Fundamental Theology (Christian Apologetics)
1. Object and tasks of fundamental theology
Reconstruction of entire truth as a main purpose of fundamental theology. Intercommunication with natural and human sciences, on the one hand, and with theological sciences – on the other.
Chapter I. Essence and genesis of religion
2. Essence of religion
The necessity of solving the question on the essence of religion. Etymology of the word “religion”, various hypotheses: Cicero, Arnobe, Lactance, St. Augustine, modern views. Nonreligious and Christian conceptions of the essence of religion. The problem of the definition of religion. Essential elements of religion: the belief in personal God and in the supernatural world, Revelation, belief in the immortality of soul, morality, Church and religious worship. The Holy. Distinction between the Church and the destructive sect.
Types of religion and religious-philosophic conceptions: Theism, Deism, Pantheism; Monotheism and Polytheism, Paganism.
3. Genesis of religion
Importance of true solution of the question about primordial character of religion. Critical survey of various atheistic theories of the genesis of religion: a) theory of French enlighteners (1. Religion is an excogitation of priests; 2. Fear as a cause of religion; 3. Ignorance as a cause of religion); b) Feuerbach’s theory; c) Marx’s theory; d) evolutionary theory; e) Freud’s theory. Christian doctrine about primordial character of religion among people. Pre-monotheism and genesis of polytheism as a result of the Fall. Evidences of modern science (history and ethnography) in favor of pre-monotheism.
Chapter II. Philosophical problems of Christian Apologetics
4. Faith and reason
Philosophical Apologetics: main problems, methods of solving them. Philosophy and Christianity. Relationship of Church Fathers to Philosophy. “Philosophy is an ancilla of Theology” (Clemens of Alexandria). Possibility of using of various philosophical systems for Christian Apologetics.
Faith and reason. The necessity of solving a problem of the relationship
between faith and reason for supporting the existence of Christian Apologetics. Historical survey of various methods of solving a problem of the relationship
between faith and reason: St. Augustine (“Credo ut intelligam”, i.e. “I believe so that I can understand”), Tertullianus (“Credo quia absurdum”, i.e. “I believe because it is absurd”), Pierre Abelard (I understand so that I can believe), Siger of Braban (teaching about double truth). Merits and shortcomings of each solution. Teaching of St. Paul and Fathers of the Church about faith and its relation to reason. “Faith is not anti-reasonable, it is super-reasonable.” Psychological (St. Augustine) and ontological (St. Maxim the Confessor) comprehension of faith. Faith as ontological feature of human being. On possibilities and restrictions of using rational arguments to prove religious realness.
The problem of the truth. Various definitions of the truth. The criterion of the truth. Classical conceptions of the truth: Plato, Aristotle. Coherent conception of the truth: Hobbs, Kant. Marxist conception of the truth. Teaching about the truth in Pragmatism and Positivism. Insufficiency and inconsistency of philosophical and scientific comprehension of the truth. Metaphysical, logical and ethical meanings of the truth. Christianity as the only teaching which gives the solution to the problem of the truth.
5. The proofs of the existence of God
The essence of the problem, its complexity, inconsistency and relevancy. Fathers of the Church on possibility and particularity of argument that proves the existence of God: St. Athanasius, St. Gregorius of Nazianzus, St. John of Damascus.
The a priori evidences. The ontological argument. (Anselm of Canterbury, Bonaventure, Descartes, Hegel, Russian philosophers – bishop Michail Gribanovsky, S.L.Frank, N.O.Lossky). The criticism of the argument by Thomas of Aquin and E. Kant Moral argument. Moral law in human being. Materialistic Hupothesis about Moral law (biological, social, autonomous). The Kantian version of the argument: the being of God and the immortality of soul as a postulates of the practical reason.
The a posteriori evidences. The cosmological and teleological argument. argument. (Aristotle, Fathers of Church, Thomas of Aquin, Leibniz etc.). The criticism of the argument by Hume, Kant and Straus. Historical argument.
6. The problem of the freedom of human being
The freedom of human being and the omnipotence of God and His Providence. The definition of freedom. The freedom as a choice and as an ontological independence. The Christian doctrine on man as a image of God as a ground of the solving the problem of freedom. The freedom and the Sin. The polemics of St Augustine with Pelagius. The teaching St Maximus the Confessor about two free wills – natural and sinful.
7. The question on the meaning suffering (theodicy)
8. The Christian teaching about soul
9. The Christian teaching about body
10. The Christian teaching about person
11. The Christianity and the culture
Chapter III. Scientific questions of the Fundamental Theology
12. Science and Christianity
The genesis of science in XVI-XVII from Christian an philosophical doctrines. Belief in God as a Creator of the world as a necessary premise of the genesis of the science. Other premises: the doctrines on human being as an image of God, the Incarnation of God, matematisation of the natural science, rationalism and experiment. Antiheretical character of the science in XVII. The occultism of Bruno and opposition of his teaching to the new science. The trial on Galileo Galilei. The science and Christianity in modern world.
13. The Christian and scientific understanding of the miracles.
The problem of definition of the miracle: atheistic, religious, philosophical. The Ontological basis of the miracles. The miracles and the laws of Nature. The Life as a miracle from the physical viewpoint (Schrödinger). Eucharist as a most evident miracle. Why does people not believe in the miracles?
14. The Bible and the Science.
The uniqueness of the biblical description of the creation of the world. The Christian teaching on the six days of creation an modern sciences: physics, astronomy, geology, biology, antropology. Creationism and evolutionism.
Chapter IV. Historical apologetics
15. Christianity as a true religion
The uniquenessof the Bible. The evidences of the historicityof the facts that described in the Bible. The Gospels as a historical documents and its reliability. The Shroud of Turin.