Russian religious thought. Revival or preservation?

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleРусская религиозная мысль. Возрождение или консервация?
3. Language term Russian
4. lemma author Saprykin, Dmitry
5. lemma category Modes of interaction
6. Publication date 2002
7. lemma work Паршин Алексей [Author]. Russian religious thought. Revival or preservation?
8. lemma manifestations Вопросы философии
9. Keywords Russian philosophy
10. Citations
    1. http://old.bfrz.ru/news/rus_filos/rezume_organizator/parshin/parshin7.htm
11. Lemma body

    1. The article is devoted to the return of the Orthodoxy into the Russian society life. It does not deal with personal faith or the Church social role, but more with the religious thought, philosophical reflection on Orthodoxy. Before the October Revolution, there was a so-called religious and philosophical revival in Russia when many intellectuals turned to the faith of their ancestors, but somehow it was not enough for them just to believe, they longed to meditate upon the underlying fundamentals of their faith. Thus the Silver Age philosophy had appeared, yet interrupted soon by the revolution. One of the wonders of the late 80-s was publication of the Soloviev’s, Berdyaev’s, Bulgakov’s, Florensky’s, Frank’s and of many other religious philosophers’ works, unexpected while regulated by the uppers. According to rough calculations, about three hundred books of Russian religious philosophers were published in seven or eight years, starting from 1988. Then the interest went down, because the life has changed, and many of those who filled the halls in the early 90-s, were now occupied by survival, not philosophy. The main feature of the process was primary publication of reprints, commentaries, biographies. The attempts to develop the very philosophical thought were less noticeable. Thus, prior to the beginning of the XXI century there dominated the "conservation" trend, rather than the religious thought development. Academician Parshin considers a possibility of another approach in his article, not "conservation", but the development of modern Orthodox philosophical and scientific thought as a response to the contemporary challenges. A thinker should rather look at the border area between the church fence and the surrounding it secularized world, and to see it remains uncultivated. As Father Pavel Florensky wrote, Christian view of the world is precisely the view of the world, conception of life, but not an abstract from life system. “The great lie is to say about whatever area of life as if the Church is indifferent to it, leaves it by its own, as it doesn’t find any inner reason to percept it and a force - to enlighten it”. So there is the border question of the relationship between faith and knowledge. From the author’s point of view science should not contradict the truths of faith. And if it still contradicts them, it is not wrong belief (naive, old-fashioned, archaic), but the science is still undeveloped. Modern scientific community is proud to believe that almost everything is already understood, a little more and we will have the basic nature laws in our hands and just will be the need to “apply” them. In physics those are the unified theories of elementary particles’ interactions. The final version of them is about expected, and the name for it has long ago been procured - TOE, Theory of Everything. In biology, the genome description is naively accepted as a complete life description, although it is certainly a part of it. Finally, the huge advances in technology and medicine are considered to be scientific advances in the nature investigation. Therefore they have nothing to do with the fundamental science. The science life is all penetrated with its dogmas, often very horny and untouchable. Why can not one imagine new fundamental laws to appear in physics very close to us, say, in thermodynamics’ level, not somewhere beyond the Planck’s scale. There can be the most unexpected surprises. Thus, it is not the science to prop up (or to "correct") the theology, but the theology to gift to the science. This is the correct formulation of the question, to the author's opinion, which does not threaten to invade the doctrinal truths. The higher spheres of existence must enlighten the lower, but not vice versa. Those are the examples of problems proposed by the author where the new approaches are possible: time and eternity, philosophy of name and linguistics, Platonism and cosmology. Unlike other Christian denominations Orthodoxy is more whole and deep to preserve the purity of early Christianity and therefore it gives a great opportunity to reflect on the unsolved problems of science.