{"title":"Thinking of a human in the context of the memetic theory of religion: from the “image and likeness” to the “vehicle”","authors":"E. Khitruk","doi":"10.15382/sturi2022101.118-135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15382/sturi2022101.118-135","url":null,"abstract":"The article is devoted to the study of the idea of a human in the context of the modern memetic theory of religion. The work consistently reveals the main provisions of the memetic concept in the works of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore. Richard Dawkins is regarded as the founder of the replicator-centric interpretation of the evolutionary process, which contributed to the formation of the idea of the meme as a unit of cultural information. Memes compete with each other in the process of cultural evolution, pursuing their own benefits, regardless of the possible benefits of host organisms. To such \"selfish\" memes, R. Dawkins, first of all, refers to religious ideas. R. Dawkins' concept has a popular scientific character and its author, considering a person to be a bearer of memes, does not clarify the ways of interaction between specific memes and the human mind. This philosophical aspect of the memetic concept is developed in the theory of Daniel Dennett, who, distracting from the scientific (biological) context, builds a naturalistic metanarrative based on the concept of memes. D. Dennett argues that the human mind is not only an effective means of transportation for memes, but also literally an artifact created in the process of memetic evolution and acquired, thanks to it, a tendency to select and prefer certain (evolutionarily successful) types of memes ... Such an interpretation of man is consolidated in the psychological theory of S. Blackmore, who asserts that the theory of memes finally and convincingly debunks both the religious ideas about the free and autonomous personality of God, who is responsible for the existence of the world, and the traditional ideas about the free and autonomous personality of man, who is responsible both for his own existence in general, and, in particular, for the morally significant decisions of their lives. S. Blackmore proposes to consolidate the new concept of a person as a vehicle with appropriate psychological techniques that get rid of the \"false\" feelings of their own autonomy and freedom. The author of this article considers the memetic concept of religion, culture and man as a non-trivial version of classical naturalism and suggests the possible productivity of criticism of this concept based on the unique Christian interpretation of personality as irreducibility to nature.","PeriodicalId":170812,"journal":{"name":"St.Tikhons' University Review","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124414506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Political theology” of emperor Alexander I: ideas, representations, practice","authors":"A. Andreev","doi":"10.15382/sturii2022106.62-80","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15382/sturii2022106.62-80","url":null,"abstract":"In 1815, the Russian Emperor Alexander I formulated the principles of a new world order, which was supposed to ensure long-term and stable peace after two decades of continuous wars in Europe. This project, called the Holy Alliance, was based not so much on foreign policy as on religious grounds. This article examines in detail the set of ideas put forward by Alexander I from the point of view of political theology. The religious motives that moved the Russian emperor are shown, determined by the peculiarities of his spiritual life. The rhetoric of the Holy Union, its basic concepts related to the Christian doctrine are analyzed. Special attention is paid to the representations of the Holy Union in the public sphere, namely, the solemn God services designed to prove the unity and \"brotherhood in Christ\" of the monarchs of Europe and their peoples. At the same time, the study demonstrated how significant the image of the enemy, embodied as “revolution”, played in the justification of the Holy Alliance within the framework of political theology. The concept of revolution was extremely generalized by Alexander I and interpreted as a manifestation of universal evil. This lead to the doctrine of interventions under the auspices of the Holy Alliance in the country affected by the revolution, which in turn provoked new bloodshed. An analysis of the accumulated contradictions made it possible to draw a conclusion about the reasons for the fading of Alexander’s interest in the constructions of political theology in the last years of his reign.","PeriodicalId":170812,"journal":{"name":"St.Tikhons' University Review","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132812681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Myth, gods, man: \"speculative theology\" as a cultural and religious phenomenon of Ancient Egyptian thought of the 15th-13th centuries BC","authors":"V. Zhdanov","doi":"10.15382/sturi2022101.99-117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15382/sturi2022101.99-117","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies the features of the so-called “speculative theology” of Amun-Re, the most prominent trend of ancient Egyptian religious and theological thought of the XV-XIII centuries BC on the example of two of its most significant texts, Cairo (Pap. Boulaq 17 Pap. Kairo CG 58038) and Leiden (Pap. Leiden I 350) hymns to Amun. Unlike earlier forms of Egyptian spiritual culture, for the first time in the history of ancient Egyptian religion, it creates the image of a transcendent deity, the connection of the believer with whom is now carried out through direct personal contact, and not through traditional forms of worship for the Egyptian religion. At the same time, many features of the image of Amun in the Theban “speculative theology” of the New Kingdom can already be considered as an attempt at a fundamentally new reflection of traditional categories of ancient Egyptian culture, such as, for example, “Maat” (world-order, justice, truth), both based on traditional values and departing from them. The reason for this was the crisis of traditional ideas about Maat after the Amarna era, which fundamentally changed the nature of popular piety and at the same time the basic principles of Egyptian religious and political ethics. From the point of view of the mythogenic conception of the genesis of philosophy, “speculative theology” - both in Egypt of the New Kingdom and somewhat later in archaic Greece – is of exceptional interest as the most important \"transitional form\" on the path of transformation of primitive myth into philosophical discourse and at the same time an interesting example of the interpenetration and joint evolution of mythological, religious and emerging philosophical worldview. Not always turning into a full-fledged philosophical tradition (this is exactly what happens, in particular, with the Theban “speculative theology” of Amun-Re), it nevertheless demonstrates the complex ways of transforming the spiritual world of the ancient man of the Eastern Mediterranean, thanks to which the spiritual transformation of the \"axial time\" became possible in many ways. By the example of the image of Amun, the transformation of ideas about religious experience in the Egyptian culture of the era of the New Kingdom is also studied.","PeriodicalId":170812,"journal":{"name":"St.Tikhons' University Review","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131269674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Religious philosophy of Thomas Chubb","authors":"Andrey Polyakov","doi":"10.15382/sturi2022101.45-56","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15382/sturi2022101.45-56","url":null,"abstract":"The article presents a brief biography of the little-studied British deist Thomas Chubb (1679-1747) and a reconstruction of his ideas about capabilities of human mind. The goal of this article is to study the religious philosophy of T. Chubb that Russian studies does not distinguish from ideas of other deists. That is why the idea of the phenomenon of deism is still less clear in relation to foreign studies. The article analyzes and presents Chubbs concepts about the independence of religious truths from human perception, that are presented in «Discourse concerning Reason, with Regard to Religion and Divine Revelation» (1733) and «An Enquiry into the Ground and Foundation of Religion». The article documents that the English philosopher formulated three \"author's\" truths of natural religion: there is an initial difference between objects, independent of human perception; this distinction is the basis for human behavior; God made these foundations a moral rule for all people and for himself. The work identifies and analyzes the definition of the phenomenon of \"deism\" in Chubb's treatises, as well as an assessment of his philosophy in the context of this definition – the natural religion of reason or belief and just and sense of a Deity impressed upon the mind, and is the governing principle of a man’s-affections and actions. The correlation of the ideas of Thomas Chubb and Matthew Tindal is analyzed. At the end of the article, a brief conclusion is made about the place of T. Chubbs philosophy to deism in general. The author of this work believes that despite the absence of references to other deists by the English philosopher, the ideas of this thinker fit into their religious and philosophical system, specifically about the issue of understanding natural religion. The sources of this article are treaties «The Sufficiency of Reason in Matters of Religion, Farther Considered» (1732), «Discourse concerning Reason, with Regard to Religion and Divine Revelation» (1733), «Some reflections upon the comparative excellency and usefulness of moral and positive duties» (1733), «The true Gospel of Jesus Christ Asserted»(1741) and several other treatises.","PeriodicalId":170812,"journal":{"name":"St.Tikhons' University Review","volume":"111 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131497420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The traditional territorial structure of Andoma parish in Olonets uyezd in the first half of the 18th century","authors":"E. Suslova","doi":"10.15382/sturii2022106.44-61","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15382/sturii2022106.44-61","url":null,"abstract":"The article investigates the specific features in the territorial structure of the church parish on the Andoma pogost district of the Olonets uyezd during the first half of the 18th century. The set problem has not been the subject of close analysis in the historiography yet. Approving the idea that the parish on the North-West of Russia was coherent with the small district (volost’) in 17—18th centuries, emphasizing the unity of the parish, scientists mainly focused on the problem of identifying the general features of the parish and on classification of parishes. The study is based on a comparative analysis of data that were fixed in the reports of the local priests in 1708 and confessional records in 1769. The reconstruction of the grid of all mentioned in the sources villages were used for visualizing the groups of villages, inhabitants of which belonged to different parts of the parish. The revealing data as well as the reconstruction of peculiarities how the clergy was attached to one or another church and how the staff of the clergy was divided into two parts allow us to conclude that the church parish of the Andoma pogost district had significantly more complicated structure, especially in comparative with the structure of church parishes of not very vast districts (volosts). According to tradition the parish was divided into two parts for regulating mechanism of material support of the clergy, distributing obligations among them and satisfaction spiritual needs of the laity. Both parts of the parish had a significant degree of self-dependence: each had its own church, own clergy that was included in the common clergy staff (shtat), and the strictly geographically localized group of villages. The stable using of archaic practices in the territorial organization of the parish during the first half of the 18th century suggests that the local community managed to adapt them to the newly approved legislative principles, aimed at unifying and enlarging church parishes. This was largely possible as the state and church policy took into account archaic traditions of local communities and was aimed on results in the long term.","PeriodicalId":170812,"journal":{"name":"St.Tikhons' University Review","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125319028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Scientific use of archival documets of Moscow Spiritual Consistory under the departmental restrictions of the Synodal period","authors":"I. Ivanov","doi":"10.15382/sturii2022106.81-96","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15382/sturii2022106.81-96","url":null,"abstract":"The article deals with a little-known and hardly imaginable in the context of pre-revolutionary clerical administration scientific direction of the Moscow Ecclesiastical Consistory Archive. Based on archival material and works of ecclesiastical Moscovites of the 19th - early 20th centuries the principles of the introduction of diocesan materials into science, as well as the parameters of departmental influence within the structures of church institutions on the example of the Moscow Ecclesiastical Consistory Archive are revealed. By the second quarter of the XIX century, the Consistory had acquired a large collection of diocesan documents with undisclosed information potential. Apart from departmental rules, the interest in the archive depended on psychological factors influencing research motivation. The establishment of science in the pre-revolutionary consistory archives was helped by a special committee which was set up in the first half of the 19th century to work with the archive complex. Its employees had to bear the main burden of searching for the necessary documents. The development of archives by the scientists was nonlinear: the periods of growth and decline alternated. Attention to the archive's documents was dulled by the change in OLDP's educational methodology, which replaced historical reconstructions with visual preaching. Nevertheless, the Archive's processing mechanisms were preserved and only the First World War interrupted further development of the information capacity of the Consistory archives. Thanks to the combined efforts of the clergy employed in the Archive, as well as the improved quality of the documents preserved, the Archive of the Diocesan Institution is gradually becoming a breeding ground for scholars studying the history of the Russian Church.","PeriodicalId":170812,"journal":{"name":"St.Tikhons' University Review","volume":"2004 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125617587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Opposition \"charismatic – institutional\" in the Church Law theory of Eugenio Corecco (1931-1995)","authors":"I. Borshch","doi":"10.15382/sturi2022101.9-25","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15382/sturi2022101.9-25","url":null,"abstract":"The opposition of the categories of institutional and charismatic leadership has become a common topic of discussion in the social science of the XX century. However, this opposition has been discussed not only in sociology and political science, but also in theology and church law. This article is devoted to the charismatic-institutional concept of Eugenio Corecco (1931-1995), a Swiss Catholic canonist, Bishop of Lugano, a participant of the legal reform process in Catholic church law in the second half of the XX century. His concept was influenced by the legal theory of the German Catholic canonist Klaus Mersdorf, the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council, the ideas about the charisma of the founder of the Communione e Liberazione (Communion and Liberation) movement Luigi Giussani and, finally, the reform of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. The first part of the article discuss how Corecco approaches the problem of church institutions in the modern era, critically starting from the legacy of the Church Public Law school of the XIX - early XX centuries. The second part is devoted to solving the institution-charisma problem in Corecco’s theology of law. It is shown how from the ideas of the Munich school, founded by Mörsdorf, about the Word and the Sacrament as the pillars of church legal order, the Swiss canonist comes to the idea of charisma as an essential element of church order. Referring to the canonical theory of the Protestant lawer Rudolf Sohm about the antagonism of law and the spiritual nature of the Church, Corecco suggests solving this dilemma through the term communio, which is key for the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council. He emphasizes that law serves church communion, therefore, along with the liturgical heritage, the charismatic experience of the past and present should be reflected in the canons of church law. In the third part, the problem of charisma is clarified in connection with a priest status and preaching in modern and postmodern society. According to Corecco, the necessary response to the crisis of church discipline in the Catholic Church of the 1960s and 1970s could be found in the attempts of canonists to rethink the relations of the episcopate, clergy and laity in the Church. In this context, he particularly emphasizes the importance of the including of charismatic element in the reformed post-conciliar Catholic theology and church law.","PeriodicalId":170812,"journal":{"name":"St.Tikhons' University Review","volume":"125 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122546404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Criticism of positive theistic arguments in the polemic of theism and atheism","authors":"Valeriya Sleptsova","doi":"10.15382/sturi2022101.82-95","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15382/sturi2022101.82-95","url":null,"abstract":"In the article the author analyzes the arguments of the theist W.L. Craig for the existence of the omnipotent, all-good, timeless God of classical theism as well as counter-arguments of W. Sinnot-Armstrong. W.L. Craig used five arguments, they are Kalam cosmological argument, fine-tuning argument, objective moral values argument, argument from the testimonies of the gospels and argument from religious experience. Craig seeks to show that when we take all these arguments together, they increase the probability of the existence of the God of classical theism. Sinnot-Armstrong, in turn, criticized all these arguments and seeks to show with varying levels of credibility that every Craig’s argument can be refuted within the framework of an atheistic approach. He exposes the argument from the existence of objective moral values to the most detailed criticism, while speaking from the position of moral realism and Platonism. Sinnot-Armstrong criticized fine-tuning argument least convincingly. He accepted the fact that there is no good atheistic response to this argument, but he used usual rhetorical attacks against theism. He uncritically repeated the model of the war between science and religion. As a result of the analysis of the controversy between Craig and Sinnot-Armstrong, the author of the article comes to several conclusions. Firstly, atheism is combined with various metaphysical attitudes, from naturalism to Platonism. Secondly, an atheist may hold different views on the problem of free will between determinism and indeterminism. Thus, since atheism is very heterogeneous in itself, most of the Sinnot-Armstrong counter-arguments are not universally applicable to atheists.","PeriodicalId":170812,"journal":{"name":"St.Tikhons' University Review","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127879952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The \"Life\" of st. Germogen, the arranger of Kirensk and Albazin monasteries. A unique document siberian hagiography of the mid-19th century","authors":"V. Pushkarev","doi":"10.15382/sturii2022106.99-131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15382/sturii2022106.99-131","url":null,"abstract":"Hieromonk Hermogenes is one of the outstanding ascetics of the Russian Orthodox Church who carried out their ministry in Eastern Siberia. Two monasteries were founded here in the second half of the XVII century by his works. He was a good shepherd for the Russian first settlers of the Amur region, showing an example of Christian humility and piety. Immediately after the death of Hermogenes (1690), his popular veneration began, and in 1858 his life appeared.This is a handwritten text made up of two words spoken on the days of the memory of the righteous. In 1910, the manuscript was acquired by the Imperial Public Library. In this edition, for the first time, the full commented text of the Life is published. A preliminary analysis of this document made it possible to identify the sources used in its compilation and to establish the identity of the hagiographer. At the same time, a significant amount of historical facts contained in the text led to the preparation of a voluminous corpus of notes clarifying, supplementing or refuting this information. \"The Life of St. Hermogenes\" is a unique monument of Siberian hagiography of the middle of the XIX century. In addition to the obvious historical and cultural value, it is a convincing confirmation of the widespread popular veneration of Hermogenes in pre-revolutionary Russia and can serve as a good reason for his church glorification.","PeriodicalId":170812,"journal":{"name":"St.Tikhons' University Review","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131998722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Secular as political theology in russian religious philosophy of the first half of the 20th century","authors":"Artem Solovev","doi":"10.15382/sturi2022101.57-81","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15382/sturi2022101.57-81","url":null,"abstract":"The article is devoted to the problem of understanding the secular as political theology in Russian religious philosophy of the first half of the 20th century. The connection between the concept of «political theology» and the concept of «secular» is carried out in accordance with the approach of K. Schmitt. Schmitt’s approach is proposed to be expanded to understand political theology as borrowing the structure of theistic theology by other means for secular purposes. In the article, this approach is used to identify what can be defined as the analysis of «political theologies» in the works of Russian religious philosophers of the first half of the 20th century. The study determines that the secular as political theology appears as the «religion of anthropolatry» of the Russian intelligentsia for Merezhkovsky and Bulgakov, and appears as the mythology of communism for Losev and Florensky. The article concludes that the political theologies of socialism and communism are the result of the secularization of the Jewish apocalyptic and Christian chiliasm for Bulgakov, Berdyaev, Losev. Whereas, socialism and communism are secular variants of Gnosticism, which he defines as «the heresy of utopianism» from Frank’s point of view. The article concludes that understanding of the secular as political theology allows us to interpret the phenomenon of religious conversion, which is considered as the beginning of Russian religious philosophy, as a transition from political theology to theistic theology, and not just as a transition from atheism and skepticism to faith. It also states the possibility of applying the concept of confessionalization to understand cultural criticism of modern political theologies by Russian religious philosophers of the first half of the 20th century.","PeriodicalId":170812,"journal":{"name":"St.Tikhons' University Review","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121049678","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}