From Freedom to Love: Hermeneutics of the Epistle to the Galatians in the Works by N.N. Glubokovsky

Abstract

One of the most important modern intellectual trends is the search for ways to overcome the enlightenment conflict between scientific and religious rationality. This problem has not yet received a universal epistemological resolution. However, experience is already being accumulated in the mutual enrichment of philosophical-scientific and philosophical-religious categorical thinking in solving specific issues, such as the dialectic of love and freedom. Christianity, unlike secular philosophical traditions, does not consider the categories of freedom and love as opposing values. It sees them as complementary life forces, where love is a way of being, and freedom is the path to deification. The authors analyze the concepts of "love" and "freedom" in the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians as interpreted by the outstanding Russian biblical scholar Nikolai Glubokovsky. Through exegesis, Glubokovsky reveals love as a means of knowing God, and freedom as a divine gift realized in serving one's neighbor. The analysis led to the conclusion that the Christian philosophical nature of Glubokovsky's hermeneutics allowed him to show the Epistle to the Galatians as a key text demonstrating a categorical synthesis that reflects the inseparable vital unity of love and freedom, and this unity leads Christians to the evangelical calling.