The Perception of Ideas of I. Kant in Theological Heritage of St. Innokentii (Borisov)
Among Russian ecclesiastical academies in the 19th century the Kievan one was especially centered on the German classical philosophy. Thus, we can feel this interest in the works of St. Innocent (Borisov), whose Christology and Ecclesiology appears as an evident of explicit and covert polemics with Kant. However, St. Innocent was the ﬁrst who troubled himself with the deep reﬂection about the possible conjunction of the Christian dogma and modern philosophy. By putting the question of the moral motivation of action in the Christological dimension, Western philosophy has questioned either divine nature of Christ or the very possibility of the moral imitation of Christ and unity with Him. Reﬂecting on this challenge, St. Innocent asserts the gradual realization in Christ’s mind His own divinity and talks about a special providential act, which let Him overcome the fear of death only through the power of the human nature. This conception is oﬀering more or less acceptable answer for the inquirer from the “outside”. Meanwhile it was productive for questioning from “within” the Church because of the gap between the person and nature in the terminology of St. Innocent. Nevertheless, he denounced all the objections of this sort by the statement that the person of Christ is an exclusive “Divine mystery”. However, exactly in the works of St. Innocent we can see the sprouts of the theological personalism, which would become so fruitful in the 19th century’s Russian theological tradition.