The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute

The article discusses the possibility of qualitative completion of the anthropological matrix proposed in this issue of the journal. We give a methodological distinction between the filling that proceeds from ready-made theses, and the filling in that has an individual as the object of application and critical verification of the theses, and the filling that has an individual as the instance of application of facts and events intended to salvation. In this case the structure of human cannot be thought only as a combination of separate elements, harmonious or subordinated to any other abstract beginning, but must be understood as a field of deployment of those conceptual orders, which are connected with salvation, and which do not contradict each other as orders, even if in disciplinary use these concepts appear to contradict each other. We question that reflection on the difference between the pre-modern and modern understanding of the tasks of theology and anthropology which is presented in some interdisciplinary works. The article argues that a certain type of work has been most productive for a new anthropology that understands the human being not as a substance but as an instance; the paper refuses to focus on the accumulation of knowledge and application, but problematizes marginal disciplines allied to theology. These works, including those by Horuzhy and Bibikhin, set the stage both for the justification of a two-dimensional matrix instead of a one-dimensional model and for its justified disclosure. Modeling in these works always precedes the argument, so models are often given sketchily, and developing of the argument is possible only with knowledge of the polemical contexts. Based on a thorough reconstruction of the history of two-dimensional anthropology, which can be formalized as a matrix, a substantive filling of the matrix cells is proposed. This content takes into account the peculiarities of modern postmetaphysical philosophy and allows to use this matrix as a consistent way to study salvation as an interdisciplinary phenomenon of experience which does not contradict the presumptions of particular philosophical disciplines.