Abstract

In our literature, following Professor D. Ugrinovich, it is still customary to divide religious studies into theoretical and historical ones. It even found its name in the name of some religious departments, institutes. We will not discuss here the issue of the legitimacy of such a division. To me, the philosophy of religion is one of the disciplinary entities of religious studies, as is the history of religion. The main specificity of religious studies is that it studies religion not as a whole, but as a whole, in the organic totality of all its components and functions. Religion appears to him not as a static phenomenon, but as a dynamic phenomenon. The subject of religious studies is a functioning religion, and this functioning occurs through the interaction and interplay of all its components, and not with the absolute extinction of something in it in the change of historical eras, because religion has a prehistoric meaning.