The thesis is devoted to a complex analysis of theopoetics appeared with the name of Stanley Hopper. His scientiffic method was formed under the influence of Heidegger’s philosophy, suspicions about metaphysics, ontotheology, distrust of the supernatural in the discourse of the Death of God, which finds in Hopper’s approach the definition as the «existential and cultural mistrust» that pushed him for searching some new ways of «talking about God» at the level of deep psychological and symbolic horizons of meaning, in the realm of pre-thought, where theopoetics will be a way of thinking about the unspeakable, and God – a metaphorical, verbal expression, articulation of one’s being.
Thus, the ideas of theopoetics that emerged in the 1970s in the wake of society’s fascination with the idea of the «death of God», that was also seen as a threat to the decline of Christianity, seek to restore the language of theology in its relevance to the context. However, by the end of 1990s, the project of «restoration of Christianity» started by Hopper had fallen into oblivion. Later, in the 2000s, the emergence of mistrust about politics of Christian rights (in particular because of their protests over sexual ethics, gender issues, social and ethical stereotypes), concerns about transformation of religion into modes of violence, self-contained system, determined interest in theopoetics among such theologians, philosophers, intellectuals as Roland Faber, Catherine Keller, John D. Caputo, Richard Kearney, Scott Holland, Melanie Dugwid-May and others, but in new and quite different definitions, interpretations that seek to enter into a dialogue with the challenges of our time. Continental philosophy, which is always interested in the close connection of philosophy with the practice of life, especially in themes of the transformation of life, corporality, critique of processes, methods, practices of enslavement of individual and the search of ways to liberation, and its closeness to religious connotations of salvation, had a significant impact on the «new» theopoetics, which is why it focuses on philosophy of Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze, Foucault, Ricœur and others. While Hopper and Wilder’s theopoetics more centered around genres and forms of biblical texts, the «new» theopoetics focuses on social equality and political justice, however, both the former and the latter, theopoetics emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches that continue to experiment with discourses about divine in search of language that can open dialogue in commitment to the multiplicity and diversity, where even the love of God is experienced in different understandings of this God. Openness of theopoetics to the plurality of interpretations, emphasis on its «fully human» character, openness to culture, attention to tradition, blacklisting of abstraction, rationalism and stereotypes can reveal the importance of Ukrainian cultural heritage for Christianity today, that does not immerse in big abstract conceptions, systems about God, which in their absolutization can lead to rigid fundamentalism or remain at the level of ordinary statements far from human reality, but arises in the dimension of experience and daily practice. The works of Ivan Bahrianyi, mainly his novel Garden of Gethsemane, can be a good example of very kenotic emphasis of the form of life that resonates with the kenotic aspects of theopoetics, mostly with what Caputo calls a weak force, a desire of divine that arises from the depths of despair of a small man, placed face to face with totalitarian destruction. In this thesis for the first time in the Ukrainian science a research on theopoetics and its capability to develop interdisciplinary, intercultural, interfaith approaches was carried out. It analyzes how theopoetics contributes to the development of discourse about divine, which becomes a crossroads of meeting diversity of discourses, and able to add value to public discussions through a dialogical approach. The significance of the research is related to the analysis of the attempt to overcome the marginalization of theology and religion. Modernity carried out a systematic work of marginalizing theology, defining it as irrelevant for the understanding of reality and experience. However, this exclusion, carried out in favor of positivism, scientism and rationalism, were not able to avoid the tragedies that the twentieth century left to history and «threw» a man and society into a post-modernity or «liquid modernity», full of problems, questions and contradictions and without reference points.
