The phenomenon of M.V. Lomonosov in the history of the relationship between science and religion

M.V. Lomonosov is one of the key figures in Russian studies of the relationship between science and religion in the 18th century. The text analyzes the ambivalent picture of the interactions between the synodal church and the academic community as the “truth of faith” and the “truth of the academy”, which included both contradictions and a deep dialogue. These relations received a whole spectrum of interpretations in different periods of Russian history, from the “mutually exclusive confrontation of science and obscurantism” to the prospect of a sincere dialogue between “two daughters of one Supreme Parent”. The article shows the desire of a number of Soviet-era authors to reduce the worldview of the “father of Moscow University”, who understood that “the more its mysteries one’s mind comprehends, the greater the joy his heart feels”, to such schematic stereotypes as “atheist”, “convinced materialist”, “consistent supporter of natural-scientific materialism”, “deist”, “mechanical materialist”, whose “materialism was active, militant”, based on the cliché of “the irreconcilability of science and religion”. Post-Soviet descriptions are more correct, reasonably believing that a “good and true Christian” can also be a “great scientist-encyclopedist”.