World religions. Рахимбергенова М.Х. - 36 стр.

itself in freedom and able to speak the truth openly about the situation of the    convinced that Russia possessed social structures and spiritual values, adher-
church inside Russia. A fierce critic of the Moscow patriarchate, which it         ence to which would secure the nation’ welfare, the Slavophiles or slavyanofily.
claimed had submitted to the communists and was lying about the true situation     This dispute, still pursued in the post-Soviet era, amounted to a quarrel regard-
of believers, ROCA championed the cause of the TRUE ORTHODOX or Cata-              ing what form of society, West European or Russian, provides the optimum
comb Church of Russia, which broke away from the Moscow patriarchate in            conditions for the growth of the human personality (lichnost). These matters
1927–1928. Since the 1960s the ROCA has been a vociferous opponent of the          engaged the minds of religious and secular thinkers alike, and the debate ex-
World Council of Churches and the participation of Orthodox churches in it.        tended into areas such as the philosophy of history, which has continued to be a
      In 1981 the ROCA canonized the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of            prominent element in Russian thought, both in its religious and secular variants.
Russia. This act and a significant impact in Russia and provided a stimulus to          Russian religious philosophy came into its own with Vladimir
the revival of Orthodoxy in the Gorbachev years. Then, in 1983, the ROCA           SOLOVYOV (1853–1900), whose writing spanned the last quarter of the nine-
anathematized ECUMENISM, an act which has so far had less of an impact but         teenth century. In his person, his work and his preoccupations he exemplified
which may well become more important as the anti-ecumenism movement in             some of the most characteristic positive features of Russian religious thought.
the Moscow patriarchate gathers pace.                                              These include an abiding concern with those values that honour and secure the
      In 1990 the ROCA decided that the time had come to return to the mother-     growth of the human person in freedom; a keen awareness of the ethical dimen-
land and open parishes on Russian soil in direct opposition to the Moscow pa-      sion of social relations and organization; and strong measures of idealism and
triarchate. At first, this movement had considerable success, and many parishes    consistency in applying the tenets of Christian belief to problems of the con-
from both the Moscow patriarchate and the Catacomb Church joined the               temporary world.
ROCA, called in Russia the free Russia Orthodox Church (FROC). However, a               Solovyov was the first to provide anything in Russian philosophy ap-
variety of factors, determined opposition from the Moscow patriarchate and lo-     proaching a coherent system. Highly competent in epistemology and metaphys-
cal political authorities, a questionable choice of bishops for the FROC and       ics and uniquely well versed in the writings of Plato, the Neoplatonists and
poorly managed relations with the Catacomb Church, most of which remains           German idealism, Solovyov wrote numerous works which he intended to serve
out of communion with the FROC, have contributed to a slowing in the growth        as the basis for a synthesis of religious and secular thought. He readily ac-
of the movement. In February 1995 five FROC bishops broke away from com-           knowledged the achievements of the most far-reaching and inspired pre-
munion with the ROCA, forming their own autonomous administration. It re-          Christian philosophers, Plato in particular, but also set out the deficiencies of
mains to be seen whether the ROCA can recover from this blow and fulfil its        their systems from the traditional Christian point of view, aiming to present the
aim of becoming the focus of regeneration in the Russian Orthodox Church.          agnostic and increasingly secularized Russian intelligentsia with sound reasons
                                                                                   for re-examining the nature of Christian belief and values with a view to their
                          Russian religious philosophy                             adopting these, thus healing the serious rift between intelligentsia and people.
     Reflection upon the religious dimension of human experience became                 Solovyov’s reappraisal of Christian values, carried out after a brief but
prominent in Russian thought during the nineteenth century, though it had long     strong adherence to atheism in his youth, proved decisive for the direction taken
existed in the form of saints’ lives and related writings issuing from the coun-   by many, though not all, subsequent philosophers in Russia. A succession of
try’s strong monastic tradition.                                                   gifted thinkers explored the common ground between philosophy and theology
     Awareness of the need for a type of reflection which could accommodate        and wrote extensively, sharing many preoccupations.
the insights of Orthodox spirituality and which promoted the integral nature of         Solovyov’s writings were the fruit of deep personal religious experience
the person, “wholeness”, “integrality” or in Russian tsel’nost, was expressed in   and, consequently, attach importance to experiential aspects of prayer and sac-
a celebrated article by the Slavophile thinker Ivan Kireevskii (1806–1856) enti-   ramental life of the church. As a lay believer with a particularly strong com-
tled “On the Necessity and Possibility of New Principles in Philosophy”.           mitment to Christian values, he resembled other religious philosophers in Rus-
     Petr Chaadaev’s Philosophical Letters, written in 1829 and first published    sia. Sergei BULGAKOV (1871–1944) and Pavel FLORENSKY (1882–1938)
in 1836, had set in motion the increasingly acrimonious dispute that marked        were exceptions in being clergy. The Russian Orthodox Church regarded some
Russian polemical writings during the nineteenth century, between advocates of     of Solovyov’s ideas with suspicion, even animosity. Vasilii Rozanov (1856–
emulation of West European society, the Westernizers or zapadniki, and those       1919) and Lev Shestov (1866–1938) were even further removed from the eccle-

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