Professional journal in the system of scientific knowledge

Actual state of a most Christian confessions, or churches, nowadays may evoke memories on John. 12:31, namely the Greek text of the Evangelium: νῦν κρίσις ἐστὶν τοῦ κόσμου τοῦτου. This word from New Testament lexicon (and in the very original context: “now is the judgement of the world” John. 12:31 (KJ21)) describes exactly the modern situation. The secular ideology, together with globalism influenced two general characteristics in modern perception of Christianity.

First is a progressive refocusing of religious value-system due to demands of environment, the consumerist society. The metaphysical idea of transcendental Redemption seems to be replaced by searching for real, and immediate, terrestrial “redemption” under which mainly the financial welfare is meant.

The change of existential values, which has started in Enlightenment epoch by noblesse, has spread into the lower classes of society along with developing of competitive economy in Europe and the rest of Eurocentric civilization. Typical modern apprehension to common piousness may be expressed as “hypocrisy”, and it’s manifestations as “clericalism”; further, the usage of theological lexica is meant to be an unmistakable sign of back view of things, bankrupt anti-progressive ideology, which is set against the science and common sense.

But in contrast to ousting private religious demands and their gratification from our lives, modern people make themselves open to a wide scope of magical and quasi-magical practices. They are appealed to substitute a common piousness by any kind of ideology, which can provide a “material religiosity”, including voodoo, Buddhism, and psychoanalyses. Thus, the modern society has shown itself as amendable to the most primitive forms of mythological perception of the world, taken from diverse religions (in their context they possess a sacred sense, which is immediately lost without a context), and enrolled as a tool for a completely material branch of science. For example, practice of meditation or confession, without it’s religious meaning must the at least senseless, in worst case even harmful, while it reminds on neurolinguistic programming.

All this tendencies are representing the attempt to provide a terrestrial welfare, formed by devaluated quasi-religious practices (which are actually to be called “shamanism”), instead of a hope of Redemption and everlasting life, are leading some part of Christian society to a consumerist, magical perception of church services and even of liturgical life of Church. About thirty years ago this phenomenon was described by famous Russian historian Prof. Boris Rybakov (speaking about mediaeval Rus’) as “paganism in orthodox Christianity” [Rybakov 1987]: Christianity, which was the way of communication with God, became a magic tool of physical survival in material world; the Church, which was the point (as it teaches for last 2 thousand years) where the God and the human truly conjoined, is turning to a “place where the dear god lives”.

This demonstrates, that self-identification has changed, and church starts to fail to understand itself in a correct way.

The second this is, that Christendom has faced the danger, since autocephaly in Western orthodox churches with it’s noticeable inclination to ethnophiletism, and searching for acceptable forms of national churches in Catholicism, like Gallicanism, Febronianism or Josephinism, to degrade from universal to an ethnographic phenomenon.

Religious mind cannot cast any doubt about a possibility of crisis in Church: when it is thought as the mystical essence with Christ atop, it is impossible either now or later, because of the fact, that His Own time, on which He had told — κρίσις τοῦ κόσμου τοῦτου — will come when “there should be time (χρόνος) no longer” (Rev. 10:6), and there will “the great and terrible day of the Lord (ἡμέρα κυρίου)” (Joel. 2:31). The Church will stay until this time, as it was said, “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew. 2:31). Nonetheless the modern state of church institutes as a frame of society aimed to confess and manifest Christian faith, cannot be valued as completely stable due to many reasons.

There are at the least nine manifestations of crisis, which are to be seen in various parts of organized church institutes [Simonov 2017]:

1. the crisis of collective consciousness in church. At this point the essential role plays the process of increasing disjunction between clerus and laity, that leads to a definite perception of church as a complex of institutions, worships and clergymen, where the laity’s concern is barely noticeable.
2. an opposite site of the social crisis is the crisis of conciliarism, which is not a simply breach of collegiality in taking church-wide decisions. It is manifested as substitution of conciliarism for a secular and mainstream principle of democracy (i. e. the right of the majority, which is required of all).
3. the crisis of sacred, or profaning the sacred. Christian church gives over manifesting itself as collective person, the sacred organism, with Christ “which is the head” (Eph. 4:15), under modern circumstances of prevailing materialist consciousness. Church under the pressure of society begins to perceive itself as a separate (or separated from this collective person) part of the social corporation, very specific organization with it’s narrow scope of jobs, defined by society like “religious services” and “charity services”. Here is to be noticed, that the “religious” component of these “services” is in most cases not the number one concern. For this reason, Church acts in many cases according the rules of the secular social and economy processes, and, consequently, it perceives itself as a part of them, not of the social religious process.
4. liturgical crisis, which may be considered either as a consequence of the crisis of sacred or as it’s origin. The departure from adequate mystic and real sense of divine service in minds of clergymen as well as laity turns the religious need into obligation, which, from the secular point of view, can be easily neglected.
5. the social crisis had been caused by developing capitalism since the 2^nd half of 19^th Church had lost a significant part of it’s members, because of working hours and highly intense labour at factories left almost no chance for workers to attend church services. Impoverishment of working people was not conducive to pious thoughts. Capitalism had thrown the working class away from the church-fence, and theologians cannot define how this problem may be solved.
6. the gender crisis is connected to the social one, because of prevailing number of masculine workers at factories. The lack of male members in church and their sinking piousness lead to such a situation in Christian communities, that the women, besides their original role of “keepers of religion” are involved in religious practice, though not in New Testament sense, not as deaconesses, but as priests (that is unusual for institutional churches, i. e. organized as a clerical structure).
7. the generational crisis spans virtually all Christian churches and denominations. The younger generation happens to be more indifferent to Christianity, while immersing into material problems of daily routine and ideology of success and “successfulness” as a lifestyle, measured by money, career development and education (of course, got at one the most respected Universities), which seems to be first and absolutely imperative step to this successful life. All this have a significant impact both on the behavior of laity and ministration of priests (the lack of young priests and candidates, problem of elderly priests).
8. the dogmata crisis manifests in an utter indifference of modern Christians towards religious dogmata. The modern Zeitgeist and it’s secular dominant idea of success and welfare makes acceptable not to care about the way of possible redemption. The profaning church, which is understood as a pure social institute is intended to save the “consumer” of it’s “products” here and now, not in metaphysical Kingdom of Heaven. As a result of such kind of “piousness”, the new, or liberal, or tolerable theology emerges, which is more a sophisticated intellectual game, than reflections on God. The utter indifference to dogmata, lust for immediate miracles in church is leading to ritualism at best, and revival of Manichean dualism (in the garb of church doctrine) at worst. The essential consequence of the dogmata crisis is syncretistic religious behavior of the people, who identify themselves as Christians. It is manifested in numerous superstitious beliefs and magical perception among the church people.
9. the institutional crisis, and thereto related
10. the crisis of canonical consciousness. Pluralism of confessions and their institutes is a normal state for reformed evangelic churches, originated from the theology of Fathers of Reformation. For the traditional Christian confessions this pluralism appears to be the novelty of contemporary time.
11. the morality crisis, which was hidden for a long time, but had shown itself at last, provided an impetus to manifestation and accelerated developing of all above mentioned tendencies.

These complicated circumstances one may define as a structural crisis. A research in Church history as a branch of historical science faces the most basic challenge of keeping the scientific objectivity in analysis of it’s subject and prognosis dynamics, and avoiding the temptation to “follow the source”, which may cause (especially in today’s extremely complicated ideological context) some undesirable subjective assessment. In general, it’s the challenge of choosing the point of view of scientific objectivity among all the possible perspectives on the subject.

Back in times of study at Historical faculty of Moscow State University, we were learnt that the scientific essence of history consists in correct understanding of historical process even more than in it’s description, and the art of historian is not simply a fine way to present the source material — it is achieving of possibly adequate interpretation of this material, which allows to detect objective features and development patterns as a research subject. The founder of the Annales Marc Bloch wrote 1941 in his “The Historian’s Craft” (“Apologie pour l’histoire ou Métier d’historien”, first published 1949): “Un mot, pour tout dire, domine et illumine nos études: ‘comprendre’” [Bloch 1964:72; Bloch1986].

Academic journals are not only the way to capture the certain steps on the way to understanding that but also the way to draw the attention of science community to the work of individual researchers, let them refine and improve their statements and arguments in course of science discussion (if one arises due to science importance or social relevance of the problem) and as a result to put the individual conjectures a form of science hypothesis, the hypothesis a meaning and content of a concept.

During the centuries journals existing as a narrative genre a few types of it have developed (which are defined with a certain degree of convention). A Journal is:

1. a place to share some curious observations, original discoveries in a certain field of knowledge, which seem to their founders so interesting and important that they are worth being told about in press. The following journals belong to this type: “Istoricheskie, genealogicheskie i geograficheskie primechaniya” (“Notes on history, genealogy and geography” (primarily had published as a supplement to the first Russian newspaper “Vedomosti”, but shortly after it became a separate issue), journals produced by Russian writers and poets, such as Nikolay Novikov, Nikolay Karamzin, Alexander Sumarokov, Ivan Krylov and Mikhail Kheraskov. It was the first form of a journal as genre, which has dominated throughout the whole 18^th century and even passing over into the 19^th;
2. a place of intellectual exchange for people sharing the same broad subject. This type of journal emerged in the 19^th century and developed during the first half of the 20^th. The most close to our subject area were the academic papers published by theological academies (“Hristianskoe chtenie” — “Christian reading”, St Petersburg, “Bogoslovskij vestnik” — “Theological review”, Moscow, “Pravoslavnyj sobesednik” — “The orthodox companion”, Kazan, “Trudy Kievskoj duhovnoj akademii” — “Papers of Kievan Theological Academy”, Kiev); scientific societies (usually called “Vestnik” — “Messenger” or “Herald”, or “Zapiski” — “Notes”, or “Obozrenie” — “Reviews”) of philologists, lawyers, historians, geographers, and local lore specialists; educational institutions (like “Pravoslavnoe obozrenie” — “Orthodox review”, Moscow); and even private persons (for example, “Istoricheskij vestnik” — “History Herald”, issued by Alexey Suvorin in St Petersburg). At last, not at least there to be mentioned a very essential science periodical was “Chteniya v Imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostej rossijskih pri Moskovskom universitete” — “The papers of Moscow Society of History and Russian Antiquities”, issued in affiliation with Moscow Univesity. It was a non-journal type of print (published as separate books from 1846 to 1908), which nevertheless was setting the pace, especially at the early stages of the development of humanities in Russia, for other science periodicals. From the perspective of development of the historical science, the Annales founded 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Fevbre, and the highly influential research school formed alongside with it, which changed the methods of historical research forever, appear to be the most important example of this type of journalism.
   The communication on the pages of these journals used to be either friendly or polemical, sometimes even going beyond the limits of conventional scientific or social discussion (down to personal insults) in a completely unfounded conviction that the truth can be found in dispute. As a result of the last, periodicals could split into the opposing parties engaged in a controversy with each other. A classic example of this kind of developnemt is “Sovremennik” — “The Contemporary”, founded by Alexander Pushkin, and journals published by Faddey Bulgarin and Nikolay Grech as its opponents (“Severnaya pchela” — “Northern bee” in particular);
3. a place of a high concentration of certain socially determined ideas mostly controlled by a publisher financing a periodical and therefore also defining its content. This type of press made an appearance in 20^th century: if was a time (not that long ago, it took place literally before our very eyes) when even the ultimately scientific periodicals (fine art history, literature) were obliged to place the note “socio-political journal” after their titles. This type of press medium has had a book form incarnation as well, beginning from the early 20^th century where it was presented by miscellanea “Problemy idealizma” — “Problems of philosophy of idealism” (1902), “Vekhi” — “Landmarks” (1909), “Iz glubiny” — “De profundis” (1918), “Smena vekh” — “Change of Landmarks” (1921). Finaly, the 21^th century due to numerous influences implants the elements of mechanical perception into journals, while keeping the fundamental socio-economic determinants: often it’s a strictly determined ideological concept that hides behind a mask of scientifical objectivity.

COI statement — there’s no competing interests disclosed