Pastoral Discourse in Christian Theology

The article analyzes the treatises of the representatives of the "golden age" of the Christian writing, included in the treasury of academic pastoral theology as its best examples, as well as public speeches by the modern hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, which can be characterized as public theology. Various aspects of pastoral identity are revealed, such as ethics, morality, enlightenment, mentoring. The commonality of the thematic and semantic contents of the texts under consideration is revealed. The concepts of pastoral theology of the II-V centuries are compared with the modern church interpretation of pastoral activity. The author comes to the following conclusions: Christian patristicism contains the theological justification for pastoral ministry; the texts of theological treatises of such prominent Christian writers as John Chrysostom, Gregory the Theologian and Isidore Pelusiot are saturated with concepts reflecting various aspects of the pastoral identity; the texts of Christian exegetes contain not only explicit but also hidden meanings that are relevant to the issue of the priest's professional competence; in Orthodox theology, the idea that the vocation of the priest is actualized in the liturgical, preaching and educational activity is aimed at developing the religious reflection of believers; modern church discourse develops in the spirit of Christian pa-tristy; the view of the modern Church on the personality and activities of the priest is formed taking into account the spiritual needs of society and the actual tasks of the Orthodox mission, one of which is the attraction of student youth to religious values. The study of normative documents of the Russian Orthodox Church, Orthodox media and other church sources gives a clear understanding that the Patriarchate is developing a strategy for the formation of a new generation of priests capable of adequately presenting Orthodoxy through preaching and social work. To this end, a competence approach is introduced into the system of attestation of clerics, of which the Christian patristicism speaks, but in archaic formulations. Today, like many centuries ago, the Church assesses the pastor from the standpoint of educational qualifications, communicative abilities and moral characteristics.

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