"THE POWER OF THE KEYS " AND CONFESSION : PASTORAL POWER IN THE "SIX READINGS ON THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE IN ITS HISTORY " BY REVD . VALENTIN SVENTZITSKY

This article focuses on the concept of pastoral power as presented by Revd. Valentin Sventzitsky in his "Six Readings on the Sacrament of Penance in its History", this text is regarded as significant for the contemporary Russian Orthodoxy. Opposing the practice of general confession in the 1920s, he contrasts it with private confession, basing his arguments on pre -revolutionary studies of penitential practices and priesthood. At the same time, in Sventzitsky's text, academic theses undergo a signifi cant transformation in connection with his historiosophic and religious -philosophical ideas. First of all, in this context he uses the theory of the gradual unfolding of selfconsciousness of the Church in history and projects this theory onto the theological reflection on the development of the forms of the Sacraments. In the same line, he applies the theory of the historical diff erentiation in the Church of good and evil in relation to ecclesiastical practices. In this context, we analyse Sventzitsky's ideas about the secularisation of the Church, to which he contrasts the active spiritualisation of all life and formulates this call in the idea of a monastery in the world. The article shows what place the priest has in the formation of the monastery in the world. Against this background, the analysis of representations of pastoral power both in the "Readings" and in other texts by Sventzitsky, and correlating them with the sources on which he relies, allows us to highlight his thesis about the transformation of this type of power in history. The author of the "Readings" identifi es three characteristic periods in which pastoral power changed from its public dimension in the ancient Church, to communal - in Byzantine monasteries and Russian parish churches, and, finally, to personal -psychological - in the Soviet period. These three types of pastoral power are described by Sventzitsky in connection with the transformation in historical perspective of the forms of confession, the continuity of the "power of the keys" in the Church, and the actualisation of obedience in church life. From this perspective, Sventzitsky off ers a theological justification for the established practice of confession, which he constructs as a bricolage of Russian academic theology and philosophy.