Światopogląd chrześcijański wobec naturalizacji religii. Adaptacje, transformacje, negacje

The scientific study of religion creates a considerable challenge to religious communities, including Christian communities and denominations. Since such a study makes religion a subject of scientific explanation instead of perceiving it as a partner of dialogue with science, the religious attitude towards the outcomes of the scientific study of religion requires employing interpretive tools other than those usually used to understand the relation between science and religion. The scientific study of religion takes different forms, but a unique role is played by conceptions that attempt to find the natural foundations and determinants of religious thought and behavior. The results of those attempts – new theories of religion – are popularized, penetrate social consciousness, and are often used as a basis for a worldview according to which religion is nothing more than a purely natural phenomenon. However, in late modernity, reflexivity based on expert knowledge, including scientific knowledge, forces the change of religious thinking and the reorganization of religious action. This article points to three different reactions of Christian tradition to the attempts to naturalize religion, including a decisive rejection of the naturalist worldview as well as various forms of adaptation and transformation of the religious view of the world through introducing naturalist premises.