PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT OF GABRIEL KOSTELNIK (THE ANALYSIS OF UNDERSTUDIED AND ARCHIVAL SOURCES)

The article analyses the understudied and archival philosophical and religious works of the famous Bachwana Rusin, Chairman of the initiative group on the reunification of the UGCC with the ROC, Protopresbyter Gabriel Kostelnik (1886–1948). While some of his philosophical works were only an interim stage in his philosophical understanding of being (the theory of cognition in “Three clues to cognition”), other studies carried a powerful charge of criticise, going beyond the traditionally dogmatic Catholic creationism (for instance, the analysis of atheistic doctrine and social ideas in “Philosophical Natural Thought”, “Space and Universe”) or criticising the foundations of the socialism-communism (“Evolution”, “Reason”, “Causes of Atheism”, “Atheist”, “Materialism”, etc.). Some of the unpublished philosophical works from Kostelnik’s archive disclose the peculiarities of his philosophical system (“Logic”), which opposed the established norms of logic as a science and the postulates of Christianity (the connection of consciousness and subconsciousness, stigmatisation, reincarnation, esoteric terminology, “a sense of mystery”, etc.). The analysis demonstrates that the protopresbyter was a diverse scholar with broad erudition and critical thinking, who generated original philosophical and religious concepts (Catholic modernism).