Article

Name: Prayer as Creativity in the Religious Discourse of Orthodoxy (Constants and Innovations)

Authors: Valentina I. Postovalova

Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation

Abstract: On the basis of the theolinguistic description of one of the oldest discourses in the human world – the euchological, or the discourse of a prayer – the issue of the possibility, specifics and limits of the application of the linguocreative approach to the characterization of religious discourse is considered. The paper analyzes the paradoxical situation of the discrepancy in the perception of Orthodox prayer from the outside observation and from the inside of the Orthodox spiritual experience. From the perspective of the Orthodox worldview, prayer (conciliar and personal) provesto be a unique spiritual and semiotic activity, eternally new in its content, while its form remains unchanged. In the religious consciousness of believers, the prayer’s eternal novelty is perceived as a creative beginning of the prayer experience. The article reveals the theological foundations of the creative nature of the prayer as well as the internal recourses of euchological discourse for realizing the “infinite” creative potential in it. The main features of euchological discourse are depicted – mystical (mysterious) nature, grace (the openness to Divine energies), miracle-working (the supernatural ontological action of prayer), apophaticism (the inaccessibility for an exhaustive rational explanation).

Keywords: creativity, euchological discourse, prayer, liturgical prayer, Jesus prayer, prayermaking, variation of prayer

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