Priest Georgy Safoklov, Dr. iur., Senior research fellow at the Chair of German and European Constitutional and Administrative Law and International Law, University of Hagen
Pp. 86–104
DOI: 10.25803/26587599_2025_3_55_86
The article deals with the issue of church-state relations in the postsecular time. The author proposes to evaluate Fr. Pavel Florensky’s and Fr. Sergius Bulgakov’s philosophical writings in order to create a substantial fundament for a new church-state system. Thus, the institutional co-existence can be designed utilizing the concept of Friendship, which Father Pavel drafted in the 11th letter of his “Pillar and Ground of the Truth”. On the other side, Father Sergiy’s thesis of “enchurching of the state”, realized by the church influencing political processes as the state’s “conscience”, is being taken into consideration. However, postsecularity draws its own impact on the building of church-state relations. The growing importance of religious topics in the socio-political context is by far not the only postsecular feature. The inability to understand basic religious terms and categories as well as the loss of “sensibility” towards the problems and requirements of the religious fellow citizens is a no less significant phenomenon. In order to prevent interpersonal alienation and the paralysis of social processes, J. Habermas proposed to engage in “complementary learning”, which should introduce religious and non-religious participants into the world view of the vis‑à‑vis on the ground of mutually comprehensible and acceptable terms and concepts. However, this plan to initiate social dialogue on a secular basis has been justifiably criticized, as it ignores the inability of believers to express their views by means of secular vocabulary. Therefore, the author sketches an alternative model of “mutual contemplational dialogue”, a combination of Father Pavel’s anthropology and ecclesiology and Father Sergiy’s socio-political thoughts. As a medium for this dialogue, the law is being proposed, as its terminology appears understandable to both church and state representatives, whereas the substantial indeterminacy of legal concepts allows an open discussion without a feeling of residing in the “foreign land”.
Keywords: church and state, Fr. P. Florensky, Fr. S. Bulgakov, “friendship”, “enchurching” of the state, postsecularity, J. Habermas
For citation: Safoklov Y. I. (2025). “Is ‘Friendship’ between the Church and the State Possible? Theological heritage of P. A. Florensky and S. N. Bulgakov in the context of the problematic of postsecularity”. The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute, v. 17, iss. 3 (55), pp. 86–104.