Deification in Russian Religious Thought

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Coates
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Religious Order ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
Divine Attribute ◽  
The Social ◽  
Russian Religious Thought ◽  
Revolutionary Period

Deification in Russian Religious Thought is a study of the reception of the Eastern Christian (Orthodox) doctrine of deification by Russian religious thinkers of the immediate pre-revolutionary period. Deification is the metaphor that the Greek patristic tradition came to privilege in its articulation of the Christian concept of salvation: to be saved is to be deified, that is, to share in the divine attribute of immortality. The central thesis of this book is that between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 Russian religious thinkers turned to deification in their search for a response to the imminent destruction of the Russian autocracy (and the social and religious order that supported it), that was commensurate with its perceived apocalyptic significance. Contextual chapters set out the parameters of the Greek patristic understanding of deification and the reception of the idea in nineteenth-century Russian religious culture, literature, and thought. Then, four major works by prominent thinkers of the Russian Religious Renaissance are analysed, demonstrating the salience of the deification theme and exploring the variety of forms of its expression. In these works by Merezhkovsky, Berdiaev, Bulgakov, and Florensky, deification is taken out of its original theological context and applied respectively to politics, creativity, economics, and asceticism: this is presented as a modernist endeavour. Nevertheless their common emphasis on deification as a project, a practice that should deliver the ontological transformation and immortalization of human beings, society, culture, and the material universe, whilst likewise modernist, is also what connects them to deification’s theological source.

Religious Thought and Experience in the Prison Camps

2020 ◽  
pp. 579-591
Author(s):  
Andrea Gullotta
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Direct Effect ◽  
The State ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
Prison Camp ◽  
Russian Religious Thought

The development of religious thought has often been marked by discord and conflicts between religions (and/or individual religious thinkers) and the State, which at times led to the repression of individuals and or groups of people united by the same confession. The Russian case is fully in line with this unfortunate tradition: from Nikon’s schism to the repression against all religions under the Soviet regime, Russian religious thought has often developed in repressive conditions. However, the Russian case has one distinguishing feature, that is, the extensive use of prison camps by Russian and Soviet authorities from the nineteenth century onwards, which has had a direct effect on some religious thinkers. The social and historical-cultural peculiarities of both Tsarist camps and the Gulag have shaped some of those thinkers’ views (for instance, Dostoevsky’s intellectual path was deeply influenced by his experience in the camp). Drawing upon both primary and secondary sources, this chapter aims at showing how the experience of detention in a Russian/Soviet prison camp has influenced some Russian religious thinkers such as Dostoevsky, Florensky, and Karsavin. It will also point readers’ attention to some lesser-known contributions to religious thought by philosophers, poets, and writers.

Deification in the Long Nineteenth Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 55-81
Author(s):  
Ruth Coates
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Education ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Expressions ◽  
Russian Religious Thought ◽  
The Church

Chapter 2 sets out the history of the reception of deification in Russia in the long nineteenth century, drawing attention to the breadth and diversity of the theme’s manifestation, and pointing to the connections with inter-revolutionary religious thought. It examines how deification is understood variously in the spheres of monasticism, Orthodox institutions of higher education, and political culture. It identifies the novelist Fedor Dostoevsky and the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev as the most influential elite cultural expressions of the idea of deification, and the primary conduits through which Western European philosophical expressions of deification reach early twentieth-century Russian religious thought. Inspired by the anthropotheism of Feuerbach, and Stirner’s response to this, Dostoevsky brings to the fore the problem of illegitimate self-apotheosis, whilst Soloviev, in his philosophy of divine humanity, bequeaths deification to his successors both as this is understood by the church and in its iteration in German metaphysical idealism.

Reality as History

1998 ◽  
pp. 190-198
Author(s):  
Johannes J. Venter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
New Age ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Vertical Descent ◽  
Historical Turn ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Unique Ability

Most philosophers have noted the linguistic turn at the end of the nineteenth century. Few, if any, have noted the historical turn in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Living in a time of anxiety in which the universe and life present problems to be solved, the problem for this paper can be stated as: Why was history so imprtant until recently, and is narrative so important now? I examine the advent of irrationalism in order to provide some explanation for the substitution of story for history. Some find the origins of modern humanism in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's contention that human beings have been given the wonderfully unique ability to choose for themselves. But Pico still limited the options for humankind to provisions of the traditional hierarchical ontology of the Middle Ages. Thus, for him, the journey of humankind to itself was not a historical one, but rather the choice between a vertical descent into vegetative or brute state of being, or a mystical ascent along the hierarchy to the angelic or even divine level. But Modern thought relinquished this hierarchy in favour of a human centred teleology, framing the ontology in between nature (individuality, non-rationality) as the origin and culture (reason, the social) as its outcome. Thus the ontology became historicised from Defoe, Lessing, Rousseau, through Kant down to Marx. In irrationalism this became a mythical movement remaining within the non-rational, as in Nietzsche, and Mussolini, and finally story, as in Virginia Woolff, and films such as Dead Poets Society and A River Runs Through It, or New Age neo-romanticism.

The "Resolution of Grievances for Mutual Beneficence” and its Relation to the “Reordering of the Universe” in Daesoon Thought

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-82
Author(s):  
Taesoo Kim ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
New School ◽  
Central Tenet ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Religious Body ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Way

This study is an attempt to show the religious implications of the central tenet of the “resolution of grievances for mutual beneficence” in Daesoon thought in relation to its other tenet of the “harmonious union between divine beings and human beings.” This new school of religious thought developed as the main idea of Daesoon Jinrihoe (“The Fellowship of Daesoon Truth”), established at the end of nineteenth century in Korea by Kang Jeungsan, who is known as a “Holy Master” or “Sangje.” Upon receiving a calling to perpetuate religious orthodoxy from Sangje Kang, Doju Jo Jeongsan launched the Mugeuk Do religious body and constructed a Yeongdae—a sacred building at which the 15 Great Deities were enshrined. He then laid down the “four tenets” of Daesoon thought and issued the Declaration of the Propagation of Dao, which was said to show followers the way to seek the soul in the mind.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 208-216
Author(s):  
Ruth Coates
Keyword(s):  
Religious Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
Major Topic ◽  
Younger Generation ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
Russian Religious Thought ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Revolutionary Period

The Conclusion offers a brief account of the fate of the thinkers whose work has been analysed after the 1917 revolution and the further development of deification as a motif in the post-revolutionary work of Berdiaev and Bulgakov. It considers the ‘modernism’ of Russian religious thought of the inter-revolutionary period in light of the inter-war debate between the ‘modernists’ in exile and the younger generation, the representatives of the ‘neo-patristic synthesis’ (V. Lossky and G. Florovsky). Whilst it was this younger generation that introduced deification to the ‘West’ and made possible its emergence as a major topic of theological scholarship (which it remains to this day), its achievement rests on foundations laid by the protagonists of this book. Finally, the Conclusion sums up the main ideas that the book has attempted to express.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
David M. Doyle ◽  
Liam O’Callaghan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Crime ◽  
Revolutionary Period

This chapter opens with a micro-history of the murder of Ellen O’Sullivan by David O’Shea in rural Cork in 1931; this case study is used to introduce some of the key themes of the book, particularly around the social history of capital punishment in Ireland. The chapter then outlines the history of capital punishment in Ireland in the nineteenth century before analysing, in detail, the executions carried out during the revolutionary period and the civil war, and the attendant legal proceedings. Political crime and emergency legislation would remain key themes in the history of capital punishment after independence. The chapter then outlines the legal and technical procedures associated with the death penalty in independent Ireland. This key contextual material sets the scene for the remainder of the book.

Life in the Spirit

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter C. Hodgson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Russian Religious Thought ◽  
The Church

‘Life in the Spirit’, an ancient conviction of the Church, finds diverse new meanings among the thinkers of the nineteenth century. The chapter starts with a distinguished line of Protestants from Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Kierkegaard to Bushnell, Royce, and Troeltsch. Then it turns to three Anglicans (Coleridge, Maurice, Gore); to Möhler and the Catholic Tübingen School; and to Soloviev and Russian religious thought. It ends with ‘marginalized voices’ of the century, voices that spoke of the Spirit in the genre not of theology but of sermon, song, and story. The purpose is to display as much variety in viewpoint as possible and not to resolve contradictions. Tensions are inherent to the topic itself. It is clear that, despite the centrality of Christological issues in this century, the Spirit too comes into its own, blowing in every direction.

The Awakening and Theology

2019 ◽  
pp. 111-146
Author(s):  
Andrew Kloes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
University Professors ◽  
New Developments ◽  
The Awakening ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Academic Theology

This chapter analyzes how new developments within early nineteenth-century, university-based, academic theology were expressions of religious awakenings that had occurred in Protestant communities in Germany. The respective schools of thought reflected many university theologians’ own personal religious experiences of awakening. These considerably shaped the aims and methods of their scholarship. Recognizing how university professors were influential leaders in the Awakening movement through their lecturing, writing, and roles in new religious voluntary societies underscores an important point about the social composition of the movement. It was not simply a phenomenon of popular religious culture. Rather, different theological varieties of awakened Protestantism were fostered by some of the most learned members of the Protestant churches of Germany. They used their status and authority to promote such beliefs and assumed doing so was a responsibility of the academic and ecclesiastical offices that they held.

Theosis in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Religious Thought

2020 ◽  
pp. 239-254
Author(s):  
Ruth Coates
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The One ◽  
Russian Religious Thought ◽  
Vladimir Solov'ev ◽  
Entire Economy

The chapter argues that the Greek patristic doctrine of theosis (‘becoming god’ or ‘making god’) was a dominant theme of late imperial Russian religious thought, in which it served as a response to the acutely felt anticipation of the imminent collapse of the Russian political and social order. Theosis is defined as a metaphor for salvation that emphasizes the process, as much as the goal, of assimilation to God, and which can be viewed as a narrative encompassing the entire economy of salvation as well as a doctrine narrowly conceived. It is argued that lay Russian religious thinkers accessed the concept of theosis through diverse channels that included the patristic translation project and related scholarship of Russia’s Theological Academies, the still vital tradition of spiritual eldership and the pathway to personal transfiguration by the divine energies set out in the Dobrotoliubie, and the philosophy of divine humanity of the nineteenth-century religious philosopher Vladimir Solov’ev. Three seminal early twentieth-century treatments of theosis are analysed: Sergei Bulgakov’s Philosophy of Economy (1912), Nikolai Berdyaev’s Meaning of Creativity (1916), and Pavel Florensky’s The Pillar and Ground of the Truth (1914). These reveal the ‘modernist’ approach typical of the period, that is, engagement of theosis in dialogue with diverse intellectual contexts including German metaphysical idealism (Bulgakov), Symbolism and the theosophy of Jakob Böhme (Berdyaev), on the one hand, and, in the case of Florensky, engagement of the formal experimentalism of modernism in the service of a defence of Orthodox mystical asceticism.

Jewish Religious Thought in Early Victorian London

AJS Review ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-210
Author(s):  
Steven Singer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Host Society ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
The Social

Religious thought and observance almost never exist in a self-contained vacuum but are rather influenced, to a greater or lesser extent, by their social and ideological surroundings. A study of the spiritual life of early Victorian Jewry provides a good example of this law of history and shows how a Jewish community's religious beliefs and actions can be shaped and even dominated by the influence of its Gentile host society. An analysis of early Victorian Judaism is really an investigation into the social dynamics of the London community and a study of how the endeavors of its various factions to adapt to the mid-nineteenth-century English world affected its religious life.

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