SOCIAL REFLECTION OF PROFESSOR FRANC GRIVEC IN TURBULENT TIMES: CHRISTIAN UNITY, SLOVENIAN NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS, SLAVIC SOLIDARITY

Franc Grivec (1878 – 1963), a pioneer in systematic research of Eastern Christianity in Slovenian higher education, was not a political thinker but a theologian and historian. However, some ecclesiological and historical themes he studied answered the pressing social questions of his time. In Grivec’s works, it is possible to identify a certain Christian social vision that opposes both socialism and liberal capitalism. The first core of Grivec’s social vision is unity among Christians under the auspices of the Catholic Church, where the thought of the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov (1853 – 1900) is highlighted. The second core is the national consciousness among Slovenians and other Slavs, which acts as a defense mechanism against the socialist revolution. In Grivec’s social vision, Russia occupies a negative and at the same time positive starting point for reflection – based on the revolution carried out and at the same time experiences in preventing its spread and a preserved sense of the search for truth. The Slovenian author places the two conceptual cores (Christian unity and national consciousness) within the example of the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius. In this way, he establishes a mythical idea of the medieval period, thus approaching the theory of the “New Middle Ages” of the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874 – 1948).