Orthodox Thinkers Research Articles

Altruism in the interpretation of Russian religious philosophy

Introduction. A number of Orthodox philosophers, among them K.N. Leontiev, criticized New European altruism, and N.A. Berdyaev generally rejected it, calling it “the teaching of bourgeois-democratic morality, the middle-general morality of well-being, the morality of quantities”. P.A. Florensky, N.O. Lossky, V.S. Soloviev, on the contrary, called altruism active love and Christian agape. L.N. Tolstoy believed that the good of people lies in unity and solidarity, and F.M. Dostoevsky called for active and selfless love, which is capable of transforming and purifying. This position of Russian religious philosophers arouses research interest in the author of the article. Thus, the purpose of the work is to conduct a comparative analysis of a number of concepts of Orthodox thinkers who interpreted the concept of altruism differently, but at the same time expressed similar opinions in relation to this ethical category. Methodology and sources. The author uses the hermeneutic method, which allows one to immerse oneself in the study and interpretation of the texts of Russian religious philosophers, which helps to create a voluminous hermeneutic circle of Russian culture, highlighting its features. Results and discussions. The author's approach to the study of culture and interpretation of cultural meanings through the analysis of ethical categories can be called original. A similar approach may be useful to researchers in the field of cultural philosophy as a possible method when studying a particular sociocultural system. Analyzing the concepts of Russian religious philosophers using a similar method helps the author highlight the value foundations of Russian culture. Conclusion. Altruism as a cultural phenomenon and ethical category, once on the soil of Russian culture, acquires a completely different meaning and fullness.

Ancestral Sin is not Pelagian

Various thinkers are concerned that the Orthodox view of Ancestral Sin does not avoid the age-old Augustinian concern of Pelagianism. After all, the doctrine of Ancestral Sin maintains that fallen human beings do not necessarily or inevitably commit actual sins. In contemporary literature, this claim could be articulated as a denial of the ‘inevitability thesis.’ A denial of the inevitability thesis, so contemporary thinkers maintain, seems to imply both that human beings can place themselves in right relation to God as well as the Pelagian denial that all require Christ's work to attain this right relation to God. This article demonstrates that the Ancestral Sin, along with a denial of the inevitability thesis, is neither Pelagian nor Semi-Pelagian. I show that the doctrine of Ancestral Sin denies (Semi-) Pelagianism in various ways. I show that, for Ancestral Sin to entail (Semi-) Pelagianism, one must commit to several assumptions, each of which is plausibly deniable and none of which Orthodox thinkers affirm.

ВКЛАД НИКАНОРА (БРОВКОВИЧА) В ФОРМИРОВАНИЕ ТРАДИЦИИ «ПРАВОСЛАВНОГО ФИЛОСОФСТВОВАНИЯ»

The article analyzes the creative heritage of the Orthodox philosopher Nikanor (Brovkovich). He sought to create a type of philosophy in which, on the basis of theocentrism, distracted-contemplative and vital-practical principles were combined, old scholastic metaphysics was overcome. Orthodox thinkers are indicated, whose views are correlated with the "positive philosophy" of Nikanor, a justification for the similarity of their theoretical provisions is given.

РЕЦЕПЦИЯ КАНТОВСКОЙ ФИЛОСОФИИ В РУССКОМ ДУХОВНО-АКАДЕМИЧЕСКОМ ТЕИЗМЕ XIX – НАЧАЛА XX ВЕКА: НАТУРФИЛОСОФСКИЙ АСПЕКТ

t. In this article, the author describes the main points of critical reception of Kant's philosophy in the spiritual and academic theism of the pre-revolutionary period. The text shows that the criticism of Kant and the assimilation of some of his ideas in theological acad-emies were part of a general trend in Russian religious philosophy towards the German thinker. Kant's perception was multifaceted, varied and complex. Orthodox theists recognized Kant’s historical and philosophical significance, but at the same time they criticized him for rationalism, subjectivism, agnosticism, separation of the subjective and objective aspects, and extreme apriorism. Spiritual-academic philosophy was characterized by the desire to fill Kant's natural-philosophical apriorism with aposteriorism and to harmo-nize it with the data of the natural sciences. The author comes to the conclusion that the attitude of Orthodox thinkers to Kant's philosophy can show the specifics of Russian spiritual and academic thought.

'If it don't fit, don't force it?' If real-world, complex clinical decisions are intrinsically categorical can dimensional systems add value? Reflections on Lahey, Tiemeier & Krueger (2022).

'If it don't fit, don't force it?' If real-world, complex clinical decisions are intrinsically categorical can dimensional systems add value? Reflections on Lahey, Tiemeier & Krueger (2022).

Conspiracy narratives in Russia: A search for identity, religious worldviews, and Russian politics

AbstractConspiracy thinking plays an important role in Russian culture. Contemporary Russian conspiracism inherits elements of the Cold War rhetoric, French anti‐Freemasonic literature, ideas of conservative Russian Orthodox thinkers and North American Christian writers. In today's Russia we see two distinct, although interconnected, types of conspiracy narratives—official and popular. Official narratives, which can be seen as a component of the new Russian ideology and civil religion, promote a patriotic sentiment in order to consolidate the nation and solidify political hierarchy through a sharp distinction between “traditional values” and the “depraved West.” Popular conspiracy narratives share similar characteristics but lean towards a thorough disbelief in institutions. From this perspective, elites worldwide, including Russia, participate in the conspiracy of governments and corporations. Because of this attitude, popular conspiracy narratives often conflict with official rhetoric even if at times official and popular narratives seem aligned.

‘Classical’, ‘True’ Slavophiles and Slavophilism as Depicted, Interpreted and Perceived in Works by Russian Émigrés (In the 1920s)

The article is concerned with the consideration, perception and interpretation by first-wave Russian émigrés (in the 1920s) of Slavophilism as well as ‘classical’ and ‘true’ Slavophiles and their heritage. This study is aimed at providing an insight in the historical conditions in which Russian émigrés found themselves, namely the philosophical, historical and political views of those who wrote about Slavophiles as well as the reasons Slavophiles’ heritage attracted their interest. The article uses a method first and foremost requiring that detailed consideration be given to the spiritual and religious perspectives from which Slavophiles were viewed. The relationship between Slavophilism and Eurasianism has been established. Particular attention has been paid to Slavophiles’ works published in Russian and foreign languages in European countries. Also analyzed is the chronology of publications on Slavophiles produced by Russian émigrés, including chronological peaks predominantly associated with anniversary dates. The authors have determined the major areas of activities carried out by Russian émigrés to familiarize the audiences in the host countries with Russian Orthodoxy and Slavophiles as non-clerical Russian Orthodox thinkers, and have revealed the reasons behind the interest in Slavophiles’ heritage. The authors have come to the conclusion that first-wave Russian émigrés in the 1920s continued the traditions of the 19th century and the early 20th century in almost every respect. As before, the spiritual and political views of the writers played a significant role in the study of Slavophilism. At the same time, under the influence of the tragic events of the civil war and the new situation in Europe and across the globe, the connection between works in emigration and pre-revolutionary studies led to the emergence of some new perspectives in emigration that revised the previous understanding of Slavophilism. When these publications are compared with the Soviet historiography of Slavophilism of the 1920s, the latter appears to be of no scientific interest.

Welcoming Finitude: Toward a Phenomenology of Orthodox Liturgy by Christina M. Gschwandtner

Reviewed by: Welcoming Finitude: Toward a Phenomenology of Orthodox Liturgy by Christina M. Gschwandtner Tamsin Jones Christina M. Gschwandtner. Welcoming Finitude: Toward a Phenomenology of Orthodox Liturgy. Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought Series. New York: Fordham University Press, 2019. 308 pp. This is a brilliant book. One does not usually begin a book review with such a blunt statement, but that is the most significant point of this review. Reading Gschwandtner’s Welcoming Finitude: Toward a Phenomenology of Orthodox Liturgy would reward a number of different audiences—Eastern Orthodox thinkers, theologians and liturgists, religious studies scholars invested in the analysis of lived religion, and, especially, French phenomenologists. The work moves between the worlds of contemporary phenomenology and Orthodox liturgy with a fluency that few other than Gschwandtner could master, despite her expressions of humility (1). (While already a tenured professor in philosophy, Gschwandtner spent her sabbatical earning a PhD in theology at Durham.) The result is a richly detailed and comprehensively researched analysis of Orthodox liturgy through the lens of phenomenology, in which Gschwandtner not only illuminates aspects of the liturgy but also demonstrates deficiencies in phenomenology as it has developed thus far. She examines different aspects of Orthodox liturgy through the topoi of temporality, spatiality, corporeality, sensoriality, affectivity, community, and intentionality. Gschwandtner constructively brings to light the ways in which the discourses of phenomenology and Orthodox liturgy might enrich each other. For instance, in terms of temporality, there is a tension within the liturgy “between anamnesis (memory) and eschaton (anticipation)” (35). Gschwandtner points to some erroneous analyses of the temporality of liturgy that try to resolve this tension through a literalist interpretation in which statements such as “today is the day that . . .” are read to mean on this present day Christ is re-sacrificed, betrayed again, or presently ascending to heaven, etc. Instead, Gschwandtner employs Heidegger’s phenomenological temporality in order to elucidate how we “enter” into a specific time in liturgy, one that “concerns” us and in which we participate: “In the experience of liturgy, past and future become present, but not as recreations or reenactments of historical events, but as liturgical events that are experienced ‘now,’ appropriated by our experience of the event in the liturgical moment” (43). At the same time, however, liturgy can correctively expand on Heidegger’s conceptualization of time as too focused on “my” time and, thus, too individualistic. Liturgical temporality, on the other hand, recalls the memory of Christ and the saints and anticipates the coming of a heavenly community; it broadens out beyond one’s own personal time to create a time that individuals can enter into but that is not dependent upon an individual to construct it. Along the same lines, Gschwandtner considers the question of liturgical intentionality—particularly the tension between a view of liturgy as primarily a manifestation and disclosure of God and a view of liturgy as primarily concerned with the ethical formation of its participants (172)—to demonstrate ways in which phenomenology can both be helpful to, and corrected by, an analysis of liturgy. She argues that liturgy is fundamentally a human endeavor, one that does not proceed from God, is not given by God, but instead “is oriented toward God” (183). [End Page 143] What appears, or is made manifest in the liturgy, is the human person in community in a “posture of expectation, desire and preparation” (184). For example, when Basil of Caesarea prays in the “anaphora” that the bread and wine be manifest as the body and blood of Christ, this is less an ontological claim than it is a description of the worshippers’ intentionality. In this way, a phenomenological analysis of what is being experienced in liturgy displays structures of intentionality that ready the ground for a possible encounter with God without claiming to prove God’s presence as manifest therein (184). Part of Gschwandtner’s argument aims to critically correct a tendency of French phenomenology to be simultaneously too parochial and, ironically, too broad. By drawing on primarily Catholic concepts and practices in a phenomenological analysis of human experience, Marion, Lacoste, Falque, et al., run the risk of conflating theological claims with phenomenological ones and of rendering universal human experience of...

Ontology of Personality in the Apophatic Theology: Development of the Ideas from Lossky to Manoussakis

This article examines the path of the ontology of personality (πρόσωπον) in apophatic theology taken by Orthodox thinkers such as Vladimir Lossky, John Zizioulas, Christos Yannaras and John Manoussakis, and analyzed in dialogue with contemporary philosophy. It is described how the dependence of existentialism, personalism and phenomenology on the ontology of personality (the Another) is established, whose origins lie in Christological and Trinitarian decrees (Lossky). It is analyzed what way ontology in the personal sense, derived from the personality of the Father, takes precedence over ontology in terms of being (Zizioulas). It is pointed out that it is the Nietzschean (“God is dead”) and Heideggerian (“Nothing”) post-metaphysical concepts that have cleared the way for a genuine ontology of personality in its apophatic mystery, manifested and experienced in the phenomenon of “eros” which affirms the primordially interpersonal character of being (Jannaras). It is considered in what the ways in which modern phenomenology, using the ontology of personality, eliminates all the systemic metaphysical elements of thought, opening the way to a mere non-conceptual experience of experiencing the otherness of the Other (Manoussakis). Within the framework that was sketched above, the article offers the following: a critical examination of the personalistic vector in Orthodoxy; reflections condemning any kind of personality reduction; and also the ways and purposes opened up by a new understanding of the anthropological dimension have been indicated.

Book Review: Louth E., prot. Contemporary Orthodox thinkers: From “Philanthropy” to our time. Moscow, Palomnik Publ., 2020. 640 p.

Журнал «Вопросы теологии» — международный академический журнал по теологии. Журнал ориентирован на развитие всех направлений и областей, входящих в исследовательскую отрасль «Теология», прежде всего в том варианте, в каком она развивается в светских вузах и научно-исследовательских структурах, а также в духовных академиях.

Teologická etika vybraných ruských pravoslavných myslitelů

This study introduced ethical refl ection of the three Russian Orthodox thinkers who apocalyptically refl ected ethical questions of their era, in spite of the generation gap between them. Vladimir Solovjov, with his determination of the defense of the good, wanted to prepare the society of the 19th century not for the reception of an earthly prosperity, but for the recognition of the divine value of the Divine Kingdom. In the ethics Nikolaj Losskij is the fi rst to discover the theoretical-practical facilitation of the development of the Dark Power in the fi rst half of the 20th century. He also didn’t forget to invoke divine return to the ideal of the Divine Kingdom. Pavel Evdokimov, the youngest of the Russian writers under investigation, represented the new generation of the Russian emigres, who – in the culture of the different world – were looking for establishing his orthodox identity in the return to patrology. The starting point for his ethics is a new way of life in Christ, the metamorphosis in the Holy Ghost and the life of the liturgical-sacramental mission in the Church.

W poszukiwaniu utraconej metody, czyli Włodzimierz Sołowjow a idea sofijna w nowej książce Henriecke Stahl „Sophia im Denken Vladimir Solov’evs. Eine Ästhetische Rekonstruktion”

The article is based upon Henriecke Stahl’s newest monograph under the title “Sophia im Denken Vladimir Solov’evs. Eine asthetische Rekonstruktion”. The author’s precise analysis focuses on the metamorphosis of the Sophia-idea in both Solovyov’s philosophy and poetry. The following review discusses the most important aspects of Stahl‘s book as well as the semantic peculiarity of her methodology. Other significant and meaningful elements are various frames of reference between Solovyov and German philosophers (Kant, Hegel, Schelling) and mystics (Jacob Bohme) and Eastern Orthodox thinkers, especially those of the hesychast spiritual tradition (Gregory Palamas, [Pseudo-]Dionisys the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor).

Beyond Making and Unmaking: Re-Envisioning Sacred Art

This paper engages with predominantly Eastern Orthodox thinkers in reassessing the conditions under which sacred art may be possible today. The sacred has both ontological and cultural aspects. An artwork is sacred, firstly, by virtue of partaking of transcendent realities; and secondly, by being embedded in a worldview which allows the work to be made and received as sacred. Drawing on the thought of Philip Sherrard, the paper suggests that current conditions are characterised by cultural forgetting and the loss of such a metaphysical worldview. This paper proposes that the possibilities of sacred art must be rediscovered from within the practices of particular arts; and that this goes hand in hand with the rediscovery of a sacred ontology and of a Christian understanding of freedom. The paper will follow David Bentley Hart in affirming a theological understanding of freedom—as the orientation towards, and the attainment of communion with, ontological goods—against the prevalent postmodern and ultimately nihilistic notion of freedom as spontaneous volition. It is crucial, therefore, to also identify those transcendent goods towards which art may fruitfully be directed. In this light, the paper proposes the need to revise our concepts of matter, form, and, above all, beauty.

Letters

Letters Steve Pinkerton Sir: “The question,” writes Geert Lernout in JJQ 54.3–4 (Spring–Summer 2017), 434–36, “is not whether we can read Joyce as a Catholic or as someone of religious faith. Of course, we can; this book is a good example. The real point is a moral one: we ought not to do so.” By “this book” Lernout refers, unfortunately, to my own Blasphemous Modernism: The 20th-Century Word Made Flesh (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)—a study which, for all its lesser sins, is plainly innocent of the grave error Lernout imputes to it. His remarks nonetheless have the virtue of reanimating certain well-worn academic questions, including the extent to which an author’s biography “ought” to determine or (at the other extreme) to foreclose avenues of scholarly inquiry and literary criticism. Joyce was an atheist, of course. But this biographical datum hardly tells the full story of his pervasive and unceasing negotiation of religious materials throughout his oeuvre. Nor is it a point worth belaboring, given that Lernout has already rehearsed it so exhaustively in Help My Unbelief: James Joyce and Religion (New York: Continuum, 2010). For my own project, I was more interested in exploring Joyce’s status as the blasphemous modernist par excellence, a writer whose aesthetic practice of “sacreligion” provides an exemplary template for the literary irreverence of other modernist authors: a diverse group of poets and novelists whose uses of religion, profane and otherwise, have to date received far less attention than Joyce’s have (FW 365.03–04). So concerned is Lernout to protect Joyce’s atheism from all real or imagined threats that he neglects entirely to address this core function of Joyce’s work within my overarching argument or even to mention any of these other authors—including Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes, and a number of Harlem Renaissance writers—who collectively occupy the bulk of Blasphemous Modernism. One person Lernout does mention, repeatedly, is Slavoj Žižek, whom I cite exactly once in the book. I certainly do not claim that Joyce, Loy, Barnes, et al. subscribed to a “Žižekian non-denominational ‘religious faith’ (without God, scripture, or church),” as Lernout puts it. He is the first reviewer to understand Blasphemous Modernism’s argument in this way; that he does can perhaps be attributed to a statement in my introduction which he quotes and, I daresay, misreads. In the offending sentence, I venture that meaningfully blasphemous art requires “a respect and even reverence, not for God, or scripture, or the church, but for religious faith itself and its enduring cultural sway.” “Surely,” Lernout marvels, “a religious faith without God, scripture, or church . . . is a particularly late-post-modernist [End Page 497] notion that modernist writers would not recognize?” Perhaps, but I do not ascribe such a faith to any of the writers discussed at length in Blasphemous Modernism—almost none of whom was personally religious. (One exception: Mina Loy, Christian Scientist.) My point, rather, was that any blasphemy worth the name requires a tacit acknowledgment of religion’s abiding power, “of the sanctity that still adheres to its institutions, sacraments, and scriptures.” I was talking about religious faith(s) in God, complete with church, scripture, and all the rest—not “without” them. These are precisely what the seriously irreverent writer profanes, reimagines, and makes new. The other inaccuracies Lernout finds in my book are enumerated as follows: “Photius I of Constantinople, Arius, and Sabellius were not Catholic heretics; there is no single Protestantism; and Queen Victoria is not ‘facetiously’ celebrated as a ‘defender of the faith’—that was and is the official title of the reigning monarch.” Yet Lernout’s own Help My Unbelief notes that “Photius was a heretic, from the point of view of the catholic church”; that Sabellius was “a heretic according to orthodox thinkers”; and that “the case of Arius as heretical is the clearest: in a way he became the church’s arch-heretic.” (Surely “the point of view of the Catholic Church,” and that of “orthodox thinkers,” must count for something in the identification of “Catholic heretics”?) As for his other objections, I do not recall advocating for...

Семья в трудах представителей казанской школы духовно-академического теизма второй половины XIX – начала XX века: осмысление библейских традиций

The article analyzes the philosophical concepts presented in the works of the representatives of the Kazan school of spiritual and academic theism, dealing with the problems of marriage and family: in particular, their understanding of biblical traditions in the conditions of socio-cultural and socio-economic realities. The basis of the material presented in the article was unpublished earlier works of Kazan researchers stored in the State archive of the Republic of Tatarstan. The author comes to the conclusion that in the Russian Empire, the representatives of spiritual and academic theism faced the task based on modern knowledge of sociology, pedagogy and psychology to give a philosophical answer to new challenges, to adapt traditional values according to the realities of life. The acquaintance of Kazan researchers with modern them ideas of Russian religious philosophy of the second half of the 19th – first half of the 20th centuries in which the family was associated with the highest moral value, the realization of love, with the commitment to excellence and integrity, fullness of being (N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, B. Vysheslavtsev, V. Zenkovsky, I. Ilyin, N. Lossky, V. Solovyev, S. Troitsky, N. Fedorov, P. Florensky, G. Shimansky) had great importance for understanding the philosophical essence of family and marriage. In modern conditions of return to the bourgeois-capitalist relations, philosophical searches of Orthodox thinkers are interesting for understanding the problems and tendencies of development of family and marriage, thus representing a subject of not only historical or historical and theological research, but also historical and philosophical one.

Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present . By Andrew Louth

<i>Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the</i> Philokalia <i>to the Present</i> . By Andrew Louth

Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present, written by Andrew Louth

Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present, written by Andrew Louth

Book Review: Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present. By Andrew Louth

Book Review: Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present. By Andrew Louth

Epistemology of the Orthodox theology of postmodern era

The article is an analysis in key of religious studies of epistemology of Orthodox theology postmodern era. Analysis of epistemological doctrines of representatives of the Orthodox theology of the XXI century is especially relevant today because it is theological epistemology defines the nature of anthropology, ontology and systematic theology. Orthodox thinkers of the postmodern era are trying to create the phenomenology of communication with God as a personal reality. This greatly depends on the phenomenology of modern philosophy and theology, especially - from the theological works of French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion. Epistemology of the Orthodox theology of postmodern era is emerging, experiencing the transformation of complex mystical empiricism to hermeneutics of mystical experiences. Orthodox theologian A.Papanikolaou believes that truth is an event in communication. Man has true knowledge in the act of communion with God only insofar as it is involved in the inner life of God. A.Papanikolaou believes that knowledge of God in the act of communication exists only Trinity, which also involved person or Eucharistic community. If the act of communication according J.Zizioulas provides mutual ecstasy, going beyond its own existence to God and man, then according A.Papanikolaou God and man is always in communication, and the knowledge of God it is only when this communication becomes closer and more conscious. And man is in communion with God even outside the Eucharistic experience as always is in God as limited in infinite. J.P.Manoussakis stresses that the structure of the individual sensory overrides rational, passive-affective experiences influence more important than rational and volitional acts. Sensual experience with the most individual evidence. J.P.Manoussakis boldly puts forward the thesis: God exists if there is a sensual experience feelings meet with him. Originality views D.Hart that according to him the most unlimited line between God and man is infinitely call of God to man. Awareness abyss between God and man, revealing to man groundlessness its existence, is the beginning of knowledge human dignity.

An Eastern Orthodox Reflection on Papal Primacy: Olivier Clément’s Response to Ut Unum Sint and the Ecclesial Legacy of Patriarch Athenagoras I

Russian émigré intellectuals and theologians in Paris brought a renewed faith rooted in Patristic Tradition into dialogue with Western modernity. Their creative work was developed and taken forward into the twenty-first century by Olivier Clément, one of the major figures of the ‘Paris School’ from the 1950s. The decision of the Russian émigré community to move from Russian ecclesial authority to come under Constantinople, and Clément’s own collaboration with Patriarch Athenagoras I, were early defining influences on him. The Second Vatican Council convoked by Pope John XXIII and the subsequent raising of anathemas by Paul VI and Athenagoras I led to ecclesial renewal and an ecumenical springtime in which many Orthodox and Catholic thinkers sought to bring Tradition and contemporary problems into a creative synthesis. Clément’s Orthodox interpretation of the three-fold structure of local, regional and universal primacy is his irenic response to John Paul II’s call for deeper reflection on Christian unity.