Svetlana Konacheva

Philosophy, Religion, and Science: the Models of Understanding

Svetlana Konacheva - Professor, Chair of Modern Problems of Philosophy, Russian State University for the Humanities; Professor, National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow, Russia). konacheva@mail

This article deals with the basic models of philosophical understanding of religion, those constitutive characteristics of it that determine its specificity in relation to other forms of human existence. The article outlines several approaches to the description of religion: Kantian, Hegelian, phenomenological, and analytical. The special character of religious thinking is defined by its participation in faith: religious thinking is like a meeting with an object of thought that reveals itself for the thought and thereby determines our thinking. The article also focuses on the role of metaphor in modern religious thought and shows that the metaphorical language of modern theology becomes an alternative to conceptual language. The author proposes a new methodology for dialogue between science and religion, which is based on the understanding of their fundamental otherness. The possibility of substantive dialogue is to explore the situation of human existence in the world.

Keywords: philosophy, religion, science, dialogue, metaphysics, religious experience, religious statement.

Konacheva S. Philosophy, religion, science: models of understanding // State, religion, and Church in Russia and abroad. 2015. N 1 (33). pp. 51-75.

Konacheva, S. (2015) "Philosophy, Religion, and Science: The Models of Understanding", Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov' v Rossii i za rubezhom 33 (1): 51 - 75.

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An immature theology student from Canada came to me this morning and asked, among other things, what place reason occupies in my theology. Answer: "I'll use it!" Karl Barth (letter dated 7.5.68)

THE problem of the relationship between religion and science belongs to the discourse of modernity, where religion is conceived as a separate sphere of life, separated from other areas of theoretical and practical activity. Before Modern times, such a dichotomy has no basis, since in the previous period "there was no separate sphere or limited area called religion and different from reason, politics, art or commerce"1.In the framework of modern philosophy of religion, the latter appears as a kind of construct involving extremely diverse ways of describing it. It is impossible to imagine one general philosophical approach to religion. Rather, we can identify several key models of describing religion (Kantian, Hegelian, phenomenological, analytical) that have developed in Modern times, try to identify in them those characteristics that led to the appearance of the science / religion dichotomy, and identify those changes that occur in postmodernity, where the dichotomies secular/sacred, rational are called into question/ irrational and where the autonomous mind has lost its right to act as a judge.

Philosophy in its definition of religion is primarily interested in the relationship of religion not with specific positive sciences that thematize a certain sphere of existence, but with it-the science of philosophy, since a certain hierarchical scheme has been built since Aristotle, within the framework of which only philosophy (metaphysics) is considered as a science of principles, and here substantial tensions arise in relation to religion These include both an understanding of the abyss that separates faith and thought, and a recognition of the fundamental commonality between them. The most profound difference between philosophy and religion is that religion is prefaced with something that does not belong to human existence - Revelation. However

1.J. Caputo How the secular world became post-secular // Logo. 2011. N 3 (82). P. 189.

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there is something unconditional in their essential realization. For religion, it consists in accepting the self-revelation of the creative God; for philosophical thinking, it consists in the question of the existence of beings as that to which man belongs unconditionally.

Preliminary notes

If we use the terminology of John Caputo, then in the sacredperiod2 a philosophical approach to religion is formed, which can be called onto-theological. This approach assumes that religion should not be transformed into philosophy; nevertheless, religion relies on philosophical grounds in order to find arguments against atheism in them and to find evidence that not all religions correspond to the philosophical definition of its essence, not all are "true", but this characteristic applies only to one - the bible. Religion is understood here as serving God or gods. The advantages of religion over atheism must be argued through philosophical proofs of the existence of God. The question of which of the many religions is the true one is resolved through philosophical arguments describing the divine essence. Only serving the true God (i.e., a God who corresponds to the concept of God) can be a " true religion."

At the same time, the formulation of the question of philosophical theology differs from the questions of religion itself. The religious person does not in principle ask the question, " Does God exist?"; rather, in the situation of contemplating an exceptional phenomenon that transcends experience, he may ask, "Is this (what has appeared to me)?" God?" In this case, the question is neither about the existence nor the essence, but about who is God and on the basis of what He can be recognized? Philosophical theology asks about the essence and existence, religion asks about the distinctive features of theophanies and about the names of God revealed in these theophanies, which make it possible for us to address Him. Creature-

2. In On Religion, John Caputo suggests a periodization that reflects key changes in the understanding of religion: the sacred period, secularization, and the post-secular. The sacred period roughly corresponds to the Middle Ages and is described as an era in which religion was not a separate sphere, reason was not autonomous in relation to the field of religious experience, and metaphysics was consistently combined with prayer.

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the existence or non-existence of God can be confirmed by rational arguments; theophany, on the other hand, cannot be the result of a chain of arguments, but only the content of experience.

However, there is also a close relationship between the philosophical and religious way of speaking about God. Thinking about God and the divine involves talking about "principles," and principles of a special kind. These principles are not subject to the flow of time, are not subject to temporal definitions, although they remain real and valid. In the religious cult, these origins are realized as an eternally new and renewing present. Similarly, philosophy speaks of principles as operating principles that do not fall under temporal definitions.

Thus, in the" sacred period " within the framework of ontology, God is understood as being in itself (ipsum esse), being in itself and for itself, and thus as thinking that thinks itself. At the same time, being itself is simultaneously and necessarily an existing entity. Thus, the question of true religion is solved as follows: true religion is the service of that God who reveals himself as "Being." The question remains: what is the specifically religious aspect of true religion that cannot be reduced to philosophy? Is there a certain excess in the Christian proclamation that remains unknowable for the philosopher with his rational reasoning about the existence and essence of God? What is the difference between the act of faith (hearing the word of Revelation) and the act of knowledge (the result of a "natural" ability to know)? It can be assumed that the free divine sacrament, which is not determined by any essential necessity, remains unknowable by any philosophical arguments. In the New Testament, this is referred to as "mystery" (1 Cor 2:7; Rom 11:25). If the specific content of religion is the unfathomable mystery of the divine sacred will, its specific form is the trustful listening to divine self-communication, i.e., faith. The juxtaposition of faith and its mystery, on the one hand, and knowledge with its subject matter accessible to research, on the other, has another significant aspect: faith, attributed to the sphere of will, is in principle subject to risk (there is a situation when I do not seek to believe). Knowledge as a result of rational argumentation, on the contrary, belongs to the sphere of the necessary. Hence the idea of faith arises

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as a foundation that requires, however, the next step-to knowledge (fides quaerens intellectum). The path of religious knowledge is the path from the God of faith as the content of an unexplained experience to a clear and distinct representation (to a certain extent, a movement in a circle - from God to God).

The Cantonese model

In Modern times, cognitive strategies are determined by the subject-the object schema, the idea of a self-aware subject; religion becomes a separate sphere, along with science and art, and the image of the judgment of reason becomes the key metaphor that determines the relationship between religion and science. Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, seeks to show that philosophy, if it acts as a science, must abandon the name of ontology and become an analyst of pure reason. Within the framework of such an analysis, a thesis is put forward about the impossibility of speculative rationalistic theology, based on the understanding of the finiteness of human thinking and the inability of thinking to deduce absolute truth from itself. Realizing the contradictions into which reason inevitably falls, trying to give an unconditional answer to the question: "What can I know?", Kant moves into the space opened by the question of morality: "What should I do?" and the question of religion: "What can I hope for?" Religion in Kant's understanding comes from a dialectic into which reason falls in its theoretical and, above all, practical application, as soon as it seeks to acquire the concept of a universal relationship, within which we meet the objects of experience. Having revealed the power of reason that constitutes objects, Kant showed both the possibility of objective cognition and the unattainability of metaphysical objects for finite cognition. Human cognition is not absolute, but it inevitably raises the question of the absolute (God as the ideal of pure reason, which has a regulatory meaning). Thus, the existence of God cannot be considered impossible, but neither can it be rationally proved. Fully aware of the finiteness and limitations of man, Kant simultaneously shows man's openness to the infinite, which is unattainable for theoretical knowledge and open to faith. It is precisely the limitation of human knowledge in relation to an unconditional goal that makes room for faith: "I cannot even allow the existence of God, freedom, and immortality for the purposes of necessary practical application.-

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ma, if I do not take away from speculative reason also its claim to transcendental knowledge"; and further: "... I had to limit (aufheben) knowledge in order to make room for faith"3. As Norbert Fischer shows, the recognition of the inadequacy of evidence for the existence of God corresponds to the situation of man as a finite spiritual being. Thus, " critical philosophy leads to the possibility of believing in God without claiming to know the universal meaning of this belief. This state of affairs appeals to the living person, who is able not only to understand his life as a set of unchanging data, but to live with the happiness of his whole life at stake."4. By limiting reason in its effort to apply rational concepts to the transcendent, "criticism relativizes the power of concepts that may be legitimate in the natural sciences or in mathematics, but which, when applied to the question of God, are useless because they make Him finite." 5 Considering the alternative of thinking about God in terms of physics or in terms of morals, Kant clearly makes a choice in favor of the latter. "To explain the arrangements of nature, or their changes, by using the concept of God as the creator of all things , is at least not a physical explanation; it generally means admitting that philosophy is finished here."6. Attempts to assert that this world is possible only because of God mean, according to Kant, attributing divine omniscience to man.

Thus, the Kantian understanding of religion defines the recognition of the reality of God, freedom and immortality of the human soul as postulates of practical reason, based on the gap between the inability of man to realize the highest good and the immutable moral necessity that requires its realization. By faith, Kant does not mean trust in Revelation, but a morally pure disposition of the soul, which comes from the use of reason. Therefore, religion is not the source of morality, "but it consists in the fact that moral laws are applied to the knowledge of God." 7
3. Kant I. Kritika chistogo razuma [Criticism of pure reason]//Kant I. Sochineniya v 6 tt. T. 3. M.: Mysl', 1964.

4. Fischer N. Filosofskoe voprosanie o Boggo [Philosophical Inquiry about God], Moscow: Khristianskaya Rossiya, 2004, p. 342.

5. Ibid., p. 343.

6. Kant I. Kritika prakticheskogo razuma [Criticism of practical reason] / / Kant I. Sochineniya v 6 tt. T. 4. Ch. 1. Moscow: Mysl, 1965. P. 106.

7. Kant, I. (1990) Eine Vorlesung uber Ethik, s.94. hrsg. von G. Gerhardt. Frankfurt/M: Fischer.

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Thus, in the Kantian model, religious faith is not based on knowledge of the essence of things, morality is not based on religious faith; neither science can create faith, nor faith - morality. The spheres of theoretical knowledge and religious faith are fundamentally different, so a faith that seeks to expand human knowledge and points to the divine will in the explanation of nature, and adds supernatural causes to natural causes, is, according to Kant, not a religious faith, but a doctrinal one and should be referred to the field of scientific opinions and hypotheses. Religion is based on morality, and morality consists in the disposition of the soul, which creates faith, because, being finite and imperfect, we feel the need for perfection, the need for redemption from evil.

Later interpretations of Kant's doctrine of postulates (Karl Rahner, Richard Scheffler) suggest that the very power of human cognition and its relation to possible objects is the place where the divine reality "shines through". According to this understanding, religion is the relation of a person as a subject to that super-objective foundation that justifies human contemplation and thinking in its transcendence, making it able to open the horizon of possible experience. Acts of contemplation and thinking do not receive justification in themselves, nor can they receive it from the objectivity of the world, since this objectivity itself becomes possible only through transcendence. If such a basis cannot be either the transcendental subject itself or the objects of empirical experience, the condition for the possibility of human transcendence, which "determines" the transcendence of human knowledge and freedom, can only be God. The relationship between God and human thought is not described as an intellectual comprehension of the divine nature through the use of the word "God".analogia entis, but as an act of the loving divine will, which expresses itself, and the reciprocal action (correspondence) of the human will. It is only in this correspondence that the relation is revealed in which the person called by God is able to name Him. Religion gratefully reminds us of "where" (woher) the gift of the word comes from, of the inaccessibility of this gift to order, since only the namelessness of the sacred in its surrender gives a person the opportunity to name the divine.

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The Hegelian model

Hegel returns to the concept of God as the real subject of theoretical speculation. The assertion of the unknowability of God for theoretical reason and the reduction of religion exclusively to the realm of faith or feeling means for Hegel to concentrate research only on human aspirations to the Absolute According to Hegel, God cannot be considered as a product of religious consciousness. After all, " if... religion was to be understood only as our relation to God, and then there would be no independent existence of God, God would exist only in religion as something posited, generated by us"8. The relation between consciousness and God is considered by Hegel in the general context of understanding the relation between the finite and the infinite. The starting point of religion is the striving of the finite consciousness towards God, but this starting point in the process of dialectical development must be removed in the elevation to the infinite.

Finite consciousness and divine intelligence are not opposed to each other as something fundamentally different, since there are no two forms of spirit. The connection between the consciousness of God and God, which determines the religious attitude, must grow out of the essence of God himself, understood as an absolute subject that differs in itself and develops. In this respect, the religious consciousness is called upon to renounce itself in the face of the infinite, so that the dualism between God and our knowledge of God will completely disappear. Man's knowledge of God becomes man's knowledge of himself in God. Faith "in God" also implies the disappearance of duality, entering into the essence of God. This removal, the annihilation of the individual as a subject existing in and for itself, constitutes a kind of theoretical cult in which our life in God is identical with the life of God in us. Hegel's conclusion: Religion is the relation of spirit to absolute spirit, or more precisely, the idea of a spirit that relates to itself. The concept of religion must be realized, must rise from the dark depths of the spirit, from the unconscious to a clear consciousness. This development takes place in the course of history, in certain religions, in which God manifests himself as a spirit in various ways.-

8. Gegel G. V. F. Lectures on the proof of the existence of God// Gegel G. V. F. Filosofiya religii [Philosophy of Religion]. In 2 vols. Vol. 2. Moscow: Mysl', 1977, p. 367.

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sobiami and with varying degrees of perfection. The peculiarity of Hegel's philosophy of religion is that Hegel sees in the history of religion the stages of development of the idea of God, the development of one and the same truth, determined by the very nature of the spirit. Religion comes to itself only in the history of religion.

Thus, in the Hegelian model, the object of religion is God, the subject is human consciousness directed towards God, and its goal is the unification of both, that is, a consciousness completely imbued with God. The essence of religion is God, religious consciousness, and worship. Faith as a cult is not faith in God, but faith in God, when dualism is removed and faith becomes unity with God. "In the cult, God is on one side, I am on the other, and its purpose is that I should merge with God in myself, know myself in God as my truth and God in myself - this is concrete unity." 9 True worship is a knowledge of God, so religion and philosophy coincide in dialectical identity, differing in the methods of their comprehension of God. Religious certainty consists in the fact that we are sure of the existence of God as our own being. The religious truth is that God is really what we think he is. Religious consciousness has the same forms as the theoretical Spirit: feeling, contemplation, representation, and thinking. Feeling is the most elementary, though necessary, form of religious consciousness; it belongs to subjective, accidental existence. "God is essential in thinking" 10. Religion is the relation of the spirit to the Absolute spirit, the idea of the spirit that relates to itself, the self-consciousness of the absolute spirit. Since worship is the ultimate goal of religion, the foundations of religion are not individual: we do not create faith, but we perceive it from the national and family spirit.

The phenomenological model

The phenomenology of religion includes very different thinkers, united by a common research direction: the description of the main characteristics of religious consciousness based on religious experience. One of the origins of the phenomenology of religion can be considered the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Schleyer-

9. Gegel G. V. F. Filosofiya religii [Philosophy of Religion]. In 2 vols. Vol. 1. Moscow: Mysl', 1977, p. 379.

10. Ibid., p. 306.

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maher emphasized the special nature of religion, its irreducibility to morality and metaphysics. Metaphysics and morality are limited to the finite; they deal with abstract considerations or practical concerns. Religion, on the other hand, is involved in the infinite; it is not a form of thinking or acting, but a unity of contemplation and feeling. He defined the essence of religion as "the feeling and taste for the infinite" or " the feeling of absolute dependence." In religion, all individual things are experienced in an infinite totality. Everything that is is experienced as a unity, in which the difference between subject and object is leveled. Religion is based on a kind of intentional relation that relates every particular experience to an infinite whole. Religion as understood in this way is described as "childish passivity" in the face of Everything, on the one hand, and the return of each particular experience to the inner unity of life, on the other. Thus, the source and end of religion is infinite existence, where God is necessarily placed. God is not identified with infinite being, but is nevertheless posited in it. For Schleiermacher, it is important to delve into the deepest sanctity of life in order to find there the original unity of feeling and contemplation. This unity can be found in the human being itself. Schleiermacher understood religious feeling itself not as a separate area of the soul's life, but as the contact of a person with the deep foundation of the universe in the very depths of the individual, as direct religious self-consciousness, the original root of all consciousness in general. Religious experience was for him an experience of the unity of consciousness, in which there is no division into subject and object, reason and feelings. As he points out, the measure of knowledge is not the measure of piety. God, who is perceived in the domain of knowledge as the basis of knowledge and understanding, is not identical with God, who is found in a pious attitude towards him, where "knowledge" flows from this piety.

The second source of the phenomenology of religion was the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. He sees the phenomenology of religion as one of the regional ontologies, does not distinguish the sphere of the religious as a special region of existence, and does not believe that religious objects are given to religious acts in some special, original way of being given. The task of the researcher, according to Husserl, is to describe the structure of a religious act and the way in which religious objects exist and are given, and to consider the con --

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the consciousness that initiates religion in its relation to a possible religion in general. However, for many phenomenologists who tried to follow Husserl's program in the study of religion, the question arose about the primordial and non-deductibility of religious experience and about the specifics of hierophany in comparison with the modes of givenness of other subjects.

In the work of R. Otto's "Sacred" (1917) focuses on irrational moments, when the feelings associated with them deviate from a rational conceptual grasp and can only be revealed through indicating ideograms or concept-designations. The essence of religion is not limited to clearly defined dogmatic statements about God or reducing God to ethics - all these are attempts to show that theism can be rationally justified. At the center of religion is the experience of the "sacred", which cannot be described in itself, but only in a roundabout way, when the nature of the numinous is reflected in the mind through feeling. Otto understands feeling as a holistic cognition in its intuitive pre-conceptual form. He refers to the irreducible moments of religious experience as mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans-a sense of tremendous and fascinating mystery. The structure of religious noesis is characterized by combining three types of opposites. Thus, as the first opposite, a religious act combines the rational and the irrational. In the act of experiencing the numinous, fascinans are combined - an attractive, charming moment andtremendum-numinous horror of the perfect inaccessibility of the deity. This combination of horror and fascination in contrast-harmony constitutes the second pair of opposites within the religious act. In the act of understanding and naming numinous, opposite moves are also connected. One aims to establish ideogrammatic meanings of moments of the irrational in order to "fix in permanent 'signs' the fluctuating sensory phenomena to come... to the formation of "healthy learning"... striving for objectivity... and thus resist all irrationalism.11 Another point involves silencing the language of the past.-

11. Otto R. Sacred. On the irrational in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational / Translated from German by A. M. Rutkevich. St. Petersburg: ANO "St. Petersburg University Publishing House", 2008, p. 105.

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with the ineffability of the sacred, which, "being quite different, "is" not predicate. " 12
This structure of religious noesis corresponds to the main characteristics of religious noema. The sacred is revealed as imperious and imperative, as Numen. But at the same time, it turns out that any attempt by a person to satisfy the demands of the sacred is untenable in the face of the sacred. A person feels the powerful call of the sacred and his impurity, his collapse before this revelation. Experiencing the unapproachable numinous value of the sacred, a person feels that he is not worthy to stand close to the sacred, "even that his own utter lack of value would make the sacred itself 'unclean '" 13.

Thus, in the phenomenology of religion, religious consciousness is considered in such a way that the noetic side appears as a unity of opposite moments, and the sacred as noema is experienced in the mode of an elusive presence, a nameless appeal, an impracticable demand. Here a special kind of intention arises, which is directed at the sacred in such a way that noesis co-intends its destruction. Very often, to describe the encounter with the sacred, the image of a gaze blinded by the light of the divine is used. The human spirit "goes out of itself", that is, it becomes aware of itself in the mode of losing all self-consciousness. This kind of noesis corresponds to the religious noema, which is originally given in the method of self-concealment. This dialectic of hierophany determines the specifics of understanding religious a priori. Otto calls the "sacred" an a priori category of consciousness, while emphasizing that it is not just a question of consciousness directed at a numinous object, but of consciousness defined by this object. The sense of numinous "breaks out of the " basis of the soul", from its deepest cognitive foundations " 14. It is no coincidence that the concept of "basis, foundation of the soul" is used(Seelengrunde), Meister Eckhart's numinous sense is an a priori moment of cognition on a deeper essential level than theoretical reason. It is a question of that "pure reason" which differs "from Kant's theoretical and practical reason as something different."

12. Otto R. Sacred. On the irrational in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational. p. 104.

13. Ibid., p. 98.

14. Ibid., p. 178.

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higher and deeper"15. The sacred itself determines the "foundations of the soul", thus constituting the essence of religious consciousness. The a priori turns out to be the first and primordial unity of the soul with God, and religious noesis appears as a rejection of itself in the metamorphosis of God-likeness.

In the phenomenological model, as presented in the works of Otto, Heidegger, and Reinach, the study of religion is based on the revealing power of the experience given to it. The specificity of religious phenomena is emphasized. It is assumed that they do not belong to a kind of psychic or social phenomena, but rather are some kind of super-phenomena that clarify themselves and everything else, while remaining inexpressible and unrecognizable. The constitution of the divine present represents the primordial phenomenon; God cannot be understood as a phenomenon constituted from the outside, by something external. It is implicated in the attitudes by which the world is understood, clarified, and analyzed. Knowledge of the essential relationship between God and man is achieved by "grasping", and not by considering one of the members of this relationship, as the "state of things"is represented. Here the basis of apprehension cannot be any representation, but only feeling, which must later be reflected. The sacred is not problematized either as a theoretical noema or as something irrational, "but as a correlate of the active character of faith, which itself becomes clear only from the fundamental essential relationship of experiences in historical consciousness." 16 True religious knowledge can only correspond to a truly experienced fundamental experience. Religious experience cannot be evaluated on the basis of non-religious or scientific criteria, but only in relation to the semantic elements contained in the religious consciousness itself and according to its own criteria. Therefore, religion is characterized as a historical event, a mystical moment of unarticulated unity between contemplation and feeling, which goes away from all the conceptual studies undertaken by me.-

15. Otto R. Sacred. On the irrational in the idea of the divine and its relation to the rational. p. 179.

16. Heidegger, M. (1995) "Die philosophischen Grundlagen der mittelalterlichen Mystik", in Heidegger, M. Phanomenologie des religiosen Lebens. Gesamtausgabe. Bd. 60, S. 333. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann.

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taphysics. Phenomenological analysis is closer to piety than to knowledge, because its subject matter affects experience.

Analytical Philosophy of Religion

The main characteristic of this trend can be considered an appeal to the analysis of the language of religion, attempts to answer the question of the meaningfulness of religious statements. Most interpretations of religious language have their origin in various aspects of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy.

In the work" Logical and Philosophical treatise " Wittgenstein asks the question about the boundaries of meaningful language, about what we can and cannot say at all. All statements that depict the world, in other words, all statements that say something meaningful and can be informative, belong to the field of natural sciences. All other statements are either tautological or meaningless. Statements of logic and mathematics are classified as tautologies, and most traditional metaphysical questions are classified as meaningless. If metaphysics speaks of God as a reality transcendent to the world, its language is meaningless, since it cannot be verified by reference to empirical data. The critique of metaphysical language does not exhaust Wittgenstein's relation to divine reality. Equally important for religious discussions are his reflections on the"mystical." By" mystical " Wittgenstein means "a sense of the world as a limited whole." "The mystical expresses not how the world is, but what it is "17. The" how and why " of the world is described in the sciences, and God does not reveal himself in the world. The" what " of the world is a problem that we can feel, but we can neither formulate nor solve. We can feel that even if science has answered all the questions, the problem of life remains unaffected. This suggests that for Wittgenstein, understanding the boundaries of language and asserting the meaninglessness of religious utterances means rather the ineffability of religion. In Wittgenstein's own words: "It is indeed unspeakable. It shows itself; it is the mystical."18. Speaking of the meaninglessness of metaphysics-

17. Wittgenstein, L (1984). Werkausgabe in 8 Bde. Bd. 1, S. 84. Frankfurt am Main.

18. Ibid., s. 85.

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Thus, Wittgenstein leaves it possible to understand it as silence, which, however, does not cancel the ban on religious and philosophical "chatter".

Almost none of Wittgenstein's followers and interpreters fully accepted the concept of a " Logical-philosophical treatise." Most of them focused on the problem of the meaning of religious language, the possibility of empirical verification of religious statements. The most revealing here are the developments of Alfred Ayer, who in his book" Language, Truth and Logic " (1936) not only criticizes metaphysics, but also refers directly to the analysis of religious statements. All true statements fall into two classes. The first category includes analytical judgments, which are necessary and quite simple, since they are tautologies. All propositions of logic and mathematics belong to this class. The second class consists of synthetic judgments - judgments about the world that are characterized by the possibility of empirical verification; any sensory experience can always be used to confirm their truth or falsity. And, finally, there are judgments that go beyond the proposed classification altogether, are not authentic in principle, and can be neither true nor false, because they simply make no sense. This is a large part of the judgments of metaphysics, ethics, and theology. The metaphysician, seeking to speak of a transcendent reality, claims the truth of his statements, without providing an opportunity to verify them. Metaphysical statements do not refer to things that can be experienced, and therefore we cannot provide any empirical evidence to justify their falsity or truth. Therefore, any statement describing a transcendent God or proving his existence, according to Ayer, can be neither true nor false; neither of them is a literal description.

The arguments of logical positivists have now largely lost their sharpness, since it has been recognized that the literal representation of the world is only a small part of the tasks of language, and besides, religious language was never intended to be understood literally. By the middle of the 20th century, Wittgenstein's later work Philosophical Studies, which developed the theory of "language games", became much more significant for the philosophy of religion. According to this theory,

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language is associated with the life form of a particular human group. It is used in different ways, and the meaning of the word is given in terms of the context in which the word is used. We can have more than one language - a language that provides factual information, but several, and each of them has its own accepted rules, similar to the rules of the game. There are many "language games" - we give orders, tell stories, give thanks, curse, and pray. Some games are more serious than others, some have stricter rules than others, but they are all equal, and each set of rules corresponds to its own game. We should not try to evaluate the moves in one game by the rules of another. The rules of a scientific language game cannot claim to serve as a criterion of meaningfulness for moral or religious statements that belong to another language game. This served as the basis for the formation of the "neo-Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion", which is characterized by the idea of religion as an autonomous form of life, with its own rules of the game, assuming different criteria of rationality from science. The language of religion, like any other kind of language, is a form of life, a game that is logically different from other language games. And if it does not meet the criteria of validity accepted in science, this does not mean that religious beliefs should be considered meaningless or irrational.

Thus, in the analytical model, attention is focused on the consideration of the meaning and justification of basic religious provisions. It is here that we analyze the epistemological status of religious knowledge, its correspondence to the forms of rationality recognized in culture. The question of the relationship between faith and science actually arises in the analytical philosophy of religion, since in it the status of religious beliefs is determined through correlation with other types of knowledge and ways of using language, among which it is scientific knowledge that is recognized as a paradigm.

Several epistemological questions are raised about religious faith. Are there any valid arguments for the existence of God? If not, what does it matter? Can the existence of evil be considered as evidence against theistic belief? How can religious pluralism be understood: there are several world religions - Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism (with versions within each one

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of these), but also a mass of less widely practiced religious cults, and " everyone is refuted by everyone." Some religious doctrines - the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement-are not easily understood; does this mean that they cannot be known or cannot be the subject of rational belief? If religious beliefs are based on faith rather than reason, does this mean that they are unreliable, so it should be a "leap of faith" or a "blind faith"?

Perhaps the main epistemological question is: what is the source of rationality of a religious belief, and does it have a positive epistemic status? Do religious beliefs belong to the same type as those found in the teachings of modern science? Does the evidence of religious belief, if any, belong to the same type as the evidence of scientific beliefs? Or is there some special source of positive epistemic status for religious belief? This is related to the question of whether there are valid arguments (rational arguments, arguments derived from the verdict of reason) for a theistic belief, and whether the existence of a convincing, indisputable argument is required for the rational acceptance of a religious belief.

The modern epistemology of religious beliefs offers two ways to address these issues. According to evidentialism (R. Swinburne 19), the source of positive epistemic status for religious belief is simply reason as an ensemble of rational abilities, including perception, memory, rational intuition, evidence, etc. Thus, the source of positive epistemic status for religious beliefs of faith coincides with the source of epistemic status for scientific beliefs. This path assumes that the existence of compelling arguments in favor of religious beliefs is required for rational acceptance of those beliefs of faith, or at any rate is deeply related to rational acceptance.

19. See the works of Richard Swinburne. Swinburne, R.: The Coherence of Theism, 1977; The Existence of God, 1979 (new edition 2004); Faith and Reason, 1981 (new edition 2005); The Christian God, 1994; Epistemic Justification, 2001; The Resurrection of God Incarnate, 2003.

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In Reformed Epistemology (A.V. It is assumed that belief in God can be rationally accepted even if there are no convincing arguments formulated rationally; religious beliefs have a source of positive epistemic status independent of the verdict of reason. In Calvin's terminology, there is a Sensus Divinitatis, which is the source of faith in God and the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit, and this testimony is from an epistemological point of view as reliable as any other source we have - our senses and memory. The beliefs produced by this source are beyond reason, in the sense that the source that guarantees them is not brought before reason; of course, this does not mean that such beliefs are irrational or contrary to reason, and faith is necessarily a leap into the dark. Religion and faith have a source of truly rational beliefs independent of reason and science; therefore, religion and faith can be as justified as science and reasonable beliefs are justified.

Religious thinking

Finally, in the philosophical theology of the twentieth century, one can find some paradigmatic reflections on the specifics of religious thinking and language, which indicate the well-known artificiality of the problem of "science and religion".

The specificity of religious thinking is determined by its involvement in faith. Rather precisely, the Anglican theologian John McQuarrie reveals this specificity in his work "Principles of Christian Theology", where he defines theology as "a study that, through participation in and reflection on religious faith, seeks to express the content of this faith in the most clear, consistent and accessible language form"21. Theology is inseparable from faith, and from a very specific faith - Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, since the theologian always belongs to a religious community. On the other hand, theology is not identical with non-theology.-

20. See the works of Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga, A.: God, Freedom, and Evil, 1974; Does God Have A Nature? 1980; Warranted Christian Belief, 2000; Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism, 2011.

21. Macquarrie, J. (1977) Principles of Cristian Theology, p. 1. London: SCM Press.

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In it, faith becomes the subject of thinking, which may even be critical. The direct experience of faith can be considered as a kind of datum for theology, which, through reflection, must pass to the level of theological expression. The last part of the definition of theology shows that it is also a discourse that aims to express faith verbally. Striving for clarity and intelligibility of the verbal expression of faith, using ordinary language, theology is on a par with other intellectual disciplines, although it differs from them in its direct involvement in its subject-faith. Calling theology a "divine" science, McQuarrie emphasizes the need to recognize "both the difference between theology and other disciplines, which stems from the inextricable connection of theology with religious faith, and the kinship of theology with all other intellectual disciplines, which is manifested in their common desire for clarity and comprehensibility."22
In the religious thought of the twentieth century, it was repeatedly emphasized that religious thinking is primordial and essential thinking, which does not need to be supported by any other types of thinking. It finds its definition and self-evidence not in other thinking, but in the Revelation of faith. Theology must understand its thinking not as a consideration of the object freely carried out by the subject, but rather as an encounter with what is thought, which reveals itself to thought and thereby defines thought. The character of theological thinking is determined by its appeal to the divine word. Receptivity to the divine word is contrasted with cognitive strategies focused on the intentionality of the cognizing subject. Thinking goes beyond its limits, it is caused by the self-declaration of God, so theology "asks because it has heard" 23. Therefore, theological thinking is thinking of faith and from faith, thinking from a believing encounter. Theology is a movement of faith that seeks to clarify itself. Faith can be considered here as the primary way in which the divine addressee is revealed to man, and therefore thinking can be called the reflection of faith. Thinking structurally

22. Macquarrie, J. (1977) Principles of Cristian Theology, p. 4.

23. Jungel, E. (1982) Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, S. 345. Tubingen: Mohr.

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similar to the belief that they both shift attention from the ego to the primary divine reality, which "pulls" the person out of himself. This gives rise to the key concept of Western theology in the second half of the twentieth century - thinking as conformity. In the present context, correspondence refers to the original relationship of subject and object in thinking. Thinking as correspondence is the activity of a thinking subject, whose mental representations are formed by the object of thought in such a way as to express its inner character. Thus, thinking cannot be an independent epistemological strategy, a study of the nature of thought, abstracted from the actual requirements of the object.

This does not mean that theology loses the character of strict thinking. Although the original theme of theology is God himself, ineffable, never "given", "appearing" as a phenomenon among other phenomena, "theology needs to be based on existential phenomena, on what is experienced by man, on the "life experience" of people; and theological work and discussion must tirelessly strive for this goal." 24. Since theology deals with the invisible, it cannot expect unquestionable data and experimental results, but this does not mean abandoning methodological rigor, clarity, and distinctness. The thinking subject only ceases to regard itself as the sole source of such evidence. If Modern metaphysics is characterized by the idea of the cogito as a "place of presence", before which all things are present and by which all things are confirmed, then in religious thinking we meet with the opposite situation: "the characteristic moment of thinking about God is the fact ... that the thinking subject experiences himself in the implementation of this thinking as an object known by God " 25. The creative potential of thinking as a human project depends on the fact that the thinking subject is an object of divine knowledge: we know because we are known.

24. Ott, H. (1970) "Die Bedeutung von Martin Heideggers Denken fur die Methode der Theologie", in Klostermann V. (Hg.) Durchblicke. Martin Heidegger zum 80. Geburtstag, S. 32. Frankfurt a. M.

25. Jungel, E. Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, S. 218.

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Thus, religious knowledge is impossible outside of experience, it cannot be reduced to the construction of a system of positive judgments about the divine essence or to a rational cosmology. As Vladimir Lossky wrote, theology means an existential position, "a mindset that responds to truth." 26 If religious experience is the basis of religious cognition, the relationship between perception and the object ceases to be objective in the traditional sense of objective as indifferent in a purely theoretical relation to it: "It is not the state of things that is before me, but I am experiencing myself in this respect."27. The predestination of God in faith determines the relation to the Absolute as to the primordial object, changing not only the theory of the object, but also the understanding of the subject. Here arises a special "theory of knowledge" of the essentially indefinable Absolute, which presupposes a radical transformation of the subject. The relation of subject and object established in the act of thinking turns out to be the realization of a more primordial relation - the preliminary connection of thinking with the object, which allows itself to be revealed by the subject. Thus, thinking ceases to be an act in which the content of thought is inseparable from the way it is formed by consciousness, and appears as a space for revealing the divine being.

Religious language

Unlike the language of science, religious language is not a "direct language" and is not reduced to a"literal interpretation". In Christian theology, language is perceived as a historical medium through which God speaks to us. Therefore, the language of theology has the character of an answer: the word is the answer word. As theologians, as Christians, we respond to the call of divine Revelation, we respond with our own words. Therefore, faith is not before the tongue, not outside the tongue, but only in the tongue. But man does not raise the question of God and does not introduce God into the boundaries of language. Otherwise, God would become an object of application of human linguistic capabilities, and in relation to such an object, all these capabilities would be doomed to failure.

26. Lossky V. N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church // Mystical theology. Kiev: Path to Truth, 1991, p. 119.

27. Heidegger, M. Die philosophischen Grundlagen der mittelalterlichen Mystik, S. 327.

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A person does not start a conversation about God, but God himself comes to the language. For the Christian faith, the word "God" is defined in the context of a verbal event that takes place within the boundaries of our language, but does not belong to this language - the event of the word of God. It is from God, who speaks about himself out of himself, that the word "God" finds its function within the boundaries of our language. Using the word "God" means listening, allowing God to come to the language. The religious word addressed to God is not based on human thoughts about Him, nor on self-evident conceptions, but on God himself speaking to us. Here, truth is not reduced to the truth of a statement or logical proposition - it is an eventful truth. At the same time, speaking about God is not a suspension of human language or its devaluation. Speech about God is not immanent in the structures of everyday human speech. But it is also not transcendent to these structures to such an extent that it loses its human character. Speech about God makes demands that run counter to the natural language resources of man, but it does not exclude ordinary discourse, but exceeds it.

The desire to separate religious language from any variants of literal interpretation led to the fact that in the second half of the XX century, attention is focused on the non-conceptual nature of the language of religion. As E. Jungel shows, the language of faith is not a direct description of reality, it is metaphorical, which means that it does not just abolish reference to reality, but refers to what is greater than reality. The possibility of a Christian religious language is revealed in the mutual play of a familiar word and an unknown referent in metaphor. Religious discourse gives language performative functions beyond direct reference to reality. The truth that faith proclaims does not relate to reality in a simple and direct way. The rejection of the univocative language of concepts, the metaphorical use of the word "gives this word a new meaning and together with this new meaning leads to the speech of a new being" 28. Thus, religious thinking and language, understood primarily as a human response to the call of God, retain the accuracy, but express the meaning of the word.-

28. Jungel, E. (1974) "Metaphorische Wahrheit. Erwagungen zur theologischen Relevanz der Metapher als Beitrag zur Hermeneutik einer narrativen Theologie", in Ricoeur, P., Jungel, E.Metapher. Zur Hermeneutik religioser Sprache, s. 105. Evangelische Theologie, Sonderheft. Munchen.

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taforically. Christian theology, conceived not as a conceptual knowledge of God, but as a space of revelation of the divine presence, becomes a human response to the primordial gift of meaning.

Does such thinking need to be justified before scientific rationality? I hope not, especially if we take into account the current sense of randomness and projectivity of all thought structures. If postmodernity is, in the aptly expressed phrase of J. R. R. Tolkien, Caputo, "a more enlightened enlightenment," where the dream of pure objectivity is no longer there, and the traditional boundaries between faith and reason are gradually blurring. In this context, many aspects of the traditional dialogue between science and religion are meaningless: the dispute between evolutionists and creationists, discussions about "intelligent design", clashes between religious and scientific anthropology, etc. Having abandoned the idea of metalanguage and metanarrative, in religion we tell a story, and this is a good story if we realize that words and names are historical and contingent, but they arise in response to the call of the Word addressed to us by the event. If religion is not a version of metaphysics and not a biography of the Absolute in time, if religion does not claim to be a comprehensive systematic explanation of the objective world, then it can enter into a dialogue with science without trying to find excuses before the court of reason and without pointing out to the" godless " natural reason super-natural grounds - that is, in such a way that the dialogue was really a dialogue with the Other, not an endless conversation with yourself. This susceptibility to the otherness of the Other "does not imply either 'neutrality' or self-destruction, but involves a dispassionate assimilation of one's own explanations and reasonings."29 And if such a dialogue turns out not to be a grimly serious presentation of arguments and counterarguments, not a dispute between a prosecutor and a lawyer, but a game filled with mutual sympathy, "a spirit of lightness, freedom, joy and good luck" 30, then a situation of understanding may arise - not just the position of the other, but the essence of the matter. Despite all the otherness of religion in relation to science, which is determined both by the way of thinking and by language, if we understand religion as a person's attitude to God or about the world, then what is it?-

29. Gadamer G. -G. Truth and method. Osnovy filosofskoy hermenevtiki [Fundamentals of Philosophical Hermeneutics], Moscow: Progress, 1988, p. 320.

30. Ibid., p. 89.

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In the light of the divine, the merging of the horizons of the participants in the dialogue is possible precisely in clarifying the human situation in the world, where religion can help science to understand other dimensions of experience. For religion, however, a dialogue with science can serve to overcome a certain imbalance of immanence and transcendence in the traditional view of the relationship between God and the world, God and man, and move to a model in which the divine being is found together with existence, God is more closely connected with our human experience and is affected by the world.

In other words, the dialogue with science leads religious thought to consider the ways in which a person can experience the reality of God, to understand that the first basic fact on which religious experience is based is our existence here and now. We exist here, among other people, among our society, among our world. Human existence and the way in which it is realized turns out to be the place where the attitude that we call religion lives. Of course, the primary factor here is God, who himself relates to man from within the human relation to God. Man, for his part, responds to the call of the divine, but the divine call is also found in the horizon of human existence. When we talk about religion, we always refer to that mode of human existence in which man defines himself through a whole called God or an indefinite divine. Thus, the study of conditio humana (including scientific research) opens the horizon for understanding the sacred mystery of the deity.

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