The conceptualization of love in religious thought of George Florovsky and Michael Pomazansky

Abstract

The present article is concerned with the question of conceptualization of love in works of Fr. George Florovsky and Fr. Michael Pomazansky, Russian religious thinkers and theologists. We are studying the meaning and appropriacy of two words, ‘love’ (English) and ‘любовь’ (Russian), that are the best to represent the agapelogical positive evaluation in Russian religious thought. Data for study was taken from ten different articles and extracts from books written by Fr. George Florovsky and Fr. Michael Pomazansky. On the basis of this analysis we develop semantic explications of words ‘love’ and ‘любовь’ as Christian spiritual concepts within the framework of theoretical approach of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). In summary we state that this article discusses, describes and determines some similarities and differences in understanding of concept ‘love’ in the affore-referenced works by Fr. George Florovsky and Fr. Michael Pomazansky.

Keywords

• conceptualization of love
• love
• Natural Semantic Metalanguage
• Russian religious thought
• enculturation
• philanthropic attitude