Libmonster ID: KG-1291

Currently, theology is institutionalized in the Russian academic space: the passport of the scientific specialty has been approved, the first dissertation council and the expert council at the VAK have been established. The acute phase of the national discussion about theology as a science has ended. However, the practical recognition of theology as a science requires justification, especially since the academic community still does not fully agree on this issue. In this issue of our journal, we offer a number of materials that can help clarify the positions of both supporters and opponents of recognizing theology as a scientific and academic status. Below we publish the answers of Ekaterina Elbakyan and Konstantin Antonov to the questions that were put to the participants of the round table organized by the editorial board of our magazine, which they could not attend. Next, we publish a transcript of the discussion that took place at the end of 2015 at the RANEPA. The position of the Russian Orthodox Church on the issue under discussion is expressed in an article by Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), Chairman of the Dissertation Council on Theology established in 2016. A series of interviews with professors of theology at German universities completes the block of relevant materials, which allows you to get acquainted with the status of theology in the scientific and educational system of one of the leading European states.

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Ответы на вопросы редакции

Ekaterina Elbakian

"In contrast to theology, the scientific axioms are only local and ‘technical'..."

Elbakian S. Ekaterina - Academy of Labour and Social Relations (Moscow, Russia). elbakyanes@gmail.com

Ekaterina Elbakian, a leading specialist in religious studies, answers to the questions about theology and its prospects as an academic discipline in institutes of higher education in Russia. In particular, one can find discussion of the questions concerning the subject of theology, relations between theology and the study of religion, the dogmatic limits of free theological investigation, and confessionalism in academic life. In general, Prof. Elbakian is quite skeptical about the presence of theology in secular universities, and she has doubts about the scientific status of the discipline that places God at its very center.

Keywords: theology, higher education, positivism, Russia, study of religion.

E. Elbakyan "Unlike theology, axioms in science are of a local, "technical" nature... " (interview) / / State, religion, Church in Russia and abroad. 2016. N 3. Pp. 190-199.

Elbakian, Ekaterina (2016) "In contrast to theology, the scientific axioms are only local and ‘technical'..." (interview), Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov' v Rossii i za rubezhom 34(3): 190-199.

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What you you can to answer that, who approves, what theology - this the science about God? If this not the science about God and about in the world in the light Of god, that in than consists of special object and object theology?

Ekaterina Elbakyan: I can answer that any theology is a teaching about God and his self-discovery in the world. The discovery of God is a purely subjective procedure that is carried out within the framework of a person's personal religious experience or the group experience of members of a religious community. Detection is possible only in the case of Divine self-discovery (that is, "by the will of God"), and in no other case, from the point of view of the theologian, is it possible. But it is also important to consider the aspect of axiomatization in theology and science. It is clear that axioms are also accepted in scientific research, especially in the exact sciences. However, unlike theology, axioms in science - as propositions accepted without proof (for example, in mathematics) - are local, I would say, "technical" in nature, being only elements of scientific theories. By the way, the reverse procedure of de-axiomatization is also possible in science. If we talk about theology, then the axiom here is God - not a certain local aspect of the theory, but the direct object that theology is actually aimed at studying. Based on the axiomatization of the object as a whole, it is natural to establish axioms of a more local nature. No less naturally, in the case of theology, de-axiomatization is practically impossible - that is, it essentially cancels the very existence of theology as such.

How you relate to to to your opinion religious scholars, which consider, what theology invades in their space? In than specificity actually theological education approach?

I have nothing to say to such religious scholars, because I myself share this opinion. It is enough to look at the passport of the specialty "Theology" to understand that it includes far from theological aspects and problems. So, in the formula of the specialty, along with the specific disclosure of its content and the main sections and sources of theological teaching, there are purely religious studies " fundamentals of faith and religious rites,

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historical forms and practical activities of a religious organization, its religious service, and religious cultural heritage in various contexts." And then: "Theological research is aimed at identifying, analyzing and interpreting significant aspects of religious life and their correlation with the norms of a particular religious tradition. An important area of the subject field of the specialty "Theology" is the study of the history and current state of the relationship of a religious organization to other confessional teachings and organizations, as well as to the state and society." All this is the sphere of religious studies, because the object of religious studies is religion, and the subject is various aspects of the manifestation of religion in the life of society and an individual. The object of study in theology is God, the subject is the self-discovery of God in the world, as already mentioned. It is clear that in the direction of "Theology" a group of specialties can be set, and a broader context can be included in it, including, of course, the history of theological thought itself, and ecclesiasticism, and ways of one's own existence and development. But it is important that all this theology should be considered within the framework of the theocentric picture of the world. Science, solving "earthly" problems, received an impulse and development precisely after the change of paradigms, that is, within the framework of an anthropocentric picture of the world.

Let's take example dissertations by religious studies on subject line "Anthropology the apostle Paul", in which one author tries value-neutral reconstruct views Paul about a person. What to the author had to would to change, to imagine your your dissertation in advice by theology?

I am not sure that such a dissertation, if it is built in an objectivist way, could be defended in the theological council, which assumes that the dissertation candidate has a certain ideological position. I will give an example, by the way, connected just with the Apostle Paul. Recently, I had to edit a lengthy text that criticized Christian Trinitarianism and the departure from Judaism in early Christianity, which was associated exclusively with the person of Paul. I told the authors that this text is unscientific, because one religion cannot be viewed from the perspective of another: this is the basic principle of religious studies as a science.-

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uki. In this case, Christianity was considered and criticized from the standpoint of Judaism, Trinitarianism-from the standpoint of strict monotheism. The authors replied that they did not claim to be scientific, but wrote the text as Jewish theologians. Well, it is possible to talk about the axiological neutrality of theology, but this kind of conversation is devoid of practical and theoretical meaning.

If theology - the science, that which the paradigm in within the framework of philosophies sciences she does it match? What are they criteria scientific interests theology? Can whether dilute it a scientific one and unscientific theology?

There are three key areas of philosophy: religious philosophy, irrational philosophy (anti-scientific), and rational philosophy (scientific). Religious philosophy has nothing to do with the philosophy of science, as well as irrationalism-the philosophy of life, existentialism, that is, those philosophical trends that are based on certain spontaneous sensations, intuition, insight, etc., and not on rational and logical constructions. Clearly, this type of philosophy cannot underlie science. Moreover, irrationalism explicitly declares that it is impossible to know reality by scientific methods, because this requires completely different procedures - spontaneous insight, intuitive insight, intelligent contemplation, etc. However, if we talk, for example, about existentialism as the largest anti-scientific philosophical direction of the twentieth century with its key category of being, then it is necessary to pay attention that there is still a certain "gap" between being and essence in existentialism, and this "gap" is neither God, nor numinous, nor anything at all sacred.

There is still one more type - rational, in which the priority in understanding the world is given to the human mind. Paradoxically, the confrontation between rationalism (in the narrow sense of the word) and empiricism, in my opinion, led to positivism - a rationalistic trend that laid the foundation for "facts, facts and nothing but facts". It is clear that positivism has gone through many stages and is not a single philosophical direction, consisting of many schools, but nevertheless its basic principle remains unchanged. So, if we talk about postpositivism, or logical positivism, then we can recall, for example, analytical philosophy, in which analytical judgments

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They are considered as logically conditioned: their falsity or truth depends solely on their correspondence to logical procedures, and it does not matter at all whether they correspond to real facts, while synthetic judgments, in search of truth, appeal to real facts, that is, they are empirically conditioned. In the context of epistemology, this means that a person has some kind of a priori knowledge, not obtained from experience, but arose due to "pure" logic. Further, if we consider not individual propositions, but the text as such (that is, a logical set of propositions) and the context against which the text unfolds, then the question arises about the possibility of establishing the truth of the entire set of propositions and the need to divide them into analytical and synthetic ones. In E. Husserl's phenomenology, as a result of a transcendental-phenomenological reduction, we get the consciousness of the pure Ego, in the structure of which there are noesis, noema and intentionality. All concrete ontological facts have been eliminated from this consciousness. Ernst Kassirer, on the other hand, sees science, art, and religion as an attempt by man to transcend, that is, to transcend himself.

Now I have a rhetorical question: which philosophical school of rationalist (scientific) philosophy can become a methodological base for the development of theological problems? I don't see any such possibilities. Neither analytical judgments about God (recall the logical errors of the proofs of the existence of God in Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, etc.), nor synthetic ones (the absence of actual confirmation in reality) are impossible. The phenomenological method is powerless here - "pure consciousness" does not include the idea of God. And transcendence as going beyond the limits of one's own personality is also quite possible without God (for example, art and science of the twentieth century). Positivism itself also leaves no room for theological reflection, because "facts" can neither confirm nor refute them.

If we move away from philosophy (given that philosophy carries an element of a worldview) and turn to science, then we need to focus on the types and principles of science.

Classical science, which is based on a mechanistic picture of the world, proclaims objectivity as the norm, that is, the correspondence of our ideas about an object of the external world or about some external phenomenon to this object or phenomenon. This, in turn, implies the elimination of the subject.-

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It means that the researcher is detached from his personal characteristics, worldview orientations, and the scale of values.

Non-classical science, which emerged at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries as a result of discoveries at the level of the microcosm (in particular, quantum mechanics), relies on the cognitive abilities of the subject. The consequence of this is the "admission" of the subject to the world of objects, and the ideas of the identity of perceptions and things, language and reality are very popular in many philosophical concepts of the twentieth century. The post-non-classical stage in the development of science, which began in the 1970s, presupposes the interdisciplinarity of scientific research, and therefore post-non-classical science contributes to the convergence of natural science and social and humanitarian sciences. The "objective" (or "external")method descriptions of objects and/ or phenomena (primarily social ones) were supplemented by the method of studying them "from the inside" - from the point of view of people who form social, including religious, structures. Here, understanding of meaning remains a priority, when the main methodological procedure is not so much explanation (as in the natural sciences), but understanding. The description of the studied processes, which is of great importance in natural science, is insufficient; it is supplemented by the interpretation of the text in the broad sense of this concept.

Despite the fact that science, of course, is constantly in development and its paradigmatic foundations are changing, the key point is still the study of what exists by itself, regardless of the subject. It doesn't care why it exists, what could have been, what should be, or how good or bad it is. That is, the scientific approach excludes subjunctive and axiological judgments. In general, science is based on evidence, so only what can be confirmed or refuted makes sense for the scientific community. To date, this community recognizes a number of scientific criteria, including the following::

1. The principle of verification, by virtue of which only the knowledge that can be confirmed is scientific.

2. The principle of falsification, by virtue of which only that knowledge is scientific that can be changed: refuted or supplemented.

3. The principle of objectivity, that is, the postulation of what belongs to the object and does not depend on the subject.

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4. The principle of rationality: reasonableness, accessibility to reasonable understanding, as opposed to irrationality as something unreasonable, inaccessible to reasonable understanding. In the methodology of scientific knowledge, rationality is understood in two ways. Most often, it is interpreted as compliance with the laws of reason - the laws of logic, methodological norms and rules. Sometimes rationality is understood as expediency, a certain goal setting that involves certain logically verified steps to achieve the goal.

5. The principle of methodicality - a sequence of logical procedures, pre-aimed at achieving a specific goal.

6. The principle of truth, which means the correspondence of knowledge (more broadly-information) to the known object (more broadly-object). On the basis of the sign of truth, a complementary sign of the objectivity of knowledge is formulated: all knowledge must be characterized by a relation to the known that exists outside of it, because if there is no known, then there is no knowledge.

7. The principle of consistency: only that information is scientific, which is properly structured.

8. The principle of mutability of parts: only that information is scientific, the components of which can be changed, that is, refuted or supplemented.

9. The principle of intersubjectivity expresses the property of general validity, general obligation, universality of knowledge-in contrast, for example, to an opinion characterized by non-general validity, individualism.

10. The principle of axiological neutrality, which implies the inadmissibility of making value judgments about the object under study.

Based on the above, I would like to repeat the rhetorical question: how do these principles of science "work" in the field of theology, if the latter is given the status of a science? After all, strictly speaking, supernatural intervention can explain anything, but none of the explanations can be confirmed.

How defined by confessional status in theology? Through self-identification? Or there is objective data criteria?

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Confessiveness is self-awareness within a denomination not only in the sense of nominal or real belonging to it, but also in the sense of attitude to the external world for a given denomination and to the inner being of the denomination itself. The key point here is a completely logical perception of the truth of the creed, cult practice, etc. of one's own denomination and the falsity (or, in extreme cases, "tolerance") of all others. In this case, both personal self-identification of a person and objective factors that allow him to be attributed to this denomination "work" - his statements, compliance with a certain morality, lifestyle, actions, etc.

What such orthodoxy applied to to theology? How generally possible orthodoxy in science?

Orthodoxy does not apply to science. This is only an allusion or reinterpretation of epistemology and praxeology. In the natural and exact sciences, orthodoxy is absent, because when new knowledge is obtained (usually by empirical means, a system of calculations, etc.), it is always possible to revise the established ("orthodox") positions. The situation is more complicated with the social and humanitarian sciences, where, for example, one of the philosophical trends (the same distorted Marxism of the Soviet period) can be considered as the "only correct methodology" (the same "orthodoxy"), based on which the whole concept of research is built. At the same time, having overcome the ideological "superstructure", in the "dry residue" we find a scientific construction/model, which, as a rule, is based on deduction.

In the religious sphere, "orthodoxy" is different - it is dogmatization and dogmatism. In science, it is its evidence-based approach. Are Newton's laws "orthodox"? Definitely. Throw anything out of the window and see for yourself. Is it possible to supplement them, or are they unchangeable, like religious dogmas? Perhaps this is what happened at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries: no one abolished Newtonian mechanics, but our knowledge expanded, and it was significantly supplemented by quantum mechanics.

Is it possible to supplement the Nicene-Tsaregrad Creed? Is "dogmatic development" possible? No, it's not possible: this is

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contradicts the fundamentals of the faith. This, for example, was repeatedly discussed at religious and philosophical meetings in St. Petersburg in 1901-1903, when one of the meetings was devoted to this issue. Then the church directly replied to the liberal religious intelligentsia that "dogmatic development" is impossible. As an example: let us recall what led to the addition of the filioque formula by Catholics.

If theological education research dedicated to to the issue, by which one in this one religious groups no agreed upon positions or generally none at all positions, that what is it will be status suggested services as a researcher solutions in appropriate confessions?

I think that the truth or falsity of the conclusions of the study in this case will be determined by how much they agree with the doctrinal foundations. If they agree, then this work can be recognized as theological, but if they disagree in some ways, then it may well be classified, for example, as a "religious philosophy", which generally reflects the main ideas of a particular religion or religious trend, but is much more "free" in the interpretation of dogma.

What is regulatory framework theological issues judgments? Admit, what theologian put it forward and justified it a certain one theological school the concept (for example, receiving autocephaly), which become legitimate in scientific and theological center space. What this will be mean for churches how a specific one religious content communities?

I believe that this issue should be resolved from the point of view of canon law. If the text proceeds from its positions, then it can be used in the argument "for" autocephaly, if "no", then it is unlikely to help achieve anything... Summarizing, we can say that the normativity of theological judgments depends on the internal rules and procedures developed in a given denomination, and not on external events in relation to it. In general, this question does not seem quite correct to me, since the publication is a kind of approbation, and not a "patent".

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Possible whether in within the framework of university card theology develop ideas, which were rejected how unacceptable? For example, it can whether protect yourself Human, which will be develop sophiology program the line - in accordance with all of them using the following criteria: scientific knowledge?

I think that this is hardly possible in Orthodox theology. Sophiology is a clear departure from Orthodox theology, from dogmatics; it is a religious philosophy. On the other hand, if theology is understood in a broad context, as including a number of specialties, then everything is possible... In this sense, sophiology can be considered as the development of various types of thought. Including misconceptions...

Not will be whether theology, which gravitating to individualization, to destroy hierarchical Build, throwing challenge to your opinion or actions ecclesiastical superiors? What more important: voice hierarchies or result theological school reflections by about togo or other a question?

I do not think that theologians can and do not depend on the church hierarchy, whose interests most of the theologians express.

If theology can to be only confessional, that how explain her existence in non-denominational university? Must whether in university present only non-denominational theology?

I do not know what "non-denominational theology" is. It seems to me that there is no "theology in general". There are Catholic, Protestant, and other theologies that try to accommodate various aspects (the so-called "genitive theology"). If we talk about individual (non-confessional) religiosity, then it is clear that some people have their own ideas about God, but what does theology have to do with it? Theology is a general concept that denotes a certain class of subjects. There is no tree at all - the word "tree" we call spruce, pine, aspen...

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