The emergence of the confessional theology in Russia (18th – first half of the 19th centuries)
Abstract
This article looks at a text dealing with theology as a text dealing with the reality that stands behind this text. Based on examples of three Russian church hierarchs who tried to systematise theology in the 18th and 19th centuries — Archbishop Feofan (Prokopovich), St. Philaret (Drozdov), St. Innocent (Borisov) — the paper reveals and interprets the following issues: gradual penetration of categories of history, administration and church service into the structure of theology; rejection of the socalled natural theology (theologia naturalis), which takes place at the beginning of the 19th century. Proceeding from Foucauld’s methodology, we come to a conclusion about the emergence of confession in the Russian Empire of the fi rst half of the 19th century. This was an integrated and distinct social body, the key category of which was theology. Theology unites the social space of the confession by means of three key narratives: the identity (a complex of historical disciplines), administration (the canon law, or “theologia rectrix”, and pastoral theology), participation practices (liturgics). At the end of the period in question, the category of “Church” emerges within the theological system. On the one hand, this fact refl ects the completion of the process of constructing the confession; on the other hand, it is a sign of the emergence of ecclesiology, the new practice of theological discourse that came to be dominant in the following period.
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