Nikolay Rozhdestvensky’s Fundamental Theology and Rational Theology of the Russian Synodal Period

Abstract

The article attempts to critically review a lecture course by St. Petersburg Theological Academy professor, Nikolay Rozhdestvensky’s (1840–1882), a course that is seen as basic for Russian fundamental theology, in the context of his contemporaries’ achievements and modern philosophical theology. While speaking of the latter, the author compares two rational-theological disciplines to uncover both their close thematic connections and differences, mainly of a communicative nature. A structural analysis of the text of Rozhdestvensky’s lecture course is provided, revealing its methodological features. It is demonstrated that the fundamental theology developed by Rozhdestvensky, in its main idea, anticipates the integrative model of the discipline that was later established in modern Western fundamental theology. It is noted that in the second part of the course that corresponds to the traditional section of the fundamental theology demonstratio christiana, or Revelation, Rozhdestvensky follows the methodology developed by his teacher, Bishop Chrysanthus (Retivtsev; 1832–1883), that strengthens the justification of Christianity as a divinely revealed religion. The content of the course section devoted to the cosmological, teleological, ontological and ethical proofs for the existence of God is critically examined as akin to the subject matter of rational theology. The article attempts to reconstruct Rozhdestvensky’s thorough study of the issue of the scientific status of the proofs and their authentic “evidentiary force”, as well as the refutation of the main objections to them. Rozhdestvensky not only reveals the content of each proof meticulously, but also analyzes Kant's criticism of these in detail, offering his own counterarguments. He goes into detail about the four aforementioned proofs that should not be considered separately, as, taken together, they produce a cumulative effect. A special attention is paid to comparison of Rozhdestvensky’s presentation of the arguments for the existence of God with those of other Russian academic philosophers of the Synodal period, in the first place Theodor Golubinsky, Victor Nesmelov and Michail Gribanovsky.