Contingency as a way of being of the world: features of theological interpretations
Authors:   Mariupol State University, Hudyma Ihor 
Published: February 2023

The main objective of this article is to study the traditional Christian doctrine of the ontological balance of beings established by God, which is contingent and does not have a deep first reason for its own existence in itself, as well as the attempts of contemporary theologians to modernize this doctrine. The author's special attention is focused on the components of the theological doctrine of the "deeds of God", where the researchers examjning the topics of religion, considering the idea of direct divine causality, inevitably raise the question of its direct goal - maintaining the existence of the world and preventing it (the world) from sliding into the abyss of non-existence. The choice of theoretical and methodological approaches of the article is determined by the very subject of thought and the nature of the tasks. The providence of God and the miracle, as its special case, in accordance with fundamental Christian instructions, without significant disagreement, are clearly interpreted by theologians of all major Christian denominations in their theophanic perspective, as a permanent manifestation of God in the realm of God’s own creation. Almost all the main theological approaches to this issue aim justify and show the presence of God in the natural and human world through the terms of «preservation» and «management», and also, invariably, by highlighting over exstraordinary cases of direct creative acts of God in the world, through miracle. These means of God's interaction with the world, according to the theologians, are intended to preserve the ontological balance of the being, which was originally established by God, which is contingent, that is, is not the cause of itself. The ontological instability of the world, which lies in its contingency and the danger of its return to non-existence, is completely balanced by the activity of God; the latter is aimed not only at preserving the originality of the world, but also acts as the source of its formation, relies on its basis as an internal goal. The providence of God, without much disagreement, is shown by theologians of the main Christian movements as coherent processes, on the one hand, ordinary natural changes, as the objectification of the divine will in action, and on the other hand, as direct creative acts of God's interaction with the world in a miracle, when he does something surpassing the power of natural things. Common in the positions of theologians of different Christian denominations is also the fact that they unanimously emphasize the inadmissibility of a speculative interpretation of these concepts. All this, in the end, is aimed at introducing into the minds of believers the ontological image of God, who constantly indicates his presence in history and the indispensable ontologization of a miracle. Without this, faith is ultimately annihilated. In this case, the ideological opponents of religion get the opportunity to assert the thesis about providence and miracles as the results of ignorance or deliberate deceit. The main result of the study of the problem leads to the conclusion that for theologians who are in search of acceptable models for expressing the creative essence of God, modernizing the religious picture of the world and its main elements intends to reveal the essential in the doctrine by moving from the figurative-fantastic to the deep-true; all this, according to the theologians, should testify to the eternal values of the religious worldview in all the vicissitudes of epochs and cultures.