THE TRADITIONAL METHODOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS STUDIES:CONFESSIONAL NEUTRALITY OR THE POSITION OF CHRISTIANORTHODOXY?

The article discusses the prevalence in religious studies of not just an evolutionary, but essentially orthodox Christian approach to the historical development of religions. Instead, it justifies the expediency of considering any religion as a dissipative system, for which the emergence and development of various components (branches, directions, churches) in the process of development is natural, and using the example of Christianity, it shows that the development of religions corresponds to the main characteristics of chaotic / dissipative systems. The argument is that a practically homogeneous Christian community existed only during the lifetime of Jesus Christ, while from the first steps of apostolic preaching, one can speak of the development of a pan-Christian system through the formation of its various ethno-national components. Western Roman-Byzantine Christianity achieved the status of Orthodoxy, the “only correct” Christian doctrine represented by the state church organization, precisely thanks to the support of the Roman emperors. And already in the status of a state religion, the doctrine of a single Christianity and a single Church began to spread, from which various communities began to depart as a result of numerous “heresies”. Such a purely political imperial concept contradicts the natural development of any system, especially one as large as Christianity.