Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Серия I. Богословие, философия (Dec 2018)
On the threshold of Modernity: Theology in the sixteen century
Abstract
Changes that occurred in Europe during the transition to the Modern Era had a strong impact on theology. The author of this paper accepts the defi nition of Modernity given by J. Habermas and demonstrates how theology in the 16th century was infl uenced by the three “threshold events of Modernity” identifi ed by the German philosopher, namely the discovery of the New World, the Renaissance and the Reformation. One of the consequences of geographical discoveries was the acceleration of the process of secularisation and the formation of a new vision of goals and tasks of theology and its place among other scientifi c disciplines. The main features of the Renaissance relevant to theology were the anthropocentric worldview that replaced the theocentric worldview as well as the emergence of historical consciousness. The rise of classical philology and the new attitude towards the phenomenon of text led to the new way of reading and interpreting the Holy Scriptures. Many of these tendencies had a strong eff ect on the development of the Reformation and later came to be refl ected in its theology. This paper demonstrates how the rejection of scholastic schemes, which was prepared by humanists, was realised to its full extent in Protestant theology. On the other hand, the ideas of the Catholic Counter-Reformation were very important for further development of theology. Among these one can point out measures taken with regard to the reformation of theological education, introducing methods of adjacent academic spheres to theology, a new rise in scholasticism. The conclusion of the paper points to the importance for present-day theology to rethink and creatively assimilate the developments that occurred in European theology during the transition to Modernity in the 16th century.
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