Humanities & Social Sciences 1 (2015 8) 4-39 ~ ~ ~ УДК 113:2 The Sense of the Universe: towards a New Phenomenological Turn in the Dialogue between Cosmology and Theology Alexei V. Nesteruk* University of Portsmouth Lion Gate Building, PORTSMOUTH, PO1 3HF, UK Received 20.09.2014, received in revised form 14.10.2014, accepted 12.12.2014 The article discusses the problem of interpretation of the universe as a whole in the context of the modern dialogue between science and religion. <...> It is argued that the very possibility of cosmology and theology imply each other. <...> Thus humanity becomes the central problem of the dialogue because of its ambivalent position in the universe as being an organic physical being on the one hand and the articulating consciousness of the whole universe, on the other hand. <...> On the basis of asymmetry in relation between theology and cosmology a methodology of a theological treatment of cosmology is suggested as being based in the irreducible primacy of the event of living with respect to any possible representation of the universe. <...> A phenomenological methodology of “deconstructing” the ideas about the universe is suggested with the aim to disclose the source of these ideas in human person. <...> Introduction This paper proposes a new methodology of appropriation of modern cosmological ideas in the context of the nowadays popular dialogue between science and religion. <...> It does not aim to compare contemporary mathematically arranged cosmological ideas with the theologically expressed experience of communion with God. <...> The author believes that it would be incongruous to bring the cosmological views of the Fathers of the Church (which historically had been rooted in ancient Greek philosophy and astronomy) into correlation with the experimental and theoretical results of modern cosmology. <...> All rights reserved * Corresponding author E-mail address: alexei.nesteruk@port.ac.uk # 4 # it seems doubtful to conduct a comparative hermeneutics of the scriptural texts with modern writings on cosmology in an attempt to reveal some linguistic parallels: such a comparison would exhibit an arbitrary approach which is dictated neither by the needs of theology nor by the logic of science. <...> The author develops his argument starting from the premise that there is a fundamental asymmetry between cosmology, as a defi nite form of activity and thinking, and that philosophico-theological consciousness which exercises its refl ection upon cosmology. <...> This asymmetry consists in a simple fact that although philosophical and theological motives Alexei V. Nesteruk. <...> The Sense of the Universe: towards a New Phenomenological Turn in the Dialogue between… enter implicitly any speculations on the universe, cosmology <...>