Respondent
Theme
The problem of the correlation between faith and reason in eastern patrystics: historical-philosophical and logical-structural analysis
Defence Date
Annotation
In the thesis the problem of the relationship between faith and reason proved
to be more developed by the first apologists than their predecessors, the apostles
men. However, this vision is not worthy of the name of concept. In the Alexandrian
school of the Christian theology we first meet the conceptualization of the
relationship between faith and reason. It is developed by Clement of Alexandria. For
him, faith is the beginning of knowledge of God, it is a kind of religious intuition,
knowledge in advance of God that exists in a human soul. It is, after Clement, a
mental act. On the other hand, mental process of reflection on the truths of faith, the
improvement in the faith is called knowledge, Christian gnosis. This concept of the
relationship between faith and reason is called rationalistic due to the fact that the
concept of faith is identified in the writings of Clement as a mental act.
Among the Cappadocian Fathers the most innovative concept of the
relationship between faith and reason was that of Gregory of Nyssa. While after
Clement of Alexandria and Origen faith primarily took place only at the beginning
of the knowledge of God, and then it was knowledge that set in; and this concept is
called rationalistic; then in the first Cappadocians (Basil the Great and Gregory the
Theologian) faith and reason cooperate at all the levels of the knowledge of God, in
the works of Gregory of Nyssa a continuation of the tradition of Cappadocians is
seen, but first faith after him is clearly associated with means of communion with
God, which is the last stage of the knowledge of God and where there is no place of
reason. This vision of the problem “Athens and Jerusalem” we called mystical
conception of the relationship between faith and reason.
Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor and Gregory Palamas in the
solving of the problem of the relationship between faith and reason are in the same
vein as their predecessor Gregory of Nyssa recognizing faith as the means of union
with God.
Therefore as a result of the critical analysis of the problem it is proposed to
classify the periods of the formulation and solution of the relationship between faith
and reason in eastern patristics as nonconseptual, rationalistic and mystic.
Keywords: faith, reason, patristics, knowledge, God, theology, apologetics,
philosophy, revelation, Christianity.