“Weak Theology” of New Martyrs

Due to the circumstances in which it found itself after the 1917 revolution, Russian theology lost many of the features that the previous academic tradition was characteristic of. However, theology was surviving in the form of theological statements that experts call “theology of new martyrs”. Authors of contemporary academic literature have attempted to compare it with the trend of thought which came to be called as “weak theology” at the end of the last century. Its proponents (J. Caputo and G. Vattimo) developed a new language of theological ontology, which rejects traditional theological metaphysics. The distinctive feature of this type of philosophical theology was the rejection of metaphors of power and apodictic assertions about being or non-being. In the era they defined as post-metaphysical, representatives of “weak theology” saw their task in “theologization of the secular”. To achieve this, they attempted to move beyond traditional confessional theological languages and to find new ways of conceptualizing the experience of God revealed in faith. The purpose of the article is to compare the two types of theological discourse in order to understand to what extent this comparison is correct and what methodological consequences it may lead to. The article shows that “weak theology” and “theology of new martyrs” differ not only in the initial reason for the “weakening” of the theological language and in the way of formulating a theological expression, but also at the level of setting objectives — which is especially important. Their similarity can be described as isomorphic. The comparison also made it possible once again “to backlight” those generic traits that have been preserved in the “theology of new martyrs” as a specific form of confessional (ecclesiastical) theology. Argumentation here is based on retrospective reference to the principles that are normative for the confessional tradition, and theology is always “soteriologically” oriented.