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Incarnation, as defined in its simplistic form, in which God assumes a human nature, is at the heart of Christian doctrine. The uniqueness of the Incarnation, in Christian doctrine as opposed to other religious traditions, is incorporated into and among other Bible texts and into the Gospel according to John 1:1–18. This article will discuss some of the philosophies that existed at the time, which supposedly influenced the Gospel of Saint John. Thus, we will try to understand how some of these philosophies interpret incarnation in forms that do not necessarily reflect incarnation as is traditionally understood in Christianity (where God becomes flesh). This article opted for a special structure of consolidation, primarily from the belief that the Gospel of John differs from historical and contemporary philosophical tradition to the time it was written and therefore begins with the removal of Gnostic philosophies and teachings that have been assimilated in the Gospel of John. This indicated the independence and uniqueness of the writing of the evangelist John. The article also provides a list of fundamental beliefs by Christians of incarnate logos also supported by some historians the first and second century. These beliefs are then compared to concepts such as theophany, apotheosis, theosis, deification, canonization, anthropomorphism, to which Huxley is alluded to, as being equated with logos.
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This research presents an interdisciplinary analysis, on the border between medical sciences, ecology, anthropology and Orthodox theology, of some of the most important pandemics of the last century, their causes and implications for civilization. The economic and social impact of the pandemic on our civilization is particularly powerful and causes drama in our communities. However, gradually, the economy will recover, jobs will be re-established, states will find solutions to avoid collapse, and civic freedoms will be reactivated, at least in Euro-Atlantic democracies. The pandemic did not liquidate the world economy, nor does it stop humanity from its path to a global, planetary and free society, but merely awakened homo sapiens from the "drunkness of speed" of material progress that had become toxic to both him and the planet. The spiritual perspective, offered by Christian theology, introduces patristic reflections on the rationality of creation, in the light of the Incarnation of logos, and the spiritual way of reporting to the living world that derives from it. The human being wants to know whether there is a reason behind his suffering. The question of ―why me?‖ in times of suffering stems from the theological answers to the question ―What is God really like?
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This article focuses on the controversial figure of the ‘revolutionary Chief Procurator’ of the Most Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Vladimir Lvov. A large landed proprietor, a member of the ‘Union of October 17’ party, a religious expert, he was brought up to the foreground of Russian politics by the Revolution of 1917 and became the first Chief Procurator of the ‘non-Tsarist’ period. However, his excessive radicalism regarding the Church issues, his open hatred of the episcopate very quickly nullified many of the achievements of the March-June 1917 reforms. Lvov also failed to work adequately at the Local Council of 1917-1918. Having arrived in emigration after the Russian civil war, he took up the position of Smenoovekhovtsy and wished to return to Soviet Russia. The main supporters of the return of Lvov among the Soviet leadership were the Soviet envoy to Germany Nikolai Krestinsky and Lev Trotsky. Vladimir Lenin, who was sceptical and ironic about Lvov, nevertheless allowed his return to Russia. Having returned to Russia, Lvov was able to take an active part in the work of renovationists only for a few years. He was arrested and expulsed to Siberia, where he died in 1930. Vladimir Lvov became one of the symbols of the Russian re-emigration (vozvrashchentsy).
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It is already a well-known reality, proven by the numerous volumes, studies and research aproaches published after 1990 on this topic that the amplitude of the personalities that made up the group of Rugul Aprins (The Burning Bush) still arouses the interest of historians, theologians, sociologists or philologists. The present study aims to reconstruct as truthfully as possible the stage of the arrest of the 16 people who constituted the group „Teodorescu Alex. and others”, also known as the group of the Rugul Aprins, by corroborating the data from the documents in the Archive of the National Council for the Study of Security Archives with the information from the memorialistic literature, but also with the interview of two people who directly had this experience – Emanoil Mihăilescu and Nicolae Rădulescu. The memorialistic literature corroborated with the official documents (see A.C.N.S.A.S.) offers an impressive number of evidences of the fight against the Romanian Orthodox Church, the policy of compromising the Church subordinating itself increasingly diverse and treacherous means.
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The present study examines from the perspective of dogmatics Eduard Böhl’s book entitled Christologie des Alten Testamentes oder Auslegung der wichtigsten Messianischen Weissagungen published in 1882. The study deals mainly with the introductory chapter. E. Böhl, professor of Reformed Systematic Theology at the Protestant Theological Faculty in Vienna from 1864 to 1899, was strongly influenced by the theological vision of H. F. Kohlbrugge (1803–1875), a Reformed pastor from Elberfeld, Germany. As a systematic theologian he followed the orthodox Reformed position which emphasised the inseparable unity of Scripture. From this hermeneutic stance he defended the Christology of the Old Testament. Böhl testified that God in Christ, in fact, repeated, confirmed, and accomplished on a higher level what had happened in the lives of Old Testament confessors. Old Testament writings legitimize Jesus’ coming, incarnation, salvation, suffering, death, and resurrection. The essence of Böhl’s standpoint is that some of the messianic texts do not refer directly to Christ, but above all to “types”, figures who carry the promise of salvation. Other parts, however, such as the psalms discussed in detail in his book, are unequivocal pieces of evidence of the promises of the Messiah who is embodied in Jesus Christ. In support of his view, he cited “the exegesis of the New Testament,” the apostles and evangelists, and the Targums, the Book of Enoch, and the Talmud among the Jewish religious literature. With his theological vision and writings, through his Hungarian disciples, Böhl exerted a decisive influence on the Reformed theological thinking and the New Orthodoxy in Hungary. This theological trend took up the fight against the spread of theological liberalism with its centre in Debrecen during the second half of the nineteenth century. Böhl, as a defender of traditional Calvinism, was a sure point of reference with respect to important theological issues.
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Eduard Böhl (1836–1903), a scholar of the second half of the nineteenth century, was professor of dogmatics at the Protestant Theological Faculty in Vienna for 35 years. His lifework was his “Dogmatics”, which he wrote for 23 years. In this unfairly forgotten work, he formulates cardinal Reformed beliefs providing the reader with accurate guidance regarding theology, anthropology, soterology, and eschatology. This study analyses Böhl’s teaching based on the last major chapter of his book, concerned with the “End of Times”. In order to gain a better understanding of the theological issues discussed by Böhl, this work parallels Gábor Szeremlei’s chapter on “Eschatology” which can be found in his book of Dogmatics entitled “Christian Religious Science”. A study of this issue provides insights into what theologians of the nineteenth century formulated in relation to this question, and how biblical approaches and ideas emerged within the debates of orthodox and liberal theology.
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Review of: Николай Митрохин - Dmitry Adamsky. Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy: Religion, Politics, and Strategy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019. 376 pp. ISBN 978-1-5036-0864-1.
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E. E. Golubinsky, one of the most prominent natives of the Kostroma land, the largest historian of the Russian Orthodox Church, the first of the professors of the Moscow Theological Academy, elected as an ordinary academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Through the prism of the milestones of the historian’s biography, the article examines the general trends in the socio-cultural development of Russia in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries The specific features in the culture of everyday life of the Orthodox clergy are analyzed, the problem field of church educational institutions is structured, the portrait characteristic of the theological and academic corporation is personalized, its role in the historical and cultural development of Russian society is revealed. The amazing fate of E. E. Golubinsky, his intellectual honesty, commitment to the religious, moral and institutional reorganization of the historical church are updated in the context of contemporary problems of Russian education and society as a whole. The problematic connotations in the development of theological and academic corporations are revealed — the lack of a single intellectual and spiritual space in their coexistence, a certain disconnectedness of their position in the socio-cultural development of society, the need to deepen their interaction with representatives of secular intelligentsia. The necessary consequence of the synergy of scientific knowledge and spiritual faith is the construction of the Orthodox philosophy of history, which in the context of the crisis that is being experienced today, essential discourse is of practical importance in the inevitability of dialogue and the inevitability of creative transformation of personality in the modern world.
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The article studies publications of Semyon Nikolayevich Bogolyubov, 1889—1971, an outstanding educator of Russian Abroad. These publications were devoted to his trips to parish schools of the Russian Church Abroad (ROCOR). The educator S. N. Bogolyubov served in the 1960s as Chief Clerk of the Educational Council under Synod of Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad. In order to maintain effective control over and to improve learning process the teacher visited a few parish schools in 1962—1968. In particular, he visited such famous parishes in the states of New York and Pennsylvania as the Holy Protection Church in Nyack, the Joy of All Who Sorrow Church in Philadelphia, the St. Vladimir Parish of the same city, and the Convent of New Diveyevo in Spring Valley. S. N. Bogolyubov reflected some results of his trips in reports which were published by the Orthodox Russia journal, the print organ of the ROCOR St. Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York. Reading and analysis of the Bogolyubov publications give researcher an opportunity to reconstruct the little-known activities of this activist of Church and community, to show the daily work of the parish schools, to identify challenges and achievements that the parish institutions of educations had, to get to know the features of the most successful school teachers. The above issues have not yet been addressed in the studies of Russian historians and specialists on history of intelligentsia. That is why this article seems relevant. The author used methods of criticism of historical source as well as methods of induction and deduction. The author came to the conclusion that the parish schools of New York and Pennsylvania performed an important function, namely, they conserved and supported Russian ethnic and religious identity among Russian youth. During the trips to schools, the teacher opened and published the most successful methods of education. Hierarchs of the Church Abroad highly appreciated the activities of the teacher and recommended that parishes make wide use of pedagogical methods of Bogolyubov.
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The last decade of the 20th century marked the beginning of profound changes in the ideological orientations and worldviews of Russians. In the 1990s, the attitude towards religion, its place in everyday and social life changed significantly. The revival of religious and church traditions is no longer perceived as an unusual, surprising and alarming phenomenon. The religious factor has become so active and influential that ignoring it has become almost impossible. The purpose of the article is to try to identify the role of nontraditional religions in the ideological orientations and worldviews of the Far Eastern intelligentsia in the 1990s. The study’s source base consists of two equal parts: the author’s field diary, based on the included observation of activities conducted by representatives of non-traditional religions, meetings with missionaries, visits to religious communities of non-traditional religions, both individually and with students of the DVSU between 1989 and 1996, and the author’s personal archive; the second part of the sources — publications in the media, internal literature of non-traditional religions, materials of the current archives of the departments of relations with public and religious organizations administrations of the Far Eastern Federal District. The methodology chosen by the author for this study includes a comparative analysis that highlights the most significant problems in the «religion-intellectua» relationship; Identification of objective and subjective reasons for the growth of interest of the Far Eastern intelligentsia in nontraditional religions in the early 1990s and the decline of this interest after the adoption of the “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations” (1997). The spread of non-traditional religions of domestic and foreign origin in Russia is the result of sudden and profound sociocultural changes of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which gave rise to a sense of pessimism, futility of life, and a sense of fragility of the surrounding world. This was felt most acutely by young people and intellectuals, who were acutely faced with the question of finding the “new foundations” of their individual existence. The God-seeking boom, which took over thousands of Far Easterners in the early 1990s was originally aimed at finding the foundations of its individual existence and “true” faith in Orthodox communities. It was their inability in the early 1990s to meet the “spiritual needs” of the God-hunters that led to the that a certain part of the Far Eastern intelligentsia and students began to seek support for their individual existence in various pseudo-religious groups and non-traditional religions, whose beliefs after the adoption of the Religious Freedom Act (1990) and the “discovery” of Vladivostok began to be actively distributed in the Far East by missionaries of neighboring countries. The author concludes that the decline in interest in non-traditional religions among the Far Eastern intelligentsia is connected with the process of self-determination, the search by the intelligentsia for the “new” foundations of individual existence. By the end of the 1990s, the process of religious self-identification was almost over. In the worldview of the Far Eastern intelligentsia began to prevail cultural-national-religious self-identification, even non-believers self-identified themselves as Orthodox, as carriers of the cultural tradition of the Russian people.
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The article explores the opening of religious relics in the first years of Soviet power and the reaction to this opening by “popular оrthodoxy”. Holy relics — the bones and imperishable remains of holy people — are revered in both the Orthodox and Catholic churches. In 1918–1920, the Bolsheviks, knowing popular belief in the incorruption of Holy relics, organized the opening of Church relics, and instead of imperishable relics found only bones. Government officials, priests, and doctors were appointed to the Commission responsible for opening relics of saints. Thus, the Soviet authorities tried to discredit the Church. The organizers of the company for opening relics were those who before the Revolution were linked to the Orthodox Church. These were either former priests or people who served in the Synod. The opening of the relics was a great shock for the faithful and a great success for the new authorities. Instead of imperishable relics, the tombs were found at best with rotted bones. The results of this campaign were published in the press and were actively used by Soviet power later.
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The Christian East is extremely diverse. Some Churches of the Christian East have developed extensive iconographic art along with the theory of this art, while others have not. The Church of Constantinople developed patterns in the field of iconography, including Marian iconography. Byzantine Marian icons can be divided into four groups: (1) Marian feasts; (2) theological icons; (3) symbolic icons; (4) liturgical icons. A characteristic feature of theological icons is the focus on the close relationship between Mary and Christ (God). These icons include the types: Kyriotissa, Hodegetria, Eleusa, Platytera. These are the most important basic icons of Mary discussed in the article.
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The article examines the F. M. Dostoevsky’s Pushkin’s Speech in the context of modern studies of the way ancient heritage was reflected in the writer’s work. The analysis of the speech was carried out in the categories of rhetorical poetics. The author proves that the speech is structured according to the rules of epideictic eloquence, with a pronounced emotional component characteristic of Christian preaching. The author identifies established stylistic figures, the use of which is always justified: repetition, parallelism, gradation, amplification, polyphonic forms, period, allusion, irony. Rhetoric is translated into poetics. Pushkin’s characters (Aleko and Onegin, Tatiana, Pimen) become images with apparent features of both Christian culture and antiquity. Evangelical motifs and images, allusions to antiquity, concepts of Orthodox and ancient culture are integrated in a journalistic form. Christ and Pushkin are connected figuratively in poetics and rhetoric of the speech. Dostoevsky creates a portrait of the Russian poet, his image, and it is no accident that the “speech” is called an essay by its author.
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The article focuses on the unsolved mystery of the novel by I. S. Turgenev Fathers and Children - the Italian-style al fresco painting The Resurrection of Christ, located above the entrance to the church at the entrance to the Odintsova estate. None of the researchers and commentators of Turgenev’s novel were puzzled by the question: what does “Italian-style” mean in the Easter image? Meanwhile, Turgenev directly points out that, instead of the gateway Orthodox icon, there is a religious painting The Resurrection of Christ (al fresco painting) in the church, where both the sacrament itself and the outsider witness (“a swarthy warrior in a spiked helmet in the foreground”) are presented. In the Orthodox Easter iconography, however, an outside figure is an unacceptable detail, and the sacrament of the Resurrection as the highest sacred reality in accordance with the spirit and letter of the Gospel was not depicted. The Easter sacrament was replaced by the scene of the Descent into Hell, but such an icon was still called Resurrection. Meanwhile, canonically, the procession of Christ is captured, when the Savior does not descend into hell, but rises from there on the icon of the Resurrection of Christ/Descent into Hell: he leads Adam and other biblical heroes out of the underworld by “grabbing of the wrist.” In this way, the Resurrection of Christ begins with the salvation of man, with co-resurrection. In the value and semantic space of the novel, the Orthodox icon of the Resurrection of Christ/Descent into Hell is concealed behind the “Italian” fresco-veil. If Turgenev knows the “Italian” semantics of the Resurrection, then it is quite natural that the author is more familiar with the semantics of the Orthodox icon from liturgical recollection and makes it covertly actual. The behind-thescenes presence of the icon of the Resurrection of Christ/Descent into Hell and everything that is liturgically and theologically associated with it and experienced transubs the structure of Fathers and Children. The Easter hierotopy of the novel, outlined by the Orthodox icon and supported by the prayerful hopes of the finale 1) creates a very special, breathtaking and enlightening value space, correlated with eternity, the infinity of the spiritual, which affirms, elevating all present to endless life through participation; 2) sets up the supertext dimension, gives rise to the motive of transcendental hope: “You will not leave my soul in hell”; 3) and also strengthens the Russian word as the Christocentric foundation of Russian culture.
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The article deals with the anthropological aspects of Dostoevsky’s creative work. Its study requires researchers to take into account the classic’s pronounced Christian orientation of the artistic system. In the center of this system is the ideal of Christ, in whose light Dostoevsky’s concept of man is formed and the typology of characters is determined. The dominant type is the hero-ideologist, however, in addition to the underground type, he is also represented by the heroes of the “positive idea”. The latter preach the idea of salvation through the transformation of the person in Christ, rather than the idea of forcibly changing the world to achieve universal happiness. However, Dostoevsky’s anthropological discovery was not only the idea of compassion for a person fallen in sin, but also the concept of human transience in earthly existence, and hence the assertion of the idea of immortality, in which man will achieve his fullness and harmony. The quintessence of Dostoevsky’s anthropological concept is the idea of “all-humanity” (“vsechelovechnost”) and “universal responsiveness”, capable of uniting people on the basis of spiritual brotherhood and acceptance of the alien as one’s own.
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The article analyzes the semantic functions of the Old Testament and New Testament texts in the story Polosa (Stripe), a landmark for the literature of the final stage of Russian classical realism, written by Lydia Nelidova, whose work has not yet been the subject of special study. The relevance of the research is defined by the rather high role of Nelidova’s creative activity in the literary process of the last decades of the 19th century. Biblical references, quotations, reminiscences, allusions and paraphrases, which determine the sequence of the text that creates the semantic field of the work, perform the dominant ideological and aesthetic function in creating the story as a “non-trivial new text.” Nelidova’s innovation is based on the active use of Dostoevsky’s literary traditions (orientation toward the idea of “finding a person in a person” and the “living life” constant). As a “semantic whole,” Nelidova’s story is organized by the internal dialogue of three concepts of “life.” One of them is based on the Christian teaching, the other on an appeal to science, and the third - on the idea of life as an all-dominating objective force. The author’s moral and aesthetic position, which confirms the biblical concept of life, is objectified in the logic of semantic actualization of the gospel truths associated with the interpretations of the eternal theme of the struggle between good and evil, ways of human salvation, overcoming the sin of thoughts, pride and selfishness. The artistic historicism of the story, manifested in the coverage of the social contradictions of the post-reform Russia, sanctions the author’s intentionality associated with the assertion of universal human spiritual, moral and humanistic ideals. Formation of meaning at the level of the author’s intentionality and at the level of meaning generation is carried out by activating the intertextual, hypertextual and contextual functionality of biblical pretexts and traditions of Orthodox Christian culture. It is implemented in the process of illuminating conflicts of time and characters’ psychological disclosure. Intertextual reminiscences and quotes from biblical texts, the works of Christian ascetic writers and patristic sources aim to form the semantic core of the main character’s narrative and implement the principle of intersemantization of meanings enshrined in sacred texts. Thanks to these texts, they manifest in the thoughts of a character seeking a way out of spiritual and moral impasse. The author’s artistic experience stimulated the formation of the Dostoevsky school in the literature of the last decades of the 19th century. The author’s quote-based thinking anticipates the narrative strategies that will become characteristic of the artistic discourse of subsequent historical and literary eras.
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