“We Need to Dig Deep Into the Mystery of Man — Research Alone Won’t Do the Trick”
This summer, SFI published an entire series of books on Christian anthropology. In addition, under the auspices of a scholarly research project entitled “Christian Anthropology”, which has been functional at the institute since 2017, a new interdisciplinary anthropological laboratory was launched, to continue systematic work in the field. To mark this occasion, we decided to interview the Founder and first Rector of St Philaret’s Institute, Fr Georgij Kochetkov, whose work has already laid the foundation for a new Christian anthropology.
— Fr Georgij, tell us please, where does your interest in questions relating to Christian revelation on man come from? In what does it originate?
— I have worked on anthropological questions since the end of the 1970s, even from before I began studying at the seminary in Leningrad. Of course, my 1980 monograph entitled “The Creation of Man in the Image of God” was just preliminary — a first attempt. Nevertheless, I published it as an addendum to second stage catechetical materials on Mystagogy. This demonstrates that we have been working on anthropological questions for a long time and haven’t just started now because it has become fashionable.
But at that point I had only begun, yet I planned to work seriously on anthropology. But I had to get into seminary, which meant that I didn’t carry that work any further at that time. Later I came back to it from 1983, when I first drafted a plan for the mystagogical lectures for third stage catechesis. It was impossible not to include anthropological topics there, of course; so from that time onward, we always found room for anthropology. True, we had to do this a bit ex prompt, because we didn’t have any materials. Little by little it developed into the Sacramentology that we now teach for members of the Brotherhood as a sort of university of the sacraments. At this point, thanks be to God, all the materials have been published — all the primers and all the texts. I’ve had to work a lot on anthropology since 2009. Of course, at first I planned to do something very fundamental, broad and deep — but somewhere in the middle I understood that I would never complete this work. Unfortunately, I had to turn to a more thesis-based format, beginning with a paragraph about the soul. Though I started with a detailed scholarly work, chose quotes, analysed different points of view, I had to leave almost all of this behind with a few exceptions, and turn to expressing things in a more formulaic fashion. Even so, the book is not short.
I thought at that point that I wouldn’t work further on the topic, and that what had been published for the mystagogical lectures was entirely enough. But I want to thank Dmitry Gasak, who asked me to give a lecture on Christian anthropology to open the 2021–2022 academic year. For me, this developed into an impulse to continue work on Christian anthropology. That lecture then developed into an article, entitled “A New Christian Anthropology”, which was published in the SFI Quarterly Journal. This, further, gave even more of an impulse to me, and not only me, thank be to God, to continue working on these topics in a new and more serious way. We are still interested and moved by these topics today. Anthropology is an enormous subject — colossal. Actually, these topics are universal. Just as with Theology, Anthropology is a cosmic subject. There is much to develop and discuss.
— Where do you think the subject needs development as a matter of first priority?
— Of course, it turned out to be impossible to even name all the issues in a single article. I have tried to lay out some of the foundational ideas, while adhering to an approach that has a certain internal integrity. At this point, thanks be to God, a collection of interdepartmental seminars on “Man, both Vertical and Horizontal: A New Christian Anthropology”, has been published. The collection is large, though in this case volume isn’t a bad thing. On the contrary, I’m quite glad the collection managed to preserve a dialogical character.
Of course we require an integral, systemic and complete view of the human person. We need to know that there is a sort of mystery within the human person. We need to know how both spirit and meaning are at work within man. How can a person achieve without losing his face and his personal identity. How can one preserve and not ruin his own body – not the body in general, but that body which will be collected, not scattered – not simply satisfying all personal needs, but also knowing his external and internal boundaries.
In order to solve such problems, we need to think about them not only in a scholarly fashion. We need to dig deep into the mystery of man – and research alone won’t do the trick. We are dealing with something deeper. Research is needed only to collect experience that already exists, or to forge new paths in a chosen direction, if we have properly understood and analysed the spiritual experience that we have.
— Your anthropology grows from within a particular practice of passing on the experience of faith. Such origins make it what it is. How can on speak about the gnoseological setting for this new Christian anthropology? Do I understand correctly that it can be reached only through faith?
— Faith in man has turned out to be a very complicated and real matter. In the 20th century the problem of faith in God grew to full proportion and proceeded through a period of contradiction of that faith. It became obvious that we can get nowhere without faith in God. This has already been shown and proven in practice, through enormous human sacrifice, and in theory. And now faith in man is in question. As witness to this, we have the myriad discussions about artificial intelligence. I think people are working on anthropology at this point because they want to acquire faith in man, but don’t have faith in man, all the same. When people say: “Why should we believe it God, after all we have faith in man”, I always answer: “Very good. What precisely do you believe in in the human person? Exactly what is it in man that is the subject of your faith?” As a rule, the conversation ends at this point.
But what is it in man that we should believe in? I recall one conversation on this topic with a taxi driver. Right away I said to him, “What you believe in in man is that which is related to the image of God in man. It’s what we call the image and likeness of God in man. And it’s worth believing in this, but without this there is nothing to believe in. We don’t really need to believe in evil, crime, sin, and fallen reason, do we? Is such faith justified?” From this there is only one conclusion: we still need to learn faith in man, and we need to know what this means for us.
Interviewers Alina Patrakova, Sofia Androsenko