The first chapters of Anselm of Canterbury’s “Proslogion” including his «ontological argument» are examined in this article not so much from the point of view of proving the existence of God, but from the point of view of the concept of God, which, as Anselm argues, necessarily contains a proof of the reality of its object. The author of the article focuses on the question of whether Anselm’s concept of God has a special philosophical origin, or whether it, undoubtedly correlating with philosophical thought, is in itself inherent to religious piety of a Christian in its primary form, which is expressed in the texts of the Bible. In order to solve the main task of this small study, a number of examples from the Bible are analyzed, which, in the opinion of the author of the article, contain variations of the understanding of God as that «than which nothing greater can be thought» and even that which «greater than can be thought». Examples are selected from the Psalter, the Book of Wisdom of Sirach, and the 2nd Epistle to the Thessalonians, with parallels from the Book of Job and other biblical texts. The author comes to the conclusion that the traditional biblical concept of God should not be deprived from its “metaphysicality|”, although its foreground remains to be the sacred “historicity”.

This paper deals with the strategies of apologetic justification of divine existence in post-Kantian philosophy. These ways differ from the classical proofs of rational theology, since Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason discredited and made it extremely difficult to use the latter. Since the way to the transcendent was closed in the rational sphere, and the Protestant dogmatics had lost its cogency during the Enlightenment, apologetics was left with only the psychological way. The proofs of the existence of God underwent changes of form, while retaining the essence. Psychological arguments were especially actively used in the period of German Idealism. The article shows the key moves to which it can be referred: the argument of F.H. Jacobi from the theistic feeling, the argument of J.G. Fichte from the ethical feeling, the argument of F.W.J. Schelling’s from intellectual contemplation, J.F. Fries’s argument from premonition, sentimentalist arguments of F.D. Schleiermacher and the later (ca. 1900) argumentative move of the Russian philosopher V.I. Nesmelov from the reflected character of the human personality. The latter seems to be the most successful of all mentioned, as it bypasses a number of weaknesses of its predecessors, both the appeal to ineffable personal experience and the use of speculative anachronisms.

The knowledge of God is the key task of a Christian in the theological legacy of Anselm of Canterbury. The ambiguous term «intelligere», filled with deep semantic content, which in this article we will translate with the word «to understand», is repeatedly found in the works of the medieval theologian. Its significance for understanding the thought of Saint Anselm is also important because, forming a large number of single-root terminones, intelligere is found in the works of Anselm in many variations, such as: intellectus fidei, credo ut intelligam, etc. In this article, we will consider both medieval versions of the understanding of this concept, which is certainly important for scholastic theologians, and the place and meaning of «intelligere» in the writings of Anselm of Canterbury himself.

In the early works of the Protestant theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Barth, the knowledge of God is not one of the key theological issues. Moreover, according to Barth, knowledge of God is practically impossible in general due to the infinite remoteness of the Creator from creation. However, turning to the legacy of Anselm, Barth softens his rather radical theological position, expanding the boundaries of what a person can know and say about God. Interpreting the famous ontological proof of the existence of God, Karl Barth consistently examines and interprets all the key to understanding «Proslogion» terms, one of which is «intelligere».

In this article, we will proceed from the fact that «intelligere» as a concept is one of the fundamental concepts for understanding the theological legacy of Anselm of Canterbury. It is considered on an equal basis and paired with credere (to believe), forming a dichotomy of understanding/believing that permeates all of Anselm’s work. Consistently «deploying» the ontological argument of the «Proslogion», Karl Barth analyzes its concept by concept, paying special attention to the concept of «intelligere». His interpretation of Anselm’s argument ultimately proves decisive for his own theological thought: the process of God-knowledge in Barth’s theology is made possible by the Protestant theologian’s appeal to Anselm’s legacy.

The article is devoted to the study of the role of interpretation of the ontological argument of Anselm of Canterbury in the work of Karl Barth, one of the greatest representatives of Protestant theology of the 20th century. The author focuses on how Barth formulated this argument within the framework of his theology of the Word of God, seeking to reject any form of dependence on philosophy. The aim of the study is to identify the particularities of understanding the role of the ontological argument in two key traditions of studying Barth’s work: the first, represented by Hans Urs von Balthasar, and the second by Bruce McCormack. Balthasar emphasizes the significance of Barth’s two “conversions,” especially the one from dialectical theology to the analogy of faith (analogia fidei) and which is fixed with the publication of his work «Fides quaerens intellectum». McCormack, in contrast, emphasizes a smooth and gradual development, and considers the «Göttingen Dogmatics», but not «Fides quaerens intellectum», to be a landmark work for Barth. The article provides a detailed comparison of the approaches of both traditions to understanding Barth’s interpretation of the ontological argument and demonstrates how each interprets both Barth’s intellectual development as a whole and his thought in «Fides quaerens intellectum». Also, the paper considers the views of contemporary scholars on the role of «Fides quaerens intellectum» and their relationship to the paradigms of Balthasar and McCormack.

This article examines Thomas Aquinas’s critique of Anselm of Canterbury’s ontological argument, focusing particularly on its modal aspects. While Aquinas’s traditional objections (the fallacy of begging the question and the non-self-evidence of God’s definition) have been thoroughly studied, their modal interpretation requires further analysis. The article demonstrates that Aquinas rejects Anselm’s argument because it conflates the ontological necessity of God’s existence with the epistemic possibility of denying it due to human cognitive limitations. Five key texts from Aquinas are analyzed, in which he systematically refutes Anselm, arguing that God’s existence is selfevident only in itself (secundum se) but not to human reason. In the modal version of this critique, emphasis is placed on the denial of transitivity in the relation between possible worlds: the impossibility of comprehending the divine essence in the earthly state prevents the transition to the necessity of knowing God’s existence. Aquinas insists on an epistemic barrier that renders the ontological argument untenable for human cognition. The conclusion notes that while Aquinas’s critique aligns with broader Christian skepticism regarding human knowledge of divine reality in earthly existence, it does not refute the very possibility of God’s necessary existence.

The problematic of the article is to clarify the meaning of the ontological argument in its non-classical form in the thinking of being and faith of Revelation in German-language theology and Russian religious philosophy of the 20th century. The solution to this problem involves turning to the thematization of the ontological argument in the context of its event-based, verbal and emotional nature.

The article will discuss the phenomenological model of the ontological proof of the existence of God by the German Catholic theologian B. Welte and the metaphysical model by the Russian philosopher N. Lossky.

The Catholic theologian believes that in the ontological argument, thinking does not think only of itself. It goes by way of transcendence, turning into an existential, personal act. Distancing himself from the metaphysical presumption, he identifies the ontological argument with the search for the original meaning by thinking. Proof in B. Welte is one of the ways to justify and explain the possibility of meaning in being. The ontological argument reveals the meaning of being in the positive nothing (the sacred). B. Welte inscribes the ontological argument in the Thomistic metaphysics updated by phenomenology. Revelation for B. Welte acquires the features of an existentialverbal event.

Lossky’s ontological argument is based on the idea of intuitive knowledge, that is, the clarification of the obviousness in the consciousness of the concept of the Absolute. God is really seen in the idea of God, as the subject of any general concept. Each step of discerning an insensible (mental) object presupposes focusing attention on it, and regarding the Absolute, contemplating it in the unity of concept and being. A genuine ontological proof does not rely on the law of contradiction, but on the consciousness of the unity of the objective and subjective, the individual and the general. The judgment “God exists” is at first an analytical judgment, then it becomes synthetic. Differentiation of the concept of God for us occurs. N. Lossky classifies the judgment “God exists” as an existential judgment. Their subject is not a thing, but the existence of a thing. N. Lossky and B. Welte each in their own way deduce the ontological argument from its criticism by I. Kant, prolonging its life in the culture of modernism and postmodernism.

This article examines the ontological proof of the existence of God, one of the key arguments in philosophical theology dating back to Anselm of Canterbury (11th century) and developed in scholasticism, modern times and contemporary philosophy. Despite various critical attacks on this proof, especially by Thomas Aquinas, I. Kant and modern materialists, the history of this proof shows that interest in it does not wane, but on the contrary, newer and newer versions of this proof arise. Particularly interesting from our point of view is the proof proposed by Russian Orthodox philosophers – Bishop Mikhail (Gribanovsky) and S.L. Frank, who showed that in essence this proof was proposed by Plotinus. In addition, when discussing this argument, other questions arise concerning the knowledge of God and His relationship to the world and man. This is the problem of God’s omnipotence and theodicy, the question of the existence of time, the philosophy of mathematics, etc. The article demonstrates the evolution of the ontological argument from medieval scholasticism to modern philosophical discussions, showing its strength and vulnerabilities. Despite criticism (especially from Kant), the proof remains influential, emerging in new forms and maintaining relevance in modern philosophy of religion.

The study of godparenthood, that is, the ties of spiritual kinship, posed a definite challenge for Western social anthropology, since its “discovery” did not fit into the already existing theories of kinship systems. The first anthropological studies of the institute proceeded from the need to describe its observed effects and functions, consisting in the social integration of local communities, building exchange relations between households, as well as replacing the functions of biological kinship, by analogy with avunculate or fictitious kinship. Such a “utilitarian view” was criticized for neglecting the specific Christian roots of this complex of relations in comparison with other similar institutions. In order to find more adequate interpretations of its role, anthropologists turned to the study of Church law and identified the meanings of categories used in everyday language with reference to their theological interpretations (for example, honor, grace, etc.). Godparenthood is defined as a Folk-Christian institution when Christian dogmatic is embedded in the local tradition. Relying on the findings from the research of the compadrazgo institute, a complex of relations linking natural and spiritual kinship, we focus on expanding the meaning of the concept of family, which follows from these conclusions. Implementing theological arguments about “second birth” and “parenting by grace”, anthropologists on the one hand, draw an opposition between natural and spiritual kinship, which explains a number of rules of the compadrazgo institute that elevate spiritual affinity. On the other hand, they define it as a mechanism for expanding the natural boundaries of the family by including spiritual ties in kinship relationships and maintaining Christian family ideology within natural kinship relationships, as well as within local communities. Studies comparing the Catholic Institute of Compadrazgo and the Orthodox Institute of Kumstvo also pointed to the influence of the institute of godparents on the conceptual modification of family ties complementing natural kinship.

The article is devoted to the relationship between the Old and New Testaments is Foma magazine, an Orthodox publication working at the interface of religious and traditional media. The mediatization of religion, which created new space for open discussions on religious issues, led to the actualization of topics that seemed previously studied. However, when being discussed in the mediated space, such issues as, for example, the intertextuality of the Old and New Testaments are presented in a new way. The research is based on an analysis of the material from ten September issues of the Foma magazine. Based on the Essex school of discourse analysis, developed by E. Laclau and Ch. Mouffe, the nodal points of discourse on the Old Testament and the general semantic field in which the Old and New Testaments are mentioned together, working to strengthen given argument, legitimizing the New Testament are revealed. This semantic field touches upon the foundations of Christianity, love, the coming and the prophecies of the Messiah. Equivalence chains are also considered – key topics that are consistently associated with one of the texts and have an oppositional pair for the second text, allowing the authors of articles in the magazine to draw a line between the practices of the Old and New Testaments, contrasting them. In the system of these expanded oppositions, a boundary is drawn between several religious communities, which makes it possible to clarify the religious roots of the perception of the “other”, without tracing the commercialization of this distinction, which is often characteristic of the media space and its struggle for an audience.