Principles for Cognizing the Sacred Essay -- Spiritual Religion Papers

Principles for Cognizing the Sacred Today we need a scientific analysis of basic world views which expresses genuine understanding of the sacred. Such world views hold the main principles for cognizing reality. A ‘substratum’ understanding of the Sacred is characteristic of mythology and magic, wherein all spiritual phenomena are closely connected with a material or corporeal bearer. Functional understanding of the Sacred is developed by the earliest civilizations in which the spiritual is separated from the material. For example, Plato, Aristotle, and Neoplatonism created European functional theology. Substantial understanding of the Sacred appears in Christianity. Here we find the synthesis of substratum and functional peculiarities which are looked upon as "creaturous," revealed by God to man and integrated in their fundamental unity as the basis for variety. It is only unity which avoids the mixing of the three images of an object-substratum, function, and substance-that allows us to cognize a true obj ect. In reproducing the Sacred as such, we can show the Sacred as the unity of the mysterious and the obvious, the static and the dynamic, and the passive and the active. In our eventful time with unstable international conflicts and politics characterized by an pervasive enthusiasm for occultism and lack of spiritual depth, we need a renewed interest in the scientific analysis of basic world view concepts that can express a genuine understanding of the Sacred. Such concepts express the main principles for cognizing reality. They help us to systematise the information about our surrounding world, and to determine not only how we conceive ourselves and the world, but also the specific logic of linking such statements with t... ...ry of the Peoples of the World. Moscow 1976, p.22. (12) J. Freser, Golden Branch. Moscow 1987, pp. 54-55. (13) A. Men, History of Religion, op.cit., pp. 54-55. (14) M. Veber, Science as Inclination and Profession. Vol 2. Moscow 1979, p.343. (15) K. Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology. Moscow 1983, p.147. (16) Aristotle, Works. Vol. 1. Moscow 1975, p.189. (17) G.V. Florovsky, Eastern Fathers of the Ivth Century. Moscow 1992, p.152. (18) Ibid., pp. 14-15. (19) Ibid., pp. 112, 84. (20) W.Pannenberg, Theology and Philosophy of Science. Philadelphia 1976, pp. 29-35, 45. (210 A. F. Losev, Of the Early Works. Moscow 1990, p.574. (22) F. Engels, Natural Dialectics. Vol 20. Moscow, pp. 382, 392, 566. (23) G. A. Yugai, General life Theory. Moscow 1985, p.54. (24) Y. Prigogine and I. Stengers, Time, Chaos, Quantum. Moscow 1994, pp. 6-7.