THE DEBATE ABOUT SOPHIOLOGY YESTERDAY AND TODAY

The purpose of this study is to present as objectively as possible various approaches and positions on the problem of religious philosophy, such as the problem of sophiology. Taking into consideration its already long history, an attempt has been made to make some generalizations about this dispute. The authors of the study concluded that the desire not to establish the essential gap between the Creator and the Created world, but to find as many connecting threads as possible between God and man, the emphasis in the character of 'similarity' is not on otherness, but on coincidence, forms intellectual schemes of speculative syntheses and harmonic systems from the structures of the heavenly and earthly in Russian religious thinkers. The modem attitude to the analysis of the nature of the dispute is as follows: 1) from a sharp demarcation, there has been a steady tendency to a more balanced and cautious position regarding estimates; 2) more sources are being put into circulation; 3) the historical and creative contexts of the emergence of sophiology are being clarified. The authors of the study identify and analyse two interrelated themes that underlie the dispute about Sophia and largely determine the nature of its development. These are topics that focus on the concept of theology and the real innovation of theology of the Father S. Bulgakov, which, in its turn, 'pulls' the theme of the originality of Russian religious philosophy in a specific way, which originates in the concept of vseedinstva (all-unity) of V. Solovyov. The authors do not come to any final conclusions, but agree with the idea that the Church should be the only judge in this matter.