This article examines the doctrine of grace in the theology of John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist movement. The study explores key aspects of Wesley’s understanding of grace, including prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace, as well as their connection to the doctrines of salvation and Christian perfection. Particular attention is given to the influence of Anglican tradition and Reformation ideas on the formation of Wesley’s views, and to the practical embodiment of his theology in Methodist practice. The article demonstrates how the doctrine of grace became the foundation for Wesley’s emphasis on personal spiritual experience and the social responsibility of believers. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the specifics of Methodist theology and its impact on contemporary Protestant thought.

Within the framework of the problem of thinking about the being and faith of Revelation in German-language theology and Russian religious philosophy, this article compares the logic of the ontological proof of God’s existence in the Barthian tradition, as exemplified by Karl Barth and Erich Jüngel, and by the Russian philosopher Boris Vysheslavtsev. Unlike Karl Barth, Jüngel’s ontological proof of God’s existence eliminates the emphasis on God’s name. For Karl Barth, God’s name functions as an event, while for Jüngel, the event of God becomes a narrative. Barth’s ontological argument is a movement of believing thought, clarifying the impossibility of God’s nonexistence in the name-event. Jüngel replaces the question of the impossibility of God’s nonexistence with the question of meaningful speech about God in the linguistic event of a unique narrative (the Gospel parable). Transcendence in Karl Barth’s ontological argument is verified through the principle of analogia fidei, the transformation of the Platonic model of time, the neo-Kantian concept of Ursprung, and the theological interpretation of S. Kierkegaard’s dialectic of faith. Jüngel integrates the model of transcendence into the linguistic uniqueness of parable, relying on the concepts of metaphor and catachresis. Karl Barth directs the efforts of believing thought toward a discursive form of elucidating the impossibility of the non-existence of the event of God’s Word. Jüngel introduces the believing subject to the linguistic event through parable narrativization. It is worth noting the fundamental differences in the principles of understanding the ontological argument between Jüngel and Vysheslavtsev. Cartesian metaphysics, according to Jüngel, is not the revelation of the obviousness of the absolute in human consciousness (as in Frank and Vysheslavtsev), but the discovery of the self-evidence of the human self. Both Jüngel and Vysheslavtsev transcend the boundaries of metaphysics in proving God’s existence: into the narrative of the Gospel parable (Jungel), into the irrational absolute given in the experience of freedom (Vysheslavtsev). The question, according to both Jüngel and Vysheslavtsev, is not so much about the existence of God as about one’s relationship to him. (For Vysheslavtsev, this is the axiom of dependence. For Jüngel, it is not the presence or absence of God, but the linguistic event of His Revelation in the Word here and now.) Vysheslavtsev creatively develops Frank’s concept of the ontological argument beyond the boundaries of philosophical systems. Jüngel, in turn, based on K. Barth’s work on Anselm, introduces the proof of God’s existence into the sphere of E. Fuchs’s new hermeneutics and M. Heidegger’s fundamental ontology.

The theme of Christianity’s presence in and influence on Rabindranath Tagore’s creative heritage and thought is insufficiently depicted in modern Oriental studies. An attempt to discover and describe Tagore’s experience of understanding the Other religion, Christianity, is presented in the article. Based on an analysis of biographical, socio-cultural, and intellectual contexts, the author describes Tagore’s path to understanding Christianity, from a lack of interest to the establishment of the Christ Celebration (Khṛiṣṭotsav) in his Shantiniketan school (1910) and the delivery of speeches in Bengali on Christ and Christianity for his listeners. Being inside the developed tradition of understanding of Other (namely, Other religions) in the Bengal Renaissance (19th – early 20th c., British India), Rabindranath Tagore continued the hermeneutics of Christianity on three vectors: Christology, understanding of the meanings of Christ’s teachings as the essence of Christianity, and understanding of the religion’s universal meaning for humanity. Tagore’s main achievement is a fundamentally different understanding of the religion derived from the personality of Jesus Christ. The Bengali text of Jiśucarit (The Life of Christ, December 25, 1910,) helps to highlight the main results of his experience of understanding: 1) Jesus Christ is the Messenger of universal truth to deliver and to save human beings; 2) He came to the fallen, suffering, and humiliated people to raise human freedom and dignity of all who ‘live in Father’s home’; 3) Jesus Christ’s life and crucifixion mean the voluntary acceptance of suffering to discover both the true source of eternal life and a religion of love for God and Humankind. The Russian translation of Jiṡucarit (The Life of Christ) by Rabindranath Tagore from Bengali is offered as an appendix to the article.

The article examines livestock farming in the context of religious economy using the example of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery in the village of Spas-Kupalishche, Sudogodsky District, Vladimir Region. The relevance of the study is determined by the interrelation of a set of issues: doctrinal aspects of the attitude towards animals in Christianity, ethical categories and practical foundations of the monastery economy, the specifics of labor obedience in the farmyard, its role in achieving the goals of the community and the personality of the inhabitant. The research material is based on interviews with the nuns of the monastery, statements by the confessor, builder and rector of the monastery church Archimandrite Peter (Kucher), and included observation. In the context of acquiring the main monastic virtue – obedience, animals are necessary in the monastery in following aspects: they play a role for self-sufficiency in food and transport (economic aspect); they fill monastic life with necessary physical labor, preventing spiritual discouragement (educational aspect); they express the commandment of love for God’s creation (spiritual aspect). Animals act as a marker, highlighting the norm/degree of humanity in people. On the one hand, the distinction “human/animal” can be interpreted as an antithesis, often identified with the distinction “carnal/spiritual” and indicating the divine purpose that people must follow, on the other hand, it can be seen as a “human-animal” connection, actualizing the commandment of love and the fundamental community and interconnectedness of life in the world.

The article analyzes the process of integration of traditionalist communities into the space of postsecular culture using the example of the organization of confessional museums in modern Old Believer communities. Based on field material recorded by the author in 2017–2025, the author demonstrates the desire of Old Believers to appropriate secular educational practices to preach their faith, form and maintain collective memory, in particular, the traumatic experience of persecution. At the same time, the contradictions that museum organizers – community leaders and Old Believer activists – inevitably encounter are noted. This concerns general negative perception of museumification as a form of decline of religious tradition between old-believers, and the possibility of demonstrating ritual practices and sacred objects in the museum space. Attempts to resolve the existing contradictions lead to a complex symbiosis of secular and religious practices, which in many ways reflect the specifics of the culture of a postsecular society.

The article compares the practices and meanings associated with two key holidays in the Jewish annual cycle – Passover and Yom Kippur – in the cultures of Iberian converted Jews, namely conversos or Marranos, and Soviet Jews. Its aim is to trace the process by which traditional rituals were reduced and/or distorted and orthodox meanings reinterpreted in both cultures, to identify the differences between them, and to explore their presumed causes related to the hegemonic discourse – either Catholicism or atheism. Despite the considerable temporal, geographical, and ideological distance between the Spanish Marranos and Soviet Jews, as well as their internal heterogeneity, the author nevertheless regards them as promising objects for comparison and unites them under the concept of a culture of diminishing forbidden Judaism. The bearers of this culture were neither convinced crypto-Jews, nor convinced apostates, nor voluntary assimilationists, but rather often doubtful and guilt-ridden witnesses to the rapid reduction of their tradition. The reduction, adaptation, and reactualization of Jewish norms and practices take place under conditions of cultural hegemony, coercion into an alien religion or ideology, and constant surveillance, and are understood as inventive tactics of micro-resistance (M. de Certeau).

This research aims to understand how students of the 2021 and 2022 cohorts of Fakultas Ilmu Agama Islam, Universitas Islam Indonesia (FIAI UII) assess the sanctification program conducted by Direktorat Pendidikan dan Pembinaan Agama Islam (DPPAI) over two periods with different transitions, both in terms of procedures and implementation time. The focus of this study is on students’ perceptions of the sanctification program organized by DPPAI UII and their views on an ideal sanctification program. This research is qualitative-descriptive in nature. Data collection techniques include observation, interviews, and documentation. The findings indicate that students perceive the sanctification program as a mere formality, especially in the 2021 cohort, where the program was conducted online. In contrast, the 2022 cohort identified shortcomings in the program, citing a lack of initiative from musyrif/musyrifah (mentors) in guiding students during the program. According to students, an ideal program would involve extending the duration of the sanctification program to approximately one year, allowing for a more thorough assimilation of the Islamic values imparted to the students.

Research at the intersection of theater and religion does not have a widely developed research method. We propose to use the interdisciplinary method of ritual studies for research in this area on the example of theatrical productions by Romeo Castellucci and Boris Yukhananov. The article examines the background of Roy Rappoport’s ritual research and the development of Ronald Grimes’ ritual research method, as well as how the concept of ritualization is developing in such researchers as Catherine Bell and Paul Post. We illustrate the difference in the conceptualization of ritualization on the example of two theatrical works by modern experimental directors – the trilogy “The Divine Comedy” by Romeo Castellucci and “Pinocchio” by Boris Yukhananov. The article shows that ritual studies as a method of working with ritual allows us to look at modern theater as an object of religious studies interest, in which new forms of religiosity develop and live.

The article focuses on the idea of “thinking impossible” developed by the American scholar of religion Jeffrey Kripal in his latest book “How to think impossibly: About souls, UFOs, time, belief, and everything else” (2024). The author analyzes the epistemological and ontological foundations of this project and its connection with Kripal’s previous intellectual strategy aimed at transforming the humanities. The article examines the debate on the status of the “impossible” in academic science and on the boundaries of religious studies as a discipline. It is shown that Kripal’s project represents a deliberate departure from the bounds of “normal science” (in Thomas Kuhn’s sense) with the goal of changing the existing paradigm. Special attention is paid to the metaphysical foundations of his approach – dual-aspect monism, which goes back to C.G. Jung and W. Pauli – as well as his understanding of time, belief, and symbol as conditions for the possibility of “impossible thinking”. The author concludes that Kripal occupies a liminal space between academic science and esoteric tradition, and that this position is not accidental but the result of a consistent intellectual strategy.