Вестник Екатеринбургской духовной семинарии (Jul 2023)
The Historical-Philosophical Method of the Fundamental Theology of Bishop Chrysanth (Retivtsev; 1832–1883)
Abstract
The article analyzes the Fundamental Theology heritage of Bishop Chrysanth (Retivtsev; 1832–1883). It is shown that, being a teacher of Basic Theology at the Kazan and St. Petersburg Theological Academies, Bishop Chrysanth, for the first time in Russian theological science, applied the historical-philosophical method of studying religions to substantiate both the truth of the Christian religion and its divinely revealed character. At the same time, the main difficulty in the study of his method lies in the fact that Bishop Chrysanth’s lecture texts on Fundamental Theology have not been preserved, therefore, one can judge the method, subject structure and the content of his course only on the basis of: 1) a brief testimony of Professor P. V. Znamensky, 2) the analysis of some journal publications of Bishop Chrysanth, 3) the program on fundamental theology compiled by him and 4) the author’s three-volume work “The Religions of the Ancient World in their Relation to Christianity”. It is noted that Bishop Chrysanth’s methodology turned out to be more suitable in solving the key apologetic task of the second section of Fundamental Theology — “On Revelation” — in comparison with the traditional scholastic approach used by Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov; 1816–1882) in his “Introduction to Orthodox Theology”. On the whole, this methodology found some support both in the theological academy and university fundamental theology of the synodal period. At the same time, the considered structural change in Fundamental Theology was not something original for this discipline as such, and was in full accordance with the architectonics of German Catholic courses on Fundamental Theology of those years. It is concluded that the contribution of Bishop Chrysanth to the formation and development of the national theological academy and university fundamental theology of the synodal period should be called outstanding, since the historical-philosophical method of the fundamental theology work applied by him made it possible to significantly strengthen the apologetic component of Fundamental Theology as a basic theological discipline.
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