Pavel Florensky on Religious Experience and Religious Dogma

Abstract

This article is centered on presenting Florensky’s thought regarding the close relationship between dogma and religious experience. The author begins by briefl y examining the idea of religion as a particular sense of consciousness (Schleiermacher) in the realm of knowledge and thought (John Newman). Hans-Georg Gadamer’s theory of religious feeling and religious experience is also discussed. Western authors who wrote about the rapport between religious experience and religious tradition include William James and Rudolf Otto; Russians include Bulgakov, Berdyaev, Frank, Il’in, and Tareev. Florensky’s ideas on the subject are presented on the basis of his early works and of his Pillar and Foundation of Truth. The author remarks that Florensky understands religious dogma primarily as a means given to man which makes it possible for him to overcome rational reality and rise to higher levels of perception. The possibility of surmounting mundane reality is realized through religious experience in which dogma assumes the role of an anchor or point of orientation as well as a point of resistance. The objectivity of religious experience, according to Florensky is guaranteed by its participation in that same truth which reveals itself to man, which gives man the means to recognize itself as the objective and absolute truth, and which establishes man’s religious experience in a formulated dogmatic doctrine.