Secularization as Religious and Philosophical Problem in the Works of V. N. Lossky

Abstract

The article analyzes the way Orthodox theologian V.N. Lossky (1903–1958) understood the concept of a "secular" and how he applied it to explain the cultural history of the Christian world. Lossky never devoted a separate paper to the problem of secularization, but it always remained a pervasive issue for him and his works. The analysis stands to show that Lossky connected the origin of the secularization trend in the European history with the distortion of Christian ecclesiology, and the false understanding of the Church and the culture. He saw the Church as the center and the cause of the universe, as well as the source of development for the world. For him, the secularization of the Church led to the destruction of the universe. Lossky explained the relationship between the Church and the earthly world by the Chalcedonian dogma about the two natures in Christ. He generalized the variety of historical distortions of this teaching into two large groups: “ecclesiological monophysites” and “ecclesiological nestorians”. He criticized the former for trying to break the connection between the Church and the earthly (icononomy), to render the Church an ideal abstraction, to deprive it of the material concreteness, and to tear it away from the historical tradition, thereby turning it into an inanimate body. According to Lossky, the “nestorian” understanding of the ecclesiology eventually led to the secularization of the theological language, to the emergence of secular (autonomous) areas of culture.