The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky: Essential Theological Writings 9780567540188, 9780567659491, 9780567603562

Table of contents :
Cover
Endorsements
Title
Copyright
Copyright Notices
Abbreviations
To the memory
Contents
Preface
Editorial Introduction
Introduction
Part 1 Creation, Incarnation and Redemption
1 Creation and Createdness
2 Preface to In Ligno Crucis
3 In Ligno Crucis : The Church Fathers’ Doctrine of Redemption
4 The Lamb of God
5 The Ever-Virgin Mother of God
6 The Stumbling-Block
Part 2 The Nature of Theology
7 Revelation, Philosophy and Theology
8 Western Influences in Russian Theology
9 Patristics and Modern Theology
10 Breaks and Links
11 The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology
12 The Predicament of the Christian Historian
13 Saint Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers
14 The Christian Hellenism
15 ‘On the Authority of the Fathers’
16 ‘Theological Will’
Part 3 Ecclesiology and Ecumenism
17 The Limits of the Church
18 Sobornost: The Catholicity of the Church
19 The Body of the Living Christ
20 Confessional Loyalty in the Ecumenical Movement
21 The Ethos of the Orthodox Church
22 The Ecumenical Dialogue
Part 4 Scripture, Worship and Eschatology
23 Eschatology in the Patristic Age
24 Starets Silouan
25 Scripture and Tradition
26 The Worshipping Church
Epilogue: ‘Let Us Choose Life’
Index

Citation preview

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Endorsements for The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky: Essential Theological Writings The life and thought of Fr Georges Florovsky remain as significant and relevant today as ever: for his creative synthesis of the patristic tradition but also for the unparalleled intuition of his theological vision. This introduction to and selection of his authoritative and formative writings provides a timeless insight into the breadth and depth of Fr Florovsky’s theology, ecclesiology and eschatology. It is highly recommended to all those interested in Orthodox theology. John Zizioulas Metropolitan of Pergamon For a long time, students of modern Eastern Christian theology have lacked a reliable and representative English-language selection from the prolific works of perhaps the most influential Orthodox thinker of the twentieth century. This collection of significant texts by Georges Florovsky is a wonderfully welcome addition to the available studies of his life and work, and the editors have done a superb job of framing and interpreting his writings for a wider readership. This is a real scholarly achievement and a great contribution to theological renewal across all the churches. Rowan Williams University of Cambridge Georges Florovsky was one of the most seminal Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century. His important shorter writings have long been difficult to obtain. Now this welcome volume brings many of them together into one place, showing that he still has much to contribute to theology and ecumenism in the years ahead. Highly recommended. George Hunsinger Princeton Theological Seminary This book succeeds triumphantly in giving the reader access to one of the greatest minds of the Russian religious renaissance. Aidan Nichols, OP Blackfriars, Cambridge

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky Essential Theological Writings Edited by Brandon Gallaher and Paul Ladouceur Preface by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware Introduction by Brandon Gallaher and Paul Ladouceur Translations by Olena Gorbatenko, David Heith-Stade, Alexis Klimoff, Alexey Kostyanovsky, Paul Ladouceur, Christopher Sprecher, Alexis Torrance and Gregory Tucker

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T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Paperback first published 2020 Copyright © Brandon Gallaher, Paul Ladouceur, 2019 Brandon Gallaher and Paul Ladouceur have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xvii-xix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Amber Schley-Iragui. Cover image: ‘Exodus’ by Marc Chagall (Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, 1952–1966). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-0-567-54018-8 PB: 978-0-5676-9771-4 ePDF: 978-0-567-60356-2 eBook: 978-0-567-15974-8 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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Copyright Notices The editors and the publisher are grateful to the following for permission to reprint Georges Florovsky’s original writings or in English translation:  Anglican Theological Review; Seraphim Danckaert; Diakonia; Dialog (John Wiley & Sons); Ecumenical Review (John Wiley & Sons); Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius; Fortress Press; HarperCollins Publishers; Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology; David Heath-Stade; Institut de théologie orthodoxe Saint-Serge; Monastère de Bussy; Monastery of Saint John the Baptist; Presse-AV (akademie-verlag.de); Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press; SPCK; The Orthodox Observer; The Student World; Theologisk Oratorium. For permission to reprint from Fr Matthew Baker’s sermon quoted in the Dedication, we are grateful to Gregory E. Baker and family. The editors and the publisher have made every reasonable effort to obtain appropriate permission to reprint copyright material included in this book. We apologize if errors or omissions have occurred. On notification, we will make the necessary corrections in future reprints and editions.

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Abbreviations CCSG CSEL CW

FC PG PL SC

Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca. 81  vols. (Turnhout:  Brepols, 1977–). Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 104 vols. (Vienna and Salzburg: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1866–). The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, 14 vols., ed. Richard Haugh (Vaduz, Liechtenstein, and Belmont, MA: Nordland and Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1974–1989). The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. 137 vols. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1947–). Patrologia Graeca. 166 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1857–66). Patrologia Latina. 217 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1844–55). Sources chrétiennes. 595 vols. (Paris: Le Cerf, 1943–).

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To the memory of Rev. Dr Matthew Jeremy Baker (5 April 1977–1 March 2015) Spiritual brother, theologian and heir to Fr Georges Florovsky. Memory eternal! ‘What shall pass from history into eternity?’ The city of Cain, the kingdom of Satan, cannot stand (Mt 12:25–26). But neither is our end to be found in a flight from history, an escape from the city. For if the story of Scripture, which is our story, began with a garden, we know that it will end, not with a garden, but with a city: even the holy city, the new Jerusalem, ‘coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband’ (Rev 21:2), and in the midst of her, the tree of life (Rev 22:2). And just as in the exodus into the promised land, the people of Israel brought with them the spoils of Egypt (Ex 3:21–22), the silver and the gold gathered in the land of their affliction, so also into this holy city ‘the kings of the earth shall bring their glory’ (Rev 21:24):  ‘whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise’ (Phil 4:8) – all things of beauty and genuine creativity which have been made or accomplished within the city of man, shall in some way be found in this new Jerusalem, the city of the living God. The human polis and all that it represents – human history, human culture – is not only judged; it is also cleansed and sanctified, redeemed – if only now ‘in hope’ (Rom 8:24; cf. 8:25). ‘What shall pass from history into eternity?’ asked Fr Georges Florovsky, of blessed memory. ‘The human person with all its relations, such as friendship and love. And in this sense also culture, since a person without a concrete cultural face would be a mere fragment of humanity.’ –Fr Matthew Baker

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Contents Preface Editorial Introduction Introduction Part 1 Creation, Incarnation and Redemption 1 2 3 4 5 6

Creation and Createdness Preface to In Ligno Crucis In Ligno Crucis: The Church Fathers’ Doctrine of Redemption The Lamb of God The Ever-Virgin Mother of God The Stumbling-Block

xi xv 1 31 33 65 71 81 95 107

Part 2 The Nature of Theology

113

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

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Revelation, Philosophy and Theology Western Influences in Russian Theology Patristics and Modern Theology Breaks and Links The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology The Predicament of the Christian Historian Saint Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers The Christian Hellenism ‘On the Authority of the Fathers’ ‘Theological Will’

129 153 159 185 193 221 233 237 241

Part 3 Ecclesiology and Ecumenism

245

17 18 19 20

247

The Limits of the Church Sobornost: The Catholicity of the Church The Body of the Living Christ Confessional Loyalty in the Ecumenical Movement

257 273 279

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21 The Ethos of the Orthodox Church 22 The Ecumenical Dialogue

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Part 4 Scripture, Worship and Eschatology

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23 24 25 26

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Eschatology in the Patristic Age Starets Silouan Scripture and Tradition The Worshipping Church

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325 329 335

Epilogue: ‘Let Us Choose Life’

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Index

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Preface Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) I clearly remember the first time that I  listened to Fr Georges Florovsky. It was in March 1960. I was staying in Boston, and I was taken to a graduate seminar led by Fr Georges at Harvard Divinity School. One of his students was due to present a paper on St Maximus the Confessor. He had not read more than the opening sentence before Fr Georges intervened, and for the remaining two hours of the session, he talked to us at length, fluently and without notes, about the theology of the Confessor. The student’s paper was forgotten. I was delighted, for it was Fr Georges that I had come to hear; but I hope that the student had a chance to read his paper on some future occasion! Listening to Fr Georges, I felt with an overwhelming conviction: This is how theology should be practiced. Here is someone who does not simply study the Fathers as an academic subject; patristic theology is his life, his very being. The last time that I heard Fr Georges speak was at the Sixth International Conference on Patristic Studies in Oxford during September 1971. I  had exactly the same impression as at Harvard. Fr Georges was scheduled to give one of the main lectures, forty-five minutes in length, on the topic ‘Problems in Patristic Ecclesiology’. This has never been published; indeed, he did not have any written text. As he ascended the rostrum, I noted with alarm that he held no papers in his hand, not even a single page of notes – nothing at all. He was seventy-eight, and I wondered whether at his relatively advanced age, speaking extempore for three-quarters of an hour, he would be able to keep firmly to the theme of his argument. He was the specially chosen spokesman for Orthodoxy at an outstanding international assembly. Would he live up to the expectations of his distinguished audience of several hundred patristic specialists? I need not have worried. Speaking without hesitation, in his distinctly staccato style, with short trenchant sentences, he set before us clearly and effectively his belief in the perennial value of patristic theology. Admittedly, he did not say anything that he had not already said on other occasions. But it was said with coherence and clarity, in powerful and inspiring words. It was an impressive performance. Fr Georges’s career was marked by a number of clashes and rifts. As Dr Gallaher and Dr Ladouceur recount here in their Introduction, while he was at the St Sergius Institute in Paris, he became progressively estranged from his colleagues and this led to his departure for America in 1948. At St Vladimir’s Seminary in New York, once more as result of internal tension, in 1955 he was removed from his position as Dean. Then in 1965 he was dismissed by Archbishop Iakovos from his part-time post at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline. It should not be assumed that in these three cases the fault lay solely or even chiefly with Fr Georges. Yet it cannot be denied that he was polemical in his theological

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stance, reactive rather than constructive: ‘I am a born protestor,’ he remarked. Some people even thought him harsh and bitter. That, however, is not at all how I personally remember him, although admittedly my contacts with him were rather limited. I recall him as warm and friendly, ready to respond to my questions – I treasure his letters, signed in green ink – always supportive of my research and writing. I am sure that his many students remember him in similar terms, for he evoked strong loyalty among those whom he taught. The pieces in this anthology cover a broad chronological span, from 1928 to 1969. Needless to say, during those forty-one years Fr Georges’s thinking evolved and matured.1 But from the 1920s until his death in 1979 he was inspired by an allembracing master theme:  the return to the Fathers, ‘Neopatristic Synthesis,’ to use his own characteristic phrase. The clause ‘Neo-’ in the Florovskian slogan should be particularly noted. He was fiercely opposed to what he termed the ‘theology of repetition’. In his view, it is not enough for us to quote patristic texts, simply reiterating what the Fathers said in the past. It is necessary also to ask: What would the Fathers be saying if they were alive today? In this way he advocated an ‘endless patristics,’ not restricted by the specific limits of time. So it is our task, as Fr Georges believed, to enter into the inner sprit of the Fathers, acquiring what he used to call their ‘mind’ or phronema, their vision and existential orientation. If we are to ‘follow the Fathers,’ this requires of us not only historical accuracy but also intuitive imagination; for tradition is much more than a static deposit inherited from earlier times. ‘Tradition,’ he wrote, ‘is not only a protective, conservative principle; it is, primarily, the principle of growth and regeneration . .  . Tradition is the constant abiding of the Spirit and not only the memory of words. Tradition is a charismatic, not a historical, principle.’2 As he expressed it elsewhere, ‘Traditions can be truly preserved only by a continuous creative endeavour, when they are lived by, or lived in, and not just remembered . . . One has to learn to be at once “ancient” and “modern.” ’3 This was equally the view of Fr Georges’s colleague at the St Sergius Institute, Fr Sergius Bulgakov, who was for a time his father confessor: ‘The life of the Church includes within itself not eternity alone, but also time, not only the static element, but also the dynamic one, not only the mystical givenness, but also development.’4 Fr Georges and Fr Sergius disagreed on many points, but in their understanding of the vital and creative nature of tradition they were in full agreement. What both of them affirmed was living tradition. Alongside this basic notion of ‘Neopatristic Synthesis’, Fr Georges made use of a second typical slogan, ‘Christian Hellenism’ or ‘Hellenism under the Sign of the Cross’. 1

2 3 4

For Fr Georges’s intellectual biography, see Andrew Blane, ed., Georges Florovsky:  Russian Intellectual  – Orthodox Churchman (Crestwood, NY:  St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993); and (especially for the period 1920–1948) Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Florovsky preferred to spell his name ‘Georges’ (rather than George), because, as he said to me, ‘It is closer to the Greek “Georgios”.’ This is an intriguing example of his ‘Christian Hellenism’! Georges Florovsky, ‘Sobornost: The Catholicity of the Church’, Ch. 18, 265, in this book. Georges Florovsky, ‘The Christian Hellenism’, Ch. 14, 235–236, in this book. Sergius Bulgakov, ‘The Church Universal’, Journal of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, 25 (1934): 12.

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‘Hellenism,’ he claimed, ‘has actually become, as it were, the perennial category and pattern of Christian thought and life . . . Let us be more “Hellenic” in order that we may be truly Christian.’5 Yet here again, as with his insistence on being ‘Neopatristic’, Fr Georges was not advocating a slavish reproduction of the past. What is needed, he said, is not ‘a blunt reception of Hellenism as such’, but ‘a dissection of Hellenism’: ‘The old had to die, but the new was still Greek – the Christian Hellenism of our dogmatics, from the New Testament to St Gregory Palamas, nay, to our own time.’6 When Fr Georges spoke in this way about Christian Hellenism , and when he said ‘Let us be “Hellenic,” ’ he did not have in view a Hellenism that was narrowly nationalistic or exclusively ethnic. Although he used to speak of Orthodoxy as specifically ‘Eastern’, and although he liked to make sweeping contrasts (perhaps too sweeping) between East and West, yet he believed that Christian Hellenism and Orthodoxy are not to be limited geographically or culturally, but they are fundamentally catholic and universal. Thus he considered that a Latin writer such as St Augustine of Hippo, whom he often quoted, was ‘really an Eastern Father’.7 Christian Hellenism, as envisaged by Fr Georges, involved primarily four elements, none of which is culturally limited: 1. An emphasis on historical revelation, as opposed to speculative cosmology; 2. ‘The intuition of creaturehood’, to use his own phrase, as opposed to any pantheistic blurring of the cosmological distinction between the uncreated and the created; 3. Personalism, a full recognition of the unique value of each individual person, as opposed to a view of history that assigns primary importance to economic factors, to ‘class struggle’ and to vast, impersonal ‘movements’ or ‘forces’; 4. Indeterminism, a rigorous insistence on the freedom and spontaneous creativity of the individual, as opposed to any theory that degrades the person into a machine or a tool dominated by external circumstances. For Fr Georges there was an essential link between theology and prayer, between dogma and liturgical celebration. Here again he agreed with Fr Sergius Bulgakov, who used to say: ‘Theology ought to be drunk from the bottom of the Eucharistic chalice.’8 ‘True theology’, Fr Georges affirmed, ‘can spring only out of a deep liturgical experience.’9 As he asserted elsewhere, ‘Time-conquering unity is manifested and revealed in the experience of the Church, especially in its Eucharistic experience.’10 In his ‘theological will’, composed towards the end of his life, he wrote: ‘Theology I have learned not in the school, but in the Church, as a worshipper. I have derived it from the liturgical books first, and much later, from the writings of the Holy Fathers.’11 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Florovsky, ‘The Christian Hellenism’, Ch. 14, 235–236, in this book. Quoted in Blane, Georges Florovsky, 155. Quoted in Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 209. Ibid., 119. Georges Florovsky, ‘The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology’, Ch. 11, 191, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Sobornost: The Catholicity of the Church’, Ch. 18, 264, in this book. Blane, Georges Florovsky, 153; and see Florovsky, ‘Theological Will’, Ch. 16, 241, in this book.

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Critics have complained that Fr Georges nowhere explained in a concise and systematic way precisely what he meant by Neopatristic Synthesis. What doctrines is it intended to embrace, and what does it exclude? How is the common ‘mind’ of the Fathers to be discerned?12 Readers of the texts in this present anthology will certainly discover in general terms what Fr Georges understood by this ‘synthesis’. But for a more definite picture of the possible scope and contents of Neopatristic Synthesis, we may be helped by looking elsewhere, in particular at two books by other authors: The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church by Vladimir Lossky,13 and the second half of Fr John Meyendorff ’s Byzantine Theology.14 Florovsky himself welcomed Lossky’s book as ‘an essay in what can be described as a “Neopatristic Synthesis” ’,15 while Lossky in his turn praised Fr Georges as ‘possibly the greatest Orthodox theologian of our time’.16 As Dr Paul Gavrilyuk has rightly commented, ‘Neopatristic theology remains a work in progress.’17 The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky have appeared in fourteen volumes, edited by Richard S. Haugh.18 Grateful though we may be to Dr Haugh for this publication, it has to be acknowledged that it has various shortcomings, especially in the later volumes. In any case, it has now become a bibliographical rarity. The editors of this book, Dr Gallaher and Dr Ladouceur, have therefore rendered a signal service in making readily available a careful and well-balanced selection of Fr Georges’s key writings. No less than thirteen pieces in this book do not appear in The Collected Works, while six have been newly translated or revised for this anthology. I count it a privilege and a lasting enrichment to have known Fr Georges personally. It was his writings, along with those of Aleksei Khomiakov and Vladimir Lossky, that first attracted me to the Orthodox Church, and it was his example and witness that have never ceased to guide me in my university teaching and my pastoral ministry. Fr Georges’s writings are no way outdated. May this present selection ensure that his neopatristic voice continues be heard loudly and clearly in the twenty-first century. Kallistos Ware Metropolitan of Diokleia

12

13 14

15 16 17 18

See Kallistos Ware, ‘Orthodox Theology Today: Trends and Tasks’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 12, no. 2 (2012): 105–121, especially 112–113. Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: James Clarke, 1957). John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974), 129–227. Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 240. Ibid., 233. Ibid., 270. Richard S. Haugh, The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (Belmont, MA, and Vaduz:  Nordland and Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1972–1989).

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Editorial Introduction Georges Florovsky (1893–1979) was the most prominent Orthodox theologian and ecumenist of the twentieth century. His many publications had an unparalleled influence on modern Orthodox thought. He was also an important ecumenical figure and was in dialogue with many major twentieth-century theological figures of other Christian churches. Among those whom Florovsky influenced are Karl Barth (1886– 1968), Paul Tillich (1886–1965), Emil Brunner (1889–1966), Willem Visser ‘t Hooft (1900–1985), Yves Congar (1904–1995), Michael Ramsey (1904–1988), Jean Daniélou (1905–1974), E.  L. Mascall (1905–1993), Thomas F.  Torrance (1913–2007), George Huntston Williams (1914–2000), Krister Stendahl (1921–2008) and Rowan Williams (1950–). Despite Florovsky’s importance as a Christian theologian, his writings are not as well known as they should be, in large part because of the difficulty of accessing his most important works. The intent of this book is to collect together Florovsky’s most significant writings in an accessible, reliable and compact edition. Florovsky wrote few books – the best known is his Puti Russkogo Bogosloviia (The Ways of Russian Theology) (Paris, 1937) – and most of his publications consisted of articles and essays on a wide range of subjects published in numerous periodicals and books. As editors, we have sought to provide a selection of Florovsky’s most enduring and historically significant works, grouped under four broad thematic headings reflecting his primary theological interests:  Creation, Incarnation and Redemption; The Nature of Theology; Ecclesiology and Ecumenism; and Scripture, Worship and Eschatology. The Epilogue is a sermon under the title ‘Let Us Choose Life’. Florovsky’s writings contained in this book are, in the case of texts published in English, the original publications, checked against later editions, and, in the case of five essays (two from Russian, two from German, and one from French), new translations from the original language, produced specifically for this book. One translation (from Swedish) has been revised for this book. The writings included in this book are the integral versions as published of Florovsky’s essays, articles or chapters of books. This book contains footnotes by Florovsky himself, as well as additional notes by the translators and by ourselves as editors. These additional notes provide basic references to important persons or events mentioned or alluded to by Florovsky and identify the often indirect targets of particular arguments that he puts forward. We also occasionally provide (in square brackets [. . .]) more detailed references to some sources that Florovsky quotes, including recent editions and translations. In many cases, we provide fuller publication details for Florovsky’s own references, which were sometimes too brief for contemporary scholarly standards. All footnotes are numbered consecutively within each text and hence do not necessarily correspond with the numbering of the footnotes in the original publication. At the end of each footnote we

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indicate the source of the note: Georges Florovsky – [GF]; the editors – [Eds.]; and the translator – [Trans.]. In the case of well-known Russian personalities, we have used the most common English versions of their names, such as Vladimir Solovyov and Sergius Bulgakov, rather than the more scholarly transliterations of their names (Vladimir Solov’ev and Sergii Bulgakov). In preparing this book, we have relied extensively on the bibliography of Florovsky’s writings prepared by Andrew Blane with the help of Zoya Samoylova and published in his work Georges Florovsky: Russian Intellectual – Orthodox Churchman.1 The brief introduction to each chapter in this book summarizes its publication history and includes a reference to the item number in Blane’s bibliography. For a bibliography of secondary literature relating to Florovsky, we refer the reader to the work of the late Fr Matthew Baker.2 We have come across only a few published works of Georges Florovsky not included in the Blane bibliography. Most of these are correspondence and archival material published after Blane finalized his bibliography.3 The main archives for Florovsky’s unpublished works are located at Princeton University’s Firestone Library4 and at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in New  York, which has a significant collection of his books and papers.5 Other archival material is housed at institutions in Paris, London, Basel, Prague, Boston, Odessa and Belgrade and in the private collections of Andrew Blane and the literary estate of the late Fr Matthew Baker. The most important publications not contained in the Blane bibliography are volumes V to XIV of The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (1974–1989) (=CW),6 which reproduces writings already noted by Blane in their original source publications. With the exception of the first two volumes of the CW, which Florovsky himself oversaw, there are numerous translation and editorial problems in almost all the volumes, especially the last two volumes on ecumenism (XIII–XIV), which include many of Florovsky’s most influential texts on this subject. Volumes V–VI of the CW are a translation of Florovsky’s seminal Ways of Russian Theology (1937), to which unreferenced material has been added. The translations of Florovsky’s Russian 1

2

3

4

5 6

Andrew Blane, ed., Georges Florovsky:  Russian Intellectual  – Orthodox Churchman (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993), 347–401. Matthew Baker, ‘Bibliography of Literature on the Life and Work of Father Georges V. Florovsky’, Teologikon: Godishnik na tsentŭra po sistematichesko bogoslovie pri pravoslavniia bogoslovski fakultet na velikotŭrnovskiia universitet, Tom. 2 (Veliko Tŭrnovo:  Izdat. Faber, 2013), 253–331. Online at (accessed 22 April 2019). Baker prepared earlier versions of this bibliography with the assistance of Nikolaos Asproulis and Alexis Klimoff. For a listing, see in Matthew Baker, ‘Addenda to the Primary Bibliography of Georges Florovsky’, Teologikon, Tom. 2, 249–252; and ‘Appendix I:  Letters by and to Georges Florovsky’ of Baker’s ‘Bibliography of Literature on the Life and Work of Father Georges V. Florovsky’, 322–328. Georges Florovsky Papers, Manuscript Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. For a collection description, see Blane, Georges Florovsky, 407–429. Updated version online at (accessed 22 April 2019). For a description of contents, see Blane, Georges Florovsky, 431–436. The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, 14 vols., ed. Richard Haugh (Vaduz, Liechtenstein, and Belmont, MA: Nordland and Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1974–1989).

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lectures on the early Fathers of the Church, published as two volumes in 1931 and 1933 (volumes VIII, IX and X in the CW), also include extensive additional material for which no source is indicated and for which no published Russian original exists (except for one case).7 For these reasons Andrew Blane judged the Collected Works to be ‘often not reliable’.8 As editors of this book, we agree with his assessment and have therefore returned to the originally published texts of Florovsky’s writings, or have commissioned new translations.

Acknowledgements Many institutions and individuals have aided us in this publication over a period of nearly a decade; this is truly a real work of sobornost’. We are immensely grateful for the support of our publishers T&T Clark. Thanks are due to the original commissioning editor, the Reverend Thomas Kraft, who had the vision, foresight and scholarly knowledge to see the need for this book and to support it from the beginning. We have been supported and aided in all ways by Anna Turton (Theology Commissioning Editor), who was ever patient and helpful as the preparation of the book took considerably more time than anticipated and increased in length. Sarah Blake, Miriam Cantwell, Joanne Murphy and Beth Williams were most kind for their prompt and thorough assistance. We thank Shyam Sunder (Newgen KnowledgeWorks) for his meticulous copy-editing and type-setting of our complex manuscript. We acknowledge, for Brandon Gallaher, the generous financial and academic support of the British Academy. For Brandon Gallaher, we are also thankful for financial and academic support from St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (Crestwood, New  York) (Frs Thomas Hopko (†), John Erickson, John Behr and Chad Hatfield) the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford (Profs Sarah Foot, Johannes Zachhuber and Graham Ward), the Centre for Research on Religion, Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University (Prof. Torrance Kirby), Keble College, Oxford (Prof. Markus Bockmuehl), Regent’s Park College, Oxford (Dr Robert Ellis and Prof. Paul Fiddes), the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Notre Dame (Prof. Brad Gregory, Dr Donald Stelluto and Prof. Cyril O’Regan), the Centre for Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions, School of Theology, Doshisha University (Kyoto, Japan) (Profs Katsuhiro Kohara and Junya Shinohe) and the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter (Profs Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Morwenna Ludlow, David Horrell and Esther Reed). For Paul Ladouceur, we are thankful for support and assistance from the Montreal Institute of Orthodox Theology, the Faculté de théologie et d’études religieuses, Université de Sherbrooke (Sherbrooke, Québec), and the Faculté de théologie et de sciences religieuses, Université Laval (Quebec, Canada) (Dr John Hadjinicolaou), the 7

8

Some of the material in Vol. VIII of the CW on Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna was published posthumously as Florovsky, ‘Ottsy pervykh vekov’ (The Fathers of the Early Centuries), Vestnik russkogo khristianskogo Dvizheniia, 145 (III, 1985): 5–31. Blane, Georges Florovsky, 401.

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Orthodox School of Theology at Trinity College and the Faculty of Divinity, Trinity College, at the University of Toronto (Dean Christopher Brittain, Dean Emeritus David Neelands, Prof. Richard Schneider and Fr Geoffrey Ready) and the libraries of the University of Toronto (especially the John P. Robarts Research Library, the John W. Graham Library of Trinity College and the John M. Kelly Library of St Michael’s College). Thanks are also due to the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius (Fr Stephen Platt), the Father Georges Florovsky Library and St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (Fr John Behr, Profs Peter Bouteneff and Paul Meyendorff, and librarians Eleana Silk and Matthew Garklavs), the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections of the Princeton University Library (Don C. Skemer, Ben Primer, Charles E. Greene and Margaret Rich), the library of the Princeton Theological Seminary, the Fr Georges Florovsky Orthodox Christian Theological Society at Princeton University (Fr Matthew Baker, Seraphim Danckaert, and Drs Natalia Ermolaev and Nicholas Marinides/Fr Evgenios of Iviron) and the Society for Orthodox Christian History in the Americas (Rev. Dr Oliver Herbel, Matthew F. Namee), the Institut Théologie Orthodoxe Saint-Serge (Paris) (Fr Nicolas Cernokrak, and Profs Joost van Rossum, Michel Stavrou and Goran Sekulovski). First among our co-workers whose diligent work we gratefully acknowledge are our translators, who have produced fluid and faithful versions of Florovsky’s texts:  Prof. Alexis Klimoff and Dr Alexey Kostyanovsky, with the assistance of Olena Gorbatenko (from Russian), Christopher Sprecher (from German but also Latin and Greek), Prof. Alexis Torrance and Gregory Tucker (from Greek and Latin), and Dr David Heith-Stade (from Swedish). Paul Ladouceur translated the text originally published in French. Many scholars have brought their expertise to the long process of the preparation of this work, especially Fr Robert M. Arida, Dr Nikolaos Asproulis, Fr Demetrios Bathrellos, Prof John Behr, Hieromonk Makarios (Bonnet) of Simonos Petras, Prof Peter Bouteneff, Fr Ciprian Burca, Fr John Chryssavgis, Profs Will Cohen, Nicholas Constas/Hieromonk Maximos, Vladimir Cvetkovic, Seraphim Danckaert, Marko Djurdjevic, Fr John Erickson, Prof Paul Gavrilyuk, Fr Chad Hatfield, Prof George Hunsinger, Drs Pantelis Kalaitzidis and Julia Konstantinovsky, Prof. Andrew Louth, Dr Nicholas Marinides/Fr Evgenios of Iviron, Fr Aidan Nichols, Profs Aristotle Papanikolaou, Michael Plekon, Marcus Plested, and Andrei Psarev, Fr Alexander Rentel, Hieromonk Tikhon (Vasilyev), Prof Alexis Torrance, Dr Rowan Williams and Metropolitan John Zizioulas. We appreciate the gifted eye of Amber Schley-Iragui in contributing to the cover design. We wish to thank the publishers, journals and individuals who have granted permission to reproduce Florovsky’s works in this book, either in the original English or in translation. We are very grateful to our families and close friends (especially Michelle Gallaher and Sophie, Ita, Alban and Maria Gallaher, Anne Holloway, Dr Donald Gallaher, Tiffany Gallaher and Massimo Savino, Safia Boutaleb, Matthew Smale, Prof Federico Caprotti, Fr Gregory and Elizabeth Carpenter, Fr Ian Graham, Amber and Charles Iragui, Simon and Frances Jennings, Sr Seraphima (Konstantinovsky), Drs Alexey and Lucy Kostyanovsky, Fr Stephen and Anna Platt, Fr Richard and Jaime Rene, Protodeacon

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Peter and Irina Scorer, Gregory Tucker and Christopher Sprecher, Lise and Richard Julien, Denise Ladouceur and Pierre Charland, Monique Vallée, Dr Milutin Drobac, Peter Drobac, and Bojana, Luc and Emilija Lafond), church communities in Canada, England and elsewhere, who have been loving and patient with this long labour. Above all, we wish to acknowledge the unqualified support, guidance and assistance of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. He inspired this work from the outset, suggested thematic divisions, assisted in the selection of texts, reread and helped edit the entire manuscript, and wrote the Foreword. Metropolitan Kallistos truly embodies Florovsky’s universal ‘vision of the Fathers’.

Dedication This book is dedicated to the memory of the late Fr Matthew Baker, who died tragically in a car accident on 1 March 2015. The quotation for the dedication is taken from a homily he was to give for the Pre-Sanctified Liturgy at his parish of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church (Norwich, Connecticut, USA).1 We are very grateful to Prof Gregory Baker of the Catholic University of America and his family, especially Presbytera Katherine Baker, for permission to use the homily. Prof Baker was invaluable in helping to identify the source of the citation. Fr Matthew was unfailingly generous to us in his friendship, a true ‘spiritual brother’, in his unflinching support for this project and in his expertise in answering numerous queries. His inexhaustible store of knowledge about the life, writings and theology of Fr Georges Florovsky was an invaluable resource to us and a source of ongoing inspiration. Memory eternal! Revd Dr Brandon Gallaher Department of Theology and Religion University of Exeter Exeter, United Kingdom Dr Paul Ladouceur Orthodox School of Theology at Trinity College (University of Toronto) Toronto, Canada & Faculté de théologie et de sciences religieuses, Université Laval Quebec, Canada Great and Holy Pascha 2019.

1

For the full text of the sermon, see http://myocn.net/city-cain-city-jesus/ (accessed 23 April 2019). The Florovsky quotation in the sermon is from Ioann Sviridov, ‘Certain Aspects of the Theology of Archpriest Georges Florovsky (For the 10th Anniversary of His Demise)’, The Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, 4 (1989): 67–74 at 73 (thanks to Dr Gregory Baker for the reference).

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Introduction Brandon Gallaher and Paul Ladouceur

‘To follow’ the Fathers does not mean just ‘to quote’ them. ‘To follow’ the Fathers means to acquire their ‘mind,’ their phronēma.1

Georges Vasilevich Florovsky (1893–1979) is undoubtedly the most influential Orthodox theologian of the twentieth century. His theological programme and method of spiritual renewal in the Byzantine heritage – the Greek patristic corpus and the monastic and liturgical tradition, in Florovsky’s well-known designation, a ‘neopatristic synthesis’2 – became the dominant paradigm for Orthodox theology and ecumenical activity in the second half of the twentieth century. His students included some of the best-known personalities in modern Orthodox theology, such as Fr Boris Bobrinskoy (b. 1925), Fr John Meyendorff (1926–1992), Fr John Romanides (1928–2001) and Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon (b. 1931). In addition, he profoundly influenced or sometimes mentored others who became key figures in modern Orthodox thought: Myrrha LotBorodine (1882–1957), Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) (1896–1993), Archbishop Basil (Krivoshein) of Bruxelles (1900–1985), Vladimir Lossky (1903–1958), Fr Dimitru Stăniloae (1903–1993), Fr Alexander Schmemann (1921–1983), Jaroslav Pelikan (1923–2006), Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia (b. 1934), Panayiotis Nellas (1936–1986) and Sergey S. Horujy (b. 1941). Since Florovsky’s influence has been so profound, it is sometimes difficult to discern what he actually taught as distinct from contemporary assumptions about his theology upheld by many Orthodox theologians.3 1

2

3

Georges Florovsky, The Byzantine Fathers of the Fifth Century (1933), in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky [hereafter cited as CW, I, CW, II, etc.], ed. Richard Haugh (Belmont, MA, and Vaduz, Liechtenstein:  Nordland and Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1974–1989), Vol. VIII, 38; and Florovsky, ‘St Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers’, Ch. 13, 224–225, in this book. The first published use of the expression ‘neopatristic synthesis’ was in a 1947 Swedish summary of Florovsky’s lectures in 1936 at the University of London on ‘The Patristic Doctrine of Atonement’. See Georges Florovsky, ‘In Ligno Crucis: The Church Fathers’ Doctrine of Redemption’, Ch. 3, 72, in this book. See also Georges Florovsky, ‘The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology’, Ch. 11, 191, in this book; Florovsky, ‘Theological Will’, Ch. 16, 242, in this book; and Florovsky, ‘The Ethos of the Orthodox Church’, Ch. 21, 297, in this book. See Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006) (on Lossky and Zizioulas); Paul Ladouceur,

2

2

The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

A better understanding of the origins and nature of George Florovsky’s thought and his role in modern Orthodoxy is central to the construction of non-polemical narratives about the shape and development of Orthodox theology that are solidly anchored in the texts, contexts and influences of individual writers. It has become commonplace to view modern Orthodox theology basically as evolving in two contrasting and conflicting ‘schools’.4 The first ‘school’ has its origins in the Silver Age of Russian literature and philosophy of the late imperial nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, up to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Its best-known figures were often religious philosophers whose thinking fused philosophy and theology:  Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900), Vasily Rozanov (1856–1919), Dimitry Merezhkovsky (1866–1941), Lev Shestov (1866–1938), Sergius Bulgakov (1871–1944), Nicolas Berdyaev (1874–1948), Semen L.  Frank (1877–1950), Vasily Zenkovsky (1881–1962), Lev Karsavin (1882–1952) and Pavel Florensky (1882–1937). These writers were formed intellectually in imperial Russia, and many went into exile after the revolution of 1917. This movement in Russian thought is often referred to as the ‘Russian religious renaissance’ (Nicolas Zernov), embracing both the pre-revolutionary and the émigré periods,5 or ‘Russian religious thought’, ‘Russian philosophy’,6 ‘religious philosophy’ or again simply the ‘Russian School’.7 When scholars are interested primarily in the émigré period, the movement is also called the ‘Paris School’.8 None of its appellations are ever neutral and almost all of them are freighted with judgement about its perceived orthodoxy or heterodoxy. Both proponents and opponents of this approach to theology point to its ‘modernist’ character and an agenda seeking to address contemporary issues,9 often by going, according to its critics, ‘beyond the Fathers’, illicitly importing non-traditional elements into Orthodox theology, such as of notions from Romanticism and German idealism.

4

5

6

7 8

9

‘Treasures New and Old: Landmarks of Orthodox Neopatristic Theology’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 56, no. 2 (2012):  191–227; Augustine Casiday, Remembering the Days of Old: Orthodox Thinking on the Patristic Heritage (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2014); and Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2013), 232–258. See Alexander Schmemann, ‘Russian Theology:  1920–1972:  An Introductory Survey’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 16, no. 4 (1972):  172–194; Paul Evdokimov, Le Christ dans la pensée russe [Christ in Russian Thought] (Paris:  Le Cerf, 1970), 146–206; Paul Valliere, Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov: Orthodox Theology in a New Key (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2000), 1–11; and Kallistos Ware, ‘Orthodox Theology Today:  Trends and Tasks’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 12, no. 2 (2012): 105–121 at 110–115. Nicolas Zernov, The Russian Religious Renaissance of the Twentieth Century (London:  Darton, Longman & Todd, 1963); Michael Plekon, Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002); and Andrew Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From Philokalia to the Present (London: SPCK, 2015). Judith Deutsch Kornblatt and Richard Gustafson, eds., Russian Religious Thought (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996); and G. M. Hamburg and Randall Poole, eds., A History of Russian Philosophy 1830–1930: Faith, Reason, and the Defense of Human Dignity (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2010). Valliere, Modern Russian Theology, 1. Antoine Arjakovsky, The Way: Religious Thinkers of the Russian Religious Emigration in Paris and Their Journal, 1925–1940 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013 [2002 in French]). An example of this ‘modernist’ orientation is the classic text Zhivoe Predanie:  pravoslavie v sovremennosti [Living Tradition:  Orthodoxy in the Modern World] (Paris:  YMCA, 1937)  (with

3

Introduction

3

The other ‘school’ is identified with a generation of thinkers younger than those of the Russian Religious Renaissance, with Georges Florovsky and Vladimir Lossky as its principal founders. It is argued that this ‘school’ is premised on a return to the patristic theological tradition, a ‘neopatristic synthesis’, in which theology is done in harmony with the living tradition of the Church. The opponents of this ‘neopatristic school’ accuse it of being unable to deal adequately with modern issues and of being politically and culturally conservative and even reactionary and anti-Western. The standard narrative of the development of modern Orthodox theology sees most Orthodox theology since the end of World War II as built on the solid foundation of patristic theology, not only among Russian theologians, but also among the leading Greek, Romanian and Serbian theologians of the second half of the twentieth century. Recent scholarship argues that the standard narrative concerning two ‘schools’ in modern Orthodox theology needs revising.10 In the first place, it is possible to identify not two ‘schools’ of Orthodox theology in modern times, but four strands or ways of doing theology, distinct yet overlapping, with complex relationships among each other. The standard narrative generally overlooks, with its focus on Russian religious thought and neopatristic synthesis (our first two strands), a type of theology that is often called ‘academic theology’ or ‘school theology’ because it dominated (and, in many cases, still dominates) the theological educational systems of the major countries of Orthodox tradition, especially in pre-revolutionary Russia, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and the Ecumenical Patriarchate (the Theological School of Halki, to 1971). Florovsky also refers to it as the ‘historical school’. 11 This theology is characterized by attempts to systematize theological discourse into a unified framework, often inspired in structure, language and, in some cases, even

10

11

essays by Sergius Bulgakov, Lev Zander, Vasily Zenkovsky, Nicholas Afanasiev, Ivan Lagovskii, Vladimir Ilin, Kiprian Kern, Kassian Bezobrazov and Boris Sove). Translations of selected essays are available in Tradition Alive: On the Church and the Christian Life in Our Time – Readings from the Eastern Church, ed. Michael Plekon (Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward, 2003). See Arjakovsky, The Way, Part One, ‘A Modernist Journal (1925–1929)’, 33–188. See Matthew Baker, ‘“Theology Reasons”  – In History:  Neo-Patristic Synthesis and the Renewal of Theological Rationality’, Theologia, 81, no. 4 (2010):  81–118; A. V. Cherniaev, G. V.  Florovskii kak filosof i istorik russkoi mysli (Moscow :  IFRAN, 2010); Brandon Gallaher, ‘“Waiting for the Barbarians”: Identity and Polemicism in the Neo-Patristic Synthesis of Georges Florovsky’, Modern Theology, 27, no. 4 (2011):  659–691 at 660ff. (and see an expanded version of this text:  ‘Mia epanexetasē tēs Neo-paterikēs synthesēs; Orthodoxē tautotēta kai polemikē ston p.  Geōrgio Phlōrophsku kai to mellon tēs Orthodoxēs Theologias [A Re-envisioning of “Neo-Patristic Synthesis?”: Orthodox Identity and Polemicism in Fr Georges Florovsky and the Future of Orthodox Theology’], Theologia, 84, no. 1 [2013]: 25–92); Brandon Gallaher, ‘The “Sophiological” Origins of Vladimir Lossky’s Apophaticism’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 66, no. 3 (2013): 279–298; Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, especially 2–4 and 270–271; Paul Ladouceur, Modern Orthodox Theology: ‘Behold I Make All Things New’ (London: T&T Clark, 2019), 439–444 and 450–454; Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, xiv–xv, 1; Aristotle Papanikolaou, ‘Sophia, Apophasis and Communion:  The Trinity in Contemporary Orthodox Theology’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity, ed. Peter C. Phan (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2011), 243–258; and Aristotle  Papanikolaou, ‘Eastern Orthodox Theology’, in The Routledge Companion to Modern Christian Thought, ed. Chad Meister and James Beilby (London: Routledge, 2013), 538–548. Florovsky devotes part of chapter V (‘The Struggle for Theology’) and most of chapter VII (‘The Historical School’) of The Ways of Russian Theology (CW, V–VI) to academic theology. See also Schmemann, ‘Russian Theology:  1920–1972’, 172–175; and Evdokimov, Le Christ dans la pensée russe, 60–61 and 121–145.

4

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

doctrines, by Western theology and theological treatises, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. As in the West, the typical expression of Orthodox academic theology was a manual of dogmatic theology, often heavily influenced by Latin scholasticism (not surprising as Latin was the language of instruction of theological education well into the nineteenth century in many parts of the Orthodox world) and in ethics and spirituality, by Protestant pietism. Classic examples of Russian academic theology are the Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (5 vols., 1849–1853) of Metropolitan Makarius (Bulgakov) of Moscow (1816–1882), and, in the Russian emigration, the one-volume manual of Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (1963) of Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky (1888–1988) of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR or ‘the Synod’). Examples of the same tradition in Greece are the Dogmatics of the Eastern Orthodox Church (1907) of Christos Androutsos (1869– 1935) and the Dogmatics of the Orthodox Catholic Church (3  vols., 1959–1961) of Panagiotis Trembelas (1886–1977). Academic theology was a major component of what Georges Florovsky calls the ‘pseudomorphosis’ of Orthodox theology.12 The emancipation of Orthodox theology from an essentially Western approach began in the nineteenth century, but the process has been slow and is far from complete even in the twenty-first century, as was evident in the agreed conciliar texts of the recent Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church held in Crete in June 2016.13 Besides academic theology, our third strand, there exists also a fourth theological strand in modern Orthodoxy, which is the continuation of the ascetic and mystical theology found in the writings of the great spiritual teachers in the Orthodox tradition from the Desert Fathers of the fourth century to the present time. This has been understood by many prominent modern Orthodox theologians to be the true ‘mystical theology’, in which there is continuity and an essential harmony between theological reflection and the experience of God; the ultimate goal of the Christian life – and of theology – is salvation, expressed as theosis, union with God.14 This stream of theology 12

13

14

The term pseudomorphosis is derived from mineralogy. A  pseudomorph is a mineral or mineral compound that appears in an untypical form, resulting from a substitution process in which the appearance and dimensions of the original remain constant, but the mineral or material is replaced by another – petrified wood is a typical example. Florovsky borrowed the term from the German historian and philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), especially his book The Decline of the West (1918). In Spengler, pseudomorphosis refers to an older culture so deeply ingrained in another civilization that native culture cannot find its own form and full expression. Florovsky first used the expression in 1937, in his paper ‘Western Influences in Orthodox Theology’ (Ch. 8, 137, 141, 149, in this book) and also in The Ways of Russian Theology, especially in chapter II, ‘The Encounter with the West’ (CW, V). See also in this book Ch. 11, ‘The Legacy and Task of Orthodox Theology’, 188, 191 and Ch. 21, ‘The Ethos of the Orthodox Church’, 296. See F. J. Thomson, ‘Peter Mogila’s Ecclesiastical Reforms and the Ukrainian Contribution to Russian Culture: A Critique of Georges Florovsky’s Theory of the Pseudomorphosis of Orthodoxy’, Slavica Gandensia, 20 (1993):  67–119. The expressions ‘Western captivity’ and even ‘Babylonian captivity’ are often attributed to Florovsky. Although they capture his notion of pseudomorphosis, Florovsky appears to have referred to ‘Latin captivity’ only with respect to the Russian theological academies. See ‘Western Influences in Orthodox Theology’ (Ch. 8, 143, in this book), and Ladouceur, Modern Orthodox Theology, n. 2, 96. See Paul Ladouceur, ‘The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church (June 2016),’ Oecuménisme/Ecumenism (Montreal), 51, no. 198–199 (2016): 18–39; and Brandon Gallaher, ‘The Orthodox Moment:  The  Holy and Great  Council in Crete and Orthodoxy’s Encounter with the West: On Learning to Love the Church,’ Sobornost, 39, no. 2 (2017): 26–71. This is the central theme and conclusion of Vladimir Lossky’s classic work The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1944 in French) (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1957).

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Introduction

5

is continuous in the history of Orthodoxy from the time of the first monks in the early fourth century. It was largely the product of the monastery, the teaching of monastic elders to their disciples and to the laity. In the modern period, many monastics have been educated in academic theology and have produced works that cross the boundaries between the academy and the monastic lavra. Examples of influential figures in modern times include St Nicholas (Velimirovitch) (1881–1956), Fr Lev Gillet (‘A Monk of the Eastern Church’) (1893–1980), St Justin (Popovitch) (1894–1979), Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) (1896–1993), Archimandrite Placide (Deseille) (1926–2018), Archimandrite Aimilianos (Vafeidis) of Simonos Petras (1934–2019), Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) (1934–1982), Archimandrite Vaseilos (Gontikakis) of Iveron (b. 1936), Hieromonk Gabriel (Bunge) (b. 1940), Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos and Agios Vlasios (b. 1945) and Hieromonk Makarios (Bonnet) of Simonos Petras. These charismatic figures have had a profound influence on both the spirituality of contemporary Orthodoxy and the shape of modern Orthodox theology. The other main difficulty with the standard narrative of two opposing ‘schools’ within modern Orthodox theology is that it ignores the complex relationships among the different strands or trends in Orthodox thought. The roots of the broad neopatristic movement in Orthodoxy can be traced to the nineteenth century and even to the late eighteenth century, with the publication in 1782 of the Philokalia, a major collection of patristic ascetic and spiritual writings.15 Ramifications of the patristic revival are found in all four strands of Orthodox theology, and it is historically incorrect to attribute a ‘return to the Fathers’ solely to the type of theology practised and advocated by Georges Florovsky and Vladimir Lossky and their successors. With nuances of emphasis and interests, many of those typically associated with the Russian religious renaissance, academic and ascetic-mystical theological strands were also patristic in different ways. In retrospect, there was indeed a broad, identifiable movement in Orthodox thought over the last two centuries or so that we can call ‘neopatristic’. Many of those identified with a more narrowly defined neopatristic synthesis in fact drew ideas from their competitors and opponents in the Russian religious renaissance as well as from Western philosophy and theology. Moreover, there never was a coherent ‘Russian School’ of theology, even less a ‘Paris School’, but rather a number of émigré religious writers (many of whom in fact lived in Paris in the first half of the twentieth century) who do not fit easily into any rigid category, since they were simultaneously both ‘traditionalist’ and ‘modernist’. Several of these figures, such as Bulgakov, actively appealed to patristic tradition (notably Gregory Palamas and Maximus the Confessor) and were – or became – opponents of German idealism. Furthermore, prominent representatives of the neopatristic stream of Orthodox theology, such as Florovsky and Lossky, did not create their theologies ex nihilo, but themselves were heavily dependent on philosophy in the articulation of their traditional theologies and also drew on the thinking of earlier theologians, including both religious philosophers and non-Orthodox authors. In short, many of the major figures of modern Orthodox theology have links with several of the theological strands that we have outlined. Future narratives of Orthodox theology need to pay greater attention to the complexity of the theological tradition in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 15

Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 1–12.

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

Nowhere in Florovsky’s writing will one find a sustained systematic treatment of precisely what he meant by neopatristic synthesis, although he spoke and wrote about his theological project on several occasions.16 Neopatristic synthesis can be understood as a perpetual theological return to and renewal in patristic thought (especially the Greek Fathers), the tradition of ascetic spirituality (mainly hesychasm) and the liturgical tradition (the Byzantine rite). In this theological return, the patristic spirit and vision (so it is ‘patristic’) should permit an adequate response to the queries and problems of our age (so it is ‘neopatristic’) in a creative and synthetic form, avoiding mere ‘theology of repetition’ of ancient formulae and concepts, in the context of an integrated vision of Orthodoxy (so it is a ‘synthesis’). The often unsystematic nature of Florovsky’s literary work and the institutionalization of major areas of his theological vision have locked away, as it were, until recently both an understanding of his writings as a creative whole and a proper evaluation of his theological legacy. One possible hermeneutic key in this process may be found in an analysis of his writings in their Russian émigré context. When read in this context, both the fundamentally polemical nature of his thought and the basic appeal of his theology to a pan-Orthodox identity come to the foreground.17 Above all, Florovsky’s polemicism can be seen in his attempt (as he saw it) to articulate a theology of ‘traditional’ Orthodox identity against both the excessive rationality of neo-scholasticism typical in academic theology and the excessive theological speculations of those he dismissed as ‘religious philosophers’, notably the sophiology of Solovyov, Florensky and Bulgakov. By appealing to the patristic foundations of Orthodox thought, Florovsky sought a middle way between the theological ‘conservatism’ of academic theology and, as he understood it, the theological ‘liberalism’ of the Russian religious renaissance, in close harmony with Orthodoxy’s mystical-theological tradition. The selection of Florovsky’s writings contained in this book provides a foundation for assessing how well he succeeded.

Exile and Pan-Orthodoxy18 Georges Vasilevich Florovsky was born on 28 August 1893 (9 September 1893 by the Gregorian calendar) into a clerical and academic family in the town of Elisavetgrad in the Russian Empire (now Kirovohrad in Ukraine). When he was six months old the family moved to Odessa. Florovsky was a precocious but sickly child, with an aptitude

16

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18

In this book, see ‘Preface to In Ligno Crucis’, Ch. 2, 65–70; ‘Patristics and Modern Theology’, Ch. 9, 153–157; ‘Breaks and Links’, Ch. 10, 159–183; ‘The Legacy and Task of Orthodox Theology’, Ch. 11, 185–191; ‘The Christian Hellenism’, Ch. 14, 233–236; ‘Theological Will’, Ch. 16, 241–244; and ‘The Ethos of the Orthodox Church’, Ch. 21, 289–302. See Gallaher, ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’, 659–691; and Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 4–5 and 98–158. In contrast, see Matthew Baker, ‘Neopatristic Synthesis and Ecumenism: Towards the “Reintegration” of Christian Tradition’, in Eastern Orthodox Encounters of Identity and Otherness:  Values, SelfReflection, Dialogue, ed. Andrii Krawchuk and Thomas Bremer (New  York:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 235–260. For biographies of Florovsky, see George H. Williams, ‘Georges Vasilievich Florovsky: His American Career (1948–1965)’, Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 11, no. 1 (1965):  7–107; Andrew Blane, ‘A Sketch of the Life of Georges Florovsky,’ Georges Florovsky:  Russian Intellectual, Orthodox

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Introduction

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for learning languages and a voracious appetite for reading, which later earned him the reputation as a ‘theological encyclopaedia’. From 1911 to 1919 Florovsky focused his university studies in Odessa on philosophy, with additional studies in history and Russian literature. Ever an autodidact and polymath, he also studied natural sciences and languages. In January 1920 the threat of a Red Army offensive obliged the family to flee to Sofia, Bulgaria, via Istanbul. The Florovsky family joined many Russian intellectuals of the period, driven into exile either forcibly (such as Berdyaev, Bulgakov and Nicolas Lossky [1870–1965], father of Vladimir Lossky, all expelled by the Bolsheviks) or voluntarily, like the Florovsky family, fleeing chaos, civil war and threat of persecution in the ruins of the Russian Empire. The cultural and spiritual trauma of the revolution and the sense of a need for roots marked the thought of both the older and the younger generations of Russian intellectuals in exile, and many sought an identity in Orthodoxy and the Byzantine legacy that would permit them to rise above the tragedy of exile. Florovsky remained a year (1920–1921) in Sofia. He was then associated briefly with the ‘Eurasian’ movement (active from 1921 to 1935).19 The Eurasians were a Russian cultural, nationalist and autocratic movement, highly critical of the West and Roman Catholicism. Eurasianism looked to Asia and the Tatar period of Russian history in their quest for an authentic Russian identity distinct from Europe, understood as a ‘Romano-Germanic’ civilization. The movement was centred first in Sofia, then Berlin, Vienna and Paris. The Eurasians aspired to a non-Western political and cultural transformation of Russia and in its early stages saw Bolshevism as an illegitimate westernization of the country. Although Florovsky assimilated aspects of the Eurasian anti-Western rhetoric and a tendency to see the East and West as polarized, he distanced himself from Eurasian political posturing and focused more particularly on Russia’s Byzantine-Orthodox heritage.20 Moreover, as was typical of Florovsky, he quarrelled early on with many of the members of this movement. By late 1923, he refused to be published in any their journals, but in 1926 he signed a manifesto defending their principles. He broke definitively and publicly with Eurasianism only in 1928, which at that point was aligning itself with Marxism – the movement later became pro-Soviet.21 In December 1921, Florovsky accepted a scholarship from the Czechoslovak government to study and teach in Prague. He taught in several Russian émigré institutions, including philosophy of law and Russian literature in the Russian Law Faculty at Charles University, Russian literature at the Russian Institute of Commercial

19

20

21

Churchman, ed. Andrew Blane (Crestwood, NY:  St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993), 11–217; Cherniaev, G. V. Florovskii; and Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky. See Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 60–79; Marc Raeff, ‘George Florovsky and Eurasianism’, in Twenty-Five Year Commemoration to the Life of Georges Florovsky (1893–1979), ed. G. O. Mazur (New York:  Semenenko Foundation, 2005), 87–100; Dmitry Shlapentokh, ed., Russia between East and West:  Scholarly Debates on Eurasianism (Leiden:  Brill, 2007); and Marlene Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008). See Florovsky, ‘The Cunning of Reason’, trans. Catherine Boyle – reprinted from CW, XII, 13–22; and ‘About Non-historical Peoples (The Land of the Fathers and the Land of the Children)’, trans. Ilya Vinkovetsky, in Exodus to the East: Forebodings and Events [1921], ed. Ilya Vinkovetsky and Charles Schlacks, Jr. (Idyllwild, CA: Charles Schlacks, Jr. Pub., 1996), 30–40 and 52–68. Florovsky, ‘Evraziiskii soblazn [The Eurasian Seduction]’, Sovreminnyia zapiski, 34 (1928): 312–346.

8

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

Knowledge, and the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov at the Slavic Institute. In Prague, he completed and successfully defended in June 1923 before the Russian émigré academic organization, the Russian Academic Group, a higher research Masters thesis (approximately equivalent to a present-day PhD dissertation) on the historical philosophy of the Russian social and political thinker Alexander Herzen (1812–1870).22 Herzen’s criticism of all forms of historical determinism, his emphasis on human freedom and his vision of the movement and creativity of history in terms of perpetually opposed antinomies, which are never resolved, influenced Florovsky’s hermeneutics and practice as a historical theologian. During his years in Prague (1921–1926), with the encouragement of his confessor Fr Sergius Bulgakov, Florovsky formed a study circle devoted to the Fathers, whom he saw even then as the wellspring of Orthodoxy. This study group, under Florovsky’s inspiration, quickly became critical of Bulgakov’s sophiology, which Florovsky increasingly considered as incompatible with patristic theology. In 1925, Bulgakov took up a post at the newly established Institut de théologie orthodoxe Saint-Serge in Paris, the seminary of the Western European Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church (after 1931, under the Patriarchate of Constantinople) led by Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievsky) (1868–1946). Bulgakov proposed that Florovsky be offered a teaching post in patristics (Florovsky had wanted to teach philosophy) at the St Sergius Institute and in 1926 Florovsky began teaching at the Institute. Florovsky taught in Paris for sixteen years (1926–1939 and 1945–1948), interrupted by World War II. At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Florovsky was in Clarens (Vaud) in Switzerland for a meeting of the Faith and Order Commission. Florovsky and his wife fled to Yugoslavia, where he had family, just before Christmas 1939. He was in Belgrade then Bela Crkva, near the Romanian border, until October 1944, working as a schoolmaster and chaplain for two boarding schools, the ‘Russkii Kadetetskii Korpus’ (the Russian Cadet Corps) and the ‘Girl’s Institute’. With the advance of Tito’s communists, in November 1944 the Florovskys fled to Prague, which in turn was soon controlled by the Soviet Army. After a difficult year, and thanks to his American and Anglican ecumenical contacts, the Florovskys returned to Paris in December 1945. The foundations of all Florovsky’s later academic and ecumenical work were laid during his Parisian and war years. He was ordained to the diaconate and priesthood in 1932 and became intensively involved in the life of the Church as assistant chaplain for the Russian Student Christian Movement (established 1923). Beginning in earnest in the 1930s he was active in the ecumenical movement, especially in the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius (established 1928) and the Faith and Order Movement, one of the predecessors to the World Council of Churches (WCC) (established 1948). He had a long-running dialogue with Karl Barth (1886–1968), and was associated, with other Orthodox theologians, with the first ferments of what became the ressourcement movement or return to the patristic and medieval sources within the Roman Catholic 22

See Paul L. Gavrilyuk, ‘Georges Florovsky’s Monograph “Herzen’s Philosophy of History”: The New Archival Material and the Reconstruction of the Full Text’, Harvard Theological Review, 108, no. 2 (2015):  197–212; and Matthew Baker and Paul L. Gavrilyuk, ‘Deviatnadtsat’ tezisov dissertatsii protoiereia Georgiia Florovskogo «Istoricheskaia filosofiia Gertsena» [The Nineteen Theses of Georges Florovsky’s Dissertation on Herzen’s Philosophy of History]’, Vestnik PSTGU 52, no. 3 (2013): 126–132.

9

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9

Church, a movement that laid the groundwork for much of the work of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Florovsky developed his theology during a period of ecclesial and theological upheaval in the Orthodox Church. For centuries, following the Tartar occupation of most of the old Russian Empire and the disappearance of the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox Church was considerably weakened both institutionally and in its theology.23 In the first decades of the twentieth century, traditionally Orthodox lands suffered series of national tragedies, notably the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and the subsequent Civil War (1917–1922), the Armenian Genocide of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire, and the 1923 ‘Asia Minor Catastrophe’, the forced exchange of Christians and Muslims between Turkey and Greece in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, during which most of the substantial Greek population (over 2.1 million in 1914) of Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace, the Pontic Mountains and the Caucasus was massacred or expelled. In the centuries following the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Orthodox theology absorbed certain Western theological categories and forms and even some doctrines, with the result that it manifested important deviations from its traditional Eastern theological and spiritual roots. Florovsky detailed the confusion wrought by this Western ‘pseudomorphosis’ of Orthodox consciousness in his great polemical work, The Ways of Russian Theology (1937).24 The Orthodox, Florovsky argued, underwent a ‘violent pseudomorphosis of Orthodox thought’. The result of this Western or ‘Latin captivity’ was that Orthodox began ‘to think in categories foreign to their essence and to articulate themselves using non-customary terms and concepts’, such that a Western theological culture was assimilated in Orthodoxy, with no ‘roots in authentic religious experience or in life’, resulting in a ‘a disastrous rupture, a division within Orthodox consciousness’.25 The core liturgical and spiritual tradition of Orthodoxy, however, remained unchanged, as the foreign accretions did not destroy the ‘unity of faith’. What was required was a ‘return to the ancient historical sources of Orthodoxy’, away from ‘the path of scholasticism’, of ‘heterodox Western sources’. Such a return to the origins of Orthodoxy must be both a critical and ‘spiritual return to Patristic sources and foundations’.26 Thus the heart of Florovsky’s theology, which calls for a renewal of the Orthodox Church by a return to its patristic, liturgical and monastic sources, is a response to a weakening of traditional Orthodox thought founded on the ancient Fathers, an appeal to a Pan-Orthodox identity founded on the theological synthesis of the Greek Fathers.

Bulgakov and the American years During the 1930s Florovsky and Sergius Bulgakov, professor of dogmatic theology and dean of the St Sergius Institute, were involved in two major theological controversies 23

24

25 26

See Ladouceur, ‘Theological Encounters with the West: Orthodox Theology from the Fifteenth Century to the Nineteenth Century’, Modern Orthodox Theology, 7–30. See Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, I, CW, V, 85. Also see in this book ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, Ch. 8, 129–151; ‘Patristics and Modern Theology’, Ch. 9, 153–157; and ‘The Ethos of the Orthodox Church’, Ch. 21, 289–302. ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology,’ Ch. 8, 141, 143, 149, 148, in this book. ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology,’ Ch. 8, 149, 144–145, 129, 150, in this book.

10

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

that served to confirm Florovsky in his theological project. The first controversy, in 1933–1935, concerned Bulgakov’s proposals for a limited, episcopally blessed intercommunion between the Anglican and Orthodox participants in the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius,27 and the second, in 1935–1937, was over Bulgakov’s sophiology, his teachings on Divine Wisdom.28 Florovsky opposed Bulgakov on both these issues, publically on intercommunion, and mostly privately on sophiology. He distanced himself from what he saw as the universalist and pantheist tendencies in Bulgakov’s theology on both these issues,29 offering instead a maximalist insistence on the maintenance and defence of the traditional doctrinal and ecclesial boundaries of Orthodoxy. After World War II, the memory of Florovsky’s trenchant opposition to the well-beloved Bulgakov (+1944) and his sometimes imperious manner led to hostility from his colleagues at the St Sergius Institute and in 1948 he took up a professorship in dogmatic theology and patristics at the St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York. In 1949, Florovsky became dean of St Vladimir’s, transforming the seminary into a Pan-Orthodox institution with high academic standards and an international reputation gained in large part largely through his own theological writings and his ecumenical activities within the World Council of Churches and other ecumenical fora. To a faculty that already included such Russian émigré luminaries as Nicolas Lossky (1870–1965) (father of Vladimir Lossky), George Fedotov (1886–1951), 27

28

29

See Barbara Hallensleben, ‘ “Intercommunion spirituelle” entre Orient et Occident. Le théologien orthodoxe russe Serge Boulgakov (1871–1944)’ [Spiritual Intercommunion: The Russian Orthodox Theologian Sergius Bulgakov (1871–1944)], in Le Christianisme:  Nuée de témoins  – Beauté du témoignage, ed. Guido Vergauwen (Fribourg CH:  Éditions Universitaires Fribourg, 1998), 87–104; Sergei V. Nikolaev, ‘Spiritual Unity:  The Role of Religious Authority in the Disputes between Sergius Bulgakov and Georges Florovsky Concerning Intercommunion’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 49, nos. 1–2 (2005):  101–123; Bryn Geffert, Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), ch. 11; Paul Ladouceur, ‘“Aimons-nous les uns les autres”: Serge Boulgakov et Georges Florovsky’ [‘Let Us Love One Another’: Sergius Bulgakov and Georges Florovsky], Contacts, 237 (2012): 56–87 at 66–70; and Brandon Gallaher, ‘ “Great and Full of Grace”: Partial Intercommunion and Sophiology in Sergii Bulgakov’, in Church and World: Essays in Honor of Michael Plekon, ed. William C. Mills (Rollinsford, NH:  Orthodox Research Institute, 2013), 69–121. See Gennadii Eikalovich, Delo prot. Sergiia Bulgakova: Istoricheskaia kanva spora o Sofii (San Francisco:  Globus, 1980); N. T. Eneeva, Spor o sofiologii v russkom zarubezh’e 1920–1930 godov (Moscow :  Institut vseobshchei istorii RAN, 2001) (including condemnations); Bryn Geffert, ‘ The Charges of Heresy against Sergii Bulgakov: The Majority and Minority Reports of Evlogii’s Commission and the Final Report of the Bishops’ Conference’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 49, nos. 1–2 (2005):  47–66; Alexis Klimoff, ‘Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 49, nos. 1–2 (2005):  67–100 (especially its chronology of the critiques of sophiology at 82–83); Brandon Gallaher and Irina Kukota, ‘Hypostasis and Hypostaticity: Scholia to the Unfading Light’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 49, nos. 1–2 (2005): 5–46 at 6–11; Ladouceur, ‘Serge Boulgakov et Georges Florovsky’, 56–87; Roman Zaviyskyy, Shaping Modern Russian Orthodox Trinitarian Theology: A Critical Study of Sergii Bulgakov with Reference to Vladimir Lossky and Georgii Florovsky, D. Phil. Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011, ch. 5; Gallaher, ‘Mia epanexetasē tēs Neo-paterikēs synthesēs’, Theologia, 84, no. 1 (2013):  29–44; and Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 114–158. For accounts at the time, see Clément Lialine, ‘Le débat sophiologique’ [The Sophiological Debate], Irénikon, 13, no.  2 (1936):  168–205, ‘Chronique religieuse’ [Religious Chronical], Irénikon, 13, no.  3 (1936): 328–329 and 13, no. 6 (1936): 704–705. See Brandon Gallaher, Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2016), chs 4–6, 45–114.

11

Introduction

11

and Nicolas Arseniev (1888–1977), he also recruited younger scholars who later became leaders in Orthodox theology and church life in America, including Fr Alexander Schmemann (1921–1983) in 1951, Serge Verhovsky (1907–1986) in 1952 and Veselin Kesich (1921–2012) in 1953. Florovsky initiated the first Orthodox theological journal in North America, St Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly (subsequently St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly). His lecturing was renowned for its unsystematic and high-flown (even ‘rhapsodic’) style in which he would jump from ancient to modern periods and back again. Thus, in the course of lecturing on Origen’s thought, he would link it to his future colleague at Harvard, Paul Tillich (1886–1965), go on to speak of Tillich’s opponent Barth, then discuss Tertullian. In those early years, Florovsky, entering a classroom with a towering and tottering pile of books, would, with no warning, launch into lecturing with no apparent syllabus or plan. This dizzying approach to teaching won over a few dedicated disciples as well as graduate auditors but left many of the young seminarians more than a little confused, since they were often emigrants themselves (Russian, Polish, Slovakian, Japanese) or the sons of emigrant clergy from the border areas of Ruthenia and Galicia who settled in the Rust Belt of America (in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York). Florovsky alienated both faculty and students of St Vladimir’s: they found him at once intellectually dazzling but overbearing, distant, demeaning and short-tempered, and frequently going beyond the bounds of the syllabus, yet uncompromising in his academic demands. Moreover, Florovsky was often absent from the seminary on lecture tours or abroad for ecumenical meetings and thus disconnected from the daily routine of seminary life. During this period, Alexander Schmemann and Serge Verhovsky effectively ran the institution. A series of missteps, including a conflict with the popular Fr Alexander, whose family was briefly evicted from its seminary apartment, led to his dismissal by the Seminary’s Board of Trustees in early 1955. From 1955 to 1965 Florovsky then taught part-time (and somewhat acrimoniously) at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts (near Boston), and also at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Bishop (later Archbishop and Greek Orthodox Primate of the Archdiocese of North and South America) Iakovos (Koukouzis) (1911–2005) dismissed Florovsky from Holy Cross in a faculty dispute concerning Florovsky’s advice on fasting to conservative students. Ironically, Florovsky thus taught and was alienated or dismissed from the three major Orthodox seminaries in the West (St Sergius, St Vladimir’s and Holy Cross), whose future character he also decisively shaped. While his sometimes difficult character was no doubt the main cause of these breaks, many paradigm changers are often controversial figures in their lifetime and Florovsky was no exception. Unsurprisingly then, all three seminaries subsequently reached out and reconciled with Florovsky in his declining years and now laud him as a contemporary ‘Father’. In early 1956, thanks to his numerous friends in American Protestant circles, Florovsky obtained a position at the Harvard Divinity School, the first Orthodox theologian to hold a post there. He taught patristics and Russian culture and history at Harvard, while continuing his ecumenical involvement, especially in the WCC, and

12

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

he wrote a number of seminal essays on tradition, patristics and ecumenism, many of which are collected in this book. In autumn 1964, he moved to Princeton University in New Jersey as visiting professor of Slavic Studies and Religion. On 11 August 1979, Florovsky died at 85  years of age in Princeton. He had retained his identity as an Orthodox Christian intellectual and theologian to the end, through revolution, exile, war, displacement and life in a score of countries.

Identity and polemicism Florovsky’s neopatristic synthesis is fundamentally polemical but, for Florovsky, this was part of his positive theological methodology: by attacking error, one asserts the truth of Orthodoxy as the ecclesial bulwark of the truth and the Body of the Living Christ. Fr John Meyendorff, in his important preface to the reissue of Florovsky’s Ways of Russian Theology in 1981, writes concerning Florovsky’s lectures on patristics:  ‘More often than not, the Fathers of the Church,’ he said, ‘theologized for the refutation of heretics. Setting out from an “unfaithful” expression of the Christian Gospel, they found “faithful” words, and, in this way, they did not “create” the Truth, which is true only by virtue of its divine origin, but expressed and explained it.’30

This patristic approach to theology, Meyendorff continues, was the ‘fundamental psychological method of Florovsky in his critique of Russian culture’ and, more particularly, his refutation and rejection of ‘the so-called sophiology in all its guises’ especially in the work of Solovyov, Florensky and Bulgakov. Florovsky saw Russian sophiology as a variety of German idealism, an odd sort of gnosticism, and as an ‘illegitimate utilization of philosophy for the expression of Christian dogmas’. Meyendorff says that it is possible that Florovsky studied the Fathers precisely because the sophiologists claimed that their thought was ‘traditional’ and their use of philosophy was ‘sanctified’ by the examples of the Fathers.31 Meyendorff is alluding especially to Bulgakov, who alleged that sophiology was a form of Palamism,32 and argued that drawing on contemporary philosophy was inevitable for modern Orthodox theology, just as the Fathers theologized with ancient philosophy.33 These were precisely the sorts of arguments that Florovsky rejected. Meyendorff then goes on to say that Florovsky never engaged in open written polemics with his ‘older (and wellthought-of) colleague, Fr Sergius Bulgakov’. For Florovsky, the essence of the study of patristic literature lay in ‘obtaining the faithful “key” to the relationship between secular philosophy and theology’, in contrast to sophiology, which defined the key to the relationship of philosophy and theology incorrectly or unfaithfully. For Florovsky,

30

31 32 33

John Meyendorff, ‘Predislovie’ [Preface] in Georgii Florovskii, Puti Russkogo Bogosloviia [The Ways of Russian Theology] (Paris: YMCA Press, 1981), v–x at vi. Meyendorff, ‘Predislovie’, vii. For references, see Gallaher, Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology, 51–52. See Bulgakov, ‘Dogma and Dogmatic Theology’ [1937], Tradition Alive, 79.

13

Introduction

13

in the example set by the Greek Fathers, which he understood as a baptized Christian philosophy or ‘Christian Hellenism’, could be found a correct key to the relationship between secular philosophy and theology. Such a faithful and traditional key to the interconnection between these two disciplines was also lacking in Origen.34 Origen, though he was the founding figure of Christian Hellenism, was condemned by that same tradition for his errors. For Florovsky, Hellenism, including philosophy, as we shall see later in this Introduction, had to be ‘transfigured from within’ by the Fathers in order to become ‘truly Christian’.35 In many points of his theology, Florovsky is indirectly responding to Bulgakov’s sophiology. However, Florovsky’s relationship with Bulgakov was far from straightforward.36 Although Florovsky was an unrelenting, if tacit, critic of major aspects of Bulgakov’s theology of Holy Wisdom, he had, as Meyendorff notes, the highest respect for Bulgakov personally, and was even his spiritual child for a period in the 1920s.37 At the same time, Florovsky assimilated and adapted many ideas from Bulgakov without acknowledgement.38 Florovsky’s neopatristic synthesis can therefore be understood as a positive assertion of Orthodox identity, manifested as a polemic against heterodoxy, with sophiology as a silent substratum; sophiology is both the skeleton in the closet of modern Orthodox theology and the key to unlock the closet.39 But what precisely for Florovsky characterizes this Orthodox identity?

Christological concentration The fundamental thematic unity of Florovsky’s neopatristic synthesis is its assertion of the identity of Orthodox theology and Greek-Byzantine patristic thought, an identity resolutely focused around a ‘Christological concentration’, not unlike Barth’s 34

35

36

37

38 39

Bulgakov, ‘Dogma and Dogmatic Theology’, 79; Elsewhere Meyendorff links Origen to sophiology. See Meyendorff, ‘Creation in the History of Orthodox Theology’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 27, no. 1 (1983): 27–37 at 30. Compare Florovsky’s exegesis of Origen with his polemical allusion to a ‘fourth hypostasis’ (which Bulgakov’s sophiology was routinely accused of upholding): Florovsky, ‘Appendix:  The Idea of Creation in Christian Philosophy’, Eastern Churches Quarterly, 8, no.  2 (1949): 53–77 at 65. This paper is adapted from an earlier French article ‘L’Idée de la création dans la philosophie chrétienne’ [The Idea of Creation in Christian Philosophy], Logos: Revue internationale de synthèse orthodoxe, 1 (1928): 3–30 at 18 (these papers overlap with the Russian article, ‘Creation and Createdness’, Ch. 1, 33–63, in this book). Meyendorff, ‘Predislovie’, vii; see Florovsky, ‘Preface to In Ligno Crucis’, Ch. 2, 67–68, of this book and ‘The Christian Hellenism’, Ch. 14, 236. See Ladouceur, ‘Serge Boulgakov et Georges Florovsky’, 80–83; and Miguel de Salis Amaral, Dos visiones ortodoxas de la Iglesia: Bulgakov y Florovsky [Two Orthodox Visions of the Church: Bulgakov and Florovsky], Colección teológica 111 (Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, 2003). Bulgakov writes in his diary on 29 September 1923:  ‘I had a large (written) confession of G.  V. Florovsky, I accepted him into my heart as a spiritual father. Glory to God!’ (Aleksei Kozyrev and Natal’ia Golubkova, ‘Prot. S. Bulgakov. Iz pamiati serdtsa. Praga [Out of the Memory of the Heart. Prague] (1923–1924)’,  Issledovaniia po istorii russkoi mysli. Ezhegodnik za 1998  [Studies on the History of Russian Thought. 1998 Yearbook] Moscow: O. G. I., 1998, 156). See Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 114–158. See Klimoff, ‘Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy’, 76; Ladouceur, ‘Serge Boulgakov et Georges Florovsky’, 70–76; Gallaher, ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’, 660–663; ‘The “Sophiological” Origins of Vladimir Lossky’s Apophaticism’, 298; and Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 4.

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

theology.40 Christian doctrine and spirituality are wholly determined by ‘the central vision of the Christian faith:  Christ Jesus, as God and Redeemer, Humiliated and Glorified, the Victim and the Victor on the Cross’.41 Florovsky’s Christology begins with a meditation on the Christological definitions and inheritance of the Council of Chalcedon. Florovsky sees Chalcedonian Christology not as a metaphysical expression, but as an ‘existential statement’ of faith describing our Redeemer as a divine Person, God Himself who takes on human nature and thereby ‘enters human history and becomes an historical person’.42 Florovsky’s Christology is crucial for understanding his neopatristic synthesis because Christ is the personal centre of the identity of the Church or, more methodologically, ‘The theology of the Church is but a chapter, indeed a crucial chapter, of Christology.’43 Florovsky’s Christology grounds the two basic poles of his theology, the historical and the personal.44 Theology must be historical because the Christian faith bears witness to a God who has acted, acts and will act in history from creation in Christ until His coming again.45 At the same time theology is also eminently personal insofar as the Truth in whom we live in abundance (Jn 10:10) is a Person, our Master, Redeemer and Head, Jesus Christ.46 Christ is the last Man, the last Adam, the New Man in whom all things in history end so that all can begin anew (cf. Rev 21:5). As Redeemer, Christ is indeed the Saviour of humanity by His victory over death through His own death on the Cross, sealed and signified by His Resurrection, the premise of the resurrection of humanity.47 As the Alpha and the Omega who makes all things new in Himself, He thereby witnesses to Himself in His Body as an eschatological community fulfilling His Coming. This Gospel is the good news of the coming of God’s Kingdom, the inauguration of a new aeon given in the coming of Christ the King, although His Kingdom has not come with full power and glory, but as the promise of the Father seen in the Spirit that descended at Pentecost.48

Ecclesiology and ‘living tradition’ Christ’s headship of the Church as His personalized human and eschatological Body makes the Church into a ‘kind of continuation of Christ’,49 a notion that Florovsky

40 41

42 43

44 45 46 47

48

49

See Karl Barth, How I Changed My Mind (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1969), 43. Florovsky, ‘The Ethos of the Orthodox Church’, Ch. 21, 297, in this book. See also ‘The Lamb of God,’ Ch. 4, 81–94; and Epilogue, ‘Let Us Choose Life’, 348, in this book. Florovsky, ‘The Lost Scriptural Mind’ (1951), CW, I, 13. Florovsky, ‘The Body of the Living Christ’, Ch. 19, 277; and see ‘The Ever-Virgin Mother of God,’ Ch. 5, 96–97, in this book. Florovsky, ‘The Lamb of God’, Ch. 4, 81–82, in this book; and Blane, Georges Florovsky, 154–155. Florovsky, ‘The Predicament of the Christian Historian’, Ch. 12, 193–194, 214–215, in this book. Florovsky, ‘The Lamb of God’, Ch. 4, 82, in this book. See in this book Florovsky, ‘In Ligno Crucis: The Church Fathers’ Doctrine of Redemption’, Ch. 3, 71–79, and ‘The Stumbling-Block’, Ch. 6, 107–112, in this book. Florovsky, ‘The Predicament of the Christian Historian’, Ch. 12, 214–219; and ‘Eschatology in the Patristic Age’, Ch. 23, 311–323, in this book. Georges Florovsky, ‘The New Vision of the Church’s Reality’, in John XXIII Lectures, Vol. 2, 1966 (New York: John XXIII Center for Eastern Christian Studies, Fordham University, 1969), 108. See also Florovsky, ‘The Worshipping Church’, Ch. 26, 340, in this book.

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15

adapted from Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838) of the Catholic Tübingen School.50 We are redeemed and saved by living and dwelling within the fullness and unity of this risen divine Person incarnate in the world, the Church as Christ ‘in both His head and His body’ (caput et corpus), in Florovsky’s favourite Augustinian phrase.51 The Body of Christ, as a divine-human organism, is ‘knit together’ and ‘grows’ (Col 2:19) in unity of the Spirit and love through its perpetual renewal in the Eucharist, guaranteed by the uninterrupted sacramental succession of the hierarchy. As a divine-human unity, the Church is not bound by time, but, in the celebration of the Eucharist, eternally embraces the living and the dead who are one and alive in Christ through His Spirit.52 This ‘time-conquering’ aspect of ecclesial unity is symbolized by ‘tradition’, which is the living, ever-renewed connexion to the plenitude of the Church’s experience in all ages,53 founded on the experience of the Apostles in the Upper Room and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost:  ‘Tradition is the constant abiding of the Spirit and not only the memory of words. Tradition is a charismatic, not a historical, principle.’ Tradition is thus not merely a guarding of the apostolic deposit, conservativism for its own sake, but ‘it is primarily the principle of growth and regeneration’.54 Throughout his work, to describe the dynamism, creativity and freedom of the life of the Body of Christ as animated by the Spirit, Florovsky constantly uses a phrase that was common among his Russian émigré contemporaries – ‘living tradition’ (zhivoe predanie).55 Once again, Florovsky adapts this idea from Möhler, as well as from the Slavophile writers Aleksei Khomiakov (1804–1860) and Ivan Kireevsky (1806–1856). Within the life of tradition, through which the Spirit moves, witnesses, reveals and proclaims, the shape and form of the unity of the Church become visible as the Gospel itself, a ‘God inspired scheme or image (eikōn) of truth, but not truth itself ’. Scripture only lives and breathes within tradition and in the Body of Christ, who is truth Himself, and in this Body, Christ ‘unchangeably and unceasingly reveals Himself ’.56 Scripture is thus given and preserved in tradition as the spirit and continuous memory of the Church. Tradition furthermore has a definite order seen in the ‘rule of faith’ that guided the Fathers and is expressed in the creed recited at baptism; tradition so understood forms the very basis of all scriptural interpretation. Tradition and Scripture are inseparable, just as the Church cannot be separated from either.57 The unity of the Church – her 50

51

52

53 54 55

56 57

Johann Adam Möhler, Symbolism:  Or, Exposition of the Doctrinal Differences between Catholics and Protestants as Evidenced by their Symbolical Writings, 2  vols., trans. James Burton Robinson (London: Charles Dolan, 1847), Vol. 2 (ch. 5, §36), 6, and see Vol. 1, 35. See also Florovsky, Review of Möhler, Die Einheit in der Kirche (Mainz, 1925), ‘Kniga Melera o tserkvi’, Put’, 7 (1927): 128–130; and ‘The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology’, Ch. 11, 189–190, in this book. Florovsky, ‘The Ever-Virgin Mother of God’, Ch. 5, 96–97; and ‘The Body of the Living Christ’, Ch. 19, 273, in this book. See Augustine, In Iohannis evangelium tractatus CXXIV, PL 35:1622/Tractates on the Gospel of John 28–54. Trans. John W. Rettig FC 79 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 28.1. 3–13 at 3. Florovsky, ‘Sobornost:  The Catholicity of the Church’, Ch. 18, 263–264; and ‘The Worshipping Church’, Ch. 26, 340–341, 344 in this book. Florovsky, ‘Sobornost: The Catholicity of the Church’, Ch. 18, 264, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Sobornost: The Catholicity of the Church’, Ch. 18, 265, in this book. See, e.g. in this book ‘The Ever-Virgin Mother of God’, Ch. 5, 105; ‘Breaks and Links’, Ch. 10, 172; ‘St Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers’, Ch. 13, 222; ‘Sobornost: The Catholicity of the Church’, Ch. 18, 264–265; and ‘The Ethos of the Orthodox Church’, Ch. 21, 295, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Sobornost: The Catholicity of the Church’, Ch. 18, 265–266, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Scripture and Tradition’, Ch. 25, 329–334, in this book.

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

identity  – is simultaneously salvific, loving, eucharistic, traditional-scriptural and pneumatic in character. It is a unity of the One Jesus Christ, Head and Body through His Spirit; that is, Christ is One both in Himself and in the members of the Church. The divine-human unity of the Church above all reflects the unity of the Trinity in whom many become one, which Florovsky referred to as sobornost’ or catholicity. In the idea of the Church as sobornost’ – completeness, integrality, conciliarity and unity in plurality or difference-in-unity – Florovsky draws on Möhler, the Slavophiles, especially Khomiakov, and his contemporaries in the emigration.58 Florovsky was inspired by Möhler’s classic text Die Einheit in der Kirche (Unity in the Church) (1825), a key writing for both modern Roman Catholic and Orthodox ecclesiology.59 Unity in the Church is ostensibly an ecclesiology founded on the witness of the early Fathers, although in fact it is heavily influenced by German Romanticism.60 Florovsky claims that Möhler only provided commentary on the patristic corpus of the first three centuries, especially Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130–c. 202).61 He notes approvingly Möhler’s similarity to Khomiakov and Kireevsky. Möhler, he argues, like Kireevsky, drew on the ‘experience of the Holy Fathers’ and proceeds not from abstract principles but ‘concrete existence, from the reality of grace in the Church. He does not construct an intellectual scheme, but describes a living experience’.62 This emphasis on the ‘experience of the Church’, revealed in the saints, the Fathers and inspired teachers, formed the basis by which Florovsky distinguished orthodox from heterodox teaching. Florovsky contends that for Möhler, patristics was not archaeology, since the writings of the Fathers speak not ‘of the bygone things from the past’, but offer a vision of the ancient Church as a living, fresh and complete Christianity:  ‘with all his soul and will, he [Möhler] was immersed in this wondrous world, in his imagination he lived in the ancient Church’. This ecclesial vision was not of a concept of the Church ‘revealed to him in some prophetic vision’, but the very Church herself, made known ‘through sympathetic communion with patristic experience’.63 Thus Möhler ‘does not construct an intellectual scheme but begins with ecclesial experience’,64 as Florovsky puts it, because like all concrete idealism he believed that ideas move towards their fulfilment in concrete reality. Möhler’s system scorns the naked idea, beginning with life  – the Romantic idealist cult of vitality  – so that he can write that ‘Christian life she [the Church] called the true and divine philosophy’.65 58

59

60

61 62 63 64 65

See Aleksei Khomiakov, ‘The Church Is One’, in On Spiritual Unity: A Slavophile Reader, trans. and ed. Boris Jakim and Robert Bird (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Books, 1998), 31–53; Khomiakov, ‘Letter to the Editor of L’Union Chrétienne on the Occasion of a Discourse of Father Gagarin, Jesuit’, in Jakim and Bird, On Spiritual Unity, 135–139 at 139; Vasily Zenkovsky, ‘Svoboda i sobornost’ [Freedom and Conciliarity], Put’, 7 (1927): 3–22; and Sergius Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church (1932), trans. Lydia Kesich (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988), 60ff. Johann Adam Möhler, Unity in the Church or the Principle of Catholicism Presented in the Spirit of the Church Fathers of the First Three Centuries (1825), trans. Peter C. Erb (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996). See Thomas F. O’Meara, Romantic Idealism and Roman Catholicism: Schelling and the Theologians (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), 146–153. Florovsky, Review of Möhler, Die Einheit in der Kirche, 129. Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, II, 46–47. Florovsky, Review of Möhler, Die Einheit in der Kirche, 129. Florovsky, Review of Möhler, Die Einheit in der Kirche, 129. Möhler, Unity in the Church, 92.

17

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17

This philosophy, like any philosophy, needs a first principle, a ruling idea, and Möhler begins his system with the ‘principle of catholicism’. The ‘principle of catholicism’, which is the origin of the Slavophile sobornost’, is Spirit/Unity. Unity is the life principle animating and divinizing the Church. Möhler traces the organic and historical development of this principle in the growth of the Christian Body as a living organism. As Florovsky observes, Möhler holds that the ‘Church is sobornyi, catholic in nature’ and she is thereby ‘an organic whole, one great body, fastened together by bonds of love and united by the power of the Holy Spirit, living and dwelling in it’.66 In this light, Florovsky’s neopatristic synthesis entailed a creative adaptation of Romantic sources, akin to those that he detected and denounced in figures such as Solovyov, Florensky and Bulgakov.

The ‘Churching of life’ and the ‘catholic consciousness’ of the Fathers Florovsky’s ecclesiology, which sees the Church above all as sobornost’-unity-catholicity, is the basis of his vision of patristic Orthodoxy. The catholicity of the Church, completeness in the life of grace by being bonded together in a union of common life and love with one’s fellows, reflecting the Trinity, is a call to all Christians in the ‘glorious liberty of the children of God’ (Rom 8:21) to participate, in the expression popular in Russian émigré circles, in the ‘churching’ (otserkovlenie; also tserkovnost’) of their very being.67 Florovsky variously refers to ‘the catholic transfiguration of personality’, ‘catholic consciousness’ and ‘the catholic regeneration of the mind’. Each Christian is called on to love his neighbour in freedom as himself by rejecting, denying and even dying to himself. He sees himself wholly in the other because in the other he is responding to Christ Himself. The Christian life consists in the cultivation of a historical ecclesial consciousness whereby in faith in Christ ‘we enclose the many within our own ego’, as an image of the Holy Trinity in whom many become one.68 In taking on Christ through treating our brother as our life, we become incorporated into Christ and ‘become partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Pet 1:4). Florovsky, following the Fathers, describes the free historical process of creative striving and ecclesial becoming in Christ as ‘divinisation’ (theōsis) and ‘deification’ (theopoiēsis). Humanity is created in the ‘image of God’ (Gen 1:26), which itself reflects and is a likeness of the proto-image or image of creation in God. This proto-image

66

67

68

Florovsky, Review of Möhler, Die Einheit in der Kirche, 129. Compare ‘The Orthodox Churches and the Ecumenical Movement’ (1954), CW, II, 201–202; ‘Le Corps du Christ vivant: Une interprétation orthodoxe de l’Église’ [The Body of the Living Christ: An Orthodox Interpretation of the Church], in La Sainte Église universelle: Confrontation œcuménique [The Holy Universal Church: Ecumenical Encounter] (Neuchâtel/Paris: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1948), 9-57 at 10–11, 20ff. (see the introduction to Florovsky’s essay in this book, Ch. 19, ‘The Body of the Living Christ’, 273–277; and Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, II, 49–53. On the ‘churching’ or ‘Christification’ of life in Orthodox thought, see Ladouceur, Modern Orthodox Theology, 318–332. Florovsky, ‘Sobornost: The Catholicity of the Church’, Ch. 18, 262, in this book.

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

transcends created nature and in no way coincides with the imago dei. It serves as a ‘supernatural task’, a goal and calling from God set above created nature for humans to participate freely in union with God and to become themselves by transcending themselves in a ‘leap from the realm of nature to the realm of grace  .  .  .  such selfrealization is achieved through acquisition of the Spirit and communion with God’.69 In the light of Florovsky’s Christocentrism and the importance of freedom and creativity in the process of divinization or the ‘churching of the mind’, it is not surprising that he saw history as a field of action where free personalities stand behind contingent events. The course of singular events from Creation to the Second Coming does not ‘follow evolutionary schemes and patterns’,70 but moves forward by ‘breaks’ and ‘links’ to new developments through creative bursts of inspiration in the form of heroic feats (podvig) of free personalities.71 Here once again can be seen his polemic against the determinism of sophiology, his resolute personalism and sacralizing of freedom, as well as the influence of Alexander Herzen, who rejected teleology in history. For Florovsky, there is, against Herzen72 and not dissimilar to Florensky, Bulgakov and Nicolas Lossky, an end or telos and direction to history, namely the ever-persuading but non-coercive grace of God given to us in the Spirit of Christ (Rom 8:9). At the centre of history, therefore, stands Jesus Christ and His Church composed of a union of free persons. Christ calls all to become free agents in a ‘history of the spirit, the story of man’s growth to the full stature of perfection, under the Lordship of the historical God-man, even of our Lord, Christ Jesus’.73 Thus Florovsky sees the identity of the Church as catholicity or unity in Christ, and a form of consciousness that Christians are in the process of acquiring in their growth into the full stature of Christ, in becoming truly free. Throughout his work he employs a primary set of terms as subjects (such as Church, Fathers, tradition), who undergo, or are characterized by or possess a second set of terms (experience, faith, image, vision, witness, memory, freedom and especially ‘mind’), in stock phrases such as ‘the experience of the Church’, ‘the mind of the Fathers’, ‘the vision of the Fathers’. He also combines the second set of terms within itself, treating one as a subject of another, such as the ‘experience of faith’. Florovsky’s psychology of catholic consciousness begins with a silent internal faith (as an ‘experience’ or ‘vision’), which revelation, as the Word of truth, addresses to humanity. This comprehension of the truth of Christ cannot remain silent but is expressed noetically as dogma. As in patristic thought, for Florovsky, dogma bears witness to what has been experienced or seen by faith. The saints, in particular the Fathers, are the pre-eminent examples of this catholic consciousness. Like St Seraphim of Sarov (1754/9–1833) and St Silouan the Athonite

69 70 71

72

73

Florovsky, ‘Creation and Createdness’, Ch. 1, 59–60, in this book. Florovsky, ‘The Predicament of the Christian Historian’, Ch. 12, 207, in this book. See Georges Florovsky, ‘Evolution und Epigenesis (Zur Problematik der Geschichte)’, Der russische Gedanke, 1, no. 3 (1930): 240–252. On the tension in Florovsky’s work (especially in the Ways of Russian Theology) due to his ambivalent acceptance/rejection of Herzen’s ateleological vision of history leading nowhere, see Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 85–87 and 168–169. Florovsky, ‘The Predicament of the Christian Historian’, Ch. 12, 218, in this book.

19

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19

(1866–1938), who witnessed to Christ in the boldness of the Spirit, the Fathers as saints combine at once humility and audacity or daring in partaking of the divine nature.74 The Fathers have attained such a fullness of catholicity, such a completeness of a life full of grace, that their faith once expressed is no longer only a personal profession but ‘the testimony of the whole Church. This is because they speak out of the Church’s catholic fullness and depth, theologizing within the medium of sobornost’’.75 Florovsky refers to the Fathers, who witness to the testimony of the Church and its life as tradition, not just as teachers but as ‘guides and witnesses’ to the identity of the Church whose ‘vision is “of authority”, not necessarily their words’.76 Conversely, heterodox teachers are by definition those who cannot be said to have catholic consciousness with its accompanying ecclesial experience, since they are not a part of the Church and do not share its common mind.77 The Fathers neither present to us ready-made answers, nor can one look to them for a simple consensus patrum as a binding empirical agreement of individuals. The Fathers help us face the problems that are of true importance in our age and to construct a contemporary synthesis. We must follow the Fathers creatively and not through what Florovsky often referred to as a ‘theology of repetition’,78 quoting their sayings outside the context of their meaning and of their lives. We are called, then, to return to the sources creatively and spiritually,79 to follow the Fathers by acquiring their mind (phronēma), which is a consensus reflecting the very ‘catholic mind’ or fundamental identity of the Church:80 ‘The time has arrived to en-church our mind and to resurrect for ourselves the holy and blessed sources of ecclesial thought.’81 Florovsky’s frequent references to the ‘catholicity’ of the Church must, of course, be distinguished from his unambiguous view concerning the status of the Orthodox Church as distinct from all other Christian Churches and communities, including the Roman Catholic Church. Yet this distinction has not prevented Florovsky’s ecclesial vision, especially his emphasis on the patristic notion of the Church as the Body of Christ, from having a broad appeal beyond Orthodoxy. The Catholic scholar Yves-Noël Lelouvier emphasizes that Florovsky’s ecclesiology is comparable

74

75 76 77 78

79

80

81

See in this book ‘On the Authority of the Fathers’, Ch. 15, 237–240; and ‘Starets Silouan’, Ch. 24, 325–327. Florovsky, ‘Breaks and Links’, Ch. 10, 167, in this book. Florovsky, ‘On the Authority of the Fathers’, Ch. 15, 238, in this book. See Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 226–230. Florovsky, ‘St Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers’, Ch. 13, 225, 226, 228; ‘Theological Will’, Ch. 16, 242; and ‘The Ethos of the Orthodox Church’, Ch. 21, 295, in this book. Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, CW, V, I, ‘Preface’, xvii–xviii; and II, 294–301 (‘Breaks and Links’, Ch. 10, 166–172, in this book); and ‘The Ethos of the Orthodox Church’, Ch. 21, 292–297, in this book. Florovsky, ‘St Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers’, Ch. 13, 223–225, in this book; Florovsky, ‘The Church: Her Nature and Task’ (1948), CW, I, 58; Florovsky, ‘The Authority of the Ancient Councils and the Tradition of the Fathers’ (1967), CW, I, 103; and Florovsky, ‘The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church’ (1964), CW, I, 80, 83 and 89. Florovsky, Preface of Vostochnye Ottsy IV-go Veka [Eastern Fathers of the Fourth Century] (Paris:  YMCA Press, 1931); and see Brandon Gallaher, ‘Georges Florovsky on Reading the Life of St Seraphim’, Sobornost, 27, no. 1 (2005): 58–70 at 68, n. 34 for translation (‘On the Authority of the Fathers’, Ch. 15, n. 10, 239, in this book).

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

to those of Johann Adam Möhler, and the leading Catholic theologians of Vatican II, Charles Journat (1891–1975), Yves Congar (1904–1995) and Henri de Lubac (1896–1991).82 As a theological method, the acquisition of the ‘mind of the Fathers’ goes beyond knowledge of what the Fathers taught, beyond a flat view of a consensus patrum, to the application of a patristic mode of thought to modern problems. Florovsky never spelled out clearly what actually constitutes the ‘patristic mind’ and some interpretations of the notion in fact understand it as an equivalent of consensus patrum.83 While some of Florovsky’s statements about ‘the mind of the Fathers’ lend themselves to this reading, a more plausible interpretation is that he more typically meant ‘learning to think like the Fathers’, and not merely ‘to quote the Fathers’, a ‘theology of repetition’ that he frequently warned against. Based on indications that he gave over the years, beginning with his two papers at the first Congress of Orthodox Theology held in Athens in 193684 and the provocative but prophetic conclusion to The Ways of Russian Theology in 1937,85 the following elements appear to enter into Florovsky’s notion of what constitutes the ‘patristic mind’: Scripture as the foundation of all theology; Christ as the centre of theological reflection; a historical awareness, both the history of salvation as revealed in Scripture and the history of the Church; a ‘catholic consciousness’, theology in the context of the Church; fidelity to the Hellenistic-Byzantine theological tradition; a focus on contemporary issues and problems; and the integration of theology with the prayer and sacramental life of the Church – the Fathers were ‘Holy Men of Old’, not simply ‘theologians’ in the modern academic sense.86

A perennial Christian philosophy: ‘Christian Hellenism’ As mentioned earlier, Florovsky was explicit that the vision of the Fathers was coextensive with the teaching and lives of the Greek Fathers understood as a ‘Christian Hellenism’. Against the view of Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) that dogma in Christianity represented an ‘acute Hellenisation’ of the faith,87 Florovsky 82

83

84

85 86

87

Yves-Noël Lelouvier, Perspectives russes sur l’Église: Un théologien contemporain Georges Florovsky [Russian Perspectives on the Church:  A Contemporary Theologian, Georges Florovsky] (Paris: Éditions du Centurion, 1968), 168. See, e.g. John Behr, ‘Passing beyond the Neo-Patristic Synthesis’, in Pantelis Kalaitzidis and Nikolaos Asproulis, eds., Neopaterikē synthesē ē metapaterikē theologia? To aitēma tēs theologias tēs synapheias stēn orthodoxia [Neopatristic Synthesis or Postpatristic Theology:  Can Orthodox Theology Be Contextual?], trans. Nikolaos Asproulis (Volos, GR: Ekdotike Demetriados, 2018). English version forthcoming. See Procès-Verbaux du premier congrès de théologie orthodoxe à Athènes. 29 Novembre–6 Décembre 1936 [Proceedings of the First Congress of Orthodox Theologians, Athens, 29 November–6 December 1936], ed. Hamilcar S. Alivisatos (Athens: Pyrsos, 1939), 212–231. Florovsky’s two papers are included in this book: ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, Ch. 8, 129–151; and ‘Patristics and Modern Theology’, Ch. 9, 153–157. See ‘Breaks and Links’ from The Ways of Russian Theology, Ch. 10, 159–183, in this book. See also in this book ‘Theological Will’, Ch. 16, 243–244; ‘The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology’, Ch. 11, 185–191; and ‘The Ethos of the Orthodox Church’, Ch. 21, 297–301. See Paul L. Gavrilyuk, ‘Harnack’s Hellenized Christianity or Florovsky’s “Sacred Hellenism”:  Questioning Two Metanarratives of Early Christian Engagement with Late Antique

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argued that the Hellenization of revelation in the Fathers was by no means accidental but part of the providential action of God in the calling of the Gentiles.88 Hellenism, Florovsky admitted, is itself ‘ambiguous’ and ‘double-faced’, as can be seen in the pagan revivals of the Renaissance and German Romanticism, recycled, in his view, in Russian sophiology.89 Hellenism, however, underwent a ‘conversion’ or as it were, was thereby ‘trans-valuated’. ‘Dissected with the sword of Christian revelation’ and ‘polarized’, pagan Hellenism was ‘baptized’ to become the Christian Hellenism of the Fathers and the Hagia Sophia, and not the pagan Hellenism of the Athenian Acropolis, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832).90 Christian Hellenism is coextensive with the Byzantine heritage and Florovsky regarded it as the common tradition of both the Eastern Church and the Western Church, embodied above all in the Orthodox Church. Florovsky called on the Orthodox specifically, but also on all Christians regardless of tradition, to return to this ‘Hellenism under the sign of the cross’91 by means of a ‘spiritual Hellenization (or re-Hellenization)’ of theology:  ‘let us be more Greek to be truly catholic, to be truly Orthodox.’92 Re-Hellenization, not de-Hellenization, then, is needed as ‘the only remedy for the modern chaos in theology is just this move back to the Greek tradition’93 which is revealed as a decisive move back to Byzantium – a ‘re-Byzantinisation’ of theology. Through the gracious adoption of specific ‘eternal words, unable to be replaced’ in their dogmatic definitions, the Fathers forged a perennial ‘Christian philosophy, a sacred philosophy, a philosophy of the Holy Spirit’ included within Christian dogmatics.94 This ‘true philosophy’ is a ‘system of religious philosophy and . . . a philosophy of Revelation’ where revelation develops within human thought, creating a ‘comprehensive system of a confession of faith’.95 In contrast, Bulgakov believed that dogmas were truths of religious revelation that had metaphysical content and therefore could be expressed differently depending on the language of the philosophy of the day, such as the Greek philosophy used by the Fathers or contemporary philosophy.96 In reaction, Florovsky asserted that it was illegitimate to express Christian teaching in any other philosophy than that forged by the Fathers, which was identical to what he called Christian Hellenism, Greek philosophy baptized and transfigured by the Holy Spirit in the Church. Christianity ‘is history by its very essence’ and there exists no abstract general Christian message that

88 89 90

91 92 93 94 95 96

Culture’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 54, nos. 3–4 (2010):  323–344; and Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 201–219. Florovsky, ‘Revelation, Philosophy and Theology’, Ch. 7, 122, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Preface to In Ligno Crucis’, Ch. 2, 67, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Preface to In Ligno Crucis’, Ch. 2, 67–68, in this book; and see ‘Breaks and Links’, Ch. 10, 169, in this book; and ‘The Christian Hellenism’, Ch. 14, 234, in this book. Florovsky, ‘The Christian Hellenism’, Ch. 14, 234, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Patristics and Modern Theology’, Ch. 9, 157, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Preface to In Ligno Crucis’, Ch. 2, 67, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Revelation, Philosophy and Theology’, Ch. 7, 122, 124, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Revelation, Philosophy and Theology’, Ch. 7, 118, in this book. See Bulgakov, ‘Dogma and Dogmatic Theology’, Tradition Alive, 78–79.

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

can be detached from its historical context and there is likewise no eternal truth ‘which could be formulated in some super-historical propositions’.97 The philosophy that the Fathers used in expressing Christian dogma was in fact unique, even if eclectic. It differed greatly from the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato and so it was unthinkable to attempt to reinterpret ‘traditional doctrine in terms or categories of a new philosophy, whatever this philosophy may be’.98 The Fathers adopted no particular philosophical tradition, but they ‘attempted a new philosophical synthesis on the basis of the revelation' linking the ‘divine message’ to which they witnessed with the ‘aspirations of the Hellenic mind’. Philosophy is then understood as ‘simply the vocation of the human mind to apprehend the ultimate Truth, now revealed and consummated in the incarnate Word’.99 This philosophical vision shines forth above all in the services of the Church, especially from Lent to Pentecost, where we see the ‘common mind of the worshipping Church. One can best be initiated into the spirit of the Fathers by attending the offices of the Eastern Church’.100 The ‘premises and categories’ of this new ‘philosophy of the Holy Spirit’101 include the Resurrection of Christ; history as non-circular and nondeterministic, a creative fulfilment involving free acts of free personalities; God as an absolutely free being responsible for wholly new and unpredictable events in history (divine and human voluntarism); and, by extension, a radical distinction between God who is eternal and creation that is temporal and contingent seen in the teaching of creation ex nihilo.102 This last presupposition was aimed tacitly at Bulgakov’s sophiology, which for Florovsky blurred the line between the created and the uncreated, although Bulgakov understood it as panentheism and not pantheism.103

97

98 99

100 101 102

103

Georges Florovsky, ‘The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Movement’, Theology Today, 7, no. 1 (1950): 68–79 at 75. Florovsky, ‘Patristics and Modern Theology’, Ch. 9, 156, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Preface to In Ligno Crucis’, Ch. 2, 68, in this book, and see ‘The Legacy and Task of Orthodox Theology’, Ch. 11, 190–191, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Preface to In Ligno Crucis’, Ch. 2, 69, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Revelation, Philosophy and Theology’, Ch. 7, 123–124, in this book. See Florovsky, ‘Creation and Createdness’, Ch. 1, 33–63, in this book, and see Kallistos Ware, Preface, xiii, in this book. Although Florovsky claims he drew these presuppositions from the Fathers, they are likely inspired by Charles Renouvier (1815–1903). See Florovsky’s ‘The Renewal of Orthodox Theology, Florensky, Bulgakov and the Others. (New Title): On the Way to a Christian Philosophy’ (1968), George Florovsky Papers, (C0586), Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. Also Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 82–83, 217; and Rowan Williams, ‘The Theology of Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky’, D. Phil. Thesis, University of Oxford (1975), 218–254. See Paul L. Gavrilyuk, ‘Bulgakov’s Account of Creation:  Neglected Aspects, Critics and Contemporary Relevance’, International Journal of Systematic Theology, 17, no. 4 (2015):  450–463; Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 145–150; Brandon Gallaher, ‘The Christological Focus of Vladimir Solov’ev’s Sophiology’, Modern Theology, 25, no. 4 (2009): 617–646; Gallaher, ‘Antinomism, Trinity and the Challenge of Solov’ëvan Pantheism in the Theology of Sergij Bulgakov’, Studies in East European Thought, 64, nos. 3–4 (2012):  205–225; Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology, 45–114; Ladouceur, Modern Orthodox Theology, 215–219; and Robert F. Slesinski, The Theology of Sergius Bulgakov (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2017), 143–154.

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Orthodox ecumenism as missionary activity and the limits of the Church Florovsky’s basic ecumenical outlook was forged in the mid-1930s, partly in reaction to Bulgakov’s ecumenical ideas.104 Bulgakov believed both that the Anglican and Orthodox Churches might be led to unity by limited, episcopally blessed intercommunion and that although the Orthodox Church most fully embodied the Church Universal or Una Sancta, the Church Universal was not bound by its canonical limits and included to a lesser degree other ecclesial bodies as true churches.105 Throughout his writings, Florovsky is clear that he believed that the Orthodox Church is the true and only Church; she does not witness to a ‘local tradition of her own’ but witnesses to ‘patristic tradition’ or ‘the common heritage of the Church universal’.106 Nevertheless, he argued that not every teaching that is held or had been held by the Orthodox Church is the ‘truth of God’; the Orthodox Church is still imperfect, although she ultimately embodies the fullness of the truth of God: ‘The true Church is not yet the perfect Church.’107 All other churches, he argued, had defected from Orthodoxy as the common tradition of the Undivided Church or were ‘schismatic’, and consequently called to return and be healed within the unity of the Orthodox Church.108 Intercommunion between the Orthodox and the heterodox, whose faith and life were so different, was thus inconceivable and as a means to unity it was ‘a blind alley from which there is no escape’.109 Future progress on the road to unity would only come from supplementing an ‘ecumenism in space’ (the discovery and registry of the various agreements and disagreements among the churches) with an ‘ecumenism in time’, which was the reintegration of the East and the West in their return to the common tradition of the Undivided Church.110 Nonetheless, as we saw above, he basically saw this common tradition as essentially ‘Eastern’, ‘Christian Hellenist’ and ‘Greek’ in character.

104

105

106

107 108 109

110

See Matthew Baker and Seraphim Danckaert, ‘Georges Florovsky’, in Orthodox Handbook on Ecumenism:  Resources for Theological Education, ed. Pantelis Kalaitzidis, Thomas FitzGerald, Cyril Hovorun, Aikaterini Pekridou, Nikolaos Asproulis, Guy Liagre and Dietrich Werner (Volos, Greece: Volos Academy Publications in cooperation with WCC Publications, Geneva, and Regnum Books International, Oxford, 2014), 211–215. See Brandon Gallaher, ‘Bulgakov and Intercommunion’, Sobornost, 24, no. 2 (2002):  9–28 (sequel to ‘Bulgakov’s Ecumenical Thought’, Sobornost, 24, no.  1 [2002]:  24–55); Brandon Gallaher, ‘Fr. Sergius Bulgakov’, in Orthodox Handbook on Ecumenism, 201–206; and see n. 27 above. Florovsky, ‘The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Movement’, 72; and see ‘The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology’, Ch. 11, 190, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Confessional Loyalty in the Ecumenical Movement,’ Ch. 20, 285, in this book. Florovsky, ‘Confessional Loyalty in the Ecumenical Movement,’ Ch. 20, 285–286, in this book. ‘Report of Conference held at High Leigh June 26–28, 1934 on “The Healing of Schism” ’, Oxford Archive of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius; folder labelled ‘The Fellowship Conference Policy Before 1940’, 6. Georges Florovsky, ‘The Challenge of Disunity’, St Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly, 3, nos. 1–2 (1954–1955): 31–36 at 36; and Florovsky, ‘The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology’, Ch. 11, 186, 191, in this book.

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

Not surprisingly, Florovsky saw the involvement of the Orthodox Church in the ecumenical movement as a kind of ‘missionary activity’111 or as the witness of the truth of Orthodoxy to the whole Christian world: Christian reunion is just universal conversion to Orthodoxy . . . What is beyond [the Church’s norm of the rule of faith and order] is just abnormal. But the abnormal should be cured and not simply condemned. This is a justification for the participation of an Orthodox in the ecumenical discourse, in the hope that through his witness the Truth of God may win human hearts and minds.112

Although Florovsky firmly believed the Orthodox Church is (and not merely, in a weak sense, ‘subsists in’ the Orthodox Church) the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church,113 he did not hold that only Orthodox were Christians. Florovsky enunciated his vision of ecumenism in publications and in meetings of the WCC in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This vision involved a maturing of his early ecclesiology, in which he leaned towards an exclusivist view of the Orthodox Church as the sole manifestation of the Church of Christ on earth. This is reflected in his first major theological writing, ‘The House of the Father’ (1926), in which he writes that ‘In the Church a mosaic of different parts is impossible [. . .] There is no and can be no “partial” Christianity.’114 Florovsky’s mature ecclesiology, from 1933 onwards, became the core of the rationale for contemporary Orthodox involvement in the ecumenical movement – ecumenism as witness to the truth of Orthodoxy and a sort of tacit evangelism, an evangelism by example.115 Florovsky contended, most famously in the 1933 essay ‘The Limits of the Church’ (which draws on an earlier essay of Bulgakov),116 that individual Christians in schismatic bodies existed outside the canonical limits of the Orthodox Church but within its 111

112 113

114

115

116

Georges Florovsky, ‘Une vue sur l’Assemblée d’Amsterdam’ [A View of the Amsterdam Assembly (of the World Council of Churches)], Irénikon, 22, no. 1 (1949): 5–25 at 9. Florovsky, ‘Confessional Loyalty in the Ecumenical Movement’, Ch. 20, 285–286, in this book. See, e.g. Vatican II’s ‘Dogmatic Constitution on the Church – Lumen Gentium, 21 November 1964’, I, 8 www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_ lumen-gentium_en.html (accessed 23 April 2019). Georges Florovsky, ‘The House of the Father’ (1926), in Ecumenism I: A Doctrinal Approach, CW 13: 79. Florovsky’s early rambling article cannot be taken as representative of his mature and stable ecclesiology, as contained in subsequent texts, e.g. in ‘The Limits of the Church’ (1933) (Ch. 17, 247–256, in this book); ‘The Body of the Living Christ: An Orthodox Interpretation of the Church’ (1948) (Ch. 19, 273–277, in this book) ‘The Church: Her Nature and Task’ (1948) CW, I, 57–72; ‘The Doctrine of the Church and the Ecumenical Movement’, The Ecumenical Review, 2, no. 2 (1950): 152–161; ‘The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Movement’ (1950); and ‘Confessional Loyalty in the Ecumenical Dialogue’ (1950) (Ch. 20, 279–288, in this book). See also the other texts in Part 3 of this book, ‘Ecclesiology and Ecumenism’, 245–307. See ‘Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World’, Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, Crete, 19–26 June 2016, https://www.holycouncil.org/-/restof-christian-world?_101_INSTANCE_VA0WE2pZ4Y0I_languageId=en_US (accessed 23 April 2019); and Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, ‘Basic Principles of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Attitude to the Non-Orthodox’ (2000), https://mospat.ru/en/ documents/attitude-to-the-non-orthodox/ (accessed 23 April 2019). See Florovsky, ‘The Limits of the Church’, Ch. 17, 247–256, in this book; and also Georges Florovsky, ‘The Doctrine of the Church and the Ecumenical Movement’, (1950). Compare Sergius Bulgakov, ‘Ocherki ucheniia o tserkvi. (III). Tserkov’ i “Inoslavie”’, Put’, 4 (1926):  3–26. Abridged

25

Introduction

25

spiritual bounds. This quasi-membership of certain non-Orthodox in the Orthodox Church is by virtue of elements such as right belief, the preaching of the Word of God and true devotion. Above all (and here he adapts Augustine),117 the heterodox could be said to be Christians due to the ‘validity’ of their Trinitarian baptism. Non-Orthodox baptism, he argued, was both gracious and ‘of the Church’, although it lacked full efficacy outside the canonical bounds of the Church.118 This basic ecclesiality of nonOrthodox baptism is acknowledged, he contended, in the mainstream tradition of the Orthodox Church by the reception of non-Orthodox Christians not by a ‘new baptism’ but by the sacraments of chrismation (akin to confirmation in Western Christianity) or confession of faith.119 The inclusion of non-Orthodox within the boundaries of the Church should not be taken to mean Florovsky adhered to the ‘branch-theory’ of Christianity – he explicitly rejected it.120 This theory, popular within Anglo-Catholic circles in the early part of the twentieth century, sees the Orthodox Church as but one of many branches of the historical Catholic Christian Church, which includes the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches as well as those Protestant churches that have preserved apostolic succession (such as the Church of Sweden). Yet for Florovsky the term ‘church’ was not a magic word reserved only for the Orthodox Church. Other Christian ecclesial bodies, such as the Anglican Church, could legitimately be called ‘churches’ without this usage implying that they are thereby of the same ecclesial and dogmatic reality as the Orthodox Church. For Florovsky, the view of St Cyprian of Carthage (c. 200–258) (and, by extension, of certain Orthodox who follow the sacramental theology of St Nikodimos the Hagiorite [1749–1809])121 that outside the canonical walls of Orthodoxy there is undifferentiated darkness and that all heterodox sacraments are null and void, was a late theological distortion. One should not collapse the canonical and spiritual bounds of the Church, thereby creating a sort of spiritual hermetic wall around the Orthodox Church. This theological approach emerged in the Counter-Reformation, when Orthodox entering the Roman Catholic Church were rebaptized. Florovsky argued that rebaptism of converts to the Orthodox Church represented ‘only a private “theological opinion”, very late and very controversial, having arisen in a period of theological confusion and decadence in a hasty endeavour to dissociate oneself as sharply as possible from Roman theology.’122 In other words, it was an understandable overreaction at the time, but it was contrary to the teaching of the Fathers.

117 118 119 120 121

122

translation: ‘Outlines of the Teaching about the Church: The Church and Non-Orthodoxy’, [New] American Church Monthly, 30, no. 6 (1931): 411–423, and 31, no. 1 (1932): 13–26. See Will Cohen, ‘Sacraments and the Visible Unity of the Church’, Ecclesiology, 4, no. 1 (2007): 68–87. Florovsky, ‘The Limits of the Church’, Ch. 17, 253–255, in this book. Florovsky, ‘The Limits of the Church’, Ch. 17, 248, 251–252, in this book. Florovsky, ‘The Limits of the Church’, Ch. 17, 255, in this book. See the references in Paul Ladouceur, ‘On Ecumenoclasm:  Anti-Ecumenical Theology in Orthodoxy’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 61, no. 3 (2017): 323–355 at 329–330, nn. 13 and 14. See also John Erickson, ‘On the Cusp of Modernity: The Canonical Hermeneutic of St Nikodemos the Haghiorite (1748–1809)’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 42, no. 1 (1998): 45–66 at 59–66; and Kallistos Ware, Eustratios Argenti: A Study of the Greek Church under Turkish Rule (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014 [1964]), 90–97. Florovsky, ‘The Limits of the Church’, Ch. 17, 253, in this book.

26

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

Florovsky, as we saw above, observed that on some occasions the Church received into her fold ‘converts from other denominations without insisting absolutely on baptism’ but received them through confession of faith, penance (the sacrament of confession) and also received their clerics in their orders.123 This would lead one to see the sacraments of separated Christians as having a ‘certain sacramental significance’, so that they could not be ‘reiterated’, meaning that they were recognized to have spiritual reality though performed outside the Orthodox Church. Therefore, non-Orthodox received into the Orthodox Church without baptism or even chrismation and without re-ordination implies that they were already baptized, chrismated (confirmed) or ordained and ‘that they were not outsiders in the strict sense of the term’. Such non-Orthodox joining the Orthodox Church are in some sense Orthodox already and are in a sort of paradoxical ‘intermediate sphere’, both inside the Church and simultaneously outside the Church. Florovsky notes that ‘a strict discrimination is usually made between the different categories of the “separated” ’,124 leading one to conclude that ‘there are degrees of Church membership’.125 Here he is most likely alluding to the traditions emerging from the first canonical epistle of St Basil the Great (329–379), which distinguishes between heresies, schisms and illegal congregations. Basil and the mainstream of the Church following him distinguished between the sacraments of different sorts of ‘heretics’ (e.g. Gnostics from Arians) and understood heretics as being those completely broken off from the Church and alien to her faith, so needing reception via baptism. Heretics, in turn, had to be extinguished from ‘schismatics’ who had broken from the Church for ‘certain ecclesiastical reasons’ and on questions that admitted of a remedy such as on the admission or non-admission of lapsed Christians. These in turn had to be distinguished from illegal congregations or ‘parasynagogues’, which are assemblies brought into being by ‘insubordinate’ presbyters and/or bishops and by uneducated laymen. Parasynagogues are groups that were often created by clerics who being caught in error and then censured defied the canons and the authorities and continued in their orders illicitly functioning as presybters or bishops. Schismatics and parasynagogues had a basic teaching which was sound and so their baptism also could be considered in some sense Orthodox as well. They were, therefore, received through other means than baptism, such as chrismation or even confession and penance. As Basil writes, ‘the ancients, accordingly, decided to reject completely the baptism of heretics, but to accept that of schismatics on the ground that they were still of the Church’.126 There is a good basis basis for saying that Florovsky held, building especially on Augustine and to a lesser degree Basil and other subsequent authorities, that the validity of non-Orthodox

123 124

125 126

Florovsky, ‘The Doctrine of the Church and the Ecumenical Movement’, 158. Florovsky, ‘The Doctrine of the Church and the Ecumenical Movement’, 158 and see ‘Confessional Loyalty in the Ecumenical Movement’, Ch. 20, 286, in this book. Florovsky, ‘The Doctrine of the Church and the Ecumenical Movement’, 160. Basil the Great, Letter 188.1, ‘To Amphilochius, On the Canons’, in The Letters: Volume III: Letters 186–238, ed. and trans. Roy J.  Deferrari, Loeb 243 (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1986), 8–13.

27

Introduction

27

sacraments is the guarantee that God continues to act through the Church, even in Christians separated from (but in some sense still within) the true Church, which he understood to be the Orthodox Church, drawing separated Christians back to the fullness of union and communion within herself.127

Florovsky after Florovsky:  The future of neopatristic theology George Florovsky’s approach to theology was vastly influential in Orthodox theology during the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. In 1980 Rowan Williams wrote in his obituary of Florovsky that ‘it is easy to forget that he [Florovsky] was not a walking textbook but an original and radical mind’.128 Florovsky was indeed an original thinker but in the very specific sense of his being a ‘radical (in the sense of radix, root) traditionalist’. His genius consisted in his awareness that the time was ripe for the construction of a pan-Orthodox theological identity founded on a return to the roots of Orthodoxy in the Greek patristic corpus and the Orthodox liturgical and spiritual tradition, and in his ability to articulate the spirit of such a return and to apply it dynamically and creatively across a broad range of theological issues, most especially in ecclesiology. As a ‘radical traditionalist’, Florovsky defies standard categorization; he was a sui generis thinker, who saw tradition as the basis of innovation.129 Despite Florovsky’s cautions about Orthodox appeal to non-patristic and dubious Western sources, he himself creatively and daringly fused in his neopatristic theology a wide range of philosophical and theological sources, Eastern and Western. Many of Florovsky’s key insights are his own developments and applications of ideas found in late Romanticism, in the thinking of Alexander Herzen, Johann Möhler, the Slavophiles and their descendants in the Russian religious renaissance of the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. From Herzen, Florovsky inherited an emphasis on radically ungrounded creative freedom that moves in history by feats of faith, as well as deep suspicion of historical organicism with its latent determinism. From Möhler, directly as well as through Khomiakov, Florovsky was influenced most significantly by the notion of the life of the Church as a ‘living tradition’, in which the saints and doctors of the Church are bound together in a common vision of unity, having one united experience of the Church, since they share the same ‘catholic consciousness’.130 Ivan Kireevsky’s Hellenism and anti-Western polemic were conjoined with a call for the restoration of the ‘philosophy of the Holy 127

128 129 130

For detailed historical discussion see Georges Florovsky, ‘Terms of Communion in the Undivided Church’ in Intercommunion (The Report of the Theological Commission Appointed by the Continuation Committee of the World Conference on Faith and Order Together with a Selection of the Material Presented to the Commission), eds. Donald Baillie and John Marsh (New York: Harper & Brothers Pubs., 1952), 47–57. Rowan Williams, ‘Obituary of Georges Florovsky’, Sobornost, 2, no. 1 (1980): 70–72 at 70. See also Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 9–11. Möhler, Unity in the Church, 107–111, 117, 127ff. and 175–181. See also Khomiakov, ‘The Church Is One’, 33, 36.

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

Fathers’, which Florovsky understood as a creative adaptation of elements of classical Greek philosophy to the needs of a truly Christian philosophy, as a product of the ‘superior vision’ or ‘immediate, inner experience’ of the Fathers.131 Or, as expressed by Yves-Noël Lelouvier, Florovsky’s theological method is characterized by ‘intuitive penetration rather than analytical speculation’.132 Such a Hellenistic and Romantic approach to the Fathers not only risks ignoring the importance of the non-Greek patristic corpus (Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, etc.), with its identification of Orthodoxy with ‘Byzantinism’, but also far too hastily melts differences among patristic writers into a static and undifferentiated whole, a universal consensus patrum. Furthermore, it approaches the works of the Fathers using categories such as tradition, experience, vision, faith, etc., which, while by no means alien to the Fathers, have a content that largely reflects Florovsky’s own theological project. Florovsky’s work is sometimes hampered by its ‘easternocentric’ vision of theological orthodoxy and it exhibits a subtle anti-Western bias, which sees the Western theological tradition essentially as a falling away from the ecclesial truth of the Eastern Church and not a distinct and equally valid development of the ‘vision of the Fathers’.133 Florovsky’s theology displays, overtly or subtly, a polemical intent, directed towards either competing approaches within Orthodox theology or Western ideas and methodologies foreign to Orthodoxy. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to see Florovsky’s theology as either simply anti-Western or a paragon of receptive ecumenism. His theology contains both polarities of East and West in a ceaseless creative tension,134 which reflects the fate, cultural tragedy and opportunity of Orthodox theology in the contemporary West: to find itself unhappily westernized in a modern Western world order that its Eastern Christian vision has not created but to which it now must respond and shape creatively from the depths of its living tradition.135 Modern Orthodox theology occupies a unique place in the history of Christian thought given the historical road of Eastern Orthodoxy in a Western age. For most of the last five centuries, the Orthodox Church developed under the thumb of various powers intent on either co-opting and controlling her for political purposes, by turning the Church into a strictly national institution, by ghettoizing her, Westernizing her or attempting to stamp her out entirely. This delayed a decisive encounter between Orthodoxy and modernity. Concerned mostly with survival for the last halfmillennium, the Orthodox ecclesial, dogmatic and liturgical consciousness did not

131 132 133

134

135

Ivan Kireevsky, ‘Fragments’ (early 1850s), in Jakim and Bird, On Spiritual Unity, 283. Lelouvier, Perspectives russes sur l’Église, 159. See Florovsky, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, Ch. 8, 168–170, 172–175, in this book; and revised version of ‘Quest for Christian Unity: The Challenge of Disunity’ (1955), Georges Florovsky Papers, (C0586); Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. See Gallaher, ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’, 659–691; ‘Mia epanexetasē tēs Neo-paterikēs synthesēs’, 82–92; Ladouceur, Modern Orthodox Theology, 418–424; and Baker, ‘Neopatristic Synthesis and Ecumenism’, 235–260. See Brandon Gallaher, ‘Orthodoxy and the West  – The Problem of Orthodox Self-Criticism in Christos Yannaras’, in Polis, Ontology, Ecclesial Event: Engaging with Christos Yannaras’ Thought, ed.

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pass through, like Christianity in the West, the trials of modernization marked by the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Romantic movement and even the scientific and technological revolutions. The Orthodox Church remains on the whole pre-modern in her basic life and identity, which is worship and prayer. It is only with the rise, fall and slow, ongoing, and agonizing recovery from communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that Orthodoxy has been obliged to face squarely both political and social issues long familiar in the West, such as Church-State and inter-Christian relations, and at the same time a host of new issues ushered in by secularism, globalization, and social, sexual and religious plurality. One of the central tasks of contemporary Orthodox theology in the wake of Florovsky is the search for a creative response to modernity and postmodernity that remains faithful to traditional Orthodox faith and practice, while avoiding the temptation, the unhealthy quest for ‘relevance’, to jettison the apparently archaic forms of the past in favour of the ‘new’ and ‘relevant’ forms of this present age.136 For Florovsky, traditions and teachings that may seem arbitrary, abstract husks, products of a Byzantine synthesis with no obvious link to the kernel of the Gospel, are crucial to the Church’s time-enduring cohesion as the Body of Christ. This requires the creative response of contemporary Orthodox theology in our age. It must engage Western thinking and creatively appropriate the best of Western thought and resources, a discovery of how Eastern Orthodoxy is not simply unhappily westernized but can also faithfully draw on the West while still retaining its traditional Orthodox roots. In such a dialectical interpenetration of East and West, Orthodoxy finds itself as ‘eastern’ precisely in what is most ‘western’, from St Augustine to Jacques Derrida. The temptation to generalized anti-Western polemics and narrow Eastern-centric theology must be avoided at all costs to permit the emergence of an ecumenical Orthodoxy freed from all provincialism and ethnicism in the twenty-first century. Above all, this creative theological response to the age calls for a re-envisioning of Florovsky’s project of a neopatristic synthesis that developed into the dominant trend of Orthodox theology in the second half of the twentieth century. Such a renewal of neopatristic theology should aim to eliminate its weaknesses, in particular an uncritical Christian Hellenism and an underlying uncritical anti-modern and antiWestern polemic.137 This renewal should seek a further appropriation of aspects of Western thought that can strengthen Orthodoxy in responding to the problems of the contemporary world with creativity, humility and a ‘daring of spiritual assurance’.138

136

137

138

Sotiris Mitralexis (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2018), 206–225; and Ladouceur, Modern Orthodox Theology, 446–450. See Florovsky, ‘Patristics and Modern Theology’, Ch. 9, 153–157, in this book; ‘Breaks and Links’, Ch. 10, 172–179, in this book; and ‘The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology’, Ch. 11, 185–191, in this book. Compare Aristotle Papanikolaou, ‘Orthodoxy, Postmodernity, and Ecumenism: The Difference That Divine-Human Communion Makes’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 42, no. 4 (2007): 527ff.; and Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-radical Orthodoxy (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2012), 9. See Ware, ‘Orthodox Theology Today’, 114, Paul L. Gavrilyuk, ‘The Orthodox Renaissance’, First Things, December 2012, 33–37; Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, 254–257, 268, 270–271; and Gösta Hallonsten, ‘Ex oriente lux? Recent Developments in Eastern Orthodox Theology’, Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift, Årgång 89, no. 1 (2013): 31–42. Florovsky, ‘Starets Silouan’, Ch. 24, 325, in this book.

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky

Only in this light can Orthodox theology deal adequately with contemporary Western challenges, from sexual diversity and the crisis of the episcopate in a democratic age, to modern science and technology and religious pluralism. A return to the immense riches of Florovsky’s theology  – a modern ‘Father of the Church’, along with others such as Sergius Bulgakov, Sophrony Sakharov, Vladimir Lossky, Dimitru Stăniloae, Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff  – is crucial to the revitalization of Orthodox theology. Florovsky himself called for such a rebirth as early as the 1930s and 1940s, to find new patterns of ideas and new expressions that articulate the faith of the Fathers, a faith that is ever ancient and ever new.139 There are many pitfalls in this new renaissance but with great danger always comes enormous opportunity: Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst / Das Rettende auch (But where danger threatens / There also grows that which saves).140

139

140

See ‘The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology’, Ch. 11, 191, in this book ; and ‘Breaks and Links’, Ch. 10, 179, in this book. Friedrich Hölderlin, ‘Patmos (Fragments of the Later Version)’, in Hyperion and Selected Poems, ed. Eric L. Santner and trans. Michael Hamburger (New York: Continuum, 1990), ll.3–4, 256–263.

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Part One

Creation, Incarnation and Redemption

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1

Creation and Createdness

This article, which Florovsky considered one of his greatest theological contributions, is a tacit attack on the sophiology of Sergius Bulgakov.1 Florovsky felt sophiology had an erroneous understanding of creation, often verging on pantheism. The article was first published in Russian as ‘Tvar’ i Tvarnost’’ in Pravoslavnaia mysl’ (Paris: Saint Sergius Institute), No. 1, 1928, 176–212 (Blane #44) and then in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, III, 43–78 and 269–279. The new translation below is from the original Russian text. The CW version has some expansion in the notes and the occasional additional sentence. Related but somewhat different articles are ‘L’idée de la creation dans la philosophie chrétienne’, Logos:  Revue internationale de la synthèse orthodoxe, 1 (1928): 3–30 (Blane #39) and ‘The Idea of Creation in Christian Philosophy’, Eastern Churches Quarterly, 8, no.  3 (1949):  53–77 (Blane #101). The original Russian text and the English translation in the CW contain numerous minor inaccuracies in patristic quotations and references, no doubt because Florovsky frequently cited from memory. In this translation, the editors have restored the correct citations and references to the extent possible. Florovsky’s original text can be consulted in the original 1928 publication or in this re-edition: ‘Tvar’ i Tvarnost’’, in Dogmat i Istoria (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Sviato-Vladimirskogo Bratstva, 1998), 108– 150, and online at http://www.odinblago.ru/pm_1/7 (accessed 23 April 2019). This new translation is by Alexey Kostyanovsky, with assistance from Olena Gorbatenko.

1

Cf. Paul Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2013), 147. Bulgakov’s followers understood this article as a critique of Bulgakov and Florovsky later explicitly acknowledged it as such. See also Paul Ladouceur, Modern Orthodox Theology: ‘Behold I Make All Things New’ (London: T&T Clark, 2019), 205–209.

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky Behold I have written thy walls upon mine hands, and thou art before me forever. Isa 49:162

I The world was created. In other words, it was made out of nothing and did not exist before. It came into being together with time, for it makes no sense to speak of time before the world began. St Maximus the Confessor also makes this point:  ‘Time is reckoned from the creation of the heavens and the earth.’3 Only the world exists in time, subject to change as part of a temporal continuum. As there can be no time without the world, so the beginning of the world was also the start of time.4 St Basil the Great further explains that the start of time cannot yet be called time, or a unit of time, just as the start of a journey is not yet the journey itself. The beginning of time is wholly simple, not divisible into smaller parts.5 This means that initially there was no time and then it began suddenly, at once. Creation arises, comes into being, makes a transition ‘from non-existence into being’, starts to exist. As St Gregory of Nyssa put it, ‘the very hypostasis of creation came into being through change’,6 ‘the very transition

2

3

4

5 6

Florovsky quotes the Slavonic text that follows the Septuagint version, as a reference to the Creation. The Hebrew text says ‘have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me’ (NIV translation) [Trans.]. Maximus the Confessor, In Librum de Divinis Nominibus Scholia, in V. 8. PG 4.336A [GF]. [These scholia on Dionysius have been long attributed to Maximus the Confessor, but are now believed to be largely the work of John of Scythopolis (c. 536–550) with only a few of them by Maximus himself. See Paul Rorem and John C. Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) [Eds.].] St Augustine makes this connection especially clear in De Genesi ad Litteram libri XII, V. 5.12, PL 34.325:  ‘Factae itaque creaturae motibus coeperunt currere tempora:  unde ante creaturam frustra tempora requiruntur, quasi possint inveniri ante tempora . . . potius ergo tempus a creatura, quam creatura coepit a tempore; utrumque autem ex Deo [And so creatures once made began to run with their movements along the tracks of time, which means it is pointless to look for times before any creature, as though times could be found before times. [. . .] So it is time that begins from the creation/ creature rather than the creation/creature from time, while both are from God’ (The Literal Meaning of Genesis, in On Genesis, trans. and ed. Edmund Hill, Michael Fiedrowicz, Matthew O’Connell and John E. Rotelle, The Works of St. Augustine:  A Translation for the 21st Century, I/13 (Hyde Park, NY:  New City Press, 2002), 282)]’; cf. De Genesi contra Manichaeos libri II I. 2.3–4 PL 34.174, 175; De Civitate Dei, XI, 6, PL 41.321: ‘quis non videat, quod tempora non fuissent, nisi creatura fieret, quae aliquid aliqua motione mutaret [Who does not see that there could have been no time had not some creature been made, which, by some movement, could bring about change?’ (The City of God against the Pagans, trans. and ed. R.  W. Dyson (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press,  1998), 456)]; c. 322: ‘procul dubio non est mundus factus in tempore, sed cum tempore [Beyond doubt, then, the world was not made in time, but simultaneously with time’ (ibid., 456)]’; Confessiones XI, 13, PL 32.815–816 et passim. Cf. Pierre Duhem, Le Système du monde: Histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic, Vol. II [of 10 vols.] (Paris: A. Hermann, 1914 [–1959]), 462ff. [GF]. St Basil the Great, In Hexameron, Homilia 1, 6, PG 29.16 [GF]. St Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio catechetica magna, 6, PG 45.28; Russian translation: IV.22; cf. St John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa I, 3, PG 94.796A-B; Russian translation:  Polnoe sobranie tvorenii sv. Ioanna Damaskina [Collected Works of St John of Damascus] (St Petersburg: edition of Imperial St Peterburg Spiritual Academy, 1913), Vol. 1, 160: ‘For things which came into being through change (apo tropēs), have to remain in a state of change, either voluntarily or by decaying’ [GF].

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from non-being into being is a kind of movement and change of the non-existing into existing, brought about by God’s volition’.7 The human mind cannot comprehend that primordial generation, the start of change and duration; that transition from nothingness to existence. It becomes comprehensible and imaginable, however, if we reason from the opposite. We measure time retrospectively, beginning with the present and going back chronologically, and so the incremental passage of time is only conceived retrospectively, as a secondary step. As we move back into the past from a point in the middle of the temporal row, we distinctly perceive that at some point we must reach an end point at which we must stop. The concept of a beginning of time therefore arises from the need to stop this infinite regress into the past. It makes no difference to our argument whether or not the length of time from that initial point is measurable in days or centuries; it does not alter the imperative to reject infinite regress. As a matter of logical necessity, we have to postulate in that temporal row a first point before which there is no antecedent, no links in the chain, no units of time, for no change or temporal order of any kind existed before it. It was to this that St Augustine referred when he said that time is not preceded by time, but by non-temporal ‘heights of everlasting eternity’ (celsitudo semper praesentis aeternitatis).8 Time began, yet there will be a time when ‘there should be time no longer’ (Rev 10:6).9 Change shall cease. In the words of St John of Damascus, ‘after the resurrection, time no longer will be counted in days and nights, but rather there will be one day without an evening’.10 Having reached its final point, temporal order will be brought to an end. However, a cessation of change does not mean that what started, evolved and existed in time will either be brought to an end or return to non-being. Time shall cease to exist, but creation shall be preserved. The created world can also exist outside time. Creation had a beginning, but will not end.11 Admittedly time as a linear continuum with a beginning and an end cannot be measured against eternity. Time has a beginning, but eternity neither starts with a beginning nor suffers change. Everlastingness [vsevremennost’], however, is not the same as eternity [vechnost’]; ‘all time’ (omne tempus) does not yet mean ‘ever’ (semper), as St Augustine has already pointed out.12 Infinity or endlessness does not always mean a lack of beginning, so 7

8 9

10

11

12

Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opificio XVI, PG 44.184; Russian translation:  I, 142; cf. Or. cath. m., 21, PG 45.57; Russian translation: IV, 57: ‘The very transition from non-existence to being is a kind of transformation, in which that which had no substance through God’s power becomes a substance.’ For St Gregory, human beings ‘of necessity have changeable essence’, as they came into being ‘through change’ [GF]. Augustine, Confessions, 11.13.16 [Eds.]. See Brandon Gallaher, ‘Chalice of Eternity: An Orthodox Theology of Time’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 57, no. 1 (2013): 5–35 [Eds.]. St John Damascene, De fide orth. II, 1, PG 94.864; Russian translation: I, 188:  Oude gar meta tēn anastasin hēmerais kai nyxin ho chronos arithmēthēsetai: estai de mallon mia hēmera anesperos. The whole passage is of interest:  Legetai palin aiōn ou chronos oude chronou ti meros hēliou phorai kai dromōi metroumenon, ēgoun di’ hēmerōn kai nyktōn synistamenon, alla to symparekteinomenon tois aidiois, oion ti chronikon kinēma, kai diastēma [Again, an age signifies not time nor some part of time as measured by the motion and path of the sun, that is to say made up of days and nights, but the sort of temporal movement and interval that is co-extensive with eternity] [GF]. St Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 29.13, PG 36.89–92: ‘kai ērktai, kai ou pausetai’ [and they did begin, and they will not end] [GF]. St Augustine, De Civ. Dei, XII, 15 [in some editions: 16], PL 41.363–365 [GF].

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in geometry creation can be compared to a bundle of rays, all of which begin at the same point and stretch into infinity. The world that was brought out of nothing by the Creator’s ‘fiat’ has an unshakeable ultimate foundation of being. Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov) of Moscow13 wrote about this: The Creator’s word is like an adamantine bridge, on which creatures are established and stand; overshadowed by an abyss of divine infinity, with the abyss of their own non-existence stretching beneath. For we must not think that the Word of God is like a human word which dissolves in the ether and ceases to be as soon as it leaves the lips. In God there is nothing that will cease, or disappear; his word goes out, but does not pass, for the Word of the Lord endureth forever (1 Pet 1:25).14

God has ‘created all things that they might have their being’ (Wis 1:14). He did not create for a time, but forever; he brought creation into being by his creative decree, ‘for he hath established the world so that it shall not be moved’ (Ps 92:1 – LXX). The world exists, but it also began to exist, which means that it might not have existed, and so its existence is not a matter of any necessity. Created existence is neither self-sufficient nor self-sustaining. The created world in itself does not contain either a reason or a firm basis for its origin and being. By the very fact of its existence, creation proclaims its createdness, and as it was made, it depends on another. In St Augustine’s words, ‘they [heaven and earth as creatures] cry out that they were created, that they have not made themselves: “We are because we were made. We did not exist before we became; we could not have come from our own selves!” ’15 By its very existence creation points beyond itself. The cause and foundation of the world lie outside it. The world’s existence is made possible only by the transcendent will of an all-good and allpowerful God, ‘who calls into existence the things that do not exist’ (Rom 4:17). However surprising this might sound, the world’s stability and substantiality are based in the fact that it was created by Another. This is because belief in creation out of nothing affirms the world as a substance that is different from God. To say that created things are placed outside God is not enough, and can even be misleading. An ‘outside’ is itself for the first time posited in creation, so creation ‘out of nothing’ itself posits that ‘outside’ for the first time and endorses ‘Another’ alongside God. The newly made second substance cannot be seen as something that limits God’s fullness but it receives distinct existence; is utterly different from him as a subject, which is to some extent independent and self-acting. That which was not, comes into being and becomes; creation produces a totally new, non-divine reality. In the great, ineffable wonder of 13

14

15

St Philaret (Drozdov) (1782–1867), Metropolitan of Moscow from 1826 to 1867, was one of the most influential Russian hierarchs and theologians of the nineteenth century. He is one of the few ‘heroes’ in Florovsky’s The Ways of Russian Theology [1937] (cf. Collected Works, V, Part 1, 201–220). See also Florovsky, ‘Philaret, Mitropolit Moskovskii’, Put’, 12 (1928): 3–31 [Eds.]. The Works of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna, ‘Discourses and Speeches’, Vol. III (Moscow: Tip. A. I. Mamontova 1873–1885, Vol. III: 1877), 436, ‘Address on the Occasion of the Recovery of the Relics of Patriarch Alexey’, 1830 [GF]. ‘Clamant quod facta sint . . . Clamant etiam quod se ipsa non fecerint: ideo sumus, quia facta sumus; non ergo eramus antequam essemus, ut fieri possemus a nobis’ (St Augustine, Confessiones, XI, 4.6, PL 32.812) [GF].

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creation something ‘other’ comes into being, and the new droplets of created, nondivine nature come to exist alongside God, who is the ‘immeasurable and limitless sea of being’.16 There is an infinite chasm between God and creation, which according to St John of Damascus represents not a physical distance, but one of natures (ou topō, alla physei [not in place, but in nature]),17 and although God’s limitless love as it were bridges it, its reality cannot be ignored. In St Augustine’s words, creation has ‘nothing in common with the Holy Trinity except that the Trinity made it [nihilque in ea esse quod ad Trinitatem pertineat, nisi quod Trinitas condidit]’,18 and even at the greatest heights of mystical union in prayer a clear divide persists between two living entities, God and the creature. St Macarius of Egypt emphasizes this as he writes about the human soul, ‘He is God; she is non-God. He is the Lord; she is the servant. He is Creator; she is a creature. He is the Fashioner; she is the fashioned, and their natures have nothing in common.’19 Therefore it is as impossible for the created nature to transubstantiate into the divine, as for God to change into a creature. We must therefore reject any ‘confusion’ or ‘merging’ of created and divine natures. Even within the single person and hypostasis of Christ the Incarnate God, the differences of the human and divine natures remain undiminished, despite their perfect communion [soproniknovenie] (perichōrēsis eis allēlas [circumcession/coinherence with one another]), so ‘the distinction of natures is in no way abolished by the union, but the properties of each nature are preserved’.20 The Fathers of Chalcedon advisedly replaced the old, ambiguous formula ‘from two natures’ with the decisive ‘in two natures’, through this establishing a firm and indisputable rule of faith in Christ’s double consubstantiality of two kinds. This type of Christology, in which the divine nature suffered no change, requires that created human nature should have genuine existence alongside and outside God as a ‘second’ or ‘other’ nature. In other words, created nature is outside God, but unites with him. The doctrine of creation was most comprehensively formulated by the fourthcentury Fathers in response to the Arian controversy. For them the nature of creation is radically different from the nature of its Creator, as opposed to the ‘consubstantiality’ of a child and its parent, who are related by begetting. They explained this difference by the creation’s dependence on God’s will and intention. So, according to St Athanasius, all created things ‘by essence are completely unlike their Creator, and exist outside him’, so their existence is not necessary.21 Creation ‘comes into consistence from without [lit. ‘comes into being, is formed from without’]’,22 so as it comes out of nothing it is utterly 16 17 18

19 20

21 22

St Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 38.7, In Theoph., PG 36.317 [GF]. St John Damascene, De fide Orth. I, 13, PG 94.853; Russian translation: I, 183 [GF]. St Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram Imperfectus Liber, I. 2: ‘non de Dei natura, sed a Deo sit facta de nihilo  .  .  .  Quapropter creaturam universam neque consubstantialem Deo, neque coaeternam fas est dicere aut credere [All created things are made, not out of the nature of God, but out of nothing . . . Thus it is not right to say or believe that all of creation is consubstantial or coeternal with God].’ PL 34.221; Russian translation: VII, 97 [GF]. St Macarius of Egypt, Hom. 49.4, PG 34.816 [GF]. Florovsky quotes here the key doctrinal definition of the Council of Chalcedon (451); see Heinrich Denzinger and Adolf Schönmetzer, eds., Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 36th ed. (Barcelona/Freiburg/Rome: Herder, 1976), §302, 108 [Trans.]. St Athanasius, Orationes contra Arianos, I.20, PG 26.53; Russian translation: II, 202 [GF]. St Athanasius, C. arian. II, 2, PG 26.152; Russian translation: II, 264 [GF].

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unlike the Self-existing Creator who brings creatures from non-existence into being.23 As creation is an act of God’s will (ek boulēmatos [from the will/counsel]), it is radically different from divine begetting, which is an act of God’s nature (gennai kata physin [begetting according to nature]).24 St Cyril of Alexandria makes a similar distinction. Whereas the Father begets the Son ‘from his essence’ and ‘by nature’, the act of creation does not stem from God’s essence, so creatures are by nature dissimilar from their Creator.25 St John of Damascus, in his summary of patristic opinions, gives these definitions, ‘By birth we mean that the child comes into being from its parent’s nature and is by nature like its parent. In contrast creation or fashioning is from something external, and not from the artist’s or maker’s essence, and so in essence is utterly unlike him.’ Begetting comes from a ‘natural reproductive capacity’ (tēs gonimotētos physikēs [natural fecundity]), whereas creation is an ‘act of will’ (thelēseōs ergon).26 Therefore createdness requires radical dissimilarity between creation and God, their disparity of essence, and as a consequence of this the creation’s substantiality and independence.27 A creature is a ‘substance’, not a phenomenon, and the genuine substantiality of created nature is most importantly revealed in creation’s freedom. Freedom is not limited to an ability to choose, although it is a necessary condition of it and a first step to freedom. Instead created beings’ freedom consists in their ability to take the path to or away from God, both of which are equally possible. This choice is not merely a formal logical possibility, but a real one, which is based on the creature’s power not only to choose, but also to complete its chosen path. Moreover, freedom is not mere potential, but also the necessity to make a choice; the autonomous ability to decide and to implement the decision. Without this autonomy no accomplishment can be achieved by a creature. In the words of St Gregory the Theologian, God has ordained human sovereignty,28 ‘he has honoured man with freedom so that goodness should in equal measure belong to him who chooses it, and to God who had implanted its seeds.’29 Therefore the creature’s goal is to ascend to God by its own podvig30 and to become one with him, and the fact that to achieve union Divine Mercy must move 23 24 25

26

27

28 29 30

St Athanasius, C. arian. I, 21, PG 26.56; Russian translation: II, 204 [GF]. St Athanasius, C. arian. III, 3, 60ff., PG 26.448ff.; Russian translation: II, 444ff. [GF]. St Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus, 15, PG 75.276C: ‘to gennēma . . . ek tēs ousias tou gennōntos proeisi physikōs – [to ktisma] . . . exōthen estin, hōs allotrion [That which is begotten . . . from the essence of the begetter pre-exists by nature: the creature is from without, as pertaining to another]’; ibid., 18, PG 75.312C: ‘to men poiein, energeias esti, physeōs de to gennan, physis de kai energeia ou tauton [Making/creating pertains to energy, while begetting pertains to nature: nature and energy are not identical]’; cf. ibid., 32, PG 75.564–565 [GF]. St John Damascene, De fide orth. I, 8, PG 94.812–813; Russian translation:  I, 167–168; cf. St Athanasius, C. arian. II, 2, PG 26.149C; Russian translation: II, 262. He rebukes the Arians for not recognizing that ‘karpogonos estin autē ē theia ousia [the divine essence is fruitful in itself]’. The same expression is to be found in St Cyril’s writings (see his Thesaurus 4 and 5, PG 75.49 and 64) [GF]. The Collected Works translation has an additional sentence not in the Russian: ‘The whole section of St John is actually an elaborate rejoinder to arguments of Origen’ (CW, III, 48) [Eds.]. St Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 45.28 in S. Pascha, PG 36.661 [GF]. Ibid., Or. 45.8, PG 36.632 [GF]. Podvig is an untranslatable Russian word usually rendered in English along the lines of a sustained spiritual/ascetic ‘struggle’, ‘exploit’, ‘attainment’ and ‘feat’. It is characteristic of Russian spirituality. For a discussion, see the essay of Sergius Bulgakov, ‘Heroism and Spiritual Struggle [Podvichnichestvo]’, in Sergii Bulgakov:  Towards a Russian Political Theology, ed., trans. and introd. Rowan Williams (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 69–112, with Williams’s discussion in his introduction at 65–66 [Eds.].

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towards his creature in response, does not detract from the authenticity of this ‘ancient law of human freedom’, to use Irenaeus’s phrase.31 Likewise, the path of alienation, destruction and death is not denied to creatures. Divine grace does not impose itself. The creature can inflict harm on itself and in extreme cases might commit a kind of metaphysical suicide. Although in both its origin and final calling creation is destined to live in union with God, and to share in his life, this is not forced on it as a requirement or necessity of its nature. Admittedly, creation has no life outside God. However, as St Augustine aptly put it, for creatures life is not the same as mere existence.32 There is also existence in death. Although a creature can overcome its alienation and reach its full potential only in God, it does not cease to exist even if, having wasted itself, it opposes or fails in its calling. It may commit metaphysical suicide, but it cannot completely destroy itself. Creation cannot be annihilated, and this is true in equal measure for those who have established themselves in God – the wellspring of true being and eternal life  – and for those who have set themselves against him. ‘The image of this world passeth away’ (1 Cor 7:31), and pass away it shall, but the world itself shall not pass. For the world has been created ‘that it might exist’. Its properties and features can and do change, but its basic ‘elements’ are unalterable. More than to other beings this permanence belongs to humankind – the microcosm – and to individual human hypostases, for they individually have been chosen and called from non-existence into being by God’s creative will. It is true that one who chooses to oppose God and turns away from him enters the way of destruction, but instead of complete nothingness this way leads to death, which is not the end of existence, but a separation of body from soul, and of creature from God. It has long been accepted that evil ‘has no substance’,33 or as St John of Damascus puts it, it is insubstantial (anousion).34 As something that lacks true being, evil has a negative and privational character. Yet, as St Gregory of Nyssa says, ‘in the very non-being it has its being’ (en tōi mē einai to einai echei).35 The root and substance of evil consist in deception and error. As one German theologian has aptly put it, evil is a ‘fable-telling lie’.36 It is in some sense make-believe, but one charged with baffling energy and force. Evil is active in the world and through its actions it becomes real. Evil introduces new qualities into the world, as if adding something to the God-given reality, something that was neither willed nor made by him, although it happens with God’s permission; evil, a novelty that in one sense ‘does not exist’, enigmatically becomes real and strong. ‘God did not make death’ (Wis 1:13), and yet all creation is subject to the punishment of death and to the bondage of corruption (Rom 8:20, 21). Through sin death has entered the world (Rom 5:12), so although sin is merely a parody of a creative novelty in the world, a child of the creature’s free will and of ‘human imaginings’ [Gn 6:5], in its turn it produces death as an act of false 31 32 33 34 35

36

Irenaeus, Against All Heresies, 4.37.1 [PG 7/1.1099B] [Eds.]. St Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram libri XII, 1, I, 5.10, PL 34.250 [GF]. St Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 40.45 in S. Baptism, PG 36.424A [GF]. St John Damascene, Dialogus contra Manichaeos 14, PG 94.1518 [GF]. St Gregory of Nyssa, Dialogus de anima et resurrectione, PG 46.93 [Eds.]. St Gregory of Nyssa, De anima et resurrectione, PG 46.93B; Russian translation: IV, 269 [GF]. Florovsky refers to the phrase eine dichtende Lüge of Franz Anton Staudenmeier from his unfinished Die christliche Dogmatik [Christian Dogmatics], 4  vols. (Freiburg:  Herder, 1844–1852), 4.1 (Die Lehre von der Sünde [The Doctrine of Sin] [1852]), 177 [Eds.].

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creation and attempts to establish a new law of life for creatures, a kind of counter-law. In some sense evil is indestructible. The final perdition and eternal punishment in the ‘resurrection of condemnation’ [Jn 5:29] that result from evil are not the same as complete annihilation of being, for it is impossible to accept that the destructive power of evil equals God’s creative will. When evil plunders a creature’s life it does not annihilate it, so this wasted, perverted, deceptive and deceiving reality is mysteriously accepted into eternity, albeit in the torments of unquenchable fire. In this way the eternity of torments that await the ‘sons of perdition’ [Jn 17:12] affirms forcefully and tragically the belief in the reality of creation as a second, non-divine nature. An eternity of torments is the consequence of the person’s persistent, yet free opposition to God, of their rooting themselves in evil. Thus in both birth and destruction, in holiness and perdition, in obedience and disobedience, creation affirms its reality as a free heir of God’s decrees. The concept of creation is alien to ‘natural’ thought. It was unknown to the ancient Greeks and has been largely abandoned by modern philosophy. However, first revealed in the Bible, it was developed in the Church’s living experience. The doctrine of creation teaches that the nature of the world is twofold:  it is both a permanent, free and acting subject (or better, an assembly of interrelated subjects) and one that is utterly contingent on another, radically different nature. Because of this it becomes untenable to postulate either that the world exists eternally and necessarily, or that it can come to an end in the future. Creation therefore is neither a self-existent being nor impermanent happenstance [byvanie], neither an eternal ‘substance’ nor ghostly ‘appearance’. The doctrine of creation reveals a great mystery. The world might not have existed, but that which might not have existed, for which there are no necessary reasons, does exist. It is a puzzle and a ‘folly’ for ‘natural’ philosophy, which it tries to deconstruct, or to blunt, or to replace with seemingly more transparent concepts. But the mystery of creation can only be clearly understood in an argument from the opposite, which alone can conclusively refute all erroneous opinions and conjectures.

II God creates in complete freedom. This point was well made by Duns Scotus,37 the ‘Subtle Doctor’ of the Western Middle Ages, who writes, ‘God creates things not out of some necessity of essence, knowledge or will, but out of pure freedom, which is neither moved nor compelled by any external necessity.’38 However, as we attempt to define God’s freedom in creation, it is not enough to rule out the crude idea of compulsion by external necessity. It is clear that to speak of any external compulsion is 37

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John Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308), a Franciscan from Scotland, was an important philosophertheologian of the High Middle Ages called the Doctor subtilis (Subtle Doctor). Amongst other teachings, he is known for his theological voluntarism (the strong emphasis on human freedom in all aspects), his arguing for the radically free and ungrounded nature of the divine will and the crucial role of contingency in all free acts. Florovsky was attracted to him precisely for this emphasis on the radical freedom of the divine and human wills [Eds.]. Procedit autem rerum creatio a Deo non aliqua necessitate vel essentiae, vel scientiae, vel voluntatis, sed ex mera libertate, quae non movetur et multo minus necessitatur ab aliquo extra se ad causandum (Ioannes Duns Scot. Quaestiones disputatae de rerum principio, IV, 1, 3 and 4; Opera Omnia, editio

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self-contradictory, as the ‘external’ first appears in creation; given that in creation God is only determined by his own self, he determines himself to create. The challenge becomes greater if we are to argue that there was no internal necessity in God’s determination to reveal himself ad extra. This argument is threatened by many and various snares. The question can be formulated like this: are the qualities of being Creator and Sustainer essential, determining attributes of God’s being? The problem with rejecting this contention is that God’s nature is immutable, an argument already used by Origen: ‘It is impious and foolish to imagine God’s nature as being at rest or idle, or to think that there was a time when Goodness did no good, or Supreme Power exercised no authority.’39 As Vasilii Bolotov40 has aptly put it, from the complete timelessness and immutability of God’s being Origen concludes that ‘God has always possessed all his attributes literally in actu, in statu quo [in the very act, in the state things always were]’,41 and for Origen ‘always’ meant timeless eternity, not merely ‘everlasting time’. Origen continues his argument: As no-one can be a Father without a son, as no-one can be a master without an estate or a servant, so also God cannot be called all-powerful, if there are no beings over which God could exercise power. Therefore everything must exist of necessity to ensure God’s omnipotence. If anyone imagined that in the past there were aeons or periods of time when creation did not exist, that would doubtless mean that at those times God did not have supreme power and only acquired it later, when beings appeared over whom he could rule. But that would mean that God has undergone some kind of development and has moved from an inferior to a superior state, for without a doubt it is better for him to be all-powerful than not. But is it not foolish to think that God used to lack that which it is fitting for him to possess, and only acquired it later by means of some kind of improvement? However, if there was no time when God was not all-powerful, then we must accept that those things by virtue of which he is called all-powerful, must have also existed, and that God as sovereign and head has always possessed that over which he ruled and which belonged to his dominion.42

In other words, as God is completely immutable, ‘all of God’s creatures of necessity had to be created from the beginning, and there was no time when they were not’ (ibid.). Origen cannot accept that God might change in time ‘from rest to activity’, so he has to conclude that ‘all things are unoriginate and coeternal with God’.43

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nova, juxta edit. Waddingi, IV, Paris, 1891). The whole discourse of Duns Scotus is characterized by its great lucidity and profundity [GF]. Origen, De principiis, III, 5, 3; PG 11.327. Russian edition: The Works of Origen, I: On First Principles, trans. N. Petrov (Kazan: Kazan Spiritual Academy, 1899), 282 [GF]. Vasilii Vasil’evich Bolotov (1853–1900) was a leading church historian at the St Petersburg Theological Academy. His doctoral thesis was on Origen’s Trinitarian theology [Trans.]. V. V. Bolotov, Origen’s Doctrine of the Holy Trinity (St Petersburg:  F. G.  Eleonsky Press, 1879), 203 [GF]. Origen, De princ. I, 2, 10, PG 11.138–139 [GF]. Ibid., Nota ex Methodio Ol[ympus]. Apud Phot[ius]. Bibl[iotheca]. cod., 235, sub linea, n. (40), PG 103.1141; Russian translation: Notes, 25–26 [see Photius, Bibliothèque, trans. and ed. René Henry, 9 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1959–1991)] [GF].

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Origen’s dialectic snares are not easily untangled. His question is based on a genuine problem, and even St Augustine exclaims in puzzlement, ‘of what thing God was Lord from eternity, if creation did not exist eternally, I hesitate to assert anything’ (Cum cogito cuius rei dominus semper fuerit, si semper creatura non fuit, affirmare aliquid pertimesco).44 However, Origen complicated the issue by his inability to see time other than as a succession and change. On a par with the immovable eternity of divine existence, he imagined an endless flow of the ages, which required content. In addition, any suggestion of a sequence of God’s predicates seemed to him to introduce a de facto temporal change in God. So as he rejected change he also inclined towards rejecting the idea of sequence or mutual dependence within the divine predicates. As a result, he concluded not only that the world is ‘coeternal’ with God, but also that God has to actualize himself ad extra, that he of necessity eternally reveals and imparts his goodness to ‘Another’, and so of necessity fully realizes the potential of divine power. In other words, for Origen, God’s immutability demands the existence of a co-everlasting and unoriginate divine ‘Not-I’ as a precondition correlated with divine life and fullness. This is at the heart of the issue. The world might not have existed, but this could only be true if God could choose not to create. By contrast, if God created out of necessity in order to fully realize his being, then the world would exist necessarily and unavoidably.45 However, even if we accept a beginning of time and so reject Origen’s idea of its infinity, we still need to consider whether at least God’s thought about the world should belong to the immutable necessity of divine life. Perhaps the real world started to exist together with time, and [the world] was there when it was not, when there was no temporal change. But then might not the image of the world in God’s mind and will still be eternal, an immutable part of God’s perfect self-contemplation and selfdetermination? This argument was already used against Origen by St Methodius of Olympus who emphasized that divine perfection cannot depend on anything other than God’s own nature.46 God creates because of his goodness alone, which is the sole reason for his revelation to ‘Another’. His goodness is also the reason for the existence of any ‘other’, who becomes the recipient and object of his goodness. If this is true, should that revelation be thought of as eternal? And if so, does this mean that as God eternally possesses his immutable fullness, at least the ‘image of the world’ eternally exists in God down to the last detail, complete and unalterable in its characteristics? Would that in its turn imply a ‘necessity of God’s knowledge and will’? Would that also mean that in God’s eternal contemplation of himself he necessarily contemplates that which he is not, that which is something other than God? Perhaps God is conditioned in his eternal self-contemplation by the image of his ‘Not-I’, albeit existing only potentially? When God reflects on himself, does he necessarily perceive himself as the creative principle and source of the world that becomes the object of and participant

44 45

46

St Augustine, De Civ. Dei, XII, 15 [in some editions: 16], PL 41:363 [GF]. Although Origen is Florovsky’s immediate target in this and subsequent paragraphs, Florovsky’s line of argumentation is indirectly directed against Sergius Bulgakov’s doctrine of creation. See also n. 113 below [Eds.]. St Methodius of Olympus, De creatis, apud Phot., Bibl. cod. 235, PG 103.1141 [GF].

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in his goodwill? Approaching this issue from a different angle, the world bears a mark of divine immutability and a reflection of God’s glory. God’s concern about it, his immutable providence, gives the world enduring stability, a wise order and a kind of necessity. This logic undermines the idea that the world might not have existed. Indeed, it might seem impossible to imagine the world as non-existing without introducing an impious element of chance and arbitrariness into its origin, which would contradict and insult divine wisdom. As the world clearly must have a sufficient reason for its existence (cur sit potius quam non sit) [why does something exist rather than does not exist],47 some would suggest this principle in itself must be God’s immutable and eternal will and command. However, that would lead to concluding that if the world is impossible without God, so also God is impossible without the world. If then we accept a temporal beginning only for the world’s actual existence, but its potential existence as an idea in God’s mind and will is in some sense coeternal with God, then the difficulty is merely postponed, not resolved. This hypothesis would introduce the world into the inner life of the Holy Trinity as its co-determining principle, and so it too must be rejected. God’s idea of the world, his plan and intention are without any doubt eternal, but in some sense they are not coeternal or co-existent with him,48 as they are ‘separated’ from his ‘essence’ by the exercise of his will. To put it differently, the eternity of God’s idea of the world is of a different type to the eternity of God’s being and consciousness. However paradoxical this distinction between different types of eternity might appear, it must be made in order to emphasize the fundamental difference between God’s nature and will. Far from bringing complexity into God’s inner life, it rightly serves to reaffirm the distinction between his nature and will, which the Fathers of the fourth century made so insistently. The idea of the world originates in God’s will, not his being. Instead of ‘having’ the idea of creation, God ‘invents’ it,49 and because he does this freely through the exercise of his will, he in some sense becomes Creator, albeit from eternity. Nevertheless, God could have chosen not to create, and then his ‘abstaining’ from creation would in no way alter or impoverish his divine nature. It would mean no diminution of it, any more than creating a world enriches divine life. So, examining the issue from the opposite, we have gained some insight into God’s freedom as Creator. In some sense, it makes no difference to God whether or not the world exists; God’s absolute self-sufficiency or aseity means just that. If the world did not exist, that would be like subtracting a finite number from infinity, which by comparison with infinity is

47

48

49

The expression occurs in the metaphysics of Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz (1646–1716) (e.g. in Confessio philosophi: Fragmentum Dialogi de Humana libertate et justitia Dei [The Confession of a Philosopher: Fragment of a Dialogue Concerning Human Freedom and the Justice of God] [1673], Christian Wolff [1679–1754] [Ontologia (1730)] and Immanuel Kant [1724–1804] [in Metaphysik Mrongovius, 1782–1783]). The idea, as Florovsky suggests, is that there must be ‘sufficient reason’ for something to exist, an implicit rejection of the notion that existence is meaningless [Eds.]. Here Florovsky introduces, not unlike Karl Barth before him (see Church Dogmatics [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–1975], II/1, 621–638), temporality into eternity in the form of a notion of contingent eternity. This may be the result of his philosophy of logical relativism, whereby everything related to creation is contingent [Eds.]. St Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 45.55, PG 36.629A:  ‘ennoei [he/it invents/thought up]’; Carminum Liber I. Poemata Theologica, Sectio I. Poemata Dogmatica, IV: De mundo, ll. 67–68, PG 37.421 [GF].

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negligible. Likewise, creating a world adds a finite entity to infinity, which cannot make it any greater. Therefore God’s power and freedom should not only be identified as his capacity to create and develop, but also as his supreme power not to create. As these conjectures are expressed in the categories of human language, by their nature they lack fullness and precision; they only establish certain negative limits instead of formulating clear positive concepts. However, it is the only way in which the experience of faith can be conceptualized in order to disclose, however imperfectly, the mystery of God’s freedom. Therefore, it can be said without undue exaggeration that God might have allowed a complete lack of beings outside himself. Far from diminishing God’s love, this idea shows its surpassing greatness. As God creates from the abundance of his grace and goodness, creation is a clear instance of his exercising free will. That makes the world some kind of a divine excess, and one that adds nothing to the fullness of the Godhead, but is gifted gratuitously and superfluously. The world did not have to be and only exists because of God’s perfect freedom and unfathomable will. That is the ultimate consequence of the world being created as the ‘work of God’s will’ (thelēseōs ergon).50 As God’s self-revelation does not possess the necessity that characterizes his nature and inner life, God’s goodness does not constrain him to reveal himself in creation; so although God reveals himself eternally, he does so with complete freedom. From this it follows that there was no point at which God began to create or became Creator, even though ‘being Creator’ is not a predicate of his nature, unlike being a Trinity of Hypostases. Although in God’s eternal, immutable life there is no origin, development or progression, yet there is a certain perfect order, which is imperfectly reflected in the sequence of divine predicates and names. St Athanasius the Great meant precisely this when he said that ‘for God creation comes second, begetting first’, and ‘that which is from his nature’ precedes ‘that which is from his will’.51 We have to draw these distinctions inside the unchanging eternity of divine life itself. Within divine simplicity there is an absolute, ideal order (taxis) of Hypostases, where the Father is first, the Son second and the Holy Spirit third. It is absolute because there can only be one ‘fount’ or ‘source’ of divine nature.52 Likewise the Trinity of Hypostases should be regarded as prior to divine will and mind, as God’s will and actions (or ‘energies’) belong to the Holy Trinity as a whole, jointly and inseparably. More than that, God’s Trinitarian being is in itself an internal revelation of his all-sufficient and superabundant nature. Divine attributes are also a type of God’s self-revelation, but he is free in choosing how to disclose them, and as one such disclosure, God’s unchanging will first freely produces the idea of creation and then creation itself. 50

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Florovsky likely has in mind a statement from the De fide orthodoxa of John of Damascus: ‘Since with God creation is a work of his will, it is not co-eternal with him – which is because it is not of the nature of that which is produced from nothing to be co-eternal with that which is without beginning and always existing.’ The Orthodox Faith, in St John of Damascus: Writings, trans. Frederic Chase (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999), I, 8, 179 [PG 94.813A] [Eds.]. St Athanasius, C. arian. Or. II, 2, PG 26.149C, 152B; Russian translation: II, 263: ‘deuteron esti . . . to dēmiourgein tou gennan ton Theon . . . pollōi proteron . . . to hyperkeimenon tēs boulēseōs’ [GF]. Cf. V. V. Bolotov, ‘On the Filioque Question, III: The Significance of the Sequence of the Hypostases of the Holy Trinity According to the View of the Eastern Fathers’, Christian Readings [Khristianskoe Chtenie], no. 9 (Sept. 1913), 1046–1059 [GF].

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Another error that we must guard against is equating God’s ‘invention’ of the world in his mind with its creation in the world of the Forms. That would require that both the Form of the world and the individual Forms that jointly constitute it should subsist in God (en tōi Theōi). Nothing created can ever be part of God. The error of this suggestion clearly shows the gulf between God’s necessary existence as Trinity and his free ‘invention’ and creation of the world, which has its basis in his will. Disregard of this fundamental difference might lead to interpreting divine economy as a sum total of essential acts and states, which of necessity reveal God’s nature, and which therefore would ascribe to the world an unduly high status, even if it is only the intelligible world (kosmos noētos). This therefore allows us to make a radical claim: that God’s idea of creation has a degree of contingency, and if it is taken to be eternal, it must possess eternity of freedom, not of essence. As a way of explaining God’s freedom in inventing and willing the Form of the world, we can surmise that God could choose not to create; admittedly it is only a hypothesis, but one that is not self-contradictory. Furthermore, we can surmise that God had a sufficient reason for inventing this Form. Yet St Augustine rightly rejects all attempts to ‘find a cause of God’s will’,53 for it cannot be bound or conditioned by anything. Therefore, God’s will could not be constrained in ‘inventing’ the world [ne ponuzhdaetsia ‘izmyshliat’’ mir’]. St Gregory the Theologian develops this idea as he praises the divine Intellect: from eternity it ‘contemplated the sweet light of its own goodness, the Godhead’s equal and perfect triple light . . . The world-bearing Mind perceived the pictures of the world which he himself had made before the world’s creation, but which for him was real even then. In God’s sight, future, past and present all are one. For God, all are united, held together by his mighty arm.’54 From this passage it is clear that the ‘sweet light of God’s goodness’ cannot be improved by the ‘pictures of the world’; the Mind only ‘creates’ them because of its superabundant love. The images are not part of the Trinity’s light – they stem from God’s will and intention. The ‘images of the world’ are an excess, an unwarranted gift of the all-sufficient Love. In this way, God’s boundless freedom becomes evident by the mere act of willing the world into being. According to St Athanasius, ‘the Father creates everything through the Word in the Holy Spirit’,55 so creation is a joint work of the Holy Trinity. St John of Damascus also says that ‘God creates by thinking, and his thought becomes reality’ (ktizei de ennoōn, kai to ennoēma ergon hyphistatai).56 He continues, ‘Before anything existed, he eternally contemplated it in his mind. Everything came to be at its appointed time by the eternal design of his will, which is both his preordination, and the world’s image and blueprint [obraz i plan]’ (kata tēn thelētikēn autou achronon ennoian, ētis esti proorismos kai eikōn kai paradeigma).57 These images and blueprints [obrazy i proobrazy: types and 53

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St Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus, qu. 28, PL 40.18:  ‘nihil autem maius est voluntatis Dei; non ergo causa eius quaerenda est [Nothing, however, is greater than the will of God; therefore, its cause is not to be sought after]’ [GF]. St Gregory of Nazianzus, Carm. theol., IV: De mundo, ll.67–68, PG 37.421; kosmoιο typous [images/ types of the world=thoughts of God] [GF]. St Athanasius, Epistolae ad Serapionem, III, n. 5, PG 26.632B; Russian translation: III, 64 [GF]. St John Damascene, De fide orth. I, 2, PG 94.865A; Russian translation:  I, 188; St Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 45.5 in S. Pascha, PG 36.629A [GF]. St John Damascene, De fide orth., I, 9, PG 94.837A; Russian translation: I, 176 [GF].

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prototypes] of the things to come are part of God’s ‘eternal and unchanging counsel’ (hē boulē autou hē proaiōnios kai aei hōsautōs echousa), in which ‘all that God had predetermined and which would surely come to pass, was written (echarakterizeto) before it became’.58 As nothing belonging to God can suffer change, this divine ‘counsel’ is also immutable, pre-eternal and unoriginate (anarchos). According to St John of Damascus, this counsel is another kind of God’s image, an image turned towards creation.59 He refers here to Dionysius the Areopagite’s concept of divine images as prototypes of created things. These prototypes for Dionysius are ‘principles which are pre-existent in God as a unity and produce the essences of things: [principles] which theology calls “preordinations” or divine and beneficent volitions, [principles] which ordain things and create them, [principles] whereby the Super-Essential preordained and brought into being all that exists’.60 In a further development, St Maximus the Confessor calls these prototypes or Forms ‘the perfect and eternal thoughts of the eternal God’ (noēseis autoteles aïdioi tou aïdiou Theou).61 This eternal counsel is God’s design and intention about the world, and it must be clearly distinguished from the world itself. God’s Idea of creation is not yet creation, nor must it be identified with the substance from which creation arose, nor does it take part in the cosmic process. Likewise ‘transition’ from God’s ‘design’ (ennoēma) to reality (ergon) must not be equated with some internal development of the divine idea, for it is the genesis of a completely new physical reality outside God, which comprises a multitude of creatures. The divine idea by contrast remains unchangeable and unchanged; as it is transcendent, it also stays outside the created world. Although the world comes into being as a realization of its prototype, the prototype itself suffers no change or development. The prototype in this scheme is a kind of an ideal standard or a task that subsists in God, but points to Another, that which is outside God. The gap between these entities must not be disregarded or minimized. This relationship allows the unchanging prototype that is above temporal

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St John Damascene, Pro sacris Imaginibus Orationes tres, I, 10, PG 94.1240D-1241A; Russian translation: I, 351 [GF]. St John Damascene, De imag., III, 19, PG 94.340; Russian translation: I, 401: ‘The second type of image is God’s thought about what he will create, i.e. his preeternal counsel which stays eternally the same, for in God there is no change and in his counsel no beginning. [Deuteros tropos eikonos, hē en tōi Theōi tōn yp’ autou epomenōn ennoia, toutestin hē proaiōnios autou boulēsis, hē aei hōsautōs echousa, atrepton gar to Theion, kai hē boulēsis autou, anarchos’]’ [GF]. ‘Paradeigmata de phamen einai tous en theōi tōn ontōn ousiopoious kai enaiōs proÿphestōtas logous, hous hē theologia proorismous kalei kai Theia kai agatha thelēmata, tōn ontōn aphoristika kai poiētika kath’ hous ho hyperousios ta onta panta kai proōrise kai parēgagen’ (Dionysius the Areopagite, De divinis Nominibus, V, n. 8, PG 3.824C; cf. VII, n. 2, PG 3.868–869) [GF]. [The English translation is based on Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology, trans. C. E. Rolt (London: SPCK, 1920), 140–141 [Eds.].] St Maximus the Confessor, Scholia in lib. de div. nom. in c. V, 5, PG 4.317C:  cf. in c.  V, 7, PG 4.324A: ‘Everything pre-existed (proÿphestēken) in the Cause of all, as in its Form and Prototype’; in c. V, 8, PG 4.329A-B: ‘hoti poiēsin autotelē aïdion tou aïdiou Theou tēn idean, ētoi to paradeigma phēsi [that surely what is called a paradigm is an idea, a creation complete in itself and everlasting of the everlasting God]’. [On Maximus’s authorship of this text, see n. 3, 34 above.] Unlike Plato whose Forms were separate from God, Dionysius speaks of images and ‘reasons’ (logoi) of things having their existence in God. Cf. Aleksandr Brilliantov, The Influence of Eastern Theology on Western Theology in the Works of John Scotus Eriugena (St Petersburg, 1898, 157ff., 192ff.) [GF].

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change to launch and then generate temporal beings that fulfil God’s eternal decrees in time. In the words of St Augustine, ‘before things came to be they were as if they did not exist’ (utique non erant). Commenting on this phrase, Augustine says that they both were and were not before they came to be, as ‘they existed in God’s knowledge, but not in their own nature’ (erant in Dei scientia, non erant in sua natura).62 St Maximus has a similar concept of created beings as ‘images and likenesses of divine ideas’,63 in which they ‘participate’.64 In the act of creation God actualizes his ideas, ‘turns into substance and reality’ his knowledge that he eternally possesses.65 In other words, in 62

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St Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram libri XII: 1, V, 18.36, PL 34.334; cf. De Trinitate, 1, IX, 6.9 or some similar words, PL 42.965:  alia notitia rei in ipsa se, alia in ipsa aeterna veritate [one is the knowledge of things in themselves, another according to their eternal truth]; cf. De Trin, 1, VIII, 4.7 PL 42.951–952. See also De div. qu., 83, qu. 46, n. 2., PL 40.30: ‘ideae igitur latine possumus vel formas vel species dicere  .  .  .  Sunt namque ideae principales formae quaedam, vel rationes rerum stabiles atque incommutabiles, quae ipsae formatae non sunt, ac per hoc aeternae ac semper eodem modo sese habentes, quia in divina [Florovsky has:  mente] intelligentia continentur. Et cum ipsae neque oriantur, neque intereant; secundum eas tamen formari dicitur omne quod oriri et interire potest, et omne quod oritur et interit [in Latin we can call the ideas either ‘forms’ or ‘species’ . . . The ideas are certain original and principal forms of things, i.e. reasons, fixed and unchangeable, which are not themselves formed and, being thus eternal and existing always in the same state, are contained in the Divine Intelligence. And though they themselves neither come into being nor pass away, everything which can come into being and pass away and everything which does come into being and passes away is said to be formed in accord with these ideas (Eighty-Three Different Questions [De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus], trans. David L. Mosher, FC 70 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1982)]’ [GF]. St Maximus the Confessor, Lib. de div. nom. schol., VII, 3, PG 4.352A-B: ‘ta gar onta . . . eikones eisi kai homoiōmata tōn [theiōn] ideōn [ . . .] ōn eikones ta tēs ktiseōs apotelesmata [for existent things . . . are images and likenesses of the [divine] ideas . . . of which the fulfilments/functions of creation are images]’ [GF]. [Florovsky frequently adds and substitutes words to the Greek and Latin texts he cites and often gives slightly inaccurate references (off by a digit or so), suggesting that he was most likely quoting the texts from memory [Eds.].] St Maximus the Confessor, Lib. de div. nom. schol., V, 5, PG 4.317C; ‘ōn metechousin [in which they participate]’ [GF]. St Maximus the Confessor, Capita de Charitate, IV, 4, PG 90.1048D:  ‘Tēn ex aïdiou en autō ho Dēmiourgos tōn ontōn proÿparchousan gnōsin, hote eboulēthē, ousiōse kai proebaleto’ [When the Creator willed, he gave being to and manifested that knowledge of created things which already existed in Him from all eternity – The Philokalia, trans. G. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware, 4 vols. (London: Faber & Faber, 1979–1995), Vol. 2: 100]; cf. Maximus the Confessor, Lib. de div. nom. schol., IV, 14, PG 4.265C. We must outline here different types of God’s ‘image’ as distinguished by St John Damascene [Florovsky details only three of the six types that the Damascene describes [Eds.]], De imag., III, 19–20, PG 94.1340–1341; Russian translation: I, 400–401: The first is God’s image by essence (physikos), i.e. the Son of God. The second is God’s eternal counsel that has its being in God (en tōi Theōi). The third is the human being; this type of image is called image ‘by imitation’ (ho kata mimēsin hypo Theou genomenos), for created beings cannot share God’s uncreated nature. St John identifies the image of God here as the triple division of the human soul (cf. Fragmenta, 574, PG 95.230). By emphasizing a sharp distinction between divine and human natures, St John emphasizes the eternity of ‘Ideas’ in God’s counsel. The concept of ‘image’ was for the first time fully developed by St Theodore the Studite during the iconoclastic controversy. He makes a direct connection between man as created in God’s image and the legitimacy of icons. He says, ‘The creation of man in the image and likeness of God shows that the making of holy images is in some sense God’s doing’ (St Theodore the Studite, Antirrh. III, c. 2, 5, PG 99.420A; Russian translation: 1907, I, 178). St Theodore adopts here an argument of St Dionysius the Areopagite, when he emphasizes a deep connection between the ‘image’ and its ‘prototype’, as well as their difference of substance or essence. He writes in cf. Antirrh. III, c. 3, 10, PG 99.424D; Russian translation: I, 192: ‘One is inseparable from the other, despite the difference of natures (tēs ousias diaphoron).’ Cf. Karl Schwartzlose, Der Bilderstreit, ein Kampf der griechischen Kirche um ihre Eigenart und ihre Freiheit [Iconoclasm: The Struggle of the Greek Church for Its Special Character and Freedom] (Gotha: Perthes, 1890), 174ff.; the

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creation a new reality emerges from non-existence, which becomes the fulfilment of the divine idea and which must fulfil it in its development. This interpretation of creation steers clear of pantheism, whether Platonic or Stoic, by introducing the idea of ‘seminal reasons’ (logoi spermatikoi).66 Platonism equates the ‘substance’ of every thing with its divine Idea or Form, and so introduces the ‘Forms’ into the essence of beings and ascribes to substances absolute predicates of eternity. However, it is important to draw a sharp distinction between created essences of things and their divine ideas. This allows even the most consistent logical realist to avoid a pantheistic subtext in their theology, and ensures that the universals can be seen as real, yet created. The same argument repudiates pan-logism, as God’s design for a creature does not coincide with its ‘essence’, although its essence remains ‘logical’. The image of things in God’s mind equates neither to their ‘substance’ nor to their ‘hypostasis’; it does not possess the same properties or suffer the same states as the thing itself. A better term for it would be the truth of a thing, or its transcendent entelechy. The truth of a thing and its essence therefore do not coincide.67

III The contention that the world was created and is therefore radically contingent leads to a distinction between two kinds of attributes and actions in God. Although this enquiry belongs to the final limits of understanding where words grow powerless and must be taken in an apophatic (negative), not a cataphatic (affirmative), sense, the example of the Fathers encourages us to persevere in an abstract formulation of our faith. As Metropolitan Philaret Drozdov said, ‘We must not consider any wisdom, even that which is hidden in secret, to be alien or irrelevant, but must in humility prepare our minds for divine contemplation’.68 Yet we must be careful in our abstract reasoning not to overstep the limits of what has been revealed, but instead must develop the internal philosophical content of doctrine and in doing so must limit ourselves to an interpretation of the rule and experience of faith. The distinction of divine attributes that we suggest follows from the internal logic of theology, and in essence is already contained in the ancient distinction between ‘theology’ and ‘economy’. From the early

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Rev. Nikolai Grossou, St Theodore the Studite, His Times, His Life, His Works (Kiev : Press of the KievCaves Uspensky Lavra, 1908), 198ff., 180ff.; Aleksandr P. Dobroklonsky, St Theodore the Studite, Vol. I (Odessa: Ekonomicheskaia Tip., 1901 [2 vols.: 1913–1914]) [GF]. As used by St Justin Martyr (second century), the expression logoi spermatikoi is often translated as ‘Seeds of the Logos’, becoming thereby a Christian reference to the Logos of God. See Justin Martyr, The First and Second Apologies, trans. Leslie W. Barnard (New York: Paulist Press, 1997) [Eds.]. A detailed and insightful study of Ideas has been done by the prominent Catholic theologian Staudenmaier in F. A. Staudenmaier, Die Philosophie des Christentums, Bd. I (the only one published), Die Lehre von der Idee: in Verbindung mit einer Entwicklungsgeschichte der Ideenlehre und der Lehre vom göttlichen Logos [The Doctrine of the Idea, together with the History of the Development of the Doctrine of Ideas and the Doctrine on the Divine Logos] (Gieszen:  B. Ferber, 1840), and also in his monumental work Die Christliche Dogmatik, Bd. III (Freiburg im Breisgau:  Herder’sche Verlagshandlung, 1848 [reprinted, 1967]) [GF]. Discourses and Speeches of a Member of the Holy Synod, Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, Part II (Moscow: Tip. A. Semon, 1844), 87: ‘Address on the Occasion of the Recovery of the Relics of Patriarch Alexey’ [GF].

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days of Christian history, the Fathers make a clear attempt to distinguish between the divine predicates that are part of ‘theology’ (God in himself) and ‘economy’ (God in relation to the world). This warrants a distinction between God’s ‘essence’ and ‘will’, the former being his divine ‘nature’, the latter ‘that which is about his essence’ or that which ‘relates’ to it, a distinction which, however, does not imply separation. According to St John of Damascus, ‘positive statements about God tell us nothing about his nature, but of what relates to his nature’ (ou tēn physin, alla ta peri tēn physin),69 or ‘something that accompanies his nature’ (ti tōn parepomenōn tē physēi).70 However, ‘what God is in his essence or nature, we do not know; it is completely unknowable’.71 St John reiterates here the fundamental tenet of Eastern theology, that God’s nature transcends understanding, and that only his energies or actions can be known.72 From this, it follows that God’s nature and energies are truly distinct, and that this distinction has an impact on God’s relationship with the world. God can only be known insofar as he opens himself to the world, in other words, in his self-revelation or ‘economy’. God’s inner life is concealed from creatures by an ‘unapproachable light’ [1 Tim 6:16] and can only be known in ‘apophatic’ or negative terms that rule out attributes and names that fall short of God’s perfection. In pre-Nicean theology this distinction was often made with some ambiguity. Cosmology was used as the defining factor in relationships between the Persons of the Holy Trinity, and the Second Person was usually seen from the point of view of God’s self-revelation to the world as the God of Revelation, the creative Word of God. This reinforced the view that it was the Hypostasis of the Father that is properly beyond knowledge and comprehension, and so cannot be revealed or described. God reveals himself only through the Logos, as the ‘Pronounced Word’ (logos prophorikos) in the sense that God generates it as his ‘idea and active force’ in order to accomplish the task of creation.73 Because of this, the doctrine of the Holy 69 70 71 72

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St John Damascene, De fide orth., I, 4, PG 94.800B; Russian translation: I, 162 [GF]. St John Damascene, De fide orth., I, 9, PG 94.836A; Russian translation: I, 174 [GF]. St John Damascene, De fide orth., I, 4, PG 94.797B; Russian translation: I, 161 [GF]. This topic is studied by Popov; see Ivan V. Popov, The Personality and Teachings of the Blessed Augustine, Vol. I, Part 2 (Sergiev Posad:  Tip. Trinity-St Sergius Lavra, 1916), 330–370 [GF]. [The reference is to the distinction, classically expressed by Gregory Palamas, between the unknowable essence (ousia) and the knowable or revealed energies (energeia) of God [Eds.].] This phrase (en ideai kai energeiai [in conception and action/in idea and in energy]) was coined by Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis, c. 10, PG 6.908B. Cf. Popov, The Personality and Teachings of the Blessed Augustine, 339–341; Bolotov, Origen’s Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, 41ff.; Aimé Puech, Les apologistes grecs du IIe siècle de notre ère [The Greek Apologists of the Second Century of Our Era] (Paris:  Hachette, 1912). On Origen, see Bolotov, Origen’s Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, 191ff. Although formally the distinction between ‘essence’ and ‘energy’ goes back to Philo and Plotinus, in their minds God’s self is only actualized through his necessary internal self-revelation in the world of the Forms, so they call this cosmological sphere within God ‘Intellect’ or ‘Word’. Philo’s and Plotinus’s cosmological categories for a long time obscured the philosophical formulation of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, although they have nothing to do with it. However, if we detach ourselves from this connection, we will encounter another problem, i.e. God’s relationship to the world, particularly how the Trinitarian God freely relates to the world. It is this relationship that the Church’s teaching about God’s ‘eternal counsel’ makes clear. On Philo, see Metrophan D. Muretov, The Philosophy of Philo of Alexandria in Its Relation to the Doctrine of St John the Theologian on the Logos, Vol. I  (Moscow :  Tip. University of Moscow, 1885); Nikolai N. Gloubokovsky, St Paul the Apostle’s Preaching of the Glad Tidings in Its Origin and Essence, Vol. I (St Petersburg: Tip. Montivid, 1910), 23–425; Victor Ivanitzky, Philo of Alexandria (Kiev :  Tip A. O. ‘Petr Barskii v Kieve’, 1911); Jules Lebreton, Les origines du dogme de la Trinité [The Origins of the Dogma of the Trinity], 4th ed. (Paris:  Gabriel Beauchesne, 1925), 166–239, 570–581, 590–598; cf. [in the same book] excursus A,

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Trinity before Nicea was heavily coloured by subordinationism. It is only in the fourth century that the Church Fathers could for the first time clearly formulate the concept of God’s relationship with the world, based on a complete Trinitarian doctrine. For them, God the Consubstantial Trinity manifests his single and undivided ‘energies’ [deistvie: or ‘operations’] (energeiai) in revealing himself through works and creations, but the single ‘substance’ (ousia) of the One Trinity remains beyond human knowledge or comprehension. In the words of St Basil the Great, creation reveals God’s power and wisdom, but not his hidden being.74 He writes to St Amphilochius of Iconium, ‘We say that we can know God in his energies, but cannot presume to approach his divine substance. For although his energies reach us [hai energeiai autou pros hēmas katabainousin], his nature remains unapproachable.’ Besides, whereas God’s activity consists of manifold energies, his nature is one and simple.75 God’s nature is unknowable and indescribable by humans, and is only known by the Only-Begotten and the Holy Spirit.76As St Gregory the Theologian put it, God’s essence is ‘the Holy of Holies, which is hidden even from the Seraphim and is glorified by the Three Holies who come together in one Dominion and Godhead’. Because of this, a created mind may only imperfectly ‘see the shadow’ of an ‘image of the truth’ in the boundless sea of God’s nature, which does not directly reflect what God is, but ‘what is around him’ (ek tōn peri auton).77 According to St Gregory of Nyssa, ‘God’s nature is utterly unknowable and unlike anything else, for it can only be glimpsed though his energies’,78 so human words can only describe his energies, not his nature.79 Because God’s nature is above human understanding,

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‘On the Energies’, 503–506. Cf. also Franz Josef Dölger, ‘Sphragis’, Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums, Bd. V, Hf. 3–4 (1911), 65–69 [GF]. St Basil the Great, Adversus Eunomium, II, 32, PG 29.648A-B; cf. St Athanasius, Epistola de Nicaenis decretis, n. II, PG 25.441D; Russian translation: I, 413: ‘God is in all by his goodness and power; and he is outside of all in his own nature’ [kata tēn idian physin] [GF]. St Basil the Great, Ep. 234, Ad Amphilochium, PG 32.869A-B [GF]. St Basil the Great, Adversus Eunomium, I, 14, PG 29.544–545; cf. St Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 28.3, PG 36.29; Or. 29, PG 36.88B [GF]. St Gregory Nazianzus, Or. 38.7, in Theoph., PG 36.317B [GF]. St Gregory of Nyssa, In Cantica Canticorum, h.  11, PG 44.1013B; Russian translation:  III, 293; In Psalmos, II, 14, PG 44.585C; Russian translation: II, 169; cf. Viktor I. Nesmelov, The Dogmatic System of St Gregory of Nyssa (Kazan:  Tip. of Kazan Imperial University, 1887), 123ff.; Popov, The Personality and Teachings of the Blessed Augustine, 344–349 [GF]. St Gregory of Nyssa, Quod non sint tres dii, ad Ablabium, PG 45.121A-B; Russian translation: IV, 117:  ‘We have found God’s essence to be ineffable and indescribable, so we conclude that any name, whether it has come from human understanding or from Scripture, is an interpretation of something about God’s essence that can be accessible to us and does not in itself encapsulate it  .  .  .  This applies to any description. They do not refer to the divine essence itself, but instead to something which belongs to it [ti tōn peri autēn].’ Cf. St Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium libri duodecim, II, PG 45.524–525; De Beatitudinibus, Or. 6, PG 44.1268B-C; Russian translation: II, 440–441:  ‘The divine essence in its own self and nature is above any rational thought, as it is beyond all abstract reasoning and cannot be approximated  .  .  .  However, although God is truly above all essence, although he is invisible and indescribable, in other respects he can be seen and known.’ Not all knowledge is knowledge of an essence. St Gregory of Nyssa, In Ecclesiasten, h. VII, PG 44.732B; Russian translation:  II, 332–333:  ‘Even illustrious men speak of God’s works (erga) and not of God himself.’ St John Chrysostom, Incomprehensibili Dei natura, h. III, 3, PG 48.722: In Isaiah’s vision (Isa 6:1–2) the angelic powers contemplated some kind of ‘divine condescension’ and not his ‘unapproachable essence’. ‘The dogma concerning the incomprehensibility of God in his

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naming or description, the multiplicity of imperfect terms that we apply to God refer to his attributes, not his essence. However, God’s qualities that, taken in totality, form our concept of him are not mere speculation – ideas that were abstracted or invented by humans. On the contrary, they describe God’s energies and actions, real and life-giving manifestations of divine life, and his ways of relating to the creation. They arise from God’s eternal mind and from his knowledge of the image of creation that subsists in his mind. This is what is meant by ‘that which may be known of God’ (to gnōston tou Theou – Rom 1:19). In some sense, this is divine light and energies (hē theia ellampsis kai energeia) – to use the terminology of St John of Damascus and Dionysius80 – a distinct part of the divine being, which is one and simple, but ‘has many names’. According to St Paul, ‘the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead’ (hē te aïdios autou dynamis kai theotēs – Rom 1:20). St Paul speaks here of God’s self-revelation to humans, ‘for God hath revealed to them’ (ephanerōsen – Rom 1:19). Commenting on this passage, Bishop Sylvester Malevanskii81 rightly says, ‘God reveals his invisible things not as imagined only, but as really existing; his eternal power not as appearance, but as a fact; his true Godhead not as merely existing in the human mind, but in reality; this he makes visible to us not as an illusion, but in truth.’82 It is visible because God has clearly revealed it, as he is present everywhere and not at a distance, as the prayer says, ‘who art everywhere present and fillest all things, Treasury of blessings and Giver of life’.83 This kind of divine omnipresence by providence can be contrasted with God’s ‘special’ presence by grace in certain places, and can be labelled as a special ‘mode of God’s existence’, different from his ‘existence in his own nature’.84 This other mode of existence is substantial, real presence and not just operative omnipresence, by which any agent is present in what it does (omnipresentia operativa sicut agens adest ei in quod agit). According to St John Chrysostom, even if we ‘do not fully understand’85 this mysterious omnipresence and this mode of God’s existence in what is outside God, he is still ‘present everywhere, completely and fully’; he is, in the words of St John of Damascus, ‘all in all’ (holon holikōs pantachou on . . . holon en pasi).86 In other words,

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essence and the possibility of knowing him through his relationship to the world’ is discussed in perceptive detail by Bishop Sylvester, Essay on Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Vol. I (Kiev : Tip. G. T. Korchak-Novitskii, 1892–1893), 245ff.; Vol. II (Kiev: Tip. G. T. Korchak-Novitskii, 1892–1893), 4ff. Compare with this the chapter on ‘negative theology’ in [Sergius] Bulgakov’s book, Unfading Light (Moscow: Tip. I. Ivanov, 1917), 103ff. [GF]. [Sergius Bulgakov, Unfading Light: Contemplations and Speculations, trans. Thomas Allan Smith (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 103–180 [Eds.].] St John Damascene, De fide orth., I, 14, PG 94.860; Russian translation: I, 185 [GF]. Sylvester Malevanskii (1828–1908) was a prominent systematic theologian who for many years served as an assistant bishop of the Kiev diocese and the head of the Kievan Theological Academy. His magisterial Dogmatic Theology in 5 volumes was first published in 1879 [Trans.]. Bishop Sylvester, Essay on Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, II (3rd ed.) [Kiev :  Tip. G.  T. KorchakNovitskii, 1892–1893], 6 [GF]. This is from a well-known prayer to the Holy Spirit, which forms part of the opening prayers for most Byzantine rite services and liturgies as well as the private rule for Orthodox Morning Prayer [Eds.]. Cf. Bishop Sylvester, Essay on Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, II, 131 [GF]. St John Chrysostom, Homiliae XXXIV in Epistolam ad Hebraeos, h. 2, n. 1., PG 63.19 [GF] St John Damascene, De fide orth., I, 13, PG 94.852C; Russian translation: I, 182 [GF].

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God’s life-giving and active presence in the world is God himself. These are distinct, but also inseparable realities.87 A more systematically developed teaching about God’s ‘nature’ and ‘energies’, which builds on the ideas of the Cappadocian Fathers, is found in the mystical writings known as the Corpus Areopagitica, whose author has evaded historical identification, but who comprehensively shaped the course of all later Byzantine theology. Pseudo-Dionysius starts with the premise that there is a sharp distinction between those ‘divine names’ that describe the inner life of the Holy Trinity, and those that refer to God’s relationship to external things.88 Although both these types of names tell of the immutable divine reality, God’s inner life is hidden and can only be known through negation and restriction [otritsaniiakh i zapretakh].89 This Dionysius emphasizes to the extent that ‘if anyone claims that they have seen God and have understood what they saw, they have not seen him’.90 Nevertheless, God reveals his nature substantially, acts and is truly present in creation through his energies and ideas, in ‘his providence and gifts which proceed as a mighty stream from the incommunicable Godhead, of which all beings partake’.91 He is present in the ‘essence-making procession’ (ousiopoion proodon) and in the ‘beneficent providence’ (agathopoion pronoian), which, although distinct from God’s ‘supersubstantial substance’, cannot be separated from him, as is expressed in the Scholia of St Maximus.92 These ‘processions’, as well as his providence – a kind of divine procession out of himself (exō heautou ginetai) – come from God’s goodness and love.93 These divine energies do not form an indispensable part of creatures, but instead are their life-giving principles and foundations. They are God’s ‘words’ (logoi) and volitions about the creatures, which play the role of their prototypes and preordinations, with which the creatures are linked and must strive to maintain communion.94 They are not merely a ‘starting point’ and a causal principle of things, but also the final goal of creatures that transcends this world. Dionysius gives the best statement of God’s nature and energies as distinct, yet inseparable entities (to tauton kai to heteron [identical 87

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The Eastern Fathers’ distinction between God’s essence and energies, and between apophatic and cataphatic theology that follows from it, have traditionally been rejected by Western theology, starting with St Augustine. See Popov, The Personality and Teachings of the Blessed Augustine, 353ff.; cf. Brilliantov, The Influence of Eastern Theology on Western Theology in the Works of John Scotus Eriugena, 221ff. [GF]. Dionysius the Areopagite, De div. nom., II, 5, PG 3.641D [cf. ibid., II, 3, PG 3.640C] [GF]. Cf. Dionysius the Areopagite, for example, De Coelesti hierarchia, II, 3, PG 3.141A [GF]. Dionysius the Areopagite, Ep. I, Ep. ad Caium, PG 3.1065A [GF]. Dionysius the Areopagite, De div. Nom, XI, 6, PG 3.956B [GF]. Dionysius the Areopagite, De div. nom., I, 4, PG 3.589D; ibid., V, 1–2, PG 3.816B-C: cf. St Maximus the Confessor Lib. de div. nom. schol., in V, 1, PG 4.309A: ‘proodon de tēn Theian energeian legei, hētis pasan ousian parēgage [the divine energy is called procession, which produced every essence]’; in ibid., I, 5, PG 4.205B, 208A: pronoia [providence] and proodos eis ta hexō [outward procession] are contrasted here with autos ho Theos [God himself]’ [GF]. Dionysius the Areopagite, De div. nom., IV, 13, PG 3.712A [GF]. Dionysius the Areopagite, De div. nom., V, 8, PG 3.824; V, 5–6, PG 3.820; XI, 6, PG 3.953. Cf. Brilliantov’s whole chapter on the Areopagitica, The Influence of Eastern Theology on Western Theology in the Works of John Scotus Eriugena, 142–178; Popov, The Personality and Teachings of the Blessed Augustine, 349–352. The pseudo-epigraphical nature of the Corpus Areopagitica and its close connections with Neoplatonism do not lessen its theological importance, which has been accepted by the authority of the Church and the Fathers. It does, however, call for a new historical-theological study and evaluation [GF].

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and separate]).95 For him, God’s energies are his face turned towards creation, not merely his face as imagined by us. It is the true, living gaze of God himself, by which he communicates his will and life, and keeps everything in existence. It is the gaze of almighty strength and superabundant love. The teaching about God’s energies receives its final expression in Byzantium in the fourteenth century, and is best developed in the theology of St Gregory Palamas.96 He starts with the premise that grace and essence are distinct entities, ‘God’s deifying grace or enlightenment is not his essence, but energy’ (hē theia kai theopoiōsa ellampsis kai charis ouch ousia, all’ energeia esti Theou).97 The concept of divine energies received a clear definition at a series of fourteenth-century Constantinopolitan church councils.98 According to them, there is a real distinction, but no separation, between God’s nature and energies. This distinction is primarily reflected in the fact that God’s nature is totally incommunicable and unreachable for creatures, although they can commune with God’s energies. By means of this communion, however, they can achieve genuine fellowship and perfect union with God or ‘deification’,99 for that is ‘God’s natural and 95 96

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Dionysius the Areopagite, De div. Nom., IX, 1, PG 3.909B [GF]. St Gregory Palamas (1296–1357), archbishop of Thessaloniki, is the most important medieval Father of the Orthodox Church. In the fourteenth century, he defended the hesychast monks of Mount Athos who practiced the Jesus Prayer. Some claimed that during their prayer, they had a vision of ‘uncreated light’, which they said was God himself. Some theologians, especially Barlaam of Calabria (1290–1348), argued that it was not possible to experience God directly and that the monks’ claim jeopardized divine simplicity, unity and transcendence. Gregory, drawing on earlier patristic writers, distinguished between God’s unknowable essence and the divine energies through which he reveals himself in creation. Thus, the light seen by the hesychasts was a manifestation of divine energies and hence God himself [Eds.]. St Gregory Palamas, Capita CL physica, theologica, moralia, et practica [150 Chapters on Physics, Theology, Morality and Practical Matters], 68–69, PG 150.1169 [GF]. These local councils (1341, 1344, 1347, 1351, 1368) convened in Constantinople to deal with the hesychast controversy and vindicated Palamas’s teaching on the divine energies. Many Orthodox consider these councils to have church-wide authority. See the Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of Crete in June 2016, §3, (last accessed 23 April 2019). [Eds.]. St Gregory Palamas, Capit. phys., theol. etc., c.  75, PG 150.1173:  St Gregory’s argument is based on drawing distinctions between three realities in God:  his essence, energies and the Trinity of Hypostases. The theological consensus is that it is impossible to attain union with God by essence (kat’ ousian), as in his essence God is ‘incommunicable’ (amethekton). Hypostatic union (kath’ hypostasin) has only been attained by the Incarnate Word of God, c. 78, 1176: Creatures that have achieved perfection are united with God through his energies (kat’ energeian), and participate in his energies, not in his essence, c. 92, 1188: and by participating in his ‘deifying grace’ they achieve union with God himself (c. 93). Divine enlightenment and energies that deify those who participate in them are God’s grace (charis), not his essence (physis) (c. 141, PG 150.1220; c. 144, PG 150.1221; Theophanes, sive de divinitatis et rerum divinarum communicabilitate et incommunicabilitate, Theophanes or of divinity and communicable and incommunicable divine things PG 150.912, 928D; cf. PG 150.921, 941. Cf. the Synodikon of the council of 1452 [sic: 1352] in Bishop Porphyrius [Uspensky]’s book. History of Mt. Athos (St Petersburg: Pub. of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1902), III, 2, supplements, 784 [full text:  780–785], and in the Triodion (Venice, 1820), sel. 168). Originally this idea belongs to St Maximus the Confessor:  ‘methektos men ho theos kata tas metadoseis autou, amethektos de, kata to mēden metechein tēs ousias autou [God is communicated according to his distributions/gifts, but is not communicated according to the imparticipability of his essence]’ (apud Euthymius Zigabenus, Panoplia Dogmatica., 3, PG 130.132A) [GF]. [The Council or Synod of Blachernae of 1351 in Constantinople put forth a famous Synodal Tome of Orthodoxy that sanctioned Gregory Palamas’s Confession of Faith. In 1352, the Synodal Tome was incorporated into a liturgical affirmation of the Orthodox Faith, the Synodikon of Orthodoxy. Uspensky argues,

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inseparable energy and might’ (physikē kai achōristos energeia kai dynamis tou theou),100 ‘the joint dominion and energies of one God in Three Persons’.101 What St Gregory means is that God’s action proceeds from his nature, but at no point separates from it. The concept of ‘procession’ (proïenai) means that there is an ‘ineffable distinction’ between nature and energies, which, however, does not destroy their ‘super-substantial union’.102 God’s energies are neither equated with his substance nor with one of its accidents (symbebēkos), for they are immutable and coeternal with God, existing before creation and revealing God’s creative will about it. In God, besides his substance, there is also that which is neither substance nor accident, that is, his active will, which manifests as his existent, substantial and substance-creating providence and power.103 If the distinction between ‘substance’ and ‘energy’ were disregarded, according to St Gregory Palamas, that would either abolish or blur the difference between begetting and creation, as both of these would then appear to be derived as acts from God’s nature. If this were the

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and Florovsky follows him, that a council was held in July 1352 at Constantinople that ratified this change. The Synodikon, whose basis is the affirmation of icons of 787, continued to evolve over the centuries and is now prescribed to be read on the First Sunday of Lent or the ‘Triumph of Orthodoxy’ [Eds.].] Bishop Porphyrius, History of Mt. Athos, III, 2, 783; Russian translation: 263 [GF]. St Gregory Palamas, Theophanes, PG 150.941 [GF]. St Gregory Palamas, Theoph., PG 150.940C:  ‘ei kai dienēnoche tēs physeōs, ou diaspatai tautēs [it is different from the nature, yet not separated from it].’ Cf. Triodion, sel. 170; and Porphyrius, History of Mt. Athos, III, 2, 784; Russian translation:  264:  ‘To those who confess One God in Three Hypostases, who is omnipotent, and possesses not only uncreated essence and hypostases, but also uncreated energies, and to those who proclaim that God’s energies indivisibly proceed from his essence and by procession reveal their ineffable difference [diakrisin], and by indivisible procession manifests their supersubstantial union [hyperphya tēn henōsin] . . . memory eternal.’ Cf. Triodion, sel. 169, Porphyrius, History of Mt. Athos, III, 2, 782; Russian translation:  262  – ‘henōsis theias ousias kai energeias asynchyton… kai diaphora adiastatē [an unconfused union of the divine essence and energy . . . and undivided difference].’ See St Mark Eugenikos of  Ephesus, Capita syllogistica adversus acindynistas de distinctione inter essentiam et activitatem, Syllogistic Chapters against Akyindynos concerning the distinction between essence and energies apud W. Gass, Die Mystik des N.  Cabasilas [The Mysticism of N. Cabasilas] (Greifswald: C. A. Koch, 1849), Appendix II, 15, 221 [full text: 217–232]: hepomenēn. . . aei kai syndromon [following  .  .  .  eternally and together]. [See also Marci Eugenici Metropolitae Ephesi opera anti-unionistica, ed. L.  Petit (Patrologia Orientalis, 17), (Paris:  Firmin-Didot, 1923, 307–491] [GF]. St Gregory Palamas, Capit. phys., theol. etc.,127, PG 150.1209C-D:  ‘oute gar ousia estin, oute symbebēkos [for it is neither essence, nor accident]’; c. 135, PG 150.1216B-D: ‘to gar mē monon ouk apoginomenon, all’ oud’ auxēsin ē meiōsin hēntinoun epidechomenon, ē empoioun, ouk esth’ hopōs an synarithmoito tois symbebēkosin . . . all’ esti kai hōs alēthōs estin. Ou symbebēkos de estin, epeidē pantapasin ametablēton estin. All’oude ousia kai gar ou tōn kath’heauto hyphestēkotōn estin . . . echei ara ho Theos kai ho ousia, kai ho mē ousia kan ei mē symbebēkos kaloito, tēn theian dēlonoti boulēn kai energeian [for that which not only does not pass away but also admits or effects no increase or diminution whatever could not possibly be numbered among accidents  .  .  .  but it exists and exists truly: it is not an accident since it is absolutely immutable. But it is not a substance for it is not one of those things that can subsist on its own . . . Therefore, God possesses both what is substance and what is not substance, even if it should be called an accident, namely the divine will and energy’ [St Gregory Palamas – The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, Studies and Texts 8, ed., trans. and study by Robert E. Sinkewicz (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988), 240–241 (translation amended)]]; Theoph., PG 150.928B: ‘tēn de theatikēn dynamin te kai energeian tou panta prin geneseōs eidotos kai tēn autou exousian kai tēn pronoian [the foreseeing power and energy of the knowing cause before all things and his authority and foreknowledge/providence]’; cf. Theoph., PG 150.937, 956 [GF].

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case, then in the words of St Mark of Ephesus104 it would also necessarily follow that God’s being and energies fully coincide. If so, any distinction between ‘substance’ and ‘will’ (thelēsis) would be destroyed, and God would be only a Begetter, not a Creator or a Willing Agent. Then there will be no clear distinction between God’s foreknowledge and creation, and so creation would have to be regarded as coeternal with the Creator.105 God’s nature is synonymous with his self-existence, whereas his action or energies is the expression of his nature in relationship with another (pros heteron); so God is Life and has life, is Wisdom and has wisdom and so on. The first set of these terms describes his ineffable nature, the second his nature’s discrete energies, which are indivisibly divided and descend to creation.106 As none of these energies is either hypostatic or self-hypostatic, their multiplicity does not introduce complexity in God’s being.107 The totality of God’s ‘energies’ forms his pre-eternal will, his plan and volition about the ‘other’, in other words, his eternal counsel as Creator. This is rightly regarded as God himself, although in his will, not in his supersubstantial essence.108 104

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St Mark (Eugenikos) of Ephesus (1392–1444) is best known for his defence of Orthodoxy at the Union Council of Ferrara-Florence in 1439, when he opposed the Roman Catholic doctrines of the filioque, the supremacy of the pope and purgatory, and refused to sign the union agreement, which received the support of the patriarch of Constantinople, the emperor and the other Orthodox bishops present, but was soon disowned and never implemented [Eds.]. St Gregory Palamas, Capit. phys., theol. etc., 96, PG 150.1189: ‘ei . . . mēden diapherei tēs theias ousias hē theia energeia, kai to poiein, ho tēs energeias esti, kat’ ouden dioisei tou gennan kai ekporeuein, ha tēs ousias estin  .  .  .  kai ta poiēmata kat’ ouden dioisei tou gennēmatos kai tou problēmatos [If . . . the divine energy is not in any sense distinct from the divine substance, then creating, which belongs to the energy, will in no way differ from generation and procession, both of which belong to the substance . . . and creatures will in no way differ from the one begotten and the one sent forth’ (trans. St Gregory Palamas  – The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, Robert Sinkewicz, amended, 196–197)]. Cf. Capit. phys., theol. etc., 97, 98, 100, 102; Cf 103, PG 150.1192:  ‘oude tōi thelein dēmiourgei Theos, alla to pephykenai monon [if God’s creative energy is not subject to his will, then God creates not by willing but by nature alone [trans. Robert Sinkewicz, 200–201]]’, c. 135, PG 150.1216C-D: ‘ei tōi boulesthai poiei ho Theos, all’ ouch’ haplōs tōi pephykenai, allo ara to boulesthai, kai heteron to pephykenai [if God creates by will and not simply by nature, then willing is one thing and natural being is another [trans. Robert Sinkewicz, 240–241]].’ St Mark of Ephesus, Capita syllogistica, apud Gass., 217: ‘eti ei tauton ousia kai energeia, pantē te kai pantōs hama tōi einai kai energein ton Theon anagkē synaïdios ara tōi Theōi hē ktisis ex aïdiou euergounta kata tous Hellēnas [yet if essence and energy are identical, in each and every way both what God is and what God does would at once be a necessity: then creation would be coeternal with God, out of an eternal activity, just as the Hellenes/pagans taught]’ [GF]. [The last few sentences of the paragraph above are Florovsky’s paraphrase of both Mark of Ephesus and Gregory Palamas [Eds.].] St Gregory Palamas, Capit. phys., theol. etc., 125, PG 150.1209; St Mark of Ephesus, Capita syllogistica, apud Gass., c.  14, 220; c.  9, 219:  c. 22, 225:  ei polypoikilos men hē tou Theou sophia legetai te kai esti, polypoikilos de autou hē ousia ouk estin, heteron ara hē autou ousia kai heteron hē sophia [If it is said that the wisdom of God is manifold [cf. Eph 3:10], and it is so, his essence is not thereby manifold: his essence then is one thing and wisdom another]; Cf. St Mark of Ephesus, Capita syllogistica, c. 10, 209 [GF]. St Gregory Palamas, Theoph., PG 150.929; 936; 941; St Mark of Ephesus, Capita syllogistica, apud Gass., c. 21, 223 [GF]. The study of Byzantine theology of divine energies and actions still awaits treatment in a monograph, especially as most of St Gregory Palamas’s works still exist only in manuscript form. For a general overview of that era and its theological movements, see Bishop Porphyrius, First Journey into the Athonite Monasteries and Sketes (Kiev :  Tip. V.  L. Frontskevicha, 1877– 1881), II, 358ff., and by the same author, History of Mt Athos, III, 2, 234ff.; Archimandrite Modestus [Strel’bitskii], St Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica (Kiev, 1860), 58–70,

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The distinction made in God between ‘nature’ and ‘action’, or between ‘substance’ and ‘grace’ (physis and charis) mirrors the mysterious distinction in him between ‘necessity’ and ‘freedom’, which must be understood in terms appropriate to divine life. In his hidden being God is ‘necessary’. This necessity clearly cannot be the necessity of compulsion, but is instead some kind of necessity of nature, which in the mind of St Athanasius the Great is ‘higher and prior than the freedom of choice’.109 Therefore it could be stated with permissible boldness that God cannot fail to be a Trinity of Persons, as the Trinity of Hypostases, being a ‘necessity’ or a ‘law’ of God’s nature, precedes God’s will. The idea of such internal necessity is reinforced by the teachings of ‘consubstantiality’ and utter inseparability of the three Persons in God, ever coexisting and embracing [sopronitsaiushchikh:  co-inhering or co-penetrating]110 each other. St Maximus the Confessor denies that the divine will could belong to the inner life of the Godhead or that it could define the relationships of the Persons of the Holy Trinity, for they coexist above all relation and action and their relationships are defined purely by their existence.111 As God’s ‘natural’ will common to all three Persons is free, and as God is free in his energies, the primary inner relationships between the three Hypostases need to be defined without reference to cosmology or to any creatures, either in the original or in the new creation. God’s Trinitarian being does not depend on the need for him to act in the world or to reveal himself. The mystery of God’s inner life must be thought of without reference to the divine economy, and the hypostatic characteristics of the Divine Persons must be defined only in relation to each other, with no reference to the creation. This would not undermine the fact that God truly relates to the creation as a Trinity, or that the three Hypostases play different roles in creation, but this does set their

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113–130; Bishop Alexey [Dorodinitsyn], Byzantine Church Mystics of the XIVth Century (Kazan:  Tsentralnaia Tipografiia, 1906), and in the Greek of G. H. Papamichael, St Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica (St Petersburg-Alexandria:  The Press of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, 1911). For an overview of Russian studies, see the bibliographical survey by Ivan I. Sokolov in the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education, 1913, April–July issues. The Eastern distinction between ‘essence’ and ‘energy’ met with resolute rejection by Catholic theology. A detailed and perceptive study of this can be found in [Dionysius] Petavius, Opus de theologicis dogmatibus, ed. J. B. Thomas (Paris:  Barri-Ducis[/L. Guérin, 1864[–1870]), tomus I, I, I, c.c. 12–13, 145–160; III, 5, 273–276 [GF]. [Florovsky is writing in the late 1920s, at the beginning of the neo-palamite revival in Orthodox theology. His bibliography appears to be taken almost entirely from Pavel Florensky [Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny: opyt pravoslavnoi teoditsei v dvenadtsati pis’makh (Moscow : Put’, 1914), n. 127, 660–661], The Pillar and Ground of the Truth, trans. Boris Jakim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), n. 128, 468–469. It is unclear whether Florovsky had read any texts of Palamas beyond those collected in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca (1857–1866), such as Palamas’s monumental Triads. The first critical edition of the Triads was published by John Meyendorff: Grégoire Palamas, Défense des saints hésychastes [Defense of the Holy Hesychasts], 2 vols., Introduction, critical text, translation and notes by Jean Meyendorff (Louvain:  Peeters, 1959; 2nd ed. 1973). The first complete critical edition of Palamas’s works was published beginning in 1962, under the editorship of Panayiotis K. Chrestou (Grēgoriou tou Palama syngrammata, 5 vols. (Thessaloniki:  Ekdotikos Oikos Kyromanos, 1962–1992)). For further discussion see Norman Russell, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) [Eds.].] St Athanasius, C. arian. Or. III, c. 62–63, PG 26.453–457; Russian translation: II, 446–449 [GF]. This is a reference to perichōrēsis or circumincessio, which is the patristic teaching of the persons of the Trinity existing through and in one another. See Verna Harrison, ‘Perichoresis in the Greek Fathers’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 35, no. 1 (1991): 53–65 [Eds.]. St Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua 24, PG 91.1261–4 [GF].

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various roles in the correct context. Indeed, the work done by the early Church to conceptualize Christ’s divinity can be seen as the progressive shelling away of attributes that describe him in relation to the world, such as Creator, Redeemer, Demiurge and Saviour, so as to better see his divinity within God’s inner life as Being and Existence. Although the Nicene Creed states that the Word took an active part in the world’s creation (‘by him all things were made’), this is possible not only because the Word is God, but also because he is the Word of God, or God who is also the Word.112 Even so, none other than the Great Athanasius decisively severed all links between the doctrines of the Word’s generation and the world’s creation. The generation of the Word does not presuppose the world’s existence as either reality or a plan. Even if the world had not been created, the Word would have been fully divine, for the Word is the Son of God by nature (huios kata physin).113 St Athanasius writes, ‘Even if it pleased God not to make creatures, still the Word would have abided with the Father, and the Father in him’; but creatures could only receive their being through the Word.114 Even before Athanasius, St Methodius of Olympus teaches that creatures were made by the Word and through the Word, ‘in the image’ of the Word and ‘in the image of the Father’s Image’.115 Creation therefore requires that God should be Trinitarian and bears his Trinitarian imprint. It is precisely for this reason that cosmological motifs must be kept separate from the inner life of the Holy Trinity. As being a Trinity encompasses the fullness of divine nature, it follows that God’s devising and willing the world into existence is a truly creative act that arose from his will as a surplus of love, a gift and a grace. The distinction between God’s attributes in himself as He Who Is, and in his energies as One who reveals himself to the world, is not a subjective one based on the human need to reason by analysis. Instead it objectively and ontologically affirms God’s absolute freedom as he creates and acts in the world. The same can be affirmed about the divine economy of salvation. God’s plan [sovet:  counsel] to redeem the world is an eternal and pre-eternal plan:  it is his ‘pre-eternal purpose’ (Eph 3:11), the ‘economy of the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God’ (Eph 3:9). As the Son of God was eternally predetermined to become incarnate and to die on the Cross, he is called 112

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‘Potomu, chto Slovo est’ Slovo Bozhie, Bog Slovo.’ Florovsky emphasizes that the hypostatic characteristics of the Second Person of the Trinity, although they are not connected with the creation, allow him to create [Trans.]. These remarks are an indirect critique of Sergius Bulgakov. Bulgakov argued that  – seen from one point of view – creation was a necessity for God as love. God had to be Creator to be God and, Bulgakov argued, Christ, the incarnate Logos, was written into the foundation of creation. See Brandon Gallaher, Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2016), 84–114 [Eds.]. St Athanasius, C. arian., II, 31, PG 26.212B; Russian translation: II, 302: ‘The Word of God did not come to exist because of us; instead we came to exist because of him, for “through him all things were made” (Col 1:16). He, the Mighty One, did not receive being from the One Father for the sake of our weakness, or in order that the Father should create us through him. That cannot be; that is not the teaching of truth! Even if God had not willed creation, the Word would have still been with God, and the Father would have been in him. Creatures could not receive their being without the Word, which is why they came to be through him. This is just. As the Word is by nature the Son of God’s essence, as he comes from God and abides in God, which is what he himself has said, creatures could not exist other than through him’ [GF]. St Methodius of Olympus, Convivium decem virginum, VI, I, PG 18.113 [GF].

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‘the Lamb who was verily foreordained before the foundation of the world’ (1 Pet 1:19–20) – the ‘Lamb slain from the foundation of the world’ (Rev 13:8). However, this ‘predestination’ (prothesis) does not belong to the ‘natural’ necessity of divine nature. It is, in the words of St John of Damascus, not ‘an act of nature, but a glimpse of his future economy of self-abasement’.116 In other words, it is an act of divine love, ‘for God so loved the world that he sent his Only-Begotten Son’ [Jn 3:16]. Because of this, the divine attributes of the Son that relate to the economy of salvation differ from those that relate to his hypostatic being within the Holy Trinity. Consequently, there is no internal necessity for God to reveal himself, a point already contained in the concept of divine beatitude. As revelation is an act of freedom and love that lacks a ‘natural’ internal cause in the divine nature, it does not introduce change into God’s being.117 This means that the world is rooted in God’s freedom, the freedom of divine love.

IV God eternally creates [izmyshliaet: invents/thinks up] the image of the world in his mind, and this free act of will is no other than his immutable counsel. But the fact that his will was with necessity accomplished does not mean that his act of will was also necessary. The immutability of God’s will stems from the fact that his will is supremely free, which is also why it does not constrain the freedom of creatures.118 Perhaps the scholastic distinction between God’s absolute and ordinary power (potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata)119 can help here. By God’s providence, creatures, as well as time itself, are concurrently ‘constituted’ out of nothing, so that by freely developing in time, creation as a whole should reach the full measure [mera] of God’s eternal image and purpose about it. Throughout this process, the divine image of the world by its nature remains transcendent for the creation, but there also is an ineluctable connection between them, even when creation shows resistance. This is because the ‘image’ or the ‘Form’ [idea] of creation is none other than God’s will (thelētikē ennoia) and energies, by which creation has been made and sustained. However, as God’s creative intention and plan [sovet:  counsel] cannot be destroyed by a creature’s rebellion, they appear 116 117 118

119

St John Damascene, Tractatus contra Jacobitas, n. 52, PG 94.1464 [GF]. Ibid., De fide orth., I, 8, PG 94.812; Russian translation: I, 167. [GF]. Florovsky’s use of tvar (creation or creatures) is ambiguous. He seems to be using tvar collectively to mean ‘creatures’, not ‘creation’, given the subsequent discussion of providence. Alternatively, he could be saying that because God’s will is immutable, and so supremely free, it is for this reason absolutely free and in no way bound in its action in creation [Eds.]. The distinction between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata is found in Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologica, 1.25.5) and is developed in both subsequent scholasticism and in Protestant writers down to Karl Barth (1886–1968). In his absolute power (potentia absoluta), God can do anything that does not imply contradiction, whereas ordinary power (potentia ordinata) refers to what God actually does, according to laws that he has freely established. This distinction is interpreted as establishing a line between the natural, operating under divine providential efficiency, and the supernatural, the immediate exercise of his power. The laws of nature would fall into the category of ‘ordinary power’, and revelation and miracles into that of ‘absolute power’ [Eds.].

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to the rebellious as judgement:  a wrathful force and a consuming fire. God’s image of and counsel for the world contains in itself ‘every creature’, that is, every created hypostasis in its unique, indestructible form. God eternally contemplates and wills every individual being in the fullness of its particular destiny, including the existence of sin, which God permits without willing it. If, according to the mystical vision of St Symeon the New Theologian, in the world to come ‘Christ will look at myriads of saints, and will see one and all, so each will perceive Christ looking and addressing him alone’, Christ will ‘not be changed, but will appear differently to all’,120 then also in his eternal counsel that is part of his will, God eternally beholds all the countless myriads of created hypostases, wills them into being and reveals himself differently to each. In this consists his ‘undivided bestowing’ of his grace and energies, of a ‘thousand hypostases’,121 as St Gregory Palamas daringly calls it, for it is freely given to myriads of other hypostases. Each hypostasis is therefore marked with a unique ray of God’s loving will by the very fact of its coming into being. In this sense, everything subsists in God by its ‘image’ (en ideai kai paradeigmati [in form and pattern]), although by its nature creation is infinitely removed from the uncreated Being. The distance between them persists, albeit permeated by the divine love, but the barrier between them was broken by the incarnation of the Word of God. The image of creation that subsists in God is beyond the reach of created nature and differs from the ‘image of God’ in a creature. In whatever sense we interpret the ‘image of God’ in humans, it is an aspect of created human nature and so must itself be created.122 It is some kind of a ‘likeness’ or a reflection,123 but over the image its Prototype unceasingly shines, sometimes with a joyful, and sometimes with a forbidding, light and this light shows man’s true vocation and potential [lit. ‘call and norm’]. Created beings are set the supernatural task of freely achieving communion and fellowship with God. Although 120

121 122

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See The Discourses of St Symeon the New Theologian in the Russian translation of Bp. Theophan, 2nd ed., of Panteleimon Monastery, Mt Athos (Moscow: Tipo-litografiia I. Efimova [1890–] 1892), T. 1 [2 vols], p. 479, Dis. 52. The original Greek was not available to me [GF]. [The passage is the following: On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses, Vol. 1: The Church and the Last Things, trans. and ed. Alexander Golitizen (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), Dis. 3, 127–128. This is the updated note of the translation in CW, IV, 277: ‘St Symeon, Ethical Discourses III – St Symeon le Nouveau Théologien, Traités théologiques et éthiques [Theological and Ethical Treatises] (SC, 122) (Paris: Le Cerf, 1966), 414: ‘Enthen toi kai blepomenos para pantōn kai pasas blepōn autos tas anarithmētous myriadas kai to heautou omma echōn aei atenizon kai ametakinētōs histamenon hekastos autōn dokei blepesthai par’ autou kai tēs ekeinou apolauein homilias kai kataspazesthai hyp’ autou . . . allos allo ti deiknymenos einai kai diairōn heauton kat’ axian hekastōi, katha tis estin axios’’ [Eds.].] St Gregory Palamas, Theoph., PG 150.941 [GF]. Florovsky is here reacting to the pantheistic dangers of Bulgakov’s teaching that Created Sophia (the divine image), which humanity bears within itself (and in his later thought will be identified with creation as such), is ultimately in conformity and even one reality with Divine Sophia (the proto-image of divine-humanity in God, which he later identifies with the divine substance) [Eds.]. Cf. apeikonisma [image/likeness] in St Gregory of Nyssa, De hom. opif., V, PG 44.137; Russian translation:  I, 90. St Augustine rightly distinguishes and juxtaposes the image of his substance (imago eiusdem substantiae)  – God’s Son  – and the image not of his substance, which as a created image is similar to a picture (imago non eiusdem substantiae, sicut pictura, sicut imago creata), i.e. the human being. See St Augustine, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum, I, V, 4, PL 34.749. In Russian, the best discussion of patristic interpretations of ‘the image of God’ can be found in V. S. Serebrennikov, The Doctrine of Locke on the Innate Principles of Knowledge and Activity (St Petersburg: Tip A. Katansky and K, 1892), 266–330 [GF].

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this goal transcends created nature, a creature can only fulfil its potential by succeeding in it. This task is a calling from God, in which a creature can only succeed by its selfdetermination and podvig.124 This process of creaturely becoming, therefore, is real in its freedom and free in its reality and by it things that formerly were not, are completed and accomplished, for it is directed by God’s task. It gives scope for ultimate creativity not only in the sense of developing one’s potential, but also crucially in the sense of bringing something radically new into existence. Creativity is possible here because of the chasm between the creature’s nature and the task it was set, although in some sense this task is entirely ‘natural’ and congenial for creative beings, and so succeeding in it brings fulfilment to the creature. Nevertheless, the ‘I’ that brings itself to such creative realization is no longer a natural or empirical ‘I’, and its ‘self-realization’ is a break and a leap from the realm of nature to the realm of grace. For a human being, such self-realization is achieved through acquisition of the Spirit125 and communion [prichastie] with God, for only in ‘communion’ [obshchenie] with God can humans become ‘truly themselves’, and conversely in alienating themselves from God they fall short of themselves. Yet they do not achieve self-realization by their own efforts, for this task transcends human nature and requires a living and free encounter and union with God. As the world’s substance is radically different from God, his plan for it can only be fulfilled through creation developing itself [tvarnoe stanovlenie:  lit. created becoming], as God’s counsel about the world was not to create a self-evolving or self-actualizing substratum or substance. Instead he prepared a final measure and a crowning glory for Another’s achievement [dlia stanovleniia drugogo: lit. ‘for the becoming of another’]. Seen like this, the task of creation is not limited to development or to realizing its natural talents. Indeed, the point of the ultimate and the highest self-determination for a created being means a burning desire to transcend oneself, a move beyond nature – kinēsis hyper physin, as St Maximus put it126 – and God responds by sending his grace, which blesses and crowns the creature’s podvig. The final limit and goal of a creature’s desire and progress, in this theological vision, is deification (theōsis) or divinization (theopoiēsis), in which the divine and created natures nevertheless remain separate, given the impossibility of created nature’s transubstantiation into the divine. Although St Basil the Great, as preserved by St Gregory the Theologian, says that creation ‘has received a commandment to become God’,127 this ‘divinization’ is strictly understood as fellowship with God, a communion (metousia) with his life and gifts, and so attaining certain qualities that liken the creature to God. By being sealed by the Spirit’s anointing, such people become conformed to 124

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Florovsky says chrez samoopredelenie i podvig tvari. In English this might be rendered ‘through the self-determination and sustained effort of the creature’, but this does not fully grasp Florovsky’s emphasis on the act of free will (samoopredelenie) and then a sustained ascetic effort or spiritual feat (podvig) that are required to achieve the deified state [Trans. and Eds.]. The phrase stiazhanie Dukha (‘acquisition of the Spirit) is an adaptation of the well-known expression, ‘the acquisition of the Holy Spirit’ from the ‘Conversation of St Seraphim of Sarov with Nicholas Motovilov Concerning the Aim of the Christian Life’. Seraphim of Sarov (1754 (or 1759)–1833), building on the ascetic tradition of the Philokalia (1782), taught that the goal of life is developing a living communion with the Holy Spirit. Coming from a merchant background and speaking to a merchant disciple, he used the word stiazhanie as a metaphor for persistence in ‘acquiring’ the Holy Spirit [Trans. and Eds.]. St Maximus the Confessor, Ambigu., 7, PG 91.1093 [GF]. St Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 43.48, In laudem Basil. Magni, PG 36.560A [GF].

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God’s will, to their own image in God, their prototype, and so ‘conformed to God’ (symmorphoi theōi).128 This is possible because Christ’s incarnation has immutably united the first fruits of human nature with the life of the Godhead, and so adoption by God and participation in his life are open to every creature. As St Athanasius said, the Word ‘became human so that he might deify us (theopoiēsē) in himself ’129, so that the ‘sons of man become sons of God’.130 This ‘deification’ became possible because Christ, the Incarnate Word of God, made us ‘receptive to the Spirit’; he ‘prepared for us not only the resurrection and the ascension, but also the indwelling and intimacy of the Spirit’.131 A ‘flesh-bearing God’ has transformed us into ‘Spirit-bearing men’, sons ‘by grace’, the ‘sons of God in the likeness of God’s Son’.132 So humans have now regained what they had lost in the Fall, when ‘the breaking of the commandment returned man to his natural state’,133 from which man had been elevated in his first adoption or birth by God, that is, when he was first created.134 The idea of ‘deification’ encapsulated in the favourite phrase of St Athanasius and St Gregory the Theologian,135 ‘theon genesthai [to become a god]’, is more fully explained by the other two Cappadocian Fathers as ‘becoming like God’ (homoiōsis pros ton Theon).136 Although St Macarius of Egypt says that Spirit-bearing souls are ‘transformed into the divine nature’ and achieve ‘communion with the divine nature’,137 he understands this communion as krasis di’ holon [total mixture], or a kind of ‘mingling’ of the two in which the natures and their properties remain distinct.138 He also clearly states that although ‘the divine Trinity inhabits the soul, which through God’s grace keeps itself pure, she only does so to the extent of everyone’s ability and spiritual measure, not as the Holy Trinity is in herself [ne kak Ona Sama v Sebe est’], for God cannot be contained by a creature’.139 As in many other areas, clear formulations 128 129

130 131 132 133

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St Amphilochius of Iconium, Or. I In Christi natalem, 4, PG 39.41A [GF]. St Athanasius, Epistola ad Adelphium Episcopum, Ep. 40, 4, PG 26.1077A; Russian translation: III, 306 [GF]. Ibid., De Incarnatione et Contra Arianos, 8, PG 26.996A; Russian translation: III, 257 [GF]. Ibid., C. arian., I, 46, 47, PG 26.108–109; Russian translation: II, 236–237 [GF]. Ibid., De incarn. et c. arian., 8, PG 26.996–997; Russian translation: III, 258 [GF]. Ibid., Oratio de Incarnatione Verbi, 4, PG 25.104B: ‘eis to kata physin autous epestrephen [turned them to what was natural]’; Russian translation: I, 196 [GF]. Ibid; C.  arian., II, 58–59, PG 26.272–273; Russian translation:  II, 338–340. Cf. Ivan V. Popov, The Religious Ideal of St Athanasius (Sergiev Posad, 1903) [published in instalments in a journal:  Bogoslovskii Vestnik, no. 12 (1903): 690–716; no. 3 (1904): 448–483; no. 5 (1904): 91–123 [Eds.]] [GF]. For a summary of citations from St Gregory, see Karl Holl, Amphilochius von Ikonium in seinem Verhältnis zu den grossen Kappadoziern [Amphilochius of Iconium in His Relationship to the Great Cappadocians] (Tübingen and Leipzig:  J. C. B. Mohr, 1904), 166; cf. also Ivan V. Popov, ‘The Idea of Deification in the Ancient Eastern Church’, Questions in Philosophy and Psychology (1909, II-97): 165–213 [GF]. Cf. Holl, Amphilochius von Ikonium, 124–125, 203ff. [GF]. St Macarius of Egypt, Hom. 44, 8, 9, PG 34.784A-785:  ‘allagēnai kai metablēthēnai  .  .  .  eis heteran katastasin, kai physin theian [altered and changed . . . to another condition, and a divine nature]’ [GF]. Cf. Joseph Stoffels, Die Mystische Theologie Makarius des Aegypters (Bonn:  P. Hanstein, 1908), 58–61 [GF]. St Macarius of Egypt, De amore, 28, PG 34.932A: enoikei de ou kath’ ho estin. [it indwells, but not as it is in itself] [GF]. [This text is an eleventh-century adaptation by Symeon Metaphrastis of portions of the Macarian Homilies. See The Philokalia, trans. Palmer et al., Vol. 3: §112, 334 [Eds.].]

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took time to develop here, but from the outset it was understood that there is an insurmountable divide between the two natures, and a distinction was made between divinity by nature (kat’ ousian or kata physin) and divinity by communion (kata metousian). Further developments of the concept of divine ‘energies’ provided a stronger foundation for the idea of ‘deification’, especially in the writings of St Maximus, ‘Those who are saved receive salvation by grace, not by nature [Eph 2:5]’,140 and if ‘in Christ the whole fullness of the Godhead dwelt by nature, in us God dwells not fully, but only by grace’.141 Therefore, the future ‘deification’ for St Maximus means becoming like God by grace; in his words, ‘we will appear like him, in virtue of deification by grace’ (kai phanōmen autōi homoioi kata tēn ek charitos theōsin).142 However, even as the creature partakes of divine life ‘in the union of love’, ‘wholly and completely co-inhering with the whole God’ (holos holōi perichōrēsas holikōs tōi Theōi) and sharing in his divine attributes, it still remains outside God’s nature (chōris tēs kat’ ousian tautotēta [without identity according to essence]).143 St Maximus powerfully emphasizes this point when he equates God’s deifying grace with his creative will expressed in the command ‘Let there be’.144 The human person, through the podvig of the acquisition of the Spirit, becomes a vessel of grace, a thing nourished and filled by it. This fulfils God’s will, which in creation brought the non-existing into being, so that those of them who come to him may share in him. Even though not every person would open their door to the Creator who stands patiently knocking, God’s decision to create every individual being is already a gift of grace. Humans were made in order to open themselves freely to God’s call, to overcome their isolation and to fulfil, by renouncing themselves, the dread mystery of the two natures, human and divine, for the sake of which the world was made, for it was made so that it might become the Church, the Body of Christ. The goal of human history is that the creation should respond to God by freely accepting his pre-eternal 140

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St Maximus the Confessor, Capita Theologiae et Oeconomiae Centuria, I, 67, PG 90.1108B: ‘kata charin gar, all’ ou kata physin estin hē tōn sōzōmenōn sōtēria [For the salvation of those that are saved is by grace and not by nature]’ [GF] [=The Philokalia, Two Hundred Texts on Theology, 2: I, §67, 127 [Eds.]]. Ibid., Cap. theol. et oecon. cent., II, 21, PG 90.1133 [GF] [=The Philokalia, Two Hundred Texts on Theology, 2: II, §21, 142 [Eds.]]. Ibid., Ep. 43: Ad Ioannem cubicularium, PG 91.640C; cf. Capitum Quinquies Centenorum Centuria, I, 42, PG 90.1193D [=The Philokalia, Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice, 2: I, §42, 173 [Eds.]]; De charit., III, 25, PG 90.1024: ‘kata metousian, ou kat’ ousian, kata charin, ou kata physin [according to participation, not according to essence; according to grace, not according to nature].’ [This exact phrase is not in this passage.] Ambigu., 7, 127a: he refers to this as ‘being deified through the grace of God Incarnate’ (PG 91.1088C, 1092) [GF]. St Maximus the Confessor, Ambigu. 41, 222b: The goal of the creation’s ascent is ‘by uniting in love the created nature with the uncreated, to achieve their union and sameness (en kai tauton deixeie) by acquiring God’s grace, and as they are fully permeated by God through grace, to become all that God is (pan ei ti per estin ho Theos).’ PG 91.1308B; cf. also St Anastasius of Sinai, Hodēgos, c. 2, PG 89.77: ‘Deification is an ascension to that which is better, but it is neither an diminution nor change of human nature (ou mēn physeōs meiōsis ē metastasis) . . . nor a transformation of one’s essence’ [GF]. St Maximus the Confessor, Ep. 43: Ad Ioann. Cubic., PG 91.640: ‘He created us to become sharers of God’s essence and participants of eternity itself, so that we become like him by deification through grace, through which the substances of all beings were created (hē ousiōsis), and that which was not came into being and had its genesis (kai hē tōn mē ontōn paragōgē kai genesis)’ [GF].

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counsel both in word and in deed. The potency of created nature is from the beginning affirmed in the dual nature of the Church, human and divine. Creation is Another – a second nature – which God brought out of nothing by freedom and for freedom, and in freedom it must become fully formed to the Creator’s measure [mera], by which it exists and moves and has its being. Creation is not equivalent to God’s measure, nor is that measure the same as the original creation. Human freedom mysteriously imposes a ‘limit’ on God’s omnipotence, for God wills to save creation not by force, but in freedom. Creation is Another, and because of that it must, within its own self, ascend to God by its own efforts, albeit with God’s help. In the Church, creation is restored to its fullest reality, and its creaturely podvig is crowned with salvation. The Church replicates or, to put it better, continues the miracle of Christ’s two natures. In the words of St Theophan the Recluse,145 the Church as the Body of Christ is the ‘fulfilment of Christ, just as the tree is the fulfilment and realisation of the seed’.146 The Church lives in constant union with Christ, her head, of which St Nicholas Cabasilas writes in his Exposition of the Divine Liturgy, ‘As when we look at red-hot iron we can only see fire, not iron whose properties are completely consumed, so likewise if anyone could see the Church as it is united with Christ and communicates with his flesh, they would only see her as the Body of the Lord.’147 It is therefore in the Church, through her union with Christ in the Holy Spirit, that creation ever finds its foundation and strength.

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147

Saint Theophan the Recluse (Theophan Zatvornik; Georgy Vasilievich Govorov) (1815–1894) was a leading figure of the spiritual renaissance in nineteenth-century Russia. He was consecrated bishop of Tambov in 1859 and then moved to the see of Vladimir in 1863. Theophan resigned his see in 1866 and spent most of the rest of his life, first as a monk, then as a hermit, in the small monastery of Vyshi. He popularized in Russia the hesychastic revival of the eighteenth century with the use of the Jesus Prayer (or ‘Prayer of the Heart’) by all Orthodox Christians. He translated the Philokalia (Venice, 1782) into Russian (1876–1890) and Unseen Warfare by Nikodemus the Hagiorite [Eds.]. Bishop Theophan [the Recluse], Commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians (Moscow : Univers. Tip., 1882), 112–113; to the Ephesians, I, 23 [GF]. Nicholas Cabasilas, Sacrae liturgiae expositio, 38, PG 150.452D (Russian translation:  Writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church Concerning the Divine Services of the Orthodox Church (St Petersburg: Tip K. Trusova, [1855–] 1857), T. III, 385 [GF]. [See Nicholas Cabasilas, A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, trans. J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty (Crestwood, NY:  St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 91 [Eds.].]

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Preface to In Ligno Crucis

One of George Florovsky’s major (but ultimately abortive) literary projects from the late 1930s until his final years was a book on the patristic understanding of redemption or atonement, to have been titled In Ligno Crucis1 [On the Tree of the Cross]: The Patristic Doctrine of Atonement. Florovsky’s writings on redemption can be seen as a reaction to Sergius Bulgakov’s controversial Agnets Bozhii [The Lamb of God] (1933), which featured a ‘sophiological’ reading of atonement. Florovsky was publicly ambivalent about Bulgakov’s theology but privately highly critical of sophiology. The theme of Florovsky’s unfinished book on atonement would have been that the true Orthodox teaching on redemption is founded on the Fathers and the best historical scholarship. Although Florovsky never completed the book as he would have liked, portions of it appeared in various forms, based initially on three lectures at the University of London in November 1936, titled ‘The Patristic Doctrine of Atonement’. It was to be published by James Clarke & Co. Ltd of London but the manuscript was lost during the London blitz in World War II. Florovsky expanded the lectures in subsequent years and delivered similar lectures in the autumn of 1946 at Lund University in Sweden and Aarhus University in Denmark, and subsequently revised the text in 1948. Another version of Florovsky’s 1939 and 1948 manuscripts was published in 1976 in volume III of The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky under the title ‘Redemption’. Other published extracts of the projected book include the articles ‘The Lamb of God’ (Chapter 4, 81–94, in this book); ‘On the Tree of the Cross’ (St Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly, 1, nos. 3–4 [1953], 11–34) (Blane #119); and ‘Cur Deus Homo? The Motive of the Incarnation’, first published in 1957 and reprinted in volume III of The Collected Works (163–170; 310–314) (Blane #143). The text below is a preface that Florovsky wrote in 1939, published for the first time in On the Tree of the Cross: Georges Florovsky and the Patristic Doctrine of Atonement, edited by Matthew Baker, Seraphim Danckaert and Nicholas Marinides (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2016), 137–141. This text is based on

1

The epigraph to In Ligno Crucis found in all the manuscripts of ‘Ad Lectorem [To the Reader]’ is from Augustine:  Morte occisus mortem occidit [He (Christ) was killed by death; He killed death]’ (Augustine, In Ioannis Evangelium Tractatus CXXIV/Tractates on the Gospel of John 11–27 [PL 35.1489]. John W. Rettig, trans. FC 79 (Washington, DC:  Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 12.10.1, 38) [Eds.].

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The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky a manuscript contained in Andrew Blane’s collection of Florovsky’s personal papers (currently in the possession of Katherine Baker). It appears to be identical to a heavily marked-up typescript from 1939 in the Georges Florovsky Papers (Manuscript Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library, CO586, Box 2, Folder 1). An unmarked but incomplete typescript (also dated 1948) has a few minor variations (CO586, Box 3, Folder 4).

This small book is not a historical study, nor is it to be regarded as a chapter in a dogmatic system. My purpose is much more limited. It is an attempt to bring forward certain features of the patristic teaching, almost forgotten or neglected by the modern theologians, even in the churches of the catholic tradition, and to prove that just by this return to the Fathers one may regain a solid basis for theological research. This essay is but a pointer towards what one may describe as a neopatristic synthesis.2 Dr G. L. Prestige’s recent book, God in Patristic Thought,3 has clearly shown how much a modern theologian can profit by an unprejudiced and open-minded reading of the patristic writings. Inexhaustum est penum theologiae patrum [The theology of the Fathers is inexhaustible], said one of the seventeenth-century theologians.4 In modern times, patristic writings have been, and are still, usually read rather as merely historical documents. For their inspiration, modern theologians usually look elsewhere. They have much more concern with what is taken to be the ‘modern mind’ than with what is referred to as the ‘venerable tradition’ of the Church. But the real trouble about this so-called ‘modern mind’ is that one cannot very easily discover what it really is. It was recently suggested that possibly the ‘modern man’ has not yet made up his mind, and that perhaps it is preferable to speak rather only of the ‘modern temper’ or ‘modern mood’. One may speak rather of a modern chaos than of any settled mind today. In any case, it would be very precarious to allow our theological interpretation to depend so much upon the ‘temper’ of any particular age, upon all these changes and chances of this fleeting world. One has to rely, not upon the mind of any age, but solely upon the mind of the Church. The whole authority of the Fathers rests just upon the fact that they were the Doctors of the Church. It is true, however, that the main objection to the pattern authority of the Fathers is just that they too were limited by their own age. In a way that is indeed true, they were interpreting the New Testament message in Greek categories, and the influence of Hellenistic philosophy on their conceptions must not be overlooked. Yet the real question is whether we can regard this ‘Hellenistic phase’ of Christian theology merely as a historic accident, and whether we can ever 2 3

4

This is one of the first uses of this famous phrase in Florovsky’s work [Eds.]. G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London:  George Heinemann, 1936; re-published in 1952 and 1964 by SPCK and in 2008 by Wipf and Stock) [Eds.]. See my paper, Georges Florovsky, ‘Patristics and Modern Theology’, Procès-verbaux du Premier Congrès de Théologie orthodoxe à Athènes. Hamilcar Alivisatos, ed. (Athens, 1939), 238–342; repr. in The Christian East, 8, nos. 1–2 (1936), 30–34 [GF]. [See Ch. 9, 153–157, in this book. In one of the Princeton versions of this text (CO586, Box 3, Folder 4), the seventeenth-century theologian is identified as the French Oratorian Louis de Thomassin (1619–1695). The passage is quoted from memory (as is typical for Florovsky), slightly inaccurately. See the quotation in this book, Ch. 21, ‘The Ethos of the Orthodox Church’, 297 [Eds.]].

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get away from these Greek categories. Strangely enough, Harnack’s thesis that patristic doctrine was simply an ‘acute Hellenization’ of primitive Christianity still keeps its strong grip upon catholic-minded scholars.5 There are so many who would shrink from any suggestions that we are not Hellenized enough and that the only remedy for the modern chaos in theology is just this move back to the Greek tradition. The problem is obviously too vast to be dealt with properly in a brief forward to an occasional essay. But we can hardly escape raising it here. Christian Hellenism is much wider than one is prepared to realize. St Augustine and even St Jerome were no less Hellenistic than St Gregory of Nyssa and St [John] Chrysostom. And St Augustine introduced Neo-Platonism into Western theology. Pseudo-Dionysius was influential in the West no less than in the East, from Hilduin up to Nicholas of Cusa.6 And St John of Damascus was an authority both for the Byzantine Middle Ages and for Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas. Thomism itself is Hellenistic. In England, the Caroline divines7 were obviously Hellenistic in tendency. And one of the greatest contributions of the Tractarian movement8 was just this move back to the Greek Fathers. Christian Hellenism was never a peculiarly Eastern phenomenon. The Fathers were teachers of the Church Universal, not just of the Eastern Church. Hellenism is the common background and the basis of the whole Christian civilization.9 It is simply incorporated into our Christian existence. One cannot easily undo the whole of history once it has been lived. Nor is there any reason to long for that. Somebody has wittily remarked that in a way the battle of Marathon belonged to English history no less than the battle of Hastings. With much more justification, we can insist that the ecumenical councils and Greek patristics do belong to our own history, whatever our local allegiance may be. Hellenism was, of course, ambiguous and double-faced. And some of the Hellenistic revivals in the history of European thought have obviously been rather pagan revivals. It is enough to mention Goethe or Nietzsche. But we have not to overlook the existence of another Hellenism. Hellenism itself was dissected with the sword of Christian revelation, and was polarized. So too was Judaism. May I  suggest a pair of symbols to illustrate this polarity: the Acropolis and Saint Sophia [Hagia Sophia in Constantinople]. Both are 5 6

7

8

9

See Ch. 23 in this book, ‘Eschatology in the Patristic Age’, n. 21, 318 [Eds.]. Hilduin of Saint Denis (c. 775–785 to c. 855–858) was a noted prelate in the imperial court of the Carolingian Empire. The works of Pseudo-Dionysius were translated into Latin under his direction. Hilduin wrote a vita of St Denis of Paris, identifying him with Denis the Aeropagite of the Acts of the Apostles, an error which had a long life in subsequent hagiography. Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) was an important German philosopher, theologian, jurist, church diplomat and astronomer. His extensive writings show a strong influence of Proclus and the Pseudo-Dionysius. He was an early proponent of Renaissance humanism and was involved in the ill-fated ‘union’ Council of Ferrara (1439), which sought to reconcile Byzantine and Latin Christianity [Eds.]. The Caroline Divines were Anglican theologians, heavily influenced by the Greek Fathers, who lived during the reigns of Charles I (1625–1649) and his son, Charles II (1660–1685). The most famous of these Divines were Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1626) and William Laud (1573–1645) [Eds.]. The Tractarian Movement was the early stage of the Oxford Movement, named after the Tracts for the Times, the first of which was issued by John Henry Newman in 1833. It was an attempt by members of the Church of England to support a more Catholic theology and practice. Its most eminent members were Newman (1801–1890), E.  B. Pusey (1800–1882) and John Keble (1792– 1866) [Eds.]. One version adds: ‘and culture’ (Princeton University Library CO586, Box 3, Folder 4) [Eds.].

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truly Hellenistic. And yet Saint Sophia is in very truth a Christian temple. One has to go back not to Plato or Aristotle, but to the Greek Fathers, who were by no means simply Christian Platonists or Aristotelians. The Christian ‘reception’ of Hellenistic categories was not just a servile absorption of an undigested heathen heritage. Rather it was a conversion of the Hellenic mind itself. Everything was trans-valuated thereby. And having been converted, the Hellenic mind was fertilized for a new and Christian development. ‘Hellenistic categories’ were in fact no greater limitations for Christian thought than was the Hebrew mind under the old dispensation. Hellenism means philosophy. We have to distinguish carefully between philosophies and Philosophy. Clement of Alexandria was very strict about that. For him, Greek philosophy was a preparation of the Gospel, as a whole. But all the particular systems were only unsuccessful attempts to apprehend the general providential guidance. All of them are antiquated since the heavenly Master came in person to guide his people into the full Truth. For Clement, no less than for Tertullian, Athens is of no more value since the divine light shone from Jerusalem. But Philosophy has not been done away with. It has rather been given a new purpose. Ancient philosophers may have erred and have erred most dangerously indeed. Yet Christians must be philosophers themselves. For Philosophy means simply the vocation of the human mind to apprehend the ultimate Truth, now revealed and consummated in the incarnate Word. No particular philosophical system was ever adopted or authorized in the early Church. The Fathers were rather eclectic. They attempted a new philosophical synthesis on the basis of the revelation. Certainly, they linked the divine message they had to deliver with the aspirations of the Hellenic mind. They vindicated the right of the human mind to ask questions. But it was the revealed truth they were interpreting and commending. Individual writers may have gone too far; some of them went astray. One would naturally think here of Origen or of Pseudo-Dionysius. But on the whole the balance was kept. The new and Christian mind emerges from this philosophical quest. Modern scholars fervently hunt for the alien accretions in the patristic doctrine. Unfortunately, they so often miss just the kernel, the very system of this new Philosophy, which is Christian Dogmatics.10 Medieval Scholasticism was perhaps overburdened with unreformed philosophy. Yet what was repudiated in the Reformation was Philosophy itself. Away from philosophy and back to the Bible, as if they were radically irreconcilable. This was the main idea of the early Reformers. What was to be eliminated was just the philosophical quest, the philosophical mentality itself. This proved to be impossible. And in the second generation, even the Aristotelian scholasticism was partly restored. Protestant theology on the continent was in the seventeenth century no less scholastic than the Counter-Reformation itself. But the true metaphysical spirit was lost. The breakaway

10

In the 1930s, prominent Protestant theologians, such as Emil Brunner (1889–1966), supported Adolf von Harnack’s critique of classic patristic theology as being driven by Hellenism. Here Florovsky is using Harnack’s terminology of ‘kernel’ and ‘husk’ against him. Harnack and others argued that dogma in Christianity was an inessential Greek ‘husk’ (an ‘acute Hellenization’) that covered an essential Jewish ‘kernel’. Christianity, it was alleged, had been infected by Greek metaphysics, which distorted the simple Hebraic message of the Gospel, so de-Hellenization was needed. Florovsky, in contrast, advocates re-Hellenization through Christian philosophy as dogmatics. See Ch. 23, ‘Eschatology in the Patristic Age’, n. 21, 318, in this book [Eds.].

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from the patristic tradition in modern theology was motivated simply by a deep distrust of philosophy, by a desire to eliminate metaphysics from Christian doctrine. Morals and psychology were introduced instead. The metaphysical doctrine of man was reduced to a psychology. The immortality of the soul was overemphasized to such an extent as to miss the mortality of man, and the tragedy of human death was underestimated. Christology was first affected by this deformation of the Christian doctrine of man. Christology was, as it were, ‘reduced’. And it is obvious that no coherent doctrine of the atonement can ever be built except on a sound Christological basis. This ‘reduced Christology’ (the phrase is Dr Sanday’s)11 inevitably produces moralism and psychologism in soteriology. The basic doctrine of the hypostatical union seemed to be too metaphysical, and so was often practically neglected, sometimes plainly denied. But even in the better-balanced conceptions, the problem of salvation was dangerously moralized. This applies to the penal theory of the atonement also. The attempt was made in that theory to reconcile justice and love, divine majesty and human perversion, etc. But the ontology of salvation was almost overlooked. This also applied to the modern ‘kenotic’ and moralistic conceptions. Strangely enough, these modern theories are much more abstract than the patristic metaphysics. They deal simply with general ideas. Sin and divine anger, nothingness and perfection, even justice and mercy, all these contrasts are very abstract indeed, and they are dealt with so often in the most dialectical manner. The crucifixion itself is so often interpreted less as a crucial event in time, than as a kind of symbol, which had to express the ultimate condemnation of sin by the divine righteousness. One thinks much more of the redemption than of the Redeemer. Criticism is not within the scope of the present essay. A positive reconstruction of the original patristic doctrine is attempted instead. Possibly that is the best way of criticism. One can find a fair presentation of the history of the patristic doctrine in J. Riviere’s The Dogma of Redemption or in Prof. Grensted’s Short History of the Doctrine of the Atonement,12 or elsewhere. My aim here is simply to introduce the reader to the common spirit of patristic theology, and to attempt a systematic reconstruction of the doctrine in the same spirit. In a brief essay, it has hardly been possible to bring in all the available patristic references. I trust, however, that the selection I give here is at least fairly representative. One special point must be stressed here. The patristic doctrine of the atonement was incorporated into the liturgy. Numerous quotations are given in this book from the liturgical sources, and it would be very easy to make many more to prove that we have here not only some private speculations or theologoumena, but the common mind of the worshipping Church. One can best be initiated into the spirit of the Fathers by attending the offices of the Eastern Church, especially in Lent and up to Trinity Sunday. 11

12

William Sanday (1843–1920) was an Oxford theologian, author of Christologies:  Ancient and Modern (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911); see 96–133 [Eds.]. Jean Rivière, Le dogme de la redémption: Essai d’étude historique (Paris:  Librairie Victor Lecoffre, 1905) [The Dogma of Redemption: A Historical Essay, trans. Luigi Cappadelta, 2 vols. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1909)]; and L. W. Grensted, A Short History of the Doctrine of the Atonement (Manchester: University Press, 1920) [Eds.].

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Most of the hymns and collects used belong to the patristic epoch. The lex credendi, as presented in the patristic writings, is corroborated by the lex orandi.13 And again, this is the witness, not merely of the Eastern Church alone, but rather of the undivided Church of old, of the Church of the Fathers. One can compare it with the testimony of the early Latin Church, as exhibited by St Augustine or St Leo in his glorious liturgical sermons. And on the whole, one can describe the patristic doctrine of the atonement as a liturgical or sacramental theory, in contrast with any others juridical, moralistic, or ‘political’. In the sacramental practice and rites of the Church, the dogmatic teaching finds its fulfilment and expression, and the dogma is here again the living kerygma of salvation. This book is an enlarged reproduction of a short course of lectures, delivered for the University of London, in November 1936 by the kind invitation of the university authorities. It is my pleasant duty to acknowledge here my deep gratitude to the Board of Theological Studies of the university for the privilege of lecturing at the university as well as for a generous grant towards the publication of the present volume. I have to thank particularly the Rev. Professor H. Maurice Relton, D. D.,14 who presided over the first of my course of lectures. I lectured on the same subject at the Bishop’s Hostel, Lincoln, and I have to thank the Rt. Rev. the Bishop of Jarrow, the then Warden, and the Rev. Chancellor J. H. Srawley, D. D., for their friendly encouragement and valuable advice, which was of great help in my research.15 I owe my thanks also to my friends, the Rev. C. A. Page, the Rev. Derwas J. Chitty16 and the Rev. Denzil G. M. Patrick,17 for their kind assistance in the revision of this book, which had to be written in a language that is not my native tongue. G. F. ‘Les Serbiers’ Clarens (Vaud) September 1939

13

14

15

16

17

‘Lex orandi, [est] lex credendi’ (the rule of praying is the rule of believing). This famous phrase is shorthand for the theological position that one cannot separate worship or prayer from theology proper and that dogma as ‘right belief ’ finds its roots within worship as ‘right praise’ [Eds.]. Herbert Maurice Relton (1882–1971) was professor of Dogmatic Theology and Biblical and Historical Theology at King’s College, London [Eds.]. Leslie Owen (1886–1947) was bishop of Jarrow from 1939 to 1944. James Herbert Srawley (1868– 1954) taught at Lincoln. He was a scholar of early liturgy and the Greek Fathers and was chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral from 1924 to 1947. After 1935 Florovsky spent increasing time outside Paris, especially in England, where he taught most summers until 1939 on the theology and history of Orthodoxy. He had a particularly strong relationship to the now closed Lincoln Theological College (known as ‘The Bishop’s Hostel’), where he completed his magnum opus, The Ways of Russian Theology, in 1937 [Eds.]. Derwas J. Chitty (1901–1971), Anglican rector for many years of the parish of Upton in the diocese of Oxford, was a long-standing and formative early member of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius. Chitty was a noted specialist in ancient Christian monasticism [Eds.]. Denzil G. M. Patrick (1907–1944), a Scottish theologian and ecumenist, served in the YMCA centre in Geneva and helped organize the 1939 World Conference of Christian Youth in Amsterdam, the last major ecumenical meeting before World War II [Eds.].

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3

In Ligno Crucis: The Church Fathers’ Doctrine of Redemption Interpreted from the Perspective of Greek Orthodox Theology*

In the autumn of 1946, Georges Florovsky lectured on redemption at Lund University in Sweden. This article is a summary and translation from the English manuscript of Florovsky’s lecture (corresponding to 100 printed pages), prepared by Dr Bengt Strömberg of Lund University. The lecture corresponds to an unfinished book of Florovsky titled In Ligno Crucis [On the Tree of the Cross]: The Patristic Doctrine of Atonement (see ‘Preface to In Ligno Crucis,’ Chapter  2, 65–70, in this book). This summary omits the numerous references and lengthy patristic quotations of Florovsky’s original manuscript. The article was first published in Swedish in 1947 as ‘In Lingo Crucis:  Kyrkofädernas lära om försoningen, tolkad från den grekiskortodoxa teologiens synpunkt’, Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift, 23 (1947):  297– 308 (Blane #87). A  later version of Florovsky’s text was published under the title ‘Redemption’ in volume III of The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (95–159; notes 280–309). The translation from Swedish of Strömberg’s summary of the 1948 manuscript was made by David Heith-Stade and was first published in On the Tree of the Cross: Georges Florovsky and the Patristic Doctrine of Atonement, edited by Matthew Baker, Seraphim Danckaert and Nicholas Marinides (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2016), 143–152. The present translation is a revised and edited version by David Heith-Stade made for this book.

This study is not a historic study, nor should it be seen as a chapter in a dogmatic system. My purpose is much more limited. It is an attempt to present certain aspects of patristic thought, which are almost forgotten or neglected by modern theologians, even of the catholic tradition, and to show that by studying the Fathers it is possible to

* At the time of writing (1947), ‘Greek Orthodoxy’ had a wider sense than a specifically ethnic reality and denoted what is now referred to as ‘Eastern Orthodoxy’, or simply ‘Orthodoxy’ [Eds.].

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reacquire a firm basis for theological research. This study is a suggestion of what could be called a neo-patristic synthesis. Agnus Dei [The Lamb of God]. ‘And the Word became flesh’ (Jn 1:14). This scriptural passage expresses the fullness of revelation. The incarnated Lord is both perfect God and a perfect human being. The Incarnation reveals and realizes the full significance and highest meaning of human existence. He came down from heaven to save the world, to unite humanity with God for all eternity. In the Incarnation human nature was assumed in an intimate and hypostatic union with the Godhead itself. In this elevation of human nature to an eternal union with divine life, the Fathers of the ancient church unanimously saw the essence of salvation, the foundation of the whole redemptive work of Christ. ‘That which is united with God is saved,’ says St Gregory Nazianzen.1 And that which was not united with the Godhead could not be saved. This was the main reason why he claimed against Apollinarius that the only-begotten Son received a complete human nature in the Incarnation. This was the main theme in all ancient theology. This history of Christological dogma was determined by this basic idea: the Incarnation of the Word as salvation. The Incarnation of the Word was a revelation of life; Christ is the Word of Life. But the high point of the Gospel is the Cross; the death of the incarnated. Life was completely revealed in death. This is the paradoxical mystery of the Christian faith: life through death; life from the grave. We are born to a true eternal life only by our baptism into death and burial in Christ; we are reborn with Christ at the baptismal font. This is the unchanging law of the true life. ‘What you sow is not made alive unless it dies’ (1 Cor 15:36). Two things must be distinguished here:  that Christ assumed human nature and that he took sin on himself. He did not take the sin of the world on himself in the Incarnation. For sin is a voluntary act, not a natural necessity. He takes sin voluntarily; therefore, his work has a saving power as a free act of compassion and love. The mystery of the Cross is unfathomable to reason. Christ explained that he had to die, not only that he would die. He had to die, but not in accordance with the law that reigns in this world where goodness and truth is persecuted. The death of Christ was voluntary. He chose to die. This choice did not mean that he passively let unrighteousness triumph. He wanted to die and he had to die in accordance with the law of truth and love. The crucifixion was a sacrifice. But the necessity of the sacrifice did not have its foundation in the conditions of this world but in the divine love. The mystery of the Cross has its origin in eternity and is fulfilled in history. The Church has never tried to give a rational definition of the mystery of the Cross. Biblical terms are the most adequate. Ethical and juridical views are only colourless anthropomorphisms. This also applies to the idea of sacrifice. The sacrifice of Christ cannot only be perceived as a sacrifice or victim, since then the necessity of death would be inexplicable. The whole life of the Incarnated was an uninterrupted sacrifice. Why would this life not be enough to conquer death? Christ was not a passive victim but a conqueror even in the greatest humiliation. And he knew that this humiliation

1

Epist. 101.5, Ad Cledonium [PG 37.181C–184A] [Eds.].

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not only meant long suffering and obedience, but that it was the way of glory and final victory. The concept iustitia vindicativa [vindictive or retributive justice]2 does not reveal the inner meaning of the sacrifice of the Cross. The mystery of the Cross cannot be adequately expressed in terms such as satisfaction, retribution or ransom. If the value of the death of Christ was increased infinitely because of his divinity, so was his whole life. All his acts have an infinite value as acts of the incarnated Word of God. And they superabundantly cover all the sins of mankind. And finally, there is hardly any place for retributive justice in the death of Christ; for it was the suffering of the Incarnated, of God’s own Son, the suffering of an immaculate human nature, which had already been deified by being assumed into the hypostasis of the Word. The satisficatio vicaria [vicarious satisfaction]3 of the schoolmen is also not a useful idea. God does not seek the suffering of mankind. He grieves over suffering. The death of the Incarnated can hardly mean that sin is destroyed if death itself is the wages of sin and death only exists in the sinful world. Does justice really keep back love and mercy, and was the crucifixion necessary to reveal God’s forgiving love which otherwise would be precluded because of his vengeful justice? Gens mortalium [lit. ‘the race of mortals’ or ‘a mortal people’]. Humankind was created to live in God. It received immortality at its creation, but only as a possibility. This possibility was lost in the Fall. Mankind became mortal. It was in one sense created mortal, but it was in a condition to escape death if it held on to God and his original gifts. It was placed between life and death and had a choice. The Fall was already a kind of death, an exclusion from the only source of life and immortality, a loss of the life-giving Spirit. Human death entered the world through sin. Separated from God, human nature loses its hold and becomes unstable. The union of soul and body becomes precarious. The body is turned into the prison of the soul. Physical death becomes unavoidable. Mankind is created from nothing and, during its existence, risks plunging into an abyss of nothingness. The Christian experience views death as a metaphysical catastrophe. Death is not a normal end to human existence. God did not create death. He created humanity for incorruptibility. Human death is the wages of sin. What does it mean for a human being to die? It is apparently the body that dies, since only the body is mortal. We speak of the ‘immortal’ soul. The issue of death is first and foremost an issue of the human body. Christianity does not only preach the life of the immortal soul, but also the resurrection of the body. Human death becomes a cosmic catastrophe. Nature loses its immortal centre in the dying human being and dies itself in the human being. The human being is a kind of ‘microcosm’. All kinds of life exist in him. Only through and in the human being will the whole world come into a relationship with God. The fall of humanity alienated the whole creation from God. It destroyed the cosmic harmony. Through the Fall, humanity became subject to the course of nature. This ought not to have happened. In the life of animals, death is an expression of the power of procreation 2 3

This is a term for the Calvinist model of atonement known as ‘penal substitution’ [Eds.]. This is a term for the scholastic model of atonement known as ‘satisfaction theory’, elaborated by St Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033–1109) [Eds.].

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rather than of frailty. Through the fall of humanity, death also receives in nature an evil and tragic meaning. To the animals, death means only the end of individual existence. Among humans, death strikes at the personality, and personality is something more than mere individuality. The body is dissolved and subject to death because of sin. But the whole human being dies. The human being is composed of body and soul; therefore, the separation of body and soul means that the human being ceases to exist as a human being. The image of God fades. Death reveals that the human being, this creature made by God, is only a body. The fear of death reveals a deep metaphysical anguish and not only a sinful attachment to earthly things. The Fathers saw in the union of soul and body an analogy to the indivisible unity of the two natures in the hypostasis of Christ, which is one. In death, the unity is destroyed. The fear of death is only averted through the hope of resurrection and eternal life. Death does not only mean that sin is revealed; it is also an anticipation of resurrection. God does not only punish fallen human nature by death, but also purifies and heals it. The human being breaks in death like pottery, and the body dissolves again to ashes in order that, purified from the acquired impurity, he may be restored to the normal form through the resurrection. Death is, consequently, not something evil but a blessing. Death contains in itself the possibility of resurrection. The destiny of humankind can only be realized in the general resurrection. But only the resurrection of the Lord raised human nature and makes the general resurrection possible. Redemption is, above all, the salvation from death and destruction, a restoration of the original unity and stability of human nature. But it is only possible to restore the unity in human nature by restoring the communion between humanity and God. The resurrection is only possible in God. Christ is the resurrection and the life. The way to and hope of resurrection was revealed in the Incarnation. Humanity sinned but also fell into corruptibility; therefore, the Word of God became a human being [människa], and accepted our body.4 Death had been implanted in the body; therefore, life had to be implanted again in order to save it from corruptibility and clothe it with life. Else it would not be able to be resurrected. The decisive reason for the death of Christ is the mortality of mankind. Christ suffered death, but he conquered death and corruptibility and destroyed the power of death. In the death of Christ, death itself receives a new meaning. Seminarium mortuorum [A nursery/seed-bed of the dead].5 Death is a catastrophe for humankind. This is a basic principle of Christian anthropology. The human being is both spirit and body. The body belongs organically to the unity of human existence. And this may have been the greatest new idea of the original Christian message. Greek thought has always had a certain antipathy towards the body. The body was a prison in which the fallen soul was contained. The Christian belief in the resurrection of the body 4

5

Swedish, like Greek, Latin and Russian, has separate words denoting a human being in general (människa/anthrōpos/homo/chelovek) and a specifically male human being, a ‘man’ (man/anēr/vir/ muzh) [Trans.]. This phrase, from a passage in 1 Cor 15 discussing the resurrection body and attributed to Origen, occurs in an epistolary treatise of Jerome:  Lib. Contr. Ioann. Hierosol.,  PL  23.377A. Florovsky misquotes the phrase in his essay ‘Redemption’ (CW,  III, n.  67, 294–295) as being found in Origen’s  On First Principles,  II.10.3 (Paul Koetschau, Origenes Werke  5:  De principiis (Peri archon) (GCS Bd. 22) (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1913)) [Eds.].

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meant for the Greeks that the prison would be eternal and the soul always imprisoned. Sin meant impurity, and the body was the seat of impurity. Evil comes from defilement, not from the straying of the will. Christianity brings a new view of the body. Docetism was rejected from the beginning as a most pernicious temptation. Platonism seeks only the purification of the soul, but Christianity also seeks the purification of the body. Platonism preaches the final separation of soul and body. Christianity preaches the final cosmic transfiguration. At this point, Aristotle is closer to Christianity than Plato. The human being is, according to Aristotle, a completely earthly being. Aristotle denies personal immortality. What remains after death is not human, does not belong to the individual. It is a divine element, immortal and eternal. This weakness of Aristotle is also his strength. He truly understands the unity of human existence. The human being is for Aristotle primarily an individual, an organism, a living unity. Soul and body are not two distinct elements united with each other, but two aspects of the same concrete reality. In this way, Aristotle provided the Christian philosophers with the elements from which a true view of personality could be constructed. The divide between the impersonal and eternal intellect and the personal but mortal soul was bridged by the new consciousness of a spiritual personality. The idea of personality was a Christian contribution to philosophy. The resurrection is not a repetition. The Christian doctrine of the general resurrection is not identical with the ‘eternal return’ of Stoicism.6 The resurrection is the true renewal, explanation and reformation of the whole creation. This constitutes a real philosophical difficulty. How can we think of this change in a way that allows the identity to remain? The ancient authors only assert the identity without attempting any philosophical explanation. Origen was the first who did. The body has its principle, eidos [form], which cannot be destroyed in death. Eidos is principium individuationis [the principle of individuation]. As indestructible, eidos also becomes principium surgendi (the principle of resurrection). Regardless of the particles from which the resurrected body is formed, the eidos thus guarantees the identity. St Methodius of Olympus criticizes Origen’s idea of eidos.7 Can the form remain if the body ceases to exist? In any case the identity of form is not a guarantee of the personal identity if the whole material substratum is something else. St Methodius thinks rather that the form is the same as the external shape of the body and not, as Origen, the internal life force; therefore, his critique of Origen is not to the point. But the tendency of Methodius to claim the unity of the human being is valuable. St Gregory of Nyssa tries to unite the views of Origen and Methodius.8 After the dissolution of the body the particles retain certain signs of the former connection with the soul. And even in each soul there are signs of the connection with the body. Because of these signs, the body is able to recognize its own corporal elements on the day of resurrection. The identity is safeguarded. It is the same human being who is resurrected.

6

7 8

The ancient Stoic philosophers, such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, held that the universe went through an endless cycle of death (in a fiery conflagration) and rebirth. The idea was later built on by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) in his philosophy of eternal recurrence [Eds.]. See Methodius of Olympus, De resurrectione, III.13–19, PG 18.317–28 [Eds.]. See ‘Redemption’, CW, III, n. 70, 296 [Eds.].

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The concept of identity has a meaning in Christian philosophy different from the Greek. In the latter it is a question of timeless identity, in the former of identity with a life, which has been experienced and lived. The perception of time is different in both cases. Greek philosophy does not know the transition from time to eternity. The temporal is eo ipso (by that very fact) ephemeral. What is born must die. Only that which is unborn, without origin, remains. A future immortality is, therefore, always united in Greek thought with an eternal pre-existence. Everything that is worthy of existence exists in unchangeable static timelessness, and nothing can be added to its perfection. Time is symbolized in Greek philosophy by a circle. It is a rotation without end. There is no real history. The perception of time changes radically with Christianity. Time has a beginning and an end. It is unique and will never return. The final limit of time is the general resurrection. The temporal order is a creative process wherein that which has been created from nothing by divine will proceeds to its final perfection, on the last day, when the divine purpose will be fulfilled. And the centre of history is the Incarnation and the incarnated Lord’s victory over death and sin. St Augustine expresses the change made by Christianity in his famous statement: Viam rectam sequentes, quae nobis est Christus, eo duce ac salvatore, a vano et inepto impiorum circuitu iter fidei mentemque avertamus (Following the straight way, which for us is Christ, with him as both leader and saviour, let us turn the path of faith and our mind away from the futile and senseless circle of the impious) (City of God, 12.20.3 [PL 41.370]). Triduum mortis [The three days of death].9 The Letter to the Hebrews describes the Lord’s work of salvation as the ministry of a high priest [Heb 2:17]. The sacrifice of Christ began on earth and was fulfilled in heaven, where Christ as the eternal high priest offers and still offers us to God. The death of Christ on the cross is a sacrifice. The efficacious power of the sacrifice is love. But this love is not only compassion with the fallen. The sacrifice means that Christ gives himself not only for the sins of the world but also for our glorification. He sacrifices himself not only for sinful humanity, but also for the Church in order to make her holy, glorious and pure (cf. Eph 5:25). The death on the Cross was not efficacious because it was the death of an innocent man, but because it was the death of the incarnated Lord. It was not a human being who died on the cross but God. But God died in his own humanity. He was himself the resurrection and life. His death was human, but it took place in the hypostasis of the incarnated Word;10 therefore, it led to resurrection. In Luke 12:50, the Lord speaks of the baptism with which he has to be baptized. This baptism is the death on the cross. This is a baptism of blood, a purification of human nature in the shedding of the sacrificial blood of the Lamb and foremost a purification of the body. Not only sin is washed away, but also human weakness and mortality itself. It is a purification in order to prepare for the coming resurrection. It is a purification 9

10

This is a phrase that covers the liturgical celebration from Maundy or Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday or Pascha [Eds.]. This concept is adapted from a then-popular reading of Leontius of Byzantium’s notion of enhypostatization: the incarnate hypostasis of the Logos experienced death but only insofar as this was an experience of the Logos that subsisted in the flesh. Death, then, was not experienced or communicated to Christ’s divine nature. On Leontius of Byzantium, see Ch. 13, ‘St Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers’, n. 11, 225–226, in this book; and for Florovsky’s use of Leontius in Christology, see Ch. 4, ‘The Lamb of God’, n. 23, 90–91, in this book [Eds.].

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of the whole human nature in the firstborn, in the person of ‘the second Adam’ [1 Cor 15:45]. This is the baptism of blood of the whole Church. The death on the cross is also a purification of the whole world, a baptism of blood of the whole creation. The whole of creation participates in a mystical way in the suffering unto death of the incarnated Lord. The death on the cross is a sacrament. It has a sacramental and liturgical meaning, which is revealed at the Last Supper. The Eucharist is the sacrament of crucifixion, the broken body and the shed blood. It is also the sacrament of transfiguration, the mystical and sacramental ‘change’ of the flesh into the glorifying spiritual nourishment. The death of Christ on the cross was a real death. But it was not like our death because it was the death of the Lord, of the incarnated Word, a death in indivisible hypostasis of the Word who had become flesh [människovordna].11 And when the Lord voluntarily took on himself the sins of the world, this did not mean that he had to die. In his saving love, he decided to die. The body and soul became definitely separated in this death. But the one hypostasis of the incarnated Word was not divided. The ‘hypostatic union’ was neither broken nor destroyed. In other words, although the soul and body were separated in death, they nevertheless remained united through the divinity of the Word. This does not change the ontological character of death but its meaning. The death of Christ was a ‘death without corruption’ and therefore corruptibility and death were conquered in it and resurrection began in it. There are two aspects of the mystery of the Cross. It is both a mystery of sorrow and joy, of disgrace and glory. The Church guards against every docetic devaluation of the reality and fullness of Christ’s suffering. On the other hand, she also guards against the opposite exaggeration, against kenotic overemphasis. The death of Christ is by itself a victory over death not only because it is followed and crowned with the resurrection, for this only reveals and manifests the victory of the Cross. The power of the resurrection is the same as the ‘power of the Cross’ [Phil 3:10; 1 Cor 1:18]. ‘The three days of death’ (triduum mortis) are the mystical days of resurrection. The Lord rests in the grave with his body, and his body is not abandoned by his divinity. The body of the Lord did not suffer corruptibility, since it remained in the womb of life itself, in the hypostasis of the Word. The soul of Christ descends into Hell also without being separated from the divinity. The descent into Hell means primarily an intrusion into the kingdom of death, mortality and corruptibility. And in this sense Hell is synonymous with death. The Lord descended into Hell as the victor, Christus Victor [Christ the Victor],12 the master of life. He descended in his glory, not in his humiliation. The descent into Hell is the resurrection of the ‘whole Adam’. Christ destroys death. The resurrection triumphs. Totus Christus, caput et corpus [The whole Christ, head and body].13 The death of the Saviour revealed that death held no power over him. The Lord was mortal in respect of 11

12 13

The Swedish text has the phrase det människovordna Ordet’, which literally means ‘the Word which had become a human being’ [Trans.]. See ‘Ch. 4, ‘The Lamb of God’, n. 27, 92, in this book [Eds.]. ‘For Christ is not in the head or in the body, but Christ is wholly in the head and in the body’ [non enim christus in capite et non in corpore, sed christus totus in capite et in corpore] (Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 28–54, trans. John W. Rettig, FC 79 (Washington, DC:  Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 28.1. 3–13 at 3 [In Iohannis evangelium tractatus CXXIV, PL 35.1622]) [Eds.].

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his complete human nature; for even in the original nature there was a potentia mortis (capacity for death). The Lord died, but death could not keep him. He was the eternal life, and through his death he destroyed death. His descent into Hell, the kingdom of death, is the powerful revelation of life. By descending into Hell, he gives life to death itself. And by the resurrection, the powerlessness of death is revealed. The reality of death is not repealed, but its powerlessness is revealed. In the death of the Lord, the power of the resurrection becomes apparent, which is concealed but intrinsic to every death. The parable of the wheat can be fully applied to his death. In the case of the body of the incarnated, the period between death and resurrection has been shortened. The seed grows to perfection in three days:  triduum mortis. During this mystical triduum mortis the body of the Lord was transfigured, glorified and clothed in power and light. The resurrection happened by the power of God, and by the same power the general resurrection will happen on the last day. In the resurrection the Incarnation is perfected, a victorious revelation of life in the human nature. Immortality was grafted to humanity. The resurrection of Christ was not only his victory over his own death, but over death in general. In his resurrection, the whole human nature is resurrected, but not so that all rise from the graves, for mankind still must die. But death has become powerless, and the whole human nature has received the ability to be resurrected. We must distinguish between the healing of nature and of the will. Nature is healed and renewed with a certain coercion, the omnipotent and irresistible grace of God. We could speak of a ‘coercion of grace’. This renewal will be realized and revealed in its full extent at the general resurrection, when everyone, both the righteous and the evil, will be resurrected. No one can, as far as nature is concerned, escape the reign of Christ and be free from the irresistible force of the resurrection. But the human will cannot be healed in this irresistible way, for the will must be healed through voluntary repentance. The human will must turn itself to God. It must be a free and spontaneous response of love and worship. Only by this spontaneous and free effort does mankind enter eternal life, which is revealed in Jesus Christ. A spiritual rebirth can only take place in freedom, in obedience to love, by dedicating oneself to God. The way of life is the way of self-denial and sacrifice. We must die with Christ in his suffering and Cross in order to be able to live with him. The Christian life begins with a new birth through water and the Spirit. The symbolism of sacred baptism is rich. Baptism must be performed in the name of the Holy Trinity, and the invocation of the Trinity is unanimously seen as a necessary condition for the validity and efficacy of the sacrament. But the primary meaning of baptism is that we are clothed in Christ and incorporated into his Body. The invocation of the Trinity is necessary since it is impossible to come to know Christ outside the Trinitarian faith, which recognizes that Jesus is the incarnated Lord, ‘one of the Holy Trinity’ (Second Antiphon, Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom). But the symbolism of baptism is primarily concerned with the resurrection in Christ, a resurrection with him and in him to a new eternal life. In baptism, the believers become limbs of Christ. And eternal life manifests itself in the spiritual rebirth of the faithful and is given and perfected in baptism, before it is perfected at the general resurrection. The union with the resurrected Lord is already the beginning of resurrection and eternal life. All will

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be resurrected but only for the faithful will the resurrection be a real resurrection to life. They will not come under judgement but pass from death to life. The rite of initiation was not divided in the ancient church, but the three sacraments  – baptism, confirmation and Eucharist  – were united.14 The sacraments are instituted in order to allow mankind to partake of the saving death of Christ and through it to receive the grace of his resurrection. The whole sacramental and devotional life of the Church manifests and reflects the Cross and the resurrection in a diversity of symbols and rites. But this symbolism is realistic. The symbols not only remind us of something in the past, but they truly reveal and communicate the highest reality. This whole hieratic symbolism culminates in the exalted mystery of the altar. The Eucharist is the heart of the church, the sacrament of salvation in a special sense. The Eucharist is the Last Supper, celebrated again and again but never repeated. For every new celebration of the Eucharist not only represents, but is really the same mystical supper, which the divine High Priest himself celebrated for the first time. And the Lord himself is the real celebrant at every liturgy. The Last Supper was an offering of the sacrifice of the Cross, and this offering continues still. Christ still acts as the High Priest in his Church. The mystery is the same. The sacrifice is one and the altar is one. And the priest is the same. It is the same lamb which is slain always and everywhere, the ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ (Jn 1:29), the Lord Jesus. The Eucharist is not a sacrifice because Jesus is slain again, but because it is the same body and sacrificial blood that are really present at the altar and are sacrificed and offered. The altar is really the holy grave in which the heavenly Master rests. And in the Eucharist, the resurrecting power of Christ’s death and its significance are completely revealed. The lamb is slain, the body is broken, the blood is shed, and still it is heavenly nourishment and ‘the medicine of immortality and antidote to death’, to quote the famous words of St Ignatius (Epistle to the Ephesians 20:2 [PG 5.661A]). The Eucharist is a sacramental anticipation, a foretaste of the resurrection. The sacramental life of the faithful builds the Church. The new life in Christ is given to the limbs of his body through the sacraments. One may add: in the sacraments the Incarnation is fulfilled – the final union of humankind with God in Christ.

14

In the Orthodox Church, the newly baptized infant is immediately anointed with holy chrism in the sacrament of chrismation (approximately analogous to Western confirmation). The ‘newly illumined’ is then communicated in the Eucharist [Eds.].

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This article was first published in Denmark (Lovet være Du Jesus Krist. Inkarnationem. Seks Forelæsninger, ed. Louise Verner-Schilden-Holsten [Bringstrup:  Theologisk oratoriums forlag, 1949], 66–83) and reprinted in the Scottish Journal of Theology, 4, no.  1 (1951):  13–28 (Blane #95). It is part of an unfinished book project of Florovsky titled In Ligno Crucis [On the Tree of the Cross]: The Patristic Doctrine of Atonement (see ‘Preface to In Ligno Crucis’ and ‘The Doctrine of Redemption’, Chapters 2 (65–70) and 3 (71–79) in this book, respectively).

I Christianity is essentially a historical religion. It is not primarily a system of beliefs, nor is it just a perfect code of morality. Christianity is first of all a vigorous appeal to history, a witness of faith to certain particular events or facts of history. For these events were truly eventful, and these historical moments or ‘instants’ were utterly momentous. For, by faith, we identify and acknowledge them as ‘mighty deeds’ of God, as His intimate interventions into the course of human destiny. Already under the Old Dispensation the Living God has established His Covenant with the Chosen People, Israel, and has admitted her, the only nation of the earth, into a fellowship with Him. The God of the Old Testament did not communicate to men abstract metaphysical ideas about Himself, but He met man and challenged him in the midst of his daily existence, ‘amid toil and tribulation’. The Old Testament was truly a Covenant, a sacred fellowship, not primarily the Law and the doctrine. True, it was but a provisional fellowship, a shadow and a figure of the Good Things to come. It was a Covenant of hope and expectation, a Covenant of prophecy and promise. The consummation was ahead. Yet, it was a real Covenant indeed. And in due course it was fulfilled and thereby superseded; perfected and accomplished, and thereby abrogated. The mighty deeds of God, the Magnalia Dei, culminated in an ultimate and personal Revelation: ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us’ (Jn 1:4). Christian faith and hope can never be detached from this Divine achievement, can never be taken out of this definite and unique historical setting. Our Creed is emphatically historic. It bears witness precisely to these crucial interventions and acts

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of God: the Incarnation, the Death on the Cross, the glorious Resurrection and the Ascension, and finally the Pentecost, the Descent of the Spirit, who came down to seal and to disclose the victory and the glory of the Lord. Our faith is rooted in, our hope is based on, those facts or events, on what had happened and taken place in a particular and concrete context of space and time (hic et nunc [here and now]). Yet, being essentially historical, Christianity is, by that very reason, a personal religion. We, Christians, do not believe in ideas, but in a Person. To be Christian means exactly to believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, and Him Crucified and Risen, and to acknowledge Him as the Incarnate Lord and the Saviour of the world. Again, He is not only a Master to be followed, not only a Lord to be obeyed, not only a Redeemer to be trusted and adored. He is above all the Head of His Body, which is the Church, the blessed company of the believers. And this phrase is not merely a beautiful metaphor. It is indeed an epitome of the whole Christian experience of faith. Christians are the members, and Christ Jesus is the Head. Both belong organically together, as the true Vine and the branches, in an intimate intercourse and communion of life. Christians are precisely to live and to dwell in Him, in the phrase of St Paul, to be in Christ. For Christ Himself still abides in the world which He has redeemed and saved. ‘The days of His flesh’ (Heb 5:7) are over, and yet He has not deserted the world. He stays with His faithful flock, as He had promised, ‘always even unto the end of the world’ (Mt 28:20). He is not only a historical personality of the past, whom we might attain by an effort of a historical imagination or recollection. He came down ‘from heaven’, never to depart. And in the glory of the Holy Trinity, He is since and forever the God Incarnate, the God-made-man, the God-Man. The mystery of His person is fully disclosed and accomplished in the mystery of the Church. As Bossuet has put it, the Church is exactly ‘Jésus-Christ répandu et communiqué [Jesus Christ poured out and communicated]’.1 For Christ is, in the phrase of St Paul again, ‘the Last Adam’, or ‘the Second Man’ (1 Cor 15: 45, 47). He is ‘the first-fruits’ of the New Humanity (v. 23).

II ‘When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, “Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” . . . And Simon Peter answered and said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” ’ (Mt 16:13, 16). This answer was accurate and right, though its full meaning and connotation could hardly be available for Simon Peter at the moment he spoke. For no person can call Jesus the Lord except by the Holy Ghost (1 Cor 12:3) and the Spirit was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified (Jn 7:39). And only after Pentecost could the mystery of the Incarnation be 1

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704), bishop of Meaux, was a renowned French preacher and orator of the seventeenth century. This well-known phrase comes from the following passage:  ‘Vous me demandez ce que c’est que l’Église : l’Église c’est Jésus-Christ répandu et communiqué, c’est Jésus-Christ homme parfait, Jésus-Christ dans sa plénitude [You ask me what the Church is? The Church is Jesus Christ poured out and communicated; it is Jesus Christ as the perfect man, Jesus Christ in his fullness]’ (‘Lettre à une demoiselle de Metz sur le mystère de l’unité de l’Église et les merveilles qu’il renferme’ [Letter to a young lady from Metz concerning the mystery of the unity of the Church and its marvels], in Trois écrits spirituels de Bossuet [Three Spiritual Writings of Bossuet], ed. Charles Journet, Cahiers Nova et vetera no. 2 (Janvier 1928) (Fribourg: Fragnière frères, 1928), 49–64 at 57) [Eds.].

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fully apprehended in the Church, though it can never be fully comprehended by a finite mind. It is, and is ever to be, a mystery. It is available not by the joy of metaphysical speculations, but by faith only, in the communion and spiritual conversation with the Lord himself. Still, credo ut intelligam [I believe that I may understand].2 Faith brings light and illumination to the intellect too. The whole experience and faith of the early Church is admirably condensed in the concise formula of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451). The main emphasis of this formula is on the personal unity of Christ. When one asks, Who is Christ Jesus, the ‘Jesus of history’, the only permissible answer is, He is God, the Only Begotten Son of God, yet incarnate and ‘made man’. His personality, or hypostasis, is one, and it is a Divine personality, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. The Son of God himself is the Person or subject of human life too. Two natures, Divine and human, are joined and correlated in the unity of Person – and both natures are complete and genuine. The Fathers of Chalcedon spoke of the double ‘consubstantiality’ of Christ – with the Father according to the Godhead, with us men according to manhood. If we ask, who was born from the Virgin Mary, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, who has experienced and done all that was narrated and recorded in the Gospels, we have to reply, emphatically and unambiguously, the Son of the Living God, ‘One of the Holy Trinity’. This means simply that there was no independent human personality in Jesus Christ. Or again, the same Person is to be spoken of as God and as man, because there was the Divine Person Incarnate. Of course, the term ‘Incarnation’ does not denote only a ‘bodily existence’, but all-inclusively the fullness of manhood. This ancient formula may seem to the modern man, in our days, somewhat abstruse and uninviting; it may fail today to convey any definite conception. Yet, the fault is not with the formula itself, but rather with the ‘modern man’, and his wrong approach to the matter. The ‘definition’ of Chalcedon is not a metaphysical statement, and was never meant to be taken as such. It is a dogmatic or doctrinal statement, a statement of faith. It must not be isolated from the experience of the Church. It is, as it were, an intellectual contour of the mystery which is apprehended by faith. It is a signpost and a key, a key both to the New Testament story and to the existential situation of the Church, the blessed community of the redeemed. Here lies the existential emphasis of the statement. Our Redeemer is God Himself and not a man. Our Redeemer is One who ‘came down’ and who, by being ‘made man’, identified Himself with men, in the fellowship of a truly human life and nature. Our Redemption means a Divine ‘coming down’, a Divine condescending, and not simply an ascending of man. Not only the initiative was Divine, but the Captain of our salvation was a Divine Personality himself. The fullness of the human nature in Christ means simply the adequacy and the truth of the redeeming identification. Not only God was in Christ, but Christ was Himself God Incarnate. This sounds paradoxical and mysterious. And there is a mystery indeed ‘and without controversy great is the

2

A maxim of St Anselm of Canterbury (Proslogion 1), based on a saying of St Augustine of Hippo (crede, ut intelligas, ‘Believe so that you may understand’ (Jo. ev. tr., VII, 29.6, PL 35.1630)), and often placed in juxtaposition to its converse, intelligo ut credam [I understand that I may believe], and associated with Anselm’s other famous phrase fides quaerens intellectum [Faith seeking understanding]) [Eds.].

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mystery of godliness, God was manifested in the flesh’ (1 Tim 3:16). This very ‘mystery’ can never be adequately described in plain words. Doctrinal formulae are instructive and convincing only in the living context of faith. They never help very much when taken in abstracto. By their very nature and purpose, they bear witness to certain facts. They would not appeal at all to an obstinate unbeliever. They do not convince by the logic of a self-contained reasoning. Reasoning may help to remove certain prejudices – intelligo ut credam [I understand that I may believe]. But ultimate conviction springs only out of the evidence of faith. Faith alone makes formulae live. ‘It seems paradoxical, yet it is the experience of all observers of spiritual things: no one profits by the Gospels unless he be first in love with Christ.’3 For Christ is not a text, but a living Person. And decisive evidence, in the matters of faith, is precisely testimonium Spiritus Sancti internum [the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit].4 It is not to be confused with the private experience or judgement of individual Christians. This ‘evidence’ is available only in the Church and through the Church, for the first mystery of the Spirit in our lives is exactly that ‘by one Spirit are we all baptised into one body’ (1 Cor 12:13), and one mind is created among the faithful. It is precisely through the ‘common mind’ of the Church that the Holy Spirit speaks to the believers. And the common mind of the Church Universal bears faithful witness to the crucial facts and acts of the Divine Self-disclosure and Revelation.

III ‘And was made man’. . . This is the fullness of Revelation. The Son of God came down from Heaven to redeem the earth, and to unite man with God for ever. The new age has been initiated – we count now the anni Domini [the year of the Lord], the years of Grace, exactly post Christum natum [after the birth of Christ]. As St Irenaeus says, ‘then the Son of God became the Son of man, that man also might become the son of God’.5 Not only is the original fullness of human nature restored or re-established in the Incarnation. Not only does human nature return to its communion with God, which was once lost through the Fall. The Incarnation is the new Revelation, the new and further step. For the Second Man is the Lord from Heaven, is God Incarnate (1 Cor 15:47). In the Incarnation of the Son, human nature was not only anointed with a superabundant overflowing of Grace, but was assumed into an intimate and hypostatical unity with God Himself. In this lifting up of human nature into an everlasting communion with the Divine Life, the Fathers of the early Church unanimously saw the very essence of salvation, the basis of the whole redeeming work of Christ. ‘That is saved which is united with God’, 3 4

5

Dom Anscar Vonier, O. S. B., The Personality of Christ (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1916), 9 [GF]. This is a theological adaptation of a teaching of John Calvin (1509–1564) concerning the Holy Spirit’s inner and secret witness to the truth of Scripture (See Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols., trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), Vol. 1, Book 1, Ch. 7:4–5, 78–81)[Eds.]. Adv. Haer., III, 19.1 [PG 7/1.939B] [GF]. [Florovsky is citing from memory and paraphrases this famous passage, with an incorrect reference (Adv Haer. III.20.2) [Eds.].]

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says St Gregory of Nazianzus. And what was not united could not be saved at all. This was his chief reason for insisting on the fullness of human nature, assumed by the Only Begotten in the Incarnation, as against Apollinarius.6 This was the fundamental issue of the whole of early theology, in St Irenaeus, St Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers, St Cyril of Alexandria, St Maximus the Confessor, St John Damascene. The whole history of Christological dogma was determined by this basic idea: the Incarnation of the Word, as Salvation. In the Incarnation human destiny is completed. God’s eternal purpose is accomplished, ‘the mystery from eternity hidden and to angels unknown’.7 The days of expectation are over. The tension of prophecy is solved. The Promised and the Expected has come. And henceforth, in the phrase of St Paul, the life of man ‘is hid with Christ in God’ (Col 3:3). For the Incarnation of the Word was an absolute manifestation of God. It was not just a metaphysical miracle, it was the mystery of the Love Divine, of the Divine identification with the lost man. And above all it was a revelation of Life. Christ is ‘the Word of Life’ – ‘and the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us’ (1 Jn 1:1–2). The Incarnation itself is the quickening of man, as it were, the resurrection of human nature. Yet, God was not manifest in the flesh in order to recreate the fallen world at once by the exercise of His omnipotent might, or to illuminate and transfigure it by the overwhelming light of His eternal glory. It was in the uttermost humiliation that this revelation of Divinity was wrought. The climax of the Incarnate life is the Cross, the death of the Incarnate Life. The only true key to the story of the Gospels is precisely the Cross. ‘When I survey the wondrous Cross, on which the Prince of Glory died’,8 I can penetrate into the very depth of the mystery of the Incarnation. Life Divine has been revealed in full through death, and is available only in the communion with the Crucified. This is the paradoxical mystery of the Christian existence: life through death, life from the grave, the mystery of the life-bearing grave. And we are born to real and everlasting life precisely through our baptismal death and burial with Christ and in Him: we are regenerated and born anew with Christ in the baptismal font. Such is the invariable law of true life. ‘That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die’ (1 Cor 15:36). The Incarnation itself has been already an eschatological achievement. It was already a consummation of the Divine purpose. Christ is the Last Adam, that is, the ‘last’ and ultimate man (ho eschatos). In Him the new and ultimate Humanity has been initiated. With Him the new man was born at Bethlehem, but born for the life of humiliation, for the life crucified. It was just the beginning of the story. The will of God does not abolish the original status of human freedom, it does not destroy or abrogate the ‘ancient law of human freedom’ (the phrase is by St Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., 4.37.1 [PG 7/1.1099B]). Herein is revealed a certain self-limitation or

6 7 8

Epist. 101.5, Ad Cledonium [PG 37.181C-184A] [GF]. Dismissal Theotokion of the Fourth Tone from the Orthodox service of Saturday Vespers [Eds.]. Hymn of Isaac Watts, Nonconformist hymnographer and theologian (1674–1748), first published in Hymns and Spiritual Songs in 1707 [Eds.].

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kenosis of the Divine might, and more than that, a certain kenosis of Divine Love itself. Divine Love in Christ, as it were, restricts and limits itself in the maintenance of the freedom or ‘self-power’ of the creation; Love does not impose the healing by compulsion, as it might have done. There was no compelling evidence in this absolute manifestation of God. Not all did recognize the Lord of Glory under that ‘guise of the servant’ [Phil 2:7] He deliberately took upon Himself. And whosoever did recognize it, did so not by any natural insight, but by the revelation of the Father (cf. Mt 16:17). The Incarnate Word appeared on earth as man among men. This was the redeeming assumption of all human fullness, not only of human nature, but also of the fullness of human life. The Incarnation had to be manifested in all the fullness of life, in the fullness of human ages, that all that fullness might be sanctified. This is one of the aspects of the idea of the ‘summing up’ of all in Christ (recapitulatio, anakephalaiōsis), which was taken up with such emphasis by St Irenaeus from St Paul.9 And this was again the ‘humiliation’ of the Word (cf. Phil 2.7). Yet, this humiliation or kenosis was no reduction of His Divinity, which in the Incarnation continues unchanged. It was, on the contrary, a lifting up of man, the sanctification or ‘deification’ of human nature, the theosis. It may be a hard word, but it is the only adequate phrase to denote that intimacy of fellowship with God which is disclosed in Christ for the believers. It must be stressed, that in the Incarnation, the Word assumes the original human nature, innocent and pure, and free from ‘original sin’, that is, without any stain. This does not violate the fullness of the nature, nor does this affect the Saviour’s likeness to us sinful men. For sin does not belong to human nature, but is a parasitic and abnormal growth. We may say, sinful humanity is not fully and properly human. Sin is a degradation or a reduction. Sinlessness belongs to the fullness of the Incarnation. In the Incarnation the Son of God assumes the first-formed human nature, as it was created ‘in the image of God’, and thereby the image of God is again re-established in man. It was not yet the assumption of human tragedy, of human suffering or of suffering humanity. It was an assumption of human life, but not yet of human death. Christ’s freedom from original sin constitutes also His ultimate freedom from death, which is but ‘the wages of sin’ [Rom 6:23] for man, and is not his natural destiny. Christ is unstained from corruption and mortality right from His birth. And, like the First Adam before the Fall, He is able not to die at all, potens non mori, though obviously He can still die, potens autem mori. But He was exempt from the necessity of death, because his Humanity was pure and innocent. Therefore, Christ’s death was and could not but be voluntary, not by the grim necessity of fallen nature, but by free choice and acceptance. Christ is indeed ‘the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world’ (Jn 1:29). But He does not take the sin of the world in the Incarnation. This taking on of the sin is an act of will, not a necessity of nature. The Saviour bears the sin of the world (rather than assumes it) by the free choice of love. He bears it in such a way that it does not constitute His own sin, or violate the purity and integrity of His nature and will. He carries it freely. Hence this taking ‘up’ of sin acquires a redeeming power, as a free act 9

Adv. Haer., III, 18.1, 7; II, 22.4 [PG 7/1.957–958; 7/1.783–84] [GF].

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of compassion and love. Hence the voluntary death of the Last Adam becomes a true sacrifice of reconciliation and a betrothal of immortality. The death of Our Lord was in full freedom. No one takes His life away. He Himself offers His soul by His own supreme will and authority. ‘I have authority’, He said (Jn 10:18). He suffered and died, ‘not because He could not escape suffering, but because He chose to suffer’ (from the Catechism by Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow).10 He not only permitted, but also willed it. Hence his death was a sacrifice and oblation.

IV Our Lord’s earthly life is one organic whole, and His redeeming action cannot be exclusively connected with any one particular moment in that life. However, the climax of this life was obviously its death. Jesus plainly bore witness to the hour of death: ‘For this cause came I unto this hour’ (Jn 12:27). Salvation is completed on Golgotha, not on Tabor, and the Cross of Jesus was foretold even on Tabor (cf. Lk 9:31). The redeeming death is the ultimate purpose of the Incarnation. Or in the sharp phrase of Tertullian, forma moriendi causa nascendi est [the project of (his) dying is the reason for (his) being born].11 This may seem again rather exaggerated and paradoxical. In fact, we have to go even further than that. The death of Christ is to be regarded as an organic moment of the Incarnation itself. It is implied in its redemptive purpose. There are certain theological reasons for regarding the Incarnation as an integral part of the original plan of Creation. That is to say that the Son of God would have been incarnate even if man had not fallen at all. This problem had never been formally raised in the Patristic period (except for St Maximus the Confessor),12 but it was vividly discussed in the West, both in medieval and post-Reformation times and is still under dispute and discussion. It seems to be more coherent to regard the Incarnation as an organic consummation of the primordial creative purpose of God and not to make it essentially dependent upon the Fall, that is, upon the disruption of this purpose by the revolt and depravation of the creature. There is no need to discuss the proofs and arguments at length. The greatest plea for a ‘supralapsarian’ conception of the Incarnation has been made perhaps by Duns Scotus, and very little has been added to the discussion since. St Thomas Aquinas himself had to admit the full weight of the ‘supralapsarian’ argument and yet hesitated to make a doctrinal statement on the strength of theological convenience only.13 In doctrine we must not go beyond the direct evidence of the Scripture and Tradition. 10

11 12

13

The Longer Catechism of the Orthodox Catholic, Eastern Church, §205 in The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes, 3 vols., ed. Phlip Schaff (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1881– 1882), Vol. 2, 475. On Met. Philaret (Drozdov) (1782–1867), see Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 13, 36, in this book [Eds.]. De Carne Christi, 6 [PL 2.764A-B] [GF]. See Maximus the Confessor, Ad Thalassium 22 (CCSG 7:137–143) and 60 (CCSG 22:73–81) in On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios, trans. Maximos Constas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018), 150–156; 427–433 [Eds.]. See Allan B. Wolter, ‘Duns Scotus on the Predestination of Christ’, The Cord: A Franciscan Spiritual Review 5 (1955):  366–372; Juniper B. Carol, Why Jesus Christ? Thomistic, Scotistic and Conciliatory

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And it is obvious that the Christian message from the very beginning was precisely the message of Salvation, and Our Lord was described just as the Saviour of the world and the Redeemer of fallen mankind. We may not deal with abstract possibilities, actually unrealized and frustrated, nor build the doctrinal synthesis on the analysis of probabilities, in fact of a casus irrealis [‘unreal case’ or hypothetical situation]. The balance is to be kept, of course. We cannot dogmatically insist that Redemption was the only ‘motive’ or reason for the Incarnation. Yet, we have to deal with the fact of the Incarnation, and not with its idea. We know, both historically and spiritually, both from the Scripture and from the experience of the Church – we know the Incarnate Lord only as Our Saviour – we know the Incarnate precisely as a Crucified and Risen One, precisely as the Lamb of God. The Son of God came down into a fallen world, to seek and to bring back the lost sheep.14 Moreover, we ourselves cannot escape our own existential situation. We are in the predicament of sin and mortality, we are but ‘miserable sinners’, though created in the image of God and predestined for blessed union with Him. ‘I am an image of Thy unfathomable glory though bearing the wound of the transgressions.’15 This ‘wound’ is utterly existential, is grim and sad reality. We are in need of forgiveness and restoration first of all, although forgiveness as such is not yet the ultimate goal. Our Saviour not only brings us the Divine forgiveness, but brings us, ourselves, back into communion and unity with God. The goal is Life Everlasting, the remission of sins is but a key to the Paradise of Glory, to the house of the Father with many mansions. In any case, we can apprehend the mystery of the Incarnation only in the context of the Redemption. Yet Redemption itself is but the Revelation of Life. Once more we have to recall that Incarnation is not just a cosmic miracle, or a sort of metaphysical readjustment, but essentially a personal act of the Living God. It opens a new mode of the Divine activity in the world. It is a new and intimate identification of the Love Divine with human need and misery. Now, the very sting of sin in human existence is precisely human mortality. Death is, in the phrase of St Paul, ‘the last enemy’, that is, the ultimate enemy, ho eschatos echthros (1 Cor 15:26). This is not a metaphorical or a symbolical expression. It is the very point of St Paul’s soteriological vision and conception. The full victory of Christ will be revealed and accomplished precisely in the general Resurrection, of which Christ’s Resurrection is a token and a pledge. That new union between God and man, which had been inaugurated in the Incarnation, had to be extended to the whole state of fallen humanity, including the hopeless disintegration of human fabric by its inescapable liability to death. The mystery of the Incarnation was, as it were, to be extended to the darkness of Hades or Sheol. It has been actually

14

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Perspectives (Manassas, VA:  Trinity Communications, 1986), 120–479; and Daniel P. Horan, ‘How Original Was Scotus on the Incarnation? Reconsidering the History of the Absolute Predestination of Christ in Light of Robert Grossteste’, Heythrop Journal 53, no. 3 (2011): 374–391 [Eds.]. See ‘Since he pre-existed as one who saves, it was necessary that what might be saved also be created so that the one who saves might not be in vain [Cum enim praeexsisteret saluans, oportebat et quod saluaretur fieri, uti non vacuum sit saluans]’, Irenaeus of Lyons, Adv. Haer., III.22.3, PG 7/1.958B [Eds.]. Eastern Orthodox office of the Burial of the Departed, an anthem by St John of Damascus [GF].

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extended in the voluntary death of the Incarnate, which by itself proved to be the ultimate abrogation of death. The Son of God was born of the Virgin and ‘was made man’16 – it was the assumption of human nature. By love and compassion, the Incarnate took upon Himself the sin of man. By the same love and co-suffering (i.e. ‘sympathy’) He died – this was the assumption of human death. And therein the Incarnation, that is, the identification of God with the human situation, was completed. And in the death of the Incarnate, death was destroyed and abrogated for ever. The death on the Cross itself was a supreme and ultimate revelation of Life. The death of the Incarnate was an ultimate confrontation of Life and death, and victory of Life. ‘Because it was not possible that He should be holden of it’ (Acts 2:24).

V In Christian experience death is first revealed as a deep tragedy, as a painful metaphysical catastrophe, as a mysterious failure of human destiny, as an ultimate predicament of human existence. For death is not a normal term of human existence. Man’s death is abnormal; it is a failure. God did not create death: He created man for incorruption and true being, that he ‘might have being’ (Wis 6:18 and 2:23). In current philosophies nowadays, the ‘immortality of the soul’ is overemphasized to such an extent that the ‘mortality of man’ is almost completely overlooked. The biblical view is radically different from this current opinion, or rather prejudice. In the Bible, and in the whole of the Christian experience, death is apprehended as an ultimate misery, as an ultimate frustration of human existence. For man is not just a soul, and soul, by itself, is but a ‘part’ of human fabric: as St Irenaeus puts it, neque enim et anima ipsa secundum se homo, sed anima hominis et pars hominis [neither is the soul itself, considered apart by itself, the human being, it is only the soul of a human being, and part of a human being].17 Perhaps it was Athenagoras of Athens, a Christian apologist of the second century, who put forward this basic conception with clarity and vigour:  ‘Soul and body compose in man one living entity.’ And therefore there is no more man, if and when their union and cohesion is broken. If death is to be the ultimate term of human destiny, it means simply that man no longer exists. Disincarnation of the soul is really the disappearance of man, as man.18 This was the common and basic conviction of all the Fathers of the early Church. Separation of soul and body is the death of the man himself, the discontinuation of his existence, that is, of his existence as a man. A body without a soul is but a corpse, and a soul without body is but a ghost. The death of man is the ‘wages of sin’ (Rom 6:23), for sin itself is the spiritual death, an estrangement and separation of man from the only spring of the true life, which is God. And therefore, the only escape out of this ultimate frustration of human existence is in the reunion with God.

16

17 18

‘and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man’, NiceneConstantinopolitan Creed [Eds.]. Adv. Haer., V, 6.1 [PG 7/2.1138A] [GF]. De Resurr. Mort., 15 [GF]. [PG 6.1003A. Florovsky is citing from memory and has §13 [Eds.].]

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Salvation for man is above all an escape from the ‘bondage of corruption’ (Rom 8:21), that is, the restoration of the original wholeness and stability of human nature, or the resurrection. Yet, the resurrection is possible only in God. Christ, the Incarnate Word, is the Resurrection and the Life (Jn 11:25). The union of God with man was restored and re-established of the Incarnation, or rather in the ‘hypostatical union’ of the Incarnate Lord. It is not an impersonal unity, but unity of a Person. St Athanasius, the classical doctor of the Incarnation, makes this point very well. Could not really the union of the fallen man with God be restored by repentance? No, says St Athanasius. Repentance cannot overcome that state of corruption, that is, of death and decomposition, which had been initiated by sin. Man not only sinned but fell into corruption. Now the Word of God descended and became man, ‘that, whereas man turned towards corruption, He might turn them again towards incorruption and quicken them from death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of the Resurrection, banishing death from them like a straw from the fire’. Yet death is vanquished not simply by the appearance of Life in the mortal body, but rather by the voluntary death of the Incarnate Life. The Word became incarnate on account of death in the flesh, St Athanasius emphasizes. ‘In order to accept death He had a body’, and only through His death was the resurrection possible.19 Christ suffered death, but passed through it and overcame mortality and corruption. As it were, He quickened death itself. ‘By death He destroyed death’ (an Easter hymn).20 The death of the Cross was effective, not as a death of an Innocent One, but as the death of the Incarnate Lord. ‘We needed an Incarnate God, God put to death, that we might live’, to use a bold phrase of St Gregory of Nazianzus.21 For, the Person, who was crucified and died, was Divine – there was no human ‘hypostasis’ in Christ. It was not a mere man who died. ‘For He who suffered was not common man, but God made man.’22 It may be properly said that God died on the Cross, in His own humanity. ‘He who dwelleth in the highest is reckoned among the dead, and in the little grave findeth lodging.’23 This was the voluntary death of One who is Himself Life Eternal, who is in very truth the Life. A human death indeed, death according to humanity, but death within the hypostasis of the Word, the Incarnate Word, and hence a resurrecting death. It was a true death. Yet, not wholly like ours, simply because this was the death of the Incarnate Word, that is, within the indivisible Hypostasis of the Word-made-man. Again, it was a voluntary death – His death was not the ‘wages of sin’. It was caused not by the necessity of the fallen nature, but by the freedom of the Redeeming Love. The main point is that it was a death within the Hypostasis of the Word, the death of the ‘enhypostasized’ humanity.24 Death is a separation, and in the death of the Lord, 19 20

21 22 23 24

De Incarnatione, 6–8, 21, 44 [PG 25.105–10, 131–4, 173–6] [GF]. This is from the Troparion or Hymn of the Resurrection, ‘Having beheld the Resurrection of Christ . . .’, which is sung daily from Pascha to Ascension and is recited in the Divine Liturgy [Eds.]. Orat. XLV in S. Pascha, 28 [PG 36.661C] [GF]. St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech., 13.6 [PG 33.780C] [GF]. Eastern Orthodox office of the Good Saturday, Matins [GF]. Florovsky based his reading of the Christology of the Council of Chalcedon (451) on Friedrich Loofs’s (1858–1928) influential but now widely discredited reading of the pro-Chalcedonian antiMonophysite Leontius of Byzantium (sixth century) (on Leontius of Byzantium, see Ch. 13, ‘St Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers’, n. 11, 225–226, in this book). This reading argues

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indeed, His most precious body and soul were separated. Yet the one hypostasis of the Word Incarnate was not divided, the ‘hypostatic union’ was not broken or destroyed. In other words, though separated in death, the soul and the body remained still united through the Divinity of the Word, in the common hypostasis of both. This does not alter the ontological character of death, but changes its meaning. This was an ‘incorrupt death’, and therefore corruption and death were overcome in it, and in it begins the resurrection. The very death of the Incarnate reveals the resurrection of human nature.25 There are two aspects of the mystery of the Cross. It is at once a mystery of shame and a mystery of glory. It is indeed a mystery of sorrow and mortal anguish, a mystery of humiliation and desertion. And the Church warns us against every docetic underestimate of the reality and fullness of Christ’s sufferings, ut non evacuatur crux Christi (1 Cor 1:17) [lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power]. Yet the Church warns us also against the opposite overemphasis, against all kenotic exaggeration.26 The death of Christ is itself already the victory over death, not only as a triumph of humility and love, but above all as a victory of immortality and life. It is a victory not only because it was followed by the Resurrection. The Resurrection only reveals and discloses the victory achieved on the Cross. The Resurrection is already achieved in the very falling-asleep of the God-man. The power of the Resurrection is exactly the power of the Cross, that is, the power of the voluntary Passion and death of the God-man. This mystery of the resurrecting Cross is commemorated especially on Good Saturday [Holy Saturday]. This is more than merely the eve of salvation. It is already the very day of our salvation. ‘This is the blessed Sabbath, this is the day of rest, whereon the Only Begotten Son of God has rested from all His deeds’ (Vespers of Good Saturday). This is the day of the Descent into Hell. And the Descent into Hell is the Resurrection. Hell, or Hades, or the ‘subterranean abodes’, to which the Lord ‘descended’, is just the darkness and shadow of death, rather a place of mortal anguish than a place of penal torments, the common abode of the departed, a dark Sheol, a state of hopeless disembodiment and disincarnation, which was only scantily and

25 26

that Leontius held that in the incarnation the human nature of Christ (reasonable soul and body) is anhypostasia (lacking a hypostasis) insofar as it lacks a human hypostasis. However, this hypostasislessness of Christ’s human nature does not mean it is not hypostasized because as a nature it does not subsist in a human hypostasis/person but subsists in the Logos where it is hypostatized (enhypostasia) along with the divine nature. Florovsky, therefore, argued for an ‘assymetrical’ Christology: ‘Admitting human “hypostasis-lessness” is admitting an assymetry in the unity of the Godhead’ (The Byzantine Fathers of the Fifth Century, CW, VIII, 297). By this he meant that ‘In Christ there is no human hypostasis (although there is, of course, a human soul). His personality is Divine, yet incarnate’, so that when Christ died, one properly says that it is God who dies in His humanity and not a man:  ‘this was a death within the hypostasis of the Word, the death of the “enhypostasized” humanity’ (Florovsky, ‘On the Tree of the Cross’, St Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly, 1, nos. 3–4 [1953]: 11–34 at 13 and 16). This Christology is reiterated by John Meyendorff in Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987). Also see Ch. 3, ‘In Ligno Crucis: The Church Fathers’ Doctrine of Redemption’, n. 10, 76, in this book [Eds.]. Cf. St John of Damascus, De Fide Orth., III, 27 [PG 94.1095-8] [GF]. Here Florovsky is making a polemical swipe at Sergius Bulgakov’s profoundly kenoticist doctrine of the atonement. See Agnets Bozhii (Paris: YMCA, 1933); The Lamb of God, trans. and ed. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2008) [Eds.].

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dimly fore-illumined by the slanting rays of the not-yet-risen Sun, by the hope and expectation yet unfulfilled. Before Christ’s coming down, all descended ‘into hell’, into infernal darkness, both righteous and wicked. They were all really the ‘spirits in prison’ (1 Pet 3:19). And it was into this prison, into this ‘hell’, that the Lord and Saviour descended by His death. This was His identification with the departed. Thus, amid the darkness of pale death shone the unquenchable light of Life, and Life Divine. Thereby Hell was destroyed and abrogated. Death was overcome by Life. ‘The Descent of Christ into Hell’ (and this is a credal phrase indeed) was the manifestation of Life amid the hopelessness of death, and therefore a victory over death. Christ ‘descended into hell’ as the Victor, Christus Victor,27 as the Master of Life. He descended in His glory, although through humiliation of the Cross. As St Athanasius says, ‘It was not from any natural weakness of the Word that dwelt in it that the body had died, but in order that in it death might be done away by the power of the Saviour.’28 In the death of the Saviour the powerlessness of death was revealed. He is Life Everlasting, and the very fact of His death signifies the end of death’s dominion. In the first Adam the inherent potentiality of death by disobedience was actualized. In the second Adam, who is the Lord from Heaven, the potentiality of immortality by purity and obedience was sublimated into the impossibility of death. ‘For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive’ (1 Cor 15:2). The victory of the Cross was disclosed in the Resurrection. And in the Resurrection the Incarnation is completed – a victorious manifestation of Life within human nature and existence – a grafting of immortality into the human composition. ‘I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth, and was dead: and behold, I am alive for evermore. Amen. And I have the keys of death and of hell’ (Rev 1:17–18). The dark vale of Hades is abolished by the power of the life-giving Cross.

VI The Resurrection of Christ was a victory not over His death only, but over death in general. In Him the whole of humanity is co-resurrected  – not in the sense that all are raised from the grave, and nobody dies any longer. What is abolished is the hopelessness of death and mortal dissolution. Death is rendered powerless. St Paul makes this quite clear. ‘But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen. . . . For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised’ (1 Cor 15:13, 16). St Paul meant to say that the Resurrection of Christ would become meaningless if it were not a universal accomplishment, if the whole Body were not implicitly ‘preresurrected’ with the Head, and in Him. Apart from the sure hope of the General Resurrection, belief in Christ would be vain and to no purpose: it would only be vainglory (v. 17). ‘But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept’ (v. 20). 27

28

Florovsky’s essay was first published in a collection of lectures on the Incarnation by a Danish Lutheran Brotherhood, Theologisk oratorium. Florovsky is alluding here to the book of the Swedish theologian Gustaf Aulén (1879–1977): Christis Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement, trans. A. G. Herbert (London: SPCK, 1931) [Eds.]. De Inc., 26 [PG 25.142C] [GF].

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All will rise, by the power of Christ’s resurrection. From henceforth every disembodiment is but temporary. The integrity of human fabric or composition is restored. Human existence is again rendered truly human. Yet, again it is not just a metaphysical miracle, not just a cosmic readjustment, which could be automatically applied or imputed to any man, without any regard to his inner state or disposition. Of course, all will rise, and no one, so far as nature is concerned, can any more alienate himself from the invincible power of the resurrection. The victory of Christ over death and mortality is truly final and universal. But just because it is not just an impersonal miracle, but precisely a personal deed of God, a personal response and participation of individual persons is required too. Neither the Incarnation, nor the Resurrection acts automatically or by violence of the omnipotent might of God. They are for us ‘unto salvation’ only in so far as we appropriate them by faith. Salvation is truly universal, that is, available for every one. And yet there is no salvation outside of the Church, extra ecclesiam nulla salus.29 That is to say, there is no salvation but in Christ. Now, we are truly ‘in Christ’ only when and if we believe in Him and by faith share in His riches. The New Humanity is already initiated in the Last Adam, in the Second Man. But we have to be incorporated into this new humanity by faith. The Christian life, the redeemed existence, is initiated in us with a new birth, by water and the Spirit. And first, faith and ‘repentance’ are required (metanoia, an inner change or conversion, intimate and resolute). Then, Baptism. And let us remember, the symbolism of baptism is definitely a symbolism of Christ’s death and resurrection: ‘Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead’ (Col 2:12; cf. Rom 6:3–4, and 2 Tim 2:11). For it is in baptism that we become ‘members’ of Christ, grafted into His Body, ‘rooted and built up in Him’ (Col 2:7). And thereby the grace of the Resurrection is shed abroad on us – it is already shed, not only will be shed. Before it is consummated in the General Resurrection, at the Last Day, the Life Eternal is already manifest in the spiritual rebirth of believers, granted and accomplished in baptism, and the union with the Risen Lord is already the initiation of the resurrection and of the life to come. In the early Church the rite of Christian initiation was not divided. Three sacraments belonged together: Baptism, the Holy Chrism or Confirmation, the Eucharist. All these sacraments are instituted just in order to enable men to associate themselves with the redeeming death of Christ and gain thereby the grace of His resurrection. They are not merely symbols or signs: in them, the ultimate reality is in very truth disclosed and conveyed. And in this sense they are an extension of the Incarnation: in them that new union of God with man, which was initiated in the Incarnation, is ever present and made available for believers.30 And all this hieratic symbolism culminates in the august 29

30

See Florovsky’s discussion of this famous phrase of St Cyprian of Carthage (Ep. 73.21.2 [CSEL 3.2, 795]) in his essay ‘Sobornost: The Catholicity of the Church’, Ch. 18, 258, in this book; and see ‘The Limits of the Church, Ch. 17, n. 1, 247, in this book [Eds.]. The idea of the Church as the ‘extension of the Incarnation’ is found in Johann Adam Möhler (1796– 1838): ‘Thus the visible Church [. . .] is the Son of God himself everlastingly manifesting himself among men in a human form, perpetually renewed and eternally young – the enduring incarnation of the same [die andauernde Fleischwerdung desselben], as in Holy Scriptures, even the faithful are called the “Body of Christ” ’ (Möhler, Symbolism: Or, Exposition of the Doctrinal Differences between

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mystery of the Holy Altar, ‘the perfect and final sacrament’. Again, it is the sacrament of our incorporation. The sacramental life of the Church is its building up. Through the sacraments, and in them, the new life of Christ is extended and bestowed upon the members of His Body. We may say: in the sacraments, the Incarnation, the true reunion of man with God in Christ, is consummated. ‘O Christ, Passover great and most Holy, O Wisdom, Word and Power of God:  Vouchsafe that we may more perfectly partake of Thee in the days of Thine everlasting Kingdom.’31

31

Catholics and Protestants as Evidenced by Their Symbolical Writings, 2 vols., 2nd ed., trans. James Burton Robinson [London: Charles Dolan, 1847], Vol. 2 [ch. 5, §36], 6 [Symbolik, oder Darstellung der dogmatischen gegensätze der Katholiken und protestanten nach ihren öffentlichen bekenntnisschriften, 6th ed. (Mainz/Wien: Florian Kupferberg/Karl Gerold, 1843), 332–333]). Möhler, a member of the Catholic Tübingen School, was an important influence on Florovsky, especially by his work The Unity of the Church (1825). See Ch. 11, ‘The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology’, n. 12, 189, in this book [Eds.]. Easter hymn, recited by the priest at every celebration [of the Eucharist] [GF].

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This text was first published in 1949 in The Mother of God, A Symposium by Members of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, edited by E. L. Mascall (London: Dacre Press), 51–63. It is based on extemporaneous remarks made by Georges Florovsky at the Summer Conference of the Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius held in July and August 1948 (Blane #100). Author’s note: The writer is fully aware of the inadequacy of this exposition. This is not a theological essay in the strict sense. It is only an occasional address written down in haste some time after it had been improvised. The only contention of the author was to suggest the way in which the subject should be approached and to open the discussion. The main concern in the paper was to prove that Mariology belongs to the very body of Christian doctrine, or, if we allow the phrase, to that essential minimum of doctrinal agreement outside which no true unity of faith could even be claimed. G. F. The whole dogmatic teaching about our Lady can be condensed into these two names of hers: the Mother of God and the Ever-Virgin – Theotokos and Aeiparthenos.1 Both names have the formal authority of the Church Universal, an ecumenical authority indeed. The Virgin Birth is plainly attested in the New Testament and has been an integral part of the Catholic tradition ever since. ‘Incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary’ (or ‘Born of the Virgin Mary’) is a credal phrase. It is not merely a statement of the historical fact. It is precisely a credal statement, a solemn profession of faith. The term ‘Ever-Virgin’ was formally endorsed by the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553). And Theotokos is more than a name or an honorific title. It is rather a doctrinal definition – in one word. It has been a touchstone of the true faith and a distinctive mark of Orthodoxy even before the Council of Ephesus (431). Already St Gregory of Nazianzus warns Cledonius: ‘If one does not acknowledge Mary as Theotokos, he is estranged from God’ (Epist. 101.5 [PG 37.177C]). As a matter of fact, the name was widely used by the Fathers of the fourth century and possibly 1

The Orthodox Church teaches that Mary retained her virginity, before, during and after the birth of Christ and hence the title Aeiparthenos (Ever-Virgin). The title Theotokos, approved by the Third Ecumenical Council (Ephesus, 431), is literally translated ‘the one who gives birth to God’ (sometimes, ‘Birth-Giver of God’, ‘God-bearer’ or more simply ‘Mother of God’). As the title Theotokos is sui generis, some Orthodox traditions simply use the Greek title in translations of liturgical texts and hymns [Eds.].

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even in the third (by Origen, for instance), if we can trust Socrates (Hist. Eccl., VII, 32 [PG 67.812B]) and the texts preserved in catenas (for example, In Lucam Hom. 6 and 7, ed. Rauer, 44, 10 and 50, 9).2 It was already traditional when it was contested and repudiated by Nestorius and his group. The word does not occur in Scripture, just as the term homoousios (consubstantial) does not occur. But surely, neither at Nicaea nor at Ephesus was the Church innovating or imposing a new article of faith. An ‘unscriptural’ word was chosen and used, precisely to voice and to safeguard the traditional belief and common conviction of ages. It is true, of course, that the Third Ecumenical Council was concerned primarily with the Christological dogma and did not formulate any special Mariological doctrine. But precisely for that very reason it was truly remarkable that a Mariological term should have been selected and put forward as the ultimate test of Christological orthodoxy, to be used, as it were, as a doctrinal shibboleth in the Christological discussion. It was really a keyword to the whole of Christology. ‘This name’, says St John of Damascus, ‘contains the whole mystery of the Incarnation’ (De Fide Orth., III, 12 [PG 94.1029C]). As Petavius3 aptly puts it: ‘Quem in Trinitatis explicando dogmate homoousiou vox, eundem hoc in nostro Incarnationis, usum ac principatum obtinet Theotokou nomen [the dominant place of the term homoousios when expounding the dogma of the Trinity is occupied in our doctrine of the Incarnation by the word Theotokos].’4 The motive and the purpose of such a choice are obvious. The Christological doctrine can never be accurately and adequately stated unless a very definite teaching about the Mother of Christ has been included. In fact, all the Mariological doubts and errors of modern times depend in the last resort precisely upon an utter Christological confusion. They reveal a hopeless ‘conflict in Christology’. There is no room for the Mother of God in a ‘reduced Christology’. Protestant theologians simply have nothing to say about her. Yet to ignore the Mother means to misinterpret the Son. On the other hand, the person of the Blessed Virgin can be properly understood and rightly described only in a Christological setting and context. Mariology is to be but a chapter in the treatise on the Incarnation, never to be extended into an independent ‘treatise’. Not, of course, an optional or occasional chapter, not an appendix. It belongs to the very body of doctrine. The Mystery of the Incarnation includes the Mother of the Incarnate. Sometimes, however, this Christological perspective has been obscured by a devotional exaggeration, by an unbalanced pietism. Piety must always be guided and checked by dogma. Again, there must be a Mariological chapter in the treatise on the Church. But the doctrine of the Church itself is but an ‘extended Christology’, the 2

3

4

Origen, Die Homilien zu Lukas in der Übersetzung des Hieronymus und die griechischen Reste der Homilien und des Lukas-Kommentars [The Homilies on Luke in Translation and the Greek Fragments of the Homilies and the Commentary on Luke], ed. Max Rauer, Origenes Werke [The Writings of Origen], ix (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1930) [Eds.]. Dionysius Petavius or Denis Pétau (1583–1652) was a French Jesuit theologian of the seventeenth century, known for his vast but unfinished De Theologicis Dogmatibus [On Dogmatic Theology] (Paris, Vols. 1–3, 1644, Vol. 4, 1650) and for his early defence of doctrinal development [Eds.]. Dionysius Petavius, Theologica Dogmata: In Quo Rursum De Incarnatione Verbi Agitur [Dogmatic Theology:  Again on the Incarnation of the Word], Vol. 4 (Paris:  Sebastian & Gabriel Cramoisy, 1650), V. 15, 471. [GF].

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doctrine of the ‘total Christ’, totus Christus, caput et corpus [the total Christ, Head and Body].5 The name Theotokos stresses the fact that the Child whom Mary bore was not a ‘simple man’, not a human person, but the only-begotten Son of God, ‘One of the Holy Trinity’, yet Incarnate. This is obviously the cornerstone of the Orthodox faith. Let us recall the formula of Chalcedon: ‘Following, then, the holy Fathers, we confess one and the same Son (hena kai ton auton), our Lord Jesus Christ . . . before the ages begotten of the Father as to Godhead, but in the last days, for us and for our salvation, the self-same (ton auton), born of Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, as to Manhood’ (the translation is by Dr Bright). The whole emphasis is on the absolute identity of the Person: the Same, the Self-same, unus idemque in St Leo.6 This implies a twofold generation of the divine Word (but emphatically not a double Sonship; that would be precisely the Nestorian perversion). There is but one Son: the One born of the Virgin Mary is in the fullest possible sense the Son of God. As St John of Damascus says, the Holy Virgin did not bear ‘a common man, but the true God’ (ou gar anthrōpon psilon . . . alla theon alēthinon) yet ‘not naked, but incarnate’ (ou gymnon, alla sesarkōmenon). The Same, who from all eternity is born of the Father, ‘in these last days’ was born of the Virgin, ‘without any change’ (De Fide Orth., III, 12 [PG 94.1028C]). There is here no confusion of natures. The ‘second gennēsis’ [generation] is just the Incarnation. No new person came into being when the Son of Mary was conceived and born, but the Eternal Son of God was made man. This constitutes the mystery of the divine Motherhood of the Virgin Mary. For indeed Motherhood is a personal relation, a relation between persons. Now, the Son of Mary was in very truth a divine Person. The name Theotokos is an inevitable sequel to the name Theanthrōpos, the God-Man. Both stand and fall together. The doctrine of the Hypostatic Union implies and demands the conception of the divine Motherhood. Most unfortunately, the mystery of the Incarnation has been treated in modern times too often in an utterly abstract manner, as if it were but a metaphysical problem or even a dialectical riddle. One indulges too easily in the dialectics of the Finite and the Infinite, of the Temporal and the Eternal, etc., as if they were but terms of a logical or metaphysical relation. One is then in danger of overlooking and missing the very point: the Incarnation was precisely a mighty deed of the Living God, his most personal intervention into the creaturely existence, indeed, the ‘coming down’ of a divine Person, of God in person. Again, there is a subtle but real docetic7 flavour in many recent attempts to restate the traditional faith in modern terms. There is a tendency to overemphasize the divine initiative in the Incarnation to 5

6

7

A favourite phrase of Florovsky adapted from Saint Augustine: ‘For Christ is not in the head or in the body, but Christ is wholly in the head and in the body’ [non enim christus in capite et non in corpore, sed christus totus in capite et in corpore] (Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 28–54, trans. John W. Rettig [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1993], 28.1. 3–13 at 3 [In Iohannis evangelium tractatus CXXIV, PL 35. c.1622]) [Eds.]. Allusion to the Tome of Leo, a letter from Pope Leo the Great to Flavian of Constantinople, expressing Western Christology. The Tome was first deposited at the Second Council of Ephesus in 449 and subsequently read and received with approval at the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon in 451. The original citation from the Tome reads unus enim idem que est [he is one and the same] [Eds.]. Docetism was a doctrine of the first and second centuries attributed to the Gnostics, which held that Jesus was only divine, that his physical body was an illusion, as was his crucifixion, i.e. Jesus only

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such an extent that the historic life of the Incarnate itself fades out into ‘the Incognito of the Son of God’.8 The direct identity of the Jesus of history and the Son of God is explicitly denied. The whole impact of Incarnation is reduced to symbols: the Incarnate Lord is understood rather as an exponent of some august principle or idea (be it the Wrath of God or Love, Anger or Mercy, Judgement or Forgiveness), than as a living Person. In both cases the personal implications of the Incarnation are overlooked or neglected – I mean, our adoption into true sonship of God in the Incarnate Lord. Now, something very real and ultimate happened with men and to men when the Word of God ‘was made flesh and dwelt among us’, or rather, ‘took his abode in our midst’ – a very pictorial turn indeed: eskēnōsen en hēmin (Jn 1:14). ‘But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman’ (Gal 3:4). This is a scriptural statement of the same mystery with which the Fathers were wrestling at Chalcedon. Now, what is the full meaning and purpose of this phrase: ‘born of woman’? Motherhood, in general, is by no means exhausted by the mere fact of a physical procreation. It would be lamentable blindness if we ignored its spiritual aspect. In fact, procreation itself establishes an intimate spiritual relation between the mother and the child. This relation is unique and reciprocal, and its essence is affection or love. Are we entitled to ignore this implication of the fact that our Lord was ‘born of the Virgin Mary’? Surely, no docetic reduction is permissible in this case, just as it must be avoided anywhere else in Christology. Jesus was (and is) the Eternal God, and yet Incarnate, and Mary was his Mother in the fullest sense. Otherwise the Incarnation would not have been genuine. But this means precisely that for the Incarnate Lord there is one particular human person to whom he is in a very special relation  – in precise terms, one for whom he is not only the Lord and Saviour, but a Son. On the other hand, Mary was the true mother of her Child  – the truth of her human maternity is of no less relevance and importance than the mystery of her divine motherhood. But the Child was divine. Yet the spiritual implications of her motherhood could not be diminished by the exceptional character of the case, nor could Jesus fail to be truly human in his filial response to the motherly affection of the one of whom he was born. This is not a vain speculation. It would be impertinent indeed to intrude upon the sacred field of this unparalleled intimacy between the Mother and the divine Child. But it would be even more impertinent to ignore the mystery. In any case, it would have been a very impoverished idea if we regarded the Virgin Mother merely as a physical instrument of our Lord’s taking flesh. Moreover, such a misinterpretation is formally excluded by the explicit teaching of the Church, attested from the earliest date: she was not just a ‘channel’ through which the Heavenly Lord has come, but truly

8

seemed to have a physical body and to die physically, but in reality he was incorporeal, a pure spirit, and hence could not die physically [Eds.]. Allusion to a key aspect of the understanding of faith in Christ as expressed by Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) in his Practice in Christianity, where one of the sections is titled ‘The Form of a Servant is Unrecognizability (The Incognito)’, trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). A faith relation with the God-Man can be established only if the transcendent God communicates with us indirectly in the form of a servant (Phil 2: 5–11) through a suffering, rejected and unrecognizable servant who does not directly reveal His exalted status as the form of God. The divine kenosis (self-effacement) in the Incarnation is a major theme in Russian theology and spirituality [Eds.].

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the mother of whom he took his humanity. St John of Damascus precisely in these very words summarizes the Catholic teaching: he did not come ‘as through a pipe’ (hōs dia sōlēnos) but has assumed of her (ex autēs) a human nature consubstantial to ours (De Fide Orth., III, 12 [PG 94.1028C]). Mary ‘has found favour with God’ (Lk 1:30). She was chosen and ordained to serve in the Mystery of the Incarnation. And by this eternal election or predestination9 she was in a sense set apart and given a unique privilege and position in the whole of mankind, nay in the whole of creation. She was given a transcendent rank, as it were. She was at once a representative of the human race, and set apart. There is an antinomy here, implied in the divine election. She was set apart. She was put into a unique and unparalleled relation to God, to the Holy Trinity, even before the Incarnation, as the prospective Mother of the Incarnate Lord, just because it was not an ordinary historical happening, but an eventful consummation of the eternal decree of God. She has a unique position even in the divine plan of salvation. Through the Incarnation human nature was to be restored again into the fellowship with God, which had been destroyed and abrogated by the Fall. The sacred humanity of Jesus was to be the bridge over the abyss of sin. Now, this humanity was to be taken of the Virgin Mary. The Incarnation itself was a new beginning in the destiny of man, a beginning of the new humanity. In the Incarnation the ‘new man’ was born, the ‘Last Adam’; he was truly human, but he was more than a man: ‘The second man is the Lord from heaven’ (1 Cor 15:47). As the Mother of this ‘Second Man’, Mary herself was participating in the mystery of the redeeming recreation of the world. Surely, she is to be counted among the redeemed. She was most obviously in need of salvation. Her Son is her Redeemer and Saviour, just as he is the Redeemer of the world. Yet, she is the only human being for whom the Redeemer of the world is also a son, her own child whom she truly bore. Jesus indeed was born ‘not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God’ (Jn 1:13 – this verse is related both to the Incarnation and to baptismal regeneration), and yet he is ‘the fruit of the womb’ of Mary. His supernatural birth is the pattern and the font of the new existence, of the new and spiritual birth of all believers, which is nothing else than a participation in his sacred humanity, an adoption into the sonship of God – in the ‘second man’, in the ‘last Adam’. The Mother of the ‘second man’ necessarily had her own and peculiar way into the new life. It is not too much to say that for her the Redemption was, in a sense, anticipated in the fact of the Incarnation itself  – and anticipated in a peculiar and personal manner. ‘The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee’ (Lk 1:35). This was a true ‘theophanic presence’ – in the fullness of grace and of the Spirit. The ‘shadow’ is exactly a theophanic symbol. And Mary was truly ‘full of grace’, gratia plena, kecharitōmenē. The Annunciation was for her, as it were, an anticipated Pentecost. We are compelled to risk this daring parallelism by the inscrutable logic of the divine election. For indeed we cannot regard the Incarnation merely as a metaphysical miracle which would be unrelated to the personal destiny 9

The election of Mary to be the Theotokos is a key theme in Orthodox Mariology, especially as seen in the liturgical corpus (cf. Sergius Bulgakov, The Burning Bush: On the Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God [1927], trans. Thomas Allan Smith [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009]) [Eds.].

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and existence of the persons involved. Man is never dealt with by God as if he was but a tool in the hands of a master. For man is a living person. By no means could it be merely an ‘instrumental’ grace, when the Virgin was ‘overshadowed’ with the power of the Highest. The unique position of the Virgin Mary is obviously not her own achievement, nor simply a ‘reward’ for her ‘merits’ – nor even perhaps was the fullness of grace given to her in a ‘prevision’ of her merits and virtue. It was supremely the free gift of God, in the strictest sense – gratia gratis data. It was an absolute and eternal election, although not unconditional  – for it was conditioned by and related to the mystery of the Incarnation. Mary holds her unique position and has a ‘category of her own’ not as a mere Virgin, but as the Virgin Mother parthenomētēr, as the predestined Mother of the Lord. Her function in the Incarnation is twofold. On the one hand, she secures the continuity of the human race. Her Son is, in virtue of his ‘second nativity’, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham and of all the ‘forefathers’ (this is emphasized by the genealogies of Jesus, in both versions). In the phrase of St Irenaeus, he ‘recapitulated in himself the long roll of humanity’ (Adv. haeres., III, 18, 1 [PG 7.932B]:  longam hominum expositionem in se ipso recapitulavit), ‘gathered up in himself all nations, dispersed as they were even from Adam’ (III, 22, 3 [PG 7.958A]) and ‘took upon himself the old way of creation’ (IV, 23, 4 [sic]). But, on the other hand, he ‘exhibited a new sort of generation’ (V, 1, 3 [PG 7.1122D]). He was the New Adam. This was the most drastic break in the continuity, the true reversal of the previous process. And this ‘reversal’ begins precisely with the Incarnation, with the Nativity of the ‘Second Man’. St Irenaeus speaks of a recirculation – from Mary to Eve (III, 22, 4 [PG 7.959A]). As the Mother of the New Man, Mary has her anticipated share in this very newness. Of course, Jesus the Christ is the only Lord and Saviour. But Mary is his mother. She is the morning star that announces the sunrise, the rise of the true Sol salutis [Sun of salvation]: astēr emphainōn ton Ēlion. She is ‘the dawn of the mystic day’ augē mystikēs hēmeras (both phrases are from the Akathist hymn).10 And in a certain sense even the Nativity of our Lady itself belongs to the mystery of salvation. ‘Thy birth, O Mother of God and Virgin, hath declared joy to all the universe – for from thee arose the Sun of Righteousness, Christ our God’ (Troparion of the Feast of the Nativity of our Lady). Christian thought moves always in the dimension of personalities, not in the realm of general ideas. It apprehends the mystery of the Incarnation as a mystery of the Mother and the Child. This is the ultimate safeguard against any abstract docetism. It is a safeguard of the evangelical concreteness. The traditional icon of the Blessed Virgin, in the Eastern tradition, is precisely an icon of the Incarnation: the Virgin is always with the Babe. And surely no icon, that is, no image of the Incarnation, is ever possible without the Virgin Mother. Again, the Annunciation is ‘the beginning of our salvation and the revelation of the mystery which is from eternity: the Son of God becometh the Son of the Virgin, and Gabriel proclaimeth good tidings of grace’ (Troparion of the Feast of the Annunciation). 10

The Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God is celebrated during Matins of the Saturday of the fifth week of Great Lent and may also be celebrated at other times of the church year as a devotional hymn [Eds.].

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The divine will has been declared and proclaimed by the archangel. But the Virgin was not silent. She responded to the divine call, responded in humility and faith. ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word’ (Lk 1:38). Divine will is accepted and responded to. And this human response is highly relevant at this point. The obedience of Mary counterbalances the disobedience of Eve. In this sense the Virgin Mary is the Second Eve, as her Son is the Second Adam. This parallel was drawn quite early. The earliest witness is St Justin (Dial., 100 [PG 6.709-711]) and in St Irenaeus we find already an elaborate conception, organically connected with his basic idea of the recapitulation: As Eve by the speech of an angel was seduced so as to flee God, transgressing his word, so also Mary received the good tidings by means of the angel’s speech, so as to bear God within her, being obedient to his word. And, though the one has disobeyed God, yet the other was drawn to obey God; that of the virgin Eve the Virgin Mary might become the advocate. And, as by a virgin the human race had been bound to death, by a virgin it is saved, the balance being preserved, a virgin’s disobedience by a virgin’s obedience (V, 19, 1 [PG 7.1175-1176]).

And again: ‘And so the knot of Eve’s disobedience received its unloosing through the obedience of Mary; for what Eve, a virgin, bound by incredulity, that Mary, a virgin, unloosed by faith’ (III, 22, 4 [PG 7.959C-960A] – translation by Cardinal Newman). This conception was traditional, especially in the catechetical teaching, both in the East and in the West. ‘It is a great sacrament (magnum sacramentum) that, whereas through woman death became our portion, so life was born to us by woman,’ says St Augustine (De Agone Christiano [On the Christian Struggle], XXII, 24 [PL 40.303] – in another place he is simply quoting Irenaeus). ‘Death by Eve, life by Mary’, declares St Jerome (Epist. 22, 21: mors per Evam, vita per Mariam [PL 22.408]). Let me quote also an admirable and concise passage from one of the sermons of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow (1782–1867).11 He was preaching on the day of the Annunciation: At the time of the creation of the world, when God spoke his living and mighty words: ‘Let there be,’ the Creator’s words brought creatures into existence; but on this day without parallel in the existence of the world, when divine Mary uttered her humble and obedient ‘Let it be done,’ I hardly dare to express what took place then: the voice of the creature caused the Creator to descend into the world. God uttered his word here also:  ‘You will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son . . . He will be great . . . and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever’ (Lk 1:31–33). But – which again is divine and incomprehensible – the word of God itself delays its action, allowing itself to be stayed by the word of Mary: ‘How can this be?’ (Lk 1:34). Her humble ‘Let it be done’ was necessary for the realization of God’s mighty ‘Let it be done.’ What secret power is thus contained in these simple 11

On Met. Philaret (Drozdov) (1782–1867), see Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 13, 36, in this book [Eds.].

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words: ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word’ (Lk 1:38) and produces an effect so extraordinary? This marvellous power is Mary’s pure and perfect devotion to God, devotion of her will, her thought, her soul, her entire being, of all her faculties, all her actions, all her hopes and all her expectations.12

The Incarnation was indeed a sovereign act of God, but it was a revelation not only of his omnipotent might, but above all, of his fatherly love and compassion. There was implied an appeal to human freedom once more, as an appeal to freedom was implied in the act of creation itself, namely, in the creation of rational beings. The initiative was of course divine. Yet, as the means of salvation chosen by God was to be an assumption of true human nature by a divine Person, man had to have his active share in the mystery. Mary was voicing this obedient response of man to the redeeming decree of the love divine, and so she was representative of the whole race. She exemplified in her person, as it were, the whole of humanity. This obedient and joyful acceptance of the redeeming purpose of God, so beautifully expressed in the Magnificat, was an act of freedom. Indeed, it was freedom of obedience, not of initiative – and yet a true freedom, freedom of love and adoration, of humility and trust – and freedom of cooperation (cf. St Irenaeus, Adv. haeres., III, 21, 7 [PG 7.953B]: ‘Mary cooperating with the economy’) – this is just what human freedom means. The grace of God can never be simply superadded, mechanically as it were. It has to be received in a free obedience and submission.13 Mary was chosen and elected to become the Mother of the Incarnate Lord. We must assume that she was fit for that awful office, that she was prepared for her exceptional calling – prepared by God. Can we properly define the nature and character of this preparation? We are facing here the crucial antinomy (to which we have alluded above). The Blessed Virgin was representative of the race, that is, of the fallen human race, of the ‘old Adam’. But she was also the second Eve; with her begins the ‘new generation’. She was set apart by the eternal counsel of God, but this ‘setting apart’ was not to destroy her essential solidarity with the rest of mankind. Can we solve this antinomical mystery in any logical scheme? The Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception, of the Virgin Mary is a noble attempt to suggest such a solution. But this solution is valid only in the context of a particular and highly inadequate doctrine of original sin and does not hold outside this particular setting. Strictly speaking, this ‘dogma’ is an unnecessary complication, and an unfortunate terminology only obscures the undisputable truth of the Catholic belief. 12

13

Choix de Sermons et Discours de S. Ém. Mgr. Philarète, Métropolite de Moscow [Selection of Sermons of H. E. Bishop Philaret of Moscow], t. 1, traduit par A. Serpinet (Paris: E. Dentu, 1866), 187 [GF]. [This quotation is in French in Florovsky’s original text [Eds.].] This can be seen as a polemical allusion to neo-scholastic Roman Catholic theology of grace, which maintains that there is a distinction between a state of pure nature in which man was made and which is not free from death or lust of the flesh, and grace itself, which is an extraordinary superadded gift that grants man the possibility of immortality and an original righteousness (i.e. to do and wish supernatural good or the good of infused virtue) (cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I–II, 109, 2) [Eds.].

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The ‘privileges’ of the divine Motherhood do not depend upon a ‘freedom from original sin’. The fullness of grace was truly bestowed upon the Blessed Virgin and her personal purity was preserved by the perpetual assistance of the Spirit. But this was not an abolition of the sin. The sin was destroyed only on the tree of the Cross, and no ‘exemption’ was possible, since it was simply the common and general condition of the whole of human existence. It was not destroyed even by the Incarnation itself, although the Incarnation was the true inauguration of the New Creation. The Incarnation was but the basis and the starting point of the redemptive work of our Lord. And the ‘Second Man’ himself enters into his full glory through the gate of death. Redemption is a complex act, and we have to distinguish most carefully its moments, although they are supremely integrated in the unique and eternal counsel of God. Being integrated in the eternal plan, in the temporal display they are reflected in each other and the final consummation is already prefigured and anticipated in all the earlier stages. There was a real progress in the history of the Redemption. Mary had the grace of the Incarnation, as the Mother of the Incarnate, but this was not yet the complete grace, since the Redemption had not yet been accomplished. Yet, her personal purity was possible even in an unredeemed world, or rather in a world that was in process of Redemption. The true theological issue is that of the divine election. The Mother and the Child are inseparably linked in the unique decree of the Incarnation. As an event, the Incarnation is just the turning point of history – and the turning point is inevitably antinomical: it belongs at once to the Old and to the New. [The] rest is silence. We have to stand in awe and trembling on the threshold of the mystery. The intimate experience of the Mother of the Lord is hidden from us. And nobody was ever able to share this unique experience, by the very nature of the case. It is the mystery of the person. This accounts for the dogmatic reticence of the Church in Mariological doctrine. The Church speaks of her rather in the language of devotional poetry, in the language of antinomical metaphors and images. There is no need, and no reason, to assume that the Blessed Virgin realized at once all the fullness and all the implications of the unique privilege bestowed upon her by the grace of God. There is no need, and no reason, to interpret the ‘fullness’ of grace in a literal sense as including all possible perfections and the whole variety of particular spiritual gifts. It was a fullness for her, she was full of grace. And yet it was a ‘specialized’ fullness, the grace of the Mother of God, of the Virgin Mother, of the ‘Unwedded Spouse’ Nymphē anympheutē.14 Indeed, she had her own spiritual way, her own growth in grace. The full meaning of the mystery of salvation was apprehended by her gradually. And she had her own share in the sacrifice of the Cross: ‘Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also’ (Lk 2:35). The full light shone forth only in the Resurrection. Up to that point Jesus himself was not yet glorified. And after the Ascension we find the Blessed Virgin among the Twelve, in the centre of the growing Church. One point is beyond any doubt. The Blessed Virgin had been always impressed, if this word is suitable here, by the angelic salutation and announcement and by the startling mystery of the virgin birth. How could she not be impressed? Again, 14

The title Nymphē anympheutē (‘Unwedded Spouse’ or ‘Bride Unwedded’), is the refrain of the Akathist or Praise Service to the Mother of God in the Orthodox Church [Eds.].

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the mystery of her experience is hidden from us. But can we really avoid this pious guesswork without betraying the mystery itself? ‘But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart’ (Lk 2:19). Her inner life had to be concentrated on this crucial event of her story. For indeed the mystery of the Incarnation was for her also the mystery of her own personal existence. Her existential situation was unique and peculiar. She had to be adequate to the unprecedented dignity of this situation. This is perhaps the very essence of her particular dignity, which is described as her ‘EverVirginity’. She is the Virgin. Now virginity is not simply a bodily status or a physical feature as such. Above all it is a spiritual and inner attitude, and apart from that a bodily status would be altogether meaningless. The title of Ever-Virgin means surely much more than merely a ‘physiological’ statement. It does not refer only to the Virgin Birth. It does not imply only an exclusion of any later marital intercourse (which would be utterly inconceivable if we really believe in the Virgin Birth and in the Divinity of Jesus). It excludes first of all any ‘erotic’ involvement, any sensual and selfish desires or passions, any dissipation of the heart and mind. The bodily integrity or incorruption is but an outward sign of the internal purity. The main point is precisely the purity of the heart, that indispensable condition of ‘seeing God’. This is this freedom from passions, the true apatheia, which has been commonly described as the essence of spiritual life. Freedom from passions and ‘desires’, epithymia  – imperviability to evil thoughts, as St John of Damascus puts it. Her soul was governed by God only (theogybernēton); it was supremely attached to him. All her desire was directed towards things worthy of desire and affection (St John says:  tetammenē, attracted, gravitating). She had no passion, thymos. She ever preserved virginity in mind, and soul, and body  – [kai nōi, kai psychēi kai sōmati aeipartheneuousan] (Homil. 1, in Nativitatem B.V. Mariae 9 and 5, PG 96.676A and 668C). It was an undisturbed orientation of the whole personal life towards God, a complete self-dedication. To be truly a ‘handmaid of the Lord’ means precisely to be ever-virgin, and not to have any fleshly preoccupations. Spiritual virginity is sinlessness, but not yet ‘perfection’, and not freedom from temptations. But even our Lord himself was in a sense liable to temptations and was actually tempted by Satan in the wilderness. Our Lady perhaps had her temptations too, but has overcome them in her steady faithfulness to God’s calling. Even an ordinary motherly love culminates in a spiritual identification with the child, which implies so often sacrifice and self-denial. Nothing less can be assumed in the case of Mary; her Child was to be great and to be called the ‘Son of the Highest’ (cf. Lk 1:32). Obviously, he was one who ‘should have come’, the Messiah (cf. Lk 7:19). This is openly professed by Mary in the Magnificat, a song of Messianic praise and thanksgiving. Mary could not fail to realize all this, if only dimly for a time and gradually, as she pondered all the glorious promises in her heart. This was the only conceivable way for her. She had to be absorbed by this single thought, in an obedient faithfulness to the Lord who ‘hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden’ and ‘hath done for her great things’. This is precisely the way in which St Paul described the state and the privilege of virginity: ‘The unmarried woman, and the virgin, thinks about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and in spirit’ (1 Cor 7:34,

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Douay version: hina ē hagia kai tōi sōmati kai tōi pneumati). The climax of this virginal aspiration is the holiness of the Virgin Mother all-pure and undefiled. Cardinal Newman in his admirable ‘Letter addressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D. D., on occasion of his Eirenicon’ (1865)15 says very aptly: Theology is occupied with supernatural matters, and is ever running into mysteries, which reason can neither explain nor adjust. Its lines of thought come to an abrupt termination, and to pursue them or to complete them is to plunge down the abyss. St Augustine warns us that, if we attempt to find and to tie together the ends of lines which run into infinity, we shall only succeed in contradicting ourselves. (Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, 5th ed. [London:  Burns & Oates, 1879], 430).

It is widely agreed that the ultimate considerations which determine a true estimate of all particular points of the Christian tradition are doctrinal. No purely historical arguments, whether from antiquity or from silence, are ever decisive. They are subject to a further theological scrutiny and revision in the perspective of the total Christian faith, taken as a whole. The ultimate question is simply this: does one really keep the faith of the Bible and of the Church, does one accept and recite the Catholic Creed exactly in that sense in which it had been drafted and supposed to be taken and understood, does one really believe in the truth of the Incarnation? Let me quote Newman once more. ‘I say then’, he proceeds, ‘when once we have mastered the idea, that Mary bore, suckled, and handled the Eternal in the form of a child, what limit is conceivable to the rush and flood of thoughts which such a doctrine involves? What awe and surprise must attend upon the knowledge, that a creature has been brought so close to the Divine Essence?’ (Ibid., 431). Fortunately, a Catholic theologian is not left alone with logic and erudition. He is led by the faith; credo ut intelligam [I believe so that I might understand]. Faith illuminates the reason. And erudition, the memory of the past, is quickened in the continuous experience of the Church. A Catholic theologian is guided by the teaching authority of the Church, by its living tradition. But above all, he himself lives in the Church, which is the Body of Christ. The mystery of the Incarnation is still, as it were, continuously enacted in the Church, and its ‘implications’ are revealed and disclosed in devotional experience and in sacramental participation. In the Communion of Saints, which is the true Church Universal and Catholic, the mystery of the New Humanity is disclosed as a new existential situation. And in this perspective and living context of the Mystical Body of Christ, the person of the Blessed Virgin Mother appears in full light and full glory. The Church now contemplates her in the state of perfection. She is now seen as inseparably united with her Son, who ‘sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty’. For her the final consummation of life has already come – in an anticipation. ‘Thou art passed over into Life, who art the Mother of Life,’ acknowledges the Church. 15

In this text, John Henry Newman (1801–1890) defends Catholic devotion to Mary in the face of the allegation by E. B. Pusey (1800–1882) that this was a ‘dire impediment’ preventing reunion between the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches [Eds.].

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‘Neither grave nor death had power over the Mother of God . . . for the Mother of Life hath been brought into Life by him who dwelt in her ever-virgin womb’ (Troparion and Kontakion for the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, koimēsis).16 Again, it is not so much a heavenly reward for her purity and virtue as an ‘implication’ of her sublime office, of her being the Mother of God, the Theotokos. The Church Triumphant is above all the worshipping Church, her existence is a living participation in Christ’s office of intercession and his redeeming love. Incorporation into Christ, which is the essence of the Church and of the whole Christian existence, is first of all an incorporation into his sacrificial love for mankind. And here there is a special place for her who is united with the Redeemer in the unique intimacy of motherly affection and devotion. The Mother of God is truly the common mother of all living, of the whole Christian race, born or reborn in the Spirit and truth. An affectionate identification with the child, which is the spiritual essence of motherhood, is here consummated in its ultimate perfection. The Church does not dogmatize much about these mysteries of her own existence. For the mystery of Mary is precisely the mystery of the Church. Mater Ecclesia and Virgo Mater [Mother Church and Virgin Mother], both are birthgivers of the New Life. And both are orantes [those who pray]. The Church invites the faithful and helps them to grow spiritually into these mysteries of faith which are as well the mysteries of their own existence and spiritual destiny. In the Church they learn to contemplate and to adore the living Christ together with the whole assembly and Church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven (Heb 12:23). And in this glorious assembly they discern the eminent person of the Virgin Mother of the Lord and Redeemer, full of grace and love, of charity and compassion – ‘More honourable than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim, who without spot didst bear the Eternal Word.’17 In the light of this contemplation and in the spirit of faith, the theologian must fulfil his office of interpreting to believers and to those who seek the truth the overwhelming mystery of the Incarnation. This mystery is still symbolized, as it was in the age of the Fathers, by a single and glorious name: Mary– Theotokos, the Mother of God Incarnate.

16 17

Koimēsis is the ‘Dormition’ or ‘Falling Asleep’ or death of the Mother of God [Eds.]. This is the second part of a Theotokion or Hymn to Mary (Axion estin or It is truly meet) sung in the services of the Orthodox Church [Eds.].

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The Stumbling-Block

This homily was published in Preaching the Passion:  Twenty-Four Outstanding Sermons for the Lenten Season, edited by Alton M. Motter (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1963), 26–35, and it was reprinted in On the Tree of the Cross:  Georges Florovsky and the Patristic Doctrine of Atonement, edited by Matthew Baker, Seraphim Danckaert and Nicholas Marinides (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2016), 157–163 (Blane #375).

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. 1 Corinthians 2:2 The mystery of the cross was for the great apostle the heart of the gospel. It was the revelation of God’s glory and love. It was the crucial message of Christian faith. Now Paul was fully aware that this message was for the outsiders an offence, a scandal, a stumbling-block [1 Cor 1:23]. Unto the Jews it was a stumbling-block, indeed. Unto the Greeks, or the gentiles, it was a nonsense, a foolishness (1 Cor 1:23). Paul knew but too well the whole strength of this offence. He came himself to faith through a crisis. At first he violently resisted the message of Christ, and was for a time in the camp of persecutors. ‘For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I  persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it’ (Gal 1:13). He knew, by his own experience, how difficult it was for many to accept and to comprehend the mystery of Christ, crucified and risen. It was difficult for him, as it was difficult for so many others, precisely because he was ‘so extremely . . . zealous for the traditions’ of his elders (Gal 1:14). Indeed, the apostolic preaching contradicted sharply the current expectations of the Jews, and it did not appeal to the sophisticated wise of the heathen. The Jews failed to recognize the promised and expected Messiah, the ‘one who should have come’ [Lk 7:19], in Jesus of Nazareth. Their reasons were obvious. Their resistance and their hesitations are so plainly described in the Gospel narratives. Most of them expected the coming of a mighty prince who would restore the external strength and splendour of the Jewish kingdom, liberate Israel from the foreign yoke and power of Rome, and ‘reign over the house of Jacob forever’ (Lk 1:33).

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Indeed, people were often moved by Jesus’s preaching, and even more by His miracles. They listened to Him readily and with expectation. On occasion they were even ready to ‘take him by force and make him king’ (Jn 6:15). But Jesus persistently declined any political involvement. He was a King, and He preached the coming of a kingdom. But this kingdom of God was ‘not of this world’ [Jn 18:36]. Jesus was not concerned with the political liberation of Israel, while this liberation was probably the major dream of His contemporaries. He brought to men another freedom, the freedom from sin. He liberated men from another, from an internal bondage, the bondage of sin, not from external or political bondage. And this was a stumbling-block. Some others at that time were expecting a celestial redeemer, coming on clouds, with a heavenly glory and escort. Jesus betrayed also this expectation. He came in ‘the form of a servant’ [Phil 2:7], humble, meek, lowly; He was born in poverty, and hardly had a place to lay His head. Finally, He was taken and crucified, was, as it were, defeated by the authorities of the state and of the synagogue. Thus, the cherished hopes of the multitudes were belied and frustrated. As Paul says, ‘the Jews demand signs’ (1 Cor 1:22), but our Lord refused to give such a sign: ‘an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it, except the sign of the prophet Jonah’ (Mt 12:39). The only messianic sign which Jesus gave was precisely His Cross, His death, His stay among the dead for three days, as Jonah was three days in the whale’s belly. Again, this sign was rather a challenge and a stumbling-block. Why should the anointed of the Lord have suffered so shamefully, so helplessly and so conspicuously, instead of manifesting His might, and splendour, and glory? This passed all knowledge and understanding. And it was for that reason that but a few believed in Him, and even those who did acknowledge Christ during His earthly ministry were so uncertain and hesitant, and were confounded when He was betrayed. ‘Then all the disciples forsook him and fled’ (Mt 26:56). They failed to recognize in the humiliated Christ, in the Suffering Servant, the promised deliverer and Messiah. The faith of the disciples was restored and quickened only by the risen Lord. Paul knew but too well all these doubts and temptations of frail men. He was himself converted by a personal intervention of the Lord. He was surprised and overtaken by an invincible miracle, in a mysterious encounter with Jesus whom he was persecuting. And once converted, Paul could never forget the cost of faith. He was conscious of all obstacles which may impede belief. In his preaching he never compromised, he never tried to make his message easy for his flock, not for them whom he was to evangelize. Just the opposite:  he stressed in his preaching precisely that stumbling-block. The Crucified One was the Lord, and His Lordship was revealed and assured precisely in His suffering and death. Indeed, the ultimate message of Paul was the gospel of resurrection. Writing to the church in Corinth, Paul begins with the ‘foolishness’ of God [1 Cor 1:25], with the ‘scandal’ of the Cross [1 Cor 1:23:  skandalon, stumbling-block], and ends with the mystery of the resurrection. But Christ’s resurrection was the fruit of the Cross. This is the basic pattern of Christian life: one has to die with Christ, to share in His death in order to rise with Him and to share in the new life, which as it were, shines from the tomb of the crucified.

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Of course, there was nothing specifically ‘Pauline’ in this preaching of the Cross. It was, indeed, the common faith of the whole church. Paul used to stress emphatically that this was tradition, and not his peculiar interpretation. ‘For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures’ (1 Cor 15:3). But probably Paul was the greatest preacher of this astounding and stumbling ‘good news’ because his own faith went through such a hectic trial and had all the heat of radical conversion:  from ‘breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord’ (Acts 9:1) to triumphant insight into the glory of the crucified. Nothing else, save Jesus, and Him crucified! ‘According to the Scriptures’ . . . Indeed, one could have gathered from the Scriptures enough evidence to identify Jesus as deliverer, but even the disciples did not ‘know’ the Scriptures. It was the risen Lord who had opened their minds to understand what had been written of Him in the Law, in the Psalms and in the Prophets [Lk 24:2527]. Their hearts also had to be quickened [Lk 24:32]. Strangely enough, most of the contemporaries of Jesus would never remember the glorious prophecy of Isaiah about the Suffering Servant, which came to be regarded in the Church as a most conspicuous anticipation of the victory of the Cross. They would not connect this prophecy of doom and grief with the promise of deliverance, recovery and restoration. And yet, there was, in this magnificent vision, a paradoxical merger of sorrow and exaltation. ‘My servant . . . shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high’ (Isa 52:13). But he will be also a ‘man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief ’ (Isa 53:3). Both despised and exalted:  this is precisely the mystery of Jesus! It seems that Jesus Himself used to interpret his mission precisely in the terms of this prophetic vision. In any case, the prophecy of Isaiah came to he interpreted in this way quite early in the church. It was in the terms of this prophecy that Philip would preach Jesus unto the man of Ethiopia (Acts 8:32ff.). Indeed, it was a prophecy of deliverance, an announcement of the redeeming sacrifice: it was ‘with his stripes’ that men were to be healed (Isa 53:5). This vision of the ‘man of sorrows’, and the belief in the redeeming sacrifice, formed the deepest conviction of Paul. The whole perspective had been changed. Salvation had come, not in a spectacular and triumphant manner, but through the Cross. This was Paul’s message to the churches: ‘But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us’ (Rom 5:8). The death of Christ is a sign and a token of divine love! By the blood of His Cross all things were reconciled to Himself (Col 1:20). His Cross is the instrument and the sign of universal peace and reconciliation! For that reason the preaching of the Cross was a stumbling-block for many in the ages past, and is still a stumbling-block in our own time. Only now we prefer to speak of a ‘paradox’. The mystery of the Cross is beyond our rational comprehension. It seems to be a foolishness to the wise of this world. The whole life of Christ was one great act of love and mercy. The whole of it was illuminated by the eternal radiance of His lovingkindness. But the act of salvation was consummated and completed on Calvary, not on Mount Tabor. And the Cross of Jesus, His ‘exodus’, was foretold even on Tabor (Lk 9:31). Christ came not only that He might teach with authority and disclose to people the name of the Father, not only that He might display and accomplish works of mercy. He came precisely to suffer and to die. More than once He witnessed to this before the perplexed

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and startled disciples. But even Peter could not stand this witness. ‘And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.’ But Jesus reprimanded him sternly: ‘. . . You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men’ (Mt 16:22–23). The human mind cannot comprehend the mind of God! Moreover, His death was in no sense an accident. It was preordained in God’s design of salvation. He had to die. He suffered and died, not because He could not escape it, but because He chose to do so. He had the ‘authority’ to lay down His life (Jn 10:18). He chose so, not merely in the sense that He permitted the rage of sin and unrighteousness to be vented on Himself. He not only permitted but willed it. He had to die according to the law of divine wisdom and love. In no way was the crucifixion a kind of passive suicide, or a simple murder. It was a sacrifice and an oblation. It was not so much a necessity of this world. Rather, it was a constraint of the divine love. The mystery of the Cross begins in divine eternity. Hence, Christ is spoken of in the Scriptures as the Lamb who was ‘destined before the foundation of the world’ (1 Pet 1:20). Or in the phrase of a great preacher of the last century, ‘the Cross of Jesus, composed of the enmity of the Jews and the violence of the Gentiles, was but the earthly image and shadow of the heavenly Cross of love’ (Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, 1816).1 This divine necessity of Christ’s death passes all understanding, indeed; and the church has never attempted any rational solution of this supreme mystery. Scriptural terms have appeared, and do still appear, to be the most adequate ones. In the glorious Epistle to the Hebrews the redeeming work of Christ is depicted as the ministry of the high priest. Christ comes into the world to accomplish the will of God. Through the eternal Spirit He offers His own self to God, offers His blood for the remission of human sins, and this He accomplishes through His passion. By His blood, as the blood of the New Covenant, He enters heaven and enters within the very Holy of Holies, behind the veil. This sacrificial offering begins on earth, but is consummated in heaven, where, as the eternal high priest, the ‘high priest of the good things to come’ [Heb 9:11], the mediator of the New Covenant, Christ presented and is still presenting us to God. In the blood of Jesus was revealed the new way, the way into that eternal Sabbath, when God rests from all His mighty deeds. At this point we must beware of the legalistic misinterpretation of sacrifice. Sacrifice, indeed, is not just a surrender. It is, above all, dedication, or consecration to God. And the effective power of sacrifice is love: ‘as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God’ (Eph 5:2). This love was not only sympathy, or compassion and mercy towards the fallen and heavy-laden. Christ gives Himself not only ‘for the remission of sins’ [Mt 26:28], but also for the glorification of the Church: to cleanse and hallow her, to make her holy, glorious and spotless [Eph 5:26–27]. The power of a sacrificial offering is in its cleansing and hallowing effect.

1

On Philaret of Moscow, see ‘Creation and Createdness’, Ch. 1, n. 13, 36, in this book. For Philaret’s homily, see ‘Slovo v’ Velikii Piatok’, 1816’, in Slova i Rechi Synodal’nago Chlena Filareta, Mitropolita Moskovskago [Sermons and Speeches of the Leading Member of the Synod, Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow], 2 vols., 2nd ed. (Moscow: Got’e i Monigetti, 1848), 1: 30–34 [‘Homily on Great Friday [1816]’, Orthodox Life, 42, no. 2 (1992): 2–10] [Eds.].

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The power of the sublime sacrifice of the Cross is in that the Cross itself is the path of glory. On the Cross the Son of man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him (Jn 13:31). The prayer of Christ as high priest was concerned precisely with the glory of the disciples: ‘the glory which thou has given me I have given to them’ (Jn 17:22). Here is the fullness of the sacrifice. ‘Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ (Lk 24:26). In one of his great sermons, St John Chrysostom put it sharply: ‘today we keep the feast, for our Lord is nailed upon the Cross . . . I call him King because I see Him crucified, for it is appropriate for a king to die for His subjects.’2 The mystery of the Cross is the mystery of the love divine. And for that reason the Cross is the seal of salvation. But the mystery is even deeper than that. The death of Christ is itself the resurrection. By His Cross He descended into that darkness of human death, which was the wages of sin and the prison of captive souls. And by the bliss of His divine glory He has destroyed the power of death, has abrogated death, and opened the new way of life and resurrection. He is Himself the resurrection and life. He rose from the dead because it was not possible for Him to be held by it (Acts 2:24). But He did not rise alone. His resurrection is just the token of general resurrection, as Paul endeavoured to explain in the same epistle to the Corinthian church [1 Cor 15:  20–22, 51–53]. The power of the Cross, by which Christ has descended into the darkness of human existence, is the power of life, the power and the glory of resurrection. Thus, the sting of sin is taken away when the wages of sin, death, is abrogated. For those, however, who do not believe, do not grasp the power of divine love, do not taste by faith the power of Christ, the stumbling-block remains, and the wisdom and the power of God may still seem to be but foolishness. But even Christians would sometimes require ‘a sign’, in a Jewish manner, ‘or seek after wisdom’, like the Gentiles [1 Cor 1:22]. And the stumbling-block of Christ’s Cross may be strengthened by the superficial survey of Christian history, of the story and the destiny of the Church, which is Christ’s Body. The Church still treads the path of her Lord, the path of lowliness and humiliation, of sorrow and tribulation, as Christ Himself has predicted: ‘In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world’ (Jn 16:33). The history of the church is also a stumbling-block. It may seem to be a defeat. Was she victorious in her historic life? The Church corporately, and Christians individually, are still but suffering servants of the Lord, yea, of the crucified Lord, and the way of Christians in history was, is and, according to Christ’s own warning, will ever be ‘the way of the Cross’. And it should be so: it is only this narrow path that leads into the Kingdom. The ‘humiliated Church’ is as much a stumbling-block as Christ’s Cross itself. But it is in this way that the quickening of the world is being wrought by God. The message of Paul assumes a special reverence and poignancy in an age of crisis and trial, like ours.

2

For this homily, see John Chrysostom, De cruce  et latrone  homilia [Homily on the Cross and the Thief]  1 (PG 49.399–418). Partial translation in Celebrating Sundays:  Patristic Readings for the Sunday Gospels, Years A, B & C, Stephen Mark Holmes, ed. (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2012), 285 [Eds.].

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The victory of the Cross can never by taken away. But it is not necessarily to be revealed or manifested in human splendour. The true deliverance is in that new life which is bestowed upon believers by the Spirit Paraclete, by which they are united with Christ and, in Him, with each other. It is this mystery of being in Christ, through the power of the Spirit, that Paul was so powerfully proclaiming both in his oral teaching and in his letter to the churches. He was a preacher of the Cross, but he was also a preacher of the church, being ‘the Body of Christ’. ‘I, Paul, became a minister. Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church’ (Col 1:23–24). The destiny of man, and the whole of mankind, is decided indeed, not on battlefields, and not in the negotiations of ‘the wise’. ‘Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?’ [1 Cor 1:20] paraphrases Paul of the questions of Isaiah [Isa 33:18]. They are in the inner chamber of human mind and heart, when one is brought face to face with the Lord Jesus, yea with the crucified redeemer of the world. The real stumbling-block of human pride and impatience, of human vainglory and selfishness, is removed only by faith. The real stumbling-block indeed is not Christ’s lowliness and humiliation, but precisely the pride and foolishness of ‘the natural man’ [1 Cor 2:14], as Paul styles the unregenerate. In spite of his bonds and tribulations, Paul himself was always cheerful, full of joy, because he knew with an ultimate confidence of faith that the crucified was the Lord of glory, the Lord of all creation, to whom all power had been given on earth and in heaven, as a crown of his obedience. Indeed, believers are given ‘a sign’, which was refused to the Jews – even ‘the sign of the Cross’. And ‘wisdom’ is granted unto them also, which the Greeks sought in vain. For ‘to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God’ (1 Cor 1:24). Amen.

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The Nature of Theology

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This essay was first presented in French at Nicolas Berdyaev’s ecumenical colloquium in Paris in the spring of 1931. It was then translated into German by Fritz Lieb (1892–1970), an Orientalist and early critic of modern Russian philosophy and theology. Florovsky presented it in Bonn at Karl Barth’s seminar in June 1931. It was published as ‘Offenbarung, Philosophie und Theologie’ in Zwischen den Zeiten, 9, no.  6 (1931):  463–480 (Blane #58). It also appeared in Russian, based on the French original with remarks on Vatican I’s definition of papal infallibility (not in the German), as ‘Bogoslovskie otryvki’ [Theological fragments], in Put’, 31 (1931): 3–29 (Blane #59). Florosky gave the Bonn paper ‘with some additions’ (the text is quite different from the Bonn lecture) in English at the annual conference of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius held from 30 March to 4 April 1932, subsequently published as ‘The Work of the Holy Spirit in Revelation’, The Journal of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, 17 (1932): 5–16 (Blane #62).1 To facilitate comprehension of this translation from the German text, the editors have included certain technical terms and phrases from both the German and the Russian versions (in [square brackets]). This is a new translation by Christopher Sprecher.

I Religious knowledge has two aspects: revelation and experience. Revelation is the voice of God, who speaks to man; and man hears this voice, hearkens to it, takes in the Word of God and understands it. God therefore speaks in order that man might hear him. By ‘revelation’ in the proper sense, we understand precisely this heard voice of God. The Holy Scriptures are the laying down in letters of the revelation that has been heard. Moreover, however one might understand the inspired nature of Scripture, it must be admitted that Scripture contains for us the voice of God in the language of man. Scripture contains this Word of God for us just as this Word has resounded in man’s soul, which receives it . . . Revelation is theophany. God descends to man and reveals himself to him; and man sees and beholds God. He describes what he sees and hears; he bears witness to 1

See Matthew Baker, ‘“Offenbarung, Philosophie und Theologie”: Karl Barth and Georges Florovsky in Dialogue’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 68, no. 3 (2015): 299–326 [Eds.].

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what has been revealed to him. Herein lies the greatest mystery and miracle of the Bible: that it is God’s Word in human language. Rightly did the early Christian exegetes see in the writings of the Old Testament a proclamation and prototype beforehand of the coming Incarnation of God. Already in the Old Testament, the Divine Word becomes a human utterance. God speaks to men in the language of men, hence its characteristic anthropomorphism of revelation. This anthropomorphism is not only an accommodation; human language does not in the least weaken the absolute nature of the revelation, nor does it restrict the power of God’s Word. The Word of God can be adequately and precisely expressed in the language of man, since man is created in the image of God. Precisely for this reason, he is able to hear God, to record God’s Word and preserve it. The Word of God is not diminished by the fact that it rings out in human language. On the contrary, the human word is simultaneously changed and transformed by God’s good pleasure to speak in human language . . . In any case, the Holy Scripture speaks to us not only about God, but also about man. What is more, God himself speaks in his revelation not only about himself, but also about man. For this reason, the historical revelation is fulfilled in the appearance of the God-man . . . In the Old Testament as well as the New, we see not only God, but also man. We see God, who comes to man and appears to him; and we see people who encounter God and hearken to his Word – and what is more, respond to his Word . . . In Scripture, we also hear the voice of the man who answers God in words of prayer, of thanksgiving or of praise. It suffices to mention here the Psalms . . . and God wants, expects, and demands this answer. God wants man not only to hearken to this word, but also to respond to it. God comes down to man – and he descends so that man might raise himself up to him . . . What is surprising above all in the Scriptures is precisely this intimate closeness of man to God and of God to man: this sanctified state of all human life through the presence of God, this state of the earth being overshadowed by a divine protection and refuge. Above all, surprisingly, the reality of a holy history itself is at work in Scripture. In Scripture, it becomes clear that history itself is hallowed, that history can be hallowed, that life can be sanctified – and not just in the sense of this history being illumined, as it were, from without by the divine light, but also in the sense of this history’s transformation. For with the founding of the Church and the coming of the Holy Spirit into the world, revelation is complete. Ever since then, the Spirit of God has remained in the world. In the world itself, the fountain of eternal life has gushed forth. And revelation will end with the appearance of the new heaven and the new earth, with the cosmic and general transformation of creation. One can say that revelation is God’s way in history; we see how God passes through the ranks of men. We behold God not only in the transcendental majesty of his glory and omnipotence, but also in his loving proximity to his handiwork. God reveals himself before us not only as Lord, but also – and above all – as Father. And the main thing is that the written revelation is history, the history of the world as the creation of God. Scripture begins with the creation of the world and concludes with the prophecy of a new creation; and one can sense the dynamic tension between both these moments, between the first, divine fiat and the coming ‘Behold, I make all things new’ (idou kaina poiō panta [Rev 21:5]). This is not the place to treat the basic questions of biblical exegesis extensively, but one thing definitely must be said: the Scriptures can be considered in two ways, namely,

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either outside of history or as being history. In the first case, the Bible turns into a book of eternal and hallowed parables [Gleichnisse: also ‘allegories’] or symbols, and these must be deciphered and explained precisely as symbols in accordance with the rules of the symbolic or allegorical method – thus did the followers of the allegorical method explain the Bible in the ancient Church. The mystics of the medieval period and of the time of the Reformation also understood the Bible this way, and contemporary – especially Catholic – theologians are also frequently inclined to such an understanding. The Bible then appears to be some kind of law book, a codex of divine commands and ordinances, as a collection of texts or ‘theological loci’, as a compilation of images and examples. It becomes a self-sufficient and self-contained [selbstzufriedenen=samodov leiushchei] book – a book, in other words, that was written for no one. I would say, a book with seven seals . . .[Rev 5–8]. This does not have to be rejected: a certain truth inheres in such an understanding. Yet on the whole, it contradicts the spirit of the Bible and the literal sense of the Scriptures, the basic error here being the abstraction of man . . . Naturally, the Word of God is eternal truth, and God speaks in his revelation to all eras; yet if one admits the possibility of several meanings of Scripture, and if one recognizes a meaning in Scripture that is abstracted from time and history, then the reality of revelation is threatened: it is as though God had spoken in such a way that those to whom he first spoke directly could not have understood him  – or at least not as God had meant. Such an understanding dissolves history into mythology . . . But in the end, revelation is not merely a system of divine words, but a system of divine deeds, and for this reason precisely history [Geschichte]: salvation history [Heilsgeschichte], the history of God’s covenant with mankind. Only within such an historical aspect is the fullness of Scripture opened to us; the fabric of Scripture is an historical one. Above all, God’s words are always related to time – they always have a direct meaning. God sees the man to whom he speaks before his eyes, as it were, and thus he speaks so as to be heard and understood. For God always speaks for man’s sake and for man. There is in Scripture a symbolism, but this symbolism is prophetic rather than parable-based [gleichnishafte:  or ‘allegory-based’]. There are parables in Scripture, but on the whole, Scripture is not parable, but history. One must distinguish between symbolism and typology. In symbolism, abstraction is made from history. Typology is always historical; it is a kind of prophecy, if the events themselves are prophetic . . . One can also say that prophecy is a symbol – a sign that points forward – but it is always an historical symbol that draws the attention to coming events . . . The Scriptures have an historical teleology: everything is striving towards the historical boundary point, the historical telos, hence the existence of such a tensive character [Gespanntheit] of time in Holy Writ. The Old Testament is the time of Messianic expectation: this is the basic theme in the Old Testament. And the New Testament is basically history: the evangelical history of God the Word and the beginning of the history of the Church, which is directed anew in expectation towards the fulfilment of the end times . . . ‘Fulfillment’ is the basic category par excellence of revelation . . . Revelation is God’s Word and the word about God. Yet at the same time, revelation is also always a word to men, it is man’s state of being called . . . And in this revelation, man’s destiny is also revealed  .  .  .  In any case, the Word of God has come to us in our human language. We only know it in the way it has resounded through our

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receptivity in our consciousness and in our mind. Man can never obtain objectivity in the hearing of revelation by making an abstraction of himself, by depersonalizing himself and shrinking himself down to a mathematical point, by turning himself into a ‘transcendental subject’. It is exactly the opposite: a ‘transcendental subject’ can neither perceive nor understand God’s voice. God does not speak to a ‘transcendental subject’ or to ‘consciousness in general’. The ‘God of the living’, the God of revelation, speaks to living people, to empirical subjects. God’s countenance reveals itself only to living personalities. And man beholds God’s countenance all the better, all the more completely and clearly, the more distinct and alive his own countenance is, the more completely and clearly the ‘image of God’ has been actualized and manifested in him. The highest degree of objectivity in the hearing and understanding of revelation can be attained through the greatest striving of the creative personality, through spiritual growth, through the transformation of the personality that overcomes the ‘wisdom of the flesh’ within itself and rises up ‘to the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ’ (eis metron hēlikias tou plērōmatos tou Christou [Eph 4:13]) . . . What is demanded of man is not self-denial, but victorious progress; not self-annihilation, but rebirth or transformation  – indeed, a theōsis. Without man, revelation would be impossible, for there would be none to hear, and God would not speak. But God created man in order that he might hear his words; that he might receive them and cause them to grow within him, and thereby become a partaker of ‘eternal life’ . . . The Fall has not changed God’s original plan. Man has not completely lost the ability to hear God and bless him. And lastly, the dominion and power of sin has come to an end. ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the Only-Begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth’ (Jn 1:14) . . . The way of life and light is open, and the human mind has once again become capable of hearing God perfectly and perceiving his words.

II God has not spoken to man just so that man might remember and meditate on his words. The Word of God cannot be held only in the mind; above all, it must be kept in a living and burning heart . . . God’s Word is kept in the human mind like a seed that sprouts and bears fruit. This means that the truth of the divine revelation must develop within human thought into a comprehensive system of a confession of faith, into a system of religious perspectives  – one might say, into a system of religious philosophy and into a philosophy of revelation.2 In this is its subjective character [Subjecktivismus:  i.e. philosophical intuition]. In its essence, religious knowledge remains heteronomous, since it is the vision and description of the divine reality that was revealed and is now visible to man through the irruption of God into the world. 2

The idea of a ‘philosophy of revelation’ draws on the influential lectures on revelation of the German philosopher, Friedrich W.  J. Schelling (1775–1854):  Philosophie der Offenbarung (Philosophy of Revelation), in Sämmtliche Werke (Complete Works), ed. K. F.  A. von Schelling (Stuttgart/ Augsburg:  J. G. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1856–1861), Vols. 13 and 14. See Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, n. 63, 146, in this book [Eds.].

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God descends into the world, and not only reveals his countenance to man, but also appears to him. Revelation is comprehended through faith, and faith is vision and contemplation [or: intuition].3 God appears to man, and man beholds God; the truths of faith are the truths of experience, truths of a fact. This is precisely the basis of the apodeictic certainty of faith. Faith is a descriptive confirmation of certain facts: ‘so it is’, ‘so it was’ or ‘so shall it be’. For this reason, faith also cannot be proven; it is the evident character [Augenfälligkeit=ochevidnost’] of experience. We must clearly differentiate between the different epochs of revelation, and we must take care not to determine the essence of Christian faith according to Old Testament examples. The Old Testament was the time of expectation; the entire pathos of Old Testament man was aimed at the future, at ‘what is to come’  – this was the basic category of his life and religious experience. The faith of Old Testament man was expectation: an expectation of what did not yet exist, of what had not yet occurred, of what was thus also ‘invisible’. Yet the time of expectation has come to an end. The prophecies have been fulfilled. The Lord has come, and he has come in order to remain with those who believe in him ‘always, to the close of the age’ (Mt 28:20). To mankind, he has given ‘power to become children of God’ (Jn 1:12). He has opened up for man the possibility of a new birth, a birth of the Spirit. He has sent the Comforting Spirit into the world, in order that he might guide the faithful ‘into all the truth’ (Jn 16:13) and ‘bring to remembrance’ everything the Lord had said (Jn 14:26): ‘He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you’ (ekeinos hymas didachei panta kai hypomnēsei hymas panta ha eipon hymin egō). Therefore, the faithful ‘have been anointed by the Holy One, and know everything . . . and have no need that any one should teach [them]’ (1 Jn 2:20, 27). They possess the ‘anointing of truth’, the charisma veritatis [certum] as St Irenaeus of Lyons says [Against Heresies 4.26.2, PG 7/1.1053C]. In Christ, the possibility and the way of spiritual life are opened to man, and the summit of spiritual life is knowledge and vision (gnōsis and theōria). This changes the meaning of faith. Christian faith is not aimed at what is to come, but at what has already come; not at what does not yet exist, but at what has already been fulfilled – or better put, it is aimed at that which is eternally present, at the divine fullness that has been revealed through Christ and is visible. In a certain sense, one can say that Christ is the first to make religious knowledge, that is, knowledge of God, possible. He did this not as a preacher or prophet, but as the ‘prince of life’ (cf. Acts 3:15) and the high priest of the new Covenant. The knowledge of God has become possible through the renewal of human nature brought about by Christ through his death and resurrection. This renewal was also a renewal of human reason [Vernunft] and spirit [Geist], which meant that man became capable again of vision. The knowledge of God has become possible in the Church, as it is the body of Christ and the unity of the life of grace. In the Church, revelation develops into an inner revelation, and in a certain sense become the confession of the Church. It is 3

Schau und Anschauung=prozrenie i sozertsanie. The terms Anschauung/sozertsanie also have the sense of ‘intuition.’ Florovsky is developing an account of faith as a distinct form of visionary intuition or contemplation (the Patristic theoria) akin to Romantic intellectual intuition. See Brandon Gallaher, ‘ “Waiting for the Barbarians”: Identity and Polemicism in the Neo-Patristic Synthesis of Georges Florovsky’, Modern Theology, 27, no. 4 (2011): 659–691 at 670–678 [Eds.].

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very important to remember that the writings of the New Testament are younger than the Church. They form a book written within the Church. They are a laying down in writing of the Church’s faith, that is, the faith preserved in the Church. The Church bears witness to the truth of Scripture, confirms its authenticity and undergirds it with the authority of the Holy Spirit, who dwells in her. This must not be forgotten with regard to the Gospel. We find fixed in the written Gospels that image of the Saviour, which from the very beginning existed in the living memory of the Church and in the experience of faith: not only in historical memory, but also in the memory of faith. This is an essential difference, for we know Christ not only from reminiscences and stories. It is not his image alone that lives in the memory of the faithful; he himself dwells among them, and is always standing before the door of each person’s soul. The Gospel comes alive as a holy book precisely in this experience of living fellowship with Christ. The divine revelation lives in the Church – how else should it be able to be preserved? This revelation is summarized and supported by the words of Scripture. Summed up, yes, but these words exhaust neither the entire fullness of revelation nor the plenitude of Christian experience; moreover, the possibility of new and other words is not excluded. But in any case, Scripture allows for interpretation . . . Furthermore, the unchangeable truths of experience can be expressed in different words. The divine reality can be described in images and allegories, in the language of praying poets and in religious art. Such was the language of the Old Testament prophets; the Evangelists also speak thus at times; thus did the Apostles proclaim, and thus proclaims also the Church even to our day in her liturgical hymns and in the symbolism of her sacramental rites. This is the language of the Annunciation and the Good News, the language of prayer and of mysticism, the language of ‘kerygmatic’ theology . . . Yet there is another language: the language of comprehending thought, the language of dogmas. Dogma is a judgement of experience. The entire pathos of dogma lies in the reference to divine reality, in which the meaning of dogma is symbolic. Dogma is the testimony [Zeugnis: or ‘witness’] of thought on what is seen and revealed, of what is beheld in the experience of faith  – a testimony expressed in concepts and classifications. Dogma is ‘intellectual vision’ [vernünftiges Schauen=umnoe vedenie], the truth of contemplation [Wahrheit der Anschauung=istina sozertsaniia:  or ‘the truth of intuition’]. One can say it is the logical image [Abbild], the ‘logical likeness [Ebenbild: or ‘image’] (icon)’ of divine reality. At the same time, however, dogma is definition – and for this reason, its logical form, that ‘inner word’ that takes shape in the external manner of expression, is so important for dogma – hence the essential character of this external side of dogma, its wording. In no way is dogma a new revelation; dogma is merely a witness. The entire sense of dogmatic definition lies in its bearing witness to the unchangeable truth that is revealed and has been preserved since the very beginning. For this reason, it would be a complete misunderstanding to speak of ‘dogmatic development’. Dogmas do not develop; they are unchanging and inviolable, even as regards their external form and wording. It is only possible – and ever so slightly – to change dogmatic language or terminology. Strange though it may seem, one can yet say: dogmas appear, dogmas are established, but they do not develop. A dogma once established is an eternal and already now inviolable ‘rule of faith’ (regula fidei, ho kanōn tēs pisteōs). Dogma is an

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intuitive truth, and not some kind of discursive axiom that would be open to logical development. The entire meaning of dogma lies in the fact that it is articulated truth. Revelation is given and taken up in the silence of faith, in silent vision, which is the first and apophatic stage of the knowledge of God. In this apophatic vision, all the fullness of truth is already contained, but truth must be articulated, for man is called not only to silence but also to speech. The silentium mysticum [mystical silence] does not exhaust the full span of man’s religious vocation; there is room for doxology. In her dogmatic confession, the Church expresses herself and voices the apophatic truth preserved by her; hence, the search for dogmatic definitions is above all a search for words – and therefore the dogmatic battles were a struggle over words. It was necessary to find exact and clear words that were able to describe and express the Church’s experience. It was necessary to highlight that ‘spiritual vision’ that is offered to the believing soul in experience and contemplation [Anschauung: or ‘intuition’]. This is necessary because the truth of faith is also truth for reason and for thinking – but this does not mean that it is the truth of pure reason or of thinking. The truth of faith is fact, reality: that which is. In this ‘quest for words’, human thinking is changed and the very essence of thinking is transformed and sanctified. The Church bore witness to this indirectly when she rejected the heresy of Apollinaris. At its heart, Apollinarianism is a mendacious anthropology, a false teaching about mankind, and therefore also of the God-man Christ. Apollinarianism is the rejection of human reason, the fear of thought: ‘It is impossible that there not be sin in human thoughts’ (adynaton de estin en logismois anthrōpinois hamartian mē einai; Gregory of Nyssa, Against Apollinarius II.6, 8, I. 2).4 And this means that human reason cannot be healed (atherapeuton esti), that is, it must be cut out. The rejection of Apollinarianism, then, simultaneously means the basic justification of reason and thinking: of course, not in the sense that ‘natural reason’ is sinless and just, but in the sense that it can submit to transformation, that it can be healed, that it can be renewed. And this is a matter not only of potentiality, but also of necessity. Reason is called to the knowledge of God. ‘Philosophizing’ about God is not merely the expression of the drive for research or of some sort of presumptuous curiosity. On the contrary, it is the fulfilment of mankind’s vocation and duty – not some kind of work above and beyond what is required, not some kind of opus supererogatorium [work going beyond duty], but a necessary and organic moment of religious behaviour. For this reason, the Church has ‘philosophized’ about God and ‘formulated in words of reason the dogmas, which fishermen had previously proclaimed in simple words’.5 The ‘dogmas of the Fathers’ reproduce in the categories of thought the unchanging content of the ‘apostolic preaching’. The experience of truth does not change, and does not even grow, but thought enters into the ‘understanding of truth’ and is thereby transformed. To put it simply:  the Church, in formulating dogmas, expressed revelation in the language 4

5

The text that Florovsky is citing is not by Gregory of Nyssa but is from a work now attributed to Pseudo-Athanasius: De incarnatione Domini nostri Jesu Christi contra Apollinarium libri ii, I.2, II.6, 8, PG 26.1096, 1140, 1144–1145 (Later Treatises of Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, trans. William Bright [London: James Parker, 1881], 78–142) [Eds.]. From the Canon at Matins for the Feast of the Three Holy Hierarchs: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom (30 January) [Eds.].

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of Greek philosophy – or rather, translated the revelation into Greek from the poetic and prophetic Hebrew, whose translation in a certain sense meant a ‘Hellenization’ of revelation. In reality, this was an ‘ecclesialization’ [Verkirchlichung=otserkovlenie]6 of Hellenism. On this topic, one could say much and speak at great length; much – perhaps too much  – has been said and argued over this topic. But it is essential to point out one thing here: the Old Covenant has passed away. Israel did not accept the Messiah of God; they did not recognize him or confess him, and so the promise passed to the Gentiles. The Church is above all ecclesia ex gentibus – a church from among the nations; we must recognize this basic fact of Christian history in humility before the will of God, which is fulfilled in the destinies of peoples. And the ‘call of the nations’ turned into God’s blessing on Hellenism. In this lay no ‘historical accident’ [Zufälligk eit=sluchainost’]– no such happenstance could be there, for there are no ‘accidents’ in man’s religious destiny. In any case, the Gospel has been given to us and to all times in Greek; it is in this tongue that we hear the glad tidings in all their integrity and fullness. This cannot mean that the Gospel cannot be translated; yet we always translate it from the Greek. And just as there is nothing ‘accidental’ in the fact that God chose the Jewish people to be ‘his people’ from all the nations of the ancient world, and that ‘salvation is of the Jews’ (Jn 4:22), so too there is nothing accidental in this ‘chosenness’ of the Greek language as the fixed mother tongue of the Christian Good News. We receive God’s revelation as it happened. And it makes no sense to ask if it could have happened any other way. We must recognize the hidden counsel of the divine will in the ‘election’ of the Gentiles. At any rate, the presentation of the revelation in the language of historical Hellenism does not signify a restriction of revelation. It bears witness to the contrary: that this language possessed the power and the means to express and expound the truth of revelation. When divine Truth is uttered in human language, the words of this language are themselves transformed, and the fact that the truths of faith are clothed in logical images and concepts is witnessed by the transformation of language and thought:  through this transformation, the words become holy. The words of dogmatic definitions are not ‘simple words’ or ‘accidental words’ that can be replaced with others. They are eternal words, unable to be replaced by others. This means that certain words, that is, certain concepts, have become eternalized in that they express the divine Truth . . . This means that there exists a so-called philosophia perennis [perennial philosophy], something eternal and unconditional. However, this in no way signifies an ‘eternalizing’ of a specific philosophical system. Richter said that Christian dogmatics itself is the only true philosophical ‘system’.7 Let us recall here that dogmas are expressed in philosophical language – indeed, in a 6

7

This is a common term of the Russian emigration, borrowed from Nicholas Gogol (1809–1852), who adopted it from Church Slavonic. Theologians and religious thinkers called for the ‘(en)churching’ (Votserkovlenie) of life, the mind, culture, the world, etc. Florovsky applied the notion particularly to the baptizing of Hellenism and the adoption of the ‘mind of the Fathers’. See Paul Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2013), 53–54 [Eds.]. This is perhaps a reference to the German Romantic novelist and humorist, Jean Paul, the pseudonym of Johann Paul Friedrich Richter (1763–1825) [Eds.].

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specific kind of philosophical language – but not at all in the language of a philosophical school. Rather, one can speak of a philosophical eclecticism in Christian dogmatics, and this eclecticism has a much deeper meaning than is usually supposed. Its entire meaning derives from the fact that individual motifs of Hellenic philosophy are borrowed, and through this process of borrowing are changed in essence to the point of being unrecognizable . . . For now, in the terminology of Greek philosophy, a new, completely new, experience finds expression . . . Themes and motifs are borrowed from Greek thought, but the response to the questions sounds quite different, and is born from a new experience. For precisely this reason, Hellenism perceived Christianity to be foreign, and the Christian Gospel always remained ‘folly’ for the Greeks (ethnesin de mōrian [1 Cor 1:23]). In the forge of new experience and new faith, Hellenism is melted down and becomes something new  .  .  .  Most of the time, we are not sufficiently aware of the whole significance of that transformation that introduced Christianity to the world of thought:  in part, because so often in our philosophy, we remain ancient Greeks and have not yet experienced in our thinking the baptism by fire; and in part exactly the opposite, because we are too strongly accustomed to the new way of looking at the world and consider as ‘inborn truth’ what in reality was given to us only through revelation. It suffices to mention a few examples:  the thought of the createdness [Kreatürlichkeit=tvarnost’] of the world, not only in its transitory and mortal form, but also in its first principles [Urgründen=ideal’nye pervoosnovy] – the notion of ‘created ideas’, that is, ideas fashioned and brought into existence, which was impossible and offensive to Greek thought; connected to this, the fine sense of history as being a onetime and creative fulfilment  – the sense of moving from a real beginning to a final end  – a sense that in no way finds connection with the static pathos of the ancient Greek world; the understanding of the human being as a person, the concept of personhood, which was completely inaccessible to a Hellenism that only considered the face mask [Larve]8 to be ‘person’; and finally, the truth of the resurrection in the glorified but real flesh – a truth than could only horrify the Greeks, who lived in hope of a future disembodiment of the spirit . . . These are the new thoughts, born of a new experience, born of revelation. These are the premises [Voraussetzungen=predposylki: or ‘presuppositions’] and categories of a new Christian philosophy . . . This new philosophy is included in dogmatics. Likewise, the world reveals itself in the experience of faith differently than in the experience of the ‘natural human being’. And revelation is not just revelation about God, but also revelation about the world, since the fullness of revelation is found in the image of the God-man, that is, the fact of the inexpressible union of God and man, of divine and human, of Creator and creature  – in the indivisible and unconfused unity for ever . . . Indeed, the Chalcedonian dogma on the unity of the God-man is the true heart of revelation, the experience of faith and Christian contemplation [Anschauung: or ‘intuition’]. To be precise, a clear knowledge of God is impossible for man if he speculates inaccurately and falsely about the world and himself. Nothing should surprise 8

The Greek term for person was prosōpon (whose Latin equivalent was persona), which referred originally to the face masks used in ancient Greek and Roman theatre [Eds.].

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us in this, since the world is God’s creation, and thus through a false understanding of the world, a work would be ascribed to God that he did not in fact create, and a falsified judgement on God’s activity and will would be pronounced. In this context, a true philosophy is necessary for faith; conversely, faith necessitates perfectly defined metaphysical presuppositions  .  .  .  Dogmatic theology, as the explication of divinely revealed truth in the realm of thought, is precisely the foundation of a Christian philosophy, a sacred philosophy, a philosophy of the Holy Spirit . . . We must repeat again:  the prerequisite of dogma is experience, and only in the experience of faith and vision is it fulfilled and enlivened  .  .  .  And again:  dogmas do not exhaust this experience, just as revelation is not exhausted in the words, the ‘letters’ of Scripture . . . The experience and knowledge of the Church is fuller and more comprehensive than her dogmatic statements. And the Church bears witness to many things not in dogmas, but in images and symbols – in other words, ‘dogmatic’ theology cannot supplant or replace ‘kerygmatic’ theology. The fullness of knowledge is given in the Church, but it develops and emerges partially and in stages; moreover, knowledge in this life is always only ‘partial’ knowledge, the fullness of which will only appear at the Parousia: ‘Now I know in part’ (arti ginōskō ek merous [1 Cor 12:12]) . . . This dogmatic ‘incompleteness’ is conditioned by the fact that the Church is still ‘under way’, is still in the process of becoming, bearing witness to the mystical essence of time, in which the growth of humanity into the measure of the full stature of Christ is accomplished [Eph. 4:13]. What is more, the Church makes no effort to reveal or express everything; she makes no effort to crystallize her experience in a closed system of words and concepts. Yet the ‘incompleteness’ of knowledge in this age does not diminish its authentic and apodeictic character . . . On this point, a Russian theologian has said quite fittingly: the Church does not give her members any map drawn of the City of God, but the key to this city. And whoever enters without having a map might also end up drifting off the path; but everything he sees, he will behold in truth and reality. But whoever studies the city according to the map, yet does not hold the key to the real city, will never get in.9

III Revelation is preserved in the Church, given by the God of the Church and not individual persons, just as the ‘oracles of God’ (ta logia tou Theou [Rom 3:2]) in the Old Testament were entrusted not to individual persons, but to the people of God. Revelation is only given and is only accessible in the Church; only in the Church can it be perceived, that is, only through life in the Church, through real and living membership in the mystical organism of the Body of Christ . . . This means that true knowledge is only possible in the element of tradition  .  .  .  Now, tradition is a very important concept that is often defined very narrowly as oral tradition in contrast with Scripture . . . This view not only narrows the sense of tradition, but also distorts it . . . 9

B. M. Melioransky, from his Lectures on the History of the Ancient Christian Church, Strannik, June 1910, 931 [GF].

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Holy Tradition as the ‘tradition of truth’, traditio veritatis [Against Heresies 1.10.2, PG 7/1.552-553 and 3.4.1, PG 7/1.855B], of which St Irenaeus speaks, is not only historical remembrance or mere appeal to antiquity and empirical invariability. Rather, tradition is the inner, mystical memory of the Church. Above all, it is the ‘unity of the Spirit’, the unity and continuity of spiritual experience and the life under grace. This is the living connection to the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit, the ‘Spirit of Truth’, came into the world. Loyalty to tradition is not loyalty to antiquity, but the living connection to the fullness of ecclesial life. The appeal to tradition is not so much the appeal to earlier examples as it is the appeal to the ‘catholic’ experience of the Church, the fullness of her knowledge. In the famous formula of Vincent of Lérins – ‘what has been believed always, everywhere, and by all’ (quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est) [Commonitorium I.2, PL 50.640]  – in this formula which we so happily invoke lies an essential ambiguity: for this semper [‘always’] and ubique [‘everywhere’] must not be understood in a literal and empirical way, and by omnes [‘all’] we should not understand all who claim to be Christians, but only the ‘true’ Christians, who preserve the correct teaching and correctly explain it. In any case, heretics, the deluded and those weak in faith are excluded from this ‘all’-encompassing host  .  .  .  Finally, the Vincentian formula leads to a tautology . . . one must not fix the extent of tradition by means of a simple historical examination – this would be a very dangerous thing, and would mean the disregarding of the spiritual nature of the Church . . . Tradition is only recognized through membership in the Church, through participation in her common or catholic (=sobor[nyi]) life . . . So the term ‘Catholic’ is usually understood falsely and incorrectly. The word katholikos (from the expression kath’ holou [according to the whole]) in no way signifies an external universality – it is not a quantitative, but a qualitative signifier. ‘Catholic’ does not mean ‘universal’; katholikos is not identical with oikoumenikos [the (inhabited) world] . . . In the course of history, the ‘Catholic Church’ can appear as the ‘small flock’; there can be more ‘heretics’ than ‘orthodox’, and it can also be the case that the ‘heretics’ are the ones who are ‘everywhere’ (ubique) and that the true Church finds itself forced into the background of history – into the ‘desert’, so to speak . . . This has often been the case, and may yet become the case again; yet such an empirical fact of being constrained and limited does not destroy the ‘catholic’ nature of the Church in the least. True, the Church is catholic in nature; and where there is no catholicity, the life of the Church is shortened. The Church is catholic because she is the body of Christ, and in the unity of this body, the true concrescence of the individual members is fulfilled. The state of being shut off and closed from one another is overcome, and true ‘community’ or ‘communal life’ (koinōnia, koinōbia) is realized . . . This also affects thinking . . . In the unity of the Church, the catholicity of consciousness is realized; therein is contained the true mystery of the Church . . . ‘That they may all be one, even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you [. . .] that they also may be [one] in us [. . .] that they may be one even as we are one’ (Jn 17:21, 23; cf. 11) – hina ōsin hen kathōs hēmeis hen . . . hina ōsin teteleiōmenoi eis hen . . . Precisely this ‘fulfilment of unity’ in the image of the Trinity is the catholicity of the Church  .  .  .  Please allow me here to quote one of the most significant Russian

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theologians of our day, Metropolitan Anthony of Kiev.10 Explaining the high priestly prayer of the Lord, Metropolitan Anthony states: This prayer deals with nothing other than the foundation of a new, united being of the Church on earth [. . .] This being does not have its image on earth, where there is no unity, but only division; its image is rather in heaven, where the unity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit unifies three Persons in one Essence, so that there are not three divinities, but the One God who lives [. . .] The Church is an utterly new, special and unique being on earth; one of a kind, something that cannot be described definitively by any terms taken from profane life [. . .] The Church is an image of Trinitarian Being – an image in which many persons become one essence. Why is such a being, just like the Being of the Holy Trinity, new and unattainable for the old man? Because according to natural selfconsciousness, the person is a being closed in on himself, radically opposed to every other person.11

Elsewhere, Metropolitan Anthony adds: ‘Thus, Christ must free himself, to the extent of his spiritual perfection, from the immediate opposition of I and Not-I, [and] refashion from the ground up the structure of human self-consciousness.12 Such a transformation of ‘human self-consciousness’ is also accomplished in the Church, in the Church’s ‘catholic’ or ‘sobornal’ consciousness. ‘Catholic’ consciousness is neither a collective consciousness, nor a universal or profane community consciousness, nor is it a conglomeration of various conscious individuals or an impersonal ‘consciousness in general’. ‘Catholicity’ is the concrete unity of thoughts and community of souls. ‘Catholicity’ is structure and style, the ‘determination [Bestimmtheit] of personal consciousness’, which overcomes its own limitedness and insularity [Abgeschlossenheit: lit. ‘closed-offness’] to mature into a ‘catholic’ stature [Eph 4:13]. Catholicity is an ideal standard or point of limit [Grenzpunkt] – the telos – of personal consciousness, which is to be realized not in the abolition, but in the founding, of personhood  .  .  .  This measure can only be attained through the life in Christ, not by our actualizing an abstract ‘consciousness in general’ or the impersonal nature of rational thought in our consciousness, but through the concrete experience or vision of truth.

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Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev (1863–1936) was a prominent Russian hierarch and theologian, the first ruling bishop of the Russian Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) or Karlovtsi Synod, founded in Serbia in 1922. ROCOR represented the conservative wing of the Russian Church in exile after the revolution and was involved in the condemnation of Sergius Bulgakov during the sophiology controversy of 1935–1937. Although Florovsky considered that Khrapovitsky was a major figure in Russian Orthodoxy, he was nonetheless critical of aspects of Khrapovitsky’s theology, such as his moralism and his doctrine on redemption, See Florovsky’s The Ways of Russian Theology (CW, VI, Part 2, 203–212 [Puti, 427–436]) [Eds.]. Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky), ‘The Moral Idea of the Dogma of the Church’, Collected Works, Vol. II, 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg: I. L. Tuzov, 1911), 17–18 [GF]. [The Moral Idea of the Main Dogmas of the Faith and a Rebuttal of Immanuel Kant’s Idea of Autonomous Morality, 2nd ed., trans. Varlaam Novakshonoff and ed. Lazar Puhalo (Dewdney, BC, Canada: Synaxis Press, 2015) [Eds.].] Ibid., ‘The Moral Idea of the Dogma of the Most-Holy Trinity’, 65 [GF].

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Unity is brought about through participation in the one truth and realized in the Truth, in Christ  .  .  .  and thus is consciousness transformed. The clearest expression of this transformation must be recognized in the mysterious conquering of time that is accomplished in the Church. In Christ, the faithful of all times and races are united and unified, and so to speak, encounter one another as secretly connected contemporaries. It is precisely in this connection that the religious and metaphysical meaning of ‘the communion of saints’ (communio sanctorum) consists. For this reason, the memory of the Church is not so much directed to the past as being what is fulfilled, but rather as being what is present in the omnitemporal fullness of the Church, the body of Christ . . . Tradition is the symbol of this omnitemporality [Allzeitigkeit] . . . to perceive from within the Tradition means to perceive from within the fullness of this experience of all times, which everyone can perceive in his personal experience in the Church to the extent of his spiritual maturity . . . To turn to Tradition means to turn to this fullness. The catholic transformation of consciousness makes it possible for every person to perceive not just for himself, but for all  – it makes possible the comprehensiveness of experience  .  .  .  Knowledge is then freed from all conditionality  .  .  .  In the Church’s catholic nature, the possibility of theological knowledge and not only of theological ‘opinions’, is founded . . . I say: everyone is able to realize in himself the catholic measure – I do not say: everyone realizes it . . . that depends on the degree of one’s spiritual maturity . . . Yet everyone is called; and those who do realize this, we call the Fathers and Teachers of the Church, for we do not hear from them only their own personal confessions, but the witness of the Church . . . for they speak from within her catholic fullness . . . This fullness is never emptied out and is inexhaustible. We, however, are called to bear witness to this [fullness], and therein lies man’s vocation . . . God revealed himself and is revealing himself to man, and we are called to bear witness to what we have seen and what we are seeing . . .

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Western Influences in Russian Theology

This influential essay is a summary of the major themes of Georges Florovsky’s book The Ways of Russian Theology, published in Russian in 1937. Florovsky delivered the essay in German at the First Congress of Orthodox Theologians held in Athens, from 29 November to 6 December 1936. It was published as ‘Westliche Einflüsse in der Russischen Theologie’ in Kyrios, II, no. 1 (1937): 1–22, and in the proceedings of the congress, edited by Hamilcar S. Alivisatos:  Procès-verbaux du premier Congrès de théologie orthodoxe à Athènes, 29 novembre–6 décembre 1936 (Athens: Pyrsos, 1939), 212–231 (Blane #81). This is a new translation by Christopher Sprecher.

The question regarding Western influences or insertions in Orthodox theology is a tangled one, which even today is still posed at times with great acrimony and agitation. For Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of Sremski Karlovci,1 who reposed in 1936, the entirety of Russian theology since the seventeenth century was but a dangerous borrowing from heterodox Western sources, and thus worthy of eradication, a victim of a sudden break. ‘The system of Orthodox theology is still something being sought after, and thus we must investigate its sources in detail, but not copy out systems of heretical teachings [or] doctrines, as has been occurring among us for two hundred years already.’2 For many people, there has evolved the idea that all of Russian theology is marred by Western influence; the thought has arisen of the necessity of a thorough and decisive turnaround in theological work, of a turning back, a return to the forgotten and abandoned sources of strict, Patristic Orthodoxy. A return presupposes refusal and rejection . . . Such opinions contain a bit of truth. ‘The battle [Kampf] with the West’ in Russian theology can be justified – sufficient reasons and excuses lie at hand. However, it is precisely the history of these Western influences and borrowings in Orthodox theology that has not yet been sufficiently explored. In any case, we have to begin with an exact description of the facts.

1 2

See Ch. 7, ‘Revelation, Philosophy and Theology, n. 10, 126, in this book [Eds.]. Otzyvy еparkhial’nykh arkhiereev po voprosu o tserkovnoi reforme [A Review of Diocesan Bishops on the Question of Church Reform], Vol. II (St Petersburg, 1906), 142–143. Cf. the pamphlet of Hieromonk Tarasii (Kurganskii), ‘Perelom v drevnerusskom bogoslovii [The Turning Point in Old Russian Theology]’, recently published with a preface by Metropolitan Anthony (Warsaw:  Sinod. Tip., 1927) [GF].

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In the present short outline, given its nature, we must content ourselves with some few facts: the most important, decisive or indicative ones. With regard to more specific details, I may mention my recently printed work in Russian, Puti Russkago bogosloviia [The Ways of Russian Theology (Paris: 1937), viii + 576].

I The earlier conception of the complete isolation and separation of Old Russian development has long been discarded. The old Rus’ was never completely cut off from the West, and this connection to the West manifested itself not only in political or economic ties, but also in spiritual development, and even in religious culture.3 The Byzantine influence was the predominant, but not the only, one. Starting in the sixteenth century, we must speak of a weakening of the Byzantine influence  – of a crisis of Russian Byzantinism. The most steadfast and enduring Western relations were in Novgorod; precisely in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, this city became a religious and cultural centre, a hub for all of northern and western Russia. The up-andcoming city of Moscow drew inspiration for the most part from the cultural wellsprings of Novgorod, being indebted to the Nordic republic for its literary holdings;4 and it is here in Novgorod that we quite unexpectedly encounter a westernizing circle near the end of the fifteenth century in the house of the archbishop himself. At that time, a very responsible work was started at the suggestion of Archbishop Gennadius,5 namely, the compilation of the first complete Slavonic codex of the Bible. In his day, the Bible had not been translated as a whole into Slavonic, but existed as a collection of readings for the Divine Liturgy in the compilation and sequence of liturgical books – however, this translation did not perfectly correspond to the biblical text, since the apocryphal books of the Old Testament were also not translated, on account of their near total absence from the Eastern lectionaries. General oversight and direction for the project lay in the hands of the bishop’s archdeacon Gerasim Popovka.

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On the early period, see Bernard Leib, Rome, Kiev et Byzance à la fin du 11e siècle. Rapports religieux des Latins et des Gréco-Russes sous le pontificat d’Urbain II (1088–1099) [Rome, Kiev and Byzantium at the End of the 11th Century: Religious Relations between the Latins and the Greco-Russians under the Pontificate of Urban II (1088–1099)] (Paris: Auguste Picard, 1924) (good bibliography) [GF]. Cf. Aleksei Alekseevich Pokrovskii, ‘Drevnee Pskovo-Novgorodskoe pis’mennoe nasledie: Obozrenie pergamennykh rukopisei Tipografskoi i Patriarshei bibliotek v sviazi s voprosom o vremeni obrazovaniia etikh knigokhranilishch [The Ancient Written Heritage of Pskov and Novgorod:  A Review of the Parchment Manuscripts of the Typographical and Patriarchal Libraries in Connection with the Question of the Period of the Formation of These Archives]’, in Trudy XV arkheol. s’’ezda v Novgorode (Moscow: Sinod. Tip., 1916), II; I. P. Popov, O vozniknovenii Moskovskoi Sinodal’noi (Patriarshei) biblioteki: Sbornik stat’ei k 40-letiiu uchenoi deiatel’nosti akad. A. S. Orlova, ed. V. N. Peretts [On the Origin of the Moscow Synodal (Patriarchal) Library: Collection of Articles in Honour of the 40th Anniversary of the Scholarly Work of the Academician A. S. Orlov (Leningrad: Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1934), 29–38 [GF]. St Gennadii (Gonzov) (c. 1410–1505) was archbishop of Novgorod from 1484 to 1504. He is best known for the compilation of the first complete Bible in Slavonic and his opposition to the ‘Heresy of the Judaizers’, a pseudo-Christian sect that denied the Old Testament, the divinity of Christ, the Trinity and veneration of saints [Eds.].

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Nonetheless, the real spiritual director was a Dominican friar by the name of Benjamin, ‘a priest and monk of the Order of St Dominic, by birth a Slav (Slovene?), by faith a Latin’, in the words of the Chronicler. We do not know more about him, but it can hardly be assumed that this Dominican friar from Croatia just happened to be in Novgorod. He had apparently brought with him ready Bible texts; the influence of the Vulgate can really be felt in Gennadius’s biblical codex, since it  – or at least prints of it – served as the guiding line for the text, and not Greek manuscripts. The apocryphal books were included in the codex according to the Western scheme. Complete translations from the Latin were made of 1 and 2 Chronicles, 3 Esdras, the Wisdom of Sirach, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. ‘The passage of the Slavonic Bible out of the Greek current and into the Latin’: thus is the sense of the Gennadian codex described by a contemporary researcher ‘of the manuscript tradition of the Slavonic Bible’ (Professor Ivan E.  Evseev [1868–1921]). We cannot forget that the ‘Gennadius Bible’ served as the editio princeps of the Ostrog Bible, dating from 1580.6 On this occasion [of the Ostrog Bible’s printing], the text was once again reviewed and compared with the Greek (as found in printed editions) – indeed, the whole historical importance of the Ostrog Bible is determined by the fact that it is intentionally based on the Greek text – yet this revision did not in the end rectify the slipping away into Latin currents. The Ostrozian text, with corrections in parts, was reproduced in the so-called Elizabethan Bible of 1751, which is the text now in use.7 Moreover, much as translated from Latin in Archbishop Gennadius’s residence. Presumably, William Durantius’s famous book Rationale divinorum officiorum8 (at least in part) was translated as a reference during the work on the new order of divine services. From the language, we must consider the translator to have been a foreigner; perhaps it was the same monk Benjamin, who was already mentioned. At the same time, likewise translated from Latin is the Brief Word against Those Who Lay Claim to the Holy Things, Both Moveable and Immoveable, of Cathedral Churches, an apology for church property and the complete independence of the clergy, who thereby also has the right to act ‘with the aid of secular might’. We know of Gennadius’s telling citation of the ‘Spanish king’, who, according to the imperial envoy, ‘had purified’ his country of heretics by means of government-sponsored executions.9 6

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The 1581 Ostrog Bible was the first complete printed edition of the Bible in Slavonic, printed at Ostrog in Polish Lithuania (now in modern Ukraine) [Eds.]. Cf. especially the works of Ivan Evseevich Evseev, ‘Rukopisnoe predanie slavianskoi Biblii [The Manuscript Tradition of the Slavonic Bible]’, Khristianskoe chtenie (1911); nos. 5–6, 644–660; ‘Ocherki po istorii slavianskago perevoda Biblii [Essays on the History of the Slavonic Translation of the Bible]’, Khristianskoe chtenie (1912): vol. 238, no. 11, 1261–1285, (1913): no. 12, 1342–1374; ‘Gennadievskaia Bibliia 1499-go goda [The Gennadian Bible of  1499]’, in Trudy 15-ogo arkheol. s’’ezda v Novgorode (Moscow: Sinod. Tip., 1914), II.I, 1–14; cf. further Ilarion A. Chistovich, ‘Ispravlenie teksta Slavianskoi Biblii pered izdaniem 1751 goda [Recension of the Text of the Slavonic Bible before Publication in the Year 1751]’, Pravoslavnoe obozrenie (April–May 1860): 1: 479–511 and 2: 41–72 [GF]. William (or Guillaume) Durand (Durantius), Bishop of Mende (c. 1230–1296), was a French canonist and liturgical commentator. His Rationale divinorum officiorum [Rationale of the Divine Offices] (c. 1291) is the most important Latin medieval commentary on the liturgy [Eds.]. Vladimir N. Beneshevich, ‘Iz istorii perevodnoi literatury v Novgorode kontsa XV stoletiia [The History of Translated Literature at the End of 15th Century in Novgorod], in Sbornik stat’ei v chest’ akademika A. I. Sobolevskogo (Leningrad:  Izd. Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1928); A. D. Grigor’ev (ed.), ‘Slovo Kratko’ v zashchitu monastyrskikh imushchestv [A ‘Brief Word’ in Defence of Monastic

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There is, then, every reason to speak of a ‘very thick Catholic atmosphere’ around Gennadius ([Ivan E.] Evseev). Western motifs and objects also find their way into Russian iconography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, again through Novgorod and Pskov into Moscow, where these things were felt to be innovations and changeovers: herein lies the historical reason for the well-known ‘doubts’ of the tsar’s Chief Secretary [D’iak] Ivan Mikhailovich Viskovatyi [d. 1570] with regard to the new icons. But it was precisely the church authorities that were in favour of the innovation, which they held to be something ancient. Nonetheless, the Western influence made itself noticeable even in the holy art of icon painting.10 In this case, ‘Western’ means Latin or Roman. And ‘the marriage of the Tsar with the Vatican’ was the symbol of the sudden lurch westward. This marriage led to a rapprochement on the part of Moscow with then-contemporary Italy, rather than to a revival of Byzantine traditions. It is noteworthy that the domes in the Kremlin were built or remodelled by Italian master craftsmen, and expressly more italico [Italian style], in [Siegmund von] Herberstein’s11 judgement of these new Muscovite structures.12 Even more noteworthy was the fact that Maximus, the Greek13 who had been called to Moscow from the monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos, found no one in the city with whom he could speak Greek:  ‘He speaks Latin, and we say it in Russian to the scribes’; serving as translator was Dmitrii Gerasimov,14 a former pupil and assistant of Benjamin’s.15 It would be fundamentally

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Properties], Moskovskoe obshchestvo istorii i drevnostei Rossiiskikh (Moscow :  Univ. tip., stras bul., 1901); cf. V. Е. Val’denberg, Drevnerusskie ucheniia o predelakh Tsarskoi vlasti: Ocherki russkoi politicheskoi literatury ot Vladimira Sviatogo do kontsa 17 v. [Old Russian Thought on the Limits of Imperial Power:  Essays on Russian Political Literature from St Vladimir until the End of the 17th Century (Petrograd:  Tip A.  Benke, 1916); A.  D. Sedel’nikov, ‘K izucheniiu “Slova Kratka” i deiatel’nosti dominikantsа Veniamina [On the Brief Word and the Activity of the Dominican Benjamin]’, in Izvestiia otdeleniia Russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti rossiiskoi akademii nauk [Proceedings of the Department of Russian Language and Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences], 30 (1925): 212–273; Sedel’nikov, ‘Ocherki katolicheskago vliianiia v Novgorode v kontse XV nachale XVI v.  [Essays on Catholic Influence in Novgorod from the Late 15th to the 16th Centuries]’, Doklady Akademii Nauk CCCR, Ser. B, no. 1 (Leningrad, 1929), 12–24 [GF]. Nikolai Andreev, ‘O dele d’iaka Viskovatago [On the Case of the Lecturer Viskovatyi]’, Seminarium Kondakovianum, 5 (1932): 191–241; ‘ “Rozysk” po delu Viskovatago [The ‘Search’ for the Viskovatyi Case]’, Chteniia v obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom universitete (ChOIDR), (1847; better, 1858); cf. Fedor I. Buslaev, Istoricheskie ocherki russkoi narodnoi slovesnosti i iskusstva [Historical Studies of Russian Folk Literature and Art], 2 vols. (St. Petersburg: Tip. Tovarishchestva ‘Obshchestvennaia pol’za’, 1861). II:  Drevnerusskaia narodnaia literatura i iskusstvo [Old Russian Folk Literature and Art] and in Istoriia russkago iskusstva (published by Igor’ Grabar’), Vol. VI: Istoriia zhivopisi (Moscow: Izdanie I. Knebel, 1914) [GF]. Baron Siegmund von Herberstein (1486–1566) was a diplomat of the Holy Roman Empire and a historian known for his writing on Russian history, customs and geography, especially his major work, Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii [Notes on Muscovite Affairs] (1549), ed. and trans. R. H. Major (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010) [Eds.]. Cf. P. Pierling, La Russie et le Saint-Siège:  Études diplomatiques [Russia and the Holy See], 5 vols. (Paris: Plon Nourrit, 1896–1912), Vol. I (1896) [GF]. Maximus the Greek (1470–1556) was a Greek monk and humanist from Vatopedi Monastery on Mt Athos who was active in Russia from 1518 as a writer and translator of biblical, liturgical and ecclesiastical literature [Eds.]. Dmitrii Gerasimov was the brother of Archdeacon Gerasim Popovka who managed Archbishop Gennadius of Novgorod’s codex project [Eds.]. Cf. his letter in the appendix to Tvoreniia Sv. Ottsov, XVII.2 [GF] 190. [Tvoreniia Sviatykh ottsov v russkom perevode (Works of the Holy Fathers in Russian Translation) (Moscow: Publishing House of the Moscow Spiritual Academy, 1843–1893) [Eds.].]

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wrong, however, to regard all these facts as evidence of Roman sympathies in the Novgorod or Moscow of the time; it was more like a half-unconscious appropriation of foreign intellectual property in the naive conviction that one was remaining faithful to one’s proper traditions inherited from of old. Thus, Western psychology and antiWestern intolerance were brought into union.

II The encounter with the West was even closer and more intimate beyond the borders of Muscovy. In Lithuania and Poland, the contacts were initially with the Reformation and Socinianism,16 with the Roman Church, the Jesuits and the ‘Unia’.17 In the extremely complicated and difficult circumstances surrounding the fight for the Orthodox Church, a certain accommodation to heterodox compatriots, hangers-on, rivals and even enemies was psychologically inevitable. In the first period, the Hellenistic idea manifested itself with great power as the ideal and goal of the Graeco-Slavic culture – in the circles of Ostrog, and in Lviv in the house of Prince K. K. Ostrozhskii himself.18 There were many reasons why this goal was – and had to be  – abandoned; even in the circles in Ostrog, opinions were split and the atmosphere was in flux. The common sense of survival tended rather to the westernizing side. Faced with the danger of the Unia, the Orthodox were the natural, and occasionally even unwilling, ‘confederates’ of the Protestants and ‘heterodox’, and many were ready to go beyond simple cooperation in religious and practical matters. On this point, for example, the atmosphere of the Orthodox and Calvinist assembly and ‘Confederation’ at Vilnius before 1599 is indicative. Prince K. Ostrozhskii himself considered it permissible to delegate the Orthodox refutation of Piotr Skarga’s book ‘on the Greek apostasy’19 to

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‘Socinianism’ is a ‘radical Reformation’ form of Protestant teaching that arises out of the writings of the Italian theologian Fausto Paolo Sozzini (1539–1604). It is best known for its anti-Trinitarian teaching [Eds.]. Unia’ (Union) is a now pejorative term that here refers to the Greek Catholics or the Eastern Orthodox churches in communion with Rome, such as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The term comes from the Union of Brest-Litovsk (1595–1596) (Russian:  Brestskaia tserkovnaia uniia) between the Ukrainian (or Ruthenian) and Roman Catholic Churches. With the encouragement of King Sigismund III of Poland and Pope Clement VIII, the Metropolitan of Kiev and five of his bishops declared their desire to move from being under the Patriarchate of Constantinople to unite with and under the Pope of Rome as long as they might keep their liturgy and traditions. The union took in several million faithful and caused a lasting split in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The ‘Unia’ remains a major subject of contention between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church [Eds.]. Prince Konstantin Konstantinovich Ostrozhskii (or ‘Konstantin-Vasilii) (1526–1608) was a noble of the Kingdom of Poland and Ukrainian prince who was a noted defender of Orthodoxy. He founded the Ostrog Academy (1576) or Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy, which produced the Ostrog Bible (1576–1580) [Eds.]. The reference is to the 1577 tract On the Unity of the Church of God under One Shepherd and on the Greek Apostasy from That Unity, with a Warning and Admonition for the Ruthenian Nation by the Polish Jesuit Piotr Skarga (1536–1612). Skarga favoured a union of the Orthodox with Rome, which later came to fruition with the Union of Brest-Litovsk [Eds.].

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the Socinian Motovila, which in turn greatly outraged the unforgiving Muscovite refugee, Prince A. M. Kurbskii.20 Indeed, the Orthodox response to Skarga’s book on the Council of Brest was written by a Calvinist:  the notorious ‘Apokrisis’, published under the name of Christopher Philalethes in 1587. There is full reason to suspect under this nom de plume the well-known diplomat of his time and secretary of King Stephen Báthory, Martin Bronevskii,21 who had great sympathy for the confederation of the Orthodox and the Protestants. Even in the ‘Apokrisis’, we can detect in places an obvious convergence with Calvin’s Institutiones christianae.22 However, none of this was, on the other hand, a conscious departure from Orthodoxy or an inclination towards Protestantism. More important, and more dangerous, was the circumstance that more and more Russian authors were becoming accustomed to treating religious and theological questions in a Western formulation. The refutation of Latinism, however, does not yet signify a strengthening of Orthodoxy, all the more so since the reasoning of the Reformers themselves, which could not always be brought into full accord with the basic principles of Orthodoxy, found use in the polemical argumentation of that time. From an historical point of view, this inculcation of Protestantism was perhaps unavoidable, but under its Western influence, the ideal of Slavic and Hellenic culture became dark and dull. Add to this the fact that help from Greece was no longer a given. Most recently, the Greek teachers themselves usually hailed from the West where they had studied, coming from Venice, Padua, Rome, and even Geneva or Wittenberg; from none of these locales did they bring along Byzantine memories or Patristic inheritances, however; they brought only Western innovations, which in the sixteenth century tended to be Protestant sympathies, and later on, only a half-hidden Latinism. Thus, a certain truth inheres in the angry, ironic words of Uniate Metropolitan Ipatii Potii,23 when he writes to Patriarch Meletius Pigas24 that Calvin has taken the place of Athanasius

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Prince Andrei Mikhailovich Kurbskii (1528–1583) was a member of Ivan the Terrible’s court who subsequently defected to the Kingdom of Poland and was given lands in Ukraine. He defended Orthodoxy in the face of pressure from the reigning Polish power [Eds.]. The Polish Calvinist diplomat, historian and traveller Marcin Broniówski (d. c. 1593) wrote Apokrisis abo odpowiedź na książki o synodzie brzeskim [Apokrisis or a Response to the Writings of the Synod of Brest] (Vilnius, 1597) [Eds.]. A new translation of the ‘Apokrisis’ in modern Russian was published in 1869; cf. Nikolai Skabalanovich, Ob Apokrisise Khristofora Filaleta [On the Apokrisis of Christopher Philalethes] (St. Petersburg:  Tip. K.  V. Trubinkov, 1873); on the author, cf. Józef Tretiak, Piotr Skarga w dziejach i literaturze Unii Brzeskiej [Peter Skarga in the History and Literature of the Union of Brest] (Kraków :  nakładem Akademii Umiejętności, 1913); cf. also Mikhail Grushevskii, Istoriia UkrainyRusi, Vol. VI [10 vols in total] (Lviv :  Nakl. Naukovoho t-va im. Shevchenka, 1907). On Prince Ostrozhskii:  Kazimierz V.  Lewicki, Książę Konstanty Ostrogski a Unia Brzeska 1596 r. [Prince Konstantin Ostrozhskij and the Union of Brest,  1596] (Lviv:  nakł. Towarzystwa Naukowego, 1933)  [GF]. [The Institutio Christianae religionis (Latin, 1536; French, 1541)  or Institutes is the central doctrinal work of John Calvin (1509–1564) [Eds.].] Ipatii Potii (1541–1613) was the second Greek Catholic Metropolitan of Kiev, Galicia and All Rus’ (1599–1613). He was one of the major architects of the Union of Brest-Litovsk. He vigorously defended the union with Rome and was elevated to the primacy in 1599 [Eds]. Meletius Pigas (1550–1601) was Patriarch of Alexandria from 1590 to 1601 and was twice locum tenens of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Much of his ecclesiastical career was taken up in opposition to Latinization and the movement for union with Rome [Eds.].

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in Alexandria, Luther in Constantinople and Zwingli in Jerusalem.25 It is sufficient to call to mind the ‘Confession’ of Cyril Lucaris,26 the authenticity of which is no longer in doubt; this unexpected and opinionated Calvinism of the Orthodox patriarch can also be explained in part by his studies in Geneva, and in part by the fact that he was in Western Russia precisely at the time of the common fight against the Unia, and presumably brought with him the thought of a ‘confederation’ with the representatives of the Helvetic Confession. The influence of the Reformation in Western Russia was only temporary. Soon, the opposite pole – excitement for the Roman model – was in full swing. Characteristic of this change is the figure of the famous Metropolitan of Kiev, Peter Mogila,27 whose historical influence was decisive and whose name has justifiably been attached to an entire epoch in the ecclesial and cultural history of Western Russia. He and his colleagues were overt and staunch Westernizers, although this Westernism was basically a disguised Roman Catholicism. Certainly, Mogila fought for the legal independence of the Kievan church and consolidated the Orthodox Church’s opposition to the Unia, but he did not differ from Rome in his teaching. For this reason, he so easily and uninhibitedly dealt with Latin sources, all the while thinking to rediscover in them a true, unwarped Orthodoxy. A certain incomprehensible ambivalence hovers over the figure of this Peter Mogila. He led the Western Russian church out of its helplessness and decay, under which it had suffered greatly since the Council of Brest, and thanks to him, this church received a legal constitution in the Republic of Poland; but at the same time, all of this was modified in a new, foreign – yes, a Latin! – spirit. The battle that arose around all of Mogila’s plans and undertakings was called forth by these two conflicting [ideas] of Westernism and Helleno-Slavism. Peter Mogila earned himself another undisputed, but likewise ambivalent, merit through the founding of the Kiev Collegium,28 for this was a Latin school: language, custom and theology were not the only things subject to this Latinization, but also the entire religious psychology, and thus the soul of the 25

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Hypatius Pociej, Kazania i homilie [Sermons and Homilies] (Supraśl: Typis Monasterii Supraslensis Basilianorum, 1714), p. 539, cited by Józef Tretiak, Piotr Skarga [Peter Skarga] (Kraków : Nakładem Akademii umiejętności, 1912), p. 222 [GF]. Cyril Lucaris (1570–1638) was the nephew of Patriarch Meletius Pigas of Alexandria. He studied in Venice, Padua, Geneva, Germany and Holland and became heavily influenced by Calvinism. Meletius sent Cyril to Poland in 1596 to attend the Council of Brest-Litovsk, which led to the Union. This confirmed Cyril in his opposition to Rome. Cyril became Patriarch of Alexandria in 1601 and Patriarch of Constantinople in 1620. He was removed and restored several times until his death by strangulation in 1638. His ecclesiastical career was dedicated to the opposition of union with Rome through the vehicle of Calvinist theology. His Calvinist-inspired Eastern Confession of Faith (Geneva, 1629, in Latin) was condemned by councils of the Orthodox Church at Constantinople (1638, 1642), Jassy (1642) and Jerusalem (1672) [Eds.]. Peter Mogila (1596–1647), after studying at the University of Paris and becoming abbot of the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev (1627), became the third Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev, Galicia and All-Rus’ and Exarch of Constantinople (1632–1647) after its re-establishment in 1620. Mogila founded the Kiev Collegium, which became the Kiev Theological Academy. Mogila promoted Latinization in catechesis, theological education, scholarship and liturgical systematization. His most famous works are his Confession (1638) and his Catechism (1645) [Eds.]. The college was referred to as ‘Collegium Kijowo-Mohylacanum’ or ‘Collegium KijovienseMohileanum’ until the end of the seventeenth century and later came to be known as the ‘KyivMohyla Academy’ [Eds.].

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people once again came to be Latinized. Strangely enough, all this happened in the name of the external national-political fight against Rome and Poland. The inner independence, however, was thereby completely lost, and relations with the East were interrupted; a foreign, artificial and calqued29 school of thought made itself native, a school of thought that frequently, in the years to come, would unfortunately bar the ways to creativity. Mogila was not alone in his crypto-Roman Catholicism. Rather than creatively pointing out new ways to his time, he simply expressed the current zeitgeist. The foundational and most expressive monument of his era is the so-called Orthodox Confession.30 It is hard to say with certainty who the author or publisher of this ‘catechism’ was; usually Mogila himself or [his predecessor] Isaiah Kopinskii31 are considered responsible. Presumably, however, it must have been a collaborative work of several authors. Apparently, it was first composed in Latin, and the influence of Latin models can be felt even more strongly in this original version than in the one finally published, which was preceded by a critical revision on the basis of recommendations made in [at the Councils of] Kiev (1640) and Iași (1642). Less important here are individual instances of borrowing or imitation; much more so is the fact that the Confessio Orthodoxa is on the whole merely an accommodation or ‘adaptation’ of Latin material. In any case, however, the text is more connected – and more closely so – to the Roman Catholic writing of its time than to Orthodox spiritual life or the traditions of the Eastern Fathers. Individual Roman doctrines, such as that of papal primacy, are dismissed here, but the style remains generally Roman. The same can be said of Peter Mogila’s liturgical reform. His famous sacramentary [Ritualbuch: Missal] or Euchologion (1646) is heavily influenced by Pope Paul V’s Roman Missal [1570], whence the explanatory articles to the individual rites and ceremonies have been taken.32 In a short time, Mogila’s Kiev Collegium became a stronghold and focus of this imitative Latinism, not only for the Russian south and west, but also for the 29

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Entlehnte:  or ‘borrowed’. ‘Entlehnung’ is a ‘calque’ or a literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation from one language to another. Florovsky is emphasizing the post-Mogila derivative status of Russian theology and culture, which imitated Latin sources [Eds.]. Peter Mogila’s Confession (Kiev, 1638) was written to counter Cyril Lucaris’s Calvinist Confession (1629). It was formally approved by the four Eastern Patriarchs in 1643 and also by councils at Jassy (1642) and Jerusalem (1672), which simultaneously condemned Lucaris’s Confession [Eds.]. Isaiah Kopinskii (second half the sixteenth century–1640) was the second Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev, Galicia and All-Rus’ and Exarch of Constantinople (1631–1632). He was moved aside by the Polish authorities in favour of Peter Mogila [Eds.]. On Peter Mogila, see the foundational, but unfinished, work of Stepan T. Golubev, Kievskii Mitropolit Petr Mogila i ego spodvizhniki [Metropolitan of Kiev Peter Mogila and His Associates], 2 vols. (Kiev : Tip. G. T. Korchak-Novitskago, 1883 and 1897); very important is the recently published book of the late Evgenii F. Shmurlo, Rimskaia kuria na russkom pravoslavnom vostoke v 1609–1654 godakh [The Roman Curia in the Russian Orthodox East, 1609–1654] (Prague:  Orbis, 1928). For the Greek text of the Pravoslavnoe ispovedanie (Orthodox Confession), see the collected volumes of Ernst Julius Kimmel, Libri symbolici Ecclesiae Orientalis [The Symbolic Books of the Eastern Church] (Jena:  Apud Carolum Hochhausenium, 1843)  and Monumenta fidei Ecclesiae Orientalis [The Monuments of the Faith of the Eastern Church] (Jena: F. Mauke, 1850); or Jon Michalescu and Albert Hauck, Die Bekenntnisse und die wichtigsten Glaubenszeugnisse der Griechisch-Orientalischen Kirche [The Confessions and Most Important Testimonies of Faith of the Greek-Oriental Church] (Leipzig:  J. C.  Hinrichs, 1904); cf. also the edition of the Latin text with [a] commentary and preface by Antoine Malvy, SJ, and Marcel Viller, SJ, ‘La Confession orthodoxe de Pierre Moghila, Métropolite de Kiev, 1633–1646’ [The Orthodox Confession of Peter Moghila, Metropolitan of Kiev, 1633–1646], Orientalia Christiana Periodica, X, 39 (1927): 1–127; on P. Mogila’s euchologion, see Evfimii M.  Kryzhanovskii, Povrezhdenie tserkovnoi obriadnosti i religioznykh obychaev v

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Muscovite north. Kievan religious writing of the seventeenth century was completely dependent on Latin models. Suffice it to mention the name of Stefan Iavors’kii,33 who later went over to the north under Peter the Great. His Rock of Faith (Kamen’ very) was basically just an excerpt or abbreviation from some Latin works, mostly taken from Disputationes de controversis christianae fidei of Bellarmine;34 his book on the coming of Antichrist35 was modelled on that of the Spanish Jesuit36 Malvenda.37 The essence of this Roman pseudomorphosis38 can be seen in the fact that for educated Russians, Patristics studies were covered up by Scholasticism. This was more a psychological and cultural Latinization than a matter of confession. Nonetheless, even the standards of education and teaching were shaken up. Under Peter the Great, theological schools or seminaries were established everywhere, even in Great Russia,39 along the lines of the southern, Kievan model; the schools were always Latin ones, whose instructors usually came from south-western institutions. Even

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iuzhno-russkoi metropolii in Rukovodstvo dlia sel’skikh pastyrei [The Damage to Church Rites and Religious Practices in the Southern Russian Metropolia in Introduction for Rural Priests], No. 12 (Kiev, 1860): 285–304 and Sobranie Sochinenii, Tom. I (Kiev: Tip. S. V. Kul’zhenko, 1890). Literature about the Kiev Academy is listed in my book, Puti Russkago Bogosloviıa [The Ways of Russian Theology] (Paris: YMCA, 1937) [GF]. Stefan Iavors’kii was Metropolitan of Riazan’ and Murom (1658–1722) and from 1700 the Patriarchal exarch (locum tenens of the Patriarchal throne) before the office was abolished in 1721. Iavors’kii converted to the Unia while studying in Poland, then on his return to Kiev, he reverted to Orthodoxy and was appointed a bishop by Peter the Great (1672–1725) in 1700 after a visit to Moscow. In 1721, he was made the first president of Peter’s new Holy Synod, but he was powerless, since VicePresident Archbishop Feofan Prokopovich of Novgorod (1681–1736) ran it for the emperor [Eds.]. Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) was an Italian Jesuit and Cardinal of the Counter-Reformation period, who is remembered for his vigorous opposition to Protestantism. Bellarmine’s Disputationes de controversis christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos [Lectures Concerning the Controversies of the Christian Faith against the Heretics of This Time] (3 vols., Ingolstadt, 1586– 1593) is a systematic presentation of Catholic teaching against Protestantism [Eds.]. Stefan Iavors’kii’s Znameniia prishestviia antikhristova i konchiny veka [Signs of the Coming of the Antichrist and the End of the World] (Moscow, 1703) was written to refute the Old Believer Gregory Talitsky, who wrote that the world was ending and that the Antichrist was already ruling in the form of Peter the Great. [Eds.]. Tomás Malvenda (1566–1628) was a Spanish Dominican who wrote many works including Antichristo libri XI (Rome, 1604) [Eds.]. A detailed analysis of the Kamen’ very can be found in Ioann Morev, Kamen’ very mitr. Stefana Iavors’kago [The Rock of Faith of Metropolitan Stefan Iavors’kii] (St. Petersburg: Tip. ‘Artilleristskogo zhurnala’, 1904); cf. also the well-known book by Iurii Samarin, Stefan Iavors’kii i Feofan Prokopovich [Stefan Iavors’kii and Feofan Prokopovich], in Sobranie sochinenii, Tom. V (Moscow:  Tip. A.  I. Mamontova i Ko, 1880); S.  I. Maslov, Biblioteka Stefana Iavors’kago in Chtenie v obshchestve Nestora Letopistsa [The Library of Stefan Iavors’kii in Readings on the Community of Nestor the Chronicler], Chtenie v obshchestve Nestora Letopistsa 24, no.  2 (1914):  99–162; Hans Koch, Die russische Orthodoxie im Petrinischen Zeitalter [Russian Orthodoxy in the Petrine Era] (Breslau [Wrocław]/Oppeln [Opole]: Priebatsch’s Buchhandlung, 1929) [GF]. This appears to be the earliest public use of this famous and characteristic term by Florovsky. Florovsky borrowed this term from the German historian and philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880– 1936). In Florovsky’s usage, it refers to the process by which Orthodox theology was distorted from its original patristic and Hellenic character into a Western neo-scholastic imitation. The term is taken from mineralogy. A ‘pseudomorph’ (lit. ‘false form’) is a crystal that has replaced another mineral’s chemistry or structure with its own chemical make-up or structure without changing the outward shape of the original mineral, a process known as ‘pseudomorphosis’. Paul Gavrilyuk traces its origins to the early 1920s (Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance, 159–162) [Eds.]. Großrussland=Velikorossiia, which in pre-revolutionary Russia referred to the ethnically Russian part of the Russian Empire focussed around Moscow or old Muscovy. Modern Ukraine was often referred to as ‘Little Russia’ (Malorossiia) in the same period, or Ruthenia [Eds.].

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the Slavic Greek Latin Academy in Moscow had taken Kiev as its model and pattern. In the history of the theological schools, this Petrine reform also meant, however, a ‘Ukrainization’; it was, as it were, a relocation of South Russians or ‘Circassians’ [of the Caucasus] to the north, and was felt there to be a twofold foreign infiltration: as a school of ‘Latin’ teachings and a school of ‘Circassian’ teachers. In his outstanding book on the theological schools of the eighteenth century,40 Znamenskii [1836–1917] judges that for the pupils, these teachers were foreigners, in the fullest sense of the word, who had come from some foreign land (at the time, Little Russia [Ruthenia] was regarded as a foreign country) – with peculiar customs, opinions and foreign knowledge; with a language that was hard to understand and sounded strange to the Great Russian ear. Add to this the fact that these teachers never once thought to adapt themselves to their young pupils and to the land that had summoned them. Rather, they blatantly disdained the Great Russians, regarding them as savages, laughing them to scorn and mocking everything that bore no similarity to their Little Russian ways, which they also pushed to the fore and held up as the only correct model. There was a time in which only Little Russians [=Ukrainians] could be ordained as archbishops and archimandrites, since in the government’s eyes, the Great Russians appeared suspect on account of their supposed affection for the old pre-Petrine days. The introduction of Latin schools was accepted by the people only reluctantly, and with great distrust. The clergy only entrusted their children to the schools begrudgingly, and the pupils themselves often ran away. This was not a result of the clerical class being marked by heresy or ignorance, but rather of the perceived foreignness of the school:  it was an unexpected Latin-Polish colony in one’s homeland; a matter that, seen from this point of view – and from a purely instinctive one – could only appear to be useless. Common sense found so little use in the ‘Latin grammar’ and the ‘fine manners produced by the seminary’ – both of which were absolutely no reason for the practical mind to replace the old, customary means of preparation for church office – in one’s own house – with new, unusual, and dubious ones. ‘It was still far from proven who, generally speaking, was better prepared for a career as a priest: the chanter of psalms who had served in the church since earliest childhood, and had learned how to read and sing practically, along with church rubrics, or the Latin school pupil who had merely memorized some Latin words and declensions’ (Znamenskii). One almost began to give up Church Slavonic in this Latin school – even the Scriptural texts were more frequently quoted in Latin. Grammar, rhetoric and poetry were all taught in Latin; Russian rhetoric was taught only in higher grades. It is understandable that parents sent their children only with distrust to ‘this accursed seminary of torture’, and conversely that the children preferred prison to such teaching. A  depressing sentiment had slowly developed, that if you did not have to give up your faith in the newly established school, you still had to give up at least your cultural identity. In and of itself, the establishment of the schools was without doubt a positive outcome; but this transplanting of the Latin school to the soil [Boden] of Great Russia 40

Petr V. Znamenskii, Dukhovnye shkoly v Rossii do reformy 1808 goda [Theological Schools in Russia to the Reform of 1808] (Kazan: Tip. Impera. University, 1881) [Eds.].

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meant a rupture in ecclesial consciousness – a rift between theological ‘learnedness’ and church experience. There was a sense that, while one indeed prayed [in Slavonic], one’s studies were already done in Latin. The same words of Scripture rang out in the classroom [Boden der Schule] in international Latin, while they resounded in the mother tongue in the church nave [Boden der Kirche].41 This painful fissure within the church’s very consciousness is perhaps the most tragic result of the Petrine era. A certain ‘double faith’, and in any case a spiritual conflict, arises42:  a Western culture, yes, a Western theology is constructed, which, however, was a Scholastic theology that had no foundation [Untergrund]:  coming into being and growing on foreign soil [Boden], it became, so to speak, scaffolding over an empty construction site. Instead of resting on natural foundations, this theology stood merely on stilts. A  theology on stilts: this is the result of the theological westernization in eighteenth-century Russia.

III The school also remained Latin once the Roman currents in theological teaching had been replaced by the influence of the Reformation (or more properly, by early Protestant Scholasticism), and once the influence of the Thomists had been trumped

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Florovsky is playing on the different senses in German of Boden (soil, floor, ground and so on) in order to point to the deracinated character of the theology and schooling in Russia, the split in consciousness in Russia between its foreign theology and schooling and its native worship and to tie Slavonic (and Russian by extension) as a church language into the Russian land in contradistinction from Latin language and culture [Eds.]. The foundational work:  Petr V. Znamenskii, Dukhovnye shkoly v Rossii do reformy 1808 goda [Theological Schools in Russia up to the Reform of 1808] (Kazan:  Tip. Impera. Univ., 1881); N. I. Petrov, Kievskaia akademiia v pervoi polovine 18-go stoletiia [The Kiev Academy in the First Half of the 18th Century] (Kiev :  Tip. G.  T. Korchak-Novitskago, 1895); Stepan T. Golubev, Kievskaia akademiia v kontse 17-go i nachale 18-go stoletiia [The Kiev Academy at the End of the 17th and Beginning of the 18th Century] (Kiev :  Tip. I. I. Gorbukov, 1901); D. Vishnevskii, Znachenie Kievskoi akademii v razvitii dukhovnoi shkoly v Rossii s uchrezhdeniia Sv. Sinoda [The Importance of the Kiev Academy in the Development of the Theological School in Russia since the Establishment of the Holy Synod], Trudy Kievskoi dukhovnoi Akademii, nos. 4  & 5 [Kiev] 1904; Kievskaia akademiia v getmanstvo K.  G. Razumovskago [The Kiev Academy under the Hetmancy of K.  G. Razumovskij], Trudy K.  D. Akademii, no.  5 [Kiev] 1905; Kievskaia Dukh. Akademiia v tsarstvovanie Imp. Ekateriny II [The Kiev Theological Academy in the Reign of Empress Catherine II], Trudy K. D. Akademii, nos. 7, 8–9, 11 [Kiev] 1906; and V. Serebrennikov, Kievskaia akademiia s polovine 18-god veka do preobrazovaniia v 1819 godu [The Kiev Academy from the Mid-18th Century to Its Transformation in  1819], Trudy K.  D. Akademii [Kiev] 1896: nos. 6: 217–238, 7: 368–414, 9: 61–86, 10: 233–249, 1897: nos. 3, 5, 7, 9; Sergei K. Smirnov, Istoriia Moskovskoi Slaviano-Greko-Latinskoi Akademii [History of Moscow Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy] (Moscow : Tip. V. Got’e, 1855) and Istoriia Troitskoi Lavrskoi Seminarii [History of the Holy Trinity Lavra Seminary] (Moscow: Tip. V. Got’e, 1867). Cf. also the works on the histories of various seminaries:  on that of Vladimir, by Ksenofont F. Nadezhdin, Istoriia Vladimirskoi dukhovnoi seminarii (Vladimir-on-Klyiaz’ma:  Pechatnia A.  A. Aleksandrovskago, 1875) and by Neofit V. Malitskii, Istoriia Vladimirskoi dukhovnoi seminarii, 2nd ed. (Moscow :  Pechatnia A. I. Snegirevoi, 1900–1902); on that of Suzdal’, by N. V. Malitskii, Istoriia Suzdal’skoi dukhovnoi seminarii (1723–88 g.g.) (Vladimir :  Tip. Gub. pravleniia, 1905); on that of Tver’, by Vladimir I. Kolosov, Istoriia Tverskoi dukhovnoi seminarii (Tver’:  Tip. Gubernsk. pravleniia, 1889); and on that of Riazan’, by Dimitrii Agntsev, Istoriia Riazanskoi dukhovnoi seminarii (Riazan:  Tip. naslednikov Z. P. Pozniakovoi, 1889), et al. [GF].

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by the authority of Christian Wolff.43 The language of instruction still remained Latin, and the pedagogical methods and school structure Western. The Protestant trend is most closely associated with the name and influence of Feofan Prokopovich, the renowned close co-worker of Peter the Great, his advisor in all reforms of spiritual life and the author of the Spiritual Regulation [Dukhovnyi Reglament].44 It is of note that Feofan’s theological lectures, which he held in the Kiev Academy, were only published later in Latin (Leipzig, 1782–1784), but they were already in circulation in handwritten form and in any case influenced the new turn in theology. In his dogmatic lectures or Tractates, Feofan hewed quite closely to Western role models; from appearances, he most closely followed Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf and his Syntagma theologiae christianae (1609). He also made constant use of Johann Gerhard’s Loci communes.45 Although he was a descendant of sorts, he was not merely a compiler. Very well read and easily finding his bearings in the writing of his day, Feofan completely mastered the material, reworked it and adapted it in his own way to the conditions at hand. One thing, however, cannot be doubted:  Prokopovich did not merely follow the Protestant Scholasticism of the seventeenth century  – he simply belonged to it. He was not merely enthralled by the influence of Protestantism, but was quite simply a Protestant (Anton. V.  Kartashev [1875–1960]). It would be quite possible for his writings to find a place in the history of the German theology of the Reformation era, and if the name of a Russian bishop were not printed on his books, the most natural thing to do would be to look for the author among the professors on some Protestant theological faculty. In these books, everything is permeated by a Western spirit and the air of the Reformation; you can sense this in everything, in the entire train of thought and mode of expression. In this œuvre, a man was writing who was not merely influenced by the West – he was simply a Westerner: a foreigner. Feofan regards Orthodoxy, when he happens to do so, from Europe, so to speak: he neither knew it, nor did he experience it, from the inside. He was completely embroiled in Western disputes, and stood utterly on the side of the Reformation. The whole pathos

43

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Christian Wolff (1679–1754) was a German philosopher of the Enlightenment, heavily influenced by G. W. Leibniz (1646–1716), known for his dismissal by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) as a ‘dogmatist’ in metaphysics. Peter the Great invited Wolff to come to Russia and wanted to make him the vice president of the new Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg. Wolff declined the tsar’s offer but his pupils, recruited for the new academy, became the academic elite of the empire, bringing to Russia the philosophical rationalism and religious pietism characteristic of contemporary Lutheranism [Eds.]. Archbishop Feofan (or ‘Theophan’) Prokopovich of Novgorod (1681–1736) was the principal architect of the policy of Peter the Great (following continental Protestant models) of making the Russian Church a department of the state. This was laid out in the Spiritual Regulation (1721), which set out the theological necessity of the tsar’s autocracy and the elimination of the office of patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’ (which was vacant from 1700 until 1917). He helped set up the new Holy Synod that replaced the Patriarchate and he reformed theological education along German Protestant lines [Eds.]. Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf (1561–1610) was a Calvinist scholastic writer and his Lutheran counterpart was Johann Gerhard (1582–1637) during the periods of Reformed and Lutheran orthodoxy (from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries). See Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, rev. ed. Ernst Bizer, trans. G.  Thomson (London:  George Allen & Unwin, 1950) and Heinrich Schmid (1961), The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3rd ed., trans. Charles Hay and Henry Jacobs (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1963) [Eds.].

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of his tractates was directed against Rome, and as a result he never escaped from the charmed circle [Zauberkreis] of Western confessional theological polemics.46 In his renowned book Stefan Iavors’kii i Feofan Prokopovich [Stefan Iavors’kii and Feofan Prokopovich], Iurii Samarin [1819–1876]47 tried to portray this collision of the Roman and Protestant trends as the moment of a supposed ‘dialectic of Russian theological thinking’. Such an organic process can hardly be spoken of here; rather, we see the impact of external influences, the mutual opposition of which only served to constrict the pedagogical thinking of the Russian theological schools. We cannot speak of a spontaneous dialectic coming from an inner impulse, but rather of a violent pseudomorphosis of Orthodox thought:  the Orthodox were compelled to think in categories foreign to their essence and to articulate themselves using non-customary terms and concepts. At most theological seminaries and academies in the second half of the eighteenth century, instruction was given in line with Western Protestant manuals [Lehrbüchern:  or ‘textbooks’], or such books were simply read, especially since Latin, being the general language of scholarship and education, made the effort of translation superfluous. Metropolitan Philaret [Drozdov]48 recalls in his memoirs that he had studied theology that followed Hollatz (†1713), from whom the individual passages were simply dictated; others followed Quenstedt or I. A. Turretini (†1737).49 The textbooks that Russians themselves subsequently wrote also did not stray too far from the Western models:  examples are the Doctrina of Feofilakt Gorskii (Leipzig, 1784), the Compendium of Iakinf Karpinskii (Leipzig, 1786) and the Compendium of Sylvester Lebedinskii (1799 and 1805), as well as Irinei Falkovskii’s textbook (1802), 46

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There exists quite a voluminous literature on Feofan Prokopovich: Iurii F. Samarin, Stefan Iavorskii i Feofan Prokopovich [Stefan Iavors’kii and Feofan Prokopovich] (Moscow, 1844), published fully only in Sobranie sochinenii, Tom. V (Moscow: Tip. A. I. Mamontova i Ko, 1880); Ilarion V. Chistovich, Feofan Prokopovich i ego vremiia [Feofan Prokopovich and His Time] (St Petersburg: V Tip. I.  Akademiii nauk, 1868); on Prokopovich’s theological system, see the article by Platon Cherviakovskii in Khristianskoe Chtenie [St Petersburg], 1876: nos. 1–2, 32–86, nos. 7–8, 101–152, 1877: nos. 3–4, 291–330, nos. 7–8, 2–42, 1878: nos. 1–2, 18–32, nos. 3–4, 321–351; F. A. Tikhomirov, Traktaty Feofana Prokopovicha – o Boge edinom po sushchestvu i troichnom v litsakh [The Tractates of Feofan Prokopovich – And on God, One in Essence and Three in Person] (St Petersburg:  Tip. F.  Eleonskago i Ko., 1884); Anton I. Kartashev, ‘K voprosu o pravoslavii Feofana Prokopovicha’, in Sbornik stat’ei v chest’ D. A. Kobeko [‘On the Orthodoxy of Feofan Prokopovich’, in Collection of Articles in Honour of D. A. Kobeko] (St. Petersburg:  Tip. M. A. Aleksandrova, 1913), 225–236; P. V. Verkhovskii, Uchrezhdenie Dukhovnoi kollegii i Dukhovnago Reglamenta [The Establishment of the Theological Collegium and the Spiritual Regulation], Vols. I  and II (Rostov-on-Don:  n. p., 1916); Hans Koch, Die russische Orthodoxie im Petrinischen Zeitalter [Russian Orthodoxy in the Petrine Age] (Breslau/Oppeln [Wrocław/Opole]:  Priebatsch’s Buchhandlung, 1929); etc. See further the interesting essays by Robert Stupperich in Zeitschrift für osteuropäische Geschichte, no. 5 (1931): 327–339 and no. 9 (1935): 341–362, in Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie, no. 12 (1935): 332– 354, as well as in Kyrios, 1, no. 4 (1936): 350–362; additionally, Robert Stupperich, Staatsgedanke und Religionspolitik Peters des Großen (Königsberg, Prussia [now Kaliningrad]/Berlin:  OstEuropa-Verlag, 1936); cf. finally Boris V.  Titlinov’s article in the Russkii Biografischeskii Slovar’ [Russian Biographical Dictionary]:  Iablonovskii-Fomin, Izd. Imperatorskim Russkim Istoricheskim Obshchestvom, T. 25 (St Petersburg: Tip. Glavnogo Upr. Udelov, 1913), 399–448 [GF]. Iurii Samarin, Stefan Iavors’kii i Feofan Prokopovich (1st ed., 1844), in Sobranie sochinenii, Tom. V (Moscow : Tip. A. I. Mamontova i Ko, 1880) [Eds.]. See Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 13, 36, in this book [Eds.]. David Hollatz (1648–1713) and Johannes Andreas Quenstedt (1617–1688) were German Lutheran scholastic theologians. Jean-Alphonse Turretini (or ‘Turretin’) (1671–1737) was a Swiss-Italian Calvinist scholar. See n. 45 above [Eds.].

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which was composed entirely according to Feofan [Prokopovich].50 To look for independent trains of thought in all these compendia and tractates is a useless task; these were books for rote memorization, a proper ‘Scholastic tradition’, the ballast of formal education. The rules of Protestant Scholasticism made a home for themselves in the form of established custom: in the teaching of Scripture and Tradition, in the ordinances of the Church, in the conception of justification. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the influence of Protestant Scholasticism was joined by the extremely strong current of Pietism. It suffices to mention the name of Simeon Todorskii (1701–1754), who died as the archbishop of Pskov, but who previously was an instructor for some time at the orphanage of Halle, where he translated Johann Arndt’s Wahres Christentum [True Christianity] (following the Halle 1735 edition) into Russian.51 Most representative in this context is Platon Levshin (1737–1812), the famous metropolitan of Moscow who, under Catherine the Great, was ‘in a way the Peter Mogila of the Moscow Academy’, as Sergei. K. Smirnov [1818–1889], the historian of the Academy’s later history, has fittingly called him. Platon was more a preacher and catechist than a systematic theologian; nonetheless, his Catechisms, sermons ‘or beginners’ instructions on Christian teaching’, which he gave in Moscow while still in his early years (1757–1758), also signified a turning point in the very history of theology. His lessons with the Great Prince (later Emperor) Paul [I, 1754–1801], published in 1765 under the title The Orthodox Teaching, or, a Compendium of Christian Theology, were the first attempt at a theological system in the Russian language. However, this ‘theology’ was also translated for the theological schools into Latin, as Platon himself had insisted be done: he considered theological instruction in any other language besides Latin to be a descent from the heights of scholarship  – a consideration that was especially indicative coming from such a zealous defender of popular catechism and popularizer of Christian faith and morals. Even in his old age, before the wars of liberation of the Napoleonic Wars [Freitskriegen] the German Campaign of the Napoleonic Wars,52 he became very agitated when the thought emerged for instruction to transition into Russian in the theological schools, and he always strongly advised against this. In Platon’s Russian expositions, the whole 50

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See Bp. Feofilakt Gorskii (of Kolomna and Kashira) (d. 1788), Orthodoxae orientalis ecclesiae dogmata, seu doctrina Christiana de credendis [pars I] et agendis [pars II] [The Dogmas of the Orthodox Eastern Church or Christian Doctrine Concerning What Should Be Believed (Part I) and What Should Be Done (Part II)] (Lipsiae [Leipzig]:  Ex Officina Breitkopfia, 1784; Petropoli [St. Petersburg]:  Typographia Ios. Ioannes, 1818); Archimandrite Iakinf Karpinskii (1723–1798), Compendium theologiae dogmatico-polemicae [A Brief Summary of Dogmatic-Polemical Theology] (Leipzig, 1786; Moscow, 1790); Archbishop Silvester Lebedinskii (d. 1808)  (of Astrakhan and Kavkazskaya), Compendium theologiae dogmaticae [A Brief Summary of Dogmatic Theology] (St Petersburg, 1799; Moscow, 1805); and Bp. Irinei Falkovskii (of Smolensk) (1762–1823), Christianae, orthodoxae, dogmatico-polemicae Theologia  .  .  .  [Christian Orthodox Dogmatic-Polemical Theology], 2 vols. (Moscow: Gubern. Mosqu. Reschetnicoff, 1802) [Eds.]. Archbishop Simeon Todorskii of Pskov (1701–1754) was a Ukrainian theologian and scholar of Oriental languages trained in Germany. He served as tutor to Peter III and Catherine the Great. He popularized the Protestant revivalist movement of Pietism, which emphasized personal faith, religious affections, repentance and holy living rather than doctrine [Eds.]. By ‘wars of liberation [Freitskriegen]’, Florovsky seems to be referring to both the Russian (1812) and the German campaigns (1813–1815) of the Napoleonic Wars that led to the defeat of Napoleon and the French Empire [Eds.].

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imperfection of the vague theological descriptions and terminological definitions, and how he plucked them from his Latin resources, is made manifest. Notably, he was much more interested in morality than in doctrine. In the Russian textbooks of the eighteenth century, the teaching on the Church, Tradition and the sacraments remained incredibly undeveloped.53 The reform of the Russian theological schools at the beginning of the Alexandrine government did not lead the church back to its Byzantine or Eastern foundations. The entire reform was conceived in the spirit of Pietism, of an ‘inner Christianity’, rather than in the spirit of strict ecclesiality, and instruction continued to be closely connected to the model of Western schools, in which Pietistic moralism and a certain inclination towards mysticism were still noticeable. Yet while the school remained Western internally, at least externally a break was starting, which in the following period overcame the separation of school from life: instruction transitioned from Latin to Russian. The aim of the new theological school ordinance was to awaken both the people and society, to spur them on to higher spiritual interests, and to call forth in them a religious and moral independence. The intention was naturally connected in an organic way with the spirit of the age, being rooted in the mystical trends of the day, the era of the Holy Alliance54 and the Bible Societies. The Latin captivity could be easily replaced with a German and even an English one, with the difference being that in place of Scholasticism, the danger now arose of mysticism and German theosophy. Since that time, the shadow of German scholarship has lain over the whole of Russian theology, to the bane of many; and since that time it has become commonplace to learn German for theology in Russian academies, as the basis for any course of theological studies. Nonetheless this was a step forwards, the start of a creative upswing. There was much that was base and pathological in the new pseudomorphosis, but this was an illness that led to life and growth, and not to death or degeneration  – even though it was a real illness, and an infectious one at that. Between the extremes of mystical and philosophical enthusiasm [Schwäarmereien] on the one hand, and distrustful misgivings on the other, the steep and narrow path of ecclesial theology gradually 53

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The literature on the theological schools of the eighteenth century has already been indicated; on the individual authors, cf. Philaret Gumilevskii, Obzor russkoi dukhovnoi literatury. 862–1863 [Overview of Russian Theological Literature. 862–1863], 3rd. ed., 2  vols., Vol. 2 (St Petersburg:  Izdanie Knigoprodavtsa I. L. Tuzova, 1884). On Metropolitan Platon, see Ivan M. Snegirev, Zhizn’ metropolita Moskovskago Platona [The Life of Metropolitan Platon of Moscow], 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Moscow: Tip. Vid. Mosk. Gorod. Pol., 1856); Aleksander N. Nadezhdin, Metropolit Moskovskii Platon Levshin, kak propovednik [Met. Platon Levshin as a Preacher] (Kazan: Tip. Imp. Un-ta, 1882); Nikolai P. Rozanov, Moskovskii mitropolit Platon, 1737–1812 (Moscow:  Ob-vo revnitelei russkago istoricheskago prosveshcheniia v pamiat’ Imperatora Aleksandra III, 1913); Vasilii P. Vinogradov, Platon i Filaret, Metropolity Moskovskie. Sravnitel’niia kharakteristika ikh nravstvennago oblika [Platon and Philaret, Metropolitans of Moscow:  Comparative Analysis of Their Moral Outlook] (pub. Bogoslovskii Vestnik, Ianv-Fevr 1913) (Sergiev Posad: Tip. Sv.-Tr. Sergievoi lavry, 1913). See also Met. Philaret Drozdov, ‘Iz vospominanii pokoinago Filareta, mitropolita Moskovskago [From the Memoirs of the Late Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow]’, Pravoslavnoe obozrenie, 26, no. 8 (August 1868): 507–542 (‘iz zapisok A. V. Gorskago [from the notes of A. V. Gorskii]’) [GF]. The Holy Alliance was a political coalition created between the monarchist powers (Russia, Austria and Prussia) after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. It aimed to curb republicanism and secularism in Europe after the Revolutionary Wars [Eds.].

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emerged. Representative of this era is the monumental figure of Philaret [Drozdov], the metropolitan of Moscow (1782–1867), perhaps the most significant Russian theologian of the earlier period. He had studied in a Latin school and grew up under the mild tutelage of Metropolitan Platon [Levshin] at the seminary of the Holy Trinity Monastery in that mixture of pietism and scholasticism that held sway there at the time. As a young man, he waded through the currents of mysticism and was also sympathetic to the [Russian] Bible Society.55 Indubitable traces of these ‘Protestant’ and ‘mystical’ influences can be found in his later theological works. On the whole, however, his worldview remained resolutely ecclesial; indeed, Russian theology’s true overcoming not only of specific Western influences, but also of westernism in general, first begins with Philaret. This happened in a way – the one and only way – that can lead to lasting successes:  namely, through creatively harking back to the holy Patristic foundations and sources, and through the return to Patristics, which served as a true source of delight for Philaret, setting the standard for his own work. On the surface, Philaret did not make an immediate break with the earlier ‘Old Protestant’ tradition of the Russian schools, the tradition of Prokopovich. In his own style, much was composed under the influence of Protestant teachings, or was even borrowed from them. In his text entitled Overview of the Theological Sciences,56 written for the St Petersburg Academy in 1814, Philaret himself directs the reader to Protestant books. From these sources, we also see in Philaret that characteristic lack of precision or incompleteness of terminological definitions, to which his opponents sometimes refer – especially the instances where he neglects Holy Tradition, which in the first editions of his Catechism [1823] was not mentioned at all. This disregard, however, did not mean in reality a mistake or an imprecision in thought, but rather sprang from the usual language of the time. Completely understandable and explicable, from a psychological point of view, is the relapse into a Scholastic and Roman Catholic mindset in connection with the reforms of the Ober-Prokurator of the Holy Synod under Nicholas I  [1796– 1855], Count Protasov.57 This return, however, to the Latinizing formulations of the eighteenth century  – Peter Mogila’s Orthodox Confession, the writings of St Dimitri of Rostov [1651–1709] or Stefan Iavors’kii and his Rock of Faith – was not effective, because it was not a creative escape from the historical difficulties of Russian theology. The inclination towards Protestantism could only be overcome by the return to the 55

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See Stephen K. Batalden, Russian Bible Wars: Modern Scriptural Translation and Cultural Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) [Eds.]. ‘Obozrenie bogoslovskikh nauk v otnoshenii prepodavaniia ikh v vysshikh dukhovnykh uchilishchakh’ [A Survey of the Theological Sciences in Connection to Their Teaching in the Higher Theological Schools] [1814], in Sobranie mnenii i otzyvov Filareta, Mitropolita Moskovskago i Kolomenskago [etc.] [Collected Opinions and Remarks of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna], 6 vols. (St Petersburg: V Sinodal’noi tip., 1885–1888), Vol. 1, 123–151 [Eds.]. The Ober-Prokurator of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, appointed by the emperor, was the lay secretary of the Synod, who exercised considerable authority over the Church. The office was established by Peter the Great in 1722 and was abolished in August 1917 shortly before the All-Russian Council of 1917–1918 restored the patriarchate. Count Nikolai A. Protasov (1798–1855), Ober-Prokurator from 1836–1855, completed the process of turning the Russian Orthodox Church into an organ of the state controlled by lay government officials, a process that Met. Philaret (Drozdov) attempted to restrain [Eds.].

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ancient historical sources of Orthodoxy and through the creative restoration of the organic unity and historical order that was formerly unbroken in the culture  – but not through a hasty and immature treatment of ready-made Western models. In this sense, Philaret accomplished in truth incomparably more than Protasov and his counsellors with regard to the actual ecclesialization [Verkirchlichung=otserkovlenie]58 of Russian school theology. The Orthodox Dogmatic Theology also of Makarii Bulgakov, later Metropolitan of Moscow59 and an outstanding historian of the Russian Church, remains despite all its merits a dead book, a monument to dead erudition, unrefreshed by the spirit of true church life – and thus again, a Western book. The return, however, to a true and living ecclesiality could only be made on the path of history, and not on the path of Scholasticism; it could be made only through the living (and yet often contradictory) experience of research into church history, which already contained the sought-out synthesis in kernel form, and not through a hurried systematization according to foreign and recent regulations. This ‘unhistorical method’ was also the way of Russian theologians at the end of the previous century, a method (cf. e.g. Bishop Silvester’s Dogmatic Theology)60 that ranks as the most significant achievement in the legacy of Russian theology.61

IV In the history of Western theology in the last century, the influence of German idealist philosophy was one of the most noteworthy phenomena that touched not only Protestant circles, but also (here it suffices to mention the Catholic School in Tübingen),62 to a very significant degree, Roman Catholic theology and scholarship, especially in Germany. This influence of German idealism also came heavily to the fore in Russian theological schools, but in this case more as a philosophical than a theological concern (in theological writing per se, philosophical idealism had hardly any impact). This can be explained in part simply by the rigorous censuring; we 58 59

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See Ch. 7, ‘Revelation, Philosophy and Theology’, n. 6, 122, in this book [Eds.]. Makarii Bulgakov (1816–1882), Metropolitan of Moscow from 1879–1882, is best known for his histories of the Russian Church and his Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (5 vols., St Petersburg, 1849– 1853), a manual in the scholastic tradition [Eds.]. Silvester Malevanskii (1828–1908) was bishop of Kanev and rector of the Kiev Theological Academy. Florovsky is referring to his Opyt pravoslavnogo dogmaticheskogo bogosloviia c istoricheskim izlozheniem dogmatov [Essay in Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, with a Historical Exposition of the Dogmas], 5 vols. (Kiev: Tip. V. I. Davidenko, 1878–1891) [Eds.]. For more details, see the entire fifth chapter in my book Puti russkago bogosloviia [Paris: YMCA, 1937], entitled ‘Bor’ba za bogoslovie [The Struggle for Theology]’, 128–233. The literature is listed quite thoroughly in the supplement. Metropolitan Philaret’s theological activity, influence and worldview need a new and attentive study; not even a single theological monograph has been written about him [GF]. The Catholic Tübingen School of theology includes Johann Sebastian von Drey (1777–1853), Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838) (see Ch. 11, ‘The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology’, n. 12, 189, in this book), Johann Baptist von Hirscher (1788–1865), Franz Anton Staudenmaier (1800–1856) and Johannes von Kuhn (1806–1887). It is known for drawing on German Idealism (especially Schelling but also Hegel) in the articulation of Catholic dogmatic and moral theology and, in the case of Möhler, in direct engagement with patristic sources [Eds.].

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know from contemporary reminiscences that a great number of the professors at the academies preferred a philosophical exegesis of revealed truths to a theological one in their lectures. At any rate, the psychological influence of Romanticism and Realism was strong; Schelling and Baader,63 as well as Romantic psychologists in the mold of Gotthilf Heinrich von. Schubert ([1780]-†1860), were very popular among the students of the academy. Even in the writings of Theophan the Recluse,64 this authoritative interpreter of the holy and Patristic ascetical tradition, we find direct references to Schubert’s Geschichte der Seele [History of the Soul] (1830, 4th edition 1850), on which lectures were given during the former’s time at the Kiev Academy.65 In any case, the philosophical awakening in Russia began precisely in the theological schools, with all the initial heralds of philosophical Idealism coming from the academies or seminaries: [Danilo M.] Vellanskii [1774–1847] from the Kiev Academy, [Nikolai I.] Nadezhdin [1804–1856] from the one in Moscow, [Aleksandr I.] Galich [1783–1848] from the seminary in Sevsk and [Mikhail G.] Pavlov [1793–1840] from the seminary in Voronezh. Later, the theological academies produced university professors of philosophy: Fedor F. Sidonskii [1805–1873] and Mikhail I. Vladislavlev [1840–1890] in St Petersburg, Pamfilii D. Iurkevich [1826–1874] and later Matfei M. Troitskii [1835– 1899] in Moscow (both of whom hailed from the Kiev Academy), Archimandrite Feofan (Avsenev [1810–1852]), Orest M. Novitskii [1806–1884], Silvester S. Gogotskii [1813–1889] in Kiev and Iosif G. Mikhnevich [1809–1885] in the Richelieu Lyceum in Odessa. Among the ranks of academy professors of philosophy are Fyodor A. Golubinskii [1797–1854] and Viktor D. Kudriavtsev-Platonov [1828–1891] at the Moscow Academy, Vasilii N. Karpov [1798–1867] (the renowned translator of Plato), and Mikhail I. Karinskii [1840–1917] at St Petersburg. A native tradition of religio-philosophical Idealism was thus born in the academies; the desire for philosophical knowledge was kept alive, operating from the inside outwards and directed towards the questions of faith. It is precisely from the starting point of the ecclesial school that the Russian love for wisdom began, and that Russian theological knowledge became subject to speculative examination. At the beginning of our century, one of the conservative professors of the theological academy summarized the task of philosophical dogmatic theology: behind every dogma, we must intellectually 63

64 65

Friedrich W. J. Schelling (1775–1854) was, next to Hegel and Fichte, the most important German idealist philosopher. Aspects of his late ‘philosophy of revelation’ can be traced in Florovsky's own theology (see Ch. 7, ‘Revelation, Philosophy and Theology’, n. 2, 118, in this book). He had particular importance in Russia (all the first Russian thinkers from the academies that Florovsky mentions below draw on Schelling’s thought), where his organicism was very popular. Franz Xaver von Baader (1765–1841) was a German Romantic mystical philosopher who drew on the works of Jacob Böhme (1575–1624) and Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c.1328) in developing a speculative theosophy. With Schelling, he is one of the major Romantic influences in nineteenth-century Russia [Eds.]. See Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 145, 63, in this book [Eds.]. Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert (c. 1780–1860) was a German doctor, naturalist and natural philosopher. He attempted in his History of the Soul (1803) to outline a religious vision of the cosmos and the place and development of the human soul in it by drawing on the natural sciences and taking inspiration from idealist philosophers such as Schelling and the philosopher and critic J. G. von Herder (1704–1803) [Eds.].

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[geistig] search for the question that it answers. ‘That is the analytics of the natural demands of the mind with respect to any given truth.’ Only then must we determine the positive witness of the Church on the basis of Scripture and Tradition, ‘and here we have in no case a mosaic of texts, but an organic growth of knowledge’. Dogma then once again comes to life and reveals itself in all its speculative profundity – as a divine answer to human questions, as a divine amen and as a witness of the Church. It proves to be a ‘true understanding of self, to which any contradiction is mentally unimaginable and painful’. Dogmatic theology, which confronts the questions of today, must therefore always create dogmas anew, as it were, by transforming the dark coals of the formulae passed down to us into the shining jewels of true faith.66 In such an arrangement of the speculative problems of theology, the philosophical and the historical method form a circle, but the historical method, for its part, leads us back to the speculative confession of faith found in the holy Fathers. The influence of contemporary philosophy can be seen especially clearly in the systematic constructions of the Russian ‘secular theologians’, in part in the Slavophiles67 and Khomiakov [1804–1860],68 but mostly in Vladimir Solovyov and his successors.69 The close connection between Vladimir Solovyov’s religio-philosophical worldview and development with German Idealist philosophy (especially his connection with Schelling, and partly with Baader, [Arthur] Schopenhauer [1788–1860] and [Karl Robert] Eduard von Hartmann [1842–1906]) is quite obvious and need not be shown here in detail. Solovyoev’s system, however, was an attempt to reinterpret both the dogmas of Christian faith as well as Tradition in the categories and formulae of the new philosophy, a task that Khomiakov had already had in mind. This task passed from Solovyov to his intellectual descendants and those continuing his work, and from them into the present religio-philosophical tradition. But here, we can justifiably contrast such a conception of theological tasks with another one: not so much translating the tradition of faith into contemporary language – into the code of the most current philosophy, so to speak – as learning to find the immutable basic principles of the Christian love of 66

67

68

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Aleksei I.  Vvedenskii, ‘K voprosu o metodologicheskoi reforme pravoslavnoi dogmatiki [On the Methodological Reform of Orthodox Dogmatics]’, Bogoslovskii Vestnik, 2, no. 6 (April 1904): 179– 208; also published as an offprint [GF]. The Slavophile Movement or Slavophilism was a nineteenth-century Russian intellectual movement that flourished initially in the 1840s and 1850s and influenced the later Russian religious renaissance. The Slavophiles thought that Russia should not look to the West for inspiration, but rather to the values and traditions of its early history and culture, especially emanating from its Byzantine-Slavic Orthodox faith, its rural agrarian society and autocratic form of governance [Eds.]. Aleksei Khomiakov (1804–1860), Russian poet, theologian and philosopher, was one of the most important Russian thinkers of the nineteenth century. He was a key figure of the Slavophile movement, along with Ivan Kireevsky. Khomiakov looked above all to Orthodoxy as the privileged source of Russian identity [Eds.]. Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900) is the pre-eminent Russian philosopher of the nineteenth century and the major intellectual influence on Russian religious philosophy and theology until World War II. He was dependent on German Idealism in his development of ‘sophiology’ or the philosophy of holy wisdom. Of the modern Russian thinkers, except perhaps Alexander Herzen and Sergius Bulgakov, he is the one on whom Florovsky is most dependent, in some respects positively but mostly negatively [Eds.].

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wisdom in the old ancient Patristic tradition; not revising dogmatic theology in line with modern-day philosophy, but rather the reverse:  building up philosophy on the basis of the experience of faith itself, so that the experience of faith becomes the source and standard of philosophical contemplation.70 The weakest link in Solovyov and his school was exactly this misuse of speculative trains of thought, by which both Tradition and the experience of faith were bound in chains and, to be blunt, often warped. At any rate, the influence of German philosophy in this instance somehow organically infiltrated Russian theological knowledge.

V From the present short and cursory overview of the Western influences on Russian theology, a completely inescapable, unsettling and hopeless conclusion can be drawn, so it seems: Was and is Russian theology, in its development, not always a ‘wandering theology’, as one of its harshest critics has called it? Was it not an especially moveable, malleable, inconstant and inconceivable entity? Such is the conclusion often made by foreign, especially Roman Catholic, scholars, who in reading Orthodox theological writings usually come away with the impression of something indefinite, something not exactly defined. Impressions and conclusions of this sort, however, are the fruit of a very dangerous misunderstanding, a kind of optical illusion. In reality, something very tragic lies behind them: a disastrous rupture, a division within Orthodox consciousness, palpable in the history of Russian theology as a certain creative confusion, as a lack of clarity with regard to the path [to follow]. Most painfully, this strange rupture asserted itself as a divide between piety and theology, between theological scholarship and a pious attitude towards prayer, between the school of theology and the life of the Church. The most recent theological scholarship had come to Russia from the West. For far too long, it remained there a foreigner, and insisted on speaking in its particular tongue, alien to the people – a language neither of life nor of prayer. This scholarship remained a kind of foreign object in the ecclesial-organic mechanism of the Church, developing in an artificial and all too segregated environment; it was and has remained a ‘scholarship of the school’. As such, it turned into a subject of instruction, and all too often ceased to seek after the truth and confession of faith. Gradually, theological thinking veered away from listening for the heartbeat of the Church, and thus lost access to this heart. This thinking did not know how to awaken attention and concern in the broader circles of national and ecclesial life; in fact, it met with suspicious distrust and open resentment. Reasons for this existed: namely, in the prejudice against 70

This is a tacit critique of Sergius Bulgakov who consciously built on the work of Solovyov and whom Florovsky regarded as beholden to Western philosophical influences in his theology, especially sophiology, and which was not therefore founded on the Fathers. Simultaneously, Florovsky is distinguishing his theological method from Bulgakov’s, which (he claims) draws on the patristic tradition and is based in the experience of the faith of the Church (see the discussion on methodology in the Introduction, 12–13 and 17–22, in this book) [Eds.].

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a borrowed and self-sufficient scholarliness which had no roots in authentic religious experience or in life, and against a theology that had ceased to express and bear witness to the Church’s faith. In this respect, this theology can rightly be called ‘wandering’. Herein lies the whole meaning of Russian religious existence. In the depths, in the hiddenmost parts of the Church’s experience, faith remains inviolate [unberührt:  or ‘intact’]. In the silence of divine contemplation, in the rule of prayer, in monasticism, the Russian soul preserves the ancient, strict Patristic style, living in the entire undivided and inviolate fullness of sobornost’ and Tradition. In this spiritual depth, this depth of prayer, we still find the ancient faith, ‘the apostolic and Patristic faith’; we still find the ancient, Eastern and Byzantine Orthodoxy. But thinking has sundered itself, has detached itself from the depths; too late has it come to its right mind and to a consciousness of its fatal detachedness. The vagaries of thought have not been able to destroy the unity of faith: Orthodoxy has remained unchanged. A serious danger, however, existed in that theological pseudomorphosis once natural language had been lost, and a foreign and ill-fitting tongue was foisted on theology. In this regard, the most dangerous fact is that ever since then, theological problems have lost their proximity to life, and the teaching about God has come to resemble the scholastic squabble of a small circle of experts. Nikita P. Giliarov-Platonov,71 in his extraordinarily captivating memoirs, provides a very representative example of such a divergence of school and life:  The half-Protestant conception of Tradition was at that time quite common in the schools. Even Philaret’s Catechism did not have a section on Tradition; [Peter M.] Ternovskii [1798–1874]’s theology also did not treat this. The handwritten manual I studied from in the [18]40s was also silent on this point. The era of Prokopovich still endured  .  .  .  And this was not just the case regarding the question of Tradition – the teaching on justification was also presented along the lines of Latin books . . . While Moscow followed more or less in the footsteps of Prokopovich, a turnabout occurred in St. Petersburg, which people said was thanks to the theology of Andrei N. Muraviev [1806–1874] . . . Especially worthy of note is the fact that the theologians by trade, when the obviously important dogma (of Tradition being the second and independent source of teaching on faith) was again introduced, acted completely indifferently. They began to write and teach according to the new conception as if they had always written and taught thus . . . Strange to find such unbelief in persons of faith, the reader will think. But this apathy, strange at first glance, was no sign of unbelief, but merely bore witness to the fact that the formulae of Western theology had no living content for the Eastern Church. There, they belong to the essence of confession and form a burning question; but in the East, this question was not even raised. From this perspective, the correspondence that took place in the seventeenth century between Patriarch Jeremiah and the

71

Nikita P.  Giliarov-Platonov (1824–1887), a Slavophile, was a Russian theologian and literary journalist, who helped translate the Fathers into Russian [Eds.].

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Tübingen theologians72 is telling:  the latter ask the Patriarch for his opinion on the points at the heart of the fight between Rome and Luther, e.g. on faith and works. But the Patriarch’s answer is superficial and skirts the issue; he does not comprehend the whole issue – because the questions presented were the result of religious speculations precisely in the Western Church, which was forced into such questioning through a particular historical development.73

From a psychological point of view, at least, there is much truth in these observations. The danger lay not so much in the meanderings of theological thought and its scholarship as it did in its detachedness from the people. The Western influences in Russian theology must be overcome. At present, this is most true for the unorganic Western style. This overcoming of understanding began long ago in the Russian schools, already in Philaret’s day and in connection with the revival of asceticism in the Russian monasteries – suffice it to mention the school of Elder Paisii Velichkovsky74 and especially the hermitage of Optina.75 But the definitive restoration of Orthodox theology’s independence from Western influences can only be brought about through its spiritual return to Patristic sources and foundations. Returning to the Fathers, however, does not mean disappearing from the present age or from history – it does not mean ceding the battlefield. Rather, it means not only guarding and protecting the holy experience of the Fathers, but also unveiling it and stepping forth from it into life. Conversely, independence from the heterodox West must not turn into an alienation from the West, for a break with the West does not grant true and real liberation. Orthodox thought must also suffer through and feel all the Western difficulties and challenges. At present, such thought can and may no longer simply skirt these issues or be silent. This, however, leads to a creative and spiritual encounter of Orthodoxy with the West. Subjection and imitation did not constitute an encounter; such an encounter can only take place truly in the freedom and equality of love. It is not enough to repeat Western answers, to play some Western answers against others. Rather, we too must recognize and live with the Western questions; we must penetrate them and engage ourselves intellectually and creatively with the entire dramatic scope of problems of Western religious thought. 72

73

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See George Mastrantonis, Augsburg and Constantinople: The Correspondence between the Tübingen Theologians and Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople (Brookline, MA:  Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2005) [Eds.]. Nikita P. Giliarov-Platonov, Iz perezhitogo. Autobiograficheskie vospominaniia [From Experience: Autobiographical Reminiscences] (Moscow : T-Vo M. G. Kuvshinova, 1886), 279–280 [GF]. St Paisii Velichkovskii (1722–1794) was a Ukrainian monk and spiritual writer from Poltava, Ukraine, and a key figure in the revival of Orthodox monasticism and hesychastic spirituality in Slavic-speaking countries and Romania. He produced a Slavonic translation of the Philokalia (Venice, 1782)  of St Nikodemus the Hagiorite (1749–1809) and St Makarios of Corinth (1731– 1805). The Slavonic Philokalia, titled Dobrotoliubie (Moscow, 1793), together with Velichkovskii’s monastery, which produced many spiritual fathers and monastic superiors, were instrumental in the spread of hesychasm throughout Russia and Romania in the nineteenth century [Eds.]. The Monastery of Optina is a Russian monastery near Kozelsk. During the nineteenth century it was one of the most important spiritual centres in Russia and attracted figures as diverse as Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) and Vasily Rozanov (1856–1919) [Eds.].

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Again: Orthodox theology will not overcome its Western stumbling block [1 Cor 1:23] by rejecting or even overturning the results of westernization, but rather by overcoming them and surpassing them in a new creative activity. Only the creative return to its own ancient depths will be a real ‘antidote’ for Orthodox thought against the so-called open and hidden ‘Western poisons’, or even against those not yet recognized. Orthodox theology is called to respond to the Western questions from the depths of its uninterrupted experience, and to oppose the vagaries of Western thought with the unchanging truth of Patristic Orthodoxy.

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Georges Florovsky presented this seminal paper at the First Congress of Orthodox Theologians in Athens in 1936. It was published in the proceedings of the congress, edited by Hamilcar S. Alivisatos: Procès–verbaux du premier Congrès de théologie orthodoxe à Athènes, 29 novembre–6 décembre 1936 (Athens:  Pyrsos, 1939), 238–242, and reprinted with minor corrections in Diakonia, 4, no. 3 (1969): 227–232. The text below follows the Diakonia version of the essay, with the retention of italicization from the 1939 edition (Blane #83).

An Anglican bishop of old days gave his clergy on one occasion this admirable advice:  You who are devoting yourself to the divine study of theology; you who are growing pale over the sacred Scriptures; above all you who either occupy the venerable office of the priest, or aspire to do so; you who are about to undertake the awful care of souls; put away from you the study of the times; have nothing to do with the novelties that are in vogue; search how it was in the beginning; go to the fountainhead; look to antiquity; return to the reverend Fathers; have respect unto the Primitive Church, that is, to use the word of the prophet I am handling, ask for the old paths (Jer 6:16).1

It was a sound programme of studies indeed . . . And yet this suggestion that a modern theologian may, for his inspiration, go back, back to the past ages, is still very unpopular among our theological students. The need to face and to meet in a new theological synthesis the difficulties of our own age is dangerously overemphasized by most of them. And usually a forced distinction is uttered between the dogma and the doctrine.2 All ‘dogmas’ are to be received and kept untouched or unchanged; this is presumably 1

2

John Pearson, Bishop of Chester, Conciones Ad Clerum ‘Concio I: Jer. vi.16. Interrogate de semitis antiquis (Ask for the Ancient Paths)’ in The Minor Theological Works, Vol. II, ed. E. Churton (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1844), 6. Translation of the text is taken from Prof. J. J. Blunt’s On the Right Use of the Early Fathers: Two Series of Lectures, Delivered in the University of Cambridge (London: John Murray, 1857), where the passage of Pearson is given as an epigraph [GF]. [The 1939 publication of this essay includes Pearson’s original text in Latin, omitted from the 1969 version [Eds.].] The remark concerning dogma and doctrine is a tacit critique of Sergius Bulgakov’s essay, soon to be published: ‘Dogmat i dogmatica’, in Zhivoe Predanie: Pravoslavie v sovremennosti (Paris: YMCA, 1937), 9–24. (Pravoslavnaia mysl’ v.3). English translation:  ‘Dogma and Dogmatic Theology’,

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taken for granted by all catholic-minded scholars. But only very few statements are recognized as being really ‘dogmatic’ in a strict sense of the word, backed by a proper, decisive and binding authority of an Ecumenical Council or of the unanimous consent of the whole Church (ecclesia sparsa [the dispersed Church]). In any case, these dogmatic statements or definitions do require an explanation, and must be extended or developed into a coherent system of ideas. And the main purpose of doctrine is supposed to be just the following one: to make the unalterable truth of dogmas fully available and comprehensible for a particular and concrete historical ‘milieu’, to express and to explain the revealed truth under some special conditions, for a definite age or for a definite generation. And thus, doctrine inevitably has but a relative or conditional value  – for a certain time and environment, and must be again and again re-adapted to the changing mentality of the peoples and must be restated or reconstructed from time to time. No explanation can matter for all times! And Christian doctrine is presumed too often to be merely an explanation of the faith, helpful and instructive perhaps, but hardly indispensable or obligatory. Curiously enough, this attitude is shared sometimes by certain conservative minds in the Church also.3 The faith cannot depend upon any special philosophical presuppositions; this is the main argument. In the previous generation of Russian ecclesiastics there was a strong prejudice against any ‘metaphysics’, any philosophy or speculation, be it German or Greek.4 We are living still under a shadow of this peculiar ecclesiastical agnosticism. Purity of Scriptures and simplicity of faith are contrasted with the vainglory of all theological speculations. And there is an unexpected agreement between those who mistrust any theological speculation and those who are looking for a new or modern theological synthesis. Both disregard the traditional synthesis, the patristic doctrine. For some it is still a speculation, for others it is a speculation of old days, and therefore antiquated. Patristic writings are respected indeed, but more as historical documents than as books of authority. Numerous patristic references or even quotations are still common in our theological essays and textbooks. But so often these old texts or quotations are simply interpolated into a scheme borrowed from elsewhere. As a matter of fact the conventional schemes of our theological textbooks came from the West, partly from Roman sources, partly from Reformed ones. Patristic texts are kept and repeated. The patristic mind is too often completely lost or forgotten. Palamite teaching of the divine energeiai [energies] is hardly mentioned in most of our textbooks. The peculiarity of our Eastern tradition in the doctrine of God and His attributes has been forgotten and completely misunderstood.

3

4

in Tradition Alive, ed. Michael Plekon (Lanham, MD:  Sheed & Ward, 2003), 67–80. Bulgakov participated in the 1936 conference and was most likely in the audience for the paper [Eds.]. Bishop-theologians such as Metropolitans Antony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev (1863–1936) and Sergius (Stragorordsky) of Moscow (later patriarch of Moscow) (1867–1944), influenced by nineteenthcentury German academic liberal theology (e.g. Albrecht Ritschl [1822–1889] and Adolf von Harnack [1851–1930]), sought to avoid the ‘metaphysics’ that supposedly pervaded the Fathers (understood as unduly influenced by ‘Hellenization’) and to put ethical concerns at the core of theology. See ‘The Theology of “Moral Monism”’, in The Ways of Russian Theology, CW, VI, Part 2, 199–215 [Puti, 424–439]) [Eds.]. See Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, 129–151, and Ch. 10, ‘Breaks and Links’, 159– 183, in this book [Eds.].

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The common patristic doctrine of the theosis again is rather ignored in our modern systems . . . The doctrine of Atonement is presented in our popular textbooks either according to Anselm of Canterbury or some later Post-Tridentine authority. And the typical patristic idea, so vigorously emphasized in the liturgical texts, that Christ’s Resurrection was the climax and the real source of the victory over death has been completely overlooked by our theologians . . . The idea of the Church, as of a Mystical Body of Christ, has also been forgotten, and a modern attempt to remind [restore] it in a theological thesis was severely censured by the Russian Synod about forty years ago (the case of the Rev. E. Akvilonov).5 The admirable treatises of Nicolas Cabasilas6 or of Symeon of Thessalonica7 have been hardly studied by our theological professors as an authority on the Orthodox doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. The vital and urgent necessity to reform our theological school routine and to restore the patristic mentality in the theological teaching was felt and uttered more than once in the last fifty years by many prominent leaders in the Russian Church. It was a great and historical merit of the late Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky) [1863–1936]8 that he had preached so vigorously the standard value of the patristic writings and of the patristic mind. Unfortunately enough, his own interpretation of the patristic doctrine was in many points more than inadequate. But the right principle was promulgated with a great insistence and a real authority . . . This call to ‘go back’ to the Fathers can be easily misunderstood. It does not mean a return to the letter of old patristic documents. To follow in the steps of the Fathers does not mean iurare in verba magistri [to swear by the words of the master].9 What is really meant and required is not a blind or servile imitation and repetition, but rather a further development of this patristic teaching, but homogeneous and congenial. We have to kindle again the creative fire of the Fathers, to restore in ourselves the patristic spirit. As Cardinal Newman said on one occasion: ‘The Fathers are our teachers but not our confessors or casuists; they are the prophets of great things, not the spiritual directors of individuals.’10 What is of real importance is not so much an identity of spoken words, as 5

6

7

8 9 10

Evgenii Akvilonov (1861–1911) was a Russian academic theologian of the pre-revolutionary period who taught at the St Petersburg Spiritual Academy. He is now best known for the controversy that ensued over his Master of Divinity thesis at St Petersburg, titled ‘The Church: A Scientific Definition of the Church and the Apostolic Teaching about It, as the Body of Christ’. Members of the Holy Synod objected to the Church described primarily as the Body of Christ, understood as a ‘divinehuman organism’ headed by Christ and animated by the Spirit, rather than the popular view, influenced by Protestant theology, pre-eminently a ‘community of believers’ or moral communion [Eds.]. St Nicholas Cabasilas (c. 1320/22–died after 1390)  was a Byzantine mystical writer sympathetic to Palamism who is known for his treatise Concerning the Life in Christ (The Life in Christ, trans. Carmino J. deCatanzaro [Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997]), where he explains how union with Christ is achieved through baptism, chrismation and the Eucharist, and for his mystagogical Interpretation of the Divine Liturgy, alluded to here by Florovsky (A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, trans. J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty [Crestwood, NY:  St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997]) [Eds.]. St Simeon of Thessalonica (d. 1429) was archbishop of Thessalonica who authored works particularly on the spiritual and symbolic sense of the liturgy and sacraments. [Eds.]. See Ch. 7, ‘Revelation, Philosophy and Theology’, n. 10, 126, in this book [Eds.]. Horace, Epistles, I, l.14 [Eds.]. John Henry Newman, ‘XIII: Private Judgment’ in Essays: Critical and Historical II (London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1871), 336–374 at 371 [GF].

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the real continuity of lives and mind, and inspiration . . . One has to grow older or to go further, but in the same direction or, better to say, in the same type and spirit . . . Two points must be here specially mentioned: 1. Even historically it is hardly possible to isolate the formally defined dogma from that inclusive doctrinal context in which only the definition itself possesses its full value and meaning. The connection of ‘dogma’ and (patristic) ‘doctrine’ is much deeper and more organic than the partisans of a new doctrinal synthesis would like to admit. Patristic teaching for a historian in any case is the best and the most natural key to the dogma. This interpretation may be incomplete, then one has to continue the same line. The Holy Fathers are still leading the way, one has to walk further and many views quite unexpected do appear, but the road is still the same, the kingly way of the catholic understanding... 2. And this is perhaps the main point. Holy Fathers are more than merely theologians. They are teachers, ‘teachers of the Church’, doctores Ecclesiae, hoi didaskaloi tēs oikoumenēs. In catholic transfiguration, personality receives strength and power to express the life and consciousness of the whole. And this not in an impersonal medium, but in creative and heroic action. We must not say: ‘Everyone in the Church attains the level of catholicity,’ but ‘everyone can, and must, and is called to attain it.’ Not always and not by everyone is it attained. In the Church we call those who have attained it Doctors and Fathers, because from them we hear not only their personal profession, but also the testimony of the Church; they speak to us from its catholic completeness, from the completeness of a life full of grace.11 This ‘catholic mentality’ constitutes the incomparable methodological value or authority of patristic writings. Again, this does not mean that all personal opinions of the Fathers must also be held, or that one has to follow any particular teacher among the Fathers. The first task for the present generation of Orthodox theologians would be to restore in themselves this sacrificial capacity, not so much to develop their own ideas or views, but to bear witness solely to the immaculate faith of the Mother Church! Cor nostrum sit semper in Ecclesia [May our heart always be in the Church]! It would be unfair, even from a purely historical point of view, to pretend that the old Fathers have expressed the faith of the Church in a conditional language of the current philosophy of their own age, which has obviously no title to be canonized, even though implicitly. The full truth about the holy Fathers is that they have created a new philosophy, very different from both Platonism and Aristotelianism, or anything else. This makes ridiculous any attempt to reinterpret the traditional doctrine in terms or categories of a new philosophy, whatever this philosophy may be.12 The development 11

12

G. Florovsky, ‘Sobornost:  The Catholicity of the Church’, The Church of God:  An Anglo-Russian Symposium by Members of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius (London: SPCK, 1934), 51–74 at 62 [GF]. [See Ch. 18 in this book, 257–271 [Eds.].] Another allusion to Sergius Bulgakov’s theology. Bulgakov held that dogmas, being truths of religious revelation that had metaphysical content, could be expressed differently depending on the language of the philosophy of the day. See his essay ‘Dogma and Dogmatic Theology’ (1937) [Eds.].

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of modern philosophy in any case cannot be treated as an independent instance. And ‘modern philosophy’ must be examined first of all from within the catholic self-consciousness of the Church. It would be precisely ridiculous to check Christian doctrine by some Kantian or Hegelian criterion, or by that of Hermann Lotze, Henri Bergson or somebody else. What is really required is not a new language or any new glorious visions, but only a better spiritual sight which would enable us again to discern in the fullness of the catholic experience as much as our spiritual Fathers and forefathers did . . . This rediscovery of patristic sight would be the only real step forward. One point must be emphasized here. No particular philosophy has ever been ‘canonized’ in any doctrinal or dogmatic statements. And still all these traditional schemes and formularies are through and through Hellenistic or Greek. This ‘Hellenism’ is really, so-to-say, canonized. It is a new, Christian Hellenism. It is a common atmosphere of the Church, created by a series of Christian generations. Our Christian worship is essentially Hellenistic (as it was shown quite recently in most illuminating publications of the great Benedictine scholar, Fr Odo Casel, of the Abbey of Maria Laach).13 The same one has to say of our icons. The same is true of our doctrinal formularies too. In a sense the Church itself is Hellenistic, is a Hellenistic formation  – or in other words, Hellenism is a standing category of Christian existence. And thus any theologian must pass [through] an experience of a spiritual Hellenization (or re-Hellenization) . . . Many shortcomings in the modern developments of Orthodox Churches depend greatly upon the loss of this Hellenistic spirit. And the creative postulate for the next future would be like this:  let us be more Greek to be truly catholic, to be truly Orthodox.

13

Odo Casel (1886–1948) was one of the pioneers of the modern Catholic liturgical movement that paved the way for Vatican II and was a significant influence on the development of Orthodox eucharistic ecclesiology and liturgical theology [Eds.].

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Breaks and Links

This text is the concluding chapter (IX) of Georges Florovsky’s masterpiece, The Ways of Russian Theology, first published in Russian in Paris in 1937 (Puti russkago bogosloviia [Paris: YMCA Press, 1937]; reprinted in Paris in 1981 and 1983 and in Saint Petersburg in 2003), 500–520. The text first achieved prominence through an extract published in French: ‘Les voies de la théologie russe’, Dieu Vivant, 13, no. 1 (1949): 39–62 (Blane #3a). The book is an erudite – and often highly opinionated – survey of the history of Russian thought, centred on philosophy and theology, up to World War I. Florovsky argues that over many centuries Russian theology lost its way and became westernized (its ‘Western captivity’ and ‘pseudomorphosis’) by turning away from its Byzantine-Slavic heritage. The entire text is available in an English version in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, volumes V and VI (1979). The Collected Works version does not include most of Florovsky’s references and many of his additional remarks contained in endnotes in the final section of the book. We have included Florovsky’s complete remarks and references for this concluding chapter of his book as Endnotes after the main text. The title of the conclusion (Razryvy i sviazi) could also be rendered as ‘Breaches and Bonds’, but the editors have retained the more well-known title ‘Breaks and Links’. The new translation below is by Alexis Klimoff, with assistance from Olena Gorbatenko, who translated the Endnotes.

I The history of Russian culture is replete with discordant emphases and convulsive affinities, renunciations and infatuations, disenchantments, betrayals and ruptures. Natural wholeness is the least of its features and the fabric of Russian history is twisted and tangled, as though crumpled up and abruptly torn off. As Nicolas Berdyaev1 put it, ‘The most characteristic aspects of Russian history are its rifts and catastrophic discontinuities.’2 In the course of Russia’s development, influences have predominated 1

2

Nicolas Berdyaev (1874–1948) was a prolific Russian religious philosopher, often called a Christian existentialist, known for his emphasis on human personhood, human freedom and creativity, the eschatological meaning of history and Christian socialism. [Eds.] Nicolas Berdyaev, ‘O kharaktere russkoi religioznoi mysli XIX veka’ [On the Nature of 19th Century Russian Religious Thought], Sovremennye zapiski, 42 (1936):  309–343 at 313. For an English

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over independent creativity. The national soul has harboured far more contradictions and inconsistencies than the Slavophiles and Populists [narodniki] were prepared to admit, with traditional lifestyle [byt] and rebellion co-inhabiting the soul in a strange concord. Peter Kireevsky was right in saying that Russia seemed to be living in a multilayered structure of many concurrently proceeding independent traditional lifestyles.3 This is just as true of the subtle internal structure of the national soul, existing as it does simultaneously in numerous epochs and at various stages of development. But not because it transcends or triumphs over time. On the contrary, it spreads itself easily across the ages. The incommensurate and temporally heterogeneous psychological formations are conjoined in some fashion, but an accretion is not a synthesis and it is precisely a synthesis that has not been achieved. This complexity of the soul is the result of weakness and of an excessive receptiveness to impressions. The Russian soul has the dangerous tendency – and treacherous aptitude – to engage in the cultural-cumpsychological transformations and reincarnations of which Dostoevsky spoke in his Pushkin speech.4 Or, in the words of Blok,5 ‘All is open to our understanding, / Whether it be sharp Gallic wit or sombre Germanic genius.’6 Whatever else can be said of this gift of ‘universal responsiveness’, it is a portentous and ambiguous one. Heightened sensitivity and responsiveness are great impediments to a creative concentration of the soul. Roaming among cultures and epochs runs the risk of not finding oneself. The soul loses its way as well as its very self amid this cascade of historical impressions and emotional experiences. It is as if the soul never has time to return to itself – too much beguiles and diverts it, hindering its return home. As a result, the soul acquires habits that could be called nomadic, the custom of living amid ruins or in the tents of a moving army. The Russian soul has a poor recollection of its ancestry and its firmest convictions entail denials and renunciations. It is common to speak of Russians’ tendency to be dreamers and of the feminine pliability of the Russian soul. The truth of this is well known. But the source of the malaise is not the absence of some unifying ‘logos’ that would bind together the ductile and easily fusible ‘elements’ of natural life, allowing them to crystallize into constructive cultural activity. A naturalistic contraposition of ‘nature’ to ‘culture’ does not provide the means for grasping the full measure of the Russian temptation. For

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translation by Stephen Janos, see http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1930_345.html (last accessed 23 April 2019) [Trans. and Eds.]. Peter Kireevsky (1808–1856), younger brother of the more well-known Russian philosopher Ivan Kireevsky (1806–1856), was also an ardent Slavophile. He collected Russian folk songs and lyrics, one volume of which was published in his lifetime and others posthumously [Eds.]. A reference to a famous speech delivered on 8 June 1880 by Fyodor Dostoevsky, shortly before he died, at the meeting of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, on the occasion of the unveiling of the Pushkin monument in Moscow [Eds.]. Aleksandr Blok (1873–1921) was a Russian symbolist poet influenced by the poetry and religious philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900) (see Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology', n. 69, 147, in this book), especially his belief in the spiritual destiny of Russia. Blok was involved with revolutionary activity, reflected in his apocalyptic masterpiece, The Twelve (1918), the first significant literary response to the October Revolution. He became disillusioned with Bolshevism and was forbidden to leave Russia [Eds.]. From Aleksandr Blok’s programmatic poem, ‘Skify’ [The Scythians] (1918) [Trans.].

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it arises within the already-existing culture. In general the so-called national spirit is a historical and created entity much more than a biological one. The national spirit is created and takes shape in history. The Russian ‘undisciplined elemental energy’ [stikhiia] is not at all an innate fit of existential passion, not an example of some kind of a natural and congenital ‘primeval chaos’, a chaos still blind and unilluminated by the light of reason. No, it is a new and derivative chaos, a chaos in history, a chaos of sin and decay, of repulsion and obstinacy – of a soul beclouded and blinded. The Russian soul is afflicted not only by original sin and poisoned not only by ‘innate Dionysianism’. It is burdened far more by its historical sins, committed knowingly or unknowingly. As in the words of the prayer: ‘Iniquitous thoughts in me pour forth in a dark and muddy flood.’7 The true source of the Russian affliction is not in the allegedly ‘natural’ fluidity of the national mindset, but rather in the infidelity and inconstancy of the people’s love. Love is the only genuine source of synthesis and unity. And the Russian soul was not steadfast and committed in this ultimate love. All too often it was afflicted by mystical inconstancy. And all too often did Russians linger idly on fateful crossroads, ‘Daring neither to raise the banner of the Beast, not to bear the easy yoke of Christ’ (to quote a poet).8 The Russian soul even exhibits a special attraction to these kinds of crossways and turning points. There is no resolve to make a decision, no will to take responsibility. There is a certain artistic element in the Russian soul, an excessive dramatization. The soul is drawn in many directions, reaching for and languishing among enchantments. But enchantment is not love, neither is admiration. Strength comes only from a love consciously willed and sacrificial, but neither from an upwelling of passion nor from the mediumistic attraction of secret kinship. It is precisely this readiness for selfsacrifice, the renunciation of self before the truth, the ultimate humility in love that has been missing in the Russian soul. The soul splinters and teeters between its affections. And the last to awake in the Russian soul is the logical conscience, that is, sincerity and responsibility in the act of cognition. Two temptations have beguiled the Russian soul. The first is the lure of a ‘sacred way of life [byt]’. Arising in medieval Rus’, it is the temptation of the ‘Old Belief ’, an optimistic faith in the possibility of establishing a Christian communal structure on a historical territory, closely followed, as if by a shadow, by the apocalyptic renunciation of the seventeenth-century schism.9 The second is the temptation of pietistic selfconsolation. This is a temptation characteristic of the new intelligentsia, whether westernizing or populist. In a sense, this is also a temptation concerning a way of life, an enchantment by spiritual comfort. Here history is not conceived of as a call to creative action, as a heroic act [podvig], as a journey and a task. The Russian experience 7 8

9

From Ode 1 in the Canon to the Guardian Angel [Trans.]. From the poem by Viacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949), ‘Mest’ mechnaia’ [Revenge by the Sword] (1904) [Trans.]. A reference to the schism (raskol) of the ‘Old Believers’ (starovery, staroobryadtsy or raskol'niki), brought about by reaction to the inept ritual and liturgical reforms initiated in 1652 by Patriarch Nikon (1605–1681; Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church from 1652 to 1658). This schism left a permanent split in Russian Orthodoxy. See Paul Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual and Reform: The Liturgical Reforms of Nikon in the 17th Century (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991) [Eds.].

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of history has always exaggerated the significance of impersonal, even subconscious ‘elemental powers’, ‘organic processes’ or ‘the power of the earth’ – as though history proceeds in the passive voice, ‘happens’ rather than is created. ‘Historicism’ does not guard against ‘pietism’ here, because historicism itself remains theoretical. The category of responsibility is missing, despite all the historical sensitivity, receptivity and perception. This irresponsibility of the national spirit is revealed in the history of the Russian thought with particular clarity. It is the key to the tragedy of Russian culture. The tragedy is not an ancient Greek one. It is a Christian tragedy, a tragedy of wilful sin and of freedom rendered sightless, not the tragedy of blind fate or primeval darkness. It is the tragedy of a vacillating love, of mystical infidelity and inconstancy, of spiritual enslavement and possession. That is why it is manifested in the terrifying and frenzied paroxysm of Bolshevik madness, with its war on God, with its apostasies and defections. Therefore, breaking out of this hellish whirlwind of passions is possible only through vigilant repentance, by a return, a gathering and sobering of the soul. The way out does not come from culture or social work, but from asceticism, the ‘inner desert’ of the spirit returning to itself.

II The history of Russian theology exhibits disarray in its creative development. Most painful has been the strange gulf between theology and piety, between theological scholarship and devotional prayer, between the vagaries of theological schools and the life of the Church. This was the rupture and schism between the ‘intelligentsia’ and ‘the people’ within the Church itself. How and why this occurred was related earlier. It remains only to say again that this break (or alienation) was harmful and dangerous for both sides, as was graphically illustrated in the ‘Athonite controversy’ of 1912–13 and the polemics concerning the names of God and the Jesus Prayer.10 Theological scholarship came to Russia from the West. For much too long it remained a foreign entity, even insisting on speaking in its own alien tongue11  – neither the language of common life nor the language of prayer. It remained a kind of 10

11

Florovsky is referring to the controversy over the invocation of the Name of God (imiaslavskie spori or Afonskaia smuta) that shook Mount Athos and Russia in the years immediately prior to World War I. Florovsky was not directly involved in the controversy, but several of the older generation of Christian intellectuals, such as Sergius Bulgakov (1871–1944), Nicolas Berdyaev (1874–1948), Pavel Florensky (1882–1937), Vladimir Ern (1882–1917) and Aleksei Losev (1893–1988), defended the Athonite monks who adhered to the doctrine. For overviews of the controversy, see Paul Ladouceur, ‘The Name-of-God Conflict in Orthodox Theology’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 56, no. 4 (2012): 415–436; and Scott Kenworthy, ‘Debating the Theology of the Name in Post-Soviet Russia: Metropolitan Ilarion Alfeev and Serge Khoruzhii’, in Orthodox Paradoxes: Heterogeneities and Complexities in Contemporary Russian Orthodoxy, ed. Katya Tolstaya (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 250– 264. See Florovsky’s comments and references on the ‘Athonite controversy’ in the Endnotes in this chapter, 181–183 [Eds.]. Latin was the principal language of instruction in the theological academies, which stood at the apex of Russian theological education, until about the 1840s. See Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology', 137–143, 149, in this book [Eds.].

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heterodox insertion into the organic fabric of the Church. It developed in an artificial and all-too isolated environment, becoming and remaining an academic enterprise. As it turned into a subject of instruction, it ceased being a quest for truth or a confession of faith. Theological thought lost the habit of listening to the heartbeat of Church life and gradually lost access to this heart. It attracted little attention or sympathy in wider circles of Church society or among the people. At best it was considered unnecessary, but often the lack of understanding was overlaid with distrust or outright hostility. As a result many believers grew dangerously accustomed to dispense with theology altogether, replacing it with subjectively chosen items or themes such as the Book of Canons, or the Typikon,12 or the legends of old, or the rituals of common life or the emotional responses of the soul. This led to a sombre abstention or evasion from knowledge, a sort of theological aphasia, a startling ‘a-dogmatism’ and even agnosticism, all in the name of an imaginary piety. Such is the modern heresy of ‘gnosimachy’. This was harmful enough when it overlooked the spiritual treasures accumulated in the course of ascetic labours and prayerful vigils, but at times it was a case of conscious and deliberate concealment. What is worse, this ‘gnosimachy’ was a threat to spiritual health itself. In spiritual activity, both in private devotion and in liturgical communion [sobernost’], there always remains the danger of psychologism, the temptation of reading movements of the soul as spiritual impulses. This temptation can result in the ritualistic or canonical formalism, or else in cosy sentimentality. Yet it is always an enticing but perfidious illusion [prelest’], against which the only defence is theological scrutiny, a focused, lucid and humble application of the theologizing intellect. Neither Church canons nor the traditional way of life are capable of shielding one from prelest’, in the course of which the soul is drawn into a play of mirages and emotional inclinations. In this psychological context distrust in theology became doubly unfortunate. There was nowhere for the theological quest to be applied and the Russian soul, deprived of theological scrutiny, proved to be peculiarly unstable and defenceless in the face of temptations. Ever since the time of Peter the Great, piety was as it were relegated to the lower classes, with the gulf between the ‘intelligentsia’ and ‘the common people’ expressed principally in matters of faith. The upper classes were infected and poisoned by unbelief and freethinking early on in this process. Faith was preserved by the lower classes, usually within a framework of traditional customs and superstitions. Orthodoxy remained the faith of the ‘common folk’ alone – merchants, lower middle-class city dwellers and peasants. As a result it was commonly thought that a return into the Church could only be achieved through simplification, through reunification with ‘the people’, a return to ‘the soil’ and a resumption of a settled way of life along the lines of national tradition. Return to the Church was all too often confused with the act of ‘going to the people’. This dangerous idea was spread as much by unthinking zealots, as by repentant intellectuals, by simple-minded souls and by snobs. The Slavophiles13 12

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The Typikon (from typos, ‘ordinance’ or ‘decree’) is the liturgical book of rules and rubrics governing the services of the Church and their celebration. For a short discussion, see The Festal Menaion, trans. and ed. Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1969), 541–543 [Eds.]. See Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, nn. 67 and 68, 147, in this book [Eds.].

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were an early guilty party in this regard, for in their view the life of the common people in itself exemplified a natural version of conciliarity [sobornost’],14 while the peasant commune [obshchina or mir] resembled an embryonic church. This is why, they argued, one could return to the Church only through ‘the people’. One still frequently encounters the belief that some kind of populism [narodnichestvo] is mandatory for true Orthodoxy. The ‘faith of the coal-miner’, of one’s old nanny, of an illiterate pilgrim woman was accepted and portrayed as the most reliable criterion and model for imitation. Turning to members of ‘the people’ concerning the essence of Orthodoxy seemed more reliable than consulting the ancient Fathers. As a result, theology was almost entirely absent from the make-up of ‘Russian Orthodoxy’. For the sake of piety it is common even today to speak about faith in a pseudo-popular, unnatural and piteous language. It is the most dangerous kind of obscurantism, frequently encountered in repentant intellectuals. Orthodoxy in this interpretation becomes little more than edifying folklore. As Sergei N. Trubetskoi [1862–1905] has written: What would Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich have said if he had been informed that outside the monasteries, true Orthodoxy was preserved only among peasants and that it had vanished among the boyars, the noblemen, the leading merchants, the government clerks and even among numerous representatives of the petit-bourgeoisie? In his day, the pillars of the Church were the best men of the realm, not the unenlightened mass of country folk who had retained and who still retain, many pagan elements in their faith and among whom the Schism would soon gain many adherents.15

The falsehood of the whole concept of religious populism is made clear when one considers that the path of repentance can never be an ‘organic’ one, even though the soul is indeed restored in its wholeness through repentance. For repentance is always a crisis (and the word ‘crisis’ comes from the Greek for ‘judgement’). Strict ascetic discipline, rather than a return to ‘the people’ and to primeval wholeness and simplicity, is the only path towards a genuine return to the Church. It is not a traditional life with its customary rituals that is needed, but fasting and asceticism. Not withdrawing into native primitivism, but rather a stepping out into history to partake of the catholic and ecumenical tradition. Christianity in Russia, as elsewhere in the world, is ceasing to be primarily the religion of the common man. The majority of simple folk are moving in the direction of semi-enlightenment, materialism and socialism; they are in the process of their first fascination with Marxism, Darwinism, etc. Intelligentsia, the top cultural stratum, however, is returning to the Christian faith. . . . The old custom-bound lower-class style of Orthodoxy is over and it cannot be restored. Even the most average of Christians is today confronted with incomparably greater 14 15

See Ch. 18, ‘Sobornost: The Catholicity of the Church’, n. 1, 257, in this book [Eds.]. Sergei N. Trubetskoi, ‘O sovremennom sostoianii russkoi tserkvi’ [On the Contemporary Condition of the Russian Church], Sobranie sochinenii, 5 vols. (Moscow, 1907–1912), I: 441–442. Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich reigned from 1645 to 1676 and the schism of the ‘Old Believers’ developed in the last decade of his rule [Trans.].

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demands. . . . A simple peasant woman [baba] is now a myth: she has become a nihilist and an atheist. Today believers are the philosophers and the bearers of high culture (N. A. Berdyaev).16

The Russian spirit exhibits a fateful split. Together with a genuine cognitive curiosity, speculative restlessness and the Aristotelian sense of ‘wonder’, there is a cold and arid passion for simplification. It is a clash of two wills, or rather, perhaps, the desire of a single will to be of two minds. One hears frequent talk of Russian ‘obscurantism’. But very few are aware of its fateful and tragic profundity. It is an extraordinarily complex movement  – and it is precisely a movement, rather than a listless torpor of the intellect. It is not at all a passive phenomenon, but a very active stance and attitude in which a multitude of heterogeneous impulses come together in a hopeless tangle. In the last analysis, so-called obscurantism represents a mistrust of culture. The obstinate mistrust that many exhibit towards theological knowledge is simply a particular instance of the general wariness towards all Russian creativity. In Russian religious history, ‘obscurantism’ arose as a reaction against a borrowed and self-referential type of learning, one that lacked any grounding in actual religious life or experience. In this sense, it was above all a protest and a warning against a lifeless scholarship. But this kind of protest can easily slip into the most banal kind of utilitarianism; this is indeed what happened all too often in the past and what continues to happen today. On the other hand, it is also true that learning or rationality does not constitute genuine knowledge. The mistrust was not groundless and its ultimate source was theology that had ceased to express and give witness to the faith of the Church and could justifiably appear to be deviant. This is the essential paradox of Russian religious existence. The experience of the Church, at its most profound level, is preserved in its indivisible faith. In its hidden thoughts about God, in its prayers and spiritual labours [podvig], the Russian soul has retained the strict ancient style of the Church Fathers and remains within the fullness of an undivided and uncontaminated communion [sobornost’]. But all too often thought veered off from these profound sources and only returned to them much too late, conscious of its fateful groundlessness. ‘Obscurantism’ was a dialectical warning concerning this rootlessness. It can be overcome only by creative theological thought that returns to the sources and succeeds in illuminating them from within. That is, when the mind will be established in the heart and the heart will be enlightened by intelligent contemplation [v umnom sozertsanii: or ‘intellectual intuition’].17 This will signify the entry into a genuine understanding of the truth. 16

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Nicolas A. Berdyaev, ‘V zashchitu khristianskoi svobody’ [In Defence of Christian Freedom], Sovremennye zapiski, 24 (1925): 285–303 at 302. The last sentence of the cited passage is taken from a different essay: N. A. Berdyaev, ‘Spasenie i tvorchestvo (dva ponimaniia khristianstva) [Salvation and Creativity (Two Understandings of Christianity)]’, Put', 2 (1926): 26–46 at 40 (for an English translation by Stephen Janos, see http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1926_308.html (last accessed 23 April 2019) [Trans. and Eds.]. Florovsky is alluding to the hesychastic ‘prayer of the heart’ or Jesus Prayer: that which the mind grasps intellectually must ‘descend into the heart’, such that the entire person, mind and heart, will be fully engaged with theological and spiritual truth. ‘Heart’ is understood in the biblical sense as the core identity and values of the person. Florovsky is articulating this traditional

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III The crisis of Russian Byzantinism in the sixteenth century was at the same time a process of severing Russian thought from the patristic tradition. There was no interruption in the spiritual life and from the outside, Russian piety seems even archaic. But in theology, the patristic style and method were lost and the writings of the Fathers turned into lifeless historical documents. It is not enough to be familiar with the patristic texts and be able to select appropriate citations and arguments from them. One must attain a grasp of patristic theology from within. Intuition may very well be more important here than erudition, since it alone is capable of breathing life into the ancient texts and turning them into testimony. It is only from within that one can identify and separate in the Fathers’ teaching that which belongs to universal testimony from their own theological opinion, conjecture or interpretation. In the witty words of John Henry Newman: ‘The Fathers are our teachers, but not our confessors or casuists; they are the prophets of great things, not the spiritual directors of individuals.’18 A recovery of the patristic style is the first and basic postulate for any Russian theological renaissance. The point is not some kind of ‘restoration’, nor does it imply a simple repetition or a return to the past. The road ‘to the Fathers’ in any case leads only forward, never back. The point is to be true to the patristic spirit, rather than to the letter alone, to light one’s inspiration at the patristic flame rather than engaging in a collection and classification of ancient texts. Unde ardet, inde lucet [light is emitted from that which burns]!19 Genuine faithfulness to the Fathers can occur only in creation, never by imitation alone. There are two types of self-identification and consciousness of self – individualism and catholicity. ‘Catholic’ consciousness is neither a collective consciousness, nor a kind of ‘consciousness in general’. The personal ‘I’ does not disappear or dissolve in the ‘we’, nor does it become a merely passive medium of group consciousness. On the contrary, personal consciousness is fulfilled in the catholic transfiguration as it breaks free from its self-isolation and alienation and absorbs the fullness of the individualities of others. In the apt phrase of Sergei N. Trubetskoi, personal consciousness ‘holds council with everyone within itself ’ [derzhit vnutri sebia sovet so vsemi].20 As a result, it acquires the ability and the power to perceive and express the consciousness and life of the whole. This kind of ‘catholic transfiguration’ can occur only in the conciliarity [sobornost’] of the Church. And those individuals who in accordance with their humility before the Truth are granted the gift of expressing this catholic consciousness of the Church, we call ‘Fathers and teachers’ because what we hear from them is not only their personal

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perspective of patristic theoria or contemplation through the lens of intellectual intuition (umstvennoe sozertsanie=intellectuelle Anschauung) found in late Romantic psychology. See Ch. 7, ‘Revelation, Philosophy and Theology’, n. 3, 119 and 120, in this book [Eds.]. John Henry Cardinal Newman, Essays, Critical and Historical, 2  vols. (London and New York: Longmans, 1895), II, 371 [Trans.]. This is a Jansenist motto inspired by the work of St Augustine. The expression is attributed to Jean du Vergier de Hauranne (1581–1643), the Abbé of Saint-Cyran who introduced Jansenism to France when attempting to sum up the work of Augustine as the greatest of the Latin Fathers [Trans. and Eds.]. See S. N. Trubetskoi, Sochineniia (Moscow : Mysl', 1994), 495 [Trans.].

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opinion or confession, but the testimony of the whole Church. This is because they speak out of the Church’s catholic fullness and depth, theologizing within the medium of sobornost’. It is precisely this that needs to be learned anew before all else. By means of ascetic discipline and gathering of the self, a theologian must learn to always find himself within the Church. ‘Cor nostrum sit semper in Ecclesia [May our heart always be in the Church]!’ One must grow to the level of catholicity, outgrow the subjective narrowness of the self and emerge from one’s private niche. In other words, one must grow into the Church and live within this mysterious, timeless and all-encompassing tradition that contains the fullness of all revelations and insights. This and this alone is the guarantee of creative productivity and not the pretentious assertions of prophetic freedom.21 One must be concerned less about freedom than about truth, because only the truth sets us free [Jn 8:32]. Only in a dangerous state of self-delusion is it possible to believe that ‘thoughts that are rootless and schismatic are always more free’.22 Freedom depends neither on having nor not having roots, but rather on the truth, on the truth of life and on the illumination by the Spirit. Only the Church has the necessary strength and power to affect a genuine catholic synthesis. This is the source of the Church’s authority to teach, its potestas magisterii, its gift of and anointment to infallibility. The apprehending consciousness must expand in order to make room within itself for the fullness of the past and to incorporate into itself an unending growth in awareness. Theological consciousness must become historical consciousness and can attain catholicity only to the extent of its historicity. An insensitivity to history always leads to arid sectarianism or a rigidly doctrinaire attitude. A keen sense of history is a mandatory qualification for any theologian. It is the indispensible condition for a sense of the Church and one may doubt whether a man lacking all understanding of history can be a good Christian. It is no accident that the decay of the sense of the Church that occurred during the Reformation was connected to a mystical blindness towards history. At the same time it is true that it was precisely Protestants who created the new discipline of Church history in the course of their polemics against Roman ‘innovations’, and that they subsequently contributed more to church-historical scholarship than any other confession. But Church history as such had no religious significance for them – it was always seen as a chronicle of a decline and in fact they undertook the study of history precisely to prove this point. Their goal is always the discovery of the ‘earliest Christianity’ that existed before history. The same impulse characterizes the so-called theological modernism in which the lack of faith in history is the product of the historical positivism and humanism. From this perspective, Christian truth can no longer be ascertained in history and 21

22

In a 1935 essay, Nicolas Berdyaev argued that genuine freedom needed to be ‘prophetic’ in the same sense that the great works of nineteenth-century Russian literature were prophetic by being opposed to prevailing social and religious norms. A prophet, Berdyaev writes, is ‘always alone’ and ‘always stands in opposition to the religious collective’. See N. A. Berdyaev, ‘O profeticheskoi missii slova i mysli’ [On the Prophetic Mission of Word and Thought], Novyi Grad, 10 (1935): 56–65 at 61–62 [Trans.]. Nicolas A. Berdyaev, ‘O kharaktere russkoi religioznoi mysli XIX veka’ [On the Nature of Russian Religious Thought in the 19th Century], Sovremennye zapiski, 42 (1936): 309–343 at 313. For an English translation by Stephen Janos, see http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1930_345. html (last accessed 23 April 2019) [Trans. and Eds.].

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can only be asserted by ‘faith’. In this view, only Jesus of Nazareth is known to history and only faith testifies that he is Christ. Such scepticism towards history is overcome in the Church within the conciliarity [sobornost’] of Church experience that reveals far greater profundities of historical existence than is apparent to a humanist’s eye as it glides over the surface. The Church determines and asserts the events described in dogma to be facts of history. God-manhood [Bogochelovechestvo] is a fact of history, not just a postulate of faith. Within the Church, history must be a genuine vantage point for the theologian. To theologize in the Church is to theologize in the historical mode, because the life of the Church [tserkovnost’:  or ‘ecclesiality’] is, in fact, Holy Tradition. The theologian must perceive and experience in a profoundly personal way the history of the Church as the ‘process of Godmanhood’, as a movement from temporal existence to a grace-filled eternity, as the formation and growth of the Body of Christ. Only in history is it possible to discern the genuine rhythm of Church life and to perceive the growth of the Mystical Body. Only in history can one become fully convinced of the mystical reality of the Church, and be liberated from the temptation of reducing Christianity to an abstract doctrine or a moral code. Christianity exists entirely within history and it is entirely about history. It is not only a revelation in history, but a call to history, a call to action and creativity in history. In the Church everything is dynamic, everything is action and movement, from Pentecost to the great day of the Second Coming. This movement does not signify a departure from the past. On the contrary, it can be seen as an unceasing process of harvesting the bounties of the past. Holy Tradition quickens and lives in creativity. Fulfilment or consummation is a basic category in history and theologizing can only be justified in the perspective of history as a creative task assigned to the Church. The sensitivity to history evident in Russian thought, as well as its labours of historical contemplation and the travails of its historical experience constitute the best promise of the theological renewal that we await. It is of course true that this path of churchhistorical reminiscence was traversed too rapidly and too superficially, proceeding as it did in a wholly contemplative dimension. Neither could one say that Russian theology had appropriated patristics and Byzantinism into its creative development in a sufficiently full and sensitive manner. All this still remains a task for the future. Russian theological thought must yet be rigorously schooled in Christian Hellenism.23 Hellenism can be said to have become a perpetual dimension of the Church, having been incorporated into the very fabric of Church life as an eternal category of Christian existence. Needless to say, this has nothing to do with ethnic Hellenism, with contemporary Greece or the Levant, or with the late-blooming and entirely unjustified Greek ‘phyletism’. The reference is to ‘Christian antiquity’  – to the Hellenism of the dogmas, of the liturgy and of icons. The Hellenistic style of ‘mysteriological piety’, for example, has for all time been embedded in the Byzantine rite, so that it could be argued that one cannot apprehend the inner logic of liturgical sacrament without a modicum of mystical re-Hellenization. One doubts that there

23

See the Introduction, 12–13 and 20–22, in this book [Eds.].

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exists a member of the Church mad enough to propose de-Hellenizing the liturgy, transforming it into a more ‘contemporary’ form. The most fundamental aspect of Russian religious culture is the Russian icon, precisely because in iconography the accumulated Hellenistic experience was spiritually assimilated by Russian master painters and creatively transformed in a truly intimate way. In general, ‘Hellenism’ in the Church is much more than a transitional historical stage. When it begins to appear to a theologian that the ‘Greek categories’ might have outlived their time, this only testifies to his own loss of contact with the rhythms of conciliarity [sobornost’]. Theology can be catholic only within the Hellenistic context. Hellenism has two faces and the anti-Christian tendency dominated in antiquity. Those who wish to struggle against Christianity retreat to this aspect of Hellenism even in our time – it is sufficient to mention the name of Nietzsche. But Hellenism was brought into the Church – this is the historical meaning of patristics. What is more, the ‘churching’ of Hellenism entailed cleaving it in an uncompromising manner, with the criterion being the Good News of the Gospel, the historical image of the Incarnate Word. Transfigured Christian Hellenism is historical to its very core. Patristic theology is entirely a ‘theology of facts’, one that turns our attention to the actual events of sacred history. All the temptations associated with the ‘extreme Hellenization’ of Christianity (repeated instances of which are recorded in history) are not able to reduce the significance of the fundamental fact that the Good News of Christianity and Christian theology were from the beginning expressed in Hellenistic categories. Patristics, sobornost’, historicism, Hellenism – these are all mutually connected aspects of a single indivisible task. Objections to such a ‘Hellenistic paragraph’ are to be expected and they have been expressed repeatedly from a range of vantage points. There is the well-known attempt of Albrecht Ritschl24 to eliminate all Hellenistic notions from the Christian message in order to return to a purely ‘biblical’ foundation. Consistently applied, this leads to a disintegration of Christianity into a kind of humanitarian ethic, a result that refutes the whole idea of Ritschl’s enterprise. The return to the Bible turns out to be illusory. Any attempt to interpret Christian revelation in the exclusively ‘Semitic’ categories of ‘laws’ or ‘prophecies’ will be equally inadequate. In recent years such an approach has attracted a number of adherents; it is best represented by the contemporary ‘dialectical theology’ of Karl Barth, Emil Brunner and others. This is precisely an attempt to interpret the New Testament in the categories of the Old, focusing on the prophecies, but without their genuine fulfilment, as though the prophecies have not yet been realized. History is discounted and the emphasis is shifted to the Last Judgement, thereby diminishing the fullness of revealed truth. It is in Christian Hellenism that the biblical prophecies find their true fulfilment. Vetus Testamentum in Novo patet [the Old

24

Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889) was a liberal Protestant German theologian, who drew on Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Hermann Lotze. He is known especially for emphasizing the absolute authority of the believing community over the individual believer who is justified in and through that body and that religion rests on faith and spiritual experience rather than reason. He and his followers repudiated mystical experience and metaphysics and stressed above all ethics and incorporation into the redeeming community of faith [Eds.].

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Testament is revealed in the New].25 In the text of the New Testament as well as in the New Testament Church, both Jews and Hellenes were incorporated into the unity of a new life. The category of sacred Hebraism is deprived of its autonomous significance and any attempt to distinguish or separate it from the totality of the Christian synthesis leads to a relapse into Judaism. The truth of ‘Hebraism’ is already included in the Hellenistic synthesis, since the implantation of the biblical root was precisely what brought Hellenism into the Church. Setting off ‘Semitism’ against ‘Hellenism’ in this context cannot be justified even in historical terms. A number of thinkers in the heyday of German idealism conceived the idea of rendering what they considered the antiquated Hellenistic language used in dogmatics and dogmas themselves into the more understandable idiom of the new idealism, one in tune with Hegel, Schelling, Baader and others. (Even Khomiakov toyed with this idea.) Attempts along similar lines have continued to this day.26 Can a man shaped by ‘Faustian culture’ be content with the static code of an antiquated Hellenism? Had not all those old and outmoded words lost their precise meaning? Has not the soul itself changed so dramatically that it has lost the ability to be moved by words and symbols that are ‘old-fashioned to a fateful and deadly degree’? At this point one must immediately ask why these symbols and categories have become so ‘old-fashioned’? Might this not be because ‘contemporaneity’ has no memory of its roots and is incapable of absorbing its own past into itself, a past from which it had broken away? In any case, ‘contemporary philosophy and psychology’ are themselves subject to preliminary scrutiny by and justification before the full profundity of Church experience. A  Hegelian or Kantian frame of mind is simply incommensurate with this experience. Is it really worthwhile trying to measure the fullness of the Church with a Kantian yardstick, or with one of Lotze, or Bergson or even Schelling? The very idea seems tragicomic. What needs to happen is not at all a translation of dogmatic formulae from an obsolete idiom into a modern one, but rather a creative return to the accumulated experience of the past, a past that needs to be experienced anew, with one’s modern thoughts incorporated into the continuous fabric of conciliar [soborny] fullness. All earlier attempts to follow the path of updating via translation or ‘transmission’ have turned out to be ‘betrayals’ in the sense that transpositions produced renderings in wholly inadequate terminologies. Incurable particularism characterized them all, with ‘contemporary’ all too often meaning simply topical. Abandoning Christian Hellenism is in no sense ‘progress’ but rather regression into the blind alleys of un-transfigured Hellenism, into impasses that were resolved only by the ‘churching’ of Hellenism in the patristic age. Even German idealism was in large measure a relapse into pre-Christian Hellenism. Whoever does not wish to abide with the Fathers, fearing to be held back by ‘patristic scholasticism’ and vainly hoping to forge ‘ahead’ in step with the age, is fated, by the very logic of things, to be cast back,

25

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Adapted from St Augustine:  ‘In Vetere Novum lateat et in Novo Vetus  pateat [The New in the Old is Concealed; the Old in the New is Revealed]’ (Quaestionum in Heptateuchum Libri Septem [Questions on the Heptateuch in Seven Books], 2, 73, PL 34.623) [Eds.]. Florovsky is referring to the attraction that German idealism held for leading figures of the Russian religious renaissance, especially of course Sergius Bulgakov [Eds.].

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finding himself with Plato and Aristotle, or Plotinus and Philo – in any event before Christ. It would amount to an outdated and pointless return from Jerusalem to Athens. The ‘Hellenistic paragraph’ also evokes objections from the opposite quarter – not from Western philosophy but from the Russian national spirit. Should not Orthodoxy be presented in the Slavic key, in tune with the ‘Slavic soul’ newly acquired by Christ? Projects of this type were undertaken among some of the minor Slavophiles (Orest Miller, for example27) and in later years among some Populists. Things ‘Greek’ were suspected of intellectualism and on those grounds declared superfluous and unrelated to the needs of the Russian heart. It is no accident that our people acquired their understanding of Christianity from the Prologue,28 not from the New Testament, that they gained enlightenment from Church services, not sermons and from the veneration of holy things, not from theology.29

In recent years the question of the ‘Greek tradition’ was posed in the most blunt and direct fashion by Mikhail Tareev.30 He is entirely consistent in extending his renunciation of Hellenism to the patristic tradition. ‘The teaching of the Holy Fathers is Gnosticism from beginning to end,’ he believed.31 Efforts must be made to pave the way for an original and indigenous Russian theology, one that would avoid this Byzantine Gnosticism. The spiritual ‘philosophy of the heart’ would overshadow, if not replace, dogmatic theology that is the typical product of Greek intellectualism. Tareev held forth with great passion against Greek oppression and the ‘Byzantine yoke’: Greek Gnosticism fettered Russian religious thought, throttled our theological creativity, prevented the rise of our own philosophy of the heart, dried out its roots and burned off its shoots.32

In reality Tareev simply provided an ostensible justification for a very common type of Russian obscurantism, one in which a quiet refuge away from all intellectual anxieties is sought in the ‘warm piety’ or the ‘philosophy of the heart’. What is astonishing is the naïve readiness to exclude oneself from Christian history and the Christian heritage and the callousness of not caring to remember one’s origins. No, it is not Greek domination 27

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32

Orest Miller (1833–1889) was a Russian folklorist and literary scholar, author of the first biography of Dostoyevsky [Eds.]. Prologue (also called Synaxarion): a religious miscellany containing short versions of saints’ lives, selections from the writings of Church Fathers and various other materials of an edifying nature, all arranged in calendar fashion to correlate with Church holidays [Trans.]. From Pavel Florensky’s 1909 essay, ‘Pravoslavie’ [Orthodoxy], reprinted in Florensky’s Sochineniia v chetyrekh tomakh, 4 vols. (Moscow: Mysl, 1994–98), I, 648 [Trans.]. Mikhail Tareev (1867–1934) was a Russian theologian who taught at the Moscow Theological Academy. He is known as a ‘moralist’ and his major theological theme was the kenosis of Christ, the self-denial of his divinity, and hence his temptations and sufferings. Tareev was suspicious of metaphysics and, by extension, dogmatic theology [Eds.]. Mikail M. Tareev, ‘Novoe bogoslovie’ [The New Theology], Bogoslovskii Vestnik (1917): 168–224 at 220 [Trans.]. Ibid., 223 [Trans.].

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that brought the malaise into the Russian theological thought; its cause was precisely the imprudent and careless break with Hellenistic and Byzantine traditions and ties. Such separation from the Orthodox heritage cast a spell on the Russian soul and made it barren for a long time. Creativity is not possible outside a living tradition [zhivoe predanie]. Today a renunciation of the ‘Greek heritage’ can only signify suicide of the Church.

IV Russian theology passed though all the major stages of modern Western religious thought, albeit in the imitative mode. This has included Tridentine theology, the Baroque, Protestant scholasticism and orthodoxy, pietism and masonry, German idealism and romanticism, the ferment of social Christianity after the French Revolution, the decay of Hegelianism, the new critical and historical scholarship, the Tubingen school and Ritschlianism, and the new romanticism and symbolism. In one way or another all these ideas impressed themselves on Russia’s cultural experience. However, dependence and imitation do not amount to a genuine encounter with the West, which can only occur in the context of freedom and equality in the love of truth. Repeating available Western answers is not enough; one needed to discern Western questions, to co-experience them by immersing oneself in the complex and dramatic array of problems and concerns of Western religious thought, by spiritually tracing the entire difficult and tangled Western path from the time of the East-West Schism. Entering into constantly emerging life is possible only through the experience of and genuine empathy with its array of problems in all their controversial, questionable and troubling aspects. Orthodox theology will be able to re-establish its independence from Western influences only by means of a spiritual return to patristic sources and foundations. Returning to the Fathers does not mean abandoning the contemporary age or escaping from history by retreating from the field of battle. The accumulated patristic experience must be not only preserved but continuously discovered and used as a foundation from which to step forth into contemporary life. Independence from the heterodox West must not degenerate into an alienation from it. The break with the West is in fact that which prevents genuine liberation. Orthodox thought must understand and experience the pain of Western trials and temptations, it dare not avoid or hush them up. The entirety of Western experience with its temptations and falls must be creatively examined and made real, the ‘European yearning [toska: or ‘anguish, melancholy’]’ (in Dostoevsky’s phrase)33 accumulated over the centuries of creative history must be shouldered. Only such compassionate co-experience could reliably lead to a reunification of the divided Christian world and bring back to the fold the long-separated brothers. The point is not only to refute or reject Western solutions 33

This is a phrase from the close of Dostoyevsky’s famous 1880 Pushkin Speech (see n. 4 above). See Fyodor Dostoevsky, ‘The Pushkin Speech’, in The Dream of a Queer Fellow and the Pushkin Speech, trans. S. Koteliansky and J. Middleton Murry (London: Unwin Books, 1960), 43–59 at 58 [Eds.].

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and errors, but rather to overcome and surpass them in a new creative endeavour. For Orthodox thought this would also become the best antidote against undetected or unidentified toxins. Orthodox theology has a duty to respond to heterodox problems, drawing on the deep resources of its uninterrupted catholic experience, confronting Western heterodoxy with the witness to the truth of Orthodoxy rather than with condemnation. Russians have discussed and argued at length about the meaning of Western developments. For many, Europe has become ‘a second homeland’. But would it be true to say that the Russians have really understood the West? Western processes have often been depicted by means of rudimentary dialectical schemes that display too little genuine insight. All too often the image of a fancied or desired Europe has stood in the way of recognizing its true face. The soul of the West has been most clearly revealed in art, especially after the aesthetic awakening towards the end of the nineteenth century. The heart took alarm and gained sensitivity. Aesthetic empathy, however, is incapable of great profundity; more often than not it actually stands in the way of discerning the intensity of religious pain and anxiety. Aestheticism tends to treat problems too superficially, retreating much too easily into passive contemplation. The Slavophiles were the first to recognize the profound religious anguish and anxiety of the West. [Nikolai] Gogol and Dostoevsky followed. Vladimir Solovyov had far less understanding of Western inconsistencies and contradictions, preoccupied as he was with the schemes of ‘Christian politics’. In essence he knew little of the West beyond Ultramontanism (in which the Pope would preside over both East and West) and German Idealism. One might add only Fourier, Swedenborg and the spiritualists,34 as well as Dante, from among earlier masters. Solovyov had far too much faith in the stability of the West and remained unaware  – except perhaps in his last years  – of the romantic hunger and yearning of Western Christian souls in their distress and heartache. The conceptions of the early Slavophiles were also drily theoretical. Yet the Slavophiles related in a profound and sincere manner to some of the most central of Western concerns. More importantly, they had an awareness of Christian kinship and responsibility, a sense of fraternal compassion and realization or presentiment of the Orthodox mission in Europe. Solovyov emphasizes not so much an Orthodox mission as a Russian national mission  – a theocratic mission of the Russian tsardom. The early Slavophiles deduced Russian tasks from European needs, from the unsolved or insoluble problems of the other half of the single Christian world. This sense of Christian responsibility constitutes the great truth and moral power of early Slavophilism. Orthodoxy is summoned to witness. Today more than ever before, the Christian West stands before an array of perspectives, like a living question addressed to the Orthodox world as well. This is the whole point of the so-called ecumenical movement. And Orthodox theology is called upon to show that the ‘ecumenical 34

Charles Fourier (1772–1837) was a French utopian socialist thinker who advocated a new world order based on unity of action and harmonious collaboration. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) was a Swedish scientist, philosopher and seer or mystic, who claimed to have visions and revelations from Christ and to have visited heaven and hell. Spiritualism revolves around beliefs and practices of communication with the spirits of the dead, usually through a person called a medium, for the mutual benefit of both parties [Eds.].

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question’ can only be resolved in the fulfilment of the Church, within the totality of a catholic tradition, uncontaminated and inviolable, yet ever renewed and ever growing. And to say it once again, the return can only come about through a ‘crisis’. The way to Christian renewal is a critical, not an ironic one.35 The old theology of denunciation has long lost all meaningful relation to reality  – it was an academic discipline based on Western manuals.36 The new ‘polemical theology’ must be a historiosophical elucidation of the Western religious tragedy. But this tragedy needs to be relived and resuffered as one’s very own and its possible catharsis must be shown to be in the fullness of Church experience and of the patristic tradition. In the new and desired Orthodox synthesis, the centuries-old experience of the Catholic West must be taken into account with more care and sympathy than our theology has shown to date. This does not mean borrowing or accepting Roman doctrines, nor does it suggest some kind of imitative ‘Romanism’. Yet the great systems of ‘high scholasticism’, the experience of Catholic mystics and the latest Catholic theological scholarship will, in any case, reward the Orthodox theologian with a richer source of creative excitement than the philosophy of German Idealism or the Protestant critical scholarship of the last two centuries, or even the ‘dialectical theology’ of our days.37 A creative renaissance of the Orthodox world is a mandatory precondition for any resolution of the ‘ecumenical problem’. There is another side to the encounter with the West that deserves attention. A very intense and complex theological tradition emerged in the West in the Middle Ages. It was a tradition of scholarship and culture, of quests, actions and debates. This tradition was not fully abandoned even in the time of the bitter religious conflicts of the Reformation. Neither was scholarly solidarity lost with the rise of freedom of thought. In a certain sense, Western theological scholarship remains united even today, held together by a sense of mutual responsibility for the weakness and errors of the other. Russian theology as a scholarly discipline and a subject of instruction has its origin in the same tradition. The task is not to break with this tradition, but to participate in it freely, responsibly, deliberately and openly. An Orthodox theologian must not and dare not step outside this ecumenical sphere of theological inquiry. It so happened that after the fall of Byzantium, only the West theologized. Theology is a catholic endeavour in its very essence, but it was exercised only in the context of the Schism. This is the basic paradox in the history of Christian culture:  the West theologizes while the East remains silent or, much worse, indulges in belated and mindless repetitions of long-familiar Western commonplaces. To this day 35

36 37

Florovsky uses the word ‘critical’ in the sense that Orthodox theology must relive and resuffer the tragedy of the West as its very own, passing through it as its own internal personal crisis involving metanoia or repentance. An ‘ironic’ approach would take an external view that eschewed participation and commitment and consequently would be devoid of repentance [Eds.]. On this tradition, see Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, 141–145, in this book [Eds.]. ‘Dialectical theology’ (also known as theology of crisis and neo-orthodoxy) emphasized faith and a return to the basic ideas of the Reformation, as a reaction against Enlightenment rationalism and nineteenth-century liberal Protestant theology. It was primarily associated with two of Florovsky’s most eminent Protestant interlocutors, Karl Barth (1886–1968) and Emil Brunner (1899–1966) [Eds.].

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the Orthodox theologian is much too dependent on Western support in his own creative undertaking. The primary sources he receives from Western hands, he reads the Fathers and the acts of the Ecumenical Councils in Western (often exemplary) editions and learns the methods and techniques of using the materials collected in Western schools. Even the past of our Church we know best from the selfless labours of generations of Western scholars. This is true both for the collection of factual information and for their interpretation. The crucial point is the unceasing attention accorded by Western thought to historical aspects of Church life, the concerned alertness of its historical conscience and its unswerving focus on Christian primary sources. Western thought always lived in this past with such an intensity of historical remembrance as if it were making amends for the painful defects of its mystical memory. An Orthodox theologian must bring his testimony to this world as well, a testimony drawn from the reservoirs of the Church’s inner memory, in order to unite it with the historical inquiry. Only this inner memory of the Church can bring to life the silent testimony of texts.

V A historian is not summoned to prophesy, but he certainly must discern the rhythm and significance of events as they unfold. Sometimes events themselves can be prophetic, in which case one must discern one’s calling in the complexity of their interplay. There is hardly any need to argue that a certain new era or eon has fairly recently come into existence in the Christian world, an era that could be labelled apocalyptic. This has nothing to do with any presumptuous attempt to engage in guesswork about unknowable and proscribed time frames. However, the apocalyptic motif is all too evident in the contemporary course of events. Probably never before in history has a theomachistic and godless revolt been conducted so explicitly and on such an enormous scale. All of Russia is being schooled in an atmosphere of antireligious frenzy and spiritual perdition. The entire people, generation upon generation, is being tempted to proceed along this seductive [prelestnyi] and poisonous path. Nothing in the world remains ‘neutral’ any more. There are no more simple, ordinary things or problems  – everything has become debatable and ambivalent, everything involves a dispute with the Antichrist. For he lays claim on all things and hastens to put his mark on everything. Choice now rules all things – belief or unbelief – and the ‘or’ has attained fiery intensity. ‘He that is not with me is against me and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad’ (Mt 12:30). The Revolution has revealed a harsh and frightening truth about the Russian soul, disclosing a bottomless pit of betrayal and inveterate apostasy, of possession and depravity. The Russian soul is poisoned, agitated and sorely afflicted; it is a soul possessed and bewitched, tormented by deceit and malicious doubts. The only way it can be cured and strengthened is by the ultimate effort of evangelical heroism [podvig], illuminated by the light of Christ’s reason and armed with the words of sincerity and truth, words of power and Spirit. The time is coming – it has already come – of an open competition for the souls of men. The time is coming when every question, whether

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of scholarship or life, must receive a Christian answer and must be incorporated into the fabric and fullness of the testimony of faith. The time is coming when theology ceases to be a personal or private affair, something a person is free to either pursue or not, depending on his gifts, his inclination or inspiration. At the present time of deceit and judgement, theology once again becomes a kind of ‘common task’, a general and catholic summons. Everyone needs to be armed with spiritual weapons. The time is coming – it has already come – when theological silence or confusion, inconsistency or lack of clarity in one’s witness becomes tantamount to betrayal or flight from the enemy. One can be led astray by silence just as easily as by a hasty and poorly formulated answer. One is even more likely to mislead or poison oneself by silence, by a deliberate concealment of the truth, as though faith were a ‘fragile thing, something less than fully reliable’.38 The age of theology is dawning once again and our time is summoned to theologize. Such an assertion may strike many as too audacious, exaggerated and one-sided. Would it not be more true to say that mankind now stands under the sign of ‘social Christianity’, and that this has, in fact, been the case since the time of Lamennais and Maurice39 unless one prefers to date the beginning to the Nouveau christianisme of Saint-Simon?40 And furthermore, given our anxiety-filled age, is not Christianity called to social work, to the construction of a New Jerusalem? Is it really appropriate once again to divert religious consciousness to the intellectual problems of theology, away from the ‘social themes’ that have been propelled to the foreground by the irreversible course of events? Especially inappropriate in the eyes of many has been the idea of turning to theology in the Russian context. Is not contemporary Russian reality associated with action rather than contemplation? Is it appropriate to undermine vigorous activism with the call for reflection and the gathering of the soul? Theologizing in this context strikes some as being virtually akin to a betrayal or a flight from the field of battle. These objections and perplexities betray a fateful myopia. This is indeed not the time to turn away from social questions:  the ‘red star’ of socialism is all too visible in the historical firmament. And yet, is not the ‘social question’ itself ultimately a spiritual question, a question rooted in conscience and wisdom? And cannot social revolution be likened to an upsurge of the turgid emotions of the soul? Was not the Russian Revolution a spiritual catastrophe, a kind of convulsion in the souls of people, an arousal and eruption of passion? And does it not become necessary, therefore, to

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40

This is a phrase from Iurii F. Samarin, ‘Predislovie [Introduction]’, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii Alekseia Stepanovicha Khomiakova, ed. A. S. Khomiakov, 3rd ed., 8 vols. (Moscow : Univ. Tip, 1886– 1906), Vol. 2 (1886), 16 [Eds.]. Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782–1854) was a French Catholic priest, philosopher and political theorist who generally advocated liberal political principles and separation of Church and State. Frederick Denison Maurice (1805–1872) was an Anglican theologian and social critic, founder of Christian socialism [Eds.]. Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) was a French philosopher and economist whose ideas on industrialization and the need for the creation of a new industrial class in society to drive forward the economy were influential in early (utopian) socialism. His Nouveau Christianisme (1825) advocated an ethical faith shorn of dogma whose central aim was striving for the betterment of the poorest in society [Trans. and Eds.].

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explain it using a spiritual vocabulary? The mystery of Russia’s future is less about its prospective social and governmental structures than about the ‘new Soviet man’, a creature without God, faith or love, whose generation, nurturing and education is now in progress. Has not the irreversible flow of unfolding events brought the question of faith to the fore with truly apocalyptic clarity and directness? Is it not true that the profoundly personal questions of unbelief, non-enchantment,41 beguilement and militant atheism now stand before us with unprecedented acuity? ‘The spirit, not the flesh is afflicted with corruption in our day / And mankind is in deep anguish.’42 We are called to theology precisely because we have already been drawn into this apocalyptic struggle. One has no choice but to oppose the godless and militantly atheistic opinions that press on us on all sides with a firm, responsible and carefully crafted witness to the truth of Christ. There exists no such thing as ‘neutral’ scholarship about Christ or Christianity, since indifference or abstention already amounts to a non-neutral response. And so-called non-believing theological scholarship is of course in no sense ‘neutral’, but a kind of ‘anti-theology’ filled with blind and unfocused passions, often dark and malicious.43 There is also anguish, together with occasional unexpected insights, born from quite the opposite premises. To repeat once again, theology is summoned to heal rather than to judge. The world of disbelief, deceit and self-deception must be entered in order to respond to its doubts and reproaches. And the way to enter this faltering world is with the sign of the cross in the heart and with the Jesus prayer mentally invoked. For this is a world of dizzying mysteries where all appears as in double vision, in the fragmentary reflections of a play of mirrors. A  theologian is called upon to bear witness in this world, which in a certain sense resembles that of the early centuries of the Christian era, when the Seed was sown and sprouted in the untransfigured soil, a soil that was sanctified by the very act of the sowing. In that historical period the carriers of Good News most often had to address precisely the untransfigured heart, to appeal to the unenlightened and sinful consciences of the pagans living in darkness and in the shadow of death. Is not the godless and unbelieving world of today a counterpart of that pre-Christian world, albeit refurbished with a rich tangle of pseudo-religious, sceptical and antireligious attitudes? Theology must bear witness to such a world all the more. A  theological system must never be exclusively a fruit of scholarship born of the philosophical reflection. It requires the experience of prayer, a clear spiritual focus and genuine pastoral concern.

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‘Non-enchantment’ (bezocharovanie) is a neologism explicated by Nicholas Gogol (1809–1852), who credits Vasilii Zhukovsky (1783–1852) for suggesting that this term describes the metaphysical hopelessness expressed in the works of Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841). As Gogol puts it, first there was the enthusiastic enchantment made fashionable for a time by Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805). This was followed by the violent disenchantment made equally fashionable by Lord Byron (1788–1824). The non-enchantment of Lermontov that came next, would, in Gogol’s view, have but few adherents due to its dreariness. See Gogol’s essay ‘V chem zhe, nakonets, sushchestvo russkoi poezii i v chem ee osobennosti’ [What Is, After All, the Essence of Russian Poetry, and What Are Its Particularities?] (1846), in N. V. Gogol, Sobranie sochinenii v semi tomakh (Moscow : Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1966–1967), VI, 159–203 [Trans.]. From Fedor Tiutchev’s poem ‘Nash vek’ [Our Era] (1851) [Trans.]. See Ch. 12, ‘The Predicament of the Christian Historian’, 193–219, in this book [Eds.].

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Theology must articulate the Good News, the ‘kerygma’. A theologian must speak to living individuals and living hearts, he must speak with heartfelt concern, love and a sense of direct responsibility for the souls of his brothers, especially his unenlightened brothers. As a general rule, the acquisition of knowledge must have a dialogical dimension beyond the dialectical one. He who acquires knowledge bears witness to the truth before his companions, calling on them to be humbled by the truth and he therefore must be humble himself. Humility is a particularly important quality in a theologian. Casual pastoral and pedagogical efforts are insufficient for the task of moulding human souls and consciences that now arises before us  – a task that cannot be deferred or set aside. The response must be based on a coherent system of thought, on a theological confession of faith. One must allow oneself to suffer through the full experience of a faithless spirit who does not seek a way out, to pass through the problems of wilful error and unintentional ignorance. The time has come when evading theological knowledge is becoming a mortal sin, a stigma of smugness and the absence of love, of faintheartedness and duplicity. Advocating the abandonment of complexity for the sake of simplicity is revealed as a demonic delusion and the distrust of inquisitive reason must be denounced as an demonic intimidation. ‘There they are in great fear, where there is no fear.’44 It is appropriate here to cite the striking words of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow,45 pronounced many years ago in similar circumstances of intimidation and evasiveness: It is certainly true that not everyone has been marked with the gift and duty of being a teacher and very few have been granted the title of Theologian by the Church. However, no Christian is permitted to remain entirely without learning and to live in ignorance. Did not the Lord call himself a teacher and refer to his followers as disciples?46 Before Christians came to be called Christians, they were all named disciples. Are these words empty, signifying nothing? And why did the Lord send his apostles into the world? – Above all to teach: ‘Go ye therefore and teach all nations’ (Mt 28:19). If you do not wish to teach and educate yourself in Christianity, you are no disciple and no follower of Christ and the Apostles were not sent forth to you and you are unlike the Christians as they have been from the very beginning of Christianity. I don’t know what you are and what will become of you.47 44

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Ps 13:5 in the Septuagint version (in the Western Psalter, the sentence in Ps 14:5 lacks the phrase after the comma) [Trans.]. On Met. Philaret (Drozdov) (1782–1867), see Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 13, 36, in this book [Eds.]. The Russian word used here is ucheniki, which translates as ‘disciples’ in the present context. Uchenik also means ‘pupil’, ‘student’ or ‘learner’. Met. Philaret is contraposing ucheniki to uchitel’ (teacher) [Trans.]. Met. Filaret (Drozdov), Sochineniia Filareta, mitropolita Moskovskago i Kolomenskago. Slova i rechi [Sermons and Addresses] (Moscow : Tip. A. I. Mamontova, 1873–1885), 5 vols., Vol. 4 (1882): 151– 152. The sermon was delivered in 1841 on the feast day of St Alexis [GF].

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VI The future is revealed to us with greater certainty and depth in the context of obligations rather than expectations or presentiments. It is not only an object of hope but a reality to be created. A vocation inspires us precisely by the responsibility that duty entails. And, surprising as it may seem, it is the act of obedience that possesses creative and generative power. Self-will, in contrast, constitutes the principle of dissipated energy. A prayerful entry into the Church – a fidelity to the apocalyptic vision – a return to the Fathers – a free encounter with the West – these and similar elements comprise a creative postulate to guide Russian theology in contemporary circumstances. These are at the same time the behests of the past – our responsibility for the past and our duty towards it. The errors and failures of the past need not discourage us. The ways of history are not yet at the end and the history of the Church has not yet been concluded. Nor is the path closed off for Russia – it remains open, though difficult. An unsparing historical verdict must be transformed into a summons to a creative response, a call to fulfil what has remained undone: ‘We must through much tribulation enter into the Kingdom of God’ (Acts 14:22). Apart from Holy Tradition, Orthodoxy is a task, not one that must be sought out, but one that is given and assigned, a living leaven, a burgeoning seed, our duty and our calling. The Russian path has been split into two and will remain so for a long time. There is the mystical path of spiritual effort and struggle [podvig] for those who have remained, a path of secret and wordless striving [podvig] for the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.48 And there is another path for those who have left, for we have been granted the freedom and the power of spiritual action, of witness and of the proclamation of the Good News  – a fact that imposes on us the duty [podvig] of bearing witness, creating and building. Only this effort [podvig] will justify the past, full as it was of presentiments and forewarnings, despite its weaknesses and errors. A true historical synthesis is less an interpretation of the past than a creative fulfilment of the future.

Endnotes The original 1937 and subsequent Russian editions of The Ways of Russian Theology contain numerous comments and references by Florovsky additional to the text and printed at the end of the book. These notes and references are organized according to the chapters and sections of the book rather than being directly linked with specific words or sentences in the text. Florovsky included notes only for Sections I to III of this chapter (‘Breaks and Links’). These are translated below by Olena Gorbatenko. The English version of The Ways of Russian Theology in The Collected Works of Georges 48

On podvig, see Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 30, 38, in this book; and for ‘stiazhanie Dukha’ (acquisition of the Spirit), see Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 125, 60, in this book [Eds.].

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Florovsky (Vols. V and VI, 1979) includes some of Florovsky’s notes and references, as well as additional notes by the editor [Eds.].

Notes to Section I Cf. Nikolai A. Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii: Opyty po psikhologii voiny i natsional'nosti [The Fate of Russia:  Essays on the Psychology of War and Nationalism] (A Collection of Essays) (Moscow: G. A. Leman and S. I. Sakharov, 1918).49 Sergius N.  Bulgakov, ‘Chelovechnost’ protiv chelovekobozhiia:  Istoricheskoe opravdanie anglo-russkago sblizheniia. Publichnaia lektsiia’ [Humanity versus Mangodhood: A Historical Justification of Anglo-Russian Rapprochement; A Public Lecture], Russkaia mysl’, 38, nos. 5–6 (1917): 1–32. Cf. the famous collection of articles by Aleksandr Blok, Rossiia i intelligentsiia [Russia and the Intelligentsia] (Berlin: Skify, 1920) and others, and the entire series of the publisher ‘Skify’. On Eurasianism, see my article ‘Evraziiskii soblazn’ [The Eurasian Temptation], Sovremennye zapiski, no. 34 (1928): 312–346. Cf. the very important observations about persons with ‘a special kind of metaphysical sorrow and anguish’, in Fyodor Stepun, ‘Religioznyi smysl revoliutsii’ [The Religious Meaning of the Revolution], Sovremennye zapiski, no. 40 (1929): 427– 460 (see here also his comments on ‘revolutionary-metaphysical role-playing’). Cf. Problemy russkogo religioznogo soznaniia [Problems of the Russian Religious Mind], A Collection of Essays (Berlin: YMCA Press, 1924). Boris O. Vysheslavtsev, Russkaia stikhia u Dostoevskogo [The Russian Element in Dostoevsky] (Berlin: Obelisk, 1923). An interesting sketch on Russian religiosity (both ecclesial and sectarian) is contained in the book by Aleksandr Elchaninov, Istorii religii [The History of Religion] (Moscow: Narodny Universitet, 1909).

Notes to Section II Cf. Nicolas A.  Berdyaev, ‘Spasenie i tvorchestvo. Dva ponimaniia khristianstva’ [Salvation and Creativity:  Two Understandings of Christianity], Put’, no.  2 (1926): 26–46.50 ‘Obskurantizm’ [Obscurantism], Put’, no. 13 (1928): 19–36.51 ‘V zashitu khristianskoi svobody’ [In Defense of Christian Freedom], Sovremennye zapiski, no. 24 (1925): 285–303. 49

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English translation:  The Fate of Russia, trans. Stephen Janos (Mohrsville, PA:  Frsj Publications, 2016) [Eds.]. For an English translation by Stephen Janos, see http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_ lib/1926_308.html (last accessed 23 April 2019) [Eds.]. For an English translation by Stephen Janos, see http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_ lib/1928_337.html (last accessed 23 April 2019) [Eds.].

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‘O kharaktere russkoi religioznoi mysli XIX veka’ [On the Character of Russian Religious Thought in the Nineteenth Century], Sovremennye zapiski, no.  42 (1930): 309–343.52 In Russian ‘rootlessness’ Berdyaev now perceives the source and guarantee of creative productivity – this is reminiscent of Alexander Herzen and his enthusiasm for young Russian ‘plasticism’. Before this, however, Berdyaev insisted on organic elements of growth (see his book on Khomiakov): ‘The rootlessness of Russian thought in the nineteenth century, and of Russian religious thought in particular, was the source of its extraordinary freedom, unknown to western nations bound too strongly by their history . . . Once awakened, our thought became extraordinarily radical and bold. Such love of freedom and audacity, however, are quite unlikely to recur . . . Rootless and schismatic thought is always freer than thought grounded in and bound by continuous tradition  .  .  .  Our religious thought began without tradition after a five-centurylong break in Orthodox thought’ (Nicolas Berdyaev, Aleksei Stepanovich Khomiakov [Moscow: Izd. Put', 1912], 313).53 For the words of Sergei N. Trubetskoi, see his Sobranie sochinenii [Collected Works], 5  vols. (Moscow, 1907–1912), I, 441–446, particularly ‘O sovremennom polozhenii russkoi Tserkvi’ [On the Contemporary Condition of the Russian Church] (excerpt). The history of the ‘Athonite Disturbance’ has not yet been written; there exists only polemical and one-sided literature. A  dispute broke out concerning the book by Schemamonk Ilarion, Na gorakh Kavkaza. Beseda dvukh startsev podvizhnikov o vnutrennem edinenii s Gospodom nashikh serdets cherez molitvu Iisus Khristovu ili dukhovnaia deiatel’nost’ sovremennykh pustynnikov, sostavil pustynnozhitel’ Kavkazskikh gor skhimonakh Ilarion [In the Caucasus Mountains: Discussions between Two Hermits on the Inner Union with the Lord of Our Hearts by the Prayer of Jesus Christ, or the Spiritual Practice of Contemporary Hermits. Composed by a Hermit of the Mountains of the Caucasus], 1st ed. (Batalpashinsk: Tip. L. Ia. Kochka, 1907), 2nd ed., revised and greatly expanded (Batalpashinsk:  Tip. L.  Ia. Kochka, 1910); 3rd ed. (Kiev: Izd. Kievo-Pecherskaia Lavra, 1912).54 This book was initially accepted with great sympathy in monastic circles, but soon the boldness with which Ilarion speaks about the divine presence in prayer and calls Jesus’s name ‘God Himself ’ came to be seen as much too audacious. For Ilarion, this statement apparently was not so much a theological declaration as a mere description of the reality of prayer. But even this realism of prayer seemed too daring. For many, the use of psychology for the elucidation of prayer seemed much safer, more humble and more pious. The dispute began in print, most prominently in the journal Russkii inok published at the Pochaev Monastery, and Archbishop Anthony [Khrapovitsky]55 52

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For an English translation by Stephen Janos, see http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_ lib/1930_345.html (last accessed 23 April 2019) [Eds.]. English translation:  Aleksei Stepanovich Khomyakov, trans. Stephen Janos (Mohrsville, PA:  Frsj Publications, 2017) [Eds.]. French translation: Hieromonk Hilarion (Domratchev), Sur les Monts du Caucase: Dialogue de deux Solitaires sur la Prière de Jésus. [On the Mountains of the Caucasus: Dialogue of Two Hermits on the Jesus Prayer], trans. Dom André Louf, Fr Serge (Modal) and Claire Jounievy (Paris: Éditions des Syrtes, 2016) [Eds.]. See Ch. 7, ‘Revelation, Philosophy and Theology’, n. 10, 126, in this book [Eds.].

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made sharp comments against Ilarion. All the polemical material was subsequently compiled in the anonymous collection: Sv. Pravoslavie i imiabozhnicheskaia eres’ [Holy Orthodoxy and the Name-Worshipping Heresy] (Kharkov: Kharkov Diocesan Press, 1916). See also the book by Sergei V. Troitskii, Ob imenakh Bozhiikh i imiabozhnikakh [On the Name of God and Name-of-God Worshippers] (St Petersburg: Synodal Press, 1914) (from Tserkovnye vedomosti). On Athos itself, the dispute took an overwrought and rebellious course and all theological arguments were overshadowed by passion and irritation. The dispute had to be stopped by force, almost violence. Hilarion’s followers were declared heretics under the title ‘imiabozhniki’ [Name-of-God invokers/worshippers] (they called themselves ‘imiaslavtsi’ [Name-praisers/glorifiers] and their opponents ‘imiabortsi’ [Name-assailers/fighters]). Several hundred monks were expelled from Athos by force and relocated in various monasteries in Russia (by the decision of the Holy Synod on 27 August 1913). The essential question of the dispute, however, remained underdeveloped. See the books and publications of Hieroschemamonk Anthony (Bulatovich), Apologiia very vo Imia Bozhie i vo Imia Iisusa [A Defense of the Belief in the Name of God and the Name of Jesus] (Moscow: Religiozno-Filosofskaia Bilblioteka, 1913). Cf. also Materialy k sporu o pochitanii imeni Bozhiia [Materials on the Dispute Concerning the Veneration of the Name of God], 1st ed. (Moscow: Izd. ReligioznoFilosofskaia Bilblioteka, 1913).56 Istoriia afonskoi smuty [History of the Athonite Disturbance], 1st ed. (Petrograd: Ispovednik, 1917). Moia bor’ba s imiabortsami na Sv. Gore [My Struggle with the Name-Fighters on the Holy Mountain] (Petrograd: Ispovednik, 1917). Cf. a series of articles in Missionerskoie obozrenie (1916)57 and separate publications, 1917. Cf. Sergii Bulgakov, ‘Afonskoe delo’ [The Athonite Affair], Russkaia mysl’ (Sept. 1913): 37–46. Vladimir Ern, Razbor poslaniia Sv. Sinoda ob Imeni Bozhiem [Analysis of the Letter of the Holy Synod on the Name of God] (Moscow: Religiozno-Filosofskaia Bilblioteka, 1917). Cf. his incomplete article in Khristianskaia mysl’ (1917).58 I have not seen the book by Valentin Sventsitskii, Grazhdane neba [Citizens of Heaven].59 See a review of this book by Sergei Askoldov, ‘O pustynnikakh Kavkaza’ [On the Hermits of Caucasus], Russkaia mysl’, no. 5 (1916): 27–32.

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This book was printed by M. A. Novoselov with an unsigned Foreword by Pavel Florensky (1882– 1937) [Eds.]. Hieroschemamonk Anthony (Bulatovich), ‘Istinnoe ponimanie Imeni Bozhia Sv. Grigoriem Nisskim i Sv. Simeonom Novym Bogoslovom [True Understanding of the Name of God by St Gregory of Nyssa and St Symeon the New Theologian]’, Missionerskoe Obozrenie, 5–6 (1916) [Eds.]. Vladimir Ern, ‘Spor ob imeni Bozhiem [Controversy Concerning the Divine Name]’, Khristianskaia mysl’, 9 (1916): 101–110 [Eds.]. Valentin Sventsitskii, Grazhdane neba. Moe puteshestvie k pustynnikam Kavkazskikh gor [Citizens of Heaven: My Journey to the Hermits of the Caucasus Mountains] (Petrograd:  Novoe vremia, 1915) [Trans.].

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For the opposing perspective, see Monk Pachomius [Pavlovskii], Istoriia afonskoi smuty ili imiabozheskoi eresi [History of the Athonite Disturbance or the Heresy of the Name of God Worshippers] (St. Petersburg: Sodruzhestvo, 1914). Monk Clement, ‘Imiabozhnicheskii bunt ili plody ucheniia knigi, “Na gorakh Kavkaza” [The Name-ofGod Worshippers Revolt or the Fruits of the Teaching of the Book ‘In the Caucasus Mountains]’, Istoricheskii vestnik, T. 143 (March 1916): 752–785; and against him: E. N. Kosvintsev, ‘Chernii bunt’ [Revolt of the Monks], Istoricheskii vestnik, T. 139 (Jan. 1915): 139–160 and T. 140 (Feb. 1915): 470–487.60

Notes to Section III A radical rejection of the ‘patristic’ origins of theology in Tareev can be found specifically in his Filosofiia zhizni.61 Cf. the reflections of Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, ‘Na putiakh dogmy’ [Approaches to Dogma], Put’, 37 (Feb. 1933): 3–35, and of Anton V. Kartashov, ‘Russkoie khristianstvo’ [Russian Christianity], Put’, 51 (1936): 19–31. On enthusiasm for populism [narodnichestvo] in Russian theology, see the astute observation of the late Met. Anthony (Khrapovitsky):  ‘For many, Christianity was merged with patriotism’; ‘there was almost more sympathy demonstrated towards the Russian Old Believer schism than towards the truth of the Scriptures’ (Sochineniia, II, 87).62 Cf. Hans Ehrenberg, ‘Die Europäisierung Russlands’ [The Europeanization of Russia], Östliches Christentum. Dokumente, Bd. I:  Politik, ed. Nicolai von Bubnoff and Hans Ehrenberg (München: C. H. Beck, 1923), 335–372 and ‘Die Russifizierung Europas oder die Frage der Trinität’ [The Russification of Europe or the Question of the Trinity], Östliches Christentum, Dokumente, Bd. II:  Philosophie, ed. Nicolai von Bubnoff und Hans Ehrenberg (München: C. H. Beck, 1925), 378–407.

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For an overview of the philosophical and theological aspects of the ‘Name-of-God’ controversy, see Paul Ladouceur, ‘Onomatodoxy: The Name-of-God Conflict’, Modern Orthodox Theology: ‘Behold I Make All Things New’ (London: T&T Clark, 2019), 361–377 [Eds.]. See Mikhail Tareev, Filosofiia zhizni [Philosophy of Life] (1891–1916) (Sergiev Posad:  Tipografiia Sviato-Troitskoi Sergievoi Lavry, 1916) [Trans.]. The correct reference is: Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, 3 vols. (Kazan: Tip-lit. Imperatorskogo Universiteta, 1900), Vol. III, 87 [Trans.].

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The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology

Georges Florovsky delivered this address at the formal opening of the 1948–49 academic year of St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and Academy, held in James Chapel, Union Theological Seminary, New York, on 4 November 1948. It was published in the Anglican Theological Review, 31, no. 2 (1949): 65–71 (Blane #96).

Arnold Toynbee begins his Study of History with a question: What is an intelligible field of historical study?1 Intelligible, that is, intelligible in itself or self-explanatory. Toynbee contends that no national history (at least in Europe) is self-explanatory, unless it is taken in a wider context, as an integral part of an inclusive whole. The proper and intelligible field of study would be, in Toynbee’s opinion, only Western society or Western Christendom (of course, the USA included). But Toynbee emphatically refuses to go any further. There are obviously some other fields of study, namely, an Orthodox Christian society in the East and Southeast of Europe, an Islamic society and so on. But all of them are outside of the cultural world of the West and can be ignored in any historiosophical interpretation of Western destiny. Western society or Western Christendom is a self-explanatory or a self-sufficient realm. Toynbee admits certain external influences on the Western world, but he dismisses all of them as ‘exotic’. His instances are Russian literature, Chinese painting, Indian religion. All these considerations are highly relevant for our immediate purpose this night. Has really the Eastern Orthodox society anything to offer to the West? Or should not any such offer to be simply disregarded and sharply declined as an ‘exotic’ and dangerous intrusion upon the sacred ground of Western Christendom? Have we anything to learn from this alien and foreign world? I mean, we Westerners, by birth or by adoption.

1

In his ten-volume Study of History (1934–1954), Arnold J.  Toynbee (1889–1975) compares twenty-six differing civilizations, examining their initial integration, subsequent degeneration, and final transformation and dissolution. Each civilization is said to be a ‘self-contained’ and ‘selfexplanatory’ unity and have certain similar patterns of development. Toynbee laid great stress on the freedom and creativity of certain ‘creative minorities’ in the development of each civilization, an approach that attracted Florovsky to his thought. However, Florovsky was critical of Toynbee’s treatment of Eastern and Western Christianity as two separate fields of research rather than one common Christendom, disconnected ‘fragments’ of an original common Christian unity with a comprehensive patristic vision at their heart [Eds.].

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Can we agree with Toynbee’s diagnosis and contention? There are plenty of reasons for doubt. In any case, both societies, Western and Eastern Orthodox, have the same ancestry and the same historical roots, and have succeeded to the same parental society, Hellenic and Roman. It would be inexact to consider them simply as parallel developments, for parallel lines have no common points, and our two societies have obviously at least one point in common, namely, their starting point. They are obviously offsprings of the same root. And, again, they have had, in the course of their history, rather numerous points of contact, or collision, or conflict. One may call them sister-civilizations. And I venture to suggest, these sisters were Siamese twins. One knows but too well that even with a skilful surgeon the separation of the Siamese twins is a risky and dubious operation. I am afraid this is precisely what has happened. The main feature, or rather the major tragedy of the European history, or actually of the history of Christendom, was that these two Christian societies broke away from each other, and a historian runs a heavy risk of misconceiving and misconstruing the history of either society, if he dares to ignore this basic fact. The point is that neither is self-explanatory, neither is intelligible, when taken separately. Both societies are but fragments of a disrupted world, and they belong together despite the Schism. Only in the perspective of this Christian disruption is the history both of the East and the West truly intelligible. A  self-explanatory character of Western society is but a deceiving fiction, and a very dangerous and misleading fiction it is indeed. Western Christendom is not, and never was, an independent world, but a part or just a fragment of the wider whole. So is Eastern Christendom too. The only intelligible field of study would be Christendom as a whole. To say all this is not to disregard the fact of disruption or to ignore the profound differences of East and West. But these differences and even divergences can be properly understood and interpreted only in the perspective of disruption. Christendom was once united. The first break of unity was the schism between Constantinople and Rome. Can we really understand or explain the growth of the Papacy unless we keep in mind the perpetual tension between the two centres of power, the Old and the New Rome? It was a tension, of course, or a rivalry, if you prefer, but obviously it was not a rivalry of two foreign powers, but a rivalry of two bishops of the same Church. It was a competition for authority in the same world. The Patriarch of Constantinople claimed to be the ecumenical Patriarch, and Rome utterly detested and contested both the title and the claim. And the Eastern Emperor regarded himself as the only legitimate head of a universal Empire, that is, of the Roman Empire. An Emperor in the West was for the East but a usurper. The whole history of the Middle Ages will remain for us utterly incomprehensible, if we fail to realize that East and West were but distorted twins. They were partners in the same historical quest. They were rivals often. And yet, rivalry or competition does unite no less than an alliance. The point is that both the West and the East are incomplete while disrupted. The task of reunion is imposed on both by the inner logic of Christian history. This is the spring of the ecumenical idea. In the field of theology disruption means a disintegration of Christian Tradition. For several centuries Christendom had been united in theology, under the uncontested lead of the Greek Fathers and masters. Western theology up to St Augustine was

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basically Greek,2 though in Latin dress: St Hilary, St Ambrose, St Jerome, all of them were but interpreters of the Greek tradition, and even St Augustine himself was deeply Hellenistic in mind. Tertullian also fits easily into the same Hellenistic frame. And then comes the doom over the West. There was a general eclipse and decay of civilization in the West just after Augustine. The Greek language was almost completely forgotten, even by the scholars. Augustine himself could not read Greek. Little of the Greek patristic heritage was available in Latin translations, and only very few of the later scholars in the West had access to the original texts. Graeca [sunt] non leguntur [these words are Greek and not read].3 It is true, Greek influence was still strongly felt even in the darkest ages, but it was, as one modern American scholar has aptly stated, ‘an anonymous influence for the most part’.4 Of course, St John of Damascus was the leading authority for the whole scholastic period, and Pseudo-Dionysius has exercised an unparalleled influence on the Western spirituality and mystical theology. We have to avoid any oversimplification of the matter. And yet, an organic intercourse with the East has been broken, and the mutual estrangement of the separated halves of Christendom was rapidly and steadily growing. The whole importance of the Greek Fathers was recognized by the best medieval masters and the lack of patristic knowledge was painfully felt. ‘Numberless portions of the wisdom of God are wanting to us,’ says Roger Bacon in his Compendium studii philosophiae. ‘Many books of the sacred text remain untranslated . . . Numberless books again of Hebrew and Greek expositors are wanting to the Latins . . . The Church therefore is slumbering.’ Christian theological tradition was heavily reduced in the medieval West. The broken balance could not be restored by a recovery or rediscovery of the venerable ancient texts or writings. The spiritual key to them had been lost. Still in our days the Greek Fathers are strangers and foreigners for the average Western theologian. It is completely forgotten that they were, and are to be, doctors and fathers of the Church Catholic and Universal, and not just the teachers of the East. It is but true to say, we are living now in an age of a patristic revival. Greek Fathers are once more recognized as competent and safe theological guides in many quarters of the Christian West. And there is, in this rediscovery of the Fathers, a sure hope for a reintegration of Christian tradition, for a recovery of the true Catholic mind. And yet the success depends very much upon the right approach. It is here that the legacy of the Orthodox theology becomes of ultimate relevance and importance. Patristic teaching in the Orthodox Church is much more than a venerable tradition of the ages past. It is still alive, as it ever has been, in the liturgical practice of the Church. It is not only a matter for scholarly research or for a historical study. It is rather the normal atmosphere of the daily worship. The Orthodox Church is still keeping the key to the patristic treasures. It is not to say that Orthodox theologians have used this key often enough. Theology in the East has had its bad and dark days too. Patristic inspiration was strong and vigorous up to the final collapse of the Byzantine Empire. 2

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‘In answer to an enquiry about his attitude to St Augustine, he [Florovsky] gave the unexpected reply: “I would say that Augustine is really an Eastern Father” ’ (E. L. Mascall, ‘Obituary of Florovsky’, Sobornost, 2, no. 1 [1980]: 69–70) [Eds.]. This is a common scribal gloss found in some medieval manuscripts in the West used by unilingual Latin copyists when they encountered Greek phrases or words they could not understand [Eds.]. James M. Campbell, The Greek Fathers (New York: Longmans, Green, 1929), 93 [Eds.].

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The patristic age in the East was not closed or completed by St John of Damascus. St Theodorus of Studium, Photius, St Simeon the New Theologian, St Gregory Palamas – to quote but the most prominent names – were in the same unbroken line. And in the fourteenth century Byzantine theology was strong enough to meet and to stand the attack of the Thomistic scholasticism which had found its way to the East also. And then comes a break in Orthodox theology itself. The Greek diaspora in the West was exposed to all the devices of the Western world. Theological teaching had been discontinued for a time in the subjugated Near East. There was a considerable period of eclecticism and confusion. One of the Ecumenical Patriarchs in the seventeenth century wrote a Catechism in the Calvinistic mood, which was of course immediately disavowed by the Church.5 On the other hand, a Romanizing phraseology was often used, rather carelessly, and certain Romish opinions were adopted.6 The first theological schools in Russia, in the same seventeenth century, were Latin by language and rather Romanizing in spirit – Aquinas and Cardinal Bellarmine were for a time regarded as one supreme authority.7 Later on came a sudden change and for the whole eighteenth century the theological teaching in Russian seminaries and academies was based on Protestant authorities. Latin as the language of teaching was abandoned in Russian seminaries a little more than a century ago. It was an abnormal ‘pseudomorphosis’8 of the Orthodox theology. But we have to keep in mind that it was the school theology that went astray – the worshipping Church kept close to the patristic tradition. A certain tension, divorce and opposition between piety and teaching was the most unhappy outcome of this historical adventure. This tension and divorce were overcome to a great extent in the heroic struggles of the nineteenth century. The first impulse of renewal came, as it had come many times before, from the monasteries. A  revival of contemplative monasticism, on the basis of the strict Byzantine tradition, dates from the late eighteenth century and is connected with the name of Staretz Paissy,9 the great founder of monastic communities in Moldavia. He learned his way on Mount Athos. His numerous pupils migrated to Russia and succeeded in reviving and reforming the true ascetical life in many monasteries, badly damaged and nearly destroyed in the age of Enlightenment. A  long series of 5

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Florovsky is referring to the Calvinist-inspired Eastern Confession of Faith (Geneva, 1629, in Latin) of Ecumenical Patriarch Cyril Lucaris of Constantinople (1570–1638). It was condemned by local councils of the Orthodox Church at Constantinople (1638, 1642), Jassy (1642) and Jerusalem (1672). See also Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, n. 26, 135, in this book [Eds.]. The allusion is to Metropolitan Peter Mogila of Kiev (1596–1646), known for his Latinizing influence on the reform of theological education in Ukraine and church life more generally. Mogila’s Confession (Kiev, 1638), written to counter Cyril Lucaris’s Calvinist Confession, was formally approved by the local councils of Jassy (1642) and Jerusalem (1672), which simultaneously condemned Lucaris’s Confession, as well as the four Eastern Patriarchs (1643), but it nevertheless drew from many Latin sources, including the Counter-Reformation theologian, Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621). See also Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, n. 27, 135 and n. 17, 133, in this book [Eds.]. Florovsky is alluding to the theological school founded by Metropolitan Peter Mogila of Kiev. This school developed into the influential Kiev Theological Academy, the first of four such academies which crowned theological education in imperial Russia [Eds.]. On pseudomorphosis, see Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, n. 38, 137, in this book [Eds.]. On St Paissii Velichkovsky, see Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, n. 74, 150, in this book [Eds.].

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devotional manuals was translated into modern language and made widely available. A strong influence of this spiritual revival can be traced even in Russian literature, for example, in Dostoevsky and Gogol. Later on this revival was linked and endorsed by a rediscovery of traditional religious art – I mean the rediscovery of the religious value of this art. For in the East religious art was always a kind of ‘theology in colours’. An ‘icon’ is for the Orthodox not only a piece of beauty, and much more than a devotional symbol – it is no less a ‘dogmatic document’, or rather a peculiar doctrinal witness. Iconography, as a peculiar manner of religious painting, is a distinctive creation of Eastern spirituality. And yet, Duccio and Giotto, and later on El Greco (i.e. Domenico Theotokopoulou), have learned very much of their religious insight in the school of Byzantine iconography, and nobody would regard this as an ‘exotic’ aberration. The next venture was the biblical revival, partly stimulated by the initiative of the British and Foreign Bible Society. But the real achievement in this field was the new translation of the Bible into modern colloquial Russian, with which the best theological scholars were busy for a half a century, and which was published by the Holy Synod of the Russian Church in the sixties and seventies of the last century [nineteenth century]. Behind the whole work stood Metropolitan Philaret, bishop of Moscow for forty-seven years, a man of strong character, of deep piety and enormous learning, and a great preacher of his time too.10 His purpose and intention was to restore the Bible to the laity, to the people of the Church and to encourage Bible reading at home. He was a great Evangelical in this respect, as half a century before him St Tikhon of Zadonsk, a great teacher of the spiritual life. Both of them succeeded in merging this biblical inspiration with unceasing loyalty to the patristic tradition. It is of extreme importance that the pious laity in Russia took a very prominent part in this spiritual renewal. The true theological revival in Russia, again in the patristic spirit, must be dated perhaps from a short pamphlet on the Church written by a layman, Alexis Khomiakov, about a century ago.11 (There was a remarkable affinity of spirit between him and J. A. Möhler,12 the great Roman Catholic scholar and historian.) It was a vigorous restatement of the biblical and patristic conception of the Church, as being the mystical Body of Christ 10

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On Met. Philaret (Drozdov) (1782–1867), see Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 13, 36, in this book [Eds.]. Florovsky is alluding to Aleksei Khomiakov’s seminal essay, ‘The Church Is One’ (c. 1850), which sees the Church as an organic reality that is a difference-in-unity, often summarized by the word sobornost’. On Khomiakov, see Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, n. 68, 147, and on sobornost’, see Ch. 18, ‘Sobornost: The Catholicity of the Church’, n. 1, 257, in this book [Eds.]. Johann Adam Möhler (1796–1838), a Catholic theologian and historian, was an important member of the Tübingen school of theology (see Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, n. 62, 145, in this book and Ch. 4, ‘The Lamb of God’, n. 30, 93–94, in this book) who greatly influenced Florovsky’s theology (see Brandon Gallaher, ‘ “Waiting for the Barbarians”: Identity and Polemicism in the Neo-Patristic Synthesis of Georges Florovsky’, Modern Theology, 27, no. 4 (2011): 659–691 at 669–678). Möhler’s most important book is Die Einheit in der Kirche [Unity in the Church] (1825) (Unity in the Church or The Principle of Catholicism Presented in the Spirit of the Church Fathers of the First Three Centuries, trans. Peter C. Erb (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996); see Florovsky’s review: ‘Kniga Melera o tserkvi’ (Mohler’s Book on the Church), Put’, 7 (1927):  128–130. Möhler drew on the ante-Nicene Fathers, as read through various Romantic thinkers, including Schelling, to put forward a vision of the Church as a Spirit-filled organism, the Body of Christ, gathered around the bishop in celebration of the Eucharist, rather than only a juridically organized institution or a community of believers [Eds.].

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and an organ of the Holy Spirit. One has to add that all the most important writings of the Fathers, both Eastern and Western, were published in translation in the course of the last century and widely distributed. This translation was officially entrusted by the Holy Synod to the theological faculties and has absorbed much of time and skill and energy of Russian scholars. A series of valuable studies on patristic theology and early history of Christian doctrine has been published. The last and a most distinctive feature of the Russian development in recent time was a return of philosophers to the Church and their attempt to reinterpret precisely the patristic tradition in modern terms, to restate the teaching of the Church as a complete philosophy of life. It was a noble endeavour, and a daring and courageous one. There is no need to conceal all the dangers of this venture or the failures of those who run the risk. Unfortunately, this reinterpretation was unnecessarily linked with the adoption of German idealistic philosophy, of Hegel, Schelling and Baader, and very much of unhealthy mysticism has crept into the schemes constructed by Vladimir Solovyov, the late Father Sergius Bulgakov, Father Pavel Florensky and perhaps most of all the late Nicolas Berdyaev.13 There is no need to endorse their findings and speculations. But it is high time to walk in their steps. And the unprecedented response which the religious philosophy of Berdyaev has provoked in the whole of the Christian world is the best proof that his message was not felt to be strange and ‘exotic’. The standing legacy of this school is not their peculiar conceptions, but precisely their aim: to show and to prove that a modern man can and must persist in his loyalty to the traditional faith and to the Church of the Fathers without compromising his freedom of thought and without betraying the needs or requests of the contemporary world. The task is perhaps more inspiring than the legacy. And the task of a contemporary Orthodox theologian is intricate and enormous. He has much to learn still before he can speak with authority. And above all he has to realize that he has to speak to an ecumenical audience. He cannot retire into a narrow shell of some local tradition – simply because his Orthodox, that is, the patristic, tradition is not a local one, but basically an ecumenical one. And he has to use all his skill to phrase this ecumenical message of the Fathers in such a way as to secure an ecumenical, a truly universal, appeal. This obviously cannot be achieved by any servile repetition of the patristic letter, as it cannot be achieved by a biblical fundamentalism either. But servility is alien both to the Bible and to the Fathers. They were themselves bold and courageous and adventurous seekers of the divine truth. To walk truly in their steps means to break the new ways, only in the same field as was theirs. No renewal is possible without a return to the sources. But it must be a return to the sources, to the Well of living water, and not simply a retirement into a library or museum of venerable and respectable, but outlived relics. Lex orandi is, and must be, not only a pattern or authority for the lex credendi, but above all a source of inspiration.14 It is, and ought to be, not so much a binding and restricting authority, as a life in the Spirit, a living experience, a communion with the 13 14

See Ch. 10, ‘Breaks and Links’, n. 1, 159, in this book [Eds.]. The Latin tag lex orandi, lex credendi (lit. ‘the law of praying is the law of believing’ or ‘the rule of prayer is the rule of belief ’) was a slogan much beloved of the Catholic liturgical movement of the early to mid-twentieth century and used frequently by Orthodox theologians calling for a return to the sources of Orthodoxy in the liturgical corpus and liturgical arts [Eds.].

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Truth, with the living Lord, who is not only an authority, but the Truth, the Way and the Life. The true theology can spring only out of a deep liturgical experience. It must become once more, as it has been in the age of the Fathers, a witness of the Church, worshiping and preaching, and cease to be merely a school exercise of curiosity and speculation. This liturgical approach to theology has always been the distinctive mark of the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox theology has, in recent decades, been speedily recovering from the unhappy ‘pseudomorphosis’, by which it was paralysed for rather too long. But to regain once more its own Eastern style and temper must mean for the Orthodox theology no detachment from the rest of the Christian world. What is to be rejected and repudiated in the westernizing school of Orthodox theology is its blind subservience to the foreign traditions of the school, and not its response to the challenge of other traditions, and not the fraternal appreciation of what has been achieved by the others. All reaches of the Orthodox tradition can be disclosed and consummated only in a standing intercourse with the whole of the Christian world. The East must face and meet the challenge of the West, and the West perhaps has to pay more attention to the legacy of the East, which after all was always meant to be an ecumenical and catholic message. We are perhaps on the eve of a new synthesis in theology – of a neopatristic synthesis,15 I would suggest. Theological tradition must be reintegrated, not simply summed up or accumulated. This seems to be one of the immediate objectives of the Church in our age. It seems to be the secure start for the healing of Christian disruption. An ecumenical cooperation in theology is already a fact; Roman Catholic and Protestant scholars are already working together in many directions. The Orthodox have to join in. Of course, this is but a very poor and modest preparation for a true encounter of the disrupted traditions in the fullness of truth. And yet, let us seek, and it will be given – let us knock, and it will be opened. Let us hope and pray that the new venture which we are in all humility celebrating and dedicating this night may bring us, with the help of God, closer together for the glory of our common Lord and for the consummation of His peace on the earth.

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This speech of 1948 appears to be the first formal occasion in English at which Georges Florovsky referred to the return to patristic theology as a ‘neopatristic synthesis’. The first published reference is in Swedish:  ‘In Ligno Crucis:  Kyrkofädernas Lära om Försoningen, Tolkad från den Grekiskortodoxa Teologiens Synpunkt’ (The Wood of the Cross: The Teaching of the Church Fathers on the Atonement, as Interpreted from the Viewpoint of Greek Orthodox Theology), Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift, 23 (1947): 297–308 at 297. See Ch. 3, ‘In Ligno Crucis: The Church Fathers’ Doctrine of Redemption’, 72, in this book [Eds.].

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The Predicament of the Christian Historian

‘The Predicament of the Christian Historian’ first appeared in Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich, edited by W. Leibrecht (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), 140–166. An abridged version, containing sections II to IV of the original, was published as ‘The Study of the Past’, in Ideas of History, edited by Ronald H. Nash (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1969), 351–369 (Blane #144).

Veritas non erubescit nisi abscondi [Truth does not blush unless it is concealed] Leo XIII1

I ‘Christianity is a religion of historians.’2 It is a strong phrase, but the statement is correct. Christianity is basically a vigorous appeal to history, a witness of faith to certain particular events in the past, to certain particular data of history. These events are acknowledged by faith as truly eventful. These historic moments, or instants, are recognized as utterly momentous. In brief, they are identified by faith as ‘mighty deeds’ of God, Magnalia Dei. The ‘scandal of particularity’, to use the phrase of Gerhard Kittel,3 belongs to the very essence of the Christian message. The Christian Creed itself is intrinsically historic. It comprises the whole of existence in a single historical scheme as one ‘History of Salvation’, from Creation to Consummation, to the Last Judgement and the End of history. Emphasis is put on the ultimate cruciality of certain historic events, namely, of the Incarnation, of the Coming of the Messiah, and of his Cross and

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Adapted from Tertullian, ad. Valent. 3.2:  Nihil veritas erubescit nisi solum modo abscondi [Truth blushes at nothing except being hidden away] [Eds.]. Marc Bloch, Apologie pour l’histoire, ou metier d’historien, Cahiers des Annales, 3 (Paris:  A. Colin, 1949); English translation, The Historian’s Craft (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), 4 [GF]. Gerhard Kittel, ‘The Jesus of History’, in Mysterium Christi, ed. by G. K. A. Bell and Adolf Deissman (London: Longmans, Green, 1930), 31ff. [GF].

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Resurrection. Accordingly, it may be justly contended that ‘the Christian religion is a daily invitation to the study of history’.4 Now, it is at this point that the major difficulties arise. An average believer, of any denomination or tradition, is scarcely aware of his intrinsic duty to study history. The historical pattern of the Christian message is obvious. But people are interested rather in the ‘eternal truth’ of this message, than in what they are inclined to regard as ‘accidents’ of history, even when they are discussing the facts of biblical history or of the history of the Church. Does not the message itself point out beyond history, to the ‘life of the Age to come’? There is a persistent tendency to interpret the facts of history as images or symbols, as typical cases or examples, and to transform the ‘history of salvation’ into a kind of edifying parable. We can trace this tendency back to the early centuries of Christian history. In our own days we find ourselves in the midst of an intense controversy precisely about this very matter. On the one hand, the essential historicity of Christian religion has been rediscovered and re-emphasized, precisely during the past few decades, and a fresh impact of this reawakened historical insight is strongly felt now in all fields of contemporary theological research – in biblical exegesis, in the study of Church history and liturgics, in certain modern attempts at the ‘reconstruction of belief ’ and even in the modern ecumenical dialogue. On the other hand, the recent plea for a radical demythologizing of the Christian message is an ominous sign of a continuing anti-historical attitude in certain quarters.5 For to demythologize Christianity means in practice precisely to de-historicize it, despite the real difference between myth and history. In fact, the modern plea is but a new form of that theological liberalism, which, at least from the Age of the Enlightenment, persistently attempted to disentangle Christianity from its historical context and involvement, to detect its perennial ‘essence’ (das Wesen des Christentums)6 and to discard the historical shells. Paradoxically, the Rationalists of the Enlightenment and the devout Pietists of various description, and also the dreamy mystics, were actually working towards the same purpose. The impact of German Idealism, in spite of its historical appearance, was ultimately to the same effect. The emphasis was shifted from the ‘outward’ facts of history to the ‘inward’ experience of the believers. Christianity, in this interpretation, became a ‘religion of experience’,

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F. M. Powicke, Modern Historians and the Study of History (London:  Odhams Press, 1955), 227–228 [GF]. This is an allusion to the thought of Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), who argued that in the modern world one needed to strip or ‘demythologize’ the New Testament of its cosmological world picture and focus on an existential interpretation of its proclamation or kerygma. Bultman wrote, e.g.: ‘It is impossible to use electrical light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles. We may think we can manage it in our own lives, but to expect others to do so is to make the Christian faith unintelligible and unacceptable to the modern world’ (Rudolf Bultmann, ‘The New Testament and Mythology’, in Kerygma and Myth, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch (New York: Harper & Row, 1961 [1941]), 1–44 at 5 [Eds.]. Das Wesen des Christentums [The Essence of Christianity] is a book by the German philosopher and anthropologist Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872). Feuerbach was highly critical of religion in general and Christianity in particular. This book (1841) strongly influenced later thinkers, including Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) [Eds.].

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mystical, ethical or even intellectual.7 History was felt to be simply irrelevant. The historicity of Christianity was reduced to the acknowledgement of a permanent ‘historical significance’ of certain ideas and principles, which originated under particular conditions of time and space, but were in no sense intrinsically linked with them. The person of Christ Jesus lost its cruciality in this interpretation, even if his message has been, to a certain extent, kept and maintained. Now, it is obvious that this anti-historical attitude was itself but a particular form of an acute historicism, that is, of a particular interpretation of history, in which the historical has been ruled out as something accidental and indifferent. Most of the liberal arguments were, as they still are, historical and critical, although behind them one could easily detect definite ideological prejudices, or preconceptions. The study of history was vigorously cultivated by the Liberal school, if only in order to discredit history, as a realm of relativity, or as a story of sin and failure, and, finally, to ban history from the theological field. This ‘abuse of history’ by the liberals made even the ‘lawful’ use of history in theology suspect even in conservative circles. Was it safe to make the eternal truth of Christianity dependent in any way upon the data of history, which is, by its very nature, inextricably contingent and human? For that reason Cardinal Manning denounced every appeal to history, or to ‘antiquity’, as both ‘a treason and a heresy’. He was quite formal at this point: for him the Church had no history. She was ever abiding in a continuous present.8 After all  – it has been persistently asked  – can one really ‘know’ history, that is, the past? How can one discern, with any decent measure of security, what actually did happen in the past? Our pictures of the past are so varied, and change from one generation to another, and even differ from one historian to the next. Are they anything but subjective opinions, impressions or interpretations? The very possibility of any historical knowledge seemed to be compromised by the sceptical exploits of the learned. It seemed that even the Bible could no longer be retained as a book of history, although it could be kept as a glorious paradeigma [pattern or example] of the eternal Glory and Mercy of God. Moreover, even if one admits that Christians are, by vocation, historians, it can be contended that they are bound to be bad historians, or unreliable historians, since they are intrinsically ‘committed’ in advance. It is commonly agreed that the main virtue of a historian is his impartiality, his freedom from all preconceptions, his radical Voraussetzungslosigkeit [lit. ‘presuppositionlessness’]. Now, obviously, Christians, if they are believing and practising Christians, cannot conscientiously dispense with their formidable ‘bias’, even if they succeed in preserving their intellectual honesty and integrity. Christians, by the very fact of their faith and 7

8

Among Florovsky’s targets here are several main figures of the Russian religious renaissance, notably Pavel Florensky (1882–1937), who exalts religious experience in his The Pillar and Ground of the Truth (1914), trans. Boris Jakim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). Florovsky was highly critical of the absence of a chapter on Christology in Florensky’s book. He felt that Vladimir Solovyov, Florensky, Nicolas Berdyaev and Sergius Bulgakov were all overly dependent on German idealism, which had turned them from the correct focus on the gracious acts of God in history, seeen above all in Jesus Christ. See Georges Florovsky, ‘Religious Philosophy in the Prewar Decade’, The Ways of Russian Theology, CW, II, 276–281 [Eds.]. H. E. Manning, The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation (New York: D. Appleton, 1866), 227ff. [GF].

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allegiance, are committed to a very particular interpretation of certain events of history, and also to a definite interpretation of the historic process itself, taken as a whole. In this sense, they are inevitably prejudiced. They cannot be radically critical. They would not agree, for instance, to handle their sacred books as ‘pure literature’, and would not read the Bible simply as the ‘epic’ of the Jews. They would not surrender their belief in the crucial uniqueness of Christ. They would not consent to rule out the ‘supernatural’ element from history. Under these conditions, is any impartial and critical study of history possible at all? Can Christians continue as Christians in the exercise of their profession? How can they vindicate their endeavour? Can they simply divorce their professional work, as historians, from their religious convictions, and write history as anyone else may do it, as if they were in no way informed by the faith? The easiest answer to this charge is to declare that all historians have a bias. An unbiased history is impossible, and actually does not exist.9 In fact, evolutionary historians are obviously no less committed than those who believe in the biblical revelation; only they are committed to another bias. Ernest Renan and Julius Wellhausen were no less committed than Ricciotti or Père Lagrange, and Harnack and Baur no less than Bardy or Lebreton, and Reitzenstein and Frazer much more than Dom Odo Casel and Dom Gregory Dix.10 They were only committed to different things. One knows only too well that historical evidence can be twisted and distorted in compliance with all sorts of ‘critical’ preconceptions, even more than it has been done sometimes in obedience to ‘tradition’. This kind of argument, however, is very ambiguous and inconclusive. It would lead, ultimately, to a radical scepticism and would discredit the study of history of any kind. It actually amounts to a total surrender of all claims and hopes for any reliable historical knowledge. It seems, however, that, in the whole discussion, one operates usually with a very questionable conception of the historical study, with a conception 9

10

An interesting discussion of this took place at the Anglo-American Conference of Historians, July 1926; three addresses given at the conference by C. H. McIlwain, A. Meyendorff and J. L. Morison are published under the general title, ‘Bias in Historical Writing,’ in History, XI (October, 1926), 193–203 [GF]. Florovsky is comparing here major secular historians and liberal Christian thinkers, some associated with higher biblical criticism (the first two in each foursome), with more traditional Christian historians and liturgists (the second twosome). All the latter are Catholic priests, except the Anglican Gregory Dix. Ernest Renan (1823–1892) was a French scholar of ancient Middle Eastern languages and civilizations. Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) was a German biblical scholar and orientalist. Giuseppe Ricciotti (1890–1964) was an Italian canon regular, biblical scholar and archeologist. Marie-Joseph Lagrange (1855–1938) was French Dominican, founder of the École biblique de Jérusalem. Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) was a German Protestant theologian and church historian. Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860) was a German Protestant theologian, founder and leader of the New Tübingen School of Theology. Gustave Bardy (1881–1955) was a French patrologist and church historian, professor at the Institut catholique de Lille. Jules Lebreton (1873–1956) was a French Jesuit theologian and historian at the Institut catholique de Paris. Richard August Reitzenstein (1861–1931) was a German classical philologist and scholar of ancient Greek religion, hermetism and Gnosticism, one of the major figures of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule [history of religions school]. James George Frazer (1854–1941) was a Scottish social anthropologist, considered one of the founding fathers of modern anthropology, author of the famous book, The Golden Bough (1890). Dom Odo (or Odon) Casel (1886–1948), a German Benedictine, was a historian of the litugury and a leader of the liturgical reform movement. Dom Gregory Dix (1901– 1952) was an Anglican Benedictine monk, a noted liturgical scholar whose work influenced the reform of Anglican liturgy in the mid-twentieth century [Eds.].

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derived from another area of inquiry, namely, from the natural sciences. It is assumed in advance that there is a universal ‘scientific method’ which can be applied in any field of inquiry, regardless of the specific character of the subject of study. But this is a gratuitous assumption, a bias, which does not stand critical test and which, in fact, has been vigorously contested, in recent decades, both by historians and by philosophers. In any case, one has, first of all, to define what is the nature and specific character of ‘the historical’ and in what way and manner this specific subject can be reached and apprehended. One has to define the aim and purpose of historical study and then to design methods by which this aim, or these aims, can be properly achieved. Only in this perspective can the very question of ‘impartiality’ and ‘bias’ be intelligently asked and answered.

II The study of history is an ambiguous endeavour. Its very objective is ambiguous. History is the study of the past. Strictly speaking, we have at once to narrow the scope of the inquiry. History is indeed the study of the human past. An equation of human history and natural history would be an unwarranted presupposition or option. Much harm has been done to the study of history by such naturalistic presuppositions, which amount, in the last resort, to the denial of any specific character of human existence. Anyhow, ‘the past’ as such cannot be ‘observed’ directly. It has actually passed away and therefore is never given directly in any ‘possible experience’ (to use the phrase of John Stuart Mill).11 The knowledge of the past is necessarily indirect and inferential. It is always an interpretation. The past can only be ‘reconstructed’. Is it a possible task? And how is it possible? Actually, no historian begins with the past. His starting point is always in the present, to which he belongs himself. He looks back. His starting point is his ‘sources’, the primary sources. Out of them, and on their authority, he proceeds to the ‘recovery’ of the past. His procedure depends upon the nature and character of his information, of his sources. What are these sources? What makes a certain thing a source for the historian? In a certain sense, almost everything, omnis res scibilis [all things knowable], can serve as a historical source, provided the historian knows how to use it, how to read the evidence. But, on the other hand, no thing at all is a historical source by itself, even a chronicle, or a narrative or even an autobiography. Historical sources exist, in their capacity as sources, only in the context of a historical inquiry. Things are mute by themselves, even the texts and speeches: they speak only when they are understood; they render answers only when they are examined, as witnesses are examined, when proper questions are asked. And the first rule of the historical craft is precisely to cross-examine the witnesses, to ask proper questions, and to force the relics and the documents to answer them. In his admirable little book, Apologie pour l’histoire, ou metier d’historien, Marc Bloch illustrates this rule with convincing examples. 11

See John Stuart Mill, Odd Bricks from a Tumbledown Private Building (London: T. Cautley Newby, 1866), 40ff. [Eds.].

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Before Boucher de Perthes, as in our own day, there were plenty of flint artifacts in the alluvium of the Somme. However, there was no one to ask questions, and there was therefore no prehistory. As an old medievalist, I know nothing which is better reading than a cartulary. That is because I know just about what to ask it. A collection of Roman inscriptions, on the other hand, would tell me little. I know more or less how to read them, but not how to cross-examine [original:  crossquestion] them. In other words, every historical research presupposes that the inquiry has a direction at the very first step. In the beginning there must be the guiding spirit. Mere passive observation, even supposing such a thing were possible, has never contributed anything productive to any science.12

This remark of a conscientious and critical scholar is revealing. What he actually suggests is that all historical inquiry is, by definition, as a true inquiry, ‘prejudiced’ from the very start – prejudiced because directed. Otherwise there would have been no inquiry, and the things would have remained silent. Only in the context of a guided inquiry do the sources speak, or rather only in this context do ‘things’ become ‘sources’, only when they are, as it were, exorcized by the inquisitive mind of the historian. Even in the experimental science, facts never speak by themselves, but only in the process, and in the context, of a directed research, and no scientific experiment can ever be staged, unless an ‘experiment in mind’ has been previously performed by the explorer.13 Observation itself is impossible without some interpretation, that is, understanding. The study of history has been sorely handicapped by an uncritical and ‘naturalistic’ conception of historical sources. They have been often mistaken for independent entities, existing before and outside of the process of the historical study. A false task was consequently imposed on the historian:  he was supposed to find history in the sources, while handling them precisely as ‘things’. Nothing could come out of any such endeavour but a pseudo-history, a history made ‘with scissors and paste’,14 a ‘history without the historical problem’, as Benedetto Croce15 aptly has styled it.16 Certain 12 13

14

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Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, 64–65 [GF]. See the penetrating analysis of experimental method by Claude Bernard, in his classical essay, Introduction à l’étude de la médecine experimentale (Paris: J. B. Baillière et Fils, 1865) [An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, trans. H.  C. Greene (New  York:  Henry Schuman, 1949)]. [Henri] Bergson compares this book with the Discours sur la méthode of Descartes: ‘The Philosophy of Claude Bernard’, in The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946), 238ff. [GF]. See the caustic remarks of R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York: Galaxy Books, 1946), 257ff. [GF]. Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) was an influential Italian philosopher in the idealist tradition who wrote notably on history and aesthetics. He defended an ‘absolute historicism’ in which everything is historical and in which Spirit enfolds itself in history. Such a world is entirely knowable and, indeed, if this is the case and all is historical, then the only knowledge that exists is historical knowledge (philosophy is history). In acting in history, we make the history that can be known. Croce, and Florovsky here depends on him, also laid great stress on the role of the imagination (phantasia) in historiography. Croce’s identity of philosophy with history attracted Florovsky (he read him as early as 1921) to his thought as it echoed Florovsky’s own identity of theology with history and indeed the Christian faith with history. However, he was suspicious of all idealism and any attempt to see history as the inevitable revelation of the Spirit that marginalized human freedom and creativity and blurred the line between the Creator God and creation [Eds.]. Benedetto Croce, La Storia corne Pensiero e come Azione, 4th ed. (Bari:  G. Laterza, 1943), English translation: History as the Story of Liberty (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1949), 85ff. [GF].

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historians have deliberately sought to reduce themselves to the role of reporters, but even reporters must be interpretative and selective, if they want to be intelligible. In fact, historical sources cannot be handled simply as ‘relics’, ‘traces’ or ‘imprints’ of the past. Their function in the historical research is quite different. They are testimonies rather than traces. And no testimony can be assessed except in the process of interpretation. No collection of factual statements, no compilation of news and dates, is history, even if all facts have been critically established and all dates verified. The best catalogue of an art museum is not a history of art. A catalogue of manuscripts is not a history of literature, not even a history of handwriting. No chronicle is history. In the sharp phrase of Benedetto Croce, a chronicle is but a ‘corpse of history’ (il cadavere). A chronicle is but ‘a thing’ (una cosa), a complex of sounds and other signs. But history is ‘an act of the spirit’ (un atto spirituale).17 ‘Things’ become ‘sources’ only in the process of cognition, in relation to the inquiring intellect of the student. Outside of this process historical sources simply do not exist. The question a historian asks is the question about meaning and significance. And things are then treated as signs and witnesses of the past reality, not simply as relics or imprints. Indeed, only signs can be interpreted, and not ‘pure facts’, since the question about meaning points beyond pure giveness. There are things insignificant and meaningless, and they cannot be understood or interpreted at all, precisely because they are meaningless, just as in a conversation we may fail to understand certain casual remarks, which were not intended to convey any message. Indeed, historical cognition is a kind of conversation, a dialogue with those in the past whose life, thoughts, feelings and decisions the historian endeavours to rediscover, through the documents by which they are witnessed to or signified. Accordingly, one can infer from certain facts, words or things, as from a sign to the meaning, only if and when these objective things can be lawfully treated as signs, that is, as bearers of meaning, only when and if we can reasonably assume that these things have a dimension of depth, a dimension of meaning. We do not assign meaning to them: we should detect meaning. Now, there is meaning in certain things, in our documents and sources, only in so far as behind them we are entitled to assume the existence of other intelligent beings. History is accordingly a study of the human past, not of any past as such. Only man has history, in the strict sense of this word. R. G. Collingwood18 elaborates this point with great clarity. Close similarity between the work of an archaeologist and that of a palaeontologist is obvious:  both are diggers. Yet, their aims are quite different. ‘The archaeologist’s use of his stratified relics depends upon his conceiving them as

17

18

Benedetto Croce, Teoria e Storia della Storiografia, 6th ed. (Bari:  G. Laterza, 1948), 11 [Theory and History of Historiography, trans. Douglas Ainslie (London: George G. Harrap, 1921)] [GF]. R. G.  Collingwood (1889–1943) was an English philosopher of history and aesthetics, greatly influenced by Hegel and Croce) and a historian and archaeologist of Roman Britain. Like Croce before him, he identified history and philosophy and put great store on the role of the imagination in interpreting past human acts or the specific work of art in the rethinking or living mental reconstruction of the thoughts of past people or the particular artist. Thus in obtaining historical knowledge we must come to obtain self-knowledge, since through the imagination we can make the past thoughts of others our own. Florovsky was attracted to Collingwood’s thought as it corresponded with his own emphasis in theology on ‘experience’, ‘creativity’ and personal ‘testimony’, for Collingwood saw history as composed of the free activity of persons with a particular experience to which they are witnesses [Eds.].

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artifacts serving human purposes and thus expressing a particular way in which men have thought about their own life.’ In the study of nature, on the other hand, there is no such distinction between the ‘outside’ and the ‘inside’ of the data. ‘To the scientist, nature is always and merely a “phenomenon,” not in the sense of being defective in reality, but in the sense of being a spectacle presented to his intellectual observation; whereas the events of history are never mere phenomena, never mere spectacles for contemplation, but things which the historian looks, not at, but through, to discern the thought within them.’19 Historical documents can be interpreted as signs because they are charged with meaning, as expressions or reflections, deliberate or spontaneous, of human life and endeavour. Now, this meaning is available for others only in so far as a sufficient identification can be achieved between the interpreter and those whose thoughts, actions or habits he is interpreting.20 If this contact, for any reason, has not been established, or cannot be established at all, no understanding is possible and no meaning can be elicited, even if the documents or relics are charged with meaning, as it is, for instance, in the case of an undecipherable script. Again, ‘testimonies’ can be misunderstood and misinterpreted, just as we often misunderstand each other in an actual conversation or fail to find a ‘common language’ – then no communication is possible; just as we may misinterpret a foreign text, not only because we simply make mistakes in translation, but also when we fail to enter congenially into the inner world of those persons whose testimonies we are deciphering. An Einfühlung21 into the witnesses is an obvious prerequisite of understanding. We are actually deciphering each other’s words even in an ordinary conversation, and sometimes we fail sorely to achieve any satisfactory result. The problem of semantics, that is, of intelligent communication – a communication between intelligent beings – is inherent in the whole process of historical interpretation. In the phrase of Ranke,22 ‘history only begins when monuments become intelligible.’23 One should add that only ‘intelligible documents’ are, in a full sense, historical documents, historical sources – as H. I. Marrou24 puts it, ‘dans la mesure où l’historien peut et sait 19 20

21

22

23

24

Collingwood, The Idea of History, 214 [GF]. Compare with the similar notion (both draw on Collingwood) in Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900– 2002) of the ‘fusion of Horizons [Horizontverschmelzung]’ necessary for interpretation (see Gadamer’s Truth and Method, trans. Garrett Barden and John Cumming [New  York:  Crossroad, 1982 (1965)]), 273ff., 337ff., 358 [Eds.]. The Counter-Enlightenment and German Romantic term Einfühlung is generally translated as ‘empathy’ in English but ‘feeling into’ would be more precise. J. G. von Herder (1744–1803) applied the notion generally as the capacity to understand anything, from a work of art to a movement in history, in its individuality and development by ‘entering into’ the conditions of its existence [Eds.]. Leopold von Ranke (1795–1866) was one of the most important German historians of the nineteenth century, writing massive studies on the papacy and the Reformation. He pioneered a source-based approach to history and an ‘objective’ approach to the reconstruction of the past (advocating its depiction ‘as it actually was’), sensitive in particular to the role of national and psychological factors in events. See Leopold von Ranke, The Theory and Practice of History, ed. Georg G. Iggers (Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2011) [Eds.]. Leopold von Ranke, Weltgeschichte, Theil I, 3 Aufl. (Leipzig:  W. Engelmann, 1883), ‘Vorrede,’ s. VI [partial translation: Universal History, the Oldest Historical Group of Nations and the Greeks, trans. G W Prothero and Duncan Crookes Tovey (New York: Harper and Bros., 1885)] [GF]. Henri-Irenée Marrou (1904–1977) was one of the leading historians of late antiquity in the twentieth century, known particularly for his work on education in antiquity, Augustine and Augustinianism and Christian humanism. He was an important contributor to the French series of the works of the

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y comprendre quelque chose [to the extent that the historian can and does understand something]’.25 Consequently, the person of the interpreter belongs to the actual process of interpretation no less than the data to be interpreted, just as both partners in a conversation are essential for a successful dialogue. No understanding is possible without some measure of ‘congeniality’, of intellectual or spiritual sympathy, without a real meeting of minds. Collingwood is right in pointing out that historical inquiry reveals to the historian the power of his own mind . . . Whenever he finds certain historical matters unintelligible, he has discovered a limitation of his own mind, he has discovered that there are certain ways in which he is not, or no longer, or not yet, able to think. Certain historians, sometimes whole generations of historians, find in certain periods of history nothing intelligible, and call them dark ages; but such phrases tell us nothing about those ages themselves, though they tell us a great deal about the persons who use them, namely that they are unable to re-think the thoughts which were fundamental to their life.26

It is the first rule of the true exegesis:  we have to grasp the mind of the writer, we must discover exactly what he intended to say. The phrase, or the whole narrative, or the whole document, can be misunderstood when we fail to do so, or when we read our own thought into the text. No sentence, and no text, should be dismissed as ‘meaningless’ simply because we fail to detect meaning. We misread the text when we take literally that which has been said metaphorically, and also when we interpret that which was meant to be an actual story just as a parable. You cannot find out what a man means by simply studying his spoken or written statements, even though he has spoken or written with perfect command of language and perfectly truthful intention. In order to find out his meaning you must also know what the question was (a question in his own mind, and presumed by him to be in yours) to which the thing he has said or written was meant as an answer.27

It is true of our actual conversations, in the intercourse of current life. It is true of our study of the historical sources. Historical documents are documents of life. Every historian begins with certain data. Then, by an effort of his searching and inquisitive mind, he apprehends them as ‘witnesses’, or, as it were, ‘communications’ from the past, that is, as meaningful signs. By the power of his intellectual intuition, he grasps the meaning of these signs, and thus recovers, in an act of ‘inductive imagination’, that comprehensive setting in which all his data converge and are integrated into a coherent, that is, intelligible, whole. There is an inevitable element of

25

26 27

Fathers, Sources chrétiennes, notably preparing an edition and editing and translating Clement of Alexandria’s Pedagogue [Eds.]. Henri-Irenée Marrou, De la connaissance historique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1954), 83 [The Meaning of History, trans. Robert J. Olsen (Baltimore: Helicon, 1966)] [GF]. Collingwood, The Idea of History, 218–219 [GF]. Collingwood, An Autobiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939), 31 [GF].

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guess, or rather of ‘divination’, in this process of understanding, as there is, unavoidably, a certain element of guess in every attempt to understand another person. A lack of congenial guess, or imaginative sympathy, may make any conversation impossible, since no real contact of minds has been established, as if the participants spoke different languages, so that utterances of one person did not become messages for the other. In a sense, any act of understanding is a ‘mental experiment’, and divination is always an indispensable element therein. Divination is a kind of mental vision, an indivisible act of insight, an act of imagination, inspired and controlled by the whole of one’s acquired experience. One may suggest it is an act of ‘fantasy’, but it is fantasy of a very special kind. It is a cognitive fantasy and, as Benedetto Croce eloquently explains, without it historical knowledge is simply impossible:  senza questa ricostruzione o integrazione fantastica non e dato ne scrivere storia, ne leggerla e intenderla [without this imaginative reconstruction or integration it is not possible to write history, or to read it, or to understand it]. It is, as he says, a ‘fantasy in the thought’ (la fantasia nel pensiero e per pensiero), a ‘concreteness of the thought’, which implies judgement and is therefore logically disciplined and controlled, and thereby clearly distinguished from any poetical license.28 ‘Understanding is interpretation, whether of a spoken word, or of the meaningful events themselves’, as it was stated by F. A. Trendelenburg:  Alles Verstandniss ist Interpretation, sei es des gesprochenen Wortes oder der sinnvollen Erscheinungen selbst.29 The art of hermeneutics is the core of the historical craft. And, as it has been aptly put by a Russian scholar, ‘one must observe as one reads, and not read as one observes’.30 ‘To read’, whether texts or events themselves, means precisely ‘to understand’, to grasp the inherent meaning, and the understanding intellect cannot be ruled out of the process of understanding, as the reader cannot be eliminated out of the process of reading. Historians must be critical of themselves, probably even more critical of themselves than of their sources as such, since the sources are what they are, that is, ‘sources’, precisely in proportion to the questions which the historian addresses to them. As H. I. Marrou says, ‘a document is understood precisely in the measure in which it finds a historian capable of appreciating most deeply its nature and its scope’ (dans la mesure où il se rencontrera un historien capable d’apprecier avec plus de profondeur sa nature et sa portée).31 Now, the kind of questions a particular historian is actually asking depends ultimately upon his stature, upon his total personality, upon his dispositions and concerns, upon the amplitude of his vision, even upon his likes and dislikes. One should not forget that all acts of understanding are, strictly speaking, personal, and only in this capacity of personal acts can they have any existential relevance and value. One has to check, severely and strictly, one’s prejudices and presuppositions, but one should never try to empty one’s mind of all presuppositions. Such an attempt would be 28

29

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31

Croce, Teoria e Storia, 29ff. [Theory and History of Historiography, trans. Douglas Ainslie (London: George G. Harrap, 1921), 39]; cf. Collingwood, The Idea of History, 214ff. [GF]. Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen [Logical Investigations] (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1870), Bd. II. 2, s. 408 [GF]. Gustav Shpet, ‘Istoriia kak predmet logiki’ [‘History as the Matter of Logic’], in Nauchnye Izvestiia. Sbornik 2.  Filosofiia, literatura, iskusstvo (Moscow:  Akademicheskii tsentr Narkomprosa, 1922), 1–35 at 15–16 [GF]. Marrou, De la connaissance historique,120 [GF].

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a suicide of mind and can only issue in total mental sterility. A barren mind is indeed inevitably sterile. Indifference, or neutrality and indecision, are not virtues, but vices, in a historian as well as in a literary critic, as much as one should claim ‘objectivity’. Historical understanding is ultimately an intelligent response to the challenge of the sources, a deciphering of signs. A certain measure of relativity is inherent in all acts of human understanding, as it is inevitable in personal relations. Relativity is simply a concomitant of relations. The ultimate purpose of a historical inquiry is not in the establishment of certain objective facts, such as dates, places, numbers, names and the like, as much as all this is an indispensable preliminary, but in the encounter with living beings. No doubt, objective facts must be first carefully established, verified and confirmed, but this is not the final aim of the historian. History is precisely, to quote H.  I. Marrou once more, ‘an encounter with the other’ (l’histoire est rencontre d’autrui).32 A narrow mind and an empty mind are real obstacles to this encounter, as they obviously are in all human relations. History, as a subject of study, is history of human beings, in their mutual relationship, in their conflicts and contacts, in their social intercourse, and in their solitude and estrangement, in their high aspirations and in their depravity. Only men live in history – live, and move, and strive, and create, and destroy. Men alone are historic beings, in a full sense of the word. In the historical understanding we establish contact with men, with their thoughts and endeavours, with their inner world and with their outward action. In this sense, Collingwood was undoubtedly right in insisting that ‘there are no mere “events” in history’. What is miscalled an ‘event’ is really an action, and expresses some thought (intention, purpose) of its agent; the historian’s business is therefore to identify this thought.33

In this sense, Collingwood insisted, ‘history proper is the history of thought’. It would be unfair to dismiss this contention as a sheer intellectualism, as an unwelcome ghost of obsolete Hegelianism. Collingwood’s emphasis is not so much on the thought as such, but on the intelligent and purposeful character of human life and action. In history, there are not only happenings and occurrences, but actions and endeavours, achievements and frustrations. This only gives meaning to human existence. In the last resort, history is history of man, in the ambiguity and multiplicity of his existence. This constitutes the specific character of historical cognition and of historical knowledge. Accordingly, methods must be proportionate to the aim. This has been often ignored in the age of militant and doctrinaire positivism, and is still often forgotten in our time. Objective knowledge, more geometrico, is impossible in history. This is not a loss, however, since historical knowledge is not a knowledge of objects, but precisely a knowledge of subjects – of ‘co-persons’, of ‘co-partners’ in the quest of life. In this sense, historical knowledge is, and must be, an existential knowledge. This

32 33

Marrou, De la connaissance historique, 101 [GF]. Collingwood, Autobiography, 127–128 [GF].

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constitutes a radical cleavage between the ‘study of Spirit’ and the ‘study of Nature’, between die Geisteswissenschaften and die Naturwissenschaft.34

III It has been often contended, especially by the historians of the old school, that historians are led, in the last resort, in their study, by the desire ‘to know the past as an eyewitness may know it’, that is, to become, in some way, just a ‘witness’ of the past events.35 In fact, this is precisely what the historian cannot do, and never does, and never should attempt to do, if he really wants to be a historian. Moreover, it is by no means certain that an eyewitness of an event does really ‘know’ it, that is, does understand its meaning and significance. An ambition to perform an impossible and contradictory task only obscures the understanding of that which a historian actually does do, if only he does a ‘historical’ work. The famous phrase of Leopold von Ranke, suggesting that historians ‘wish to know the actual past’ – wie eigentlich gewesen – has been much abused.36 First of all, it is not fair to make of a casual remark by the great master of history a statement of principle. In any case, in his own work, Ranke never followed this alleged prescription of his, and was always much more than a chronicler. He always was aiming at an interpretation.37 Obviously, historians want to know what actually has happened, but 34

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37

For the whole section 2 of this article, see my essay, ‘O tipakh istoricheskago istolkovaniia’ (‘The types of historical interpretation’), in Sbornik v chest’ na Vasil N. Zlatarski (Sofia: Drzhavna pechatnitsa, 1925), 523–541 (in Russian) [‘Types of Historical Interpretation’, in Louis J. Shein, ed. and trans. Readings in Russian Philosophical Thought:  Philosophy of History (Waterloo, ON:  Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1977), 88–108]. It is gratifying for the author to discover that this conception is now widely shared by many historians and philosophers, although his Russian article was hardly likely to have been read by many. In addition to the studies by Croce, Collingwood and Marrou, already quoted, one should mention:  Raymond Aron, Introduction à la Philosophie de l’Histoire, Essai sur les limites de l’objectivité historique (Paris: Gallimard, 1948) [Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity, trans. George J. Irwin (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961)]; La Philosophie critique de l’Histoire, Essai sur une théorie allemande de l’histoire, [Critical Philosophy of History: Essay on a German Theory of History] 2nd ed. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1950). Of earlier writers one should mention Wilhelm Dilthey; on him see H. A. Hodges, Wilhelm Dilthey, An Introduction (London:  Routledge, 1944); The Philosophy of Wilhelm Dilthey (London:  Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1952). On Benedetto Croce see A.  Robert Caponigri, History and Liberty: The Historical Writings of Benedetto Croce (London: Routledge and Paul, 1955). For other points of view see, e.g. Patrick Gardiner, The Nature of Historical Explanation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1952); S. G. F. Brandon, Time and Mankind (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1951); G. N. Renier, History, Its Purpose and Method (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1950) [GF]. V. V. Bolotov, Lektsii po istorii Drevnei Tserkvi (Lectures on the History of the Early Church) (St Petersburg: Tipographia M. Merkusheva, 1907), I, 6–7 [GF]. Ranke, ‘Geschichte der Romanischen und Germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514’, in Vorrede zur ersten Ausgabe (October 1824), Sämtliche Werke, 3 Aufl., Bd. 33 (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1885), s. VII [Leopold von Ranke, The Theory and Practice of History, ed. Georg G. Iggers (Abingdon/ New York: Routledge, 2011), 85–87; and History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations from 1494 to 1514, trans. Philip A. Ashworth (London: George Bell & Sons, 1887)] [GF]. See Theodore H. von Laue, Leopold Ranke, The Formative Years (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1950), and especially Hans Liebeschütz, Ranke (London:  Historical Association, 1954)  (pamphlet General Series:  G 26); cf. Eberhard Kessel, ‘Rankes Idee der Universalhistorie’ [‘Ranke’s Idea of Universal History’] in Historische Zeitschrift, Bd. 178, H.  2 (1954), ss. 269–308 (with new texts of Ranke) [GF].

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they want to know it in a perspective. And, of course, it is the only thing they can actually achieve. We can never remember even our own immediate past, exactly as we have lived it, because, if we are really remembering, and not just dreaming, we do remember the past occurrences in a perspective, against a changed background of our enriched experience. Collingwood described history as ‘re-enactment of past experience’,38 and there is some truth in this description, in so far as this ‘re-enactment’ is an integral moment of ‘understanding identification’, which is indispensable in any conversation. But one should not mistake one’s own thoughts for the thoughts of others. Collingwood himself says that the objects of historical thought are ‘events which have finished happening, and conditions no longer in existence’, that is, those events which are ‘no longer perceptible’.39 Historians look at the past in a perspective, as it were, at a distance. They do not intend to reproduce the past event. Historians want to know the past precisely as the past, and consequently in the context of later happenings. ‘Un temps retrouvé [a time recovered]’, that is, recaptured in an act of intellectual imagination, is precisely ‘un temps perdu [a time lost]’,40 that is, something that really did pass away, something that has been really lost, and only for that reason, and in this capacity of a ‘lost moment’, can it be searched for and rediscovered. Historical vision is always a retrospective vision. What was a future for the people of the past is now for historians a past. In this sense, historians know more about the past than people of the past themselves were ever able to know. Historians are aware of the impact of the past, of certain past events, on the present. As historians, we cannot visualize the glorious Pentēkontaetia of Pericles,41 except in the perspective of the subsequent doom and collapse of Athenian democracy. Or, in any case, such an attempt, even if it were possible (which it is not), would in no sense be a historical endeavour. A perspective and a context are constitutive factors of all true historical understanding and presentation. We cannot understand Socrates properly and historically if we ignore the impact of his challenge and thought, as it has been actually manifested in the later development of Greek philosophy. Indeed, we would know much less about the ‘true’, that is, historical, Socrates if we endeavoured to see him, as it were, in vacuo [in a vacuum], and not against the total historical background, which for us includes also that which for Socrates himself was still an unrealized and unpredictable future. After all, history is neither spectacle nor panorama, but a process. The perspective of time, of concrete time, filled with events, gives us the sense of direction which was probably lacking in the events themselves, as they actually happened. Of course, one can make an effort to forget, or to ignore, what one does actually know, that is, the perspective. Whether one can really succeed in doing so is rather doubtful. But even 38 39 40

41

Collingwood, The Idea [of History], 282ff. [GF]. Ibid., 233 [GF]. This is an allusion to the seven-volume novel of Marcel Proust (1871–1922), À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–1927) (In Search of Lost Time), the last volume of which is titled Le Temps retrouvé (1927). The opening scene of the novel is a flight of memories of the narrator’s (Swann) childhood in Combray, France, triggered by his biting into a madeleine sponge cake that he has dipped in tea [Eds.]. ‘Pentēkontaetia’ is a term sometimes used by historians to refer to the approximately fifty years (479– 431 BCE) between the end of the second Persian invasion of ancient Greece and the Peloponnesian War, which was the golden period of ancient Athens under Pericles [Eds.].

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if this were possible, would this be really a historical endeavour? As has been recently said, ‘to attempt to make oneself a contemporary of the events and people whose history one is writing, means, ultimately, to put oneself in the position which excludes history’. No history without a retrospect, that is, without perspective.42 No doubt, retrospection has its dangers. It may expose us to ‘optical illusions’. In retrospect, we may discover in the past, as it were, ‘too much’, not only if we happen to read anything into the past events, but also because from a certain point of view certain aspects of the past may be seen in a distorted or exaggerated shape. We may be tempted to exaggerate unduly and out of proportion the role and impact of certain historic personalities or institutions, because their images have been disproportionately magnified in our apprehension by the particular perspective in which we are looking at them. And very often the perspective is simply imposed upon us: we cannot change our position. We may be tempted to establish wrong ancestries of trends and ideas, mistaking similarities for actual causal links, as has been done more than once in the history of Early Christianity, and indeed in many other fields. In brief, we may look at the past in a wrong perspective, without knowing it and without any means of correcting our vision. In any case, our perspective is always limited. We can never have a total perspective. Yet, on the other hand, we can never see the past in no perspective at all. The ultimate aim of the historian is indeed to comprehend the whole context, at least in a particular ‘intelligible, that is self-explanatory field’ of research (the phrase is [Arnold J.] Toynbee’s).43 Obviously, this aim is never achieved, and for that reason all historical interpretations are intrinsically provisional. The historian is never content with a fragmentary vision. He tends to discover, or to presuppose, more order in the flux of events than probably there ever was. He tends to exaggerate the cohesion of various aspects of the past. As H. I. Marrou describes the historian’s procedure, he endeavours, for the sake of intelligibility, to substitute ‘an orderly vision’ (une vision ordonnée), for that ‘dust of small facts’ of which the actual happening seems to consist.44 No historian can resist doing so, and no historian can avoid doing so. It is at this point, however, that utter caution must be exercised. Historians are always in danger of overrationalizing the flux of history. So often instead of living men, unstable and never fully ‘made up’, historians describe fixed characters, as it were, some typical individuals in characteristic poses. It is, more or less, what the painters of portraits sometimes do, and by that device they may achieve impressiveness and convey a vision. This was the method of ancient historians, from Thucydides to Polybius and Tacitus. This is what Collingwood described as the ‘substantialism’ of ancient historiography, and it was what made that same historiography, in his opinion, ‘unhistorical’.45 But the same method has been persistently used by many modern 42

43

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Cf. Henri Gouhier, ‘Vision retrospective et intention historique’ [‘Retrospective Vision and Historical Intention’] in La Philosophie de l’Histoire de la Philosophie [Philosophy of the History of Philosophy], articles dy E. Castelli, A. Dempf, M. de Corte [et al.] (Rome-Paris:  J. Vrin/Istituto di studi filosofici, 1956), 133–141 [GF]. On Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975), see Ch. 11, ‘The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology’, n. 1, 185, in this book. The allusion is to the opening page of volume 1 of Toynbee’s ten-volume Study of History (1934–1954) [Eds.]. Marrou, De la connaissance historique, 47 [GF]. Collingwood, The Idea [of History], 42ff. [GF].

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historians. It suffices to mention [Theodor] Mommsen (in his Roman History [1817– 1903]), George Grote, [Hippolyte] Taine, [Guglielmo] Ferrero. To the same category belong the numerous stories of Christ in modern historiography, from [Karl Theodor] Keim and Ernest Renan to Albert Schweitzer. In a sense, it is a legitimate device. A historian tends to overcome, in a synthetic image, the empirical complexity and often confusion of individual bits, and occurrences, to organize them into a coherent whole, and to relate the multiplicity of occurrences to the unity of a character. This is seldom done in a logical way, by a rational reconstruction. Historians act rather as inductive artists, go by intuition. Historians have their own visions. But these are transforming visions. It is by this method that all major generalizations of our historiography have been created:  the Hellenic mind, the medieval man, the bourgeois and the like. It would be unfair to contest the relevance of these categorical generalizations, which must be clearly distinguished from the generic generalizations. And yet, it would be precarious to claim that these generalized ‘types’ do really exist, that is, exist in time and space. They are, as it were, valid visions, like artistic portraits, and, as such, they are indispensable tools of understanding. But ‘typical men’ are different from real men of flesh and blood. Of similar character are also our sociological generalizations: the city-state of Ancient Greece; the feudal society; capitalism; democracy; and so on. The main danger of all these generalizations is that they overstress the inner ‘necessity’ of a particular course of behaviour. A  man, as a ‘type’ or a ‘character’, seems to be predestined to behave in his ‘typical’ manner. There seems to be a typical pattern of development for each kind of human society. It is but natural that in our time the mirage of ‘historical inevitability’ had to be exposed and disavowed, as a distorting factor of our historical interpretation.46 There is indeed an inherent determinism in all these typical and categorical images. But they are no more than a useful shorthand for the ‘dust of facts’. The actual history is fluid and flexible and ultimately unpredictable. The tendency towards determinism is somehow implied in the method of retrospection itself. In retrospect we seem to perceive the logic of the events, which unfold themselves in a regular order, according to a recognizable pattern, with an alleged inner necessity, so that we get the impression that it really could not have happened otherwise. The ultimate contingency of the process is concealed in the rational schemes, and sometimes it is deliberately eliminated. Thus, events are losing their eventuality, and appear to be rather inevitable stages of development or decay, of rise and fall, according to a fixed ideal pattern. In fact, there is less consistency in actual history than appears in our interpretative schemes. History is not an evolution, and the actual course of events does not follow evolutionary schemes and patterns. Historical events are more than happenings; they are actions, or complexes of actions. History is a field of action, and behind the events stand agents, even when these agents forfeit their freedom and follow a pattern or routine, or are overtaken by blind passions. Man remains a free agent even in bonds. If we may use another biological term, we may describe history rather as epigenesis47 than as ‘evolution’, since evolution always implies 46

47

See Isaiah Berlin, Historical Inevitability (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1954), and Pieter Geyl’s remarks in Debates with Historians (London: B. T. Batsford, 1955), 236–241 [GF]. By history being ‘epigenesis’ rather than ‘evolution’, Florovsky means that it proceeds forward through creative leaps enacted by absolutely free actors; this form of development is wholly indeterminate

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a certain kind of ‘pre-formation’, and ‘development’ is no more than a disclosure of ‘structure’.48 There is always some danger that we may mistake our conceptual visions for empirical realities and speak of them as if they were themselves factors and agents, whereas, in fact, they are but rational abbreviations for a multiplicity of real personal agents. Thus we venture to describe the evolution of ‘feudalism’ or of ‘capitalistic society’, forgetting that these terms only summarize a complex of diverse phenomena, visualized as a whole for the sake of intelligibility. ‘Societies’, ‘categories’ and ‘types’ are not organisms, which only can ‘evolve’ or ‘develop’, but are complexes of coordinated individuals, and this coordination is always dynamic, flexible and unstable. All historical interpretations are provisional and hypothetical. No definitive interpretation can ever be achieved, even in a limited and particular field of research. Our data are never complete, and new discoveries often compel historians to revise radically their schemes and to surrender sometimes their most cherished convictions, which may have seemed firmly established. It is easy to quote numerous examples of such revision from various areas of historical study, including church history. Moreover, historians must, from time to time, readjust themselves to the changes in the surrounding world. Their vision is always determined by a certain point of view, and thereby limited. But the perspective itself unfolds in the course of actual history. No contemporary historian can commit himself to the identification of the Mediterranean world with the Oikoumenē,49 which was quite legitimate in the ancient time. These limitations do not discredit the endeavour of historians. It may even be suggested that a ‘definitive’ interpretation of events would eliminate the ‘historicity’ of history, its contingency and eventuality, and substitute instead a rational ‘map of history’, which may be lucid and readable, but will be existentially unreal. Again, our interpretations are also facts of history, and in them the depicted events continue their historical existence and participate in the shaping of historical life. One may argue whether the ‘Socrates of Plato’ is a ‘real’ Socrates, but there is little doubt that this Socrates of Plato had its own historical existence, as a powerful factor in the shaping of our modern conception of ‘philosopher’. It seems that our interpretations disclose, in some enigmatic way, the hidden potentialities of the actual past. It is in this way that traditions are formed and grow, and the greatest of all human traditions is ‘culture’, in which all partial and particular contributions of successive ages are melted together, synthetically transformed in this process of melting, and are finally integrated into a whole. This process of formation of human culture is not yet completed, and probably will never be completed within the limits of history. This is an additional reason why all historical interpretations should be provisional and approximate: a new light may be shed on the past by that future which has not yet arrived.

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and unpredictable, allowing for novelty in history. This is unlike the evolutionary schemes found in some Romantic historians who see all of history proceeding according to the unfolding of specific determinate forms in which the freedom of God and man is ultimately bound [Eds.]. See my earlier articles: ‘Evolution und Epigenesis (Zur Problematik der Geschichte)’ [Evolution and Epigenesis ( The Problem of History), in Der Russische Gedanke, I, no. 3 (Bonn, 1930), ss. 240–252; ‘Die Krise des deutschen Idealismus’, in Orient und Occident, Hf. 11 & 12, 1932 [translation: ‘The Crisis of German Idealism’ (Parts I and II), Collected Works, XII, 23–30, 31–40] [GF]. ‘Oikoumenē’ is the Greek term refering to the whole ‘inhabited world’, in contrast to the lands beyond occupied by the barbarians and hence of no account [Eds.].

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IV It has been recently suggested that ‘if history has meaning, this meaning is not historical, but theological; what is called Philosophy of history is nothing else than a Theology of history, more or less disguised.’50 In fact, the term ‘meaning’ is used in different senses when we speak of the meaning of particular events or of the sets of actions and events, and when we speak of the Meaning of History, taken as an allinclusive whole, that is, in its entirety and universality. In the latter case, indeed, we are speaking actually of the ultimate meaning of human existence, of its ultimate destiny. And this, obviously, is not a historical question. In this case we are speaking not of that which has happened, and this is the only field in which historians are competent, but rather of that which is to happen, and is to happen precisely because it ‘must’ happen. Now, it can be rightly contended that neither ‘the ultimate’ nor ‘the future’ belongs to the realm of historical study, which is, by definition, limited to the understanding of the human past. Historical predictions, of necessity, are conjectural and precarious. They are, in fact, unwarranted ‘extrapolations’. Histories of men and societies are history, but the History of Man, a truly universal and providential History, is no longer just history. In fact, all modern ‘philosophies of history’ have been crypto-theological, or probably pseudo-theological: Hegel, Comte, Marx, even Nietzsche. In any case, all of them were based on beliefs. The same is true of the modern substitute for the Philosophy of history, which is commonly known as Sociology, and which is, in fact, a Morphology of history, dealing with the permanent and recurrent patterns or structures of human life. Now, is Man, in the totality of his manifold and personal existence, a possible subject of a purely historical study and understanding? To claim that he is, by itself, is a kind of theology, even if it turns out to be no more than an ‘apotheosis of man’. On the other hand – and here lies the major predicament of all historical study – no historian can, even in his limited and particular field, within his own competence, avoid raising ultimate problems of human nature and destiny, unless he reduces himself to the role of a registrar of empirical happenings and forfeits his proper task of ‘understanding’. In order to understand, just historically, for instance, ‘the Greek mind’, the historian must, of necessity, have his own vision, if not necessarily original, of the whole range of those problems with which the ‘noble spirits’ of Antiquity were wrestling, in conflict with each other and in succession. A historian of philosophy must be, to a certain extent, a philosopher himself. Otherwise he will miss the problems around which the quest of philosophers has been centred. A  historian of art must be, at least, an amateur  – otherwise he will miss the artistic values and problems. In brief, the problem of Man transpires in all problems of men, and accordingly cannot be skipped over in any historical interpretation. Moreover, in a certain sense, historical endeavour, as such, aims in the last resort at something which, of necessity, transcends its boundaries. The process of historical interpretation is the process in which the Human Mind is built and matures. It is a process of integration, in which particular insights and decisions of various ages are accumulated, confronted, dialectically reconciled, vindicated or 50

Henri Gouhier, L’histoire et sa philosophie [History and Its Philosophy] (Paris:  J. Vrin, 1952), 128 [GF].

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discriminated, or even discarded and condemned. If history, as the process of human life through ages, has any meaning, any ‘sense’, then obviously the study of history, if it is more than a matter of curiosity, must also have a meaning, a certain ‘sense’. And if historical understanding is the historian’s ‘response’ to the ‘challenge’ of that human life which he is exploring, it is of utter importance that historians should be prepared, and inwardly equipped, to meet this challenge of human existence in its fullness and in its ultimate depth. Thus, contrary to the current prejudice, in order to be competent within his proper field of interpretation, a historian must be responsive to the whole amplitude of human concerns. If he has no concerns of his own, concerns of the others will seem nonsensical to him, and he will hardly be able to ‘understand’ them and hardly competent to appraise them. A historian indifferent to the urgency of the philosophical quest may find, with full conviction, that the whole history of philosophy has been just a story of intellectual vagaries or ‘vain speculations’. In the same way, an a-religious historian of religion may find, again with naive conviction and with an air of superiority, that the whole history of religions has been but a history of ‘frauds’ and ‘superstitions’, of various aberrations of the human mind. Such ‘histories of religion’ have been manufactured more than once. For similar reasons, certain sections and periods of history have been denounced, and consequently dismissed and ignored, as ‘barbarian’, ‘dead’ or ‘sterile’, as ‘dark ages’ and the like. The point is that even a pretended neutrality, an alleged freedom from bias, is itself a bias, an option, a decision. In fact, again contrary to the current prejudice, commitment is a token of freedom, a prerequisite of responsiveness. Concern and interest imply commitment. Now, obviously, one cannot be committed in general, in abstracto. Commitment is necessarily discriminative and concrete. And consequently, not all commitments would operate in the same manner and not to the same effect. In any case, the openness of mind is not its emptiness, but rather its comprehensiveness, its broad responsiveness, or, one is tempted to say, its ‘catholicity’. Now, there is here more than just a gradation, as it were, in volume or capacity. ‘The whole’ (to katholou) is not just a sum total of various ‘particularisms’ (ta kata merous), even if these particularisms are dialectically arrayed (as they were, for instance, in the Hegelian map of intellect) or discriminated as ‘stages of the progress’ (as was done, for instance, by Auguste Comte).51 Particularisms must be done away, and catholicity of mind can be achieved only by a new, integrating reorientation, which would necessarily imply a certain radical discrimination. For in the last resort one cannot evade the ultimate discrimination between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ – and the compromise of ‘more or less’ is just ‘no’ in polite disguise. In any case, historical interpretation involves judgement. The narrative itself will be twisted and distorted if the historian persists in evading judgement. There is little difference, in this case, between discussing the Greco-Persian War and World War II. No true historian would escape taking sides:  for ‘freedom’ or against it. And his judgement will tell in his narrative. No historian can be indifferent to the cleavage between ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’, much as the tension between them may be obscured by various speculative sophistications. No historian can be indifferent, or neutral, to 51

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) was a French philosopher. He is considered the founder of the discipline of sociology and of positivism, and is regarded as the first modern philosopher of science [Eds.].

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the challenge and claim of Truth. These tensions are, in any case, historical facts and existential situations. Even a denial is a kind of assertion, and often a resolute one, charged with obstinate resistance. Agnosticism itself is intrinsically dogmatic. Moral indifference can but distort our understanding of human actions, which are always controlled by certain ethical options. An intellectual indifferentism would have the same effect. Precisely because human actions are existential decisions, their historical interpretation cannot avoid decisions. Accordingly, a historian, precisely as historian, that is, as interpreter of human life as it has been actually lived in time and space, cannot evade the major and crucial challenge of this actual history: Who do men say that I am? (Mk 8:28). For a historian, precisely in his capacity of an interpreter of human existence, it is a crucial question. A refusal to face a challenge is already a commitment. A refusal to answer a certain question is also an answer. Abstention from judgement is also judgement. An attempt to write history, evading the challenge of Christ, is in no sense a ‘neutral’ endeavour. Not only in writing a ‘Universal History’ (die Weltgeschichte), that is, in interpreting the total destiny of mankind, but also in interpreting any particular sections or ‘slices’ of this history, is the historian confronted with this ultimate challenge – because the whole of human existence is confronted with this challenge and claim. A historian’s response prejudges the course of his interpretation, his choice of measures and values, his understanding of human nature itself. His response determines his ‘universe of discourse’, that setting and perspective in which he endeavours to comprehend human life, and exhibits the amplitude of his responsiveness. No historian should ever pretend that he has achieved a ‘definitive interpretation’ of that great mystery which is human life, in all its variety and diversity, in all its misery and grandeur, in its ambiguity and contradictions, in its basic ‘freedom’. No Christian historian should lay such claims either. But he is entitled to claim that his approach to that mystery is a comprehensive and ‘catholic’ approach, that his vision of that mystery is proportionate to its actual dimension. Indeed, he has to vindicate his claim in the practice of his craft and vocation.

V The rise of Christianity marks a turning point in the interpretation of history. Robert Flint, in his renowned book, History of the Philosophy of History, says: The rise of ecclesiastical history was more to historiography than was the discovery of America to geography. It added immensely to the contents of history, and radically changed men’s conceptions of its nature. It at once caused political history to be seen to be only a part of history, and carried even into the popular mind the conviction – of which hardly a trace is to be found in the classical historians – that all history must move towards some general human end, some divine goal.52

Contemporary writers are even more emphatic at this point. For, indeed, the rise of Christianity meant a radical reversal of man’s attitude towards the fact of history. It 52

Robert Flint, History of the Philosophy of History (Edinburgh and London:  Blackwood and Sons, 1893), 62 [GF].

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meant actually the discovery of the ‘historic dimension’, of the historic time. Strictly speaking, it was a recovery and extension of the biblical vision. Of course, no elaborate ‘philosophy of history’ can be found in the books of the Old Testament. Yet, there is in the Bible a comprehensive vision of history, a perspective of an unfolding time, running from a ‘beginning’ to an ‘end’, and guided by the will of God, leading His people to His own goal and purpose. In this perspective of dynamic history early Christians have assessed and interpreted their new experience, the Revelation of God in Christ Jesus. Classical historians held a very different view of human history. The Greeks and the Romans were indeed a history-writing people. But their vision of history was basically unhistorical. They were, of course, desperately interested in the facts of history, in the facts of the past. It might be expected that they would accordingly be well qualified for the historian’s task. In fact, by their basic conviction they were rather disqualified for that task. The Greek mind was ‘in the grip of the past’. It was, as it were, charmed by the past. But it was quite indifferent and uncertain with regard to the future. Now, the past itself acquires its historic character and significance only in the perspective of the future. ‘Time’s arrow’ was totally missing in the classical vision of human destiny. Great historians of Greece and Rome were not, in any sense, philosophers. At their best, they were fine observers, but rather moralists or artists, orators and politicians, preachers or rhetoricians, than thinkers. Ancient philosophers, again, were not interested in history, as such, as a contingent and accidental flux of events. They endeavoured, on the contrary, to eliminate history, to rule it out, as a disturbing phenomenon. Philosophers of ancient Greece were looking for the permanent and changeless, for the timeless and immortal. Ancient historiography was emphatically pessimistic. History was a story of unavoidable doom and decay. Men were confronted with a dilemma. On the one hand, they could simply ‘resign’ and reconcile themselves to the inevitability of ‘destiny’, and even find joy and satisfaction in the contemplation of harmony and splendour of the cosmic whole, however indifferent and inimical it might be to the aims and concern of individuals and societies. This was the catharsis of tragedy, as tragedy was understood in the classical world. Or, on the other hand, men could attempt an escape, a ‘flight’ out of history, out of this dimension of flux and change – the hopeless wheel of genesis and decay – into the dimension of the changeless. The ancient pattern of historical interpretation was ‘cosmic’, or ‘naturalistic’. On the one hand, there was a biological pattern of growth and decay, the common fate of everything living. On the other hand, there was an astronomical pattern of periodical recurrence, of circular motion of heavens and stars, a pattern of ‘revolutions’ and cycles. Indeed, both patterns belonged together, since the cycles of the earth were predetermined and controlled by the circles of the heavens. Ultimately, the course of history was but an aspect of the inclusive cosmic course, controlled by certain inviolable laws. These laws were implied in the structure of the universe. Hence the whole vision was essentially fatalistic. The ultimate principle was tychē [fortune] or heimarmenē [fate], the cosmic ‘destiny’ or fatum. Man’s destiny was implied and comprehended in that astronomical ‘necessity’. The Cosmos itself was conceived as an ‘eternal’ and ‘immortal’, but periodical and recurrent, being. There was an infinite and continuous reiteration of the same permanent pattern, a periodical renewal of situations and sequences. Consequently, there was no room for any progress, but only for ‘re-volutions’, recirculation, kyklophoria

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[circular motion] and anakyklōsis [recurring cycle].53 Nothing ‘new’ could be added to the closed perfection of this periodical system. Accordingly, there was no reason, and no motive, to look forward, into the future, as the future could but disclose that which was already preformed in the past, or rather in the very nature of things (physis). The permanent pattern could be better discerned in the past, which has been ‘completed’ or ‘perfected’ (perfectum), than in the uncertainty of the present and future. It was in the past that historians and politicians were looking for ‘patterns’ and ‘examples’. It was especially in the later philosophical systems of the Hellenistic age that these features of ‘permanence’ and ‘recurrence’ were rigidly emphasized  – by the Stoics, the Neopythagoreans, the Platonics, the Epicureans alike. Eadem sunt omnia semper [.  . .] nec magis [id hunc] est neque erit mox quam fuit ante [always everything’s the same . . . it prevails no more now, nor ever will do, than it did before].54 Professor Werner Jaeger admirably summarizes the main convictions of Aristotle: The coming-to-be and passing-away of earthly things is just as much a stationary revolution as the motion of the stars. In spite of its uninterrupted change nature has no history according to Aristotle, for organic becoming is held fast by the constancy of its forms in a rhythm that remains eternally the same. Similarly the human world of state and society and mind appears to him not as caught in the incalculable mobility of irrecapturable historical destiny, whether we consider personal life or that of nations and cultures, but as founded fast in the unalterable permanence of forms that while they change within certain limits remain identical in essence and purpose. This feeling about life is symbolized by the Great Year, at the close of which all the stars have returned to their original position and begin their course anew. In the same way cultures of the earth wax and wane, according to Aristotle, as determined by great natural catastrophes, which in turn are casually connected with the regular changes of the heavens. That which Aristotle at this instant newly discovers has been discerned a thousand times before, will be lost again, and one day discerned afresh.55

In this setting of thought there was no room for any conception of ‘history’, whether of the world or of man and human societies. There was a rhythm in the cosmic process, and consequently in the destiny of man, but no direction. History was not going or moving anywhere. It was only rotating. It had no end, as it had no goal. It had only structure. The 53

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Kyklophoria is a word of Aristotelian origin referring to circular motion or rotation and often used in reference to the circulation of the outermost heaven. Anakyklōsis or anakyklēsis refers to circular recurrence, cyclic motion or revolution, again usually of the heavens or the cosmos more generally [GF]. Lucretius, De rerum natura, III, 945 [and V, 1135: Florovsky has conflated lines from two parts of the poem into one, perhaps because he was citing it from memory (On the Nature of the Universe, trans. Ronald Melville, ed. Don and Peta Fowler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 96 (adapted), 169)] [GF]. Werner Jaeger, Aristoteles. Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung (Berlin:  Weidmann, 1923); English translation:  Aristotle, Fundamentals of the History of His Development, translated with the author’s corrections and additions by Richard Robinson, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 389 (italics mine). Cf. Octave Hamelin, Le Système d’Aristote [The System of Aristotle], 2nd ed. (Paris: L. Robin, 1931), 336ff.; Jacques Chevalier, La Notion du Nécessaire chez Aristote et chez ses prédécesseurs, particulièrement chez Platon [The Notion of Necessity in Aristotle and His Predecessors, especially Plato] (Paris:  Félix Alcan, 1915), 160ff.; René Mugnier, La Théorie du Premier Moteur et l’Evolution de la Pensée Aristotélienne [The Theory of the Unmoved Mover and the Evolution of

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whole of ancient philosophy was, in fact, a system of ‘general morphology’ of being. And it was also essentially political or social. Man was conceived as an essentially ‘social being’, zōon politikon, and his personal uniqueness was hardly acknowledged at all. Only ‘typical’ situations were regarded as relevant. Nor was the uniqueness of any event acknowledged. Only ‘patterns’ were relevant. There was a great variety of views and shades of opinion within this general and common pattern of the Greek and Hellenistic thought; there were inner tensions and conflicts therein, which must be carefully discerned and acknowledged. But the basic vision was the same in all these variations on the same theme: an ‘eternal Cosmos’, the ‘endless returns’, the ominous ‘wheel of genesis and decay’.56 Against this kind of background, and in this perspective, Christianity meant an intellectual revolution, a radical reversal of standards, a new vision and orientation. Christianity is an eschatological religion and, for that very reason, is essentially historical. Recent theological controversy has sorely obscured the meaning of these terms, and some explanation is required to prevent confusion and misunderstanding. The starting point of the Christian faith is the acknowledgement of certain actual events, in which God has acted, sovereignly and decisively, for man’s salvation, precisely ‘in these last days’. In this sense these facts  – Christ’s coming into the world, his Incarnation, his Cross and Resurrection, and the Descent of the Holy Spirit – are eschatological events: unique and ‘ultimate’, that is, decisive, ‘critical’ and crucial, wrought once forever, ephapax. In a certain sense, they are also final events, the accomplishment and fulfilment of the Messianic prophecy and promise. In this sense, they assume their significance in the perspective of a past history which they ‘conclude’ and ‘fulfil’. They are

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Aristotelian Thought] (Paris: J. Vrin, 1930), 24ff.; Jules Baudry, Le Problème de l’origine et de l’éternité de Monde dans la philosophie grecque de Platon à l’ère chrétienne [The Problem of the Origin and the Eternity of the World in Greek Philosophy from Plato to the Christian Era] (Paris: Les Belles-Lettres, 1931), especially chapters on Aristotle (pp. 99–206) and conclusion (299ff.) [GF]. Bernard Abraham van Groningen, ‘In the Grip of the Past, Essay on an Aspect of Greek Thought’, in Philosophia Antiqua, ed. by W. J. Verdenius and J. H. Waszink (Leiden:  E. J.  Brill, 1953), Vol. VI; Pierre Duhème, Le Système du Monde, Histoire des Doctrines Cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic [The System of the World: History of Cosmological Doctrines from Plato to Copernicus] (Paris: Hermann, 1913), t. I; (Paris: Hermann, 1914), t. II; Hans Meyer, ‘Zur Lehre von der Ewigen Wiederkunft aller Dinge’, in Beiträge zur Geschichte des christlichen Altertums und der byzantinischen Literatur. Festgabe Albert Ehrhard zum 60. Geburtstag, [‘On the Teaching of the Eternal Return of All Things’, in Essays on the History of Christian Antiquity and Byzantine Literature. Festschrift for Albert Ehrhard on his 60th Birthday] Albert M. Koeniger, ed. (Bonn/Leipzig: Kurt Schroeder, 1922), 359ff.; Jean Guitton, Le Temps et l’Eternité chez Plotin et St. Augustin [Time and Eternity in Plotinus and St Augustine] (Paris:  Boivin, 1933); John F. Callahan, Four Views of Time in Ancient Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.:  Harvard University Press, 1948); Victor Goldschmidt, Le système stoicien et l’Idée de temps [The System of the Stoics and the Iea of Time] (Paris: J. Vrin, 1953); Mircea Eliade, Kosmos und Geschichte. Der Mythos der Ewigen Wiederkehr [Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return (1954)] (Duesseldorf: Eugen Diederichs, 1953); Henri-Charles Puech, ‘Temps, Histoire et Mythe dans le Christianisme des premiers siècles’, [Time, History and Myth in the Christianity of the First Centuries] in the Proceedings of the 7th Congress for the History of Religions, Amsterdam, 4th–9th September 1950 (Amsterdam: North Holland Pub. Co., 1951), 33ff.; ‘La Gnose et le Temps’, [Gnosis and Time] in Eranos-Jahrbuch, Bd. XX/1951, Mensch und Zeit, [Humanity and Time] Olga Fröbe-Karteyn, ed. (Zurich: Rhein-Verlag, 1952), 57ff. An attempt of Wilhelm Nestle to prove that there existed a certain ‘philosophy of history’ in ancient Greece was unsuccessful; see his ‘Griechische Geschichtsphilosophie’ [Greek Philosophy of History] in Archiv fur die Geschichte der Philosophie, Bd. XLI, H. 1–2 (1932), 80–114. Nor are the remarks of Paul Schubert convincing; see his chapter, ‘The Twentieth-Century West and the Ancient Near East’, in The Idea of History in the Ancient Near East, ed. Robert C Dentan, American Oriental Series, Vol. 38 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955), 332ff. [GF].

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eschatological because they are historical, that is, because they are situated in a sequence of the antecedent events, and thereby validate retrospectively the whole series. In this sense, Christ is ‘the end of history’, that is, of a particular ‘section’ of history, though not of history as such. History, as such, is far from being terminated or abrogated by Christ’s coming, but is actually going on, and another eschatological event is anticipated and expected to terminate history, the Second Coming. This entire pattern of interpretation is definitely linear, running from the beginning to the end, from Creation to Consummation, but the line is broken, or rather ‘bent’, at a particular ‘crucial’ or ‘turning point. This point is the centre of history, of the ‘history of salvation’, die Heilsgeschichte. Yet, paradoxically, ‘beginning’, ‘centre’ and ‘end’ coincide, not at ‘events,’ but in the person of the Redeemer. Christ is both alpha and omega, ‘the First’ and ‘the Last’, as well as the centre. In another sense, Christ is precisely the Beginning. The new aion has been inaugurated in his coming. ‘The Old’ has been completed, but ‘the New’ just began. Time was in no sense ‘devaluated’ by Christ’s coming. On the contrary, time was validated by his coming, by him and through him. It was ‘consecrated’ and given meaning, the new meaning. In the light of Christ’s coming history now appears as a ‘pro-gress’, inwardly ordered towards ‘the end’, to which it unfailingly precipitates. The hopeless ‘cycles’ have been exploded, as St Augustine used to say. It was revealed that there was no rotation in history, but, on the contrary, an unfolding of a singular and universal purpose. In this perspective of a unique and universal history, all particular events are situated in an irreversible order. ‘Singularity’ of the events is acknowledged and secured. Now, it can be contended that the biblical vision of history was not, in fact, a ‘history of man’, but rather ‘the history of God’, the story of God’s rule in history. Indeed, the main emphasis of the Bible is precisely on God’s lordship, both in the world at large and in history in particular. But precisely because history was apprehended as ‘God’s history’, the ‘history of man’ was made possible. Man’s history was then apprehended as a meaningful story and no longer as a reiteration of the cosmic pattern, nor as a chaotic flux of happenings. The history of men was understood in the perspective of their salvation, that is, of the accomplishment of their destiny and justification of their existence. Man’s action has been thereby justified and stimulated, since he was given a task, and a purpose. God has acted, and His ultimate action in Christ Jesus was a consummation of His continuous actions in the past, ‘at sundry times and in diverse manners’ [Heb 1:1]. Yet, His manifold actions were not simply particular cases or instances of a certain general law, but were singular events. One can never suppress personal names in the Bible. The Bible can never be, as it were, ‘algebraized’. Names can never be replaced by symbols. There was a dealing of the Personal God with human persons. And this dealing culminated in the Person of Jesus Christ, who came ‘in the fullness of time’ [Gal 4:4], to ‘complete’ the Old and to ‘inaugurate’ the New. Accordingly, there are two basic themes in the Christian understanding of history. First, there is a retrospective theme: the story of the Messianic preparation. Second, there is a prospective theme, opening the vistas of the ‘end of history’. The Christian approach to history, so radically different from that of the ancient world, is by no means just a subjective reorientation of man in time. An existential revaluation of time itself is implied. Not only was the human attitude changed when a new and unique term of reference was inserted into the flux of events, but the character of historical time itself has been changed. What was of decisive importance was that God’s revelation in Jesus Christ was of an ultimate

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character, disclosing a new dimension of human existence. The decisive contribution of the Christian faith to the understanding of history was not in the detection of the radical ‘historicity’ of man’s existence, that is, of his finite relativity, but precisely in the discovery of perspective in history, in which man’s historical existence acquires relevance and meaning. Therefore, the modern existentialist emphasis on ‘man’s historicity’ is, in fact, neither historical nor distinctively Christian. It is, in many instances, rather a relapse into Hellenism. ‘Man’s historicity’ means, in certain existentialist interpretations, nothing more than man’s essential temporality, his inextricable involvement in the comprehensive context of passing occurrences, which brings him, finally, to extinction, to death. This diagnosis reminds one, however, more of the tragic insight of the Ancients than of the jubilant News of the Gospel. The original Christian kerygma not only intended to expose the misery and ‘nothingness’ of sinful man, and to announce the Divine judgement, but above all it proclaimed the value and dignity of man – God’s creature and adoptive child – and offered empirical man, miserable and spiritually destitute, God’s ‘enemy’, and yet beloved of God, the way of salvation. It was not only a condemnation of the Old, but an inauguration of the New, of ‘the acceptable year of the Lord’ [Lk 4:19 and Is 61:2]. Now, it is precisely at this point that a radical disagreement among Christian interpreters arises. Is there anything else to happen ‘in history’ which may have any ultimate existential relevance for man, after Christ’s coming? Or has everything that could be accomplished in history already been achieved? History, as a natural process, is, of course, still continuing – a human history. But does the Divine history continue as well? Has history any constructive value now, after Christ? Or any ‘meaning’ at all? It is sometimes contended that, since the ultimate Meaning has been already manifested and the Eschaton has already entered history, history has been, as it were, ‘closed’ and ‘completed’, as a meaningful process, and eschatology has been ‘realized’. This implies a specific interpretation of the ‘turning point’ of history, which was the coming of Christ. It is sometimes assumed that there was, indeed, a sacred history in the past, just up to the coming of Christ Jesus, in which it was ‘consummated’, but that after him there is in history only an empty flux of happenings, in which the nothingness and vanity of man is constantly being exposed and manifested, but nothing truly ‘eventful’ can ever take place, since there is nothing else to be accomplished within history. This assumption has been variously phrased and elaborated in contemporary theological thought. It may take a shape of the ‘realized Eschatology’, and then meaning is shifted from the realm of history to the realm of sacramental experience, in which the Eschaton is present and re-enacted.57 It may take the shape of a ‘consequent Eschatology’, and then history appears to be just a great Interim between the great events in the past and in the future, between the ‘first’ and ‘second’ comings of the Lord, devoid of any constructive value, just a period of hope and expectation. Or else history may be ‘interiorized’, and the realm of meaning would be confined to the experience of individual believers, making ‘decisions’.58 In all these cases, history as an actual course of events in time and space is

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See, e.g. C. H. Dodd, History and the Gospel (London:  Nisbet, 1938); cf. ‘Eschatology and History’, an appendix in The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments (New  York:  Harper, 1936 [new ed. in 1944]) [GF]. Rudolf Bultmann, History and Eschatology, The Gifford Lectures, 1955 (Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, 1955) [GF].

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denied any ‘sacred’ character, any positive significance. Its course is apprehended as a continuous unfolding of human vanity and impotence. It has been, in fact, recently suggested that ‘a Christian history’ is simply nonsense. It has been contended that ‘the message of the New Testament was not an appeal to historical action, but to repentance’, and that this message, ‘dismantled, as it were, the hopeless history of the world’.59 This radical eschatologism, which simply ‘dismantles’ all human history, is open to serious theological doubt. Indeed, it is a theological, and not a historical, assumption. It is rooted in a one-sided theological vision in which God alone is seen active, and man is just an object of Divine action, in wrath or mercy, and never an agent himself. But it is this ‘inhuman’ conception of man, and not ‘the message of the New Testament’, which makes nonsense of human history. The message of the New Testament, on the contrary, makes sense of history. In Christ, and by him, Time was itself, for the first time, radically and existentially validated. History has become sacred in its full dimension since ‘the Word was made flesh’ [Jn 1:14], and the Comforter descended into the world for its cleansing and sanctification. Christ is ever abiding in his Body, which is the Church, and in her the Heilsgeschichte is effectively continued. The Heilsgeschichte is still going on. It is obviously true that in practice it is utterly difficult to discern the pattern of this ongoing ‘history of salvation’ in the perplexity of historical events, and historians, including Christian historians, must be cautious and modest in their endeavour to decipher the hidden meaning of the particular events. Nevertheless, the historian must be aware of that new ‘situation’ which has been created in history by the Coming of Christ:  there is ‘now’ nothing ‘neutral’ in the human sphere itself, since the Cross and Resurrection, since the Pentecost. Accordingly, the whole of history, even ‘the hopeless history of the world’, appears now in the perspective of an ultimate, eschatological conflict. It was in this perspective that St Augustine undertook his survey of historical events in his story of the ‘Two Cities’. It may be difficult to relate the Heilsgeschichte to the general history of the world. On the other hand, the Church is in the world. Its actual history may be often distorted by worldly accretions. Yet ‘salvation’ has also a historical dimension. The Church is the leaven of history. As Cyril C. Richardson has aptly observed recently, the history of the Church bears a prophetic character, no less than the sacred history of the Bible. ‘It is a part of revelation – the story of the Holy Ghost.’60 One may suggest that in the modern ‘hyper-eschatologism’, with its implicit radical devaluation of history, we are facing in fact a revival of Hellenic anti-historicism, with its failure to ascertain any constructive value in temporal action. Of course, eschatologists of various descriptions protest their allegiance to the Bible and abhor and abjure all Hellenism. They would indignantly repudiate any charge of philosophism. However, the close dependence of Rudolf Bultmann upon Martin Heidegger is obvious. In fact, 59

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Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 196–197; cf. also his articles: ‘Skepsis und Glaube in der Geschichte’ [Scepticism and Belief in History] in Die Welt als Geschichte, [The World as History] Jh. X. 3 (1950), 143–155; ‘Christentum und Geschichte’, in Christentum und Geschichte, Vorträge der Tagung in Bochum vom 5. bis 8. Oktober 1954. [Christendom and History’, in Christendom and History: Lectures from the Conference in Bochum, 5–8 October 1954] Hrsg. vom Vorstand des Landesverbandes nordrheinwestfälischer Geschichtslehrer, 1. Aufl. (Duesseldorf: Schwann, 1955), 9–14 [GF]. Cyril C Richardson, ‘Church History Past and Present’, in Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 5 (November, 1949), 5–15 at 9 [GF].

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they advocate the same position as the Greek philosophy, so far as the understanding of history is concerned. Obviously there is a profound difference between a subjection to the fatum, whether it is conceived as a blind heimarmenē or as a ‘fiery Logos’, and the proclamation of an impending and imminent judgement of the eternal God. Yet in both cases human action is radically depreciated, if for different reasons, and is denied any constructive task. This makes the understanding of history an impossible and even a nonsensical endeavour, except in the form of a general exposure of man’s vanity and pride, of his utter impotence even in his ambition and pride. Under the guise of prophecy, history of this kind is in danger of degenerating into homiletic exercise. It is true that, in a certain sense, the modern radical eschatologism may be regarded as a logical consequence of the reduced conception of the Church, which was so characteristic of certain trends of the Reformation. The Church was still recognized as the area of an ‘invisible’ action and operation of God, but she was denied precisely her historical significance. The modern recovery of the integral doctrine of the Church, which cuts across the existing denominational borders, may lead to the recovery of a deeper historical insight and may restate history in its true existential dimension.61 Strangely enough, for those who reduce the Church to the role of an eschatological token and refuse to regard her as a kind of proleptic eschatology, history inevitably becomes again essentially a ‘political history’, as it was in classical times. It is again conceived as a story of states and nations, and as such it is denounced and condemned. Paradoxically, it ceases to be, in this interpretation, the history of man. It is assumed that man has nothing to do, that is, to create or to achieve. He simply expects judgement, or, in any case, stands under it. But in fact, man is becoming – or, indeed, is failing to become – himself precisely in his historical struggle and endeavour. Eschatologism, on the contrary, condemns man to a dreamy mysticism, that very trap and danger which eschatologists pretend and attempt to evade. He is doomed to detect and contemplate, unredeemably, the abyss of his nothingness, is exposed to dreams and nightmares of his own vanity and spiritual sickness. And a new mythology emerges out of these unhealthy dreams. Whatever kind of ‘man’s historicity’ may be claimed as a discovery of such an impoverished Christianity, the actual historicity of man is thereby, implicitly or often quite explicitly, denied and prohibited. Then history, in such an interpretation, actually becomes ‘hopeless’, without a task, without a theme, without any meaning. Now, the true history of man is not a political history, with its Utopian claims and illusions, but a history of the spirit, the story of man’s growth to the full stature of perfection, under the Lordship of the historical God-man, even of our Lord, Christ Jesus. It is a tragic story, indeed. And yet the seed matures, not only for judgement, but also for eternity. The Christian historian does not proceed actually ‘on Christian principles’, as is sometimes suggested. Christianity is not a set of principles. The Christian historian pursues his professional task of interpreting human life in the light of his Christian vision of that life, sorely distorted by sin, yet redeemed by Divine mercy, and healed by Divine grace, and called to the inheritance of an everlasting Kingdom. The Christian historian will, first of all, vindicate ‘the dignity of man’, even of fallen man. He will, then, protest 61

For a further elaboration of this topic, see my Dudleian Lecture, The Christian Dilemma, delivered at Harvard University on 30 April 1958 (still unpublished) [GF].

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against any radical scission of man into ‘empirical’ and ‘intelligible’ fractions (whether in a Kantian fashion or in any other), of which the former is doomed and only the latter is promised salvation. It is precisely the ‘empirical man’ who needs salvation, and salvation does not consist merely in a kind of disentanglement of the ‘intelligible character’ out of the empirical mess and bondage. Next, the Christian historian will attempt to reveal the actual course of events in the light of his Christian knowledge of man, but will be slow and cautious in detecting the ‘providential’ structure of actual history, in any detail. Even in the history of the Church ‘the hand of Providence’ is emphatically hidden, though it would be blasphemous to deny that this Hand does exist or that God is truly the Lord of History. Actually, the purpose of a historical understanding is not so much to detect the Divine action in history as to understand the human action, that is, human activities, in the bewildering variety and confusion in which they appear to a human observer. Above all, the Christian historian will regard history at once as a mystery and as a tragedy – a mystery of salvation and a tragedy of sin. He will insist on the comprehensiveness of our conception of man, as a prerequisite of our understanding of his existence, of his exploits, of his destiny, which is actually wrought in his history.62 The task of a Christian historian is by no means an easy task. But it is surely a noble task.

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The problem of ‘Christian history’ (in the double meaning of the word:  ‘actual history’ and ‘historiography’) has been extensively discussed in recent years and the literature is enormous. There are several competent surveys: Gustave Thils, ‘Bibliographie sur la theologie de l’histoire’[Bibliography on the Theology of History], in Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, 26 (1950), 87–95; Francesco Olgiati, ‘Rapporti tra storia, metafisica e religione. (A proposito dell’Enciclica Humani generis)’ [Relations among History, Metaphysics and Religion (On the Encyclical Humani generis)], in Rivista di filosofia neoscholastica, n.  1 (43) (1950), 49–84; Paul Henry, ‘The Christian Philosophy of History’, in Theological Studies, XIII.3 (1952), 419–433; see also R. L. Shinn, Christianity and the Problem of History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953); Meijer Cornelius Smit, De verouding van Christendom en Historie in der huidige Rooms-Katholieke geschiedbeschouwing [The Relationship of Christendom and History in Contemporary Roman Catholic Historical Reflection] (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1950) (with a French résumé).The following publications also should be especially mentioned in the context of the present article:  Oscar Cullmann, Christus und die Zeit: die urchristliche Zeitund Geschichtsauffassung (Zürich:  Evangelischer Verlag, 1945); English translation, Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History, trans. Floyd V. Filson (London: SCM Press, 1951); Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, Bd. III. 2 [Church Dogmatics, vol. II. 2] (ZollikonZürich:  Evangelischer Verlag, 1948), 524–780; John Marsh, The Fulness of Time (London:  Nisbet, 1952); Jean Daniélou, Essai sur le Mystère de l’Histoire [Essay on the Mystery of Time] (Paris:  Éd. du Seuil, 1953); Le Mystère de l’Avent [The Mystery of Advent] (Paris:  Éd. du Seuil, 1948); ‘The Conception of History in the Christian Tradition’, in On the Meaning of History  – Papers of the Ecumenical Institute, No. 5 (Geneva:  Oikoumene/The World Council of Churches, 1950), 67–79; Erich Frank, Philosophical Understanding and Religious Truth (New York:  Oxford University Press, 1945); ‘The Role of History in Christian Thought’, in The Duke Divinity School Bulletin, XIV, No. 3 (Nov. 1949), 66–77; H. Butterfield, Christianity and History (New York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950); E. C. Rust, The Christian Understanding of History (London:  Lutterworth Press, 1947); Reinhold Niebuhr, Faith and History:  A Comparison of Christian and Modern Views of  History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949); Pietro Chiocchetta, Teologia della storia: Saggi di sintesi patristiche [Theology of History: Essays in Patristic Synthesis] (Rome:  Editrice Studium, 1953); John McIntyre, The Christian Doctrine of History (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1957); Christopher Dawson, Dynamics of World History, ed. John J. Mulloy (New York:  Sheed & Ward, 1957); Jacques Maritain, On the Philosophy of History, ed. Joseph W. Evans (New  York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1957) [GF].

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Saint Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers

Georges Florovsky delivered this lecture in 1959 at Thessaloniki, Greece, on the occasion of the six hundredth anniversary of the Dormition of St Gregory Palamas, at which time the University of Thessaloniki conferred on him an honorary doctorate in theology. The text subsequently appeared in The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 5, no. 2 (1960): 119–131 and in Sobornost, 4, no. 4 (1961): 165–176 (Blane #151).

I ‘Following the Holy Fathers’  .  .  .  It was usual in the Ancient Church to introduce doctrinal statements by phrases like this. The Decree of Chalcedon opens precisely with these very words. The Seventh Ecumenical Council introduces its decision concerning the holy icons in a more elaborate way: ‘Following the divinely inspired teaching of the Holy Fathers and the Tradition of the Catholic Church.’ The didaskalia [teaching] of the Fathers is the formal and normative term of reference. Now, this was much more than just an ‘appeal to antiquity’. Indeed, the Church always stresses the permanence of her faith through the ages, from the very beginning. This identity, since the apostolic times, is the most conspicuous sign and token of right faith – always the same. In the famous phrase of Vincent of Lerins,1 in ipsa item catholica ecclesia magnopere curandum est ut id teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est [In the catholic Church herself, all possible care must be taken to uphold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always and by all] (Commonitorium, I.2 [PL 50.640]). The Church holds fast to what has been always believed, everywhere and by all. Yet, ‘antiquity’ by itself is not an adequate proof of the true faith. Moreover, the Christian message was obviously a striking ‘novelty’ for the ‘ancient world’, and, indeed, a call to radical ‘renovation’. The ‘Old’ has passed away, and everything has been ‘made New’ [cf. 2 Cor 5:17]. On the other hand, heresies could also appeal to the past and invoke the authority of certain ‘traditions’. In fact, 1

St Vincent of Lérins (+ c. 445) was a Gallic Christian author, a monk of the Lérins Abbey on the island of Saint Honorat in the Mediterranean Sea [Eds.].

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heresies were often lingering in the past.2 Archaic formulas can often be dangerously misleading. Vincent of Lerins himself was fully aware of this danger. It would suffice to quote this pathetic passage of his: And now, what an amazing reversal of the situation! the authors of the same opinion are adjudged to be Catholics, but the followers – heretics; the masters are absolved, the disciples are condemned; the writers of the books will be children of the Kingdom, their followers will go to Gehenna – Et o mira rerum conversio! Auctores ejusdem opinionis catholici, consectatores vero haeretici judicantur; absolvuntur magistri, condemnantur discipuli; conscriptores librorum filii regni erunt, adsertores vero gehenna suscipiet. (Commonitorium, I.6 [PL 50.646])

Vincent had in mind, of course, St Cyprian and the Donatists. St Cyprian himself was facing the same situation. ‘Antiquity’ as such may happen to be just an inveterate prejudice: Nam antiquitas [in Vincent: consuetudo, custom] sine veritate vetustas erroris est [For antiquity without truth is age-old error] (Epist. 74.9 [CSEL III.2, 806]). And again: Dominus, Ego sum, inquit, veritas. Non dixit, Ego sum consuetudo [The Lord said, ‘I am truth’. He did not say, ‘I am custom’] (Sententiae episcoporum numero LXXXVI haereticis baptizandis, 30 [CSEL III.1, 448]).3 It is to say – ‘old customs’ as such do not guarantee the truth. ‘Truth’ is not just a ‘habit’. The true tradition is only the tradition of truth, traditio veritatis. This tradition, according of St Irenaeus, is grounded in, and secured by, that charisma veritatis certum [the sure gift of truth], which has been ‘deposited’ in the Church from the very beginning and has been preserved by the uninterrupted succession of Episcopal ministry:  qui cum episcopatus successione charisma veritatis certum  .  .  .  acceperunt [those who, with the episcopal succession, have received the sure gift of truth] (Adv. haeres., IV, 26, 2 [PG 7/1.1053C-1054A]). ‘Tradition’ in the Church is not a continuity of human memory, or a permanence of rites and habits. It is a living tradition – depositum juvenescens [an ever-rejuvenated deposit], in the phrase of St Irenaeus [Adv. haeres., III, 24, 1 (PG 7/1.966B)]. Accordingly, it cannot be counted inter mortuas regulas [among dead rules]. Ultimately, tradition is a continuity of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church, a continuity of divine guidance and illumination. The Church is not bound by the ‘letter’. Rather, she is constantly moved forth by the ‘spirit’. The same Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, which ‘spake through the Prophets’, which guided the Apostles, is still continuously guiding the Church into the fuller comprehension and understanding of the divine truth, from glory to glory.

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It has been recently suggested that Gnostics were actually the first to invoke formally the authority of an ‘Apostolic Tradition’ and that it was their usage which moved St Irenaeus to elaborate his own conception of Tradition. D. B. Reynders, ‘Paradosis:  Le progrès de l’idée de tradition jusqu’ à Saint Irénée’[Paradosis: The development of the idea of tradition to St Irenaeus], Recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale, 5 (Louvain, 1933), 155–191. In any case, Gnostics used to refer to ‘tradition’ [GF]. This saying is by Libosus of Vaga (in modern-day Tunisia) (+258)  from the records of the Carthaginian Council of September 256 (which pronounced against the validity of heretical baptisms), held under the presidency of Cyprian of Carthage (210–258) [Eds.].

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‘Following the Holy Fathers’ . . . This is not a reference to some abstract tradition, in formulas and propositions. It is primarily an appeal to holy witnesses. Indeed, we appeal to the Apostles, and not just to an abstract ‘Apostolicity’. In the similar manner do we refer to the Fathers. The witness of the Fathers belongs, intrinsically and integrally, to the very structure of Orthodox belief. The Church is equally committed to the kerygma of the Apostles and to the dogma of the Fathers. We may quote at this point an admirable ancient hymn (probably from the pen of St Romanus the Melodist). ‘Preserving the kerygma of the Apostles and the dogmas of the Fathers, the Church has sealed the one faith and wearing the tunic of truth she shapes rightly the brocade of heavenly theology and praises the great mystery of piety.’4 The Church is ‘Apostolic’ indeed. But the Church is also ‘Patristic’. She is intrinsically ‘the Church of the Fathers’. These two ‘notes’ cannot be separated. Only by being ‘Patristic’ is the Church truly ‘Apostolic’. The witness of the Fathers is much more than simply a historic feature, a voice from the past. Let us quote another hymn – from the office of the Three Hierarchs: By the word of knowledge you have composed the dogmas which the fishermen have established first in simple words, in knowledge by the power of the Spirit, for thus our simple piety had to acquire composition. Tōi logōi tēs gnōseōs synistate ta dogmata, ha to prin en logois haplois kateballonto alieis en gnōsei dynamei tou Pneumatos, edei gar kai outō to haploun ēmōn sebas tēn systasin ktēsasthai.5

There are, as it were, two basic stages in the proclamation of the Christian faith. ‘Our simple faith had to acquire composition.’ There was an inner urge, an inner logic, an internal necessity, in this transition – from kerygma to dogma. Indeed, the teaching of the Fathers, and the dogma of the Church, are still the same ‘simple message’ which has been once delivered and deposited, once for ever, by the Apostles [1 Tim 6:20; 2 Tim 1:12–14 (Vulg), Jude 1:3]. But now it is, as it were, properly and fully articulated. The apostolic preaching is kept alive in the Church, not only merely preserved. In this sense, the teaching of the Fathers is a permanent category of Christian existence, a constant and ultimate measure and criterion of right faith. Fathers are not only witnesses of the old faith, testes antiquitatis. They are rather witnesses of the true faith, testes veritatis. ‘The mind of the Fathers’ is an intrinsic term of reference in Orthodox theology, no less than the word of the Holy Writ, and indeed never separated from it. As it has been well said recently, ‘The Catholic Church of all ages is not merely a daughter of the Church of the Fathers – she is and remains the Church of the Fathers.’6 4

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Paul Maas, ed., Frühbyzantinische Kirchenpoesie, Bd. I, Anonyme Hymnen des V–VI Jahrhunderts, KlT 52–53 [Early Byzantine Church Poetry, Vol. I, Anonymous Hymns of the V-VI Centuries] (Bonn: A. Marcus & E. Webers Verlag, 1910), s. 24 [GF]. This is part of a sessional hymn after the third ode of the canon of Matins of the Feast of the Synaxis of the Three Hierarchs (one of the major feasts in Orthodoxy celebrating theology): St Basil the Great, St Gregory the Theologian and St John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople (30 January) [Eds.]. Louis Bouyer, ‘Le renouveau des études patristiques’ [The renewal of patristic studies], La Vie Intellectuelle, 15 (Feb. 1947), 6–25 at 18: ‘L’Église catholique de tous les temps n’est pas seulement la fille de l’Église des Pères, mais elle est et demeure l’ Église des Pères’ [The Catholic Church throughout the ages is not only the daughter of the Church of the Fathers, but she is and remains the Church of the Fathers] [GF].

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The main distinctive mark of patristic theology was its ‘existential’ character, if we may use this current neologism.7 The Fathers theologized, as St Gregory of Nazianzus put it, ‘in the manner of the Apostles, not in that of Aristotle’ – alieutikōs [=fisherman], all’ ouk Aristotelikōs (Hom. 23, 12 [PG 35.1164C]). Their theology was still a ‘message’, a kerygma. Their theology was still ‘kerygmatic theology’, even if it was often logically arranged and supplied with intellectual arguments. The ultimate reference was there still to the vision of faith, to spiritual knowledge and experience. Apart from life in Christ theology carries no conviction and, if separated from the life of faith, Theology may degenerate into empty dialectics, a vain polylogia, without any spiritual consequence. Patristic theology was existentially rooted in the decisive commitment of faith. It was not a self-explanatory ‘discipline’ which could be presented argumentatively, that is, Aristotelikōs [in the manner of Aristotle] without any prior spiritual engagement. In the age of theological strife and incessant debates, the great Cappadocian Fathers formally protested against the use of dialectics, of ‘Aristotelian syllogisms’, and endeavoured to refer theology back to the vision of faith. Patristic theology could be only ‘preached’ or ‘proclaimed’ – preached from the pulpit, proclaimed also in the words of prayer and in the sacred rites, and indeed manifested in the total structure of Christian life. Theology of this kind can never be separated from the life of prayer and from the exercise of virtue. ‘The climax of purity is the beginning of theology’, as St John the Climakos puts it: Telos de agneias hypothesis theologias (Scala Paradisi, 30.20 [PG 88.1157C]). On the other hand, theology of this type is always, as it were, ‘propaideutic’, since its ultimate aim and purpose is to ascertain and to acknowledge the Mystery of the Living God, and indeed to bear witness to it, in word and deed. ‘Theology’ is not an end in itself. It is always but a way. Theology, and even the ‘dogmas’, present no more than an intellectual ‘contour’ of the revealed truth, and a ‘noetic’ testimony to it. Only in the act of faith is this ‘contour’ filled with content. Christological formulas are fully meaningful only for those who have encountered the Living Christ, and have received and acknowledged Him as God and Saviour, and are dwelling by faith in Him, in His Body, the Church. In this sense, theology is never a self-explanatory discipline. It is constancy appealing to the vision of faith. ‘What we have seen and have heard we announce to you’ [1 Jn 1:3]. Apart from this ‘announcement’ theological formulas are empty and of no consequence. For the same reason these formulas can never be taken ‘abstractly’, that is, out of total context of belief. It is misleading to single out particular statements of the Fathers and to detach them from the total perspective in which they have been actually uttered, just as it is misleading to manipulate with detached quotations from the Scripture. It is a dangerous habit ‘to quote’ the Fathers, that is, their isolated sayings and phrases; outside of that concrete setting in which only they have their full and proper meaning and are truly alive. ‘To follow’ the Fathers does not 7

Florovsky may have been influenced here by his former student at the St Sergius Institute in Paris, Fr John Meyendorff (1926–1992). Meyendorff, in light of the then current French existentialism and Roman Catholic personalism, argued that patristic theology, Palamas and hesychasm in particular, was an ‘existential theology’ or even a ‘Christian existentialism’, as distinct from (so the argument goes) a nominalist, rationalist and essentialist approach to theology (i.e. ‘scholasticism’). Cf. John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, trans. George Lawrence (London: Faith Press, 1964), 202– 227 [Eds.].

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mean just ‘to quote’ them. ‘To follow’ the Fathers means to acquire their ‘mind’, their phronēma. Now, we have reached the crucial point. The name of ‘Church Fathers’ is usually restricted to the teachers of the Ancient Church. And it is currently assumed that their authority depends upon their ‘antiquity’, upon their comparative nearness to the ‘Primitive Church’, to the initial ‘Age’ of the Church. Already St Jerome had to contest this idea. Indeed, there was no decrease of ‘authority’; and no decrease in the immediacy of spiritual competence and knowledge, in the course of Christian history. In fact, however, this idea of ‘decrease’ has strongly affected our modern theological thinking. In fact, it is too often assumed, consciously or unconsciously, that the Early Church was, as it were, closer to the spring of truth. As an admission of our own failure and inadequacy, as an act of humble self-criticism, such an assumption is sound and helpful. But it is dangerous to make of it the starting point or basis of our ‘theology of Church history’, or even of our theology of the Church. Indeed, the Age of the Apostles should retain its unique position. Yet, it was just a beginning. It is widely assumed that the ‘Age of the Fathers’ has also ended, and accordingly it is regarded just as an ancient formation, ‘antiquated’ in a sense and ‘archaic’. The limit of the ‘Patristic Age’ is variously defined. It is usual to regard St John of Damascus as the ‘last Father’ in the East, and St Gregory the Dialogos or Isidore of Seville as ‘the last’ in the West. This periodization has been justly contested in recent times. Should not, for instance, St Theodore of Studium, at least, be included among ‘the Fathers’? Already Mabillon8 suggested that Bernard of Clairvaux, the Doctor mellifluous, was ‘the last of the Fathers, and surely not unequal to the earlier ones’.9 Actually, it is more than a question of periodization. From the Western point of view ‘the Age of the Fathers’ has been succeeded, and indeed superseded, by ‘the Age of the Schoolmen’, which was an essential step forward. Since the rise of scholasticism ‘Patristic theology’ has been antiquated, has become actually a ‘past age’, a kind of archaic prelude. This point of view, legitimate for the West, has been most unfortunately accepted also by many in the East, blindly and uncritically. Accordingly, one has to face the alternative. Either one has to regret the ‘backwardness’ of the East which never developed any ‘scholasticism’ of its own. Or one should retire into the ‘Ancient Age’, in a more or less archaeological manner, and practise what has been wittily described recently as a ‘theology of repetition’.10 The latter, in fact, is just a peculiar form of imitative ‘scholasticism’. Now, it is not seldom suggested that, probably, ‘the Age of the Fathers’ has ended much earlier than St John of Damascus. Very often one does not proceed further than the Age of Justinian, or even already the Council of Chalcedon. Was not Leontius of Byzantium already ‘the first of the Scholastics’?11 Psychologically, this attitude is quite 8

9 10

11

Dom Jean Mabillon (1632–1707) was a French Benedictine monk of St Maur who complied an edition of the works of St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) [Eds.]. Mabillon, Bernardi Opera, Praefatio generalis, n. 23, PL 182, 26 [GF]. This well-known phase of Florovsky is most likely from John Meyendorff ’s A Study of Gregory Palamas, 238, where he describes anti-Palamite ultra-traditionalists [Eds.]. Leontius of Byzantium (6th c.) was a prominent and widely influential anti-monophysite and proChalcedonian theologian. His key work was  Libri III contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos [Three Books against the Nestorians and Eutychians]. He is best known for the famous Christological distinction between the hypostasis/individual thing and the hypostatic (to enhypostaton), that which is individualized, that is, the nature or essence. These two terms are usually used together with the

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comprehensible, although it cannot be theologically justified. Indeed, the Fathers of the fourth century are much more impressive, and their unique greatness cannot be denied. Yet, the Church remained fully alive also after Nicea and Chalcedon. The current overemphasis on the ‘first five centuries’ dangerously distorts theological vision, and prevents the right understanding of the Chalcedonian dogma itself. The decree of the Sixth Ecumenical Council is often regarded as a kind of an ‘appendix’ to Chalcedon, interesting only for theological specialists, and the great figure of St Maximus the Confessor is almost completely ignored. Accordingly, the theological significance of the Seventh Ecumenical Council is dangerously obscured, and one is left to wonder why the Feast of Orthodoxy should be related to the commemoration of Church’s victory over the Iconoclasts. Was it not just a ‘ritualistic controversy’?12 We often forget that the famous formula of the Consensus quinquesaecularis,13 that is, actually, up to Chalcedon, was a Protestant formula, and reflected a peculiar Protestant ‘theology of history’. It was a restrictive formula, as much as it seemed to be too inclusive to those who wanted to be secluded in the Apostolic Age. The point is, however, that the current Eastern formula of ‘the Seven Ecumenical Councils’ is hardly much better, if it tends, as it usually does, to restrict or to limit the Church’s spiritual authority to the first eight centuries, as if ‘the Golden Age’ of Christianity has already passed and we are now, probably, already in an Iron Age, much lower on the scale of spiritual vigour and authority. Our theological thinking has been dangerously affected by the pattern of decay, adopted for the interpretation of Christian history in the West since the Reformation. The fullness of the Church was then interpreted in a static manner, and the attitude to antiquity has been accordingly distorted and misconstrued. After all, it does not make much difference, whether we restrict the normative authority of the Church to one century, or to five, or to eight. There should be no restriction at all. Consequently, there is no room for any ‘theology of repetition’. The Church is still fully authoritative as she has been in the ages past, since the Spirit of Truth quickens her now no less effectively as in the ancient times. One of the immediate results of our careless periodization is that we simply ignore the legacy of Byzantine theology. We are prepared, now more than only a few decades ago, to admit the perennial authority of ‘the Fathers’, especially since the revival of Patristic studies in the West. But we still tend to limit the scope of admission, and obviously ‘Byzantine theologians’ are not readily counted among the ‘Fathers’. We are inclined to

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idea of anhypostasia or a nature existing apart from a hypostasis. An interpretation of this distinction was central to Florovsky’s Christology (see Ch. 3, ‘In Ligno Crucis: The Church Fathers’ Doctrine of Redemption’, n. 10, 76; and Ch. 4, ‘The Lamb of God’, n. 24, 90–91, in this book). For texts, see Leontius of Byzantium: Complete Works, ed. and trans. Brian E. Daley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) [Eds.]. The Sunday of Orthodoxy is the first Sunday of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church, commemorating the restoration of icons in 842 [Eds.]. Consensus quinquesaecularis: literally ‘consensus of the first five centuries’, a term coined by Georg Calixtus (1586–1656), an ecumenically minded German Lutheran theologian. This approach to patristic and conciliar theology, which regarded the first five centuries as the foundation of classical Christianity and all later teachings as not part of the ‘essentials’ of the Christian faith, was Anglican, as Florovsky well knew from his many contacts with Anglicans. It was promoted by the Oxford Movement in the notion that the Church of England represented a via media, founded on the early councils, between Rome and Wittenberg. [Eds.].

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discriminate rather rigidly between ‘Patristics’ – in a more or less narrow sense – and ‘Byzantinism’. We are still inclined to regard ‘Byzantinism’ as an inferior sequel to the Patristic Age. We have still doubts about its normative relevance for theological thinking. Now, Byzantine theology was much more than just a ‘repetition’ of Patristic theology, nor was that which was new in it of an inferior quality in comparison with ‘Christian Antiquity’. Indeed, Byzantine theology was an organic continuation of the Patristic Age. Was there any break? Has the ethos of the Eastern Orthodox Church been ever changed, at a certain historic point or date, which, however has never been unanimously identified, so that the ‘later’ development was of lesser authority and importance, if of any? This admission seems to be silently implied in the restrictive commitment to the Seven Ecumenical Councils. Then, St Symeon the New Theologian and St Gregory Palamas are simply left out, and the great Hesychast Councils of the fourteenth century are ignored and forgotten. What is their position and authority in the Church? Now, in fact, St Symeon and St Gregory are still authoritative masters and inspirers of all those who, in the Orthodox Church, are striving after perfection, and are living the life of prayer and contemplation, whether in the surviving monastic communities or in the solitude of the desert, and even in the world. These faithful people are not aware of any alleged ‘break’ between ‘Patristics’ and ‘Byzantinism’. The Philokalia,14 this great encyclopaedia of Eastern piety, which includes writings of many centuries, is, in our own days, increasingly becoming the manual of guidance and instruction for all those who are eager to practise Orthodoxy in our contemporary situation. The authority of its compiler, St Nikodemus of the Holy Mount, has been recently recognized and enhanced by his formal canonization in the Church.15 In this sense, we are bound to say, ‘the Age of the Fathers’ still continues in ‘the Worshipping Church’. Should it not continue also in our theological pursuit and study, research and instruction? Should we not recover ‘the mind of the Fathers’ also in our theological thinking and teaching? To recover it, indeed, not as an archaic manner or pose, and not just as a venerable relic, but as an existential attitude, as a spiritual orientation. Only in this way can our theology be reintegrated into the fullness of our Christian existence. It is not enough to keep a ‘Byzantine liturgy’, as we do, to restore Byzantine iconography and Byzantine music, as we are still reluctant to do consistently, and to practise certain Byzantine modes of devotion. One has to go to the very roots of this traditional ‘piety’, and to recover the ‘Patristic mind’. Otherwise we may be in danger of being inwardly 14

15

The Philokalia, first published in Venice in 1782 and subsequently translated into Slavonic and Russian in the nineteenth century, is a collection of key ascetical and mystical writings from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries, edited by St Nikodimos the Hagiorite (St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain) (c. 1749–1809) and St Makarios of Corinth (1731–1805) (see The Philokalia: The Complete Text Compiled by St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth, trans. and ed. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware, 5 vols. (London: Faber and Faber, 1979–) (fifth and final volume forthcoming) [Eds.]. St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain (1749–1809) was a Greek monk who lived on Mount Athos for most of his life. He was a vastly influential spiritual writer and commentator on the Orthodox canon law in his Pidalion (Pedalion) or Rudder (Leipzig, 1800; The Rudder (Pedalion):  Of the Metaphorical Ship of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of the Orthodox Christians or All the Sacred and Divine Canons, trans. Denver Cummings [Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957]). The Ecumenical Patriarchate canonized Nikodimos on 31 May 1955 at the request of the Monasteries of Mount Athos. His feast day is 14 July [Eds.].

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split – as many in our midst actually are – between the ‘traditional’ forms of ‘piety’ and a very untraditional habit of theological thinking. It is a real danger. As ‘worshippers’ we are still in ‘the tradition of the Fathers’. Should we not stand, conscientiously and avowedly, in the same tradition also as ‘theologians’, as witnesses and teachers of Orthodoxy? Can we retain our integrity in any other way?

II All these preliminary considerations are highly relevant for our immediate purpose. We are gathered here in these days to commemorate St Gregory Palamas. What is his theological legacy? St Gregory was not a speculative theologian. He was a monk and a bishop. He was not concerned about abstract problems of philosophy, although he was well trained in this field too. He was concerned solely with problems of Christian existence. As a theologian, he was simply an interpreter of the spiritual experience of the Church. Almost all his writings, except probably his homilies, were occasional writings. He was wrestling with the problems of his own time. And it was a critical time, an age of controversy and anxiety. Indeed, it was also an age of spiritual renewal. St Gregory was suspected of subversive innovations by his enemies in his own time. This charge is still maintained against him in the West.16 In fact, however, St Gregory was deeply rooted in the tradition. It is not difficult to trace most of his views and motives back to the Cappadocian Fathers and to St Maximus the Confessor, who was, by the way, one of the most popular masters of Byzantine thought and devotion. Indeed, St Gregory was also intimately acquainted with the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius. He was rooted in the tradition. Yet, in no sense was his theology just a ‘theology of repetition’. It was a creative extension of ancient tradition. Its starting point was Life in Christ. Of all themes of St Gregory’s theology let us single out but one, the crucial one, and the most controversial. What is the basic character of Christian existence? The ultimate aim and purpose of human life was defined in the Patristic tradition as theōsis [deification, divinization]. The term is rather offensive for the modern ear. It cannot be adequately rendered in any modern language, nor even in Latin. Even in Greek it is rather heavy and pretentious. Indeed, it is a daring word. The meaning of the word is, however, simple and lucid. It was one of the crucial terms in the Patristic vocabulary. It would suffice to quote at this point but St Athanasius. Gegone gar anthrōpos, hin’ hēmas en eautōi theopoiēsēi [For he became man, that he might deify us in himself] (Αd Adelphium, 4 [PG 26.1077A]). Autos gar enēnthrōpēsen, hina hēmeis theopoiēthōmen [For he was made man, that we might be deified] (De Incarnatione, 54 [PG 25.192B]). St Athanasius actually resumes here the favourite idea of St Irenaeus:  qui propter immensam dilectionem suam factus est quod sumus nos, uti nos perficeret esse quod est ipse [who, through his transcendent love, was made what we are, that he might 16

See Vladimir Lossky, ‘The Problem of the Vision Face to Face and Byzantine Tradition’, in The Vision of God, trans. Asheleigh Moorhouse (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973), 11–24; A. N. Williams, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3–33; and Marcus Plested, Orthodox Readings of Aquinas (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2012) [Eds.].

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bring us even to what he himself is] (Adv. haeres. V, Praefatio [PG 7/2.1120B]). It was the common conviction of the Greek Fathers. One can quote at length St Gregory of Nazianzus, St Gregory of Nyssa, St Cyril of Alexandria, St Maximus and indeed St Symeon the New Theologian. Man ever remains what he is, that is – creature. But he is promised and granted, in Christ Jesus, the Word made Man, an intimate sharing in what is divine: Life everlasting and incorruptible. The main characteristic of theosis is, according to the Fathers, precisely ‘immortality’ or ‘incorruption’. For God ‘alone has immortality’ – o monos echōn athanasian (1 Tim 6:6). But man now is admitted into an intimate ‘communion’ with God, through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. And this is much more than just a ‘moral’ communion, and much more than just a human perfection. Only the word theosis can render adequately the uniqueness of the promise and offer. The term theosis is indeed quite embarrassing, if we would think in ‘ontological’ categories. Indeed, man simply cannot ‘become’ god. But the Fathers were thinking in ‘personal’ terms, and the mystery of personal communion was involved at this point. Theosis meant a personal encounter. It is that intimate intercourse of man with God, in which the whole of human existence is, as it were, permeated by the Divine Presence.17 Yet, the problem remains: How can even this intercourse be compatible with the divine transcendence? And this is the crucial point. Does man really encounter God, in this present life on earth? Does man encounter God, truly and verily, in his present life of prayer? Or, is there no more than an actio in distans [action at a distance]? The common claim of the Eastern Fathers was that in his devotional ascent man actually encounters God and beholds His eternal glory. Now, how is it possible, if God ‘abides in the light unapproachable’ [1 Tim 6:16]? The paradox was especially sharp in the Eastern theology, which has been always committed to the belief that God was absolutely ‘incomprehensible’ – akatalēptos – and unknowable in His nature or essence. This conviction was powerfully expressed by the Cappadocian Fathers, especially in their struggle against Eunomius, and also by St John Chrysostom, in his magnificent discourses Peri Akatalēptou [On Incomprehensibility]. Thus, if God is absolutely ‘unapproachable’ in His essence, and accordingly His essence simply cannot be ‘communicated’, how can theosis be possible at all? ‘One insults God who seeks to apprehend His essential being’, says Chrysostom. Already in St Athanasius we find a clear distinction between God’s very ‘essence’ and His powers and bounty: Kai en pasi men esti kata tēn heautou agathotēta kai dynamin, exō de tōn pantōn palin esti kata tēn idian physin [And he is within all according to his own goodness and power, but outside all according to his proper nature] (De Decretis, 11 [PG 25.441D]). The same conception was carefully elaborated by the Cappadocians. The ‘essence of God’ is absolutely inaccessible to man, says St Basil:  Aperinoētos anthrōpou physei kai arrētos pantelōs hē ousia tou Theou [The essence of God is altogether incomprehensible and ineffable to human nature] (Adv. Eunomium, 1, 14 17

Cf. Myrrha Lot-Borodine, ‘La doctrine de la ‘déification’ dans l’Église grecque jusqu’au XIe siècle’ [The Doctrine of ‘Deification’ in the Greek Church to the Eleventh Century] Revue de l’histoire des religions, 105, 1 (1932), 5–43; 106, 2/3 (1932), 525–574; 107, 1 (1933), 8–55 [GF] [republished in Myrrha Lot-Borodine, La Déification de l’homme selon la doctrine des pères grecs [The Deification of Man according to the Doctrine of the Greek Fathers] (Paris: Le Cerf, 1970) [Eds.]].

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[PG 29.545A]). We know God only in His actions, and by His actions:  Hēmeis de ek men tōn energeiōn gnōrizein legomen ton Theon hēmōn, tēi de ousiai autēi prosengizein ouch hypischnoumetha:  hai men gar energeiai autou pros hēmas katabainousin, hē de ousia autou menei aprositos. [We ourselves say that we know our God from [his] energies, but we do not venture to draw near to his essence itself: for his energies come down to us, but his essence remains unapproachable] (Epist. 234, ad Amphilochium [PG 32.869A-B]). Yet, it is a true knowledge, not just a conjecture or deduction:  hai energeiai autou pros hēmas katabainousin [His energies come down to us]. In the phrase of St John of Damascus, these actions or ‘energies’ of God are the true revelation of God Himself:  ē theia ellampsis kai energeia [the divine effulgence and energy] (De Fide Orth., 1, 14 [PG 94.860C]). It is a real presence, and not merely a certain praesentia operativa, sicut agens adest ei in quod agit [presence in operation, as an agent is present to that upon which it works].18 This mysterious mode of Divine Presence, in spite of the absolute transcendence of the Divine Essence, passes all understanding. But it is no less certain for that reason. St Gregory Palamas stands in an ancient tradition at this point. In His ‘energies’ the unapproachable God mysteriously approaches man. And this divine move effects encounter: proodos eis ta exō [Procession to what is without], the phrase of St Maximus (Scholia in De Div. Nom., 1, 5 [PG 4.205C]).19 St Gregory begins with the distinction between ‘grace’ and ‘substance’:  ē theia kai theopoios ellampsis kai charis ouch ousia, all’ energeia esti Theou [The divine and deifying effulgence and grace is not the essence, but the energy of God] (Capita Phys., Theol., etc., 69 [PG 150.1169C]). This basic distinction has been formally accepted and elaborated at the Great Councils of Constantinople, 1341 and 1351. Those who would deny this distinction were anathematized and excommunicated. The anathematisms of the council of 1351 were included in the rite for the Sunday of Orthodoxy, in the Triodion. Orthodox theologians are bound by this decision. The essence of God is absolutely amethektē [imparticipable]. The source and the power of human theosis is [are] not the divine essence, but the ‘Grace of God’:  theopoios energeia, hēs ta metechonta theountai, theia tis esti charis, all’ ouch hē physis tou Theou [the deifying energy, which deifies those who participate in it, constitutes divine grace, but is not the nature of God] (ibid., 93 [PG 150.1188B]). Charis [grace] is not identical with the ousia [essence]. It is theia kai aktistos charis kai energeia [divine and uncreated grace and energy] (ibid., 68 [PG 150.1169A]). This distinction, however, does not imply or effect division or separation. Nor is it just an ‘accident’, oute symbebēkotos (ibid., 127 [PG 150.1209D]). Energies ‘proceed’ from God and manifest His own Being. The term proïenai [going forth] simply suggests diakrisin [separation], but not a division:  ei kai dienēnoche tēs physeōs, ou diastatai hē tou Pneumatos charis [Even if it differs from the nature, the grace of the Spirit is not separate (from it)] (Theophanes, PG 940C). 18

19

The second part of the citation (sicut agens adest ei in quod agit) is from St Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, I, 8, I, 4 [Eds.]. These scholia on Dionysius have been long attributed to Maximus the Confessor, but are now believed to be the work of John of Scythopolis (sixth century). See Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 3, 34, in this book [Eds.].

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Actually, the whole teaching of St Gregory presupposes the action of the Personal God. God moves towards man and embraces him by His own ‘grace’ and action, without leaving that hōs aprositon [unapproachable light], in which He eternally abides. The ultimate purpose of St Gregory’s theological teaching was to defend the reality of Christian experience. Salvation is more than forgiveness. It is a genuine renewal of man. And this renewal is effected not by the discharge or release of certain natural energies implied in man’s own creaturely being, but by the ‘energies’ of God Himself, who thereby encounters and encompasses man, and admits him into communion ‘with Himself ’. In fact, the teaching of St Gregory affects the whole system of theology, the whole body of Christian doctrine. It starts with the clear distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘will’ of God. This distinction was also characteristic of the Eastern tradition, at least since St Athanasius. It may be asked at this point: Is this distinction compatible with the ‘simplicity’ of God? Should we not rather regard all these distinctions as merely logical conjectures, necessary for us, but ultimately without any ontological significance? As a matter of fact, St Gregory Palamas was attacked by his opponents precisely from that point of view. God’s Being is simple, and in Him even all attributes coincide. Already St Augustine diverged at this point from the Eastern tradition. Under Augustinian presuppositions the teaching of St Gregory is unacceptable and absurd. St Gregory himself anticipated the width of implications of his basic distinction. If one does not accept it, he argued, then it would be impossible to discern clearly between the ‘generation’ of the Son and ‘creation’ of the world, both being the acts of substance, and this would lead to utter confusion in the Trinitarian doctrine. St Gregory was quite formal at that point: If according to the delirious opponents and those who agree with them, the divine energy in no way differs from the divine essence, then the act of creating, which belongs to the will, will in no way differ from generation (gennan) and procession (ekporeuein), which belong to the essence. If to create is no different from generation and procession, then the creatures will in no way differ from the Begotten (gennēmatos) and the Projected (problēmatos). If such is the case according to them, then both the Son of God and the Holy Spirit will be no different from creatures, and the creatures will all be both the begotten (gennēmata) and the projected (problēmata) of God the Father, and creation will be deified and God will be arrayed with the creatures. For this reason the venerable Cyril, showing the difference between God’s essence and energy, says that to generate belongs to the divine nature, whereas to create belongs to His divine energy. This he shows clearly saying, ‘nature and energy are not the same’.20 If the divine essence in no way differs from the Divine energy, then to beget (gennan) and to project (ekporeuein) will in no way differ from creating (poiein), God the Father creates by the Son and in the Holy Spirit. Thus He also begets and projects by the Son and in the Holy Spirit, according to the opinion of the opponents and those who agree with them (Capita 96 and 97 [PG 150.1189B-C]). 20

Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus 18, PG 75.312C [Eds.].

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St Gregory quotes St Cyril of Alexandria. But St Cyril at this point was simply repeating St Athanasius. St Athanasius, in his refutation of Arianism, formally stressed the ultimate difference between ousia [essence] (or physis [substance/nature]), on the one hand, and the boulēsis [will] on the other. God exists, and then He also acts. There is a certain ‘necessity’ in the divine being, indeed not a necessity of compulsion, and no fatum, but a necessity of being itself. God simply is what He is. But God’s will is eminently free. He in no sense is necessitated to do what He does. Thus gennēsis [begetting] is always kata physin [according to nature], but creation is a boulēseōs ergon [act of the will] (Contra Arianos, III, 64–66 [PG 26.457-464]). These two dimensions, that of being and that of acting, are different, and must be clearly distinguished. Of course, this distinction in no way compromises the ‘divine simplicity’. Yet, it is a real distinction, and not just a logical device. St Gregory was fully aware of the crucial importance of this distinction. At this point he was a true successor of the great Athanasius and of the Cappadocian hierarchs.21 It has been recently suggested that the theology of St Gregory should be described in modern terms as an ‘existentialist theology’. Indeed, it differed radically from those modern conceptions, which are currently denoted by this label. Yet, in any case, St Gregory was definitely opposed to all kinds of ‘essentialist theologies’ which fail to account for God’s freedom, for the dynamism of God’s will, for the reality of divine action. St Gregory would trace this trend back to Origen. It was the predicament of the Greek impersonalist metaphysics. If there is any room for Christian metaphysics at all, it must be a metaphysics of persons. The starting point of St Gregory’s theology was the history of salvation: on the larger scale, the biblical story, which consisted of divine acts, culminating in the Incarnation of the Word and His glorification through the Cross and Resurrection; on the smaller scale, the story of the Christian man, striving after perfection, and ascending step by step, till he encounters God in the vision of His glory. It was usual to describe the theology of St Irenaeus as a ‘theology of facts’. With no lesser justification we may describe also the theology of St Gregory Palamas as a ‘theology of facts’. In our own time, we are coming more and more to the conviction that ‘theology of facts’ is the only sound Orthodox theology. It is biblical. It is Patristic. It is in complete conformity with the mind of the Church. In this connection we may regard St Gregory Palamas as our guide and teacher, in our endeavour to theologize from the heart of the Church.

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Cf. my article: ‘The Concept of Creation in Saint Athanasius’, to appear shortly in The Acts of the Third Conference on Patristic Studies, held at Oxford in September, 1959 [published in Studia Patristica, 6, no. 4 (1962): 36–57], as well as my earlier study: ‘The Idea of Creation in Christian Philosophy’, in the Eastern Churches Quarterly, 8, no. 3 (1949), Supplementary issue: ‘Nature and Grace’, 53–77 [GF].

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The Christian Hellenism

This short article appeared in the Orthodox Observer, no. 442 (January 1957): 9–10, a periodical of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North America (Blane #142).

The debt of our modern civilization to Greece is commonly recognized and duly acknowledged. ‘Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin’ (Sir Henry Maine).1 In other words, without Greece the modern world would not have existed (Sir R. W. Livingstone).2 Now, two major amendments must be introduced at once to these emphatical statements. First, one should not ignore the Bible. Without the Bible our modern world would not have existed, and even in its rebellion it cannot escape the challenge of the Bible. Nor can we forget that, by Divine ordinance, ‘salvation is from the Jews’ [Jn 4:22], as our Lord himself has pointedly stated. In this sense, our whole existence is, as it were, intrinsically ‘oriental’, or ‘semitic’, and Palestine is for us and for ever ‘the Holy Land’. Yet, it was in the Greek version that the Bible has found its way into the larger world and acquired its full ecumenical significance. ‘The Hebrew truth’ (as St Jerome used to say) became a universal message, and the permanent ferment of all cultural movement, precisely in its Greek transcription. Secondly, when we speak of Hellenism, we should not confine our attention to the ‘Ancient Greece’ alone. The ‘classical period’ of Hellenism is not the whole of Hellenism, and even not its final climax, or its acme. Hellenism is not limited to the legacy of Plato and Aristotle, of Sophocles and Pindar, of Thucydides and Demosthenes of Praxiteles and Pheidias. The Fathers of the Church were also exponents of Hellenism. The ‘ancient’ Hellenism, in fact, completed its course, and its internal limitations were spectacularly exposed. In all areas of human existence, the ‘ancient Hellenism’ found itself in a desperate impasse. Now, the new vistas were opened then by the Apostolic preaching.

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Henry James Sumner Maine (1822–1888) was a British comparative jurist and historian. The quotation is from his Village-Communities in the East and West, 3rd ed. (London:  John Murray, 1876), 238 [Eds.]. Richard Winn Livingstone (1880–1960) was a British classical scholar and academic administrator. The quotation is from his Greek Ideals and Modern Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), 143 [Eds.].

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In the Christian faith Hellenism discovered the new impetus, the new inspiration, the new guidance, the new ways. By the grace of God, Hellenism was rejuvenated and renewed, and the new era was inaugurated in the destiny of the Hellenistic world – the era of Christian Hellenism. It was in its ‘Byzantine achievement’ that latent energies of Hellenism were fully disclosed, and Hellenism reached its full stature. Only this, ‘integral’ and Christian, Hellenism is true Hellenism – only the Hellenism under the sign of the Cross. The ancient Hellenism was ambivalent and ambiguous. The ancient Christian writers treated this Hellenism at once as a ‘preamble’ to faith, as a kind of providential ‘propaideutics’, to the preaching of the Gospel, and as the main enemy of the Church, as an impediment, a temptation, a stumbling-block. As St Paul put it, for the Greeks the Cross of Jesus was ‘foolishness’, for the Jews it was ‘scandal’ [1 Cor 1:23]. The greatest spokesmen of the late Hellenism, such as Marcus Aurelius or Plotinus, were opposed to Christianity and regarded it as a ‘barbarian’ threat to the Greek tradition. The Christian teachers were also aware of the radical tension between the ‘New’ Faith and the ‘Old’ Philosophy, between Jerusalem and Athens, as much as they might be inclined to retain certain portions of the Greek inheritance. This cultural heritage could not be simply kept and carried on, as it stood. It had to be ‘converted’, and this ‘conversion’ of Hellenism meant, in practice, a radical discrimination, a judgement, a crisis. In fact, ‘Hellenism’ was mightily dissected by the sword of the Word [Eph 6:17; Heb 4:12], of the Christian Revelation, and was thereby sharply ‘polarized’. One should describe the Cappadocian Fathers, St John Chrysostom, St Cyril of Alexandria and many other Christian teachers, as ‘Hellenist’. But, obviously, their ‘Hellenism’ was not the same with that of Porphyrius, Proclus or Julian the Apostate.3 Incompatibility was obvious and conspicuous. Julian made an attempt to expel Christians from all cultural fields, in order to fence the ancient culture from the ‘Galilean’ accretions. Two centuries later, Justinian debarred non-Christians from all teaching and educational activities, and closed down all pagan schools. Yet, in spite of this radical cleavage, there was no real break in cultural tradition. Traditions of learning and art were kept and cherished, but they were re-examined and reassessed critically, in the light of the new Christian experience. The glorious Temple of Holy Wisdom, the great church of Sophia in the City of Constantine, stands for ever a living symbol and dynamic token of this cultural achievement. It is often said that Byzantium was a ‘Greece in the embrace of Orient’, and this ‘embrace’ has been variously described as deadening, stiffening and oppressive. It is often contended that Byzantium was, in fact, rather ‘oriental’ than truly ‘Hellenic’. In a sense, this is true, since Byzantium was avowedly Christian. In this sense it was strongly opposed to that archaic ‘Hellenism’ which was essentially pagan. But, on the other hand, it was Byzantium that has preserved, for all centuries to come, Greek letters and Greek philosophy, which were almost completely lost and forgotten at that 3

Porphyry of Tyre (c. 234–c. 305) was disciple and editor of Plotinus (c. 204/5–270), both leading neoplatonic philosophers of Late Antiquity. Proclus Lycaeus (412–485) was also a neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major Greek philosophers. Julian the Apostate (331/332–363) was Roman emperor from 361 to 363. He rejected and persecuted Christianity in favour in neoplatonism and attempted to revive traditional Roman religion. He died campaigning against the Sassanid Empire [Eds.].

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time in the truly barbarian West. The modern Europe, in fact, owes a debt not only to the Ancient Greece, but also to Byzantium, precisely for the preservation of the cultural heritage of the ancient times. If it is obviously true that without Greece the modern world would not have existed, it is no less true that it would not have existed without Byzantium, the true and living heir of all glories of the ancient times. Moreover, it must be kept in mind that the old Hellenism itself was deeply ‘orientalized’, and the ‘embrace of Orient’ was much more oppressive in the age of Hellenistic syncretism than it ever was in Byzantium. In the historical growth of the Church, Hellenism was absorbed into the very structure of Christian existence. Hellenism has actually become, as it were, the perennial category and pattern of Christian thought and life. One cannot fail to discern the Hellenic pattern in Christian theology, in Christian liturgy, in Christian art. This is true both of the East, and of the West. It is significant that the philosophy of Aristotle has been acknowledged as a ‘perennial philosophy’ in the Roman Church. But it is the Orthodox Church in the East that was continuing the glorious stewardship of the sacred tradition of Christian Hellenism. In our own time, in the age of cultural confusion and despair, one turns again with expectation to this glorious treasury, in which the ancient legacy was not only kept, but kept alive. The Greek Fathers of the Church are still our sure and faithful guides in the understanding of the faith. We live, just now, in the times of a vigorous Patristic revival, when the legacy of the Fathers is once more rediscovered and reassessed.4 The Byzantine Liturgy is still the pattern of our devotion, and the spirit of Early Christianity still breathes powerfully in it. In Byzantine iconography we have the standing pattern of Christian art, and its double value, devotional and artistic, has been recently recovered and refreshed. The whole fabric of Christian existence is grounded and rooted in the ‘Byzantine achievement’, both Christian and Hellenic. Now, Christian Hellenism is not only a legacy, but also a challenge. Traditions are never kept by inertia alone. Traditions can be truly preserved only by a continuous creative endeavour, when they are lived by, or lived in, and not just remembered. And one has to admit that, in our own days, we are in the danger of assessing our sacred heritage in an ‘archaeological’ mood or manner. We stand in the tradition of Christian Hellenism. But have we really preserved its spirit? We are in danger to be misled by our very appeal to Antiquity, to Christian Antiquity, as if everything has been completed in the past, and even in a remote past. But, in the phrase of St Irenaeus of Lyons, Tradition is a ‘self-rejuvenating deposit’ [Adv. haeres. III, 24, 1 (PG 7.966B)], a dynamic principle, a spring of life. Theology of the Fathers is a perennial challenge to the Christian mind. Are we really congenial to their mind? Has not our mind been rather ‘de-Hellenized’ in the recent centuries, so that we enter the world of the Fathers with some embarrassment, and do not feel 4

Florovsky is referring to the ressourcement movement (roughly 1930–1965) or ‘re-sourcing’, the ‘return’, primarily in Roman Catholicism but also in Orthodoxy, to the patristic, biblical and medieval roots of the Church. This movement grounded the work of Vatican II (1962–1965) and produced new studies, editions and translations of the Fathers (e.g. Sources chrétiennes) and an unprecedented outpouring of creative theology by both Roman Catholic and Orthodox theologians [Eds.].

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ourselves perfectly at home in their ancient mansion? We have permitted the glorious heritage of the Byzantine art to be replaced by Western or westernized imitations, and we are recovering its values, not without certain hesitation. We quote the Fathers, with assurance and conviction, but do we really live by their message? Precisely because, in our own days, the Orthodox Church is facing new issues, new problems, in a changing and changed world, and has to respond to the new challenge of the contemporary situation in complete loyalty to her tradition, it is our bounden duty to recover the creative spirit of Christian Hellenism, and to be as alive to the claims of our own epoch, as the masters of old were alive to the challenge of their age. In brief, one has to learn to be at once ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’. The task of our time, in the Orthodox world, is to rebuild the Christian-Hellenic culture, not of the relics and memories of the past, but out of the perennial spirit of our Church, in which the values of culture were truly ‘christened’. Let us be more ‘Hellenic’ in order that we may be truly Christian.

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‘On the Authority of the Fathers’

Georges Florovsky wrote this letter to A. F. Dobbie Bateman (1897–1974) in December 1963, while Florovsky was professor of Eastern Church History at Harvard Divinity School. Dobbie Bateman, an early leader of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius and one of the first English critics and translators of modern Russian philosophy and theology, was then a retired civil servant and Anglican priest. The letter is notable for its important late reflections on the themes of the authority of the Fathers and the relationship between Christology and Pneumatology as seen in the life of St Seraphim of Sarov (1759–1833). It is reproduced from the archives of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, Oxford (found in the folder ‘A. F. Dobbie Bateman – Papers and Booklist’). For a full introduction and notes, see its initial publication: Brandon Gallaher, ‘Georges Florovsky on Reading the Life of St Seraphim’, Sobornost, 27, no. 1 (2005): 58–70.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. December 12, 1963. Dear Father, [On Christ and the Holy Spirit in St Seraphim of Sarov] Thank you so much for your letter and for the paper enclosed.1 The paper is excellent. Its first merit is in that it proceeds inductively, from the concrete cases or episodes. Then the conclusion imposes. I think you are right about Motovilov. In any case, the Conversation should not be regarded as a closed unit. It does not say the whole truth. The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ [cf. Rom 8:9], and is sent by Christ from the Father in order to remind the Disciples, those of Christ, or Christians, of Him. Pneumatic should not be played against Christological. I am coming to see it with increasing clarity. The Spirit, and His gifts, the charismata, can be ‘acquired’ only in the name of Christ. And, 1

This paper is ‘The Maturity of St Seraphim’, which A.  F. Dobbie Bateman had given at the 1963 conference of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius (George Florovsky Papers, Box 59, Folder 2). It served in a much revised form as chapter one of his short book The Return of St Seraphim: A Western Interpretation (London:  Fellowship of St Alban & St Sergius, 1970). Many years earlier Dobbie Bateman had published a small work titled St Seraphim of Sarov:  Concerning the Aim of Christian Life (London:  SPCK, 1936), which included a translation of the famous conversation between Seraphim and his disciple Nicholas Motovilov, in which Seraphim describes the Christian life as the ‘acquisition of the Holy Spirit’ [Eds.].

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in the order of Salvation, there is no higher Name. One addresses the Father in the Name of Christ, the Incarnate Son. The Pentecost is the mystery of the Crucified Lord, Who rose again to send the Paraclete. Thus, Cross, Resurrection, Pentecost belong together as aspects of one mystery, distinct in the dimension of time, but integrated in the one Divine deed of Redemption. In the image of St. Seraphim all these aspects are reflected both in their temporal distinction and in their essential unity. Hardships, humility, joy and gentle charity, and  – daring.2 I  have discussed this paradoxical synthesis of humility in daring in my short preface to Father Sophronius’s book on Starets Silouan.3 The Spirit brings joy, but He also bestows authority and power. Your expression alter Christus [another Christ] is rather strong, but ultimately correct.4 After all, in the phrase of St Augustine, Christ is not only in capite but also in corpore,5 and, according to St. Paul, all ‘members’ together are ‘One Christ’ [cf. Rom 12:5 and 1 Cor 12:12]. Imitatio Christi is not just a figure of speech, and it is not a Western phrase.6 St. Ignatius of Antioch regarded himself as a mimētēs Christou [imitator of Christ], with the special emphasis on the sharing of the Cross or the martyr’s death.7 I do not see much difference between mimēsis and akolouthia. [On the Authority of the Fathers] My remark on the preference for ‘settled problems’, in the article on Old Russia, was not just a casual remark.8 This preference is still the major predicament of modern man. It is so conspicuous in the theological field. Just yesterday the question was put to me, in my Patristic seminar, by one of the participants: we enjoy immensely, he said, the reading of the Fathers, but what is their ‘authority’? Are we supposed to accept from them even that in which they obviously were ‘situation-conditioned’ and probably inaccurate, inadequate, and even wrong? My answer was obviously, No. Not only because, as it is persistently urged, only the consensus patrum is binding, – and, as to myself, I do not like this phrase. The ‘authority’ of the Fathers is not a dictatus papae. They are guides and witnesses, no more. Their vision is ‘of authority’, not necessarily their words.9 By studying the Fathers we are compelled to face the problems, and then 2

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‘[Seraphim] testifies to the mysteries of the Spirit with an unexpected daring. He was more of a witness than a teacher, but even more than that, his being and his whole life are manifestations of the Spirit’ (Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, CW, II, VI:165) [Eds.]. See Ch. 24, ‘Starets Silouan’, 325–327, in this book. This is Florovsky’s foreword to Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov)’s The Undistorted Image: Starets Silouan, 1866–1938 (London: Faith Press, 1958) [Eds.]. ‘What the Holy Spirit revealed in Saint Seraphim was Christ in him. The life, the piety and the glory of Saint Seraphim are fundamentally christocentric. He who had withdrawn the Lord of his life from the imaginative exchange of vision into the secret night of a reserved and recollected mind, has disclosed thereby the operation of the Christ-life. He is alter Christus’ (Dobbie Bateman, ‘The Maturity of St Seraphim’, 12) [Eds.]. ‘For Christ is not in the head or in the body, but Christ is wholly in the head and in the body’ (Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 28–54, trans. John W. Rettig, FC 79 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,  1993), 28.1, 3–13 at 3 [PL 35:1622]). This notion is crucial for understanding Florovsky’s ecclesiology. See Ch. 19, ‘The Body of the Living Christ’, 273, in this book [Eds.]. Allusion to Thomas à Kempis’s (c. 1380–1471) De Imitatione Christi (The Imitation of Christ), first composed in Latin ca. 1418–1427 [Eds.]. ‘Allow me to be an imitator of the suffering of my God’ (Ignatius of Antioch, Ep. Rom., 6.3) [Eds.]. Georges Florovsky, ‘The Problem of Old Russian Culture: A Discussion with Comments by Nikolai Andreev and James H. Billington’, Slavic Review, 21 (1962): 1–42 [Eds.]. Florovsky’s approach here to the authority of the Fathers is, perhaps unexpectedly, close to that of Sergius Bulgakov, as expressed in his essay ‘Dogma and Dogmatic Theology’ (in the famous

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we can follow them but creatively, not in the mood of repetition. I  mentioned this already in the brief preface to my ‘Eastern Fathers of the IVth century’,10 and provoked a fiery indignation of the late Dom Clément Lialine.11 So many in our time are still looking for authoritative answers, even before they have encountered any problem. I am fortunate to have in my seminars students who are studying Fathers because they are interested in creative theology, and not just in history or archaeology. [Other Matters] I am very glad that you found M[etropolitan] Philaret simple and not unduly rhetorical. On the other hand, his sermons were always thoroughly prepared and probably written in advance. Not all of them are on the same level, especially in his early years, when he was under the influence of ‘evangelical mysticism’ of the time.12 I was glad to learn Father Salmon is still active. I remember him very well. It is an excellent idea to produce a ‘Western edition’ of the Damascene. It is a good sign that such a project could be initiated in our time. What is needed is, of course, not a scientific edition, but a kind of working book.13 You can do it, and it will be of great help in the age of John

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collection of essays Living Tradition [1937]), where he says, e.g.:  ‘The Holy Fathers’ writings in themselves cannot be considered dogmatically infallible. They are authoritative witnesses but they cannot by any means be transformed into unerring texts’ (in Tradition Alive: On the Church and the Christian Life in Our Time – Readings from the Eastern Church, trans. Peter Bouteneff, ed. Michael Plekon (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 67–80 at 70 [Eds.]. Florovsky’s book The Eastern Fathers of the Fourth Century (Vol. VII of CW) was based on lectures given at the St Sergius Institute of Orthodox Theology in Paris. He writes in the preface: ‘This book was compiled from academic lectures. In the series of studies or chapters I strived to trace out and depict the icons [obrazy] of the great teachers and Fathers of the Church. To us they appear, above all, as witnesses of the catholic faith, as guardians of universal tradition. But the patristic corpus of writings is not only a sacred treasure-trove of tradition. For tradition is life; and the traditions are only truly preserved in the Fathers’ living representation [vosproizvedenie] and co-experiencing [soperezhivanie: ‘empathy’]. The Fathers give evidence concerning this in their creative work. They show how the truths of the faith revive and transfigure the human spirit, how human thought is renewed and revitalized in the experience of faith. They disclose the truths of the faith as an integral and creative Christian worldview. In this respect, the patristic works are for us the source of creative inspiration, an example of Christian courage and wisdom. This is a school of Christian thought, of Christian philosophy [liubomudrie]. And above all in these lectures, I  strived to enter in and to introduce [the auditor] into that creative world, into that eternal world of ageless experience and speculation [umozrenie:  lit. ‘mind-sight,’ mystical intuitive contemplation], into the world of unflickering light. I believe and I know that only in it and from it is revealed the straight and true path towards a new Christian synthesis, which the contemporary age longs for and thirsts after. The time has arrived to enchurch [votserkovit’] our mind and to resurrect for ourselves the holy and blessed sources of ecclesial thought’ (Florovsky, Vostochnye Ottsy IV-go Veka [Paris:  YMCA Press, 1931]) [Eds.]. Dom Clément Lialine (1901–1958) was a Russian convert to Catholicism and monk of the Benedictine Monastery of Chevetogne. Chevetogne is dedicated to the work of reconciliation between the Roman Catholic Church and other churches, especially the Orthodox Church. Lialine was a frequent contributor and editor of the monastery’s noted journal Irénikon, dedicated to ecumenism and the Eastern Churches. He criticized Florovsky’s lectures as lacking a scientific erudition in both its spiritual and literary approach to the material (he cites the preface given in the last note as evidence) and its absence of concern for scholarly precision (Dom Clément Lialine, Review of Vostočnye Otcy IV vĕca in Irenikon, 10, no. 1 [1933]: 84) [Eds.]. On Met. Philaret (Drozdov) (1782–1867), see Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 13, 36, in this book [Eds.]. Harold Bryant Salmon (1891–1965), formerly principal at Wells Theological College (1931–1947), had suggested to Dobbie Bateman, in conjunction with a lecturer of Arabic, the production of a ‘Western edition’ of St John of Damascus’s On the Orthodox Faith. Dobbie Bateman felt that others

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Woolwich.14 By the way, in the recent catalogue of James Thin, of Edinburgh, I found a new book of Oliver Clark, a reply to Robinson. Have you seen the book? Oliver does not seem to have written much recently.15 You are the only man who can do what Chitty has asked you to prepare for the projected Festschrift. And I shall be very grateful to you. And I am grateful to Chitty for the idea to ask you to do it.16 I have sent you a new article of mine on Tradition.17 Next to me you will find also an article of Allchin, on the same subject.18 The magazine is Lutheran, and the manager is a pupil of mine, a bright scholarly minister.19 With best greetings of ours to you both. Yours ever, Georges Florovsky

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more capable than him might already have taken up the project and that the preparation of a critical text was outside his range and he therefore had asked Florovsky what he advised [Eds.]. John Robinson (1919–1983) was Anglican bishop of Woolwich. He had just published his controversial book, Honest to God (London:  SCM, 1963), which launched the ‘God is dead’ movement in English-speaking theology [Eds.]. Florovsky refers to Oliver Fielding Clarke’s For Christ’s Sake:  A Reply to the Bishop of Woolwich’s Honest to God (Wallington: Religious Education Press, 1963) [Eds.]. Derwas J. Chitty (1901–1971), Anglican rector of the parish of Upton in the diocese of Oxford, a long-standing member of the Fellowship, was a specialist in ancient Christian monasticism. He is the author of The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism under the Christian Empire (Oxford: Blackwell, 1966). Chitty appears to have started a project for a festschrift in honour of Florovsky, to which he wanted Dobbie Bateman to contribute. This venture was eventually put aside [Eds.]. See Ch. 25, ‘Scripture and Tradition’, 329–334, in this book [Eds.]. Canon A. M. (‘Donald’) Allchin (1930–2010) was an important Anglican theologian and ecumenist, editor of Sobornost and a long-standing member of the fellowship. At that time he was a librarian of Pusey House, Oxford. Florovsky refers to his article ‘Anglican View on Scripture and Tradition’, Dialog, 2 (1963): 295–299 [Eds.]. Charles S. Anderson (1930–2013), managing editor of Dialog and professor at Luther Seminary and Augsberg College in St Paul, Minnesota [Eds.].

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‘Theological Will’

In his biography of Fr Georges Florovsky, Andrew Blane explains that Florovsky had wanted to set down a ‘theological will’ for future generations, but that he never carried out this intention. After Florovsky’s death, Blane found both a handwritten text and a typescript that appear to be a response to an honour that was being bestowed on Florovsky.1 It concludes with an outline of his ‘theological will’. The references to ‘already thirty years ago’ with respect to certain writings and to a ‘recent’ (from 1955) quotation from F. M. Powicke suggest that Florovsky composed this text in the late 1950s, possibly in connection with the honorary doctorate awarded by the University of Thessaloniki in 1959. His principal address in Thessaloniki was ‘Saint Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers’ (Chapter 13, 221–232, in this book).

On such a solemn occasion as this the only appropriate word would be that of gratitude and thanks. Indeed, I am deeply moved by that generous token of recognition which the Faculty of Theology of the University has wanted to bestow upon me. Yet, I know, probably better than anybody else, also my own failures and shortcomings. I  know indeed that I was a lazy servant throughout. I know but too well, how many things I have left undone which I ought to have done, and how many things have I done which I ought not to have done [Mt 25:24–30].2 I had no regular theological training (if not by my own fault). I am an autodidact in theology, a kind of dilettante, a self-made man, to use an American phrase. I was trained to become a teacher in history and philosophy. As a matter of fact, I started my academic career, still in Russia, years ago, as a Privat Dotsent of Philosophy, and my only course taught in this capacity in the University of Odessa was on Philosophy of Natural Science. My theology I have learned not in the school, but in the Church, as a worshipper. I have derived it from the liturgical books first, and much later, from the writings of the Holy Fathers.

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Andrew Blane, ‘A Sketch of the Life of Georges Florovsky’, in Georges Florovsky: Russian Intellectual and Orthodox Churchman, ed. Andrew Blane (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993), 153–155 [Eds.]. Florovsky was acutely aware that he had started and abandoned multiple book projects. His archives in Princeton and at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary contain multiple unfinished manuscripts and notes for unfinished projects [Eds.].

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When in 1926 I  was invited to teach Patristics in the newly founded Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, I was utterly unprepared for the task. I had to learn first what I had to teach. I am not ashamed of that. Many others have been in the same situation. The phrase has been coined actually by the greatest of the Russian theologians and hierarchs of the last century, Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, of eternal memory.3 He also was learning his subjects, while he was already teaching them at the Academy in St Petersburg. My method of study was very simple. In the first two years of my professorship in Paris I  read systematically the works of the major Fathers, partly in original, partly in translations. I studied primary sources before I turned to the learned literature. It is probably for that reason that I appear to be so much ‘old-fashioned’. I did not start with the ‘higher criticism’, and for that reason was never confused or corrupted by it. But, for the same reason, I was immunized forever against the routine, against that ‘theology of repetition’4 which is addicted simply to archaic forms and phrases, but so often misses completely the quickening spirit. Fathers have taught me Christian Freedom. They were more than simply legislators, they were true prophets, in the true sense of this word – they beheld the mystery of God. (They were first of all men of insight and faith.) They were men of God, seers. It is by that way that I was led quite early to the idea of what I am calling now ‘the neopatristic synthesis’.5 It should be more than just a collection of patristic sayings or statements. It must be a synthesis, a creative reassessment of those insights which were granted to the Holy Men of old. It must be patristic, faithful to the spirit and vision of the Fathers, ad mentem Patrum [according to the mind of the Fathers]. Yet, it must be also neopatristic, since it is to be addressed to the new age, with its own problems and queries. It was in this mood and manner that I have written, already thirty years ago, my two theological essays, on the ‘Doctrine of Creation’ and on the ‘Doctrine of Redemption’,6 which I  am still regarding as my best achievements, and probably my only ones. Unfortunately, soon after that I  was distracted. I  could not stand temptations. I  left

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On Met. Philaret (Drozdov) (1782–1867), see Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 13, 36, in this book [Eds.]. This phrase seems to come from Florovsky’s former student, Fr John Meyendorff (1926–1992). See ‘Saint Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers’, Ch. 13, n. 10, 225, in this book [Eds.]. The phrase ‘neo-patristic synthesis’ is first used in an archival document (an unrevised version of a preface to ‘In Ligno Crucis: The Patristic Doctrine of the Atonement’ [1939/1948], George Florovsky Papers, (C0586); Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library). See Ch. 2, ‘Preface to In Ligno Crucis’, 72, in this book. Florovsky subsequently used the expression throughout his career in scattered works from 1947 to the 1970s. See the ‘Introduction’, n. 2, 1, in this book [Eds.]. Florovsky is referring to his essays ‘Creation and Createdness’, first published in 1928, Ch. 1, 33–63, in this book; and ‘O smerti krestnoi’ (On the Death on the Cross), Pravoslavnaia mysl’, 2 (1930): 148– 187. The latter essay was eventually extended into the short monograph, ‘In Ligno Crucis:  The Patristic Document of the Atonement’, a revision of three lectures that Florovsky gave in November 1936 at King’s College, London. It was subsequently published in the form of the extended essay ‘Redemption’ in CW, III, 93–159, 280–309. See Ch. 2, ‘Preface to In Ligno Crucis’, 65–70, and Ch. 3, ‘In Ligno Crucis: The Church Fathers’ Doctrine of Redemption’, 71–79, in this book. For a history of this unfinished work and documents associated with it, see On the Tree of the Cross:  Georges Florovsky and the Patristic Doctrine of Atonement, ed. Matthew Baker, Seraphim Danckaert and Nicholas Marinides (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2016): 129–133 [Eds.].

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‘Theological Will’

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unfinished my work on the Fathers: of five projected volumes only two were completed,7 again in the early thirties. Instead I turned to the study of Russian theology, and this study has been completed, just on the eve of the recent war.8 But this study turned to be rather a work of destruction than of construction. At the same time I was involved in various ecumenical activities, first on a limited scale. For several years I was spending my summer vacation in England, explaining Orthodoxy to Anglican students and laymen, and travelling from college to college, and from city to city. Later on I was involved in the major ecumenical movement, that of Faith and Order. I am not sorry for all that, for this kind of ‘deviations’. I also enjoyed thoroughly teaching, during the war years, in the Russian secondary schools, in Bela Crkva and in Belgrade. I have learned much from the teaching exercise. And I  have discovered that teaching is, and is to be, more than just instruction. One has to teach living persons, one’s brethren and sisters in Christ, and to teach them for life, ultimately for life eternal. Even as a teacher one has to remain a learner, what is indeed inevitable. I enjoy learning. I  enjoy remaining in statu pupillari [in a state of pupillage]. Is it not the highest rank to be a disciple, a disciple of the Only Master to whom alone the title of Teacher belongs by right? Nobody in the Church may regard himself as master. The Only Master is Christ. Yet, how much has been left undone. I have written less than I ought to have written, or probably than I  could have written. And now probably it is too late. I  do hope, however, that I shall be given time to write down my ‘theological will’ and to convey my deep concern to the coming generations. This will include three main points. First, Orthodox theology must be a historical theology. One British historian of distinction has said recently: ‘Christianity is a daily invitation to study History’ (F. M.  Powicke9). Another modern scholar has rightly suggested: ‘We Christians believe not in ideas, but in a Person’ (Dom Ansgar Vonier),10 and this person is our beloved Lord and Saviour, Christ Jesus. Theology is not a dialectic of concepts, but a confession of faith. Our God is a God who acts, who has acted in history, from the creation of man, is still acting in our lives, and will be acting until the Judge comes to test the quick and the dead. Theology is then the study of divine Acts. 7

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The two volumes, based on Florovsky’s courses at the Saint Sergius Institute in Paris, were published in Russian in Paris in 1931 and 1933:  Vostochnye Ottsy IV-go Veka (Paris:  YMCA Press, 1931); and Vizantiiskie Ottsy V–VIII [VV] (Paris: YMCA Press, 1933). Expanded English versions were published in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, Vol. VII, ‘The Eastern Fathers of the Fourth Century’; Vol. VIII, ‘The Byzantine Fathers of the Fifth Century’; Vol. IX, ‘The Byzantine Fathers of the Sixth to Eighth Century’; and Vol. X, ‘The Byzantine Ascetic and Spiritual Fathers’ [Eds.]. This is Florovsky’s Puti Russkogo Bogosloviia [The Ways of Russian Theology], first published in 1937. See ‘Breaks and Links’, the conclusion of The Ways of Russian Theology, Ch. 10, 159–183; and ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, Ch. 8, 129–151, in this book (which gives the gist of Florovsky’s argument concerning the pseudomorphosis and Latin Captivity of Russian theology) [Eds.]. Sir Frederick Maurice Powicke (1879–1963) was an English medieval historian. The original quotation reads: ‘The Christian religion is a daily invitation to the study of history’, from Powicke’s Modern Historians and the Study of History (London:  Odhams Press, 1955), 227–228. See Ch. 12, ‘The Predicament of the Christian Historian’, 193–219, in this book [Eds.]. Dom Ansgar (also Anscar) Vonier (corrected from Venier) (1875–1938), abbot of the restored Benedictine Abbey of Buckfast (Devon), was a popular dogmatic, liturgical and spiritual writer. The source of the quotation is unidentified [Eds.].

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Secondly, while studying these acts of God, we are confronted with what has been aptly described, by Gerhard Kittel, as ‘the scandal of particularity’.11 Salvation has come ‘from the Jews’ [cf. Jn 4:22], and has been propagated in the world in Greek idiom. Indeed, to be Christian means to be Greek, since our basic authority is forever a Greek book, the New Testament. [The] Christian message has been forever formulated in Greek categories. This was in no sense a blunt reception of Hellenism as such, but a dissection of Hellenism. The old had to die, but the new was still Greek – the Christian Hellenism of our dogmatics, from the New Testament to St Gregory Palamas, nay, to our own time. I am personally resolved to defend this thesis, and on two different fronts: against the belated revival of Hebraism12 and against all attempts to reformulate dogmas in categories of modern philosophies, whether German, Danish, of French (Hegel, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin)13 and of alleged Slavic mentality. My thesis, indeed, needs precision and qualification, but is beyond our scope now. Thirdly, and finally, we must theologize not in order to satisfy our intellectual curiosity, as legitimate this task may be, but in order to live, to have life abundantly, in the Truth which is, indeed, not a system of ideas, but a person, even Christ Jesus. At this point Fathers can be only sure and safe guides. This is a programme. It is by this programme that I was guided in my theological endeavour. Now, my only hope is that our Lord embraces even our intentions. Georges Florovsky

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Gerhard Kittel (1888–1948) was a German Protestant theologian, editor of the monumental Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament (Stuttgart:  Kohlhammer, 1933–1942). English translation in ten volumes:  Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 1964–1976). The famous phrase comes from Kittel, ‘The Jesus of History’, in Mysterium Christi, ed. by G. K. A. Bell and Adolf Deissman (London: Longmans, Green, 1930), 31ff. [Eds.]. By ‘Hebraism’, Florovsky likely has in mind those Protestant theologians, such as Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), who sought to remove the perceived ‘Hellenization’ of Christianity through the development of dogma, which thereby obscured the original Gospel, thought by some to have existed in Hebrew or Aramaic (the Urevangelium); and also the quest for ‘the historical Jesus’. For Florovsky, the patristic application of aspects of Hellenistic thought to Revelation was part of God’s providential action in the calling of the Gentiles. See Ch. 7, ‘Revelation, Philosophy and Theology’, 115–127, in this book [Eds.]. ‘Hegel’ is a stand-in here for the German idealist philosophers who influenced the leading thinkers of the Russian religious renaissance. Florovsky has expanded his list of undesired modern philosophical influences on Orthodox thought to include the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941), the French Catholic philosopher and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) and the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). His main target is likely Sergius Bulgakov, whose work he regarded as a classic case of erroneously expressing Christian teaching through borrowing the language and conceptual set of a particular contingent secular philosophy. For Florovsky, the Fathers of the Church, in contrast, were Christian philosophers who synthesized their own unique conceptual world with its inspired language that was irreplaceable because it authoritatively articulated the dogma of the Church. On Florovsky and Bulgakov, see the Introduction, 9–13, in this book [Eds.].

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Part Three

Ecclesiology and Ecumenism

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The Limits of the Church

This seminal article in modern Orthodox theology was first published in The Church Quarterly Review, 117, no.  233 (1933):  117–131 (Blane #68). Another version of this article appeared as ‘The Doctrine of the Church and the Ecumenical Problem’ in The Ecumenical Review, 2, no. 3 (1950): 152–161, in which Florovsky does not fundamentally alter the position he argued in 1933 (Blane #110). The text below is the original 1933 article.

It is very difficult to give an exact and firm definition of a ‘sect’ or ‘schism’ (I distinguish the ‘theological definition’ from the simple ‘canonical description’), since a sect in the Church is always something contradictory and unnatural, a paradox and an enigma. For the Church is unity, and the whole of her being is in this unity and union, of Christ and in Christ. ‘For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body’ (1 Cor 12:13), and the prototype of this unity is the consubstantial Trinity. The measure of this unity is catholicity or communality (sobornost), where the impenetrability of personal consciousness is softened and even removed in complete unity of thought and soul, and the multitude of them that believe are of one heart and soul (cf. Acts 4:32). A sect, on the other hand, is separation, solitariness, the loss and denial of communality. The sectarian spirit is the direct opposite of the Church spirit . . . The question of the nature and meaning of divisions and sects in the Church was put in all its sharpness as early as the ancient baptismal disputes of the third century. At that time St Cyprian of Carthage developed with fearless consistency a doctrine of the complete absence of grace in every sect, precisely as a sect.1 The whole meaning and the whole logical stress of his reasoning lay in the conviction that the sacraments are 1

St Cyprian of Carthage (c. 200–258) received a classical education, converted to Christianity c. 245, became bishop of Carthage c. 248 and died a martyr in 258. He was deeply involved in the question of the return of the lapsi (those who had renounced Christ during the persecutions) to the Church, and the Novatian controversy between the rigourists and the moderates concerning the reception of the lapsi in the Church. Of Cyprian’s numerous extant writings, the most well known is his short treatise De Ecclesiae catholicae unitate (On the Unity of the Catholic Church) (251), the first writing devoted exclusively to the Church. Cyprian’s famous quotation Salus extra ecclesiam non est (typically rendered Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus [outside the Church there is no salvation]) occurs in his letters (Epistula 4, 4 and Epistula 73, 21, 2). See St Cyprian of Carthage, On the Church: Select Treatises, trans. Allen Brent (Crestwood, NY:  St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006); and Phillip Campbell, ed., The Complete Works of Saint Cyprian of Carthage (Merchantville, NJ: Evolution Publishing, 2013) [Eds.].

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established in the Church. That is to say, they are effected and can be effected only in the Church, in communion and in communality. Therefore every violation of communality and unity in itself leads immediately beyond the last barrier into some decisive outside. To St Cyprian every schism was a departure out of the Church, out of that sanctified and holy land where alone there rises the baptismal spring, the waters of salvation, quia una est aqua in ecclesia sancta [since in the holy Church is the one water] (Epist. 71, 2). The teaching of St Cyprian as to the gracelessness of sects is only the opposite side of his teaching about unity and communality. This is not the place or the moment to recollect and relate Cyprian’s deductions and proofs. Each of us remembers and knows them, is bound to know them, is bound to remember them. They have not lost their force to this day. The historical influence of Cyprian was continuous and powerful. Strictly speaking, in its theological premises the teaching of St Cyprian has never been disproved. Even Augustine was not so very far from Cyprian. He argued with the Donatists, not with Cyprian himself, and did not try to refute Cyprian; indeed, his argument was more about practical measures and conclusions. In his reasoning about the unity of the Church, about the unity of love as a necessary and decisive condition for the saving power of the sacraments, Augustine really only repeats Cyprian in new words. But the practical conclusions drawn by Cyprian have not been accepted and supported by the consciousness of the Church. One may ask how this was possible, if his premises have been neither disputed nor set aside. There is no need to enter into the details of the Church’s canonical relations with sectarians and heretics; it is an imprecise and an involved enough story. It is sufficient to state that there are occasions when, by her very actions, the Church gives one to understand that the sacraments of sectarians and even of heretics are valid, that the sacraments can be celebrated outside the strict canonical limits of the Church. The Church customarily receives adherents from sects and even from heresies not by the way of baptism, thereby obviously meaning or supposing that they have already been actually baptized in their sects and heresies. In many cases the Church receives adherents even without chrism, and sometimes also clerks [i.e. clerics] in their existing orders, which must all the more be understood and explained as recognizing the validity or reality of the corresponding rites performed over them ‘outside the Church’. But, if sacraments are performed, it can only be by virtue of the Holy Spirit. Canonical rules establish or reveal a certain mystical paradox. In the form of her activity the Church bears witness to the extension of her mystical territory even beyond her canonical threshold; the ‘outside world’ does not begin immediately. St Cyprian was right; the sacraments are accomplished only in the Church. But this in he defined hastily and too narrowly. Must we not come rather to the opposite conclusion? Where the sacraments are accomplished, there is the Church. St Cyprian started from the silent supposition that the canonical and charismatic limits of the Church invariably coincide. And it is this unproven identification that has not been confirmed by the communal consciousness. As a mystical organism, as the sacramental Body of Christ, the Church cannot be adequately described in canonical terms or categories alone. It is impossible to state or discern the true limits of the Church simply by canonical signs or marks. Very often the canonical boundary determines also the charismatic boundary; what is bound on

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earth is bound by an indissoluble knot in heaven. But not always. And still more often, not immediately. In her sacramental, mysterious being the Church surpasses canonical measurements. For that reason a canonical cleavage does not immediately signify mystical impoverishment and desolation. All that Cyprian said about the unity of the Church and the sacraments can be and must be accepted. But it is not necessary with him to draw the final boundary around the body of the Church by canonical points alone. This raises a general question and a doubt. Are these canonical rules and acts subject to theological generalization? Is it possible to impute to them theological or dogmatic motives and grounds? Or do they rather represent only pastoral discretion and forbearance? Must we not understand the canonical mode of action as a forbearing silence concerning gracelessness rather than as a recognition of the reality or validity of schismatic rites? Is it then quite prudent to cite or introduce canonical facts into a theological argument? This objection is connected with the theory of what is called ‘economy’.2 In general ecclesiastical usage oikonomia is a term of very many meanings. In its broadest sense ‘economy’ embraces and signifies the whole work of salvation (cf. Col 1:25; Eph 1:10; 3:2, 9). The Vulgate usually translates it by dispensatio.3 In canonical language ‘economy’ has not become a technical term. It is rather a descriptive word, a kind of general characteristic:  oikonomia is opposed to akribeia [strictness] as a kind of relaxation of Church discipline, an exemption or exception from the ‘strict rule’ (ius strictum) or from the general rule. The governing motive of ‘economy’ is precisely ‘philanthropy’, pastoral discretion, a pedagogical calculation – the deduction is always from working utility. ‘Economy’ is a pedagogical rather than a canonical principle; it is the pastoral corrective of the canonical consciousness. ‘Economy’ can and should be employed by each individual pastor in his parish, still more by a bishop or council of bishops. For ‘economy’ is pastorship and pastorship is ‘economy’. In this is the whole strength and 2

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The doctrine of ecclesiastical ‘economy’ is particularly developed in Greek theology. I mention only Christos Androutsos, Dogmatikē tēs Orthodoxou Anatolikēs Ekklēsias [Dogmatics of the Eastern Orthodox Church] (Athens:  Kratous, 1907), 306ff.; Konstantinos I. Dyovouniotēs, Ta Mystēria tēs Anatolikēs Orthodoxou Ekklēsias [The Sacraments of the Eastern Orthodox Church] (Athens:  S. K. Blastos, 1913), 162ff.; eiusdem, ‘The Principle of Economy’, Church Quarterly Review, 231 (April 1933), 93–101; cf. Frank Gavin, Some Aspects of Contemporary Greek Orthodox Thought, Hale Lectures 1922 (Milwaukee: Morehouse Publishing Co., 1923), 292ff.; Theophilus Spáčil, ‘Doctrina Theologiae Orientis separati de Sacramento baptismi’ [Theological Teaching of the Separated East on the Sacrament of Baptism] (Orientalia Christ., 6, 4) (Rome: Pont. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1926). In Russian theology few have held such a point of view. Cf. the correspondence of Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky) with Robert H. Gardiner [Episcopalian secretary of the Faith and Order movement] in the journal Faith and Reason [Vera i razum] no. 4 (1915), 453–469, no. 17 (1915), 667–678 and 678–689; nos. 8–9 (1916), 877–897 and 897–915 and 12 (1916), 1447–1448; and particularly the article of Archim. Ilarion (Troitskii), ‘The Unity of the Church and the World Conference of Christianity [Edinstvo Tserkvi i vsemirnaia konferentsiia]’, Theological Messenger [Bogoslovskii Vestnik] no. 1 (Jan. 1917), 1–60; also J. A. Douglas, The Relations of the Anglican Church with the Eastern Orthodox, especially in regard to Anglican orders (London: Faith Press, 1921), 51ff.; ‘The Orthodox Principle of Economy and Its Exercise’, Christian East, 13, [nos.] 3–4 (Autumn and Winter 1932), 99–109; and ‘Economic Intercommunion’ in the Report of the Committee appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to consider the findings of the Lausanne Conference on Faith and Order (London: Church Assembly, 1930) [GF]. Cf. Adhémar Alès, ‘Le mot oikonomia dans la langue théologique de St Irénée [The Word Oikonomia in the Theological Language of St Irenaeus]’, Revue des études grecques, 32 (1919), 1–9 [GF].

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vitality of the ‘economical’ principle – and also its limitation. Not every question can be put and answered in terms of ‘economy’. One must ask, therefore, whether it is possible to treat the question of the baptism of sectarians and heretics as a question only of ‘economy’. Certainly, in so far as it is a question of winning lost souls for Catholic truth, of the way to bring them to ‘the reason of truth’, every course of action must be ‘economical’, that is, pastoral, compassionate, loving. The pastor must leave the ninety and nine and seek the lost sheep [Mt 18:12–14; Lk 15:3–7]. But for this very reason the need is all the greater for complete sincerity and directness. Not only is unequivocal accuracy, strictness and clarity, in fact, akribeia, required in the sphere of dogma; how otherwise can unity of mind be obtained? Accuracy and clarity are before all things necessary in mystical diagnosis, and, precisely for this reason the question of the rites of sectarians and heretics must be put and decided in terms of the strictest akribeia. For here it is not so much a quaestio iuris [question of the law] as a quaestio facti [question of fact], further, the question of mystical fact, of sacramental reality. It is not a matter of ‘recognition’ so much as of diagnosis; it is necessary to identify and to discern. Least of all is ‘economy’ in this question compatible with the radical standpoint of St Cyprian. If beyond the canonical limits of the Church the wilderness without grace begins immediately, if in general schismatics have not been baptized and still abide in the darkness before baptism, perfect clarity, strictness and insistence are still more indispensable in the acts and judgements of the Church. Here no ‘forbearance’ is appropriate or even possible; no concessions are permissible. Is it in fact conceivable that the Church should receive these or other sectarians or heretics into her own body not by way of baptism simply in order thereby to make their decisive step easy? This would certainly be a very rash and dangerous complaisance. Rather, it would be connivance with human weakness, self-love and lack of faith, a connivance all the more dangerous in that it creates the appearance of a recognition by the Church that schismatic sacraments and rites are valid, not only in the reception of schismatics or people from outside, but in the consciousness of the majority of people in the Church and even of the rulers of the Church. Moreover, this mode of action is applied because it creates this appearance. If in fact the Church were fully convinced that in the sects and heresies baptism is not accomplished, to what end would she reunite schismatics without baptism? Surely not in order simply to save them by this step from false shame in the open confession that they have not been baptized. Can such a motive be considered honourable, convincing and of good repute? Can it benefit the newcomers to reunite them through ambiguity and suppression? To the just doubt of whether it would be impossible by analogy to unite Jews and Moslems to the Church without baptism ‘by economy’, Metropolitan Anthony [Khrapovitsky]4 replied with complete candour: Ah, but all such neophytes and even those baptized in the name of Montanus and Priscilla themselves would not themselves claim to enter the Church without immersion and the utterance of the words, ‘In the name of the Father,’ etc. 4

See Ch. 7, ‘Revelation, Philosophy and Theology’, n. 10, 126, in this book [Eds.].

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Such a claim could only be advanced through a confused understanding of the Church’s grace by those sectarians and schismatics whose baptism, worship and hierarchical system differ in little externally from those of the Church. It would be very insulting to them on their turning to the Church to have to sit on the same seat with heathens and Jews. For that reason the Church, indulging their weakness, has not performed over them the external act of baptism, but has given them this grace in the second sacrament (Faith and Reason, nos. 8–9 [1916], 887–888).

I transcribe this utterance in sorrowful perplexity. From Metropolitan Anthony’s argument common sense would draw precisely the opposite conclusion. In order to lead weak and unreasoning ‘neophytes’ to the ‘clear understanding of the Church’s grace’ which they lack, it would be all the more necessary and appropriate to perform over them the external act of baptism, instead of giving them and many others by a feigned accommodation to their ‘susceptibilities’, not only an excuse but a ground to continue deceiving themselves through the equivocal fact that their ‘baptism, worship and hierarchical system differ in little externally from those of the Church’. One may ask who gave the Church this right not merely to change, but simply to abolish the external act of baptism, performing it in such cases only mentally, by implication or by intention – at the celebration of the ‘second sacrament’ [chrismation] – over the unbaptized. Admittedly, in special and exceptional cases the ‘external act’, the ‘form’, may indeed be abolished; such is the martyr’s baptism in blood, or even the so-called baptisma flaminis [baptism of desire]. But this is admissible only in casu necessitatis [in case of necessity]. Moreover, there can hardly be any analogy between these cases and a systematic connivance in another’s sensitiveness and self-deception. If ‘economy’ is pastoral discretion conducive to the advantage and salvation of human souls, then in such a case one could only speak of ‘economy inside-out’. It would be a deliberate retrogression into equivocation and obscurity and for the sake of purely external success, since the internal enchurchment of ‘neophytes’ cannot take place with such concealment. It is scarcely possible to impute to the Church such a perverse and crafty intention. And in any case the practical result of this ‘economy’ must be considered utterly unexpected. For in the Church herself the conviction has arisen among the majority that sacraments are performed even among schismatics, that even in the sects there is a valid, although forbidden, hierarchy. The true intention of the Church in her acts and rules appears to be too difficult to discern and discriminate. From this side the ‘economical’ explanation of these rules cannot be regarded as plausible. The ‘economic’ explanation raises even greater difficulties from the side of its general theological premises. One can scarcely ascribe to the Church the power and the right, as it were, to convert the has-not-been into the has-been, to change the meaningless into the valid, as Professor Dyovouniotes expresses it (Church Quarterly Review, 231 [1931], 97), ‘in the order of economy’. This would give a particular sharpness to the question whether it is possible to receive schismatic clergy ‘in their existing orders’. In the Russian Church adherents from Roman Catholicism or from the Nestorians, etc., are received into communion ‘through recantation of heresy’, that is, in the sacrament of repentance. Clergy are given absolution by a bishop and thereby is removed the

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inhibition lying on a schismatic cleric. One asks whether it is conceivable that in this delivery and absolution from sin there is also accomplished and acquired silently  – and even secretly – baptism, confirmation, ordination as deacon or priest, sometimes consecration [as bishop], and that without any ‘form’ or clear and distinctive ‘external act’ which might enable us to notice and consider precisely what sacraments are being performed. Here there is a double equivocation, both from the standpoint of motive and from the standpoint of the fact itself. Can one, in short, celebrate a sacrament by virtue of ‘intention’ alone, without some visible act? Of course not. Not because to the ‘form’ belongs some self-sufficient or ‘magic’ action, but precisely because in the celebration of a sacrament the ‘external act’ and the pouring-forth of grace are in substance indivisible and inseparable. Certainly, the Church is the store of grace and to her is given power to preserve and teach these gifts of grace. The Church is ho tamiouchos tēs charitos [the keeper of the storehouse of grace], as the Greek theologians say. But the power of the Church does not extend to the very foundations of Christian existence. It is impossible to think that the Church might have the right ‘in the order of economy’ to admit to the priestly function without ordination the professed clergy of schismatic confessions, even of those that have not preserved the ‘apostolic succession’, remedying not only defects but just complete gracelessness in the order only of power, intention and recognition, and that unspoken. In such an interpretation the Church’s whole sacramental system in general becomes too soft and elastic. [Aleksei] Khomiakov also was not sufficiently careful, when in defending the new Greek practice of receiving reunited Latins through baptism he wrote to [William] Palmer that ‘all sacraments are completed only in the bosom of the true Church and it matters not whether they be completed in one form or another. Reconciliation (with the Church) renovates the sacraments or completes them, giving a full and orthodox meaning to the rite that was before either insufficient or heterodox, and the repetition of the preceding sacraments is virtually contained in the rite or fact of reconciliation. Therefore, the visible repetition of baptism or confirmation, though unnecessary, cannot be considered as erroneous, and establishes only a ritual difference without any difference of opinion’ (Russia and the English Church, Ch. VI, 62).5 Here the thought divides. The ‘repetition’ of a sacrament is not only superfluous but impermissible. If there was not sacrament but there was previously performed an imperfect, heretical rite, then the sacrament must be accomplished for the first time, and, moreover, with complete sincerity and obviousness. In any case the Catholic sacraments are not only rites and it is not possible to treat the ‘external’ aspect of sacramental celebration with such disciplinary relativism. 5

Aleksei Khomiakov (1804–1860) (see Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, n. 68, 147, in this book) had an important correspondence on the history and theology of Eastern of the Orthodox Church with William Palmer (1803–1885), a Tractarian theologian and Anglican deacon at Oxford as well as a friend of John Henry Newman. Newman was then contemplating converting to Orthodoxy but eventually became a Roman Catholic (see Russia and the English Church: Containing a Correspondence between Mr. William Palmer and M. Khomiakoff, in the Years 1844–1854, ed. W. J. Birkbeck [London: Eastern Churches Association/Rivington, Percival, 1895]) [Eds.].

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The ‘economical’ interpretation of the canons might be convincing and probable but only in the presence of direct and perfectly clear proofs, whereas it is customarily supported by indirect data and most of all by indirect intentions and conclusions. The ‘economical’ interpretation is not the teaching of the Church. It is only a private ‘theological opinion’, very late and very controversial, having arisen in a period of theological confusion and decadence in a hasty endeavour to dissociate oneself as sharply as possible from Roman theology. Roman theology admits and acknowledges that there remains in sects a valid hierarchy and even in a certain sense is preserved the ‘apostolic succession’, so that under certain conditions sacraments may be accomplished and actually are accomplished among schismatics and even among heretics. The basic premises of this sacramental theology have already been established with sufficient definition by St Augustine and the Orthodox theologian has every reason to take into account the theology of Augustine in his doctrinal synthesis. The first thing to attract attention in Augustine is his organic relation of the question about the validity of sacraments to the general doctrine concerning the Church. The actuality of the sacraments celebrated by schismatics signifies for Augustine the continuation of their links with the Church. He directly affirms that in the sacraments of sectarians the Church is active: some she engenders of herself, others she engenders outside, of her maidservant [Gen 16], and schismatic baptism is valid for this very reason, that it is performed by the Church (De bapt. I, 15, 23). What is valid in the sects is that which is in them from the Church, which in their hands remains as their portion of the sacred core of the Church, that through which they are with the Church. In quibusdam rebus nobiscum sunt [in some things, they are with us] [De bapt. I, 2, 3]. The unity of the Church is based on a twofold bond – the ‘unity of the Spirit’ and the ‘union of peace’ (cf. Eph 4:3). In sects and schisms the ‘union of peace’ is broken and torn apart, but the ‘unity of the Spirit’ in the sacraments is [not] terminated. This is the unique paradox of sectarian existence; the sect remains united with the Church in the grace of the sacraments, and this becomes a condemnation once love and communal mutuality have withered. With this is connected St Augustine’s second basic distinction, the distinction between the ‘validity’ or ‘actuality’, the reality of the sacraments and their ‘efficacy’. The sacraments of schismatics are valid; that is, they genuinely are sacraments, but they are not efficacious (non-efficacia) by virtue of schism and division. For in sects and schisms love withers, and without love salvation is impossible. In salvation there are two sides: the objective action of grace, and the subjective effort or fidelity. The Holy and sanctifying Spirit breathes yet in the sects, but in the stubbornness and powerlessness of schism healing is not accomplished. It is untrue to say that in schismatic rites nothing generally is accomplished, for, if they must be considered only empty acts and words, deprived of grace, by the same token not only are they empty but are converted into a profanation, a sinister counterfeit. If the rites of schismatics are not sacraments, then they are a blasphemous caricature. In that case neither ‘economical’ suppression of facts nor ‘economical’ glossing of sin is possible. The sacramental rite cannot be only a rite, empty but innocent. The sacrament is accomplished in reality. But it is impossible to say also that in the sects the sacraments are of avail. The sacraments are not ‘magic’ acts; indeed the Eucharist may also be taken ‘unto judgement

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and condemnation’.6 But this does not refute the reality or ‘validity’ of the Eucharist itself. The same may be said of baptism; baptismal grace must be renewed in unceasing effort and service, otherwise it becomes ‘inefficacious’. From this point of view St Gregory of Nyssa attacked with great energy the [common ancient Christian] practice of postponing baptism to the hour of death or at least to advanced years, in order to avoid pollution of the baptismal robes. He transfers the emphasis. Baptism is not only the end of sinful existence but rather the beginning of everything. Baptismal grace is not only remission of sins but a gift or surety of effort. The name is entered in the army list but the honour of the soldier is in his service, not in his calling alone. What does baptism mean without spiritual deeds? Augustine wishes to say the same thing in his distinction between ‘character’ and ‘grace’. In any case there rests on everyone baptized a ‘sign’ or ‘seal’, even if he falls away and departs, and each will be tried concerning this ‘sign’ or surety in the Day of Judgement. The baptized are distinguished from the unbaptized, even when baptismal grace has not flowered in their works and deeds, even when they have corrupted and wasted their whole life. That is the ineffaceable consequence of the divine touch. This clear distinction between the two inseparable factors of sacramental existence, the divine grace and human love, is characteristic of the whole sacramental theology of St Augustine. But the sacrament is accomplished by grace and not by love. Yet man is saved in freedom and not in compulsion, and for that reason grace somehow does not burn with a life-giving flame outside communality and love. One thing remains obscure. How does the activity of the Spirit continue beyond the canonical border of the church? What is the validity of sacraments without communion, of stolen sacraments, sacraments in the hands of usurpers? Recent Roman theology answers that question by the doctrine of the validity of sacraments ex opere operato [from the work done], as distinct from validity ex opere operantis (sc. ministri) [from the work of the doer, namely, the minister]. In St Augustine this distinction does not exist. But he understood the validity of the sacraments outside canonical unity in the same sense. In fact opus operatum [work done] signifies pre-eminently the independence of the sacrament from the personal action of the minister. The Church performs the sacrament and in her Christ the high priest. The sacraments are performed by the prayer and activity of the Church, ex opere orantis et operantis ecclesiae [from the work of the praying and acting Church]. In such a sense must the doctrine of validity ex opere operato be accepted. For Augustine it was not so important that the sacraments of schismatics are ‘unlawful’ or ‘illicit’ (illicita); much more important is the fact that the schism is a dissipation of love. But the love of God overlaps and surmounts the failure of love in man. In the sects themselves and even among heretics the Church continues to perform the saving and sanctifying work. It may not follow, perhaps, that we should say, the schismatics are still in the Church;7 at all events this would not be very precise and sounds equivocal. It 6

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Cf. 1 Cor 11:29, which is echoed in the prayer recited by the priest and the faithful before communion in the Orthodox Church [Eds.]. This is a tacit dismissal of a key point in an earlier essay by Sergius Bulgakov (‘Ocherki ucheniia o tserkvi. (III). Tserkov’ i ‘Inoslavie’’ [Outlines of the Teaching about the Church: The Church and Non-Orthodoxy], Put’, 4 (1926):  3–26 at 10. Abridged translation in American Church Monthly, 30, no.  6 (1931):  411–423 at 418; and 31, no.  1 (1932):  13–26). Bulgakov argues, on the basis of the canonical literature dealing with the reception of the non-Orthodox into the Church, that the Church considers as her own everything that is included in a Trinitarian baptism even in the case

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would be truer to say, the Church continues to work in the schisms in expectation of the mysterious hour when the stubborn heart will be melted in the warmth of ‘preparatory grace’ [i.e. prevenient grace], when [it] will burst into flame and burn the will and thirst for communality and unity. The ‘validity’ of the sacraments among schismatics is the mysterious guarantee of their return to Catholic plenitude and unity. The sacramental theology of St Augustine was not received by the Eastern Church in antiquity, it also was not received by Byzantine theology, but not because they saw in it or suspected something alien or superfluous; Augustine was in general not very well known in the East. In modern times the doctrine of the sacraments has been not infrequently expounded in the Orthodox East and in Russia on a Roman model and there has not yet been a creative appropriation of Augustine’s conception. Contemporary Orthodox theology must express and explain the traditional canonical practice of the Church in relation to heretics and schismatics on the basis of those general premises which have been established by Augustine. It is necessary to hold firmly in mind that in asserting the ‘validity’ of the sacraments and of the hierarchy itself in the sects, St Augustine in no way relaxed or removed the boundary dividing sect and communality. This is not so much a canonical as a spiritual boundary, communal love in the Church or separatism and alienation in the schisms. This for Augustine was the boundary of salvation, since, indeed, grace operates but outside communality does not save. (It is appropriate to note that here too Augustine closely follows Cyprian who asserted that except in the Church martyrdom itself for Christ does not avail.) For this reason despite all the ‘reality’ and ‘validity’ of the schismatic hierarchy it is impossible to speak in a strict sense of the retention of the ‘apostolic succession’ beyond the limits of canonical communality.8 And from this it indubitably follows that the so-called ‘branch-church’ theory cannot be accepted. This theory depicts the cleavage of the Christian world too complacently and comfortably. The onlooker perhaps will not immediately discern the ‘schismatic’ branches from the ‘Catholic’ trunk. In its substance, however, ‘schism’ is not only a branch. It is also the will for schism. It is the mysterious and even enigmatic sphere beyond the canonical limits of the church, where the sacraments still are celebrated, where hearts as often flame and burn in faith, in love, in works. It is necessary to admit this, but it is also necessary to remember that the limit is real, that there is no union. Khomiakov, it seems, was speaking of this when he said: Inasmuch as the earthly and visible Church is not the fullness and completeness of the whole Church which the Lord has appointed to appear at the final judgement of all creation, she acts and knows only within her own limits; and according to the

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where the baptism is in a group ‘torn’ from the Church. Thus ‘schism’ and ‘heresy’ are possible only in the Church and in relation to the Church and are ecclesial qualifications. He then argues, like Florovsky several years later, that the body of the Church does not coincide with its visible framework and that there is an external zone of the Church reaching beyond its institutional walls, which is invisible, and that the visible Church is always in relationship with this wider hidden Church [Eds.]. This question has been investigated with exhaustive fullness and great insight in the remarkable article of the late C. G. Turner, ‘The Apostolic Succession’, in Essays on the Early History of the Church and the Ministry, edited by H. B. Swete ([London: Macmillan], 1918) [GF].

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words of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians (1 Cor 5:12), does not judge the rest of mankind, and only looks upon those as excluded, that is to say, not belonging to her, who have excluded themselves. The rest of mankind, whether alien from the Church, or united to her by ties which God has not willed to reveal to her, she leaves to the judgement of the great day (Russia and the English Church, XXIII, 194).

In the same sense Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow9 decided to speak of Churches ‘not purely true’: Mark you, I do not presume to call false any Church, believing that Jesus is the Christ. The Christian Church can only be either purely true, confessing the true and saving divine teaching without the false admixtures and pernicious opinion of men, or not purely true, mixing with the true and saving teaching of faith in Christ the false and pernicious opinions of men (Conversation between the Seeker and the Believer concerning the Orthodoxy of the Eastern Greco-Russian Church (Moscow: 1833), 27–29).

‘You expect now that I  should give judgement concerning the other half of present Christianity’, Metropolitan Philaret said in the concluding conversation,  . . . but I just simply look upon them; in part see how the head and Lord of the Church heals the many deep wounds of the old serpent in all the parts and limbs of this body, applying now gentle, now strong, remedies, even fire and iron, in order to soften hardness, to draw out poison to clean the wounds, to separate out malignant growths, to restore spirit and life in the half-dead and numbed structures. In such wise I attest my faith that in the end the power of God patently will triumph over human weakness, good over evil, unity over division, life over death (ibid., 135).

This is a beginning only, a general characteristic; not everything in it is clearly and fully said. But the question is truly put. There are many bonds still not broken, whereby the schisms are held together in a certain unity. Our whole attention and our whole will must be gathered together and directed to removing the stubbornness of dissension. ‘We seek not conquest,’ says St Gregory Nazianzen, ‘but the return of brethren, the separation from whom is tearing us [apart].’10 9

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On Met. Philaret (Drozdov) (1782–1867), see Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’. n. 13, 36, in this book [Eds.]. See also the recently published collection of essays, Khristianskoe vosoedinenie. Ekumenicheskaia problema v pravoslavnom soznanii [Christian Reunion, The Oecumenical Problem in the Orthodox Consciousness] (Paris: YMCA Press, 1933), and particularly the essay by Rev. Fr Sergius Bulgakov, ‘U kladezia Iakovlia (Io. 4.23). O real’nom edinstve razdelennoi tserkvi v vere, molitve i tainstvakh [At Jacob’s Well, Concerning the Real Unity of the Divided Church in Faith, Prayer and Sacraments]. See also my article, ‘Problematika khristianskago vozsoedineniia [The Problems of Christian Reunion]’, in the journal Put’, 37 (Feb. 1933), 1–15 [GF]. [An abridged version of Sergius Bulgakov’s article was published as ‘By Jacob’s Well – Jn 4:23 (On the Actual Unity of the Divided Church in Faith, Prayer and Sacraments)’ in the Journal of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, 22 (1933): 7–17; and reprinted in Michael Plekon, ed., Tradition Alive: On the Church and the Christian Life in Our Time – Readings from the Eastern Church (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 55–65. For Florovsky’s article ‘The Problems of Christian Reunion’, see The Collected Works, XIII, 14–18 (Parts I–II) and XIV, 52–58 (Part III) [Eds.].]

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This article was published in The Church of God: An Anglo-Russian Symposium by Members of Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius, edited by E. L. Mascall (London: SPCK, 1934), 53–74. The reprint of this article in the Collected Works omits the word ‘Sobornost’1 from the title (Blane #72).

I Christ conquered the world. This victory consists in His having created His own Church. In the midst of the vanity and poverty, of the weakness and suffering of human history, He laid the foundations of a ‘new being’. The Church is Christ’s work on earth; it is the image and abode of His blessed Presence in the world. And on the day of Pentecost the Holy Ghost descended on the Church, which was then represented by the twelve Apostles and those who were with them. He entered into the world in order to abide with us and act more fully than He had ever acted before; ‘for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified’ (Jn 7:39). The Holy Spirit descended once and for always. This is a tremendous and unfathomable mystery. He lives and abides ceaselessly in the Church. In the Church we receive the Spirit of adoption (Rom 8:15). Through reaching towards and accepting the Holy Ghost we become eternally God’s. In the Church our salvation is perfected; the sanctification and transfiguration, the theosis of the human race is accomplished.

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The term sobornost is a coinage from the adjective used for ‘catholic’ in the Slavonic translation of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (sobornyi). The term is difficult to translate but has roughly the sense of ‘unity-in-difference’. It is often translated as ‘conciliarity’. The Slavophiles (see Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, nn. 67 and 68, 147, in this book), Ivan Kireevsky (1806– 1856) and especially Aleksei Khomiakov (1804–1860), developed an Orthodox ecclesiology, partly inspired by German Romanticism, especially Johann Adam Möhler’s Unity in the Church (1825), summarized by the term sobornost. This ecclesiology argues that the Orthodox Church, in reflecting the life of the Trinity, is marked by its embodiment of a wholeness and unity, of all which embraces both freedom and unity. The notion of sobornost was widely influential in the Russian diaspora and was employed by figures such as Basil Zenkovsky (1881–1962) and Sergius Bulgakov. Florovsky was initially enthusiastic about the notion of sobornost and the thought of the Slavophiles more generally, but in later years distanced himself from Slavophile thought because of its strong dependence on German idealism [Eds.].

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Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus [Outside the Church there is no salvation].2 All the categorical strength and point of this aphorism lies in its tautology. Outside the Church there is no salvation, because salvation is the Church. For salvation is the revelation of the way for every one who believes in Christ’s name. This revelation is to be found only in the Church. In the Church, as in the Body of Christ, in its theanthropic organism, the mystery of Incarnation, the mystery of the ‘two natures’, indissolubly united, is continually accomplished. In the Incarnation of the Word is the fullness of revelation, a revelation not only of God, but also of man. ‘For the Son of God became the Son of Man,’ writes St Irenaeus, ‘to the end that man too might become the son of God.’3 In Christ, as God-Man, the meaning of human existence is not only revealed, but accomplished. In Christ human nature is perfected; it is renewed, rebuilt, created anew. Human destiny reaches its goal, and henceforth human life is, according to the word of the Apostle, ‘hid with Christ in God’ (Col 3:3). In this sense Christ is the ‘Last Adam’ (1 Cor 15:45), a true man. In Him is the measure and limit of human life. He rose ‘as the first fruits of them that are asleep’ (1 Cor 15:20–22). He ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of God. His Glory is the glory of all human existence. Christ has entered the pre-eternal glory; He has entered it as Man and has called the whole of mankind to abide with Him and in Him. ‘God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, quickened us together with Christ . . . and raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus’ (Eph 2:4–6). Therein lies the mystery of the Church as Christ’s Body. The Church is fullness, to plērōma, that is, fulfilment, completion (Eph 1:23). In this manner St John Chrysostom explains the words of the Apostle: The Church is the fulfilment of Christ in the same manner as the head completes the body and the body is completed by the head. Thus we understand why the Apostle sees that Christ, as the Head, needs all His members. Because if many of us were not, one the hand, one the foot, one yet another member, His body would not be complete. Thus His body is formed of all the members. This means that the head will be complete, only when the body is perfect; when we all are most firmly united and strengthened.4

Bishop Theophan5 repeats the explanation of Chrysostom: The Church is the fulfilment of Christ in the same manner as the tree is the fulfilment of the grain. All that is contained in the grain in a condensed manner, receives its full development in the tree . . . He Himself is complete and all-perfect, but not yet has He drawn mankind to Himself in final completeness. It is only

2

3 4 5

The phrase is from St Cyprian of Carthage. See Ch. 17, ‘The Limits of the Church’, n. 1, 247, in this book; and see Ch. 4, ‘The Lamb of God’, n. 29, 93, in this book [Eds.]. Adv. Haeres. III, 10, 2 [PG 7/1.939B] [GF]. In Ephes. Hom. 3, 2, PG 62.26 [GF]. On St Theophan the Recluse, see Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 145, 63, in this book [Eds.].

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gradually that mankind enters into communion with Him and so gives a new fullness to His work, which thereby attains its full accomplishment.6

The Church is completeness itself; it is the continuation and the fulfilment of the theanthropic union. The Church is transfigured and regenerated mankind. The meaning of this regeneration and transfiguration is that in the Church mankind becomes one unity, ‘in one body’ (Eph 2:16). The life of the Church is unity and union. The body is ‘knit together’ and ‘increaseth’ (Col 2:19) in unity of Spirit, in unity of love. The realm of the Church is unity. And of course this unity is no outward one, but is inner, intimate, organic. It is the unity of the living body, the unity of the organism. The Church is a unity not only in the sense that it is one and unique; it is a unity, first of all, because its very being consists in reuniting separated and divided mankind. It is this unity which is the ‘sobornost’ or catholicity of the Church. In the Church humanity passes over into another plane, begins a new manner of existence. A new life becomes possible, a true, whole and complete life, a catholic life, ‘in the unity of the Spirit, in the bond of peace’ (Eph 4:3). A new existence begins, a new principle of life, ‘even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us . . . that they may be one even as We are one’ (Jn 17:21–23). This is the mystery of the final reunion in the image of the Unity of the Holy Trinity. It is realized in the life and construction of the Church, it is the mystery of sobornost, the mystery of catholicity.

II The catholicity of the Church is not a quantitative or a geographical conception.7 It does not at all depend on the worldwide dispersion of the faithful. The universality of the Church is the consequence or the manifestation, but not the cause or the foundation of its catholicity. The worldwide extension or the universality of the Church is only an outward sign, one that is not absolutely necessary. The Church was catholic even when Christian communities were but solitary rare islands in a sea of unbelief and paganism. And the Church will remain catholic even unto the end of time when the mystery of the ‘falling away’ will be revealed, when the Church once more will dwindle to a ‘small flock’. ‘When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?’ (Lk 18:8). Metropolitan Philaret [Drozdov]8 expressed himself very adequately on this point: ‘If a city or a country falls away from the universal Church, the latter will still 6

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Tolkovanie poslaniia sviatogo apostola Pavla k Efesianam [Explanation of the Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Ephesians], 2nd ed. (Moscow:  Tipo-lit. I.  Efimova, 1893), 93–94. For the same point of view, cf. the late Very Rev. J. Armitage Robinson, St Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (London: Macmillan, 1904), I. 403, 44–45; short ed. (London: Macmillan, 1923), 57–60 [GF]. Florovsky’s unseen opponent in this section is a certain form of ultramontane Roman Catholicism that emphasizes the ‘catholicity’ of Rome as a global totality expressed (as expressed in later language) in the pope’s ‘supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church’ (Code of Canon Law [1983], canon 331 and compare canon 218 of the 1917 code), i.e. a jurisdiction over the universal Church on earth, as distinct from a qualitative understanding of catholicity. [Eds.]. On Met. Philaret (Drozdov) (1782–1867), see Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 13, 36, in this book [Eds.].

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remain an integral, imperishable body.’9 Philaret uses here the word ‘universal’ in the sense of catholicity. The conception of catholicity cannot be measured by its wideworld expansion; universality does not express it exactly. Katholikē from Kath’ holou [according to the whole] means, first of all, the inner wholeness and integrity of the Church’s life. We are speaking here of wholeness, not only of communion, and in any case not of a simple empirical communion. Kath’ holou is not the same as Kata pantos [according to all]; it belongs not to the phenomenal and empirical, but to the noumenal and ontological plane; it describes the very essence, not the external manifestations. We feel this already in the pre-Christian use of these words, beginning from Socrates. If catholicity also means universality, it certainly is not an empirical universality, but an ideal one; the communion of ideas, not of facts, is what it has in view. The first Christians when using the words Ekklēsia Katholikē [Catholic Church] never meant a worldwide Church. This word rather gave prominence to the orthodoxy of the Church, to the truth of the ‘Great Church’, as contrasted with the spirit of sectarian separatism and particularism; it was the idea of integrity and purity that was expressed. This has been very forcibly stated in the well-known words of St Ignatius of Antioch: ‘Where there is a bishop, let there be the whole multitude; just as where Jesus Christ is, there too is the Catholic Church.’10 These words express the same idea as does the promise: ‘Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them’ (Mt 18:19– 20). It is this ‘mystery of gathering together’ (mystērion tēs synaxeōs) that the word catholicity expresses. Later on St Cyril of Jerusalem explained the word ‘catholicity’ which is used in the Creed in the traditional manner of his Church. The word ‘Church’ means the ‘gathering together of all in one union’; therefore it is called a ‘gathering’ [ekklēsia]. The Church is called catholic, because it spreads over all the universe and subjects the whole of the human race to righteousness, because also in the Church the dogmas are taught ‘fully, without any omission, catholically, and completely’ (katholikōs kai anelleipōs) because, again, in the Church ‘every kind of sin is cured and healed’.11 Here again catholicity is understood as an inner quality. Only in the West, during the struggle against the Donatists was the word catholica used in the sense of ‘universality’, in opposition to the geographical provincialism of the Donatists.12 9

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Sobranie mnenii i otzyvov mitr. Moskovskogo i Kolomenskogo Philareta po delam pravosl. Tserkvi na vostoke [A Collection of the Opinions and Statements of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomensky, Concerning the Orthodox Church in the East] (St Petersburg:  Synod. Typ., 1886), 53 [GF]. Ignat Smyrn. 8:2 [GF]. Catech. 18, 23. PG 33, 1044 [GF]. Cf. Pierre Batiffol, Le Catholicisme de St Augustin [The Catholicism of St Augustine], 2nd ed. (Paris: Gabalda, 1920), I, 212: ‘Let us recall that the term “Catholic” was employed to distinguish the Great Church as distinct from heretics. It seems that the term was of popular origin and appeared in the East in the second century. The Tractatores of the fourth century, seeking an etymological and learned sense, saw in it the expression of the integral perfection of the faith of the Church, or the fact that the Church does not accord special favour to persons of high rank or culture, or, finally and most importantly, the fact that the Church is spread throughout the entire world, from one extremity to the other. Augustine recognised only this last interpretation.’ [In French in the original.] Cf. also Bishop Lightfoot, in his edition of St Ignatius in Apostolic Fathers. Part II (3 vols.), Vol. II (London: Macmillan and Co., 1889), 319. Note ad loc. The history of the Christian and pre-Christian use of the terms Ekklēsia Katholikē and katholikos generally in various settings deserves careful study; apparently there have been no special investigations on the subject. In Russian, reference may be made to the very valuable, though not exhaustive or faultless, article of the late Professor Mitrofan D. Muretov in the

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Later on, in the East, the word ‘catholic’ was understood as synonymous with ‘ecumenical’. But this only limited the conception, making it less vivid, because it drew attention to the outward form, not to the inner contents. Yet the Church is not catholic because of its outward extent, or, at any rate, not only because of that. The Church is catholic, not only because it is an all-embracing entity, not only because it unites all its members, all local Churches, but because it is catholic all through, in its very smallest part, in every act and event of its life. The nature of the Church is catholic; the very web of the Church’s body is catholic. The Church is catholic, because it is the one Body of Christ; it is union in Christ, oneness in the Holy Ghost – and this unity is the highest wholeness and fullness. The gauge of catholic union is that ‘the multitude of them that believed be of one heart and of one soul’ (Acts 4:32). Where this is not the case, the life of the Church is limited and restricted. The ontological blending of persons is, and must be, accomplished in oneness with the Body of Christ; they cease to be exclusive and impenetrable. The cold separation into ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ disappears. The growth of the Church is in the perfecting of its inner wholeness, its inner catholicity, in the ‘perfection of wholeness’; ‘that they may be made perfect in one’ (Jn 17:23).

III The catholicity of the Church has two sides. Objectively, the catholicity of the Church denotes a unity of the Spirit. ‘In one Spirit were we all baptized into one body’ (1 Cor 12:13). And the Holy Spirit which is a Spirit of love and peace, not only unites isolated individuals, but also becomes in every separate soul the source of inner peace and wholeness. Subjectively, the catholicity of the Church means that the Church is a certain unity of life, a brotherhood or communion, a union of love, ‘a life in common’. The image of the Body is the commandment of love. ‘St Paul demands such love of us, a love which should bind us one to the other, so that we no more should be separated one from the other; . . . St Paul demands that our union should be as perfect as is that of the members of one body.’13 The novelty of the Christian commandment of love consists in the fact that we are to love our neighbour as ourselves. This is more than putting him on the same level with ourselves, of identifying him with ourselves; it means seeing our own self in another, in the beloved one, not in our own self . . . Therein lies the limit of love; the beloved is our ‘alter ego’, an ‘ego’ which is dearer to us than ourself. In love we are merged into one. ‘The quality of love is such that the loving and the beloved are no more two but one man.’14 Even more: true Christian love sees in every one of our brethren ‘Christ Himself ’. Such love demands self-surrender, self-mastery. Such love is possible only in a catholic expansion and transfiguration of the soul. The commandment to be catholic is given to

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supplement to his book Drevne-evreiskiia molitvy pod imenem Apostola Petra [Ancient Jewish Prayers Ascribed to St Peter] (Sergiev Posad: Sviato-Troitskaia Sergieva Lavra, Sobstvennaia tip, 1905). See also Bishop Lightfoot, St Ignatius, Vol. II (London, 1889), 310, note [GF]. St John Chrysostom, In Eph. Hom. 11.1, PG 62.79 [GF]. St John Chrysostom, In 1 Cor. Hom. 33, 3, PG 61.280 [GF].

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every Christian. The measure of his spiritual manhood is the measure of his catholicity. The Church is catholic in every one of its members, because a catholic whole cannot be built up or composed otherwise than through the catholicity of its members. No multitude, every member of which is isolated and impenetrable, can become a brotherhood. Union can become possible only through the mutual brotherly love of all the separate brethren. This thought is expressed very vividly in the well-known vision of the Church as of a tower that is being built (compare the Shepherd of Hermas). This tower is being built out of separate stones – the faithful. These faithful are ‘living stones’ (1 Pet 2:5). In the process of building they fit one into the other, because they are smooth and are well adapted to one another; they join so closely to one another, that their edges are no longer visible, and the tower appears to be built of one stone. This is a symbol of unity and wholeness. But notice, only smooth square stones could be used for this building. There were other stones, bright stones, but round ones, and they were of no use for the building; they ‘did not fit one into the other’ (mē harmozontes), were not suitable for the building, and they had to be placed near the walls.15 In ancient symbolism ‘roundness’ was a sign of isolation, of self-sufficiency and self-satisfaction – teres atque rotundus [finished and completely rounded off ]. And it is just this spirit of self-satisfaction which hinders our entering the Church. The stone must first be made smooth, so that it can fit into the Church wall. We must ‘reject ourselves’ to be able to enter the catholicity of the Church. We must master our self-love in a catholic spirit before we can enter the Church. And in the fullness of the communion of the Church the catholic transfiguration of personality is accomplished. But the rejection and denial of our own self does not signify that personality must be extinguished, that it must be dissolved within the multitude. Catholicity is not corporality or collectivism. On the contrary, self-denial widens the scope of our own personality; in self-denial we possess the multitude within our own self; we enclose the many within our own ego. Therein lies the similarity with the Divine Oneness of the Holy Trinity. In its catholicity the Church becomes the created similitude of Divine perfection. The Fathers of the Church have spoken of this with great depth. In the East St Cyril of Alexandria; in the West St Hilary.16 In contemporary Russian theology Metropolitan Antony [Khrapovitsky]17 has said very adequately: The existence of the Church can be compared to nothing else upon earth, for on earth there is no unity, but only separation. Only in heaven is there anything like it. The Church is a perfect, a new, a peculiar, a unique existence upon earth, a unicum, which cannot be closely defined by any conception taken from the life of the world. The Church is the likeness of the existence of the Holy Trinity, a likeness in which many become one. Why is it that this existence, just as the existence of the Holy 15 16

17

Hermas, Vis. III, 2, 6, 8 [GF]. For Patristic quotations very well arranged and explained, see Emile Mersch, S. J., Le Corps Mystique du Christ, Études de Théologie Historique, t. 1–2 (Louvain:  Museum Lessianum, 1933) [The Whole Christ: The Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body in Scripture and Tradition, trans. John R. Kelly (London: Dennis Dobson, 1949)] [GF]. On Met. Anthony Khrapovitsky, see Ch. 7, ‘Revelation, Philosophy and Theology’, n. 10, 126, in this book [Eds.].

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Trinity, is new for the old man and unfathomable for him? Because personality in its carnal consciousness is a self-imprisoned existence, radically contrasted with every other personality.18 Thus the Christian must in the measure of his spiritual development set himself free, making a direct contrast between the ‘ego’ and the ‘non-ego’ he must radically modify the fundamental qualities of human self-consciousness.19

It is just in this change that the catholic regeneration of the mind consists. There are two types of self-consciousness and self-assertion: separate individualism and catholicity. Catholicity is no denial of personality and catholic consciousness is neither generic nor racial. It is not a common consciousness, neither is it the joint consciousness of the many or the Bewußtsein überhaupt [consciousness-as-such or in general] of German philosophers. Catholicity is achieved not by eliminating the living personality, nor by passing over into the plane of an abstract Logos. Catholicity is a concrete oneness in thought and feeling. Catholicity is the style or the order or the setting of personal consciousness, which rises to the ‘level of catholicity’. It is the ‘telos’ of personal consciousness, which is realized in creative development, not in the annihilation of personality. In catholic transfiguration personality receives strength and power to express the life and consciousness of the whole. And this not as an impersonal medium, but in creative and heroic action. We must not say: ‘Every one in the Church attains the level of catholicity,’ but ‘every one can, and must, and is called to attain it.’ Not always and not by every one is it attained. In the Church we call those who have attained it Doctors and Fathers, because from them we hear not only their personal profession, but also the testimony of the Church; they speak to us from its catholic completeness, from the completeness of a life full of grace.

IV The Church is the unity of charismatic life. The source of this unity is hidden in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and in the sacrament of Pentecost, that unique descent of the Spirit of Truth into the world. Therefore the Church is an apostolic Church. It was created and sealed by the Spirit in the Twelve Apostles, and the Apostolic Succession is a living and mysterious thread binding the whole historical fullness of Church life into one catholic whole. Here again we see two sides. The objective side is the uninterrupted sacramental succession, the continuity of the hierarchy. The Holy Ghost does not descend upon earth again and again, but abides in the ‘visible’ and historical Church.

18

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Archbishop Anthony Khapovitsky, ‘Nravstvennaia ideia dogmata Tserkvi [The Moral Idea of the Dogma of the Church]’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [Complete Works], 2nd ed., Vol. 2 (St Petersburg:  Izd. I. L. Tuzova, 1911), 17–18 [The Moral Idea of the Main Dogmas of the Faith, trans. Varlaam Novakshonoff and Lazar Puhalo (Chilliwack, BC: Synaxis Press, 1984)] [GF]. Ibid., ‘Nravstvennaia ideia dogmata Presviatoi Troitsy [The Moral Idea of the Dogma of the Holy Trinity]’, 65 [GF].

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And it is in the Church that He breathes and sends forth His rays. Therein lies the fullness and catholicity of Pentecost. The subjective side is loyalty to the Apostolic tradition; a life spent according to this tradition, as in a living realm of truth. This is the fundamental demand or postulate of Orthodox thought, and here again this demand entails the denial of individualistic separatism; it insists on catholicity. The catholic nature of the Church is seen most vividly in the fact that the experience of the Church belongs to all times. In the life and existence of the Church, time is mysteriously overcome and mastered, time, so to speak, stands still. It stands still not only because of the power of historical memory, or of imagination, which can ‘fly over the double barrier of time and space;’ it stands still because of the power of grace, which gathers together in catholic unity of life that which had become separated by walls built in the course of time. Unity in the Spirit embraces in a mysterious, time-conquering fashion, the faithful of all generations. This time-conquering unity is manifested and revealed in the experience of the Church, especially in its Eucharistic experience. The Church is the living image of eternity within time. The experience and life of the Church are not interrupted or broken up by time. This, too, is not only because of continuity in the super-personal outpouring of grace, but also because of the catholic inclusion of all that was, into the mysterious fullness of the present. Therefore the history of the Church gives us not only successive changes, but also identity. In this sense communion with the saints is a communio sanctorum. The Church knows that it is a unity of all times, and as such it builds up its life. Therefore the Church thinks of the past not as of something that is no more, but as of something that has been accomplished, as something existing in the catholic fullness of the one Body of Christ. Tradition reflects this victory over time. To learn from tradition, or, still better, in tradition, is to learn from the fullness of this time-conquering experience of the Church, an experience which every member of the Church may learn to know and possess according to the measure of his spiritual manhood; according to the measure of his catholic development. It means that we can learn from history as we can from revelation. Loyalty to tradition does not mean loyalty to bygone times and to outward authority; it is a living connection with the fullness of Church experience. Reference to tradition is no historical inquiry. Tradition is not limited to Church archaeology. Tradition is no outward testimony which can be accepted by an outsider. The Church alone is the living witness of tradition; and only from inside, from within the Church, can tradition be felt and accepted as a certainty. Tradition is the witness of the Spirit; the Spirit’s unceasing revelation and preaching of good tidings. For the living members of the Church it is no outward historical authority, but the eternal, continual voice of God – not only the voice of the past, but the voice of eternity. Faith seeks its foundations not merely in the example and bequest of the past, but in the grace of the Holy Ghost, witnessing always, now and ever, world without end. As [Aleksei] Khomiakov admirably puts it, ‘Neither individuals, nor a multitude of individuals within the Church preserve tradition or write the Scriptures, but the Spirit of God which lives in the whole body of the Church.’20 ‘Concord with the past’ is only 20

Alexis Khomiakov, Russia and the English Church (London:  Eastern Churches Association, 1895), 198 [GF].

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the consequence of loyalty to the whole; it is simply the expression of the constancy of catholic experience in the midst of shifting times. To accept and understand tradition we must live within the Church, we must be conscious of the grace-giving presence of the Lord in it; we must feel the breath of the Holy Ghost in it. We may truly say that when we accept tradition we accept, through faith, our Lord, who abides in the midst of the faithful; for the Church is His Body, which cannot be separated from Him. That is why loyalty to tradition means not only concord with the past, but, in a certain sense, freedom from the past, as from some outward formal criterion. Tradition is not only a protective, conservative principle; it is, primarily, the principle of growth and regeneration. Tradition is not a principle striving to restore the past, using the past as a criterion for the present. Such a conception of tradition is rejected by history itself and by the consciousness of the Church. Tradition is authority to teach, potestas magisterii, authority to bear witness to the truth. The Church bears witness to the truth not by reminiscence or from the words of others, but from its own living, unceasing experience, from its catholic fullness . . . Therein consists that ‘tradition of truth, traditio veritatis, about which St Irenaeus spoke.21 For him it is connected with the ‘veritable unction of truth’ charisma veritatis certum,22 and the ‘teaching of the Apostles’ was for him not so much an unchangeable example to be repeated or imitated, as an eternally living and inexhaustible source of life and inspiration. Tradition is the constant abiding of the Spirit and not only the memory of words. Tradition is a charismatic, not a historical, principle. It is quite false to limit the ‘sources of teaching’ to Scripture and tradition, and to separate tradition from Scripture as only an oral testimony or teaching of the Apostles. In the first place, both Scripture and tradition were given only within the Church. Only in the Church have they been received in the fullness of their sacred value and meaning. In them is contained the truth of Divine Revelation, a truth which lives in the Church. This experience of the Church has not been exhausted either in Scripture or in tradition; it is only reflected in them. Therefore, only within the Church does Scripture live and become vivified, only within the Church is it revealed as a whole and not broken up into separate texts, commandments and aphorisms. This means that Scripture has been given in tradition, but not in the sense that it can be understood only according to the dictates of tradition, or that it is the written record of historical tradition or oral teaching. Scripture needs to be explained. It is revealed in theology. This is possible only through the medium of the living experience of the Church. We cannot assert that Scripture is self-sufficient; and this not because it is incomplete, or inexact, or has any defects, but because Scripture in its very essence does not lay claim to self-sufficiency. We can say that Scripture is a God-inspired scheme or image (eikōn) of truth, but not truth itself. Strange to say, we often limit the freedom of the Church as a whole, for the sake of furthering the freedom of individual Christians. In the name of individual freedom the Catholic, ecumenical freedom of the Church is denied and limited. The liberty of the Church is shackled by an abstract biblical standard for the sake of setting free individual consciousness from the spiritual demands enforced by the experience of the 21 22

Adv. Haeres., I, 10, 2 [PG 7/1.552-553] [GF]. Ibid., IV, 26, 2 [PG 7/1.1053C-1054A] [GF].

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Church. This is a denial of catholicity, a destruction of catholic consciousness; this is the sin of the Reformation. Dean [William] Inge neatly says of the Reformers: ‘Their creed has been described as a return to the Gospel in the spirit of the Koran.’23 If we declare Scripture to be self-sufficient, we only expose it to subjective, arbitrary interpretation, thus cutting it away from its sacred source. Scripture is given to us in tradition. It is the vital, crystallizing centre. The Church, as the Body of Christ, stands mystically first and is fuller than Scripture. This does not limit Scripture, or cast shadows on it. But truth is revealed to us not only historically. Christ appeared and still appears before us not only in the Scriptures; He unchangeably and unceasingly reveals Himself in the Church, in His own Body. In the times of the early Christians the Gospels were not yet written and could not be the sole source of knowledge. The Church acted according to the spirit of the Gospel, and, what is more, the Gospel came to life in the Church, in the Holy Eucharist. In the Christ of the Eucharist, Christians learned to know the Christ of the Gospels, and so His image became vivid to them. This does not mean that we oppose Scripture to experience. On the contrary, it means that we unite them in the same manner in which they were united from the beginning. We must not think that all we have said denies history. On the contrary, history is recognized in all its sacred realism. As contrasted with outward historical testimony, we put forward no subjective religious experience, no solitary mystical consciousness, not the experience of separate believers, but the integral, living experience of the Catholic Church, catholic experience, and Church life. And this experience includes also historical memory; it is full of history. But this memory is not only a reminiscence and a remembrance of some bygone events. Rather it is a vision of what is, and of what has been, accomplished, a vision of the mystical conquest of time, of the catholicity of the whole of time. The Church knows naught of forgetfulness. The grace-giving experience of the Church becomes integral in its catholic fullness. This experience has not been exhausted either in Scripture, or in oral tradition, or in definitions. It cannot, it must not, be exhausted. On the contrary, all words and images must be regenerated in its experience, not in the psychologisms of subjective feeling, but in experience of spiritual life. This experience is the source of the teaching of the Church. However, not everything within the Church dates from Apostolic times. This does not mean that something has been revealed which was ‘unknown’ to the Apostles; nor does it mean that what is of later date is less important and convincing. Everything was given and revealed fully from the beginning. On the day of Pentecost Revelation was completed, and will admit of no further completion till the Day of Judgement and its last fulfilment. Revelation has not been widened, and even knowledge has not increased. The Church knows Christ now no more than it knew Him at the time of the Apostles. But it testifies of greater things. In its definitions it always unchangeably describes the same thing, but in the unchanged image ever new features become visible. But it knows the truth not less and not otherwise than it knew it in time of old. The identity of experience is loyalty to tradition. Loyalty to tradition did not prevent the Fathers of the Church from ‘creating new names’ (as St Gregory Nazianzen says) 23

Very Rev. W. R. Inge, The Platonic Tradition in English Religious Thought: The Hulsean Lectures at Cambridge, 1925–1926 (London/New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1926), 27 [GF].

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when it was necessary for the protection of the unchangeable faith. All that was said later on, was said from catholic completeness and is of equal value and force with that which was pronounced in the beginning. And even now the experience of the Church has not been exhausted, but protected and fixed in dogma. But there is much of which the Church testifies not in a dogmatic, but in a liturgical, manner, in the symbolism of the sacramental ritual, in the imagery of prayers, and in the established yearly round of commemorations and festivals. Liturgical testimony is as valid as dogmatic testimony. The concreteness of symbols is sometimes even more vivid, clear and expressive than any logical conceptions can be, as witness the image of the Lamb taking upon Himself the sins of the world. Mistaken and untrue is that theological minimalism, which wants to choose and set apart the ‘most important, most certain, and most binding’ of all the experiences and teachings of the Church. This is a false path, and a false statement of the question. Of course, not everything in the historical institutions of the Church is equally important and venerable; not everything in the empirical actions of the Church has even been sanctioned. There is much that is only historical. However, we have no outward criterion to discriminate between the two. The methods of outward historical criticism are inadequate and insufficient. Only from within the Church can we discern the sacred from the historical. From within we see what is catholic and belongs to all time, and what is only ‘theological opinion’, or even a simple casual historical accident. Most important in the life of the Church is its fullness, its catholic integrity. There is more freedom in this fullness than in the formal definitions of an enforced minimum, in which we lose what is most important – directness, integrity, catholicity. One of the Russian Church historians gave a very successful definition of the unique character of the Church’s experience. The Church gives us not a system but a key; not a plan of God’s City, but the means of entering it. Perhaps someone will lose his way because he has no plan. But all that he will see, he will see without a mediator, he will see it directly, it will be real for him; while he who has studied only the plan, risks remaining outside and not really finding anything.24

V The well-known formula of Vincent of Lerins is very inexact, when he describes the catholic nature of Church life in the words, Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est. [What has been believed everywhere, always, and by all (Commonitorium, I.2 [PL 50.640])]. First of all, it is not clear whether this is an empirical criterion or not. If this be so, then the ‘Vincentian Canon’ proves to be inapplicable and quite false. For about what omnes is he speaking? Is it a demand for a general, universal questioning of all the faithful, and even of those who only deem themselves such? At any rate, all the weak and poor of faith, all those who doubt and waver, all those who rebel, ought to be excluded. But the Vincentian Canon gives us no criterion, whereby 24

Boris M. Melioransky, ‘Iz lektsii po istorii drevnei Khristianskoi tserkvi [Lectures on the History of Ancient Christian Churches]’, Strannik [The Pilgrim] (1910), no. 6, 905–934 at 931 [GF].

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to distinguish and select. Many disputes arise about faith, still more about dogma. How, then, are we to understand omnes? Should we not prove ourselves too hasty, if we settled all doubtful points by leaving the decision to ‘liberty’  – in dubiis libertas [liberty in doubtful things] – according to the well-known formula wrongly ascribed to St Augustine.25 There is actually no need for universal questioning. Very often the measure of truth is the witness of the minority. It may happen that the Catholic Church will find itself but ‘a little flock’ [Lk 12:32]. Perhaps there are more of heterodox than of orthodox mind. It may happen that the heretics spread everywhere, ubique, and that the Church is relegated to the background of history, that it will retire into the desert. In history this was more than once the case, and quite possibly it may more than once again be so. Strictly speaking, the Vincentian Canon is something of a tautology. The word omnes is to be understood as referring to those that are orthodox. In that case the criterion loses its significance. Idem is defined per idem.26 And of what eternity and of what omnipresence does this rule speak? To what do semper and ubique relate? Is it the experience of faith or the definitions of faith that they refer to? In the latter case the canon becomes a dangerous minimizing formula. For not one of the dogmatic definitions strictly satisfies the demand of semper and ubique. Will it then be necessary to limit ourselves to the dead letter of Apostolic writings? It appears that the Vincentian Canon is a postulate of historical simplification, of a harmful primitivism. This means that we are not to seek for outward, formal criteria of catholicity; we are not to dissect catholicity in empirical universality. Charismatic tradition is truly universal; in its fullness it embraces every kind of semper and ubique and unites all. But empirically it may not be accepted by all. At any rate we are not to prove the truth of Christianity by means of ‘universal consent’, per consensum omnium. In general, no consensus can prove truth. This would be a case of acute psychologism, and in theology there is even less place for it than in philosophy. On the contrary, truth is the measure by which we can evaluate the worth of ‘general opinion’. Catholic experience can be expressed even by the few, even by single confessors of faith; and this is quite sufficient. Strictly speaking, to be able to recognize and express catholic truth we need no ecumenical, universal assembly and vote; we even need no ‘Ecumenical Council’. The sacred dignity of the Council lies not in the number of members representing their Churches. A large ‘general’ council may prove itself to be a ‘council of robbers’ (latrocinium),27 or even of apostates. And the ecclesia sparsa [scattered Church] often convicts it of its nullity by silent opposition. Numerus episcoporum [the number of bishops] does not solve the question. The historical and practical methods of recognizing sacred and catholic tradition can be many; that of assembling Ecumenical Councils is but one of them, and not 25

26

27

In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas (Unity in necessary things, liberty in the things that are doubtful and in all things charity). This well-known phrase is most likely of modern provenance, dating from the Counter-Reformation (c. seventeenth century) [Eds.]. Idem per idem (the same by the same) is a phrase expressing the logical fallacy of defining something by the same thing in a circular manner [Eds.]. Allusion to the council of Ephesus held in 449 and dominated by pro-monophysite bishops. The decisions of the council were overturned by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and the council of 449 became known in history as the ‘Council of Robbers’ [Eds.].

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the only one. This does not mean that it is unnecessary to convoke councils and conferences. But it may so happen that during the council the truth will be expressed by the minority. And what is still more important, the truth may be revealed even without a council. The opinions of the Fathers and of the ecumenical Doctors of the Church frequently have greater spiritual value and finality than the definitions of certain councils. And these opinions do not need to be verified and accepted by ‘universal consent’.28 On the contrary, it is they themselves who are the criterion and they who can prove. It is of this that the Church testifies in silent receptio [reception]. Decisive value resides in inner catholicity, not in empirical universality. The opinions of the Fathers are accepted, not as a formal subjection to outward authority, but because of the inner evidence of their catholic truth. The whole body of the Church has the right of verifying, or, to be more exact, the right, and not only the right but the duty, of certifying. It was in this sense that in the well-known Encyclical Letter of 1848 the Eastern Patriarchs wrote that ‘the people itself ’ (laos), i.e., the Body of the Church, ‘was the guardian of piety’ (hyperaspistēs tēs Thrēskeias)]. And even before this Metropolitan Philaret said the same thing in his Catechism. In answer to the question: ‘Does a true treasury of sacred tradition exist?’ he says: ‘All the faithful, united through the sacred tradition of faith, all together and all successively, are built up by God into one Church, which is the true treasury of sacred tradition, or, to quote the words of St Paul, “The Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15).’ The conviction of the Orthodox Church that the ‘guardian’ of tradition and piety is the whole people, i.e., the Body of Christ, in no wise lessens or limits the power of teaching given to the hierarchy. It only means that the power of teaching given to the hierarchy is one of the functions of the catholic completeness of the Church; it is the power of testifying, of expressing and speaking the faith and the experience of the Church, which have been preserved in the whole body. The teaching of the hierarchy is, as it were, the mouthpiece of the Church. De omnium fidelium ore pendeamus, quia in omnem fidelem Spiritus Dei spirat [We depend upon the word of all the faithful, because the Spirit of God breathes in each of the faithful].29 Only to the hierarchy has it been given to teach ‘with authority’. The hierarchs have received this power to teach, not from the church people but from the High Priest, Jesus Christ, in the Sacrament of Orders. But this teaching finds its limits in the expression of the whole Church. The Church is called to witness to this experience, which is an inexhaustible experience, a spiritual vision. A  bishop of the Church, episcopus in ecclesia, must be a teacher. Only the bishop has received full power and authority to speak in the name of his flock. The latter receives the right of speaking through the bishop. But to do so the bishop must embrace his Church within himself; he must make manifest its experience and its faith. He must speak not from himself, but in 28

29

Allusion to the twelfth-century canon law collection Decretum Gratiani or Treatise on the Laws (c. 1139) of the jurist Gratium (+ c. 1160), who is the father of canon law as an academic discipline. In this text, Pope Gregory I (c. 540–604) is recorded as saying that the first four ecumenical councils should be accepted and venerated as the ‘four Gospels’ and he equally venerates the fifth council as all five have been established by ‘universal consent’ (d. 15, c.2) [Eds.]. St Paulinus of Nola, Epist. 23, 25, PL 61. 281 [GF].

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the name of the Church ex consensu ecclesiae. This is just the contrary of the Vatican [I] formula: [Romani Pontificis definitiones] ex sese, non autem ex consensu ecclesiae [irreformabiles esse] [Such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are unalterable, and not from the consensus of the Church, and].30 It is not from his flock that the bishop receives full power to teach, but from Christ through the Apostolic Succession. But full power has been given to him to bear witness to the catholic experience of the body of the Church. He is limited by this experience, and therefore in questions of faith the people must judge concerning his teaching. The duty of obedience ceases when the bishop deviates from the catholic norm, and the people have the right to accuse and even to depose him.31

VI In the catholicity of the Church the painful duality and tension between freedom and authority [are] solved. In the Church there is not and cannot be any outward authority. Authority cannot be a source of spiritual life. So also Christian authority appeals to freedom; this authority must convince, not constrain. Official subjection would in no wise further true unity of mind and of heart. But this does not mean that everyone has received unlimited freedom of personal opinion. It is precisely in the Church that ‘personal opinions’ should not and cannot exist. A  double problem is facing every member of the Church. First of all, he must master his subjectivity, set himself free from psychological limitations, raise the standard of his consciousness to its full catholic measure. Secondly, he must live in spiritual sympathy with, and understand, the historical completeness of the Church’s experience. Christ reveals Himself not to separate individuals, nor is it only their personal fate which He directs. Christ came not to the scattered sheep, but to the whole human race, and His work is being fulfilled in the fullness of history, that is, in the Church. In a certain sense the whole of history is sacred history. Yet, at the same time, the history of the Church is tragic. Catholicity has been given to the Church; its achievement is the Church’s task. Truth is conceived in labour and striving. It is not easy to overcome subjectivity and particularism. The fundamental condition of Christian heroism is humility before God, acceptance of His Revelation. And God has revealed Himself in the Church. This is the final Revelation, which passeth not away. Christ reveals Himself to us not in our isolation, but in our mutual catholicity, in our union. He reveals Himself as the New Adam, as the Head of the Church, the Head of the Body. Therefore, humbly and trustfully, we must enter the life of the Church and try to find ourselves in it. We must believe that it is just in the Church that the 30

31

The formula of Vatican I (1869–1870) defining the nature of ex cathedra or infallible papal statements that do not require the consent of the rest of the Church [Eds.]. For some more details cf. my articles:  ‘The Work of the Holy Spirit in Revelation’, The Christian East, Vol. 13, no.  2 (Summer 1932), 49–64 [also in the Journal of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, no. 17 (September 1932), 5–16]; and ‘The Sacrament of Pentecost (A Russian View on Apostolic Succession)’, Journal of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, no. 23 (March 1934), 29–35 [Collected Works, III, 189–198] [GF].

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fullness of Christ is accomplished. Every one of us has to face his own difficulties and doubts. But we believe and hope that in united, catholic, heroic effort and exploits, these difficulties will be solved. Every work of fellowship and of concord is a path towards the realization of the catholic fullness of the Church. And this is pleasing in the sight of the Lord: ‘Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them’ (Mt 18:20).

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The Body of the Living Christ

This is the introduction to Georges Florovsky’s extended essay ‘Le Corps du Christ vivant: Une interprétation orthodoxe de l’Église’ (‘The Body of the Living Christ: An Orthodox Interpretation of the Church’) published in Georges Florovsky, Franz-J. Leenhardt, Regin Prenter, Alan Richardson and Ceslas Spicq, La Sainte Église universelle:  Confrontation oecuménique (The Holy Universal Church:  An Ecumenical Confrontation) (Neuchâtel CH: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1948), 9–57. This book, which also contains essays by Protestant and Roman Catholic theologians, was prepared in the context of the ecumenical discussions leading to the establishment of the World Council of Churches at its first assembly held in Amsterdam from 22 August to 4 September 1948. A  shorter English version of Florovsky’s essay was published as ‘The Church: Her Nature and Task’ in The Universal Church in God’s Design (London:  Student Christian Movement, 1948). There is a complete English translation of the essay published by the Orthodox journal The Wheel: The Body of the Living Christ: An Orthodox Interpretation of the Church, trans. and Introd. Robert M. Arida (Boston: The Wheel Library, 2018). (See https://www.wheeljournal. com/ (accessed 22 April 2019)). This translation from the original French version is by Paul Ladouceur (Blane #93d).

Totus Christus: Caput et Corpus. St Augustine1 It is almost impossible to start with a precise definition of the Church because, in truth, there is none that can pretend to have recognized doctrinal authority. We cannot find such a definition in Holy Scripture, in the Fathers, in the decrees or canons of the Ecumenical Councils, or even in later documents. The doctrinal documents elaborated in the Eastern Church on diverse occasions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and that are often considered (erroneously!) as the ‘symbolic books’2 of Orthodoxy do 1

2

A key phrase for Florovsky: ‘For Christ is not in the head or in the body, but Christ is wholly in the head and in the body [non enim christus in capite et non in corpore, sed christus totus in capite et in corpore]’ (Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 28–54, trans. John W. Rettig, FC 79 (Washington, DC:  Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 28.1. 3–13 at 3/In Iohannis evangelium tractatus CXXIV, PL 35.1622) [Eds.]. ‘Symbolic books’ is an older academic term favoured by non-Orthodox scholars (Orthodox scholars like Florovsky objected to it as misleading) for the various Orthodox doctrinal statements since

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not themselves provide a definition of the Church, only a reference to the relevant article of the Credo followed by a few explanations. We are surprised not to find a special chapter on the Church in the systematic treatises of the Holy Fathers. Bishop Pierre Batiffol says concerning Origen: The Church does not feature among the subjects which he examines ex professo [explicitly] in the Peri archōn [On First Principles]. He considers divine unity, he considers the last things, he considers even tradition and the rule of faith – but he does not consider the Church. A strange omission, which was destined to continue in Greek dogmatics – for example in the Catechetical Discourse of St Gregory of Nyssa, and especially in the work of St John of Damascus – an omission which was also repeated in Scholasticism.3

This is not in truth an ‘omission’ at all, since we can find in the Fathers much more than we expect on the nature and vocation of the Church. And this ‘omission’ is not unique only to ‘Greek dogmatics’: it was typical of all of pre-Scholastic and medieval theology. Even St Thomas Aquinas speaks of the Church only in passing. And yet the reality of the Church is always the indispensable foundation of the entire dogmatic edifice, we can even say her existential base. Admittedly that which we find in the great Teachers is more a vision, brilliant and glorious, an intuition, firm and distinct, than an abstract idea or a firmly defined formal concept. And this absence of clear definitions does not arise from confused ideas, or from an obscurity of the faith. On the contrary, the Fathers of old were not excessively preoccupied with formulae precisely because the triumphant reality of the Holy Church of God presented itself to their spiritual vision with unquestionable clarity. One does not define that which is entirely self-evident. The Church is more a reality that one lives than a subject that one analyses and studies. Father Sergius Bulgakov has said well on this question: ‘Come and see – one recognises the Church only by experience, by grace, by participation in its life.’4 And what is most valuable for the Fathers is precisely this holistic vision, this perspective of God’s plan, in which the mystery of the Church is seen and contemplated. It is this perspective of faith that unfortunately became obscured in subsequent eras. And hence the pressing need for formal definitions imposed itself. The current definitions [of the Church] that we find today in our manuals of theology and even in our catechisms are obviously relatively recent – and the formulae of Eastern theologians are based on Western examples. Even in the West, the first formal definitions were produced at the time of the Reformation, in the Church of Rome as well, in a spirit of confessional controversies and with polemical intent. They were more

3

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the seventh and last ecumenical council in 787 that have achieved considerable recognition in the Orthodox Church. These documents include patriarchal encyclicals, statements or confessions of faith, decisions of local councils, patriarchal correspondence with non-Orthodox and catecheses approved by local churches. For a list of the main texts considered ‘symbolic books’, see Timothy (Kallistos) Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin, 1997), 203 [Eds.]. Pierre Batiffol, L’Église naissante et le catholicisme [The Emerging Church and Catholicism] (Paris J. Gabalda, 1927), 395–396 [GF]. Sergius Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church [1935] (Crestwood, NY:  St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988), 3 [GF].

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intended to satisfy the requirements of a particular age than to express spontaneously the sum of the spiritual experience of the truly catholic Church. They were all circumstantial ‘formulae’. And it would be a total misunderstanding of their nature and their theological import to consider them definitive and incapable of reformulation. In certain historical circumstances some insisted, with justification, on the visibility of the Church and described it as a ‘society’ (or as a ‘congregation’), precisely because at that particular time, this was the crux of the controversy. But it is normal that these definitions were proved inadequate and even illusionary when the spiritual climate changed. This happened in the West during the theological renewal of the nineteenth century, in what is called the ‘romantic’ era, with a flowering of the spiritual and philosophical horizon, thanks to which the organic nature of the Church appeared in full daylight: we have only to mention J. A. Möhler5and the Catholic school of Tübingen! In the Orthodox East, the same revisionist movement was launched by [Aleksei] Khomiakov’s programmatic essay on The Unity of the Church, which was probably inspired by Möhler.6 But well before Khomiakov, and with greater depth and authority, the great Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow7 presented in his sermons a much broader and more vivified vision.8 The inspiration for all these came largely from the Fathers. Behind the so-called omissions lay an inexhaustible source of vision and of life. Later liturgical renewal drew other vivifying inspirations from this source. And we can glean a great deal of light concerning the mystery of the Church from masters of liturgical piety, as was the case in Russia, for example, the well-known Father John of Kronstadt (+1909).9 Some have recognized recently that the doctrine of the Church is still in a pretheological stage.10 Certainly the traditional definitions belong more properly to the academy than to the Church. They are not supported by any magisterial authority strictly speaking and for this reason they should not be considered complete or obligatory. They are more theological and not all doctrinal, approximations and provisional, school speculations, the private opinions of theologians, even if they were 5

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See the discussion of Möhler’s influence on Florovsky in the ‘Introduction’ to this book, 14–17; Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, n. 62, 145; and Ch. 11, ‘The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology’, n. 12, 189, in this book [Eds.]. See Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, n. 68, 147; and Ch. 11, ‘The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology’, n. 11, 189, in this book [Eds.]. On Met. Philaret (Drozdov) (1782–1867), see Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 13, 36, in this book [Eds.]. It is true that in his Catechism (published with the approval of the Holy Synod of Russia in 1823), Philaret of Moscow remained faithful to contemporary school formulae. See especially the magisterial work of Fr Albert Gratieux, A. S. Khomiakov et le movement Slavophile [A.S. Khomiakov and the Slavophile Movement], 2 vols. (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1939), in the collection Unam Sanctam, 5 and 6. On Philaret, see I. N. Korsunsky, The Definition of the Church in Philaret of Moscow (Khristianskoe Chtenie, 7–8 [July–August 1895]), 47–90; or Aleksei Gorodkov, Dogmatic Theology in the Writings of Philaret of Moscow (Kazan: Tip Gubernskogo pravleniia, 1887) (both in Russian) [GF]. St John of Kronstadt (1829–1908) was a popular pastor of the port city of Kronstadt, near Saint Petersburg, author of My Life in Christ. See John Iliytch Sergieff (John of Kronstadt), My Life in Christ:  Moments of Spiritual Serenity and Contemplation, of Reverent Feeling, of Earnest SelfAmendment, and of Peace in God, trans. E.  E. Goulaeff (1897) (Jordanville, NY:  Holy Trinity Publications, 2000) [Eds.]. Cf. Mannes Dominkus Koster, Ekklesiologie im Werden [Ecclesiology in the Making] (Paderborn: Bonifacius-Druckerei, 1940). This was strongly highlighted more than a half century ago in Russian theology by A. L. Katansky, professor at the St Petersburg Theological Academy [GF].

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widely (or even ‘generally’) accepted. Many theologians, Roman Catholic as well as Orthodox, have clearly noted that the Church herself has not yet defined her essence and proper nature. Die Kirche selbst hat sich bis heute noch nicht definiert [The Church up until this very day has not yet defined itself], says Robert Gosche.11 If we propose to go beyond these habitual definitions, we are not suggesting any doctrinal revisions, but rather a new theological adjustment of our formulae in the light of more profound spiritual experience. We can speak instead of a return to the tradition of the Fathers. In this day we must go beyond modern discussions and controversies to find a wider historical perspective, even truly universal (quod semper, ubique et ab omnibus creditum est! [that which has been believed everywhere, always, by all]),12 to discover anew the true ‘catholic (that is integral) experience’, which seeks to encompass the entirety of the experience acquired by the Church in her pilgrimage across the ages. We must also return from the classroom to the temple, to the Church that adores and prays (Die betende Kirche! [The praying Church]) and that bears witness to her faith and her hope. And perhaps we must also replace the scholastic vocabulary of theology with the metaphorical and symbolical language of devotion, which is also that of Holy Scripture. The very nature of the Church can more easily be depicted and described than properly defined – and this can only be carried out from within the Church. And even such a description will probably not convince those who are of the Church. Faith alone can behold the mystery. Christian truth is one and indivisible and we should not, we cannot, separate its constituent elements – otherwise, we run the risk of disfiguring and misjudging them. The true theological method is thus always a holistic method. The Church is the vital core to the mystery of salvation. She is a new creation of God, a living summary of the redemptive action of Christ. She is the locus and the mode of his continual presence in the world until the end of time. And even more than this: the Church is Christ himself, the whole Christ, totus Christus, to take up St Augustine’s formula, ‘Jesus Christ poured out and communicated’ (Bossuet).13 Origen has stated well: ‘It is only in the community of the faithful that the Son of God can be found and this is possible because he lives only in the midst of those who are united.’14 11

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Robert Grosche, Pilgernde Kirche [The Pilgrim Church] (Freiburg im Breisgau:  Herder Verlag, 1938), 27. See also Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Dogmatik (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1883–1887), Vol. IV, 290–291; or Mgr Bernhard Bartmann, Précis de théologie dogmatique [Precis of Dogmatic Theology] (French trans.; Mulhouse FR: Éditions Salvator, vol. II, 1944), 146: ‘We must note on this question that the Church existed for some fifteen hundred years without reflecting on her nature and without seeking a logical definition – and this applies to the Western Church as well as to the Eastern Church.’ On Orthodox theology, see Stefan Zankov, Das orthodoxe Christentum des Ostens, sein Wesen und seine gegenwärtige Gestalt [Orthodoxy Christianity in the West: Its Essence and Present Form] (Berlin:  Erschienen im Furche-Verlag, 1928), 65 and the notes (there is an English translation by Dr Donald Lowrie, The Eastern Orthodox Church (Milwaukee, WI: Morehouse, 1929), but without notes) [GF]. A famous phrase of St Vincent of Lérins (+c. 445) from Commonitorium [Aide-mémoire] I.2 (PL 50.640). See Florovsky’s discussion of this phrase: Ch. 13, ‘Saint Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers’, 221–222, in this book [Eds.]. On Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704) and the reference for the citation, see Ch. 4, ‘The Lamb of God’, n. 1, 82, in this book [Eds.]. Origen, Commentaria in Evangelium secundum Matthaeum [Commentaries on the Gospel according Matthew], 14.1, PG 13.1188 [GF].

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The theology of the Church is but a chapter, indeed a crucial chapter, of Christology. And without this chapter Christology itself would be incomplete. It is in the context of Christology that the mystery of the Church is announced in the New Testament. It was presented in a similar fashion by the Greek and Latin Fathers. ‘The Word of God became man so that we might become God’, says St Athanasius.15 The Church of Christ is precisely that mysterious locus where this ‘divinization’ or ‘deification’ (theosis) of humanity is carried out and perpetuated by the action of the Holy Spirit. In ea disposita est communicatio Christi, id est Spiritus Sanctus [Christ is communicated in this deposit, that is, the Holy Spirit], as St Irenaeus says. She is ‘the door of life’, vitae introitus, says St Irenaeus.16 By her very existence the Church is the permanent witness of Christ, the assurance and revelation of his victory and his glory. We could even say that she is the recapitulation of all his work. The Church is Christianity. Not only a true doctrine, a rule for a particular way of life, but a new life, the reuniting of man with God, a true and intimate communion with him, by grace and by faith. And yet the Church is also a true historical institution, an earthly and visible reality. As the Incarnation of the Word, she was also a historical event, though mysterious and accessible only by faith. The mystery of the Church has a thoroughly antinomic structure, like the mystery of Christ, the antinomy implicit in the dogma of Chalcedon. Two realities, divine and human, without fusion, but in an indivisible and perfect union. We must diligently distinguish between them, but we dare not separate them. The sole exact definition of the Church would be Christianity as a whole. And perhaps Fr Pavel Florensky was right to insist: ‘The idea of the Church does not exist, but the Church herself exists, and for every living member of the Church, life in the Church is the most definite and palpable thing that he knows.’17

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St Athanasius, Oratio de Incarnatione Verbi [Oration on the Incarnation of the Word], 54. PG 25.192B. French translation by Fr Pierre Thomas Camelot (Discours contre les paîens Incarnation du Verbe [Orations against the Pagans: The Incarnation of the Word] [Paris: Le Cerf, SC 18, 1st ed., 1947]), 18, 312; cf. Introduction, 90; and especially Fr Louis Bouyer, L’Incarnation et l’Église-Corps du Christ dans la théologie de saint Athanase [The Incarnation and the Church-Body of Christ in the Theology of St Athanasius] (Paris: Cerf, 1943) (Unam sanctam, 11) [GF]. St Irenaeus, Adversus haeresus, III, 24, 1 and I, 4, 1. PG 7.966 and 855 [GF]. Pavel Florensky, Der Pfeiler und die Grundfeste der Wahrheit [The Pillar and Ground of Truth], in N. von Bubhoff & H. Ehrenberg, eds., Östliches Christentum. Dokumente II: Philosophie (2 vols.) (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1925), vol. 2, 30: ‘There is no concept of ecclesiality, but ecclesiality itself is, and for every living member of the Church, the life of the Church is the most definite and tangible thing that he knows. But the life of the Church is assimilated and known only through life – not in the abstract, nor in a rational way. If one must nevertheless apply concepts to the life of the Church, the most appropriate concepts would be not juridical and archaeological ones but biological and aesthetic ones’ [GF]. [In the main text, Florovsky translates from the 1925 German translation of Florensky’s book and he cites the German text in his footnote. The preceding translation is from Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters [1913], trans. Boris Jakim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 8 [Eds.].].

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Confessional Loyalty in the Ecumenical Movement

This article was initially published in The Student World, 43, no. 1 (1950): 59–70, a periodical of the World Student Christian Federation, and reprinted in Intercommunion (Report of the Theological Commission Appointed by the Continuation Committee on Faith and Order), edited by Donald Baillie and John Marsh (London: SCM, and New York: Harper, 1952), 196–205 (Blane #106).

It has been recently suggested that what we need most urgently in the ecumenical movement is a ‘theology of the abnormal’. Christian theology strictly speaking is basically concerned with the abnormal, with the most radical deviation from the divine norm of existence, with fall and sin. Even in the redeemed world we are faced with an appalling impact of sin. Sin is indeed already forgiven and a new humanity has been inaugurated in and by the Second Man. The fatherly embrace of God is again charitably extended to the repentant. Yet, repentance is still a task for man to perform, and it proves to be an exceedingly difficult one for frail man to accomplish. The prodigal son is still very slow in going back home. And therefore, in Christian theology, we find ourselves again and again in a paradoxical situation. Christian disruption, utter disunity in Christendom, is nothing but an antinomy and a paradox. The fold of Christ ought not to be disrupted. Theological intelligence fails completely to comprehend the predicament of disunity, created by human unfaithfulness and aberration. The ecumenical movement, an endeavour to overcome and to heal the Christian schism, is inescapably a paradoxical venture. The final goal is, indeed, a reunited Christendom. Yet, the nature and scope of this prospective unity and reunion is variously described and interpreted by Christians of different backgrounds and traditions. The method of re-union depends ultimately upon the conception one holds of the existing dis-union. And these conceptions utterly differ. Prescription always depends upon diagnosis. And, in our case, it is precisely the diagnosis that is uncertain and controversial. That is why it is so difficult to agree on the prescription. Several solutions have been suggested. Roughly speaking, one group of solutions can be described as a ‘theory of a common denominator’ and the other as ‘the true Church and the secessions’. Let us examine them in turn.

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A common denominator The theory of ‘a common denominator’ amounts, in practice, to a recommendation to act as if there was no real schism, no true disruption, but rather only a sad misunderstanding, which could possibly be settled by some agreement. Christians are divided and mutually estranged indeed; nobody can deny this grim fact. Yet, in spite of all their unhappy divisions and separations, they are at one on many basic points. They are united in their common allegiance to the same Lord. One might have added, they are, above all, united in His redeeming will and love. He came precisely to recover the lost sheep and the scattered. In this perspective, it seems but reasonable to disregard the existing dissensions and disagreements and to act accordingly, as if all Christians were really at one. Are not all these disagreements utterly human – human misconceptions  – and unity, a divine gift, that has been already given free in Jesus Christ, the Lord of all flesh? It is precisely at this point that the problem of what is usually described as an ‘open communion’ arises and the predicament of the schism is felt most grievously and painfully. It seems to be a shameful scandal that those who proclaim their common allegiance to Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God and the Saviour of the world, the only sure hope in ages past and to come, are still unable to join together at His table. Much worse than that, a large part of them emphatically refuses to do so. The champions of an easy solution are utterly depressed by what seems to them to be obstinacy, lack of charity and brotherly understanding. It seems to them that the whole ecumenical endeavour is compromised by this obstinate resistance. Now, from another point of view, it is not the ecumenical endeavour, but only a particular interpretation of it that is wrecked on the proposal of an ‘open communion’. In fact, the whole theory of a common denominator comes into a blind alley, since it fails to carry a unanimous conviction. This fact in itself indicates that possibly the measure of existing unity or agreement has been somehow exaggerated and misunderstood. It suggests that the division probably goes much deeper than has been admitted by those who were ready to act together. It is indeed a dreadful thing that Christians cannot join together at one and the same altar. But it is exactly what should have been expected. For they are really divided. Several and separate communion services at an ecumenical gathering are but a spectacular projection of the very fact of the schism. And the schism cannot be overcome simply by agreements on our human level. One has to be courageous enough to bear the pain, and those who are compelled by their conscience to abstain from any ‘open communion’ suffer, no less, but probably much more, than those who are prepared to go together.

The marks of a Church It is usually suggested that this obstinate refusal to join at the common Table is inspired by exaggerated ‘confessional loyalty’ and by a lack of true ecumenical comprehension. Now, the phrase ‘confessional loyalty’ is ambiguous and misleading. Surely, nobody would pledge his loyalty simply to a denomination, but only to the Church of Christ. The trouble is that this loyalty to the Church is variously conceived and interpreted. All

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‘confessions’ identify themselves, in one sense or another, with the Church of Christ, ‘protestants’ no less than ‘catholics’.1 In our present state of Christian confusion and chaos, one simply cannot escape some sort of discrimination between a ‘true’ and an ‘untrue’ church. It is no good pretending that the whole guilt of intransigency is on one side. Moreover, it is no good bringing forward the charge of intransigency at all. For, in fact, the word is but another and depreciatory name for conviction. We have to recognize, boldly and humbly, that our deep convictions differ. Yet, in spite of that, we have to stay together. The whole burden of the ecumenical endeavour is tied precisely to this small phrase: ‘in spite’. Obviously, ‘protestants’ would suggest that all empirical churches should become churches in very truth, and in order to accomplish this purpose should go through a certain kind of reform and purification, more or less identical with the European Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They are committed, by the very logic of their belief, to an emphatic claim that the churches of the Reformation are representative of a true kind of church and that, consequently, no church can ever be true unless it has gone through a process of reformation. Un-reformed means in this connection exactly un-true. On the other hand, a ‘catholic’ will never regard the Catholic Church as one particular denomination among many others. He will identify her with the Church of Christ. The claim may seem arrogant, it may easily be dismissed as a proof of spiritual pride or intransigent hypocrisy. Yet, it is to be understood that a ‘catholic’ is committed to this claim by the very logic of his belief and conviction. Again, it is to be understood that this claim does not unchurch those who do not belong to the Catholic Church of history. The most rigid ‘catholic’ will regard all faithful Christians as related, in some sense to be defined, or even as belonging, to the Church of Christ. There is implied in the ‘catholic’ claim no anticipation of the ultimate eschatological judgement. The claim is laid down on the level of history, i.e., on the level of Christian practice and action. The true composition of the Church is known to the Lord of the Church only – no ‘catholic’ has ever doubted that, and St Augustine has stated it most frankly and emphatically. Perhaps the real point is this: was the Reformation a gain or a loss, a step forward or a step astray? Of course, this is only a rough way of putting it, and both the question and the answers must be carefully defined (which is, unfortunately, quite beyond the scope and the competence of the present paper). It may be very painful for a ‘protestant’ to read this, it is very painful indeed for a ‘catholic’ to write it. But it is not written to pain or offend anybody. Conviction is bound to be outspoken. And we have to share our respective pains, to bear each other’s burdens, and to prove thereby our

1

In this article, and indeed in many other writings, Georges Florovsky uses the term ‘catholic’ to refer to those who believe in the universal nature of the Church, in the sense of the third ‘mark’ of the Church in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, and not only members of the Roman Catholic Church. As the conclusion of the article makes clear, the author considers that members of the Orthodox Church are ‘catholic’ in this broad understanding. In the ecumenical context, he also considered Anglicans to be ‘catholic’. Similarly, references to the ‘Catholic Church’ below are not specifically to the Roman Catholic Church, since the Orthodox Church is also ‘Catholic’ in the sense that Florovsky is using the term here [Eds.].

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mutual confidence and our true brotherly affection. Both ‘protestants’ and ‘catholics’ are concerned with the marks of a true church. The tragedy is that they identify these marks differently, or even in opposite senses.

Open communion and intercommunion2 One may seriously doubt whether what is called an ‘open communion’ is open in the strict sense. The case seems to be rather obscure. There are two possible interpretations. Either it is presumed that all doctrinal convictions are at this point irrelevant, and that doctrinal conformity should not be regarded as a term of admission to Holy Communion; obviously, this assumption is itself a kind of doctrinal conviction, which is unacceptable for many Christians. Or, and this seems to be the case, an ‘open communion’ is open only to those who satisfy certain requirements, of an obviously doctrinal character, and such an ‘open’ table is still fenced. It is really irrelevant, whether a fencing formula is actually said or omitted: in any case it is implied. In either case, the practice of an ‘open’ communion is justified by a certain particular conception of the Holy Communion, which is not acceptable to those who refuse to join. The opposition of an ‘open’ communion and a ‘confessional’ communion is wrong. Strictly speaking, an ‘open’ communion is also meant for a particular confession, i.e., for people of a particular persuasion, even if this persuasion is so wide as to ignore all doctrinal dissensions. An un-baptized member of the Salvation Army would usually be admitted, although he disbelieves the divine institution of the sacrament. A member of the Society of Friends would also be admitted if he so wished, although it has been made clear that any Friend who finds himself in need of habitual participation is to be reminded that his place is probably not with the Society. The door seems to be ajar in the direction of vagueness and indifference. But surely those who hold a ‘catholic’ view of the sacrament cannot conscientiously be admitted, since their belief in the sacrifice of the Mass is to be styled a ‘corruption’ and an ‘erroneous doctrine’ along with many of their other superstitions. A ‘catholic’ therefore finds himself excluded from the ‘open’ communion by the implied terms of admission and by the conception of the rite therein implied. It is no good talking of his obstinate resistance. His participation would be a nonsensical betrayal on his side, and a concealed insincerity on the other. And, in the end, it would not promote the ecumenical fellowship at all. A sentimental gesture cannot solve the conflict of deep convictions. Unity of brotherly feeling is not yet unity of faith. Are we permitted in the Church to be satisfied with anything less than this unity of faith?

2

The position set forth by Florovsky in this essay opposing open communion and intercommunion has become the standard Orthodox position in the ecumenical movement. See Brandon Gallaher, ‘La Question de “l’intercommunion”: point de vue orthodoxe’ [The Question of Intercommunion: An Orthodox Perspective], Unité des Chrétiens, No. 138 (Avril 2005), 26–28; Paul Meyendorff, ‘Ecumenical Prayer:  An Orthodox Perspective’, The Ecumenical Review, 54, no.  1 (January–April 2002): 28–32; and Kallistos Timothy Ware, Communion and Intercommunion: A Study of Communion and Intercommunion Based on the Theology and Practice of the Orthodox Church, (Minneapolis, MN: Light and Life, rev. ed., 2002) [Eds.].

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Briefly, there are three main objections which constitute a radical impediment to an all-inclusive and ‘ecumenical’ fellowship in the Holy Communion. First, utter divergence in the sacramental doctrine itself – possibly the conception of a sacramental sacrifice is the very point of demarcation. There can be no communion, because there is no common belief. Secondly, and this is but the wider context in which the first is to be seen, there are deep divergences in doctrine in general, although these divergences, in our own age at least, definitely cut across the historical confessions. And communion presupposes ‘one mind’, no less than ‘one heart’. Thirdly – and this is probably the crucial point, at least in the practical field – there is utter disagreement on the doctrine of Christian ministry. A ‘catholic’ cannot divorce order from faith, a very definite Church order is for him an article of his integral Christian faith or dogma. This fact has been partially recognized in recent times, in so far as many recent schemes of reunion included the restoration of a ‘historical episcopate’. This restoration was, however, compromised and rendered meaningless (from the ‘catholic’ point of view), since this order was emphatically excluded from faith or doctrine.3 For the ‘catholics’, the point is not merely the restoration of an episcopal order, but the recognition of the sacramental character of the priesthood; but this still seems to many to be nothing but detestable ‘sacerdotalism’. For a ‘catholic’, an all-inclusive communion will be possible only after the integrity of the faith and the fullness of the sacramental fabric of the Church [have] been restored in the whole of Christendom. It will then be not simply a manifestation, by a human arrangement, of Christian charity and mutual recognition  – and, in catholic conviction, the sacrament of the Eucharist was not instituted or meant for that purpose – but a true revelation of the Holy Church of God, in all her power and glory. The whole ecumenical situation is certainly complicated and obscured by the fact that those who claim for themselves the name of ‘catholics’ (not merely in a vague and general, but in a concrete and specific historical sense) are also divided and are not in communion with each other. And at this point another serious and painful problem arises, that of intercommunion. The difficulty in this case is of a different, though similar, character. Again, what is required for intercommunion is obviously unity of faith and the integrity of the sacramental structure. Unless this is secured and avowed, no action should be taken. The practice of an occasional intercommunion (or even of an occasional open communion) adopted in certain episcopal churches only confuses the issue. A true intercommunion can only be a corporate and catholic action. In a case in which the sacramental integrity of two churches which are not in 3

This is an allusion by Florovsky to the so-called South Indian scheme, out of which eventually came the Church of South India. The idea was to seek union between different churches, including Methodist, Anglican and Presbyterian Churches, without first requiring doctrinal unity on all teachings. Unity, it was asserted, would come after the inauguration of the church through the interaction of the different churches on one another. As part of this ‘reunion’, an episcopate was reestablished for churches that had none through the bishops of those churches that maintained episcopal polity such as the Anglicans and had (so it was maintained) valid apostolic succession. The idea was cautiously approved by the Anglican Lambeth Conference in 1930 (Resolution 40). The British theologian and bishop of the Church of South India, Lesslie Newbegin (1909–1998), notably defended the scheme. Florovsky, however, utterly opposed the scheme, no doubt with Bulgakov’s ideas for limited intercommunion in mind (see Florovsky, ‘The Church of South India’, Faith and Unity, No. 36 (May 1949), 60–63 (in CW, XIII, 145–148)), and see the Introduction, 10 and 23, in this book [Eds.].

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communion with each other is mutually recognized, the unity of faith has still to be identified and emphasized by a corporate action of the churches concerned, and not simply by a personal conviction of some advanced individuals. In the whole process there is no question of confessional loyalty, but solely of the catholic truth.

A fellowship in search The tragedy of Christendom is precisely that the truth of God is still divergently apprehended. What is a sacred treasury for some, is a deplorable superstition for others. What is an advance in the eyes of one part of Christendom is a step astray in the conviction of the other. Yet, in spite of all that, all Christians within the ecumenical movement and beyond its actual boundaries should pledge themselves to stay together and to profess their common allegiance to the same Lord and Master. It is a paradoxical situation, certainly. Yet it is exactly that paradox that makes the pledge so valuable and promising. They should stay together, exactly because they are divided. The pledge is valuable because it implies pain and tension. We are given the cross of patience to bear; let us glory in that cross. Our Christian pain is a token of recovery, a recovery which is to come from the Lord. The ecumenical movement is primarily a fellowship in search. It is a venture or an adventure, not an achievement. It is a way, not the goal. And therefore an open communion would compromise the whole endeavour. It would be to pretend falsely that Christendom has already been reunited. We know only too well that it has not. Tension remains, compelling us to move on. For that reason we still have only an ecumenical movement and not a reunited Christendom. It is true, some unexpected agreements have been discovered and achieved recently, exactly in the process of a common search. Let them not be disavowed by any premature and unwarranted action, in which some of the partners in the discourse will never conscientiously participate. There is still a long and dangerous journey ahead. It has been recently suggested that in the ecumenical conversation there has been a certain tendency to postpone agreements, even when they were possible; once an agreement on some particular point seemed to be at hand and rather imposing, the subject has been deliberately changed and another highly controversial topic brought into the discussion. Possibly this is an exaggeration. What is true, however, is that in the ecumenical discourse we do not trust our most compelling agreements. We behave once more in a most paradoxical manner. We mistrust ourselves because we have a deeper insight into the mystery under discussion, and we are aware of an ultimate disagreement which we are unable or perhaps too shy even to mention or to describe. Possibly it is the reverse tendency that is more prevalent. There is a tendency to invite or even to compel one’s opponents to think in categories unfamiliar or alien to them. A  ‘protestant’ theologian will write his books and make his statements in his particular idiom and primarily for his own edification and will expect the ‘catholics’ to follow his argument. Usually he will be misunderstood, simply because his partner in conversation fails completely to follow his peculiar manner of speech. A ‘catholic’ will habitually do just the same, and each will accuse the other of misconception and misunderstanding. The guilt obviously is on both sides. We have to learn each other’s

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idioms or rather we have to create a true ecumenical and common language in theology and possibly to un-learn our party idioms. It is an enormous task; yet we can hardly escape it. We have to identify ourselves mentally with those partners in the discourse who do not share our own convictions, if we are going to arrive anywhere. Let us try to state the ‘catholic’ conviction in the idiom of the ‘protestants’ and let us invite them to talk to us in our own idiom. What is often taken to be confessional loyalty may prove to be inadequate phrasing of a commonly accepted truth.

The true Church This paper is an attempt to write in a new and ecumenical language. Probably the attempt has not been successful. Probably some would detect in it a heavy confessional flavour, and others would complain of vagueness. And so it will not be out of place to summarize briefly my main contentions in a language familiar to myself. As a member and priest of the Orthodox Church, I believe that the Church in which I was baptized and brought up is in very truth the Church, i.e., the true Church and the only true Church. I  believe that for many reasons:  by personal conviction and by the inner testimony of the Spirit4 which breathes in the sacraments of the Church and by all that I could learn from Scripture and from the universal tradition of the Church. I am compelled therefore to regard all other Christian churches as deficient, and in many cases I can identify these deficiencies accurately enough. Therefore, for me, Christian reunion is just universal conversion to Orthodoxy. I have no confessional loyalty; my loyalty belongs solely to the Una Sancta. I know well that my claim will be disavowed by many Christians. It will seem to be an arrogant and futile claim. I know well that many things I believe with full and uttermost conviction are disbelieved by others. Now, I do not see any reason whatever to doubt them or disbelieve them myself. All I can reasonably do is this: to proclaim my faith and to try to phrase it in such a way and in such a manner that my poor idiom may not obscure the truth. Because, I am sure, the truth of God carries conviction. It does not mean that everything in the past or present state of the Orthodox Church is to be equated with the truth of God. Many things are obviously changeable; indeed many things need improvement. The true Church is not yet the perfect Church. The Church of Christ has to grow and be built up in history. Yet the whole and the full truth has been already given and entrusted to the Church. Revision and restatement is always possible, sometimes imperative. The whole history of the Ecumenical Councils in the past is evidence of that. The holy Fathers of the Church were engaged in this task. Yet, on the whole, the deposit was faithfully kept and the testimony of faith was gaining accuracy and precision. Above all, the sacramental structure of the Body has been kept integral and intact. Here again, I  know, this conviction of mine may be rejected as an illusion. For me it is a matter of evidence. If this is obstinacy, it is the obstinacy of evidence. I can only see what I actually do see. I cannot help it. But in no way am I going 4

A theological adaptation of a teaching of John Calvin (1509–1564). See Chap. 4, ‘The Lamb of God’, n.4, 84, in this book [Eds.].

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to ‘un-church’ anybody at all. The judgement has been given to the Son. Nobody is entitled to anticipate His judgement. Yet the Church has her own authority in history. It is, first of all, an authority to teach and to keep faithfully the word of truth. There is a certain rule of faith and order that is to be regarded as normal. What is beyond is just abnormal. But the abnormal should be cured, and not simply condemned. This is a justification for the participation of an Orthodox in the ecumenical discourse, in the hope that through his witness the Truth of God may win human hearts and minds.

Editors’ note: Georges Florovsky’s article led to an exchange of letters to the editor of The Student World between William Nicholls, an Anglican, and Florovsky. Nicholls, while agreeing with Florovsky on the inappropriateness of ‘open communion’, is ‘perplexed’ by aspects of the arguments presented by advocates of open communion, mainly Protestants, especially by the contention ‘that the unity of Christian people is something which is given in the redemptive acts of Christ and is prior to our human agreement in the faith’, that ‘any unity which we can enjoy on earth now is a foretaste of the eschatological unity of the marriage supper of the Lamb in the Kingdom’, that ‘the purpose of the Eucharist is to provide such a foretaste, and that therefore all communions should be open’. The text below is Florovsky’s reply to Nicholls, which was published together with Nicholls’s letter in The Student World, 43, no. 2 (1950): 169–171. Have you ever come across my article on ‘The Limits of the Church’ in the Church Quarterly Review for 1933?5 I  am following St Augustine and suggest a distinction between canonical and charismatic (or mystical) borders of the Church. At that time I had to face primarily the over-rigouristic tendency in our own Church and to fight against a widely spread (especially among the Greeks) contention that all ‘non-Orthodox’ were no Christians at all and were to be treated precisely ‘as heathen men’. But the truth is double-edged. ‘Canonical’ criterium is not an ultimate criterium, and the wild field does not begin immediately across the canonical border. There is an enigmatic ‘intermediary state’. Yet we are not entitled to disregard this ‘canonical fence’, because, strictly speaking, it is much more than merely a legal and disciplinary barrier. A schism is always a failure and leads inevitably to disintegration. As everything in the Church, unity is at once both given and required, has been given and is to be achieved. Schisms are failures of men to respond to the divine call to unity. Yet the given unity never disappears. After all, we all are united in and by the redeeming love and purpose of God. And that unity we discover in spite of all our disagreements, when we dig deep enough. Antinomy is created and constituted precisely by this enigmatic ‘disproportion’ between the Church and Christendom (the phrase is of Fr [Yves] Congar), or else between the ‘institutional’ and ‘charismatic’ aspects of the Church herself, or again 5

See Ch. 17, ‘The Limits of the Church’, 247–256, in this book [Eds.].

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between her ‘historic’ and ‘eschatological’ dimensions. There is an antinomy (and not just an un-dialectical duality) because (Church) history itself is ‘an inaugurated eschatology’. We must be very careful not to smooth this basic antinomy into a confusion. There is (and there should be) a tension. This is the very meaning of the ‘Cross of patience’. I guess we do agree at this point. My point is then this. This tension is a healthy reminder of our failure to achieve an agreement in truth. In a doctrinal controversy and confusion, all cannot be equally right. But we are expected to find the true way. Of course, the full truth will be revealed only in another ‘aeon’ still to come. Yet have we achieved already the measure of truth available or accessible within historical limits? My reply is – no. We are hopelessly behind our own measure. We have not fulfilled our task. Would it help a bit if we rush and jump impatiently into, the ‘new aeon’, which has not yet come historically, even if it is, in a sense, ‘at hand’ and ‘among us’, since the coming of the Lord and fulfilment of all prophecy? In any case, we have not fulfilled our task, although God did accomplish His purpose. Briefly speaking, I mean it would be an unhealthy and irresponsible rush, a licence and a violence (both spiritual or mystical), if we forced a ‘common table’ before we have done all we had to do and, in a sense, were up to do. For me, an open communion is unlawful and illegitimate not in a canonical sense, as a break of discipline and disregard of confusion, but primarily in a spiritual or mystical sense, since, in my opinion, it implies a sort of self-righteousness and self-satisfaction, as if we had really done everything in our power to overcome and overrule ‘our unhappy divisions’. We have not, I am afraid. Therefore it would be a sort of unhealthy ‘enthusiasm’ or Schwärmerei, if we dared to join at the Altar. We must not call in ‘eschatology’ out of season, before we ‘have borne the burden and heat of the day’. We must rather bless God that He has given us this foretaste of unity which we had not deserved a bit. The heavenly vision may become for us a somnolent ‘quietive’, while we need, on the contrary, a powerful incentive. Let us taste the sour fruit of our disloyalty up to the verge of despair and then repent. I had personally to face and experience this antinomy years ago, and in its uttermost sharpness.6 Years ago, in the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, a proposal was made to try a sort of anticipated and partial intercommunion between the members of the brotherhood, who had already realized their utter unity and agreement in doctrine, piety, charity, etc. ‘The validity of Anglican orders’ was taken for granted, since it has become spiritually evident. It was also suggested that some sort of a canonical authorization might have been secured on both sides and an additional rite of mutual revalorization might have been administered. I have to confess that from the outset I was definitely against the scheme, and possibly it was my intervention that made the attempt impossible. I have to add that I had Fr [A. G.] Hebert with me the whole time, as well as Michael Ramsey. I had no doubts, but I had an open wound in my heart. 6

The reference is to the proposals put forward by Fr Sergius Bulgakov in 1933–1935 for a limited, mutually episcopally-blessed intercommunion between the Anglican and the Orthodox members in the Anglican-Orthodox ecumenical Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, of which both Bulgakov and Florovsky were active members. Florovsky strongly opposed Bulgakov’s proposals, which never went beyond the discussion phase and became assimilated into the vaguer notion of ‘spiritual intercommunion.’ Bulgakov’s basic idea was for a mutual episcopal ‘sacramental blessing’ of Orthodox and Anglican Fellowship members, both ordained and lay, to partake of communion at one another’s

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Possibly I have suffered more than any of the schemers, who were guided rather by their glorious dreams. For years I  used to attend the communion service in Anglican churches and to preach at them. Anglican forms and habits of worship were already mine own. The highest measure of Christian ‘fraternization’, available and permissible in the state of division, had been already achieved. An eschatological vision was granted to me. It was really an unbearable burden and a saddening pain for me to abstain and to take others away. It was a true cross, and it was given to me to glory in it. My main argument was that only a ‘catholic action’ is permissible in the Holy Catholic Church, that nothing partial and ‘exceptional’ can ever lead to a true integration. Or, in other words, we have to seek not the satisfaction of our dreams and hopes, as glorious and inspiring as they may be or seem to be, but solely the common revival of spiritual life in existing communities. The unity can only grow out of a ‘molecular action’, which is to be then integrated.7 An occasional intercommunion, or that by a special dispensation, will ultimately hinder the work of reunion. The immediate task is the recovery of common mind and sound theology.

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altars at Fellowship conferences; this would serve as a sort of seed leading to the eventual complete unity of the two Churches. In the case of the Orthodox, the blessing or sacramental sanction would come from Met. Evlogii (Georgievsky) (1868–1946) of the Russian Exarchate under Constantinople, and Evlogii would ask for a corresponding blessing from the Patriarch of Constantinople. In the case of the Anglicans, the appropriate blessing would come from the diocesan bishop or from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Anglican and Orthodox bishops alike would confer the blessing on the Fellowship priest of the other Church so that the blessing would be fully mutual. Orthodox bishops would bless Anglican priests to communicate at the Orthodox liturgy, to concelebrate with Russian priests if they so desired, and to communicate Orthodox and Anglican laity in the Fellowship who wish to participate in these celebrations. Likewise, in an analogous fashion, which Bulgakov left to the Anglicans to determine, the Anglican bishop would bless the Orthodox priest to participate in intercommunion with Anglican clergy and laity. The particular sacramental blessing of Anglican laity to participate in intercommunion at Orthodox altars could take either the form of a blessing by a bishop or, more preferably, the form of Chrismation with the invocation of the Trinity by a priest. This latter rite is the standard Russian way of receiving converts to Orthodoxy, and Bulgakov was using it to acknowledge the tacit Orthodox ecclesial status of Anglican Christians. The final version of Bulgakov’s proposals was ultimately rejected in June 1935 by the Fellowship council before, however, it could be discussed in open session at the conference. For literature, see the ‘Introduction’, n. 27, 10, and n. 104 and n. 105, 23, in this book [Eds.]. Both the phrases, ‘catholic action’ and ‘molecular action’, were used frequently in the limited intercommunion controversy from 1933 to 1935. Both critics of the proposal (mainly Florovsky and many Anglican theologians) and its main proponent (Bulgakov) used the term ‘catholic action’, common in Anglo-Catholic and Roman Catholic circles of the 1920s and 1930s, to signify ecclesial engagement with the world, both political and sacramental. The term ‘molecular action’, referring to the reintegration of the churches, was associated closely with those favouring limited intercommunion. Its use here is ironic, since Florovsky, as a critic of intercommunion, is appropriating it from his theological opponents [Eds.].

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The Ethos of the Orthodox Church

Georges Florovsky presented this paper at the Faith and Order Orthodox Consultation, held in Kifissia, Greece, 16–18 August 1959. It was published in The Ecumenical Review, 12, no.  2 (1960):  183–198 (Blane #150), and reprinted as ‘Patristic Theology and the Ethos of the Orthodox Church’ in The Collected Works (IV, 11–30).

I In 1872 Wilhelm Gass published his Symbolik der Griechischen Kirche.1 Gass was an expert scholar, especially competent in the field of Byzantine studies. His monographs, Gennadius und Pletho (Breslau:  A. Gosohorsky, 1844)  and Die Mystik des Nikolaus Kabasilas (Greifswald:  C. A.  Koch, 1849), were notable contributions to the study of late Byzantine theology, little known at that time. His Symbolik also was an able book, well written and well documented. Yet, a problem of method was involved in his exposition. It was at this methodological point that Gass was strongly challenged by another distinguished German scholar, Ferdinand Kattenbusch.2 In fact, Gass based his exposition of Greek doctrine, mainly and deliberately, on the alleged ‘symbolic books’3 of the Eastern Church, in particular on Peter Mogila’s Orthodox Confession (in its revised Greek version)4 and the Decrees of the Jerusalem Council of 1672.5 Now, Kattenbusch contested the adequacy of such [an] approach. In 1

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Wilhelm Gass, Symbolik der Griechischen Kirche (Berlin:  G. Reimer, 1872). Wilhelm Gass (1813– 1889) was a nineteenth-century Protestant theologian, church historian and ethicist who taught at Breslau, Griefswald, Giessen and Heidelberg. He was one of the founders of the well-known journal Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte and wrote notably on the Greek Fathers and Eastern Christianity more broadly, including a history of Mount Athos [Eds.]. Ferdinand Kattenbusch, ‘Kritische Studien zur Symbolik im Anschluss an einige neuere Werke’, in Theologische Studien und Kritiken, Jg. 51 (1878), ss. 94–121 and 179–253. Kattenbusch deals with Gass in the first part of his article [GF]. [Ferdinand Kattenbusch (1851–1935) was a Protestant theologian of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who taught at Giessen, Göttingen and Halle. He was a disciple of Albrecht Ritschl (1882–1889) and is noted for his historical and theological work on the creeds [Eds.].] On ‘symbolic books’, see Ch. 19, ‘The Body of the Living Christ’, n. 2, 273, in this book [Eds.]. On Peter Mogila, see Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, n. 27, 135, in this book [Eds.]. The Council or Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 was a local council convened by Dositheos (1641–1707), patriarch of Jerusalem from 1669 to 1707. Its decrees and confession, of which Dositheos was the

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his opinion, the so-called ‘symbolic books’ of the Eastern Church could not be regarded as an authentic source. They were not spontaneous expressions of the Orthodox faith. They were occasional polemical writings addressed primarily to the problems of Western controversy, between Rome and the Reformation, in which the Christian East was not intrinsically involved. The seventeenth century was not, Kattenbusch contended, a creative epoch in the history of the Eastern Church. In order to grasp the genuine spirit of the Orthodox Church one had, according to Kattenbusch, to go back to that crucial epoch – die Gründungsepoche, when the distinctive Greek tradition in theology and worship has been formed, i.e., to the period of great Christological controversies in the ancient Church. In order to understand the Orthodox Church, at her very heart, one had to turn to the fathers, to St Athanasius, the Cappadocians and indeed to Pseudo-Dionysius, rather than to Mogila or Dositheos [of Jerusalem]. Moreover, one could properly understand the Orthodox tradition only out of its own central vision. Kattenbusch rightly stressed the centrality of the Christological vision in the total structure of the Greek theological system:  der Inbegriff aller Themata [the quintessence of all themes]. It was this synthetic or comprehensive method that Kattenbusch used in his own exposition of Eastern Orthodoxy, some years later.6 Kattenbusch was right. The alleged ‘symbolic books’ of the Orthodox Church have no binding authority, as much as they might have been used by particular theologians and at particular times. Their authority is subordinate and derived. In any case, they have no authority by themselves, but only in so far as they are in agreement with the continuous tradition of the Church. And at certain points they betray an obvious Western influence. This influence was characteristic of certain stages in the history of modern Orthodox theology, but in no sense is it characteristic of the Orthodox Church herself. We may quote at this point an apt statement by the late Professor Nicholas Glubokovsky [1863–1937]: As a matter of fact, Orthodoxy has no ‘symbolic books’ in the technical sense of the word. All the talk about them is extremely conditional and conformable only to the Western confessional schemes, in opposition to the nature and history of Orthodoxy. It considers itself the right or authentic teaching of Christ in all its primitiveness and incorruptibility; but then  – what particular distinguishing doctrine can it have except that of the Gospel of Christ? The Orthodox Church herself down to the present time does not make use of any special ‘symbolical books,’ being satisfied with the general traditional documents which have the character of defining the faith.7.

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principal author, repudiated the Calvinist theological interpretation of Orthodoxy propounded by Patriarch Cyril Lucaris of Constantinople (1570–1638) and is noted for its strongly Latin/Roman Catholic influence and closeness in doctrinal teaching to the Counter-Reformation Council of Trent (1545–1563). On Cyril Lucaris see Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, n. 26, 135 [Eds.]. Ferdinand Kattenbusch, Lehrbuch der Vergleichenden Confessionskunde, Erster Band Prolegomena und Erster Teil:  Die Orthodoxe Anatolische Kirche [Textbook on Comparative Denominational Studies. Volume 1: Preliminary Remarks. Volume 2: The Eastern Orthodox Church] (Freiburg:  J. C. B. Mohr, 1892) (the only volume published) [GF]. Nicholas N. Glubokovsky, ‘Orthodoxy in Its Essence’, in The Constructive Quarterly, 1, no. 2 (June 1913), 282–303 at 296–297 [GF]. [This is an English translation of the Russian original published later: ‘Pravoslavie po ego sushchestvu’, Khristianskoe Chtenie (1914), 3–22 [Eds.].]

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Gass was not impressed by the arguments of Kattenbusch. His reply was firm and sharp. There was no ‘Greek Church’ in ancient times: damals noch gar keine Griechische Kirche gab, d.h., keine Griechische Separatkirche [at that time there was no Greek Church, i.e. no separate Greek Church]. The Fathers of the Church, in Gass’s opinion, were quite irrelevant for the understanding of contemporary Orthodoxy. For Gass, the modern Greek Church was not identical with the ancient Church:  she has widely departed or deviated from the early foundations. Gass made this point quite emphatically in his Symbolik. Indeed, Kattenbusch also spoke of the Griechische Partikularkirche. But with him it was rather a statement of fact. In his opinion, all the distinctive marks of this Partikularkirche were established already in the age of Chalcedon and Justinian. Certain distinctive, but not necessarily divisive, features had developed in the East and in the West already in the early centuries of Christian history, and one speaks legitimately of ‘particular’ traditions: Eastern and Western, Carthaginian and Roman, Alexandrinian and Antiochene. In any case, since the final break with Rome, the ‘Greek Church’ actually existed as a Partikularkirche, just as did the ‘Roman Church’. But Gass went much further. In his view, the modern Eastern Church, and probably already the Byzantine, was actually a ‘new church’, a new ‘denominational’ formation, separated from the ancient Church by a long and complex process of decay and deviation. In other words, she was just a particular ‘denomination’, among others, and had to be characterized as such. For this task only the modern ‘symbolic books’ were relevant.8 The Auseinandersetzung [clash] between Gass and Kattenbusch was much more than just an episode in the history of modern scholarship.9 Nor was their disagreement simply methodological. Again, Gass was not alone in his approach. It is still typical of Western scholarship, both Roman and Protestant, to characterize Orthodoxy on the basis of modern and contemporary documents, without clear discrimination between authoritative statements and writings of individual authors, and without any proper historical perspective. It is enough to mention the various studies of such authors as Martin Jugie and Theophilus Spáčil.10 It is logical from the Roman point of view: the Orthodox Church, as a ‘schism’, must have her distinctive, schismatic, features, and cannot be ‘identical’ with the Catholic Church of old, even in her Eastern version. The ultimate question is, therefore, theological. Is the contemporary Orthodox Church the same church, as in the age of the Fathers, as has been always claimed and contended by the Orthodox themselves? Is she a legitimate continuation of that ancient Church? Or is she no more than a new Separatkirche? This dilemma is of decisive relevance for the contemporary ecumenical conversation, especially between the Protestants and the Orthodox. 8

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Wilhelm Gass, ‘Symbolik der Griechischen Kirche’, in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, Bd. III (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1879), ss. 329–357 [GF]. Cf. Ernst Benz, Die Ostkirche im Lichte der protestantischen Geschichtsschreibung von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart [The Eastern Church in Light of Protestant Historiography from the Reformation to the Present] (Freiburg/Munich: K. Alber, 1952), ss. 195–201, 206–217 [GF]. Martin Jugie (1878–1954) was a leading early-twentieth-century Roman Catholic Byzantine scholar, known in Orthodox circles mainly for his stringent critique of Palamite theology, e.g. in the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique [Dictionary of Catholic Theology]. ed. Alfred Vacant et al., 15 vols. (Paris, Letouzey et Ané, 1903–50) T. XI/2, 1932, cols. 1777–1818. Theophilus Spáčil (1875– 1950) was an early-twentieth-century Czech Jesuit theologian (better known by the Slavic form of his name, Bohumil) who specialized in Eastern Christianity [Eds.].

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Indeed, the Orthodox are bound to claim that the only ‘specific’ or ‘distinctive’ feature about their own position in ‘divided Christendom’ is the fact that the Orthodox Church is essentially identical with the Church of all ages, and indeed with the ‘Early Church’, die Urkirche. In other words, she is not a Church, but the Church. It is a formidable, but fair and just claim. There is here more than just an unbroken historic continuity, which is indeed quite obvious. There is above all an ultimate spiritual and ontological identity, the same faith, the same spirit, the same ethos. And this constitutes the distinctive mark of Orthodoxy. ‘This is the Apostolic faith, this is the faith of the Fathers, this is the Orthodox faith, this faith has established the universe.’11

II12 Following the Holy Fathers . . . It was usual in the ancient Church to introduce doctrinal statements by phrases like this. The great Decree of Chalcedon begins precisely with these very words. The Seventh Ecumenical Council introduces its decision concerning the holy icons even in a more explicit and elaborate way: Following the divinely-inspired teaching of our Holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church (Denzinger, 302).13 Obviously, it was more than just an appeal to ‘antiquity’. Indeed, the Church always stresses the identity of her faith throughout the ages. This identity and permanence, from Apostolic times, is indeed the most conspicuous token and sign of right faith. In the famous phrase of Vincent of Lerins, in ipsa item catholica ecclesia magnopere curandum est ut id teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est [in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all] (Commonitorium, I.2 [PL 50.640]).14 However, ‘antiquity’ by itself is not yet an adequate proof of the true faith. Archaic formulas can be utterly misleading. Vincent himself was well aware of that. Old customs as such do not guarantee the truth. As St Cyprian put it, antiquitas sine veritate vetustas erroris est [antiquity without truth is age-old error] (Epist. 74). And again:  Dominus, Ego sum, inquit, veritas. Non dixit, Ego sum consuetudo [The Lord said, ‘I am truth’. He did not say, ‘I am custom’] (Sententiae episcoporum, 87, c. 30). The true tradition is only the tradition of truth, traditio veritatis. And this ‘true tradition’, according to St Irenaeus, is grounded in, and guaranteed by, that charisma veritatis certum [the sure gift of truth], which has been deposited from the very beginning in the Church and preserved in the uninterrupted succession of Apostolic ministry:  qui cum episcopatus successione charisma veritatis certum . . . acceperunt [those who, with the episcopal succession, have received the sure gift of truth] (Adv. haeres., IV, 40, 2 11

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From Vespers of the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the first Sunday of Great Lent, commemorating the restoration of the icons in 842 [Eds.]. This section largely duplicates the first part of Ch. 13, ‘Saint Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers’, 221–226, in this book [Eds.]. Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma (Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum) (Handbook of Creeds and Definitions), trans. Roy J. Deferrari (St Louis, MI: Herder, 1957), §302 [Eds.]. See the discussion of this phrase in Ch. 13, ‘Saint Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers’, 221–222, in this book [Eds.].

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[sic: 4.26.2 at PG 7/1.1053C-1054A]). Thus, ‘tradition’ in the Church is not merely the continuity of human memory, or the permanence of rites and habits. Ultimately, ‘tradition’ is the continuity of the divine assistance, the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. The Church is not bound by ‘the letter’. She is constantly moved forth by ‘the spirit’. The same Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, which ‘spake through the Prophets’, which guided the Apostles, which illumined the Evangelists, is still abiding in the Church, and guides her into the fuller understanding of the divine truth, from glory to glory. Following the Holy Fathers . . . It is not a reference to abstract tradition, to formulas and propositions. It is primarily an appeal to persons, to holy witnesses. The witness of the Fathers belongs, integrally and intrinsically, to the very structure of the Orthodox faith. The Church is equally committed to the kerygma of the Apostles and to the dogmata of the Fathers. Both belong together inseparably. The Church is indeed ‘Apostolic’. But the Church is also ‘Patristic’. And only by being ‘Patristic’ is the Church continuously ‘Apostolic’. The Fathers testify to the Apostolicity of the tradition. There are two basic stages in the proclamation of the Christian faith. Our simple faith had to acquire composition. There was an inner urge, an inner logic, an internal necessity, in this transition – from kerygma to dogma. Indeed, the dogmata of the Fathers are essentially the same ‘simple’ kerygma, which had been once delivered and deposited by the Apostles, once, for ever. But now it is – this very kerygma – properly articulated and developed into a consistent body of correlated testimonies. The apostolic preaching is not only kept in the Church: it lives in the Church, as a depositum juvenescens [an everrejuvenated deposit], in the phrase of St Irenaeus [Adv. haeres., III, 24, 1 [PG 7/1.966B]]. In this sense, the teaching of the Fathers is a permanent category of Christian faith, a constant and ultimate measure or criterion of right belief. In this sense, again, Fathers are not merely witnesses of the old faith, testes antiquitatis, but, above all and primarily, witnesses of the true faith, testes veritatis. Accordingly, our contemporary appeal to the Fathers is much more than a historical reference – to the past. ‘The mind of the Fathers’ is an intrinsic term of reference in Orthodox theology, no less than the word of the Holy Writ, and indeed never separated from it. The Fathers themselves were always servants of the Word, and their theology was intrinsically exegetical. Thus, as has been well said recently, ‘The Catholic Church of all ages is not merely a child of the Church of the Fathers, but she is and remains the Church of the Fathers.’15 The main distinctive mark of Patristic theology was its ‘existential’ character. The Fathers theologized, as St Gregory of Nazianzus put it, ‘in the manner of the Apostles [lit. Fishermen], and not in that of Aristotle’, alieutikōs, ouk aristotelikōs (Hom. 23, 12 [PG 35.1164C]). Their teaching was still a ‘message’, a kerygma. Their theology was still a ‘kerygmatic theology’, even when it was logically arranged and corroborated by intellectual arguments. The ultimate reference was still to faith, to spiritual comprehension. It is enough to mention in this connection the names of St Athanasius, St Gregory of Nazianzus, St Maximus the Confessor. Their theology was a witness. Apart from the life in Christ, theology carries no conviction, and, if separated from the life of faith, theology may easily degenerate into empty dialectics, a vain polylogia, without any 15

Louis Bouyer, ‘Le renouveau des études patristiques’ [The Renewal of Patristic Studies], La Vie intellectuelle, 6, no. 15 (Feb. 1947), 6–25 at 18 [GF].

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spiritual consequence. Patristic theology was rooted in the decisive commitment of faith. It was not just a self-explanatory ‘discipline’, which could be presented argumentatively, i.e., aristotelikōs [in the manner of Aristotle], without a prior spiritual engagement. This theology could only be ‘preached’, or ‘proclaimed’, and not be simply ‘taught’ in a school manner; ‘preached’ from the pulpit, proclaimed also in the word of prayer and in sacred rites, and indeed manifested in the total structure of Christian life. Theology of this kind can never be separated from the life of prayer and from the practice of virtue. ‘The climax of purity is the beginning of theology’, in the phrase of St John Klimakos (Scala Paradisi, 30 [PG 88.1157C]).16 On the other hand, theology is always, as it were, no more than ‘propaideutic’, since its ultimate aim and purpose are to bear witness to the Mystery of the Living God, in word and in deed. ‘Theology’ is not an aim in itself. It is always but a way. Theology presents no more than an ‘intellectual contour’ of the revealed truth, a ‘noetic’ testimony to it. Only in an act of faith is this contour filled with living content. Yet, the ‘contour’ is also indispensable. Christological formulas are actually meaningful only for the faithful, for those who have encountered the Living Christ, and have acknowledged Him as God and Saviour, for those who are dwelling by faith in Him, in His Body, the Church. In this sense, theology is never a self-explanatory discipline. It appeals constantly to the vision of faith. ‘What we have seen and have heard, we announce to you [1 John 1:3].’ Apart from this ‘announcement’ theological formularies are of no consequence. For the same reason these formulas should never be taken out of their spiritual context. It is utterly misleading to single out certain propositions, dogmatic or doctrinal, and to abstract them from the total perspective in which only they are meaningful and valid. It is a dangerous habit just to handle ‘quotations’, from the Fathers and even from the Scripture, outside of the total structure of faith, in which only they are truly alive. ‘To follow the Fathers’ does not mean simply to quote their sentences. It means to acquire their mind, their phronema. The Orthodox Church claims to have preserved this phronema and to have theologized ad mentem Patrum [according to the mind of the Fathers]. At this very point a major doubt may be raised. The name of ‘Church Fathers’ is normally restricted to the teachers of the ancient Church. And it is currently assumed that their authority, if recognized at all, depended upon their ‘antiquity’, i.e., upon their comparative chronological nearness to the ‘Primitive Church’, to the initial or Apostolic ‘Age’ of Christian history. Now, already St Jerome felt himself constrained to contest this contention: the Spirit breathes indeed in all ages. Indeed, there was no decrease in ‘authority’, and no decrease in the immediacy of spiritual knowledge, in the course of Church History – of course, always under the control of the primary witness and revelation. Unfortunately, the scheme of ‘decrease’, if not of a flagrant ‘decay’, has become one of the habitual schemes of historical thinking. It is widely assumed, consciously or subconsciously, that the early Church was, as it were, closer to the spring of truth. In the order of time, of course, it is obvious and true. But does it mean that the early Church actually knew and understood the mystery of the Revelation, as it were, ‘better’ and ‘fuller’ than all subsequent ages, so that nothing but ‘repetition’ has been 16

John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, trans. Colm Leibheid and Norman Russell (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 288 [Eds.].

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left to the ‘ages to come’? Indeed, as an admission of our own inadequacy and failure, as an act of humble self-criticism, an exaltation of the past may be sound and healthy. But it is dangerous to make of it the starting point of our theology of Church History, or even of our theology of the Church. It is widely assumed that the ‘age of the Fathers’ had ended, and accordingly should be regarded simply as an ‘ancient formation’, archaic and obsolete. The limit of the ‘patristic age’ is variously defined. It is usual to regard St John of Damascus as ‘the last Father’ in the East, and St Gregory the Great or Isidore of Seville as the last in the West. This habit has been challenged more than once. For instance, should not St Theodore of Studium be counted among the Fathers? In the West, already [Jean] Mabillon17 suggested that Bernard of Clairvaux, the Doctor Mellifluus [Honey-Sweet Doctor], was actually ‘the last of the Fathers, and surely not unequal to the earlier ones’.18 On the other hand, it can be contended that ‘the Age of the Fathers’ had actually come to its end much earlier than even St John of Damascus. It is enough simply to recall the famous formula of the Consensus quinquesaecularis19 which restricted the ‘authoritative’ period of Church History actually to the period up to Chalcedon. Indeed, it was a Protestant formula. But the usual Eastern formula of ‘Seven Ecumenical Councils’ is actually not very much better, when it tends, as it currently does, to restrict the Church’s spiritual authority to the eight centuries, as if the ‘Golden Age’ of the Church had already passed and we are now dwelling probably in an Iron Age, much lower on the scale of spiritual vigour and authority. Psychologically, this attitude is quite comprehensible, but it cannot be theologically justified. Indeed, the Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries are much more impressive than the later ones, and their unique greatness cannot be questioned. Yet, the Church remained fully alive also after Chalcedon. And, in fact, an overemphasis on the ‘first five centuries’ dangerously distorts theological vision and prevents the right understanding of the Chalcedonian dogma itself. The decree of the Sixth Ecumenical Council then is regarded just as a kind of ‘appendix’ to Chalcedon, and the decisive theological contribution of St Maximus the Confessor is usually completely overlooked. An overemphasis on the ‘eight centuries’ inevitably obscures the legacy of Byzantium. There is still a strong tendency to treat ‘Byzantinism’ as an inferior sequel, or even as a decadent epilogue, to the patristic age. Probably, we are prepared, now more than before, to admit the authority of the Fathers. But ‘Byzantine theologians’ are not yet counted among the Fathers. In fact, however, Byzantine theology was much more than a servile ‘repetition’ of Patristics. It was an organic continuation of the patristic endeavour. It suffices to mention St Symeon the New Theologian, in the eleventh century, and St Gregory Palamas, in the fourteenth. A restrictive commitment to the Seven Ecumenical Councils actually contradicts the basic principle of the Living Tradition in the Church. Indeed, all Seven. But not only the Seven. 17

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On the Benedictine historian Dom Jean Mabillon (1632–1707), see Ch. 13, ‘Saint Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers’, n. 8, 225, in this book [Eds.]. Jean Mabillon, in the Preface to Bernard’s Opera, n. 23, PL 182.26, quoted recently in the Encyclical of Pope Pius XII, Doctor Mellifluus (1953). English translation of the Encyclical in Thomas Merton, The Last of the Fathers (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1954) [GF]. On Consensus quinquesaecularis, see Ch. 13, ‘Saint Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers’, n. 13, 226, in this book [Eds.].

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The seventeenth century was a critical age in the history of Eastern theology. The teaching of theology deviated at that time from the traditional patristic pattern and underwent influence from the West. Theological habits and schemes were borrowed from the West, rather eclectically, both from the late Roman scholasticism of post-Tridentine times and from the various theologies of the Reformation. These borrowings affected heavily the theology of the alleged ‘symbolic books’ of the Eastern Church, which cannot be regarded as an authentic voice of the Christian East. The style of theology was changed. Yet, this did not imply any change in doctrine. It was, indeed, a sore and ambiguous pseudomorphosis20 of Eastern theology, which is not yet overcome even in our own time. This pseudomorphosis actually meant a certain split in the soul of the East, to borrow one of the favourite phrases of Arnold Toynbee. Indeed, in the life of the Church, the tradition of the Fathers has never been interrupted. The whole structure of Eastern Liturgy, in an inclusive sense of the word, is still thoroughly patristic. The life of prayer and meditation still follows the old pattern. The Philokalia, that famous encyclopaedia of Eastern piety and asceticism, which includes writings of many centuries, from St Anthony of Egypt up to the Hesychasts of the fourteenth century, is increasingly becoming the manual of guidance for all those who are eager to practise Orthodoxy in our own time. The authority of its compiler St Nikodemus of the Holy Mount, has been recently re-emphasized and reinforced by his formal canonization in the Greek Church.21 In this sense, it can be contended, ‘the age of the Fathers’ still continues alive in the ‘Worshipping Church’. Should it not continue also in the schools, in the field of theological research and instruction? Should we not recover ‘the mind of the Fathers’ also in our theological thinking and confession? ‘Recover’, indeed, not as an archaic pose and habit, and not just as a venerable relic, but as an existential attitude, as a spiritual orientation. Actually, we are living already in an age of revival and restoration. Yet it is not enough to keep a ‘Byzantine Liturgy’, to restore a ‘Byzantine style’ in iconography and Church architecture, to practise Byzantine modes of prayer and self-discipline. One has to go back to the very roots of this traditional ‘piety’, which has been always cherished as a holy inheritance. One has to recover the patristic mind. Otherwise one will be still in danger of being internally split – between the ‘traditional’ pattern of ‘piety’ and the untraditional pattern of mind. As ‘worshippers’, the Orthodox have always stayed in the ‘tradition of the Fathers’. They must stand in the same tradition also as ‘theologians’. In no other way can the integrity of Orthodox existence be retained and secured. It is enough, in this connection, to refer to the discussions at the Congress of Orthodox theologians, held in Athens at the end of the year 1936.22 It was a representative gathering: eight theological faculties, in six different countries, were represented. Two major problems were conspicuous on the agenda:  first, the ‘External Influences on 20

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On pseudomorphosis, see Ch. 8, ‘Western Influences in Russian Theology’, n. 38, 137, in this book [Eds.]. On the Philokalia and St Nikodemus the Hagiorite, see Ch. 13, ‘Saint Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers’, nn. 14 and 15, 227, in this book [Eds.]. The First Pan-Orthodox Congress of Theologians was held in Athens from 29 November to 6 December 1936. It was attended by many of the most notable living theologians and church historians of the day, including Florovsky, Bulgakov, Hamilcar Alvisatos, Panagiotis Bratsiotis, Stefan Zankov, Anton Kartashev and Konstantinos I. Dyovouniotes [Eds.].

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Orthodox Theology since the Fall of Constantinople’; secondly, the ‘Authority of the Fathers’.23 The fact of Western accretions has been frankly acknowledged and thoroughly analysed. On the other hand, the authority of the Fathers has been re-emphasized and a ‘return to the Fathers’ advocated and approved. Indeed, it must be a creative return. An element of self-criticism must be therein implied. This brings us to the concept of a neopatristic synthesis, as the task and aim of Orthodox theology today. The legacy of the Fathers is a challenge for our generation, in the Orthodox Church and outside of it. Its recreative power has been increasingly recognized and acknowledged in these recent decades, in various corners of divided Christendom. The growing appeal of patristic tradition is one of the most distinctive marks of our time. For the Orthodox this appeal is of special urgency and importance, because the total tradition of Orthodoxy has always been patristic. One has to reassess both the problems and the answers of the Fathers. In this study the vitality of patristic thought, and its perennial timeliness, will come to the fore. Inexhaustum est penu Patrum [the Fathers’ stores are inexhaustible], has well said Louis Thomassin, a French Oratorian of the seventeenth century and one of the distinguished patristic scholars of his time.24

III The synthesis must begin with the central vision of the Christian faith: Christ Jesus, as God and Redeemer, Humiliated and Glorified, the Victim and the Victor on the Cross. ‘Christians apprehend first the Person of Christ the Lord, the Son of God Incarnate, and behind the veil of His flesh they behold the Triune God.’ This phrase of Bishop Theophan,25 the great master of spiritual life in Russia in the last century, may serve appropriately as an epigraph to the new section of our present survey. Indeed, Orthodox spirituality is, essentially and basically, Christocentric and Christological. The Christocentric emphasis is conspicuous in the whole structure of Orthodox devotional life:  sacramental, corporate and private. The Christological pattern of Baptism, Eucharist, Penance and also Marriage is obvious. All sacraments are, indeed, sacraments of the believer’s life in Christo. Although the Eucharistic Prayer, the Anaphora, is addressed and offered to the Father and has, especially in the rite of St Basil, an obvious Trinitarian structure, the climax of the Sacrament is in the Presence of Christ, including also His ministerial Presence (‘for Thou Thyself both offerest and art offered’), and in the personal encounter of the faithful with their Living Lord, as participants at His ‘Mystical Supper’. The utter reality of this encounter is vigorously stressed in the office of preparation for Communion, as also in the prayers of thanksgiving after Communion. The preparation is precisely for one’s meeting with 23

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The acts of the Athens Congress were published in 1939:  Procès-Verbaux du premier congrès de théologie orthodoxe à Athènes. 29 Novembre  – 6 Décembre 1936, ed. Hamilcar S.  Alivisatos (Athens: Pyrsos, 1939). Two papers of mine were included: ‘Westliche Einflüsse in der Russischen Theologie [Western Influence in Russian Theology]’, 212–231; and ‘Patristics and Modern Theology’, 238–242 [GF]. [Both papers are included in this book, 129–151 and 153–157 respectively [Eds.].] Louis Thomassin, Dogmatica theologica [Theological Dogmatics] (Paris: Vivès, 1864–1872), 6 vols., Vol. I, Praefatio, XX [GF] [See Ch. 2, ‘Preface to In Ligno Crucis’, n. 4, 66, in this book (Eds.)]. On St Theophan the Recluse, see Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 145, 63, in this book [Eds.].

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Christ in the sacrament, personal and intimate. Indeed, one meets Christ only in the fellowship of the Church. Yet, personal emphasis in all these prayers is dominant and prevailing. This personal encounter of believers with Christ is the very core of Orthodox devotional life. It suffices to mention there the practice of the Jesus Prayer – it is an intimate intercourse of penitent sinners with the Redeemer. The Akathistos Hymn to the ‘Sweetest Jesus’ should also be mentioned in this connection.26 On the other hand, the whole of the Eucharistic rite is a comprehensive image of Christ’s redemptive oikonomia [economy], as it was persistently emphasized in the Byzantine liturgical commentaries, up to the magnificent Exposition of the Holy Liturgy by Nicholas Cabasilas.27 In his other treatise, The Life in Christ, Cabasilas interpreted the whole devotional life from the Christological point of view. It was an epitome of Byzantine spirituality.28 Christ’s mystery is the centre of Orthodox faith, as it is also its starting point and its aim and climax. The mystery of God’s Being, the Holy Trinity, has been revealed and disclosed by Him, who is ‘One of the Holy Trinity’.29 This mystery can be comprehended only through Christ, in meditation on His Person. Only those who ‘know’ Him can ‘know’ the Father, and the Holy Spirit, the ‘Spirit of adoption’ [Rom 8:15]  – to the Father, through the Incarnate Son. This was the traditional way, both of patristic theology and of patristic devotion. The lex credendi and the lex orandi are reciprocally interrelated. The basic pattern is surely the same in both. The aim of man’s existence is in the ‘vision of God’, in the adoration of the Triune God. But this aim can be achieved only through Christ, and in Him, who is at once ‘perfect God’ and ‘perfect Man’, to use the phraseology of Chalcedon. The main theme of patristic theology was always the mystery of Christ’s Person. The Athanasian theology, as well as the Cappadocian theology, was basically Christological. And this Christological concern permeated the whole theological thinking of the ancient Church. It is still the guiding principle of Orthodox theology today. Indeed, there is actually nothing specifically ‘Eastern’ in this. It is simply the common ethos of the ancient Church. But, probably, it has been more faithfully preserved in the Eastern Tradition. One can evolve the whole body of Orthodox belief out of the dogma of Chalcedon. In Patristic theology the mystery of Christ has been always presented and interpreted in the perspective of salvation. It was not just a speculative problem. It was rather an

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A popular devotional hymn to Christ in Orthodoxy characterized by the repetition of the name ‘Jesus’, followed by varying praises [Eds.]. On Nicholas Cabasilas, see Ch. 9, ‘Patristics and Modern Theology’, n. 6, 155, in this book [Eds.]. Cabasilas’s treatises are reprinted in PG 150. Cf. Myrrha Lot-Borodine, Un Maître de la spiritualité byzantine au XIVe siècle:  Nicolas Cabasilas [A Fourteenth-Century Master of Byzantine Spirituality:  Nicholas Cabasilas] (Paris:  Éditions de l’Orante, 1958). On the Jesus Prayer, see Un Moine de l’Eglise d’Orient [Fr Lev Gillet], La Prière de Jésus (Chevetogne: Éditions de Chevetogne, 1951) [A Monk of the Eastern Church, The Jesus Prayer (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987)]; and also Élisabeth Behr-Sigel, ‘La Prière à Jésus, ou le Mystère de la spiritualité monastique orthodoxe’, [The Jesus Prayer or the Mystery of Orthodox Monastic Spirituality], in Dieu Vivant, no. 8 (1947), 69–94 [GF]. This is a phrase from the hymn ‘Only Begotten Son and Word of God’ attributed to Emperor Justinian and sung during the Divine Liturgy [Eds.].

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existential problem. Christ came to solve the problem of man’s destiny. This soteriological perspective is conspicuous in the thought of St Irenaeus, St Athanasius, the Cappadocians, St Cyril of Alexandria, St Maximus, St Symeon the New Theologian, up to St Gregory Palamas. Yet, ‘soteriology’ itself culminates in the concept of ‘New Creation’. It was both the Pauline and the Johannine theme. And the whole dimension of Christology is disclosed only in the doctrine of the Whole Christ  – totus Christus, caput et corpus [the whole Christ, head and body], as St Augustine loved to say.30 The doctrine of the Church is not an ‘appendix’ to Christology, and not just an extrapolation of the ‘Christological principle’, as it has been often assumed. There is much more than an ‘analogy’. Ecclesiology, in the Orthodox view, is an integral part of Christology. There is no elaborate ‘ecclesiology’ in the Greek Fathers. There are but scattered hints and occasional remarks. The ultimate reason for that was in the total integration of the Church into the Mystery of Christ. ‘The Body of Christ’ is not an ‘appendix’. Indeed, the final purpose of the Incarnation was that the Incarnate should have ‘a body’, which is the Church, the New Humanity, redeemed and reborn in the Head. This emphasis was especially strong in St John Chrysostom, in his popular preaching, addressed to all and to everybody. In this interpretation Christology is given its full existential significance, is related to man’s ultimate destiny. Christ is never alone. He is always the Head of His Body. In Orthodox theology and devotion alike, Christ is never separated from His Mother, the Theotokos, and His ‘friends’, the saints. The Redeemer and the redeemed belong together inseparably. In the daring phrase of St John Chrysostom, inspired by Ephesians 1:23, Christ will be complete only when His Body has been completed [In Epist. ad Ephes. Cap. I. Homil. III.2, PG 62.26]. It is commonly assumed that, in counterdistinction from the West, Eastern theology is mainly concerned with Incarnation and Resurrection and that ‘theology of the Cross’, theologia crucis, has been underdeveloped in the East. Indeed, Orthodox theology is emphatically a ‘theology of glory’, theologia gloriae, but only because it is primarily a ‘theology of the Cross’. The Cross itself is the sign of glory. The Cross itself is regarded not so much as a climax of Christ’s humiliation, but rather as a disclosure of divine might and glory. ‘Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him’ [Jn 13:31]. Or, in the words of a Sunday hymn, ‘It is by the Cross that great joy has come into the world.’31 On the one hand, the whole oikonomia of Redemption is summed up in one comprehensive vision:  the victory of Life. On the other, this oikonomia is related to the basic predicament of the fallen man, to his existential situation, culminating in his actualized ‘mortality’, and the ‘last enemy’ is identified, accordingly, as ‘death’. It was this ‘last enemy’ that had been defeated [1 Cor 15:26] and abrogated on the tree of the Cross, in ara crucis [on the altar of the cross]. The Lord of Life did enter the dark abyss of death, and ‘death’ was destroyed by the flashes of His glory. This is the main motif of the divine office on Easter Day in the Orthodox Church:  ‘trampling down death by death’.32 The phrase itself is significant:  Christ’s 30

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Totus Christus: see Ch. 3, ‘In Ligno Crucis: The Church Fathers’ Doctrine of Redemption’, 77–78, in this book [Eds.]. In the Orthodox services for Sunday, these words are sung twice, at Sunday Matins before the veneration of the Gospel and during the liturgy at the censing of the altar at the Cherubic Hymn before the Great Entrance [Eds.]. From the Paschal troparion or characteristic short hymn sung during the midnight Easter services in the Orthodox Church [Eds.].

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death is itself a victory, Christ’s death dismisses man’s mortality. According to the Fathers, Christ’s Resurrection was not just a glorious sequel to the sad catastrophe of crucifixion, by which ‘humiliation’ had been, by the divine intervention, transmuted and transvaluated into ‘victory’. Christ was victorious precisely on the Cross. The death on the Cross itself was a manifestation of Life. Good Friday in the Eastern Church is not a day of mourning. Indeed, it is a day of reverent silence, and the Church abstains from celebrating the Holy Eucharist on that day. Christ is resting in His tomb. But it is the Blessed Sabbath, requies Sabbati Magni [the rest of the great Sabbath], in the phrase of St Ambrose.33 Or, in the words of an Eastern hymn, ‘This is the blessed Sabbath, this is the day of rest, whereon the Only-Begotten Son of God has rested from all His deeds.’34 The Cross itself is regarded as an act of God. The act of Creation has been completed on the Cross. According to the Fathers, the death on the Cross was effective not as a death of an Innocent One, not just as a sign of surrender and endurance, not just as a display of human obedience, but primarily as the death of the Incarnate God, as a disclosure of Christ’s Lordship. St John Chrysostom put it admirably:  ‘I call Him King, because I see Him crucified, for it is appropriate for a King to die for His subjects’ (In crucem et latronem, Hom. I.3 [PG 49.403]). Or, in the daring phrase of St Gregory of Nazianzus, ‘We needed a God incarnate, we needed God put to death, that we might live’ (Hom. 45, 28 [PG 36.661]). Two dangers must be cautiously avoided in the interpretation of the mystery of the Cross:  docetic and kenotic. In both cases the paradoxical balance of Chalcedonian definition is broken and distorted. Indeed, Christ’s death was a true death. The Incarnate did truly languish and suffer at Gethsemane and on Calvary:  ‘By His stripes we are healed’ [Isa 53:5]. The utter reality of suffering must be duly acknowledged and emphasized, lest the Cross is dissolved into fiction: ut non evacuetur crux Christi [lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power (1 Cor 1:17)]. Yet, it was the Lord of Creation that died, the Son of God Incarnate, ‘One of the Holy Trinity’.35 The hypostatic union has not been broken, or even reduced, by Christ’s death. It may be properly said that God died on the Cross, but in His own humanity. ‘He who dwelleth in the highest is reckoned among the dead, and in the little grave findeth lodging’ (Matins of Good [‘Holy’] Saturday, Canon, Ode VIII, Irmos). Christ’s death is a human death indeed, yet it is death within the hypostasis of the Word, the Incarnate Word. And therefore it is a resurrecting death, a disclosure of Life. Only in this connection can we understand adequately the whole sacramental fabric of the Church, beginning with Baptism: one rises with Christ from the baptismal font precisely because this font represents the grave of Christ, His ‘lifebearing grave’, as it is usually described by the Orthodox. The mystery of the Cross can be understood only in the context of the total Christological vision. The mystery of salvation can be adequately apprehended only in the contest of an accurate conception of Christ’s Person: One Person in two natures. One Person, and therefore one has to follow strictly the pattern of the Creed: it is the Son of God who came down, was made 33

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Ambrose, De Obitu Theodosii (Oration on the Death of Theodosius), CSEL 73.7.29 (Vienna: HölderPichler-Tempsky, 1955) [Eds.]. The penultimate hymn sung on Holy Saturday Vespers before the Entrance with the Gospel [Eds.]. Also from the hymn ‘Only Begotten Son and Word of God’ sung during the Divine Liturgy [Eds.].

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man, suffered and died, and rose again. There was but One Divine Person acting in the story of salvation  – yet Incarnate. Only out of this Chalcedonian vision can we understand the faith and devotion of the Eastern Orthodox Church.36

IV Let us turn, in conclusion, to the immediate purpose of our present gathering together. We are meeting now in an ecumenical setting. What is actually our meeting ground? Christian charity? Or deep conviction that all Christians somehow belong together, and the hope that ultimately the ‘divided Christians’ will be re-united? Or [do] we assume that [a] certain ‘unity’ is already given, or rather has never been lost? And then – what kind of ‘unity’? In any case, we are meeting now as we are, i.e., precisely as divided, conscious of the division and mutual separation. And yet, the ‘meeting’ itself constitutes already some kind of ‘unity’. It has been recently suggested that basic division in the Christian World was not so much between ‘Catholics’ and ‘Protestants’, as precisely between East and West. This opposition is not of a dogmatic nature: neither the West, nor the East can be summed up in one set of dogmas applying to it as a whole . . . The difference between East and West lies in the very nature and method of their theological thinking, in the very soil out of which their dogmatic, liturgical and canonical developments arise, in the very style of their religious life.37.

There is some element of truth in this descriptive statement. We should not, however, overlook the fact that these different ‘blocs’ of insights and convictions did actually grow out of a common ground and were, in fact, products of a disintegration of the Christian mind. Accordingly, the very problem of Christian reconciliation is not that of a correlation of parallel traditions, but precisely that of the reintegration of a distorted tradition. The two traditions may seem quite irreconcilable, when they are compared and confronted as they are at the present. Yet their differences themselves are, to a great extent, simply the results of disintegration: they are, as it were, distinctions stiffened into contradictions. The East and the West can meet and find each other only if they remember their original kinship in the common past. The first step to make is to realize that, in spite of all peculiarities, East and West belong organically together in the unity of Christendom. Now, Arnold Toynbee, in his Study of History, contended that ‘Western Europe’, or, as he put it himself, ‘the Western Christian Society’, was an ‘intelligible’, i.e.,

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For a detailed exposition, see my articles ‘On the Tree of the Cross’, St Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly, 1, nos. 3–4 (1953), 11–34; ‘The Lamb of God’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 4, no. 1 (1951), 13–28 [See Ch. 4, 81–94 [Eds.]]; ‘The Resurrection of Life’, Bulletin of Harvard Divinity School (1950–51), 5–26 [GF]. L. A. Zander, ‘The Problems of Ecumenism’, Paper prepared for the Study Department of the WCC, not yet published, but distributed in a mimeographed form [GF]. [Lev Zander’s paper was prepared for the founding assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1948 and was published in his book Vision and Action: The Problems of Ecumenism, trans. Natalie Duddington (London: Gollancz, 1952) [Eds.].]

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‘self-explanatory’ field of study.38 It was just ‘self-contained’. Obviously, there were also several other fields of study, i.e., certain other ‘societies’, but all of them were also ‘selfcontained’ and ‘self-explanatory’. One of them was the Christian East  – the Eastern Christian Society, as Toynbee labelled it. Indeed, all these ‘societies’ actually ‘co-exist’, in the same historic space. Yet these are ‘self-explanatory’. This contention of Toynbee is highly relevant for our task. Do we really belong to the two different and ‘selfexplanatory’ worlds, as he suggests? Are these worlds really ‘self-explanatory’? Indeed, Christendom is sorely divided. But are the divided parts really ‘self-explanatory’? And here lies the crux of the problem. The basic flaw of Toynbee’s conception is in that he simply ignores the tragedy of Christian disruption. In fact, East and West are not independent units, and therefore are not ‘intelligible in themselves’. They are fragments of one world, of one Christendom, which, in God’s design, ought not to have been disrupted. The tragedy of division is the major and crucial problem of Christian history. An attempt to view Christian history as one comprehensive whole is already, in a certain sense, a step in advance towards the restoration of the broken unity. It was an important ecumenical achievement when the ‘divided Christians’ realized that they did belong together and therefore had to ‘stay together’. The next step is to realize that all Christians have [a] ‘common history’, that they have had a common history, a common ancestry. This is what I have ventured to describe as ‘ecumenism in time’. In the accomplishment of this task the Orthodox Church has a special function. She is a living embodiment of an uninterrupted tradition, in thought and devotion. She stands not for a certain ‘particular’ tradition, but for the Tradition of ages, for the Tradition of the Undivided Church. ‘Every scribe which is instructed unto the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old’ (Mt 13:52).

38

On Arnold Toynbee’s Study of History, see Ch. 11, ‘The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology’, n. 1, 185, in this book [Eds.].

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This is Georges Florovsky’s last writing on ecumenism. It appeared in Spanish in 1964 and in English the following year in an anthology of autobiographical statements by leading members of the post-war ecumenical movement:  Ecumenical Experiences, edited by Luis V.  Romeu and Lancelot C.  Sheppard, translated from Diálogos de la Cristianidad: Encuesta (Salamaca: Ediciones Sigueme, 1964) (London: Burns & Oates, 1965; Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1965), 39–45. It was written during Vatican II (1962–1965), which opened the door to Catholic involvement in the ecumenical movement after more than half a century of opposition. This text is in effect Florovsky’s ecumenical testament (Blane #168 and 168a).

In 1926 the late Nicolas Berdyaev1 invited me to join in the ecumenical conversations he started at that time in Paris. The group included representatives of several Churches: Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant. Various basic questions, mainly of a theological and philosophical nature, were taken up and discussed. Discussion was usually on a high level. The most active participants in the discussion were Jacques Maritain, Gabriel Marcel, Marc Boegner, Winifred Monod [and] Sergius Bulgakov, to name but a few. Occasionally Père [Jules] Lebreton, Étienne Gilson [and] Édouard Le Roy2 would also take part in the conversation. It was at once an encounter and a confrontation. The confrontation was often rather sharp and heated, but always in the spirit of mutual respect and confidence. It was my first ecumenical experience. These meetings taught me to appreciate the value and the potential of ecumenical dialogue, across the boundaries of denominational and cultural commitments. These meetings continued for two years. Then a smaller group, including Catholics and Orthodox only, continued to meet privately in the house of Berdyaev for some years.3 1

2

3

On the noted Russian émigré philosopher and ecumenist Nicolas Berdyaev (1874–1948), see Ch. 10, ‘Breaks and Links’, n. 1, 159, in this book [Eds.]. Jacques Maritain (1882–1973):  leading Neo-Thomist philosopher; Gabriel Marcel (1889– 1973): noted Catholic existentialist philosopher; Marc Boegner (1881–1970): long-time president of the Protestant Federation of France; Wilfred Monod (1867–1943):  professor at the Faculty of Protestant Theology in Paris; Jules Lebreton (1873–1956):  Jesuit historian of the early Church; Étienne Gilson (1884–1978):  with Maritain, a major Neo-Thomist philosopher; and Édouard Le Roy (1870–1954): controversial philosopher of science [Eds.]. For a discussion of the intellectual and ecumenical milieus surrounding Berdyaev in Paris from the mid-1920s to the onset of World War II, see Antoine Arjakovsky, The Way: Religious Thinkers of the

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My second ecumenical experience was of another character. It was connected with the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, in England.4 The Fellowship began, in the late 1920s, under the auspices of the British Student Christian Movement, as a small and informal group. It consisted mainly of students in the universities and theological colleges, with a number of senior advisers, of which the most outstanding were, in the early period, bishops Charles Gore and Walter Frere, of the Church of England, and Father Sergius Bulgakov, of the Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris.5 The first aim and purpose of the organization was to bring together younger members of the two Churches, Anglican and Orthodox, for mutual acquaintance and joint discussion of various problems of common concern. A number of members of other Churches were in attendance from the very beginning. With the course of time it became usual to have some Roman Catholic guests present, of whom may be mentioned the two Benedictines, Dom Bede Winslow, of St Augustine’s Abbey, Ramsgate, and Dom Clément Lialine, of Amay and Chevetogne, in Belgium.6 Special emphasis was put on the exchange of devotional experiences. The participation in the work of the Fellowship provided ample opportunity to observe the life of the Anglican Communion, both on the parish level and on the level of theological research and training. It was again a kind of dialogue and confrontation, informal and unofficial, an exchange of views and problems, a sharing of experiences. Both of these early ecumenical involvements of mine were of informal character. By the nature of the case there is no room for making decisions. It was a great advantage that the dialogue could be free and intimate, one could be sincere and outspoken. We could meet each other in complete Christian freedom. This did not exclude controversy, but even the controversy was dominated by the conviction that ‘divided Christians’ still do ‘belong together’ and stay under the mighty challenge of the call to unity. This dialogue has helped me to discover both the common ground of the universal Christian commitment and the depth of actual estrangement and tension. It was at this point that I was inwardly compelled to develop the sense of ‘ecumenical patience’. In 1937 for the first time I  had occasion to participate in a larger and more official ecumenical gathering – the Second World Conference on Faith and Order, in Edinburgh. It was still primarily a dialogue and a confrontation of different traditions and communions, in search [of] agreement and disagreements, but this time on a wider, more comprehensive and semi-official scale. The participants were delegates of their respective Churches, though without any authority to take decisions. Crucial questions

4

5

6

Russian Religious Emigration in Paris and Their Journal, 1925–1940 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013) [Eds.]. For a discussion of Anglican-Orthodox relations between the wars, see Bryn Geffert, Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans: Diplomacy, Theology, and the Politics of Interwar Ecumenism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010) [Eds.]. Charles Gore (1853–1932): influential Anglican theologian, bishop in Worcester, Birmingham and Oxford; Walter Frere (1863–1938): co-founder of the Anglican religious order, the Community of the Resurrection, and bishop of Truro [Eds.]. Bede Winslow (1888–1959):  ecumenist, founder and editor of the Eastern Churches Quarterly for 25 years; Clément Lialine (1901–1958): ecumenist and editor of Chevetogne Monastery’s periodical Irénikon from 1934 to 1950 (See Ch. 15, ‘On the Authority of the Fathers’, n. 11, 239, in this book) [Eds.].

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were raised in the discussion, including the problem of ministry and sacraments. Precisely at this point the ultimate divergence was disclosed, and inevitably had to be admitted openly, that there was no chance of agreement. In my opinion, this was the greatest positive achievement of the Edinburgh Conference. The whole ecumenical problem appeared in its complexity and its paradoxical tension:  the strong urge for Christian unity and the impasse of factual diversity and divergence. It was at that time that I was called to close participation in ecumenical work, at the top level, as a member of the small Committee of Fourteen, which had been set with the task of preparing the foundation of the World Council of Churches. This committee was then enlarged and became the ‘Provisional Committee of the World Council of Churches in the process of formation’. It continued its work till the First Assembly of the Council in Amsterdam, 1948, when the Council was officially inaugurated. For the long period, up to the Third Assembly of the World Council in New Delhi in 1961, I  was deeply involved in various forms of ecumenical activity  – in study groups, in editorial committees, at the Ecumenical Institute [Chambésy, Switzerland] and indeed in large gatherings, such as Assemblies – Amsterdam, Evanston [1954], New Delhi – and World Conferences on Faith and Order – Lund [1952] and Montreal [1963]. It was an enriching and welcome experience. My personal concern, however, was always with dialogue and confrontation. The theological discussion was properly focused on the process of ecumenical cooperation; new vistas have been discovered, and new awareness acquired. But the crucial problem remains as it has been before. The ultimate goal of the ecumenical endeavour has been more accurately formulated or articulated, the basic difficulties have been more courageously ascertained and acknowledged. And this is indeed a major achievement. On the other hand, it was becoming increasingly evident that in ‘divided Christendom’ there was actually no real agreement concerning the basic issue – the very ‘nature’, or true character, of that unity which Christians are bound and called to seek. It may be contended that ‘divided Christians’ are not yet ready for the true unity, and probably are not willing or prepared to proceed. It may be suggested that the historic ‘Ecumenical Movement’, as it had been promoted first by the endeavours of ‘Faith and Order’ and ‘Life and Work’ and then institutionalized in the World Council of Churches, had reached its critical peak or climax. The task is of an enormous complexity, although the promise is still great. Disagreements are manifold, inveterate, radical. And there is no room for any compromise. This must be faced frankly and courageously, without reticence or evasion, rather with confidence and trust. The actual division is profound. Shortcuts and easy ways must be avoided. One has to be bold enough to meet the challenge of Christian tragedy. The inner challenge, growing up among the various constituents of the World Council, in which the Protestants and the Orthodox are paradoxically joined in common endeavour and search, has been increased by the growing impact of the ‘ecumenical awakening’ in the Roman Catholic Church. The perspectives of ecumenical endeavour are drastically widened. One may react to this impact of ‘Roman Ecumenism’ in various manners, with hope, with indifference, with suspicion, with apprehension, with fear. But it is difficult to ignore the challenge. The very concept of ‘Ecumenism’ changes its character and scope.

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Now, it is still possible to evade the challenge, or to postpone the crisis. It is possible to reduce ‘Christian unity’ to the dimensions of a ‘cooperation’ on practical matters. It is not a new device. Already at Stockholm, in 1925,7 it was declared that ‘doctrine divides, and service unites’. Indeed cooperation and solidarity in practical matters is in a sense also a contribution to Christian unity, if only to a certain limit and only in the case when the secondary or subsidiary character of such a contribution is honestly acknowledged. In fact, this ‘cooperation’ may easily become an impediment, an obstacle or an evasive substitute for the true search for unity. The root of disunity is much deeper than historical estrangement or mutual isolation. The root is of a religious and doctrinal character. An effective cooperation of the ‘divided Christians’ on social issues, or in the field of ‘international affairs’, without any deeper urge for ultimate ‘union’ in One Church, can but obscure or even distort the vision of true ‘Christian Unity’, which is the unity in faith and order, the unity of the Church and in the Church. One of my basic convictions, which grew gradually out of my ecumenical experience and committed meditation on all the issues involved, is that ‘ecumenism in space’ which has been practised in the current endeavours is insufficient and should be supplemented by what I came to describe as ‘ecumenism in time’.8 The ecumenical experience itself has shown that encounter or confrontation of the divided Christian groups or communions, in their present state and form, cannot break through the deadlock of denominational diversity, and of all sorts of isolationist prejudices, unless the perspective is enlarged to include the whole range of Christian historical tradition. In fact, ‘modern’ Christians have become so excessively ‘over-modernized’ in their attitudes and orientation as to lose access to the very foundations of Christian faith and reality which came to seem ‘archaic’ to them. One has to recover the true historical perspective, not to be paralysingly imprisoned in detached ‘modernity’. In any case, the major task of Christians, in their existential situation today, is still in the field of theology, of ‘faith and order’, not in the ‘practical’ field, and probably not even in the ‘pastoral’ field, if pastoral concerns are detached from ‘theology’ or even opposed to theology. The only effective way of ecumenical ‘action’ today is still the way of theological study, dialogue, confrontation. It is, of course, not a smooth way. Indeed, it is a stony way, strewn with terrible stumbling blocks, which for centuries accumulated in the period when ‘unhappy divisions’ had full sway. In my opinion, it is the right way, precisely because it is so arduous. The task is to remove the stumbling blocks, not just to ignore or to evade them. Moreover, is it not obvious that the great change in the ecumenical situation, and a very real change, in recent years has been brought about precisely by the devout work of dedicated theologians, even in the separated denominations? The new, more adequate and more existential understanding of the Word of God, of Holy Scripture, is the fruit of devout biblical scholarship. Church historians, in spite of their continuing disagreement on many crucial points of interpretation, have drawn for us a new picture of the ‘common history’ of ‘divided Christendom’. Patristic scholars 7

8

Florovsky is referring to the meeting in Stockholm in 1925 of the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work, one of the predecessor bodies of the World Council of Churches [Eds.] See Georges Florovsky, ‘The Challenge of Disunity’, St Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly, 3, nos. 1–2 (1954–1955): 31–36 at 35; and the ‘Introduction’ to this book, 23 [Eds.].

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have demonstrated the perennial value of the ancient Tradition, which is existentially valid and challenging now no less than in the past. Liturgists have quickened the understanding of devotional values, and even the historical soundings in this field have enriched the inner life of contemporary worshippers and believers. In brief, if we find ourselves now in a changed and renewed world, as we actually do, and better equipped for grasping ecumenical problems, it is due chiefly to the indefatigable labour of those who concentrated their efforts in the field of theological research and meditation. Moreover, a fruitful ecumenical cooperation has been achieved now first of all in the field of theological research, not only in the areas of technical studies, but also in the areas of intensive doctrinal interpretation. A truly ecumenical dialogue is going on with unusual impetus and energy. Indeed, one must be cautious in the evaluation of the immediate impact of this work on the total situation in the Churches. The average churchman, in all denominations, is still hardly aware both of ecumenical problems and of ecumenical progress. Again, the very growth and partial success of ecumenical comprehensiveness inevitably produces counteraction and the increase of denominational rigidity in various circles. There is, in many quarters, a tendency to eliminate, at least practically, the Eastern Orthodox from the ecumenical dialogue and to reduce this to a ‘Catholic-Protestant encounter’, under various pretexts. On the other hand, there is an obvious anxiety, in some quarters, about Roman Catholic participation in the ecumenical dialogue. And the majority is probably simply indifferent to the ecumenical issue, in all its shapes. Personally I am not looking forward to any spectacular events in the ecumenical field in the near future. Nor am I  interested in the official negotiations concerning unity or reunion. There is much work to be done on the more intimate level and in an informal way. And this work must be done. There is an urgency and there is a promise. But the advance is in the hands of the Lord.

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Part Four

Scripture, Worship and Eschatology

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Eschatology in the Patristic Age

This paper was presented at the Second International Conference on Patristic Studies, held at Oxford in 1955, and first published in Studia Patristica, 2, no. 2 (1956): 235– 250. It was reprinted with some minor variations (noted) in the Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 2, no. 1 (1956): 27–40 (Blane #138).

I Four ‘last things’ are traditionally listed: Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. These four are ‘the last things of man’. And there are four ‘last things’ of mankind: the Last Day, the Resurrection of the Flesh, the Final Judgement and the End of the World.1 The major item, however, is missing in this listing, namely, ‘the Last Adam’ [1 Cor 15:45], Christ Himself, and His Body, the Church. For indeed Eschatology is not just one particular section of the Christian theological system, but rather its basis and foundation, its guiding and inspiring principle, or, as it were, the climate of the whole of Christian thinking. Christianity is essentially eschatological, and the Church is an ‘eschatological community’ since she is the New Testament, the ultimate and the final, and, consequently, ‘the last’.2 Christ Himself is the Last Adam because He is ‘the New Man’ (Ignatius, Ephes. 20, 1 [PG 5.661A]). The Christian perspective is intrinsically eschatological. ‘The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come’ [2 Cor 5:17]. It was precisely ‘in these last days’ [Heb 1:2] that the God of the Fathers ultimately acted, once for all, once forever. The ‘end’ has come, God’s design of human salvation has been consummated (Jn 19:28, 30: tetelestai). Yet, this ultimate action was just a new beginning. The greater things were yet to come. The ‘Last Adam’ was coming again. ‘And let him who heareth say, Come’ [Rev 22:17]. The Kingdom had been inaugurated, but it did not yet come in its full power and glory. Or, rather, the Kingdom was still to come – yet, the King had come already. 1

2

See, e.g. Msgr Joseph Pohle, Eschatology. Adapted and edited by Arthur Preuss (St Louis, MO, and London: Herder, 1947), 2 [GF]. See Gerhard Kittel’s Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1949 [–1979]), Vol. III, 451–2, s.v. ‘kainos’ (Johannes Behm) [Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 10 volumes., ed. Gerhard Kittel and trans. Geoffrey W.  Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 1964–1976)] [GF].

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The Church was still in via, and Christians were still ‘pilgrims’ and strangers in ‘this world’ [1 Pet 2:11]. This tension between ‘the Past’ and ‘the Coming’ was essential for the Christian message from the very beginning. There were always these two basic terms of reference: the Gospel and the Second Advent. The story of salvation was still in progress. But more than a ‘promise’ had been granted unto the Church. Or, rather, ‘the Promise of the Father’ [Acts 1:4] was the Holy Spirit, which did come and was abiding in the Church forever. The kingdom of the Spirit had been already inaugurated. Thus the Church was living in two dimensions at once. St Augustine describes this basic duality of the Christian situation in a remarkable passage of his Commentary on the Gospel of St John, interpreting the twenty-first chapter: There are two states of life that are known to the Church, preached and commended to herself from heaven, whereof one is of faith, the other of sight. One – in the temporal sojourn in a foreign land, the other in the eternity of the (heavenly) abode. One  – on the way, the other  – in the fatherland. One  – in active work, the other – in the wages of contemplation . . . The one is anxious with the care of conquering, the other is secure in the peace of victory . . . The whole of the one is passed here to the end of this world, and then finds its termination. The other is deferred for its completion till after the end of this world, but has no end in the world to come.3

Yet it is essentially the same Church that has this dual life, duas vitas. This duality is signified in the Gospel story by two names: Peter and John.

II Christianity was recently described as an ‘experience of novelty’, a Neuheitserlebnis.4 And this ‘novelty’ was ultimate and absolute. It was the Mystery of the Incarnation. Incarnation was interpreted by the Fathers not as a metaphysical miracle, but primarily as the solution of an existential predicament, in which mankind was hopelessly imprisoned, i.e., as the Redemptive act of God. It was ‘for us men and for our salvation’5 that the Son of God came down, and was made man.6 3 4

5 6

In Johan. tr. 124, 5 [PL 35.1974] [GF]. See Karl Prümm, Christentum als Neuheitserlebnis. Durchblick durch die christlich-antike Begegnung [Christianity as an Experience of Novelty: A Perspective on the Encounter between Christianity and Antiquity] (Freiburg: Herder, 1939) [Eds.]. From the Nicene Creed in the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer [Eds.]. The question whether this redemptive purpose was the only reason or motive of the Incarnation, so that it would not have taken place if man had not sinned, was never raised by the Fathers, with one single exception. The Christian message was from the very beginning the message of Salvation, and Christ was described precisely as the Saviour or Redeemer of mankind and the world, who had redeemed His people from the bondage of sin and corruption. It was assumed that the very meaning of salvation was that the intimate union between man and God had been restored, and it was inferred therefrom that the Redeemer Himself had to belong to both sides, i.e. had to be at once both Divine and human, for otherwise the broken communion would not have been recovered. This line of reasoning was taken by St Irenaeus, later by St Athanasius, and by all the writers of the fourth century, in their struggle against the Arians. Only in St Maximus the Confessor do we

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Redemption has been accomplished, once for all. The union or ‘communion’ with God has been re-established, and the power of becoming children of God has been granted to men, through faith. Christ Jesus is the only Mediator and Advocate, and His sacrifice on the Cross, in ara crucis [on the altar of the Cross], was ‘a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction’.7 Human situation has been radically changed, and the status of man also. Man was re-adopted as the Son of God in Christ Jesus, the Only-Begotten Son of God Incarnate, crucified and risen. The catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, elaborated by the Fathers, from St Irenaeus to St John of Damascus, emphasizes first of all this aspect of finality and uniqueness, of accomplishment and achievement. The Son of God ‘was made man’ forever. The Son of God, ‘One of the Holy Trinity’,8 is man, by the virtue of the Incarnation, forever and ever. The hypostatic union is a permanent accomplishment. And the victory of the Cross is a final victory. Again, the Resurrection of the Lord is the beginning of the general resurrection. But precisely for these reasons the ‘history of salvation’ should go and is going on. The doctrine of Christ finds its fullness and completion in the doctrine of the Church, i.e., of ‘the Whole Christ’, – totus Christus, caput et corpus, to use the glorious phrase of St Augustine.9 And this immediately introduces the historical duration. The Church is a growing body, till she comes to ‘mature manhood’, eis andra teleion [Eph 4:13]. In the Church the Incarnate is unfailingly ‘present’. It was precisely this awareness of His abiding presence that necessitated the orientation towards the future. It was in the Church, and through the Church, that God was still pursuing His redemptive purpose, through Jesus Christ, the Lord. Again, the Church was a missionary body, sent into the world to proclaim and to propagate the Kingdom, and the ‘whole creation’ was expected to share or to participate in that ultimate ‘re-novation’, which was already inaugurated by the Incarnate Lord, and in Him. History was theologically vindicated precisely by this missionary concern of the Church. On the other hand, history, i.e., the ‘history of salvation’, could not be regarded as an endless process. The ‘end of times’ and the ‘consummation’ were faithfully anticipated. ‘The end’ was clearly predicted in the Scriptures, as the Early

7 8

9

find suggestion that Incarnation belonged to the original plan of Creation and in this sense was independent of the Fall:  Quaest. ad Thalassium, 60, PG 90.621; cf. Ambigua, PG 91.1097, 1305, 1308 sq. Cf. the remarks of Fr Hans Urs von Balthasar, Liturgie Cosmique, Maxime le Confesseur (Paris: Aubier, 1947), 204–205 (German edition, s. 267–8) [Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe according to Maximus the Confessor [1941], trans. Brian E. Daley (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003)]. See also Aloysius Spindeler, ‘Cur verbum caro factum? Das Motiv der Menschwerdung und das Verhältnis der Erlösung zur Menschwerdung Gottes in den christologischen Glaubenskämpfen des vierten und fünften christlichen Jahrhunderts’ (Forschungen zur Christlichen Literatur und Dogmengeschichte, herausgegeben von Ehrhard und Kirsch, XVIII, 2). [‘Why Was the Word Made Flesh? The Motive of the Incarnation and the Relationship of Salvation to God Becoming Human in the Christological Debates of the Fourth and Fifth Centuries’ (Research on Christian Literature and Dogmatic History, published by Ehrhard and Kirsch, 18.2) (Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1938) [GF]. [See also Florovsky’s discussion of this question in ‘ “Cur Deus Homo?” The Nature of the Incarnation’, in The Collected Works, Vol. III, 163–170, 310–314 [Eds.].] From the Prayer of Consecration for Holy Communion in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer [Eds.]. This is a phrase from the hymn ‘Only Begotten Son and Word of God’ attributed to Emperor Justinian and sung during the Divine Liturgy [Eds.]. For Totus Christus, see Ch. 3, ‘In Ligno Crucis: The Church Fathers’ Doctrine of Redemption’, n. 13, 77, in this book [Eds.].

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Christians read them. The goal was indeed ‘beyond history’, but history was inwardly regulated and organized precisely by this superhistorical and transcendent goal, by a watchful expectation of the Coming Lord. Only an ultimate and final ‘con-summation,’ an ultimate and final reintegration or ‘re-capitulation’ could have given meaning to the flux of happenings and events, to the duration of time itself. The strong corporate feeling compelled the early Christians to look for an ultimate and inclusive integration of the Redemptive process in the Kingdom to come. This was plainly stated already by Origen: Omne ergo corpus Ecclesiae redimendum sperat Apostolus, nec putat posse quae perfecta sunt dari singulis quibusdam membris, nisi universum corpus in unum fuerit congregatum. [The Apostle (Paul) hopes that the whole body of the Church will be redeemed, and he does not consider it possible for the things that are perfect to be given to the individual members unless the entire body has been gathered into one.]10

History goes on because the Body has not yet been completed. ‘The fullness of the Body’ implies and presupposes a reintegration of history, including the old dispensation, i.e., ‘the end’. Or, in the phrase of St John Chrysostom, ‘then is the Head filled up, then is the Body rendered perfect, when we are all together, all knit together and united’ (In Ephes. hom. III.2, ad 1.23 [PG 62.26]). Erit unus Christus, amans seipsum [There will be one Christ, loving himself] (St Augustine, In Ps. 26, sermo 2, n. 23 [sic: In epistolam Joannis ad Parthos tractatus 10, 3: PL 35.2055]). The other reason for looking forward, to a future consummation, was the firm and fervent belief in the Resurrection of the dead. In its own way it was to be a ‘re-integration’ of history. Christ is risen indeed, and the sting of death has been taken away. The power of death was radically broken, and Life Eternal manifested and disclosed, in Christo. The ‘last enemy’, however, is still active in the world, although death does not ‘reign’ in the world any more. The victory of the Risen Christ is not yet fully disclosed. Only in the general resurrection will Christ’s redemptive triumph be fully actualized. Expectandum nobis etiam et corporis ver est [We must also wait for the spring-time of the body].11 This was the common conviction of the Patristic age, since Athenagoras and St Irenaeus and up to St John of Damascus. St Athanasius was most emphatical on this point, and St Gregory of Nyssa also. Christ had to die in order to abrogate death and corruption by His death. Indeed, death was that ‘last enemy’ which He had to destroy in order to redeem man from corruption. This was one of the main arguments of St Athanasius in his De Incarnatione. ‘In order to accept death He had a body’ (De Incarn., 21 [PG 25.133C]). And St Gregory of Nyssa says the same:  ‘If one inquires into the mystery, he will say rather, not that death happened to Him as a consequence of birth, but that birth itself was assumed on the account of death’ (Orat. cat., 32 [PG 45.80A]). Or 10

11

In Rom. VII, 5, 10 [PG 14.1117A; Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Books 6-10, trans. Thomas P. Scheck, FC 104 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2002), 77]  [GF]. Minucius Felix, Octavius, 34 [Liber de errore profanarum religionum, ed. K. Halm, CSEL 2.34.12 (Vienna: C. Gerold, 1867), 49] [GF].

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in the sharp phrase of Tertullian: Christus mori missus, nasci quoque necessario habuit, ut mori posset [Christ, being sent to die, had of necessity also to be born, so that he might die] (De carne Christi, 6 [PL 2.764A]). The bodily resurrection of man was one of the main aims of Redemption. The coming and general resurrection will not be just a ‘re-statement’ to the previous condition. This would have been rather an ‘immortalization of death’, as St Maximus sharply pointed out (Epist. 7 [PG 91.437C-440A]). The coming resurrection was conceived as a new and creative act of God, as an integral and comprehensive ‘re-novation’ of the whole Creation. ‘Behold, I make all things new’ [Rev 21:5]. In the phrase of St Gregory of Nazianzus, it was to be the third and final ‘transformation’ of human life (metastasis), completing and superseding the two previous, the Old and the New Testaments, a concluding eschatological seismos [earthquake] (Orat. theol., V, 25 [Or. 31.25, PG 36.160D-161A]).

III The new vision of human destiny, in the light of Christ, could not be accurately and adequately expressed in the terms of the current philosophies of that time. A new set of concepts had to be elaborated, before the Christian belief could be fully articulated and developed into a coherent system of theological propositions. The problem was not that of adjustment, but rather of a radical change of the basic habits of mind. Greek philosophy was dominated by the ideas of permanence and recurrence. In spite of the great variety of trends, a common pattern can be detected in all systems. This was a vision of an ‘eternal’ Cosmos. Everything which was worthy of existence had to have actually existed in the most perfect manner before all time, and nothing could be added to this accomplished fullness. No basic change was possible, and no real ‘novelty’ could ever emerge. The whole, the Cosmos, was perfect and complete, and nothing could be perfected or completed. There could be but a disclosure of the pre-existing fullness. Aristotle made this point with complete frankness: What is ‘of necessity’ coincides with what is ‘always,’ since that which ‘must be’ cannot possibly ‘not-be.’ Hence a thing is eternal if its ‘being’ is necessary; and if it is eternal, its ‘being’ is necessary. And if, therefore, the ‘coming-to-be’ of a thing is necessary, its ‘coming-to-be’ is eternal; and if eternal, necessary. It follows that the ‘coming-to-be’ of anything, if it is absolutely necessary, must be cyclical, i.e., must return upon itself . . . It is in circular movement therefore, and in cyclical ‘comingto-be,’ that the ‘absolutely necessary’ is to be found.12

The argument is perfectly clear. If there is any ‘sufficient reason’ for a certain thing to exist (‘necessity’), this reason must be ‘eternal’ i.e., there can be no reason whatever why this thing should not have existed ‘from eternity,’ since otherwise the reason for its existence could not have been ‘sufficient’ or ‘necessary’. And consequently ‘being’ is simply ‘necessary’. 12

Aristotle, De gen. et corr., II, 2, 338a [GF].

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No increase in ‘being’ is conceivable. Nothing truly real can be ‘innovated’. The true reality is always ‘behind’ (‘from eternity’), and never ‘ahead’. Accordingly, the Cosmos is a periodical being, and there will be no end of cosmic ‘re-volutions’. The highest symbol of reality is exactly the recurrent circle. The cosmic reality, of which man was but a part, was conceived as a permanent cyclical process, enacted, as it were, in an infinite series of self-reproducing instalments, of self-reiterating circles. Only the circle is perfect.13 Obviously, there was no room for any real ‘eschatology’ in such a scheme. Greek philosophy indeed was always concerned rather with the ‘first principles’ than with the ‘last things’. The whole conception was obviously based on astronomical experience. Indeed, the celestial movements were periodical and recurrent. The whole course of rotation would be accomplished in a certain period (‘the Great Year’), and then will come a ‘repetition’, a new and identical cycle or circle. There was no ‘pro-gress’ in time, but only eternal returns, a ‘kyklophoria’ [circular motion].14 Time itself was in this scheme but a rotation, a periodical reiteration of itself. As Plato put it in the Timaeus, time ‘imitates’ eternity, and rolls on according to the laws of numbers (38a, b), and in this sense it can be called ‘a mobile image of eternity’ (37d). In itself, time is rather a lower or reduced mode of existence. This idea of the periodical succession of identical worlds seems to be traditional in Greek philosophy. The Pythagoreans seem to have been the first to profess an exact repetition. With Aristotle this periodical conception of the universe took a strict scientific shape and was elaborated into a coherent system of physics. Later on this idea of periodical returns was taken up by the Stoics. They professed the belief in the periodical dissolution and ‘rebirth’ of all things, hē periodikē palingenesia tōn holōn (Marcus Aurelius) [Meditations, 11,  1] [this reference is not in the Studia Patristica version], and then every minute detail will be exactly reproduced. This return was what the Stoics used to call the ‘Universal Restoration’, hē apokatastasis tōn pantōn. And this was obviously an astronomical term.15 There was a kind of a cosmic perpetuum mobile, and all individual existences were hopelessly or inextricably involved in this cosmic rotation, in these cosmic rhythms and ‘astral courses’ (this was precisely what 13

14

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On the notion of the circular motion in Aristotle, see Octave Hamelin, Le Système d’Aristote [The System of Aristotle], 2nd ed. (Paris:  J. Vrin, 1931), 336; Jacques Chevalier, La Notion du Nécessaire chez Aristote et chez ses prédécesseurs, particulièrement chez Platon [The Notion of Necessity in Aristotle and His Predecessors, especially Plato] (Paris:  F. Alcan, 1915), 160, 180; René Mugnier, La théorie du premier moteur et l’évolution de la pensée aristotélicienne [The Theory of the Unmoved Mover and the Evolution of Aristotelian Thought] (Paris: J. Vrin, 1930), 24 [GF]. See Pierre Duhem, Le Système du monde, histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic [The System of the World: History of Cosmological Doctrines from Plato to Copernicus] [10 vols.], t.  I  (Paris:  Hermann, 1914 [–1959]), 65, 275–296, and especially t.  II (Paris:  Hermann, 1914 [–1959]), VIII. 447: ‘Les Pères de l’Église et la Grande Année’ [The Fathers of the Church and the Great Year]. Cf. Hans Meyer, ‘Zur Lehre von der Ewigen Wiederkunft aller Dinge’ [On the Teaching of the Eternal Return of All Things] in Festgabe A.  Ehrhard [Festschrift for A. Ehrhard] (Bonn/ Leipzig:  K. Schroeder, 1922), s.  359 ff.; and also Mircea Eliade, Der Mythos der Ewigen Wiederkehr [The Myth of Eternal Return] (Düsseldorf: Eugen Diederichs, 1953) [GF]. [On ‘circular motion’, see Ch. 12, ‘The Predicament of the Christian Historian’, 212–213, n. 53, 213, in this book [Eds.].] See A.  Oepke s.v. ‘apokathistemi and apokatastasis’, in Gerhard Kittel, Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament [Theological Dictionary of the New Testament], I, 389:  ‘Vor allem wird apokatastasis terminus technicus für die Wiederherstellung des kosmischen Zyklus’ [Above all, apokatastasis is a technical term for the restoration of the cosmic cycle] [GF].

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the Greeks used to call ‘destiny’ or fate, hē heimarmenē, vis positionis astrorum [the power of the position of the fixed stars]). The universe itself was always numerically the same, and its laws were immutable and invariable, and each next world therefore will exactly resemble the earlier ones in all particulars. There was no room for history in this scheme. ‘Cyclical motion and the transmigration of souls is not history. It was a history built on the pattern of astronomy, it was indeed itself a kind of astronomy’.16 Already Origen protested most vigorously against this system of cosmic bondage. ‘If this be true, then the free will is destroyed’.17 Oscar Cullmann, in his renowned book, Christus und die Zeit [Christ and Time], has well depicted the radical divergence between the ‘circular’ concept of time in the Greek thought and the ‘linear’ concept in the Bible and in the Christian doctrine.18 The ancient Fathers were fully aware of this divergence. Circuitus illi jam explosi sunt [these cycles have been abolished], exclaims St Augustine. ‘Let us follow Christ, “the right way,” and, with him as our Guide and Saviour, turn our mind away from the vain circular maze of the impious’ - Viam rectam sequentes quae nobis est Christus, eo duce ac salvatore, a vano et inepto impiorum circuitu iter fidei mentemque avertamus.19 Now, this circular conception of the Universe, as ‘a periodical being’, was closely connected with the initial conviction of the Greeks that the Universe, the Cosmos, was ‘eternal’, i.e., had no beginning, and therefore was also ‘immortal’, i.e., could have no end. The Cosmos itself was, in this sense, ‘Divine’. Therefore, the radical refutation of the cyclical conception was possible only in the context of a coherent doctrine of Creation. Christian eschatology does inextricably depend upon an adequate doctrine of creation. And it was at this point that Christian thought encountered major difficulties.20 Origen was probably the first to attempt a systematic formulation of the doctrine of creation. But he was, from the outset, strongly handicapped by the ‘Hellenistic’ habits of his mind. Belief in creation was for him an integral article of the Apostolic faith. 16

17 18

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Aleksei Losev, Ocherki antichnogo simbolizma i mifologii [Essays in Ancient Symbolism and Mythology], t. I [only one volume was published] (Moscow: izdanie avtora [a publication of the author], 1930), 643. This book is one of the most valuable contributions to the modern discussion of Platonism, including the Christian Platonism. The book is utterly rare:  passed by the official censorship in the Soviet Union, it was soon after taken out of circulation and probably destroyed, apparently under the pressure from the anti-religious quarters; the author was apparently deported. The book, and other valuable writings of Losev in the same field, is obtainable in Fritz Lieb’s Library, at the University of Basel [GF]. [Aleksei Losev (1893–1988) was one of the most important Russian philosophers of the twentieth century, strongly influenced by Vladimir Solovyov and Pavel Florensky (who married him to his first wife). He produced over 30 monographs, with a particular focus on symbolism, ancient philosophy, aesthetics and the philosophy of language. His principal work is the eight-volume Istoriia antichnoi estetiki (History of Classical Aesthetics) (Moscow: AST/ Isskusstvo/Mysl’, 1963–2002). He was persecuted by the Soviets for his rejection of Marxism in his The Dialectics of Myth (1930) and his support of the underground Orthodox religious movement Imiaslavie (which centered on the veneration of the name of God). He was sentenced to 10 years’ hard labour and was in the Gulag between 1930 and 1933, where he worked on the White Sea–Baltic Canal (almost becoming blind). He was then released and allowed to resume his academic career [Eds.].] Contra Celsum, IV, 67 etc.; cf. V, 20–21 [PG 11.1136A, 1210-1216] [GF]. Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History, trans. Flyod V. Filson (London: SCM, 1952), ch. 2, 51–68 [Eds.]. De Civ. dei, XII, 20 [In some editions Bk 12, 21.4, 3; PL 41.371, 370] [GF]. Cf. my article ‘The Idea of Creation in Christian Philosophy’, Eastern Churches Quarterly, Vol. 8, no. 3 (1949), Supplementary issue, ‘Nature and Grace’, 53–77 [GF].

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But from the absolute ‘perfection’ of God, he felt himself compelled to deduce the ‘eternity’ of the world. Otherwise, he thought, it would be necessary to admit some changes in God Himself. In Origen’s conception, the Cosmos is a kind of an eternal companion of God. The Aristotelian character of his reasoning at this point is obvious. Next, Origen had to admit ‘cycles’ and a sort of rotation, although he plainly rejected the iterative character of the successive ‘cycles’. There was an unresolved inconsistency in his system. The ‘eternity’ of the world implied an infinite number of ‘cycles’ in the past, but Origen was firmly convinced that this series of ‘cycles’ was to come to an end, and therefore there had to be but a finite number of ‘cycles’ in the future. Now, this is plainly inconsistent. On the other hand, Origen was compelled to interpret the final ‘consummation’ as a ‘return’ to the initial situation, ‘before all times’. In any case, history was for him, as it were, unproductive, and all that might be ‘added’ to the pre-existent reality had to be simply omitted in the ultimate summing up, as an accidental alloy or vain accretion. The fullness of creation had been realized by the creative fiat ‘in eternity’ once for all. The process of history could have for him but a ‘symbolic’ meaning. It was more or less transparent for these eternal values. All links in the chain could be interpreted as signs of a higher reality. Ultimately, all such signs and symbols will pass away, although it was difficult to see why the infinite series of ‘cycles’ should ever end. Nevertheless, all signs have their own function in history. Events, as temporal happenings, have no permanent significance. The only valid interpretation of them is ‘symbolical’. This basic assumption led Origen into insuperable difficulties in Christology. Could the Incarnation itself be regarded as a permanent achievement, or rather was it no more than an ‘episode’ in history, to be surpassed in ‘eternity’? Moreover, ‘manhood’ itself, as a particular mode of existence, was to be interpreted precisely as an ‘episode’, like all differentiation of beings. It did not belong to the original plan of creation and originated in the general disintegration of the Fall. Therefore, it was bound to disappear, when the whole of creation is restored to its initial integrity, when the primordial world of pure spirits is restated in its original splendour. History simply has nothing to contribute to this ultimate ‘apocatastasis’. Now, it is easy to dismiss this kind of eschatology as an obvious case of ‘acute Hellenization’.21 The true historical situation, however, was much more complex. Origen was wrestling with a real problem. His ‘aberrations’ were in fact the birth-pangs of the Christian mind. His own system was an abortive birth. Or, to change the metaphor, his failures themselves were to become sign-posts on the road to a more satisfactory synthesis. It was in the struggle with Arianism that the Fathers were compelled to elaborate a clear conception of ‘creation’, as distinguished from other forms of ‘becoming’ and ‘being’. The contribution of St Athanasius was decisive at this point. St Augustine, from another point of view, was wrestling with the same problem, and his discovery that 21

The reference to ‘acute Hellenization’ is directed in particular at the German historian of dogma Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) and his school. The phrase in Harnack initially was a medical metaphor used to refer to gnosticism where gnosticism is the ‘acute Hellenization’ and the ‘chronic condition’ (a ‘gradual process’ of Hellenization leading to the acute state but still retaining the Old Testament faith) is Catholicism/Orthodoxy. Harnack later applies the phrase more generally to the dogmatic orthodoxy of the Fathers, especially the Greek Fathers, and Florovsky is reacting to this broader use. See Ch. 2, ‘Preface to In Ligno Crucis’, n. 10, 68, in this book [Eds.].

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time itself had to be regarded as a creature was one of the most relevant achievements of Christian thought. This discovery liberated this thought from the heavy heritage of Hellenistic habits. And a safe foundation was laid for the Christian theology of history.

IV No comprehensive integration of human existence is possible without the Resurrection of the dead. The unity of mankind can be achieved only if the dead rise. This was perhaps the most striking novelty in the original Christian message. The preaching of the Resurrection as well as the preaching of the Cross was foolishness and a stumblingblock to the Gentiles [1 Cor 1:23]. The Christian belief in a coming Resurrection could only confuse and embarrass the Greeks. It would mean for them simply that the present imprisonment in the flesh will be renewed again and forever. The expectation of a bodily resurrection would befit rather an earthworm, suggested Celsus, and he jeered in the name of common sense. He called Christians ‘a flesh-loving crew’, philosōmaton genos, and treated the Docetists with far greater sympathy and understanding.22 Porphyry, in his Life of Plotinus, tells that Plotinus, it seemed, ‘was ashamed to be in the flesh’, and with this statement he begins his biography: And in such a frame of mind he refused to speak either of his ancestors or of parents, or of his fatherland. He would not sit for a sculptor or painter. It was absurd to make a permanent image of this perishable frame. It was already enough that we should bear it now..23

This philosophical asceticism of Plotinus should be distinguished from Oriental dualism, Gnostic or Manichean. Plotinus himself wrote very strongly ‘against Gnostics’ [Enn. II.9]. Yet, it was rather a difference of motives and methods. The practical issue in both cases was one and the same, – a ‘flight’ or ‘retreat’ from this corporeal world, an ‘escape’ from the body. Plotinus himself suggested the following simile. Two men live in the same house. One of them blames the builder and his handiwork, because it is made of inanimate wood and stone. The other praises the wisdom of the architect, because the building is so skilfully constructed. For Plotinus this world was not evil, it was the ‘image’ or reflection of the world above, and probably the best of images. Still, one had to aspire beyond all images, from the image to the prototype. One should cherish not the copy, but the pattern (Enn. V, 8, 8). ‘He knows that when the time comes, he will go out and will no longer have any need of a house.’ It is to say that the soul was to be liberated from the ties of the body, to be disrobed, and then only it could ascend to its proper sphere (Enn. II, 9, 15). ‘The true awakening is the true resurrection from the body, and not with the body’, apo sōmatos, ou meta sōmatos, anastasis, – since the body is by nature opposite to the soul (to allotrion). A bodily resurrection would be just a passage from one ‘sleep’ to another (Enn. III, 6, 6). The polemical turn of 22 23

Apud Origen, Contra Celsum, V, 14; VII, 36, 39 [PG 11.1201, 1472A, 1476-1477] [GF]. Life of Plotinus, 1 [GF].

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these phrases is obvious. The concept of the bodily resurrection was quite alien and unwelcome to the Greek mind.24 The Christian attitude was just the opposite. ‘Not for that we would be unclothed, but that we would be clothed, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life’ (2 Cor 5:4). St Paul was pleading for apolytrōsis tou sōmatos [the redemption of the body] (Rom 8:23).25 As St John Chrysostom commented on these passages, one should clearly distinguish the body itself and ‘corruption’. The body is God’s creation, although it had been corrupted. The ‘strange thing’ which must be put off is not the body, but corruption.26 There was a flagrant ‘conflict in anthropology’ between the Christian message and Greek wisdom. A new anthropology had to be elaborated in order to commend the Christian hope of resurrection to the Gentiles. In the last resort it was Aristotle and not Plato who could offer help to Christian philosophers. In the philosophical interpretation of its eschatological hope, Christian theology from the very beginning clings to Aristotle.27 Such a biased preference may appear to be unexpected and strange. For, strictly speaking, in Aristotle there was no room for any ‘after-death’ destiny of man. In his interpretation man was entirely an earthly being. Nothing really human passes beyond the grave. Man is mortal through and through. His singular being is not a person and does not survive death. But yet in this weakness of Aristotle was his strength. He had a real understanding of the unity of human existence. Man was to him, first of all, an individual being, a living unit. Man was one just in his duality, as an ‘animated body’, and two elements in him exist only together, in a concrete and indivisible correlation. Soul and body for Aristotle are not even two elements, which are combined or connected with each other, but rather simply two aspects of the same concrete reality. ‘Soul and body together constitute the animal. Now it needs no proof that the soul cannot be separated from the body.’28 Once the functional unity of the soul and body has been broken by the death, no ‘organism’ is there any more, the corpse is no more a body, and a dead man can hardly be called man at all.29 No ‘transmigration’ of souls to other bodies was possible for Aristotle. Each soul abides in its ‘own’ body, which it creates and forms, and each body has its ‘own’ soul, as its vital principle, eidos or form. This anthropology easily lends itself to a biological simplification, when man is almost completely equated with any other living being. Such indeed was the interpretation of

24

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28 29

Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 3 vols. (London: Thomas Tegg, 1845), III, 310, quotes a Plotinian phrase which cannot be found in the Enneads: ‘Christian resurrection is just anastasis eis allon hypnon’ [resurrection to another sleep] [GF]. [This reference is not in the Studia Patristica version of this article [Eds.].] See F. Büchsel, s.v. apolytrōsis, in Kittel, IV, 355 [GF]. De resurr. mortuor., 6 [PG 50.426-428] [GF]. Cf. the most interesting remarks of Étienne Gilson in his Gifford lectures: L’ Esprit de la philosophie médiévale, 2nd edition (Paris:  J Vrin, 1944), the whole chapter IX, ‘L’anthropologie chrétienne’ [Christian Anthropology], 175 ss. [The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy (Gifford Lectures 1931–2), trans. A. H. C. Downes (London: Sheed & Ward, 1936)]. Gilson seems to have underestimated the Aristotelian elements in the early patristics, but he gives an excellent mise au point of the whole problem [GF]. De anima, 413a [GF]. Meteor., IV, 12, 389b: nekros anthrōpos omōnumos; cf. De part. anim. 64la [GF].

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many followers of the Stagirite,30 including the famous Alexander of Aphrodisias [late 2nd c.-early 3rd c.]. Aristotle himself has hardly escaped these inherent dangers of his conception. Of course, man was for him an ‘intelligent being’, and the faculty of thinking was his distinctive mark. But the doctrine of nous31 does not fit very well into the general frame of the Aristotelian psychology, and probably is a survival of his early Platonism. It was possible to adapt the Aristotelian conception for Christian purposes, and this was just what was done by the Fathers, but Aristotle himself obviously ‘was not a Moslem mystic, nor a Christian theologian’.32 The real failure of Aristotle was not in his ‘naturalism’, but in that he could not admit any permanence of the individual. But this was rather a common failure of Greek philosophy. Beyond time Greek thought visualized only the ‘typical’, and nothing truly personal. Hegel suggested, in his Aesthetics, that sculpture gives the true key to the whole of the Greek mentality.33 Recently, a Russian scholar, Aleksei Fedorovich Losev, pointed out that the whole of Greek philosophy was just ‘a sculptural symbolism’. He was thinking especially of Platonism, but his suggestion has a wider relevance: Against a dark background, as a result of an interplay of light and shadow, there stands out a blind, colourless, cold, marble and divinely beautiful, proud and majestic body, a statue. And the world is such a statue, and gods are statues; the city-state also, and the heroes, and the myths, and ideas, all conceal underneath them this original sculptural intuition  .  .  .  There is no personality, no eyes, no spiritual individuality. There is a ‘something,’ but not a ‘someone,’ an individualized ‘it,’ but no living person with his proper name . . . There is no one at all. There are bodies, and there are ideas. The spiritual character of the ideas is killed by the body, but the warmth of the body is restrained by the abstract idea. There are here beautiful, but cold and blissfully indifferent statues.34

And yet Aristotle did feel and understand the individual more than anyone else in his tradition. He provided Christian philosophers with all the elements out of which an adequate conception of personality could be built up. His strength was just in his understanding of the empirical wholeness of human existence.

30 31

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Aristotle was born in Stagira, a town in central Macedonia [Eds.]. The words ‘of nous’ are in not in the Studia Patristica version of this article, but in the later Greek Orthodox Theological Review version [Eds.]. R. D. Hicks, in the Introduction to his edition of De anima (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), lvi. Cf. Anton C. Pegis, Saint Thomas and the Greeks, The Aquinas Lecture, 1939, 3rd printing (Milwaukee, MN: Marquette University Press, 1951), 17ff. Already Erwin Rohde (Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen, 3 Aufl. [Psyche: The Greek Cult of the Soul and Belief in Immortality, 3rd ed.] (Tübingen:  J. C. B. Mohr, 1903), Bd. II, s. 305) suggested that the whole doctrine of Nous was simply a survival of Aristotle’s early Platonism. This idea was recently upheld by Werner Jaeger, Aristotle, Fundamentals of the History of His Development, translation by Richard Robinson, 2nd edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 332 f. [GF]. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen ueber die Aesthetik, Saemtliche Werke, Bd. X, 2, s. 377 [Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, 2 vols., trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988–1991)]; cf. the whole section on sculpture, which was for Hegel a peculiarly ‘classical art’, s. 353 f. [GF]. Aleksei Losev, Ocherki antichnogo simbolizma i mifologii [Essays in Ancient Symbolism and Mythology], I, 670, 632, 633 [GF].

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Aristotle’s conception was radically transformed in this Christian adaptation, for new perspectives were opened, and all the terms were given a new significance. And yet one cannot fail to acknowledge the Aristotelian origin of the main anthropological ideas in early Christian theology. Such a christening of Aristotelianism we find already in Origen, to a certain extent in St Methodius of Olympus as well, and later in St Gregory of Nyssa, who in his thrilling De Anima et resurrectione attempted a daring synthesis of Origen and Methodius. The break between the ‘intellect’, impersonal and ‘eternal’, and the soul, individual but mortal, was overcome and healed in the new self-consciousness of a spiritual personality. The idea of personality itself was probably the greatest Christian contribution to philosophy. And then the tragedy of death could be visualized in its true dimension. For Plato and Platonists, death was just a welcome release out of bodily bondage, ‘a flight to the fatherland’.35 For Aristotle and his followers, it was a natural end of earthly existence, a sad but inevitable end, ‘and nothing is thought to be any longer either good or bad for the dead’.36 For Christians it was a catastrophe, a frustration of human existence, a reduction to a sub-human state, abnormal and rooted in the sinful condition of the mankind, out of which one is now liberated by the victory of Christ. The task of Christian theologians was now to relate the hope of resurrection to the new conception of man. It is interesting to observe that the problem was clearly seen and stated in the first theological essay on the resurrection which we possess. In his brief treatise De resurrectione mortuorum, Athenagoras of Athens begins with the plain statement that ‘God gave independent being and life neither to the nature of the soul itself, nor to the nature of the body separately, but rather to men, composed of soul and body.’ There would no longer be a man, if the completeness of this structure were broken, for then the identity of the individual would be broken also. ‘And if there is no resurrection, human nature is no longer human.’37 Aristotle concluded from the mortality of the body to the mortality of the soul, which was but the vital power of the body. Both go down together. Athenagoras, on the contrary, infers the resurrection of the body from the immortality of the reasonable soul. Both are kept together.38 Thus, a safe foundation was laid for further elaboration. The purpose of this brief paper is not to give a complete summary of the eschatological thought and teaching of the Fathers. It is rather an attempt to emphasize the main themes and the main problems with which the Fathers had to wrestle. Again, it is also an attempt to show how deeply and closely all eschatological topics are related to the core of the Christian message and faith, to the redemption of man by the Incarnate and Risen Lord. Only in this wider perspective, in the total context of Christian doctrine, 35

36 37 38

Allusion to a famous passage in the Enneads (I, 6, 8) where Plotinus quotes the Iliad 2, 140, and applies it to the soul [Eds.]. Ethic. nicom., III, 6, 1115a [GF]. De resurr. mort., 13.1, 15.2, 6 [PG 6.1000B, 1004-1005] [GF]. On the Aristotelian background of Athenagoras’s conception, see Max Pohlenz, in Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaftliche Theologie, Bd. 47 (1904): s. 241ff.; cf. Eduard Schwartz, Index graecus to his edition of Athenagoras, in Texte und Untersuchungen, IV, 2 (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs: 1891), s.v. eidos, s. 105. Cf. Étienne Gilson, L’ Esprit de la philosophie médiévale [Paris:  J Vrin,  1944], 197:  ‘Athenagoras’s expressions, well weighed, show how deeply the Good News influenced philosophy. Created by God as a distinct individuality, conserved in being by an act of continuous creation, the man is

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one can fully and faithfully understand even the variations of the Patristic thought. The eschatological hope is rooted in the faith, and cannot be understood except in this context. The Fathers never attempted a systematic exposition of eschatology, in a narrow and technical sense. But they were fully aware of that inner logic which had to lead from the belief in Christ the Redeemer to the hope for the age to come: the end of the world, the final consummation, the judgement, the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting.

henceforth the protagonist of a drama, which is none other than that of his own destiny. As it does not depend on us to exist, neither does it depend on us to cease to exist. The divine decree has condemned us to be; made by creation, re-made by redemption – and at what a price! – we have now but one choice, between a misery and a beatitude, both equally eternal. Nothing could be more resistant than an individuality of this kind, foreseen, willed, elected by God, indestructible as the divine decree itself that gave it birth: but nothing also could be more alien either to the philosophy of Plato, or to that of Aristotle. Here too, as soon as it aspired to a full rational justification of its hope, Christian thought found itself constrained to originality’ [GF]. [Étienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy (Gifford Lectures 1931–2) (New York: Scribner, 1940), 193. The quotation is in French in Florovsky’s article [Eds.].]

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Georges Florovsky wrote this foreword for the first English edition of Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov’s book on St Silouan the Athonite, The Undistorted Image: Starets Silouan (London: Faith Press, 1958; also published as Saint Silouan the Athonite [Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1999]). St Silouan (1866–1938), a simple Russian peasant, came to Mount Athos in 1892. Sophrony was attracted by Starets Silouan’s profound yet humble spirituality and was his disciple from 1930 onwards. In 1948 Sophrony published a book in Russian containing Silouan’s own writings and Sophrony’s study of Silouan’s life and teachings. St Silouan is one of the most beloved modern Orthodox saints. Florovsky visited the Russian monastery of St Panteleimon (Rossikon or Novyi Russik) on Mount Athos in December 1936, at which time he met Silouan (Blane #331).

Father Silouan was a humble man. But his teaching was daring. It was not a daring of the inquisitive mind, engaged in speculative scrutiny and argument. It was a daring of spiritual assurance. For, in the words of the Father himself, ‘The perfect never say anything of themselves, they only say what the Spirit gives them to say.’ Father Silouan, surely, must be counted among the perfect. Now, this ‘perfection’ is the fruit of humility. It can be acquired  – and, what is no less important, kept and preserved – only by a constant and continuous effort of self-humbling and self-denial. This process of self-abnegation, however, is not just a negative endeavour. It is not just a denial, a subtraction or a reduction of the self. On the contrary, it is a recovery of the true self. The process is initiated by faith and love. One denies one’s own self for Christ’s sake because of the great love for Him. The process is guided by a positive purpose. The objective is always constructive. It is ‘the acquiring of the Holy Spirit’, as St Seraphim of Sarov used to say.1 There is here, indeed, a paradoxical tension. The purpose of the spiritual quest is high and ambitious: consortium divinae naturae, ‘a participation in the divine nature’ (2 Pet 1:4). In whatever manner this startling phrase of the Scripture may be interpreted, it points out, clearly and distinctly, the ultimate goal of all Christian existence:  ‘life 1

From St Seraphim of Sarov’s conversation with Nicholas Motovilov on The Aim of Christian Life: The Conversation of St Seraphim of Sarov with N. A. Motovilov (Cambridge: Saints Alive Press, 2010). See Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 125, 60, in this book [Eds.].

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everlasting’, life ‘in Christ’, ‘fellowship of the Holy Spirit’. The Greek Fathers used even the daring expression theosis, ‘divinization’. Yet, the method, i.e., precisely ‘the way’, by which this goal can be attained, is the method of radical self-renunciation. Grace is given only to the humble and the meek [cf. Mt 11:29]. Moreover, humility itself is never a human achievement. It is always the gift of God, granted freely, gratia gratis data. The whole structure of spiritual life is indeed paradoxical. The riches of the Kingdom are given only to the poor. And with the riches authority is also given. The humble do not say anything of their own. Yet, they speak with authority, whenever they are moved to speak at all. They do not claim any authority for themselves. But they claim authority for that which has been disclosed, through their mediation, from above. Otherwise they would keep silence. ‘But you have an anointing from the Holy One and you know all things’ (1 Jn 2:20). The sayings of Father Silouan are simple. There is nothing spectacular in them, except indeed their simplicity itself. He had no special ‘revelations’ to disclose. He spoke usually about common things. Yet even about the common things he spoke in a very uncommon manner. He spoke out of his intimate experience. Love is both the starting point and the core of Christian endeavour. But the ‘novelty’ of the Christian Love is so often overlooked and disregarded. According to Christ Himself, the only true Love is ‘love for enemies’ [Mt 5:44]. It is in no case just an advice, and not just a free option. It is rather the first criterion, and the supererogatory distinctive mark, of genuine Love. St Paul was also quite emphatic at this point. God loved us while we were His enemies [cf. Rom 5:8–10]. The Cross itself is the perennial symbol and sign of that Love. Now, Christians must share in that redemptive Love of their Lord. Otherwise they cannot ‘abide in His Love’ [Jn 15:10]. Father Silouan not only spoke of Love. He practised it. In a humble, and yet daring, manner he devoted his life to the prayer for enemies, for the perishing and alienated world. This prayer is a dangerous and ambiguous endeavour, unless it is offered in utter humility. One can easily become conscious of his love, and then it is corroded and infected by vanity and pride. One cannot love purely, except with the love of Christ Himself, infused and operating in the humble heart. One cannot be a ‘saint’, except one knows that he is himself but a ‘miserable sinner’,2 in the utter need of help and forgiveness. And yet the Grace of God washes away all stain and heals all infirmity. The glory of the Saints is manifested in their humility, just as the glory of the Only Begotten has been manifested in the utter humiliation of His earthly life. Love itself has been crucified in the world. In his spiritual ascent Father Silouan went through the saddening experience of the ‘dark night’, of utter loneliness and abandonment.3 And yet there was nothing grim or morbid in him. He was always calm and quiet, always radiant with joy. It was a 2

3

Archimandrite Sophrony, St Silouan the Athonite (New York:  St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1999), 287 [Eds.]. Archimandrite Sophrony discusses Silouan’s alternating periods of divine grace and feeling of abandonment in ‘The Staretz’ Life and Teaching’ in St Silouan the Athonite. See, e.g. pages 37–50. Florovsky was a mentor of Fr Sophrony:  see Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), Perepiska s protoiereem Georgiem Florovskim [Correspondence with Archpriest Georges Florovsky], ed. Hieromonk Nikolai Sakharov (Essex, UK/Sergiev Posad: St John the Baptist Monastery/Holy Trinity Lavra, 2008) [Eds.].

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joy in Christ, very different indeed from any worldly joy. As we learn from the story of his life, this joy has been acquired by a long and exacting contest, by an unceasing ‘invisible warfare’.4 Left alone, man is left to despair and desolation. Salvation is only in the Lord. The soul must cling to Him. Man is never left alone, except he chooses himself to leave God. Father Silouan knew by experience the dread and dangers of the outer darkness. But he also learned by experience the immensity of the Divine Love. It shines even over the abyss of trials, torments and tribulation. Precisely because God is Love [1 Jn 4:8]. Father Silouan stands in a long and venerable tradition. Nor was he alone even in his own time. There was in every generation a cloud of witnesses [Heb 12:1] to the Mysteries of the Kingdom. Our predicament is in that we do not know them, nor do we care for them and for their witness. We are overtaken by the worldly cares. The story of Father Silouan is a timely reminder for our generation of that only ‘good thing’, which is never taken away [Lk 10:42]. It is also an invitation to the pilgrimage of faith and hope.

4

Probably an allusion to the book by St Nikodemus the Hagiorite (1749–1809), Invisible Warfare or Unseen Warfare (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1978), inspired by Invisible Warfare (or Spiritual Warfare) of Dom Lorenzo Scupoli (c. 1530–1610) and the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556) [Eds.].

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Scripture and Tradition

This article was published in Dialog, 2, no. 4 (1963): 288–293 (Blane #163).

I The Large Catechism of the Russian Orthodox Church opens with chapters on ‘Divine Revelation’ and on ‘Holy Tradition and Holy Scripture’.1 The question is asked:  ‘In what manner is divine revelation propagated among men and preserved in the true Church?’ The answer is: ‘In a twofold manner, first by tradition and then by Scripture.’ Now, tradition is described in the following sentence, ‘The true believers transmit to each other – and one generation to the other – by word and example, the teaching of faith, the law of God, sacraments and holy rites.’ The keeper of tradition is the Church. ‘All true believers, united by the sacred tradition of faith, jointly and in succession, constitute the Church,’ which is the ‘pillar and foundation of truth’. Tradition as a method of preserving divine revelation has the priority in time. There was no Scripture before Moses. Christ himself instructed his disciples orally by word and example, and so did the Apostles in the beginning. Scripture was given in order to fix revelation in precise terms for future times. Then follows the description of the biblical canon. The Old Testament books are numbered according to the Hebrew canon, with a reference to Cyril of Jerusalem and Athanasius. The holy tradition is complementary to Holy Writ in the sense that it directs the right understanding of Scripture, the right administration of the sacraments and the preservation of sacred rites in the purity of their original institution. Tradition must be kept in so far as it is in conformity with the divine revelation and the Holy Scripture. In the later sections of the Catechism where it speaks of the Church, the infallibility of the Church is professed and acknowledged, as she is given and promised the

1

The Longer Catechism of the Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church, also known as the Catechism of St Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, was first published in 1830, and translated into English (1845), Greek (1848) and German (1850). Modelled on Roman Catholic and Protestant Catechisms, it contains 611 question-and-answer articles and was long considered the authoritative doctrinal standard of the Orthodox Church. On St Philaret (Drozdov) of Moscow (1782–1867), see Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 13, 36, in this book [Eds.].

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guidance and assistance of the Holy Spirit. It should be added that in the whole course of the Catechism abundant references to Scripture are given, and proof-texts are quoted. References to tradition are comparatively rare. The most important of them are precisely in the chapter on tradition itself: a quotation from St Irenaeus and a lengthy passage from St Basil’s On the Holy Spirit, chapter 27. The Large Catechism is not a ‘symbolic book’2 in the technical sense, as the term is used in the West. Yet, it is an authoritative exposition of Orthodox faith, approved by the Holy Synod of the Russian Church and intended for the general instruction of believers. It was drafted by the greatest Russian theologian of the last century, Philaret, metropolitan of Moscow. It is safe, therefore, to take the statements of the Catechism as the starting point of presentation of the Orthodox conception of Scripture and tradition, in their essence and in their mutual relationship. The term ‘tradition’ is used in the Catechism only in order to clarify the manner of propagating and preserving divine revelation. It is the paradosis [tradition], the handing down of what God chose to disclose and communicate to men. It is not a particular ‘source’ of truth or doctrine. Revelation is adequately recorded in Scripture. But Scripture is, as it were, ‘stored’ or ‘deposited’ in the Church [1 Tim 6:20; 2 Tim 1:12,  14]. On the other hand, tradition is equated with the mind and continuous memory of the Church. And in this sense it is the guiding principle and criterion of scriptural interpretation. Accordingly, tradition does not and cannot add anything to Scripture, but only elicits what is contained in Holy Writ and puts it in the right perspective. The Scriptures ‘belong’ to the Church, are committed to her and not to individual believers. A faithful guide is required for true exegesis. The Church catholic is that guide. Or in other words, Scripture is given and preserved in tradition. Tradition and Scripture are inseparable.

II This approach to the problem of Scripture and tradition is itself traditional. In fact, it was the approach of the ancient Church. St Irenaeus and St Basil were appropriately quoted in the Russian Catechism. The problem of correct exegesis was a burning issue in the ancient Church during the struggle and contest with heresies. All parties in the dispute used to appeal to Scripture. Moreover, at that time exegesis was the main, and even the only, theological method, and the authority of Scripture was sovereign and supreme. The orthodox leaders were bound to raise the hermeneutical question: What was the principle of interpretation? Now, in the second century the term ‘Scripture’ still denoted primarily the Old Testament. It was in this same century that the authority of the Old Testament was sharply and radically challenged, and actually rejected, by Marcion. The unity of the Bible had to be proved and vindicated. What was the basis and the warrant of a Christian and christological understanding of ‘prophecy’, that is, of the Old Testament? It was in this historic situation that the authority of tradition was first invoked. 2

On the ‘symbolic books’, see Ch. 19, ‘The Body of the Living Christ’, n. 2, 273. in this book [Eds.].

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Scripture belonged to the Church, and it was only in the Church, within the community of right faith, that Scripture could be adequately understood and correctly interpreted. Heretics, namely, those outside of the Church, had no key to the mind of the Scripture. It was not enough simply to quote scriptural words and texts (the ‘letter’). Rather, the true meaning of Scripture, taken as an integrated whole, had to be grasped and elicited. In the admirable phrase of St Hilary of Poitiers, scripturae enim non in legendo sunt, sed in intelligendo [For Scripture is not in the reading, but in the understanding] [Ad Constantium Aug., II, 9. PL 10.570]. The phrase was also repeated by St Jerome [Dial. c. Lucifer., 28. PL 23.190-191]. One had to grasp in advance, as it were, the true pattern of scriptural revelation, the great and comprehensive design of God’s redemptive providence (the oikonomia [economy]), and this could be done only by an insight of faith. It was by faith that the witness to Christ could be discerned in the Old Testament, it was by faith that the unity of the tetramorphic gospel could be properly ascertained. Now, this faith was not an arbitrary and subjective insight of individuals; it was the faith of the Church, rooted in the apostolic message or kerygma and authenticated by it. Those outside of the Church, that is, outside of her living and apostolic tradition, failed to have precisely this basic and overarching message, the very heart of the gospel. With them Scripture was an array of disconnected passages and stories or of proof-texts which they endeavoured to arrange and re-arrange according to their own pattern, derived from alien sources. They had ‘another faith’.

III This was the main method and the main argument of Tertullian in his passionate treatise, De praescriptione. He could not discuss Scriptures with heretics, with those outside the communion of apostolic faith. For they had no right to use the Scriptures; the Scriptures did not belong to them. They were the possession of the Church. Tertullian emphatically insisted on the priority of the ‘rule of faith’.3 It was the only key to the Scriptures, the indispensable prerequisite of authentic biblical interpretation. And this rule was apostolic; it was rooted in and derived from the original apostolic preaching. The New Testament itself had to be taken in the comprehensive context of the total apostolic preaching, which was still vividly remembered in the Church. The basic intention of this appeal to the apostolic ‘rule of faith’ in the early Church is obvious. When Christians spoke of the ‘rule of faith’ as apostolic, they did not mean that the Apostles had formulated it. What they meant was that the profession of belief which every catechumen recited before his baptism did embody in summary form the 3

Tertullian, De praescriptione, 12 (PL 2.26A): ‘Let our “seeking,” therefore be in that which is our own, and from those who are our own: and concerning that which is our own – that, and only that, which can become an object of inquiry without impairing the rule of faith.’ The ‘rule of faith’ is also closely associated with Irenaeus, e.g. his proto-creed contained in Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, 1-7 and Adv. haeres. 1, 9, 4 and 3, 4, 2 (PG 7.545-546 and 855-856). Irenaeus and other Fathers also insist on the importance of being united with apostolic teachings through their direct successors, the catholic bishops. In a broader sense the rule of faith is the ultimate authority or standard in religious belief [Eds.].

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faith which the Apostles had taught and had committed to their disciples after them. This profession of faith was the same everywhere, although the actual phrasing could vary from place to place. It was always intimately related to the baptismal formula itself (cf. C. H. Turner).4 Apart from this ‘rule’ the Scriptures could only be misinterpreted, contended Tertullian and St Irenaeus a bit earlier. The apostolic tradition of faith was the indispensable guide in the understanding of Scripture and the ultimate warrant of right interpretation. The Church was not an external authority which could be the judge over Scripture, but was rather the keeper and guardian of that divine truth which has been stored and deposited in Holy Writ. The ‘rule of faith’, of which the early Church fathers spoke, was intimately related to the sacrament of Christian initiation. It was the ‘rule’ to which believers are committed (and into which they were previously initiated) by their baptismal profession. On the other hand, this ‘rule’ was nothing other than the ‘truth’ which the Apostles had deposited in the Church and entrusted to her, to be continuously handed down by the succession of accredited pastors, under the abiding guidance of the Holy Spirit. The image of the Church as a ‘treasury of truth’ comes from St Irenaeus [cf. Adv. haeres., 3, 4, 1 and 4, 26, 1 (PG 7.855 and 1052-1053)]. The treasure is indeed the Scripture, but also the living faith by which the mystery of the Scripture is assessed. Tradition in the early Church was, first of all, a hermeneutical principle and method. Scripture could be rightly and fully comprehended only in the light and in the context of the living apostolic tradition, which was an integral factor of Christian existence. It was so not because tradition could add anything to what has been manifested in the Scripture, but because it provided that living context, the comprehensive perspective, in which alone the true intention and the total design of the Holy Writ, and especially of the divine revelation itself, could be adequately grasped and acknowledged. The Christian truth was, in the phrase of St Irenaeus, a ‘well-grounded system’, a corpus veritatis, or a ‘harmonious melody’ [cf. Adv. haeres., 2, 27, 1 (PG 7.802)]. And it was precisely this harmony that could be apprehended by faith alone. The apostolic tradition, as it was maintained and understood in the early Church, was not a fixed core or complex of binding propositions, but rather an insight into the meaning and power of the revelatory events, of the revelation of the ‘God who acts’ and has acted.

IV The situation did not change in the fourth century. The dispute with the Arians was centred again in the exegetical field, at least in its early phase. The Arians and their supporters had produced an impressive array of scriptural texts in defence of their doctrinal position. They wanted to restrict theological discussion to the biblical ground alone. Their claim had to be met precisely on this ground. Their exegetical method was much the same as that of the earlier dissenters. They were operating with 4

Cuthbert Hamilton Turner (1860–1930): English ecclesiastical historian and biblical scholar, known primarily for the Ecclesiae Occidentalis Monumenta Iuris Antiquissima [Ancient Legal Monuments of the Western Church], a collection of Latin translations of the canons, creeds and letters of councils and synods held in the fourth century (1899–1939) [Eds.].

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selected proof-texts, without much concern for the total context of revelation. It was imperative for the Orthodox to appeal to the mind of the Church, to that ‘faith’ which had been once delivered and then faithfully kept [Jude 1:3]. This was the chief concern and the usual method of the great Athanasius. In his arguments he persistently invoked the ‘rule of faith’ [Orations against the Arians, III, 26.28-29 and 29.58 (PG 26.381-388 and 445A)], much in the same manner as it had been done by the Fathers of the second century. Only the ‘rule of faith’ allows the theologian to grasp the true intention of Holy Scripture, the skopos [aim, purpose, goal], the genuine design and intent of the revelation. The ‘scope’ of the faith or the Scriptures was precisely their credal core, which was condensed in the ‘rule of faith’, as this had been handed down and transmitted ‘from Fathers to Fathers’. In contrast, the Arians had ‘no fathers’ to support their doctrinal claims. Their blasphemy was a sheer innovation totally alien to apostolic tradition and to the overarching message of the Bible. St Athanasius regarded this traditional ‘rule of faith’ as the norm and ultimate principle of interpretation, opposing ‘the ecclesiastical sense’ to ‘the private opinions’ of the heretics. Indeed, for him Scripture was an adequate and sufficient source of doctrine, sacred and inspired. Only it had to be properly interpreted in the context of the living credal tradition, under the guidance and control of the ‘rule of faith’. Moreover, this ‘rule’ was in no sense an extraneous authority which could be imposed on the Holy Writ. It was, in fact, the same apostolic preaching which had been deposited in writing in the books of the New Testament. But it was, as it were, this preaching in epitome. Sometimes Athanasius described the Scripture itself as an apostolic paradosis [tradition]. In the whole discussion with the Arians there is no single reference to any ‘traditions’ in the plural. The only appeal is to tradition. ‘Let us look at that very tradition, teaching and faith of the catholic Church from the very beginning, which the Lord handed down, the apostles preached and the Fathers preserved. Upon this the Church is established’ (St Athanasius, Ad Serap., I, 28 [PG 26.593D-596A]). Thus, he teaches that ‘tradition’ is even more than apostolic; it is dominical, coming from the Lord himself. The first reference to ‘unwritten traditions’ is to be found in the famous treatise of St Basil, On the Holy Spirit; and, at first glance, it may seem as if St Basil admitted a double authority and double standard  – unwritten traditions alongside of the Scriptures [Ch. 27, 65-68, PG 32.185-196]. The fact is, however, that he is far from doing so. His terminology is peculiar. His main distinction is between kerygmata [teachings proclaimed] and dogmata [dogmas]. In his phraseology, kerygmata are precisely what in the later terminology was denoted as doctrine, that is, formal and authoritative teaching and ruling in matters of faith or the public teaching. On the other hand, dogmata are the total complex of ‘unwritten habits’  – in fact, the total structure of liturgical and sacramental life. These ‘habits’ were handed down, says St Basil, en mystēriōi. It would be a flagrant mistranslation if we took these words to mean ‘in secret’. The only accurate rendering is: ‘by way of mysteries’ [On the Holy Spirit, 27, 66 (PG 32.188A)]. This means under the form of rites and liturgical usages. Indeed, all the examples which St Basil cites in this connection are ritual and symbolic. These rites and symbols are means of communication. In a sense they are extra-scriptural. But

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their purpose is to impart to the candidates for baptism the ‘rule of faith’ and prepare them for their baptismal profession of faith. St Basil’s appeal to these ‘unwritten habits’ was no more than an appeal to the faith of the Church, to her sensus catholicus. He had to break the deadlock created by the obstinate and narrow-minded pseudo-biblicism of his Arian or Eunomian opponents. And he pleaded that, apart from this ‘unwritten’ rule of faith, expressed in sacramental rites and habits, it was impossible to grasp the true intention of the Scripture.

V To conclude this brief excursus on the ancient tradition we should mention St Vincent of Lerins and his famous Commonitorium. Sometimes it is asserted that Vincent admitted the double authority of Scripture and tradition. Actually he held the opposite view. Indeed, true faith could be recognized, according to Vincent, in a double manner, duplici modo, that is, by the authority of the divine law (i.e. Scripture) and by ecclesiastical tradition. This does not imply, however, that there are two sources of Christian doctrine. The ‘rule’ of Scripture was for St Vincent ‘perfect and self-sufficient’. Why then was it imperative to invoke also the ‘authority of ecclesiastical understanding’ (ecclesiasticae intelligentiae auctoritas)? The reason is obvious: Scripture was variously interpreted and twisted by individual writers for their subjective purposes. And to this confusing variety of discordant interpretations and private opinions, St Vincent opposes the mind of the Church catholic (ut propheticae et apostolicae interpretationis linea secundum ecclesiastici et catholici sensus normam dirigatur [That the line of prophetic and apostolic interpretation be directed in accordance with the sense upheld by the catholic Church]). Thus tradition for St Vincent is not an independent instance nor a complementary source of doctrine. It is no more than Scripture being interpreted according to the catholic mind of the Church, which is the guardian of the apostolic ‘rule of faith’. St Vincent repeats and summarizes the continuous attitude of the ancient Church on this matter. Scripture is an adequate source of doctrine:  ad omnia satis superque sufficiat [It suffices adequately and more than adequately for all things] [Commonitorium, 2 (PL 50.639-640)]. Tradition is the authentic guide in interpretation, providing the context and perspective in which Scripture discloses its genuine message. The Orthodox Church is faithfully committed to this ancient and traditional view on the sources of Christian doctrine. Scripture is an adequate source. But only in so far as it is read and interpreted in the Church, which is the guardian both of the Holy Writ and of the total apostolic paradosis [tradition] of faith, order and life. Tradition alone allows the Church to go beyond the ‘letter’ [1 Cor 3:6] to the very Word of Life [1 Jn 1:1].

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The Worshipping Church

This essay, one of the last substantial texts of Georges Florovsky, was first published in 1969 as the introduction to The Festal Menaion (translated by Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware [London:  Faber and Faber], 21–37). The Festal Menaion contains the liturgical texts for the major fixed feasts of the Orthodox Church (Blane #183).

Pray without ceasing 1 Thess 5:17

I. Community and retreat There is an essential duality in Christian existence. Christianity stands by personal faith and commitment, and yet Christian existence is intrinsically corporate: to be Christian means to be in the community, in the Church and of the Church. However, personality1 should never be simply submerged in the collective. The Church consists of responsible persons. The simile of the Body should never be misinterpreted and pressed too far. The Church is composed of unique and irreplaceable personalities which can never be regarded merely as elements or cells of the whole, because each individual is in direct and immediate union with Christ and His Father – the personal is not to be dissolved in the corporate. Christian ‘togetherness’ should not degenerate into a kind of impersonalism. The first followers of Jesus, in the ‘days of His flesh’, were not isolated individuals engaged in their private quest for truth. They were Israelites – and our Lord Himself used to declare that He was ‘not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (Mt 15:24); and the Twelve were ordered by Him to go precisely to these lost sheep, and to avoid the Gentiles and the Samaritans (Mt 10:5, 6). The first followers of Jesus were regular members of an established and instituted Community – ‘the House of Israel’, ‘the Chosen People’ of God  – and they were waiting ‘for the consolation of Israel’, 1

Here, as in several other writings, Georges Florovsky uses the word ‘personality’, not in the sense understood in modern psychology, but rather in the philosophical or theological sense of ‘person’ or ‘personhood’ [Eds.].

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according to the Prophecy and Promise. In a sense, a ‘Church’ already existed when Jesus began His ministry. It was Israel, the People of the Covenant. His preaching was first addressed to the members of this community. He never addressed individuals as individuals. The existing Covenant was the constant background of His preaching. The Sermon on the Mount was not addressed to an occasional crowd of accidental listeners, but rather to an ‘inner circle’ of those who were already following Jesus in the anticipation – or with the conviction – that He was the ‘One who should come’, that is, the Messiah. ‘The Little Flock’, that community which Jesus had gathered around Himself, was, in fact, the faithful ‘Remnant’ of Israel, a reconstituted ‘People of God’. It was reconstituted by the Call of God, by the announcement of the Kingdom, by the ‘Good News’ of salvation. And yet to this call each person has to respond individually, by an act of personal faith. This personal response in faith, however, incorporates the believer into the community. Or rather it is an existential pre-requisite of incorporation which is effected and completed in Baptism, by the grace of God. Yet one has first to believe and to commit oneself with the oath of allegiance, and then to be baptized. The ‘faith of the Church’ must be always personally appropriated, and continually maintained by spiritual effort. The two aspects of Christian existence – personal and corporate – are linked together inseparably. One is saved only in the community, and yet salvation is mediated always through personal faith and obedience. This basic duality of Christian existence is conspicuously reflected in the realm of worship. Christian worship is at once personal and corporate, although these two aspects may be at times in tension. There are in the Gospel two significant passages concerning prayer, and they may seem to guide the worshipper in opposite directions. In the Sermon on the Mount the multitude were exhorted to pray ‘in secret’, in seclusion or in solitude. Of course, this injunction was directed primarily against ‘the hypocrites’, against those who displayed a pretentious ostentation in worship – ‘in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men’ [Mt 6:5]; and a similar warning was extended also to almsgiving. Yet there is a deeper dimension to this invitation to ‘secrecy’, or privacy, in prayer. Indeed, prayer is intrinsically a personal act, or rather a personal action. It is always a person who prays. It is an intimate encounter of persons with the Living God, and, obviously, there should be no witnesses at this encounter: ‘enter thy closet . . . shut thy door . . .’ One has to stand before God, alone, face to face: ‘Pray to Thy Father which is in secret . . .’ [Mt 6:6]. One has to retire for worship, or even to be secluded. And yet, paradoxically, even in this retirement or seclusion, in the solitude of one’s closet, one can pray only as a member of the redeemed community, be it the Israel of old or the Church of Christ. Indeed, no true worshipper can ever forget that his Father is also the common Father of all believers and of the whole human race. As Christians we are instructed to call in worship on Our Father, who is also ‘the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ [2 Cor 1:3]. No true Christian can pray only for himself, even in his closet. Comprehensiveness in prayer is the mark of spiritual health and maturity. In its compass and content Christian prayer can never be strictly ‘private’, although it must be always personal. Moreover, Christians should be fully aware of the ultimate ground of their privilege to pray, which is precisely their membership in the community, in the Church of Christ.

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On another occasion our Lord was speaking to the disciples of the mystery of joined prayer. Believers – ‘two or three’ of them – may ‘agree’ to pray for certain things in common. And then the ultimate mystery of worship is manifested: ‘For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them’ [Mt 18:20]. This ‘agreement’ is not just an occasional human assent. The ‘gathering’ in the name of Christ is itself a gift of the Spirit. And it presupposes a kind of spiritual preparation or training. The praying heart must be enlarged to the measure of Christ’s love for man. Only in the spirit of Christ’s love can individuals truly come together, so that they meet as ‘brethren’, that is, as brethren in Christ. Prayer ‘in secret’ and prayer ‘in common’ actually belong to each other inseparably as aspects of the same devotional commitment and action. There is no choice: they must be practised together. Indeed, it is the rule of the Church that believers should prepare themselves for corporate worship by their personal devotions ‘at home’, ‘in the closet’. It is spiritually dangerous to ignore this regulation. But it is no less dangerous to be so much absorbed in ‘home devotions’ that the urge to join with brethren in corporate worship expires or is reduced:  for the climax of Christian worship  – and also its centre – is the Holy Communion in which Christ Himself appears in the midst of those gathered in His name. In any case, as St Cyprian used to explain to his flock, Christian prayer is essentially the ‘prayer of the people’, since ‘we – the whole people – are one.’2 Accordingly, the goal and measure of Christian worship is unanimity – ‘with one heart and one mouth’ [Rom 15:6]. And we Christians must be ever grateful for the grace given to us – ‘with one accord to make our common supplications’3 unto our Father in Heaven.

II. Remembrance and thanksgiving Christian worship is essentially an ‘encounter’. Moreover, it is also a ‘dialogue’. There are always two partners in worship. The worshipper is always expecting an answer. ‘Give ear, O Lord, unto my prayer; and attend to the voice of my supplication. In the day of my trouble I will call upon Thee; for Thou wilt hear me’ (Ps 85:6–7). As the prophet put it, ‘I am a God at hand, and not a God far off ’ (Jer 23:23, quoted by St Cyprian in his treatise on the Lord’s Prayer [Ch. 4, PL 4.521-522]). The initiative is divine. We call on God because He has called us first. Thus Christian worship is a response to the call or ‘challenge’ of God. We pray because the initiative has been taken by God, and we are made aware of that divine initiative through the testimony of Scripture. We call on God whom we are given to know – because He has revealed Himself through the ages, in special events, through special messengers, and finally in His Only-Begotten Son, our Beloved Lord Christ Jesus. He first called upon the people He had created, and He called upon them because He created man for His own purpose, shaping him in His own image, imprinting His similitude on every man. He has disclosed Himself 2

3

Cyprian of Carthage, On the Lord’s Prayer (VIII): ‘Our prayer is public and common; and when we pray, we pray not for one, but for the whole people, because we the whole people are one’ (ANF VIII, 402) [De dominica oratione, PL 4.524] [Eds.]. From a prayer of Saint Chrysostom, in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer of 1662 [Eds.].

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in that marvellous history which is recorded on the pages of the Holy Writ. But He has done much more than that. The Son of God came down to dwell among men for their salvation. The climax of God’s revelation is ‘the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’ [Mk 1:1]. It is the story of an Encounter, of a personal conversation with men of One who was divine and who for our sake, ‘for us men and for our salvation’, had become or ‘was made’ man.4 Always Christians pray to God ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord’. And this reference is crucial and decisive. One comes to the Father only through the Son, ‘who has declared Him’ (Jn 1:18). As Christians, we call on God whom we know  – from His mighty deeds of our salvation in Christ. Accordingly, there are always two major emphases in Christian worship: remembrance and thanksgiving – anamnēsis and eucharistia. They belong together inseparably. The starting point of Christian worship is commemoration or remembrance. The Christian Faith itself is primarily an obedient and grateful recognition of the mighty and saving deeds of God which culminated in the ‘coming down’ of the Son of God. God has acted, once for all. Man now has to acknowledge God’s gracious action and to testify to His love and glory. Christian worship is only possible in the context of God’s historic Revelation, in the perspective of ‘Sacred History’ which is precisely the ‘History of Salvation’. Accordingly, it is determined and characterized by certain ‘credal assumptions’ in which we assess and interpret, in the light of faith, God’s deeds and purposes. Already under the Old Dispensation the whole structure of Jewish worship was essentially ‘historic’. The memory of God’s mighty deeds in the past dominates the Psalter, that exemplary ‘Book of Prayers’ which has retained its central place also in the worship of the Christian Church, public and ‘private’. Certainly, this ‘memory’ has been reassessed and reinterpreted in the light of the New Dispensation. But the same sense of history has been emphatically retained. The Living God to whom prayers were addressed by the Jews under the Law has now disclosed His ultimate concern ‘in these last days’. The same Living God who chose Israel to be His servant and His people, has finally manifested His unfailing love for man in a more excellent way in Christ Jesus. The Old Covenant was finally superseded by the New, but this New Covenant ‘in Christ’ was, in fact, but the climax and consummation of the Old. This intimate connection between the two is strongly emphasized in the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, those great and triumphant scriptural hymns of the Church.5 The worship of the Church was built on old foundations. The Church took over the sacred memories of Ancient Israel and it still devoutly recalls the mighty deeds of God under the Old Dispensation. The reminiscences of the Old, understood as a prophetic anticipation, reappear in many Christian hymns and prayers. Moreover, the Church has retained the old liturgical scheme or pattern of ‘remembrance’ and ‘recital’. Lectio divina, the recitation of Scripture, is still an integral and organic part of Christian worship, including both the New and the Old Testaments. It is significant that especially on great occasions of liturgical commemoration, numerous readings from 4 5

From the Nicene-Constantinoplan Creed [Eds.]. In the Byzantine rite, the Magnificat (Lk 1:46–56) is sung at Matins and the Nunc dimittis (Lk 2:29– 32) at Vespers [Eds.].

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the Old Testament are prescribed – to emphasize the unity and continuity of ‘Sacred History’. On these great days the worship of the Church has most conspicuously an historical dimension. Christian faith and hope are rooted in Sacred History. Prophecy and Gospel belong inseparably together, as promise and consummation. ‘God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by the Son whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds’ (Heb 1:1–2). This historic character of Christian worship is clearly expressed in the structure of the liturgical year. From early times there was in the Church a yearly commemoration of the crucial Triduum6 – from Cross to Resurrection – as well as a weekly commemoration of the Resurrection, on each ‘Lord’s Day’. Gradually a comprehensive scheme of yearly commemorations was elaborated; actually every day has now its own ‘memory’. This Christian calendar has obviously a vital theological significance and many theological implications. Day by day the Church looks back to its past. The calendar testifies to the sanctification of time. The Church lives in the dimension of sacred memories, while at the same time looking equally to the future. No doubt, the consummation was much greater than the promise, and its mystery passed all expectations and all understanding. Nevertheless it was precisely a ‘consummation’ and also  – in a sense  – a ‘recapitulation’. Paradoxically, at one and the same time it abrogated the Old and confirmed its perennial significance. The very nature of Sacred History has been radically and profoundly changed, and yet it is still the same continuing history. Abraham is still ‘the father of all believers’, not only in the Old Israel but in the Christian Church. The saints of the Old Dispensation found their place in the Christian calendar. Since the coming of Christ, by virtue of the Incarnation, God is now guiding His People as it were ‘from the inside’, and no more ‘from the outside’, as happened sub umbraculo legis [under the shadow of the law]. The Christian remembrance is much more than just a memory or reminiscence. Indeed, Christians are bound to look back to the mighty events which are the foundation of their faith and hope:  Incarnation, Cross and Resurrection, Pentecost. But these individual events of the past are, at the same time, paradoxically present in the Church here and now. The Incarnation of the Word is at once an historic event of the past which can and should be ‘remembered’ in the ordinary way, and also an abiding presence of the Lord which can be directly perceived and recognized at all times and at any particular time by the eye of faith, in the Church. This changes radically the meaning and character of anamnēsis [remembrance] in Christian worship. There is much more than merely an enlargement or extension of common historical perspective. The accomplishment of the Promise was not just an extra event in the homogeneous sequence of happenings. It was an ‘event’ indeed, but it was, an event which never passes. Of course, it can be dated with a certain measure of chronological accuracy, and we are actually counting ‘the years of the Lord’, anni Domini – from Christ’s Nativity at Bethlehem, post Christum natum. 6

The Triduum refers to the three days of the Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection, liturgically from the evening of Holy Thursday until Easter morning (Pascha). It is a term now normally used only in reference to the Latin liturgical tradition [Eds.].

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Yet that which is ‘remembered’ is also actually present, and will be present ‘unto the ages of ages’ – till He comes again. For even before He comes He is already present in the Church. It is precisely His abiding presence which makes the Church what it is, that is, the Body of Christ. Now this mysterious presence of Christ – in the Church and within the world – has been inaugurated in history, by a sovereign intervention of God, by a decisive revelatory ‘earthquake’, to use the bold expression of St Gregory of Nazianzus [Orat. theol., V, 31, 25, PG 36.159-162]. The acknowledgement of the Presence is inseparably coupled with the memory of the past. This paradoxical coincidence of past and present constitutes the distinctive and unique characteristic of the Christian ‘memory’, which reaches its culmination in the Eucharistic anamnēsis or ‘commemoration’. The Holy Eucharist is the centre of Christian worship. An elaborate cycle of daily offices has been built, in the course of time, around this centre of devotion. Moreover, the Eucharist is not only a particular ‘office’ or akolouthia, but primarily a sacrament, a mystērion. Now the Eucharistic rite is obviously an anamnēsis, a ‘memorial of the Lord’, performed ‘in His memory’, according to His ordinance. But on the other hand, it is undoubtedly not a mere commemoration of the Last Supper. In fact, it is the Last Supper itself. Christ Himself is actually present in the sacred rite, both as its supreme and perennial minister and as the victim, ‘for Thou Thyself both offerest and art offered’ [Liturgy of St John Chrysostom]. In the strong words of St John Chrysostom, each Eucharistic celebration is actually the Last Supper itself, in its full reality, without any diminution. ‘This table is the same as that and has nothing less’ (In Mt hom. 82.5 [PG 58.744]). ‘The offering is the same, whether it be offered by some ordinary man, or by Paul or Peter. That which Christ gave to His disciples, and that which the priests minister now is the same. This is in no wise inferior to that, because it is not men that sanctify even this, but the Same who sanctified the one sanctifies the other also’ (In 2 Tim. hom. 2.4 [PG 62.612]). There is no difference, St John concluded. The Eucharistic Sacrament is neither a mere remembrance nor a ‘repetition’ of the Last Supper. It is rather its ‘manifestation’ or extension. Worshippers are, as it were, taken back to the Upper Room and made participants of the same sacred Supper. This paradoxical nature of sacramental anamnēsis, which is at the same time an actual and immediate encounter, or rather communion, with the ever abiding Lord, discloses the ultimate mystery of Christian existence. The Body is never separated from the Head. The Church is more than just an assembly of believers, of those who believe and acknowledge the mighty deeds of God ‘in ages past’, including the times of the Gospel. It is above all the Body of Christ, a corporation of them who dwell in Him and in whom Christ Himself is dwelling and abiding, according to His own solemn promise. There is in the Church a certain mysterious continuity between Christ the Saviour and Christians – who are being saved precisely as ‘members’ of His Body – whatever the manner in which we may attempt to comprehend and to explain this ultimate mystery, the mystery of the Church. St John Chrysostom once endeavoured to describe this mystery in daring words, speaking in the person of Christ Himself: I pursued thee, I ran after thee, that I might overtake thee. I united and joined thee to Myself . . . Above I hold thee, and below I embrace thee . . . I descended below.

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I not only am mingled with thee, I am entwined in thee . . . Things united remain yet in their own limits, but I am interwoven with thee. I would have no more division between us. I will that we both be one’ (In 1 Tim hom. 15, sub fine [PG 62.586]).

St John had in mind precisely the mystery of Communion. Indeed, the Eucharistic anamnēsis [remembrance] is also a koinōnia, communion, encounter. Those who ‘remember’ or ‘commemorate’ the Lord, according to His ordinance, are not ‘outside Him’ but ‘in Him’, in Christo, as branches of a vine. They belong to His ‘fullness’, to the plērōma which is the Church (Eph 1:22–23). In no sense are Christians outsiders. They are members of Christ. Christian worship is the worship of those who are inside. It is significant that this great mystery of our Lord’s Presence has been from the earliest Christian times described as Eucharist, that is, Thanksgiving. The major prayer in the rite, the anaphora, is precisely an elaborate anamnēsis or recollection of the Magnalia Dei [mighty deeds of God], from Creation itself up to the Last Supper and Christ’s solemn injunction ‘to do it in His remembrance’. The Sacrament is assessed in a wide perspective of the History of Salvation. Yet it is an anamnēsis in the form of thanksgiving, eucharistia. Gratitude is the proper response of man to the benevolence or philanthrōpia of God. As a response of man to the saving Providence of God, especially to the mystery of our Redemption, by Jesus Christ and in Him, and to the unfathomable gift of New Life in the Spirit, Christian worship is primarily an expression of grateful acknowledgement, of praise and adoration. It culminates ultimately in doxology. It is significant that we are directed to conclude our prayers and intercessions with doxologies: ‘for all glory, honour, and worship befitteth Thee . . .’ It should be also our starting point:  Hallowed be Thy Name is the first and introductory petition of the Lord’s Prayer and only then do intercessions follow.

III. Encounter and dialogue Worship is the norm of Christian existence. It should be the constant disposition or attitude of the Christian man. Indeed, to worship God means precisely to be aware of His presence, to dwell constantly in this presence. It is through worship that the ‘new man’ [Eph 2:15; 4:24; Col 3:10] is being formed in the believer, and the baptismal grace of adoption is actualized. The Christian man must be always in the state of worship, whether it is expressed in words or not. In its essence worship is the orientation of man towards God. Into Thy hands I commend my spirit . . . [Lk 23:46]. Prayer is a bounden duty of believers. Faith and worship cannot be separated. But prayer is also a daring endeavour, in as much as it is also a spiritual urge of those who believe. One meets God always with awe and trembling, if also with love and adoration. In prayer one has to begin with an act of detachment  – ‘to lay aside all the cares of this life’.7 In no sense is this an easy task, especially when we want to present precisely these ‘cares’ – our troubles and needs – to Him, in search for help 7

From the Cherubic Hymn, sung at the Great Entrance with the Holy Gifts during the Divine Liturgy [Eds.].

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and illumination. That is why we are instructed to pray ‘in the closet’, in retirement, in retreat from ‘the world’ [Mt 6:6]. However, the walls of the chamber, the shut door and any other external fences cannot by themselves prevent distraction or dissipation. This can be achieved only by an intense internal effort, by steady and continuous training, by a total reorientation of one’s life. But detachment is not indifference. God Himself is not indifferent to man’s needs or ‘cares’. It has been often suggested, by many authorities and expert masters of spiritual life, that ‘prayer books’, the fixed formularies of worship, are only intended for the beginners. This is undoubtedly true, if the statement is properly understood. Fixed formulae are, of course, no more than a means towards something much greater. Yet they are an appropriate means. It is spiritually dangerous to neglect the ‘books’, to dispense with them hastily, and to indulge arbitrarily in extempore improvisations of one’s own composition. It is more than merely a question of discipline. The settled formulae not only help to fix the attention, but also feed the heart and mind of worshippers, offering topics for meditation and reminding them of the mighty deeds of God. There is no room for psychologism or subjectivism in Christian worship. The goal and purpose of worship is the ‘prayer of the mind’,8 to the complete exclusion of all ‘passions’. Serenity is here the measure. Let all human flesh be silent, and with awe and trembling stand . . .9 There is in the Church a fixed rule or order of worship, even for prayer ‘in the closet’. And it is our duty to follow it. Of course, there must be more than a mere recitation: the words must come from the heart, and the heart may also find its own words. But spontaneous prayer can come only after an assiduous training. A sound balance should be maintained between ‘recitation’ and ‘improvisation’ in worship, although obviously there can be no formal rules for this. The purpose of training is to introduce the worshipper into a ‘conversation’ with God, to guide him into ‘encounter’ with the Living God. It is significant that most of the Church’s offices, including the rule for prayers at home, begin with a most daring appeal to the Holy Spirit, the Heavenly King: Come and abide in us. In fact, it is an anticipation of our ultimate and final goal – to acquire the Holy Spirit of God.10 The end is paradoxically anticipated from the very beginning. The search for the Spirit is the moving force of worship. It may happen that at a certain moment in worship the Spirit starts speaking in our hearts. Then one has to stop and listen. ‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God . . . The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered’ (Rom 8:16, 26). At this point prayer, in the ordinary sense of the word, ceases. As St Seraphim of Sarov said, one can no more ask, ‘Come and abide in us’, when the Spirit has already come and speaks in the heart. One can but receive the visitation with 8

9 10

In the Orthodox tradition, prayer should involve the entire person, body, soul and spirit. The ‘prayer of the mind’ or ‘intellect’ (nous) is the engagement of the intellect – our entire attention – in the prayer and the ideal prayer is often expressed as the ‘descent of the mind into the heart’. The inner person – the ‘heart’ – is fully committed to the prayer understood in the mind. This typology is often employed in teachings concerning the Jesus Prayer [Eds.]. The hymn for the Great Entrance from the Liturgy for Holy Saturday [Eds.]. In his well-known conversation with his disciple Nicholas Motovilov (also cited later in the paragraph), St Seraphim of Sarov sums up the goal of Christian life as the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God. See The Aim of Christian Life:  The Conversation of St Seraphim of Sarov with N.  A. Motovilov, trans, and eds., John Phillips and Maxim Nikolsky (Cambridge: Saints Alive Press, 2010). See Ch. 1, ‘Creation and Createdness’, n. 125, 60, in this book [Eds.].

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joy, but also with humility. Of course, the Spirit manifests itself only in the souls which have been prepared by a long and steady exercise in devotion. There is no room for human ‘improvisation’. It is the Spirit that improvises. At this very point the crucial problem arises: in what manner can and should we correlate these personal devotions ‘in the closet’ with the corporate worship in the community? The encounter with God, while praying ‘in the closet’, is certainly the core of worship. It is a genuine encounter and a communion with God. What, then, is missing here? Why and how should this intimate encounter with the Living God in the secrecy of the closet be supplemented by participation in the public and corporate worship of community? These are not idle or vain questions. They are of immense practical importance, especially urgent and burning in our own time. Nor are they simple questions which would admit of a general and unvarying solution. In fact, there is a constant tension in the devotional practice of individual Christians between ‘private devotions’ and ‘corporate worship’, and it can be overcome only by an intensive meditation on the articles of faith. A  certain tendency towards a peculiar kind of spiritual ‘individualism’ seems to be inherent in the practice of solitary prayer, if only subconsciously. Now it is indeed true that ‘in the closet’ the worshipper enters into an intimate and direct conversation with the Living God and acquires the Holy Spirit. It is this intimate encounter with God which is usually stressed in our current manuals of spiritual life. At the same time, of course, it is always assumed that those who worship ‘in the closet’ are members of the Church. But this aspect of the matter is not always sufficiently emphasized. In fact, Christians are only entitled to pray as members of the community. This is not only an objective presupposition, but an internal spiritual condition, an integral part of their devotional orientation. ‘Private devotions’ are inevitably but a preparation for, and a sequel to, ‘corporate worship’. They always are pointing beyond themselves. Prayer is intrinsically subordinate to sacraments. It is possible only on the basis of our sacramental incorporation into the Body of Christ, through Holy Baptism. Accordingly, the ultimate ‘encounter’ is realized also in a sacramental way, in the mystery of the Holy Eucharist. All ‘private devotions’ must be consciously directed towards this sacramental goal. It is highly significant that Nicholas Cabasilas wrote his great book Life in Christ in the form of a treatise on sacraments  – the triad of the sacraments of initiation: Baptism, Chrismation, Eucharist.11 The root of Christian existence is there, and of Christian worship too. One should also remember at this point Father John of Kronstadt and his teaching.12 For Cabasilas, the Eucharist is an ‘ultimate mystery’, a sacramental consummation, ‘the goal and term of life’. The Eucharist is the summit of Christian pilgrimage. And when this final stage of sacramental life has been achieved, there is nothing else that man may desire or need. In this mystery or sacrament, not only are the gifts of the Spirit granted and received, but the Risen Lord Himself is present. One cannot move farther. When Christ is in us, what else can we seek? Christ abides in the communicants. 11 12

On St Nicholas Cabasilas, see Ch. 9, ‘Patristics and Modern Theology’, n. 6, 155, in this book [Eds.]. On St John of Kronstadt (1829–1908), see Ch. 19, ‘The Body of the Living Christ’, n. 9, 275, in this book [Eds.].

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This is a ‘perfect sacrament’, more perfect than any other, the beginning and the end of all blessings, the ultimate goal of all human aspirations. God is united with us ‘in a most perfect union’, and nothing can be more perfect than this marvellous conjunction  .  .  .  Cabasilas was here following in the steps of St John Chrysostom, with his daring Eucharistic realism. The same experience of intimate communion with Christ is expressed in those remarkable prayers which the Church orders to be recited before and after communion by all participants.13 There is more than an encounter: there is union and communion. In the Eucharist those who are separated and estranged from each other by human frailty are brought together into the perfect and intimate unity of the One Body in Christ. Human exclusiveness and the mutual impenetrability of men are overcome. The faithful are ‘co-members’ of each other through Christ in the Church, or even ‘concorporeal’ [syssōmos] with each other and with Christ in His Body, to use the phrase of St Cyril of Alexandria.14 In the Eucharist the essential unity of Christians finds its perfect expression. This unity is not restricted or confined to those who are taking actual part in a particular celebration on a particular day. Each celebration is in reality universal, and the Eucharist is ever one. Christ is never divided. Every Liturgy is celebrated in communion with the whole Church, Catholic and Universal. It is celebrated in the name, and by the authority, of the whole Church. Spiritually, in every celebration the whole Church, ‘the whole company of heaven’, takes an invisible, yet real, part. This unity extends not only to all places but also to all times. It includes all generations and all ages. The living and the departed are to be ‘commemorated’ at every celebration of the Divine Liturgy. It is not only a remembrance, in a narrow and psychological sense of the word, not only a witness or our human sympathy and concern, but rather an insight into the universal fellowship of all believers, living and departed, in Christ, the common Risen Lord. In this sense, the Eucharist is a manifestation of the mystery of the Church, or rather of the mystery of the Whole Christ. As has been already stated, every celebration is identical with the Last Supper. It is in the Eucharist that the Church is aware and conscious of her profound unity and anticipates her final perfection in the age to come. The Eucharist is not only an expression of our human fellowship and of our human brotherhood, but above all an expression or an image of the divine mystery of our Redemption. It is a mystery of Christ. Every time that the Eucharist is celebrated, we witness to and we live in this perfect unity, initiated and inaugurated by the Incarnate and Risen Lord. We pray in the name of all mankind, of all those who have been called and have responded to the call. We pray as the Church – the whole Church is praying with us, or rather in us and through us. Of course, one has to be spiritually prepared for this participation in the mystery of the Worshipping Church, cleansed and purified. Worship in ‘the closet’ is indispensable. But it can be consummated only in the common celebration of the ultimate mystery of Christ, in communion with all our brethren. 13

14

The full text of the prayers recommended before and after communion are contained in the Jordanville Prayer Book (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 1988) [Eds.]. See Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, Volume II: S. John IX–XXI, trans. T. Randall (London: 1885), Bk. 11, Ch. 11, 550, PG 74.560B [Eds.].

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The story of Redemption is not yet completed. Rooted in the commemoration of the past, Christians are living still in expectation: the Kingdom is still to come. Yet, on the other hand, the Church herself is the token of this glorious consummation and from the early times she has prayed for its fulfilment: ‘As this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains, and was gathered together and became one, so let Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy Kingdom’ (Didache, IX, 4).

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Epilogue: ‘Let Us Choose Life’ Georges Florovsky delivered this sermon while he was dean of St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York. It was originally published as an editorial in St Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly, 1, nos. 3–4 (1953): 4–8, under the title ‘O Ye Dry Bones’ (Blane #358). O Ye Dry Bones (Ezek 37:4) A glorious vision was granted to the Prophet. By the hand of the Lord the prophet Ezekiel was taken to the valley of death, a valley of despair and desolation. There was nothing alive there. There was nothing but dry bones, and very dry they were indeed. This was all that had been left of those who were once living. Life was gone. And a question was put to the Prophet:  ‘Can these dry bones live again? Can life come back once more?’ [Ezek 37:3] The human answer to this question would have been obviously, no. Life never comes back. What is once dead, is dead for ever. Life cannot come out of dust and ashes. ‘For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again’ (2 Sam 14:14). Death is an ultimate ending, a complete frustration of human hopes and prospects. Death comes from the sin, out of the original Fall. It was not a divine institution. Human death did not belong to the Divine order of creation. It was not normal or natural for man to die. It was an abnormal estrangement from God, who is man’s Maker and Master, – even the physical death, i.e., the separation of soul and body. Man’s mortality is the stigma or ‘the wages’ of sin (Rom 6:23). Many Christians today have lost this biblical conception of death and mortality and do regard death rather as a release, a release of an immortal soul out of the bondage of the body. As widely spread as this conception of death may actually be, it is utterly alien to the Scriptures. In fact, it is a Greek, a gentile conception.1 Death is not a release, it is a catastrophe. ‘Death is a mystery indeed: for the soul is by violence severed from the body, is separated from the natural connection and composition, by the Divine will. O marvel. Why have we been given over unto corruption, and why have we been wedded unto death?’ (St John of Damascus in the Burial Office). Dead man is no man any more. For man is not a bodyless spirit. Body and soul belong together, and their separation is a decomposition of the human being. A discarnate soul is but a ghost. A soulless body is but a corpse. ‘For in death there is no remembrance of Thee, in the 1

For a more detailed discussion, see Georges Florovsky, ‘Redemption’, CW, III, 111–125 and ‘The “Immortality” of the Soul’ (1952), CW, III, 213–240 [Eds.].

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grave who shall give Thee thanks’ (Ps 6:5). Or again: ‘Wilt Thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise Thee? shall Thy loving-kindness be declared in the grave? or Thy faithfulness in destruction? shall Thy wonders be known in the dark? and Thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness’ (Ps 88:10–12). And the Psalmist was perfectly sure: ‘and they are cut off from Thy hand’ (v. 5). Death is hopeless. And thus the only reasonable answer could be given, from the human point of view, to the quest about the dry bones: No, the dry bones will never live again. But the Divine reply was very different from that. And it was not just an answer in words, but a mighty deed of God. And even the Word of God is creative: ‘For He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast’ (Ps 33:9). And now God speaks again and acts. He sends His Spirit and renews the face of the earth (Ps 104:30). The Spirit of God is the Giver of Life.2 And the Prophet could witness a marvellous restoration. By the power of God the dry bones were brought again together, and linked, and shaped, and covered over again with a living flesh, and the breath of life came back into the bodies. And they stood up again, in full strength, ‘an exceedingly great congregation’. Life came back, death was overcome. The explanation of this vision goes along with the vision itself. Those bones were the house of Israel, the chosen People of God. She was dead, by her sins and apostasy, and has fallen into the ditch which she made herself, was defeated and rejected, lost her glory, and freedom, and strength. Israel, the People of divine love and adoption, the obstinate, rebellious and stiff-necked people, and yet still the Chosen People . . . And God brings her out of the valley of the shadow of death back to the green pastures, out of the snare of death, of many waters, of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay. The prophesy has been accomplished. The promised deliverance came one day. The promised Deliverer, or Redeemer, the Messiah, came in the due time, and His name was Jesus: ‘for He shall save His people from their sins’ (Mt 1:21). He was ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel’ [Lk 2:32]. And then something incredible and paradoxical happened. He was not recognized or ‘received’ by His people, was rejected and reviled, was condemned and put to death, as a false prophet, even as a liar or ‘deceiver’. For the fleshly conception of the deliverance held by the people was very different from that which was in God’s own design. Instead of a mighty earthly Prince expected by the Jews, Jesus of Nazareth came, ‘meek and lowly in heart’ [Mt 11:29]. The King of Heaven, the King of Kings Himself, came down, the King of Glory, yet under the form of a Servant. And not to dominate, but to serve all those ‘that labour and are heavy laden’ [Mt 11:28] and to give them rest. Instead of a charter of political freedom and independence, He brought to His people, and to all men indeed, a charter of Salvation, the Gospel of Eternal Life. Instead of political liberation He brought freedom from sin and death, the forgiveness of sins and Life Everlasting. He came unto His own and was not ‘received’. He was put to death, to shameful death, and ‘was numbered with the transgressors’. Life put to death. Life Divine sentenced to death by men – this is the mystery of the Crucifixion.

2

The Holy Spirit is called ‘The Giver of Life’ in both the Nicene Creed and the prayer of Invocation of the Holy Spirit recited at the beginning of services in the Orthodox Church [Eds.].

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Once more God has acted. ‘Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain; Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that He should be holden of it’ (Acts 2:23–24, the words of St Peter). Once more Life came out of the grave. Christ is risen, He came forth out of His grave, as a Bridegroom out of his chamber.3 And with Him the whole human race, all men indeed, was raised. He is the first fruits of them that slept, and all are to follow Him in their own order (1 Cor 15:20, 23). ‘That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Rom 5:21). The prophesy of Ezekiel is read in the Orthodox Church at Matins on Great Saturday, at that glorious office at which believers are invited to keep a watch at the grave of the Lord, at that sacred and holy Grave out of which the Life sprung abundantly for all creation.4 In the beautiful hymns and anthems, appointed for the day, the egkōmia, one of the most precious creations of the devotional poetry, this tremendous mystery is depicted and adored: Life laid down in the grave. Life shining forth out of the grave. ‘For lo, He who dwelleth on high is numbered among the dead and is lodged in the narrow grave’ (Canon, Ode 8, Irmos). The faithful are called to contemplate and to adore this mystery of the Life-bearing and Life-bringing tomb. And yet, the old prophesy is still a prophesy, or rather both a prophesy and a witness. Life came forth from the grave, but the fullness of life is still to come. The human race, even the redeemed, even the Church itself, are still in the valley of the shadow of death. The house of the New Israel of God is again very much like dry bones. There is so little true life in all of us. The historical path of man is still tragic and insecure. All of us have been, in recent years,5 driven back into the valley of death. Every one, who had to walk on the ruins of once flourishing cities, realizes the terrible power of death and destruction. Man is still spreading death and desolation. One may expect even worse things to come. For the root of death is sin. No wonder that there is, in many and diverse quarters, a growing understanding of the seriousness of sin. The old saying of St Augustine finds anew echoes in the human souls:  Nondum considerasti quanti ponderis sit peccatum, ‘you never understand of what weight is the sin’.6 The power of death is broken indeed. Christ is risen indeed. ‘The Prince of Life, who died, reigns immortal.’7 The spirit of God, the Comforter, the Giver of Life,8 has been sent upon the earth to seal the victory of Christ, and abides in the Church, since the Pentecost. The gift of life, of the true life, has been given to men, and is being given to them constantly,

3

4

5

6

7

8

The image of Christ emerging from the tomb as a bridegroom from the bridal chamber is a frequent theme in Orthodox hymnography, notably in the Bridegroom Matins Services of Orthodox Holy Week [Eds.]. Ezekiel 37:1–14 is solemnly recited during Holy Saturday Matins of Orthodox Holy Week (served Friday evening) [Eds.]. This sermon was delivered in 1953, when the memory of World War II was very fresh and the Korean War was still raging [Eds.]. The citation is not from Augustine but from Cur Deus homo? (I, 21)  of Anselm of Canterbury (1033/4-1109) [Eds.]. From the eleventh-century sequence Victimae paschali laudes read or sung on Easter Sunday in the Western rite [Eds.]. From the Prayer of Invocation of the Holy Spirit [Eds.].

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and abundantly, and increasingly. It is given, but not always readily ‘received’. For in order to be truly quickened one has to overcome one’s fleshly desires, ‘to put aside all worldly cares’,9 pride and prejudice, hatred and selfishness, and self-complacency, and even to renounce one’s self. Otherwise one would quench the Spirit. God knocks perpetually at the gate of human hearts, but it is man himself who can unlock them! God never breaks in by violence. He respects, in the phrase of St Irenaeus of Lyons, ‘the ancient law of human freedom’ [Adv. haeres., IV, 37, 1, PG 7.1099B] once chartered by Himself. Surely, without Him, without Christ, man can do nothing. Yet, there is one thing that can be done but by man – it is to respond to the Divine call and to ‘receive’ Christ. And this so many fail to do. We are living in a grim and nervous age. The sense of historical security has been lost long since. It seems probably that our traditional civilization may collapse altogether and fall to pieces. The sense of direction is also confused. There is no way out of this predicament and impasse unless a radical change takes place. Unless . . . In the Christian language it reads – unless we repent, unless we ask for a gift of repentance . . . Life is given abundantly to all men, and yet we are still dead. ‘Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby you have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye’ (Ezek 18:30–32). There are two ways. ‘See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil . . . I call heaven and earth to record this day against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life’ (Deut 30:15, 19). Let us choose life . . . First, we have to dedicate all our life to God and to ‘receive’ or accept Him as our only Lord and Master, and this not only in the spirit of formal obedience, but in the spirit of love. For He is more than our Lord, He is our Father. To love Him means also to serve Him, to make His purpose our own, to share His designs and aims. ‘Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard of my Father I have made known unto you’ (Jn 15:15). Our Lord left to us His own work to carry on and to accomplish. We have to enter into the very spirit of His redeeming work. And we are given power to do this. We are given power to be the sons of God. Even the prodigal son was not allowed to lose his privilege of birth and to be counted among the hirelings [Lk 15:22–24]. And even more, we are members of Christ, in the Church, which is His Body. His life is indwelt unto us by the Holy Spirit. Thus, secondly, we have to draw closer together and search in all our life for that unity which was in the mind of our Blessed Lord on His last day, before the Passion and the Cross: that all may be one – in faith and love, one – in Him [Jn 17:21]. The world is utterly divided still. There is too much strife and division even among those who claim to be of Christ. The peace among nations and above all the unity 9

From the Cherubic Hymn, sung at the Great Entrance with the Holy Gifts during the Divine Liturgy [Eds.].

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among Christians, this is the common bounden duty, this is the most urgent task of the day. And surely the ultimate destiny of man is decided not on the battlefields, nor by the deliberations of the clever men. The destiny of man is decided in human hearts. Will they be locked up even at the knocking of the Heavenly Father? Or will man succeed in unlocking them in response to the call of the divine love? Even in our gloomy days there are signs of hope. There is not only ‘darkness at noon’ [Mt 27:45], but also lights in the night [cf. Lk 2:8–9]. There is a growing search for unity. But true unity is only that in the Truth, in the fullness of Truth. ‘Make schisms to cease in the Church. Quench the ragings of the nations. Speedily destroy, by the might of the Holy Spirit, all uprisings of heresies’ (Liturgy of St Basil).10 The life is given abundantly. We have to watch – not to miss the day of our visitation, as the Israel of old had missed hers. ‘How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not’ (Mt 23:37). Let us choose life, in the knowledge of the Father and His only Son, our Lord, in the power of the Holy Spirit. And then the glory of the Cross and Resurrection will be revealed in our own lives. And the glorious prophesy of old will once more come true. ‘Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel . . . Then shall you know that I the Lord have spoken it, and performed it, saith the Lord’ (Ezek 37:12, 14).

10

This part of the prayer is recited by the priest in the Byzantine Liturgy of St Basil (celebrated on Sundays during Great Lent and on several other occasions in the Orthodox Church), following a series of commemorations after the Anaphora [Eds.].

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Index Abraham 339 Aeiparthenos see Mary, Mother of God aestheticism 173 agnosticism 154, 163, 211 Agnus Dei see Jesus Christ Akathist Hymn 100n.10, 298 Akvilonov, Evgenii 155n5 Alexander of Aphrodisias 320 Allchin, A. M. (‘Donald’) (Canon) 240n8 Ambrose (St) 187, 300 Amphilochius of Iconium (St) 50 Anaphora 297 anathematisms 230 ancient historiography, substantialism of 206 Androutsos, Christos Dogmatics of the Eastern Orthodox Church 4 Anglican Communion 23, 25, 288, 304 Annunciation 100 Anselm of Canterbury (St) 73n3, 83n2, 155 Antichrist 137, 175 antinomy 99, 102, 277, 279, 286–7 antiquity 125, 168, 169, 209, 221–2, 226, 227, 235, 292 anti-theology 177 anti-Westernism 7, 27–9, 133 apocalyptic motif 175 Apokrisis 134, 134n22 Apollinarianism 121 Apollinarius 85 Apostles 15, 67n6, 107, 120, 178, 222–5, 256–8, 263, 293, 314, 329, 331–3 apostolic Church 263–4 apostolic tradition 222n2, 333 ‘rule of faith’ 331–2, 334 a-religious historian of religion 210 Arians, Arianism 318, 332, 333 Aristotelianism 68, 156, 165, 213n53, 214n55, 320n28, 322n39 Aristotle 75, 213, 235, 315, 316, 320, 321–2

Armenian Genocide 9 Arndt, Johann Wahres Christentum 142 Arseniev, Nicolas 11 Ascension 82, 103 asceticism 150, 162, 164 ascetic-mystical theology 4–5 Asia Minor Catastrophe 9 astronomy 316, 317 Athanasian theology 298 Athanasius the Great (St) 228, 290, 293, 312n6, 314, 329 on created things 37 on creation 44, 45, 57, 57n114, 318 De Incarnatione 314 on God’s power and essence 229 on Incarnation 90 on necessity of God 56 refutation of Arianism 232 ‘rule of faith’ 333 on Word 92 on Word of God 61, 85, 277 Athenagoras of Athens (St) 89 De resurrectione mortuorum 322 Athens 21, 171, 234, 296, 322 Athos 182 Atonement, doctrine of 155 Augustine (St) 26, 59n.123, 76, 238, 248, 255, 276, 281, 299, 318 on Church duality 312 on created beings 47, 47n.62 on creation 36, 37 on creatures 39 De Genesi ad Litteram libri 34n4 distinguishing between character and grace 254 on everlastingness and eternity 35 on God’s being 231 on God’s will 45 and Hellenism 187 on history and time 215, 217, 317

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Neo-Platonism 67 sacramental theology 254–5 theology of 253–4 on Virgin Mary 101 authority 326 of Church 226, 270, 286, 294 of Fathers 238–9, 297 of Scripture 334 of tradition 334 Baader, Franz Xaver von 146, 146n63, 147, 170, 190 Bacon, Roger Compendium studii philosophiae 187 baptism 26, 76, 79n14, 93, 155n6, 250–4, 300, 343 see also sacraments baptismal grace 254 as the death on the cross 76 and incarnation 72 non-Orthodox baptism 25–7 ‘rule of faith’ 334 symbolism of 78, 93 Bardy, Gustave 196 Barth, Karl 8–9, 14n39, 169 Basil the Great (St) 26, 27, 34, 50, 50n74, 60, 229–30, 297, 333–4 On the Holy Spirit 330, 333 Bateman, A. F. Dobbie 237 The Return of St Seraphim: A Western Interpretation 237n1 Batiffol, Pierre (Bishop) 260n12, 274 Baur, Ferdinand Christian 196, 196n10 Bellarmine, Robert (Cardinal) 137n34, 188 Disputationes de controversis christianae fidei 137 Benjamin (Dominican friar) 131 Berdyaev, Nicolas A. 2, 159, 159n1, 167n21, 181, 190, 303 Bergson, Henri 244n13 Bernard of Clairvaux (St) 225, 295 Bible 40, 68, 89, 116–17, 169, 190, 195–6, 223, 293, 329, 332, 333, 334 see also New Testament; Old Testament; Scripture(s) creation in 40 death in 89 Elizabethan Bible 131 Gennadius Bible 131 and modern world 233

mystery and miracle of 115–16 Ostrog Bible 131, 133 revelation 196 revival of 189–90 Slavonic codex of 130, 131 vision of history in 212, 215 Blane, Andrew 66 Bloch, Marc Apologie pour l’histoire, ou métier d’historien 197–8 Blok, Aleksandr 160, 160n5 Bobrinskoy, Boris (Fr) 1 bodily resurrection 315, 319 body 74–5, 320 Body of Christ 15, 19, 62, 63, 77, 78, 105, 155, 189–90, 264, 269, 299, 314, 340 Boegner, Marc 303 Bolotov, Vasilii 41 Bolshevism 2, 7 Bonnet, Makarios (Hieromonk) 5 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne 82, 82n1 branch-church theory 255 British Student Christian Movement 304 Bronevskii, Martin 134 Brunner, Emil 169 Bulgakov, Makarius (Metropolitan) 145n39 Orthodox Dogmatic Theology 4, 145 Bulgakov, Nikolaevich (Sergius) 2, 3n33, 5, 6, 8, 9–10, 12–13, 13n36, 57n113, 148n70, 190, 274, 287n6, 303, 304 Agents Bozhii [The Lamb of God] 65 on dogmas 21 ecumenism 23 sophiology 22 theology of Holy Wisdom 13 Bultmann, Rudolf 194n5, 217 Bunge, Gabriel (Hieromonk) 5 Byron, Lord 177n41 Byzantine Gnosticism 171 Byzantine iconography 189, 235 Byzantine influence 130 Byzantine Liturgy 235 Byzantine modes of prayer and selfdiscipline 296 Byzantine spirituality 298 Byzantine theology 55n108, 188, 226–7, 289, 295 and Corpus Areopagitica 52 and patristic theology 227

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Index Byzantinism 1, 9, 21, 187, 227, 295 Byzantium 53, 234–5 Cabasilas, Nicholas (St) 63n147, 155, 155n6, 343–4 Exposition of the Divine Liturgy 63 The Life in Christ 298, 343 Calvin, John 84n.4 Institutiones christianae 134 Calvinism 133–5, 135n26, 140n45 canons 25, 157, 248–9, 253, 329 Cappadocian Fathers 52, 85, 224, 234, 228, 229, 290, 298 see also Fathers Caroline Divines 67n7 Caroline divines 67 Casel, Odo (Dom) 157n13, 196 Catherine the Great (Metropolitan) 142 catholic action 288 Catholic Church 235, 239n11, 281, 305, 307 Catholicism 4, 102, 136, 275 Catholicity of the Church 17, 125–7, 166, 259–61, 267–8 consciousness 18–19, 20, 27, 263 consciousness, group versus personal 166 divine perfection 262–3 and freedom-authority duality 270 and love 261–2 objectivity 261 subjectivity 261 catholic mentality 156 Celsus 319 Chalcedon see Ecumenical Councils change, cessation of 35 charismatic tradition 268 Chevetogne 239n11, 304 Chitty, Derwas J. 70n16, 240n16 chrismation (confirmation) 25, 26, 79, 93, 119, 251, 252 see also sacraments Christendom 186–7, 284, 297, 301, 302, 305 Christian anthropology 74, 320 Christian disruption 279, 280, 302 Christian existence 224n7, 228, 293, 336–7 Christian Hellenism 20–3, 29, 233–6 see also Greece, Greek(s); Hellenism Christian heroism 270 Christian historians 193–219

355

Christian history, interpretation in the West 226 Christianity essential historicism 81–2 existentialism 224n7, 293 historical context 21–2 historical religion 214 historicity of (see Christian historians) intrinsic corporatism of 335 as a personal religion 82 as religion of experience 194–5 social Christianity 176 view on death 322 Christocentric spirituality 297 Christology 13–14, 69, 91n24, 226n11, 277, 290, 298–9 chronicles 199 Church 83, 148, 257, 302 Apostolic and Patristic 293 apostolic rule of faith in 331–2 apostolic succession 252, 253, 255, 263, 270 apostolic theology 223, 263–4, 293 authority of 226, 286, 295 and baptism 250, 251, 254 bishop’s role in 269–70 as the Body of Christ 14–15, 19, 63 canonical rules 248–9, 253 catholic consciousness of 166–7 catholic nature of (see Catholicity of the Church) as Christ’s Body 111 common mind of 84 community and retreat 335–7 conceptualization of Christ’s divinity 57 and creation 63 definition of 273–6 divinization or deification (theosis) of humanity 277 and dogmas 121–2, 124, 223, 293 duality 63, 312 and economy (oikonomia) 249–50, 251, 253 eschatological community 311 and Eucharist 253–4 and faith 221, 292 and Fathers (see Fathers) freedom of 265–6 as fulfilment of Christ 258–9

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Index

and Gospels 266 and grace 252 grace-giving experience of 266 Heilsgeschichte 217 and Hellenism 168–72, 235 history of 111, 167–8, 179, 195, 217, 218, 219, 306 image of, as a ‘treasury of truth’ 332 infallibility 167 inner memory of 175 and kerygma 223, 293 limits of 247–56 living member of 124, 264, 277 as a living tradition 27, 295 and Mariology 96–7, 103 marks of 280–2 mind of the 66 as a missionary body 313 and mystery of Spirit 84 and mystery of the Cross 72, 77 as Mystical Body of Christ 155 Patristic theology 223, 293 philosophization about God 121 and praying 344 as pure truth 256 and religious populism 163–4 return of philosophers to 190 and revelation 119–20 revision and restatement 285 sacraments 248, 252–3 and salvation 93, 258 schismatic clergy 251–2 schismatics, sacraments of 252–3 and Scripture 265–6, 331 sect/schism/heresies 247–8, 250, 253, 254–5 sobornost 259–71 teaching of the hierarchy 269 and theological minimalism, 267 and time 264 and tradition 125, 221–2, 292–3, 264–5, 266–7 as a true historical institution 277 and truth 293 Una Sancta 23 Undivided Church 23 union of peace 253 in union with Christ 63–4 as unity 247 as unity of charismatic life 263–4

unity of the Spirit 253 wholeness 259–60 and worship (see worship) Civil War 9 Classical historians, view of human history 212 Cledonius 95 Clement of Alexandria 68, 201n24 Collingwood, R. G. 199–200, 199n18, 201, 203, 205 commemoration 345 commitments 210 common denominator theory 280 communion and unity with God 59–60, 83, 84–5, 88, 229, 313 see also sacraments all-inclusive communion 283 confessional communion 282 divinity by 61–2 Holy Communion 283, 337 Holy Communion, and ecumenical movement 283, 337 intercommunion 283–4, 287, 288 open communion 280, 282–4, 287 and self-realization 60 Communion of Saints 105 community 125, 335–7 see also Sobornost and prayer 336 Comte, Auguste 209, 210n51, 210n.51 confession 26, 282 see also sacraments confessional loyalty 280 confirmation see chrismation (confirmation) Congar, Yves 20 Congress of Orthodox Theologians 20, 296–7, 296n22 consensus patrum 19, 20, 28, 238 Consensus quinquesaecularis 226, 226n13, 295 Constantinopolitan church councils 53, 53n98 consubstantiality 37, 50, 56, 83, 96, 99, 247 consummation 168, 191, 193, 215, 313, 314, 318, 339, 345 corporate worship 337 Corpus Areopagitica 52 corruption, corruptibility 37, 39, 74, 77, 86, 90–1, 177, 214, 282, 312n.6, 314, 320, 347 Cosmology 49

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Index Cosmos 213–14, 315–16, 317 Counter-Reformation 25 Covenant, Old and New 338 Created beings, communion and fellowship with God see communion and unity with God created essences and divine ideas, distinction between 48 created existence 36 created ideas 123 created nature 37, 63 createdness 123 radical dissimilarity between creation and God 38 creation see also human as Another 63 creatures (see creatures) divine images (see God, image of) and divine infinity 36 essentialism 41 ex nihilo 5, 22, 34, 36–8, 63 as God’s free will 36–7, 38, 44 and God’s grace and goodness 44 and God’s intention 37 and ‘natural’ thought 40 revelation of God’s power and wisdom 50 (see also revelation) and time (see time) of world (see world) creatures 38, 58, 229 communion with God’s energies 53–4 creativity 60, 185n1, 198n15, 199n17 deification 61 deification/divinization 60–0 Fall of 73 free will of 39 and nothingness 58 path of alienation, destruction and death 39 podvig 60 rebellious 58–9 self-determination and podvig 60 time as 318 union with God 38–9 (see also communion and unity with God) and Word 57 Croce, Benedetto 198, 198n15, 199, 202 Cross of Jesus 72–3, 77, 85, 87, 91, 107, 300 as an act of God 300 and glory 111

357

and Love 326 Mystery of the Cross 111 and salvation 111 victory of 112, 313 way of 111 crucifixion see Jesus Christ, death of Cullmann, Oscar Christus und die Zeit 317 Cyprian of Carthage (St) 25, 222, 247–8, 247n1, 292, 337 Cyril of Alexandria (St) 38, 85, 229, 232, 262, 344 Cyril of Jerusalem (St) 260, 329 death 39, 76, 88, 90, 103, 314 of animals 74 in Bible 89 as a catastrophe for humankind 74–5 Christian experience 89 fear of 74 of humans 73–4 immortalization of 315 of Incarnate 89 as the last enemy 299 and life 72 overcoming by life 92 Plato on 322 powerlessness of 92, 314 and purification 76–7 and resurrection 74 and sin 39, 73–4, 89 soul and body separation 75, 77, 89 triduum mortis (three days of death) 76–7, 78 as wage of sin 111 deification see divinization demythologization, of the Christian message 194 denominations 26, 194, 218, 280, 281, 291, 303, 306–7 denunciation 174 Deseille, Placide (Archimandrite) 5 destiny of man 58, 88, 99, 100, 112, 207, 212, 315 determinism 8, 18, 27, 207 Dimitri of Rostov (St) 144 Dionysius the Areopagite 46, 52, 67, 52n94, 187, 290 divination 202 divine beatitude 58

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Index

divine begetting 37–8, 44, 54, 55, 231, 232 divine fiat 116 divine forgiveness 88 divine grace 39, 218 divine idea 48 divine infinity 35, 36, 37 divine likeness 47, 47n.65, 59, 61, 86 divine liturgy 344 divine mercy 38–9, 218 divine might 86 divine predicates and names, sequence of 44 divine presence 229, 230 divine reality 120 divine simplicity 231–2 divine truth 122 divinity 130n5, 171n30 divinization 17, 61, 62, 86, 118, 228, 325 and divine energies 62 Dix, Gregory (Dom) 196, 196n10 Dobbie Bateman, A. F. 237n1, 239n13 docetism 75, 97n7 doctrine 153 dogma(s) 18, 20, 72, 85, 102, 120–2, 122–3, 124, 146–7, 153–4, 244, 293, 333 dogmatic theology 4, 21, 68, 124, 189 Domratchev, Hilarion (Hieromonk) 182 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 160, 160n4, 173, 189 Drozdov, Philaret (Metropolitan) 36, 48, 101–2, 141, 144, 145, 178, 242, 256, 259–60, 275 biblical revival 189 Catechism 144, 269, 275n.8, 329–30 Overview of the Theological Sciences 144 Duccio 189 Duns Scotus, John 40, 40n37, 87 Durantius, William Rationale divinorum officiorum 131 Dyovouniotes, Konstantinos I. 251 Eastern theology 49 East–West divide 23, 191, 301–2 ecclesiology 14–17, 157n13, 238n5, 257n1, 299 economy (oikonomia) 56, 249–52, 249n2, 298, 299 Ecumenical Council(s) 83, 97, 98, 226, 227, 268–9, 269n28, 285, 295 Christology 14

dogma of 277, 295, 298 Fathers of 37, 83, 98 (see also Fathers) Third 96 Fourth (Chalcedon) 14, 83, 221, 225, 292, 295 Fifth 95 Sixth 226, 295 Seventh 221, 226, 292 ecumenism, ecumenical movement 17n65, 23–7, 173–4, 186, 279–88, 282n2, 291–2, 302, 303, 305 Christian unity 306 ecumenical dialogue 303–7 as a fellowship in search 284–5 and Holy Communion 283 meetings 301 as missionary activity 24–7 in time and in space 306 Eduard von Hartmann, Karl Robert 147 El Greco 189 émigré religious writers 5 empathy 200 end of times 259, 276, 313 energies see God, energies enhypostatization 76n10 Enlightenment 174n37, 194 Epicureans 213 episcopal order, restoration of 283 eschatologism 214–15, 216–17, 218, 311, 318, 322 see also death Eschaton 216 eternal things 315 eternity 35, 40, 41, 110, 317–18 Eucharist 15, 77, 79, 189n12, 253–4, 266, 298, 313n7, 340–1, 343, 344 see also communion and unity with God; Sacrament(s) Eurasianism 7, 7n19 Europe 173, 186, 235 Evangelists 120 evil 39, 40, 75 faith 82–3, 84, 93, 95, 105, 108, 124, 147, 148, 149, 154, 163, 168, 193, 221, 264, 276, 292, 294, 297, 298, 331, 338 and historical events 214 as mighty deeds of God 81, 193, 341 of the Mother Church 156

359

Index and revelation 119 scope of 333 stages in proclamation of 223, 293 true faith, recognition of 334 truth and confession of 148 and worship 341 Falkovskii, Irinei 141 Fall 84, 87, 99, 118, 279, 318 fantasy, and divination 202 fasting 164, 221 Father, the 109, 336, 338 Fathers 20, 28, 47n62, 67, 69, 72, 74, 84, 98, 147, 150, 166, 190, 221, 223, 239n10, 244n13, 274, 291 acknowledgement of Mary as Mother of God 95–6 Age of the Fathers 225–6, 295–6 ancient Fathers 317 authority of 238–9, 297 catholic consciousness 18–19 Christian dogmatic 21–2 on Christ’s Resurrection 300 on death on the Cross 300 as Doctors of the Church 66 on doctrine of creation 37 Eastern Fathers 136 engagement in revision and restatement of Church 285 eschatology 322–3 following the 97, 224–5, 292–3 of fourth century 50, 226 ‘going back’ to 155–6 on Incarnation 312, 313 legacy of 297 mind of 20, 223, 227, 293, 296 opinions of 269 quotations from 236, 294 ‘rule of faith’ 333 statements of 224–5 teaching of 293 theologization by 224, 293 vision of 28 witness of 223, 293 writings of 190 Fedotov, George 10 Ferrero, Guglielmo 207 Feuerbach, Ludwig 194n6 Das Wesen des Christentums 194n6 filioque 55n104

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Flint, Robert History of the Philosophy of History 211 Florensky, Pavel (Fr) 2, 6, 12, 17, 18, 22n101, 56n108, 162n10, 171n29, 182n56, 190, 195n7, 277n17 Florovsky, Georges Vasilevich 1, 3, 5, 30, 119n3, 121n4, 122n4, 137n38, 139n41, 145n39, 148n70, 162n10, 165n17, 174n35, 185n1, 188n5, 188n7, 191n15, 195n7, 224n7, 235n4, 241n2, 244n13, 281n1 on academic theology 3–4 on Agnus Dei [The Lamb of God] 72 American years 10–12 on the authority of the Fathers 238–9 and Barth 8–9 birth of 6 and Bulgakov 9–10, 12–13 on canonical and spiritual bounds 25 on Chalcedonian Christology 14 childhood 6–7 Christian Hellenism 20–2 on Christian Hellenism 13 Christocentrism 18 Christological concentration 13–14 Christology 14 on Church as sobornost 16 churching of the mind 18 creative freedom 27 death of 12 development in theology 9 dismissal from Holy Cross 11 early career 7–8 ecclesiology 17–18, 19–20, 24 ecclesiology and ‘living tradition’ 14–17 and ecumenical 243 ecumenism 23–7 education 7 and Eurasian movement 7, 7n19, 7n21 evaluation of literary work and theological vision of 6 exile and pan-orthodoxy 6–9 on Fathers 242–3 Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius 304 on freedom and creativity in divinization process 17–18 on Greek Fathers’ approach 13 at Harvard Divinity School 11–12

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historical theology 14 at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology 11 on identity of the Church 18 influences and mentoring 1–2 initiation of the first Orthodox theological journal in North America 11 preface to In Ligno Crucis 65 lecturing style 11 letter to Bateman 237–40 letter to Nicholls 286–8 method of study 242 on Möhler 16–17 on ‘the mind of the Fathers’ 20 neopatristic synthesis 6, 12, 13–14, 17, 29, 66, 71–9, 191, 242 nepatristic theology 27–30 notion of patristic mind 20 ordained to the diaconate and priesthood 8–9 on Orthodox Church’s imperfection 23 on Orthodox theology as historical theology 243 pan-Orthodoxy 10, 27 patristic approach to theology 12 on patristic writings 66 personal theology 14 polemicism 6, 12–13, 18, 28 in Prague 8 at Princeton University 12 psychology of catholic consciousness 18–19 quasi-membership of certain nonOrthodox in the Orthodox Church 25 as a radical traditionalist 27 on rebaptism 25–6 on redemption 65–79 rejection of branch-theory of Christianity 25 ressourcement movement 8–9 on Russian sophiology 12 on salvation 244 on scandal of particularity 244 in Second World Conference on Faith and Order 304–5 on separated Christians 26 in Sofia 7

at St Sergius Institute 8 at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary 10–11 on teaching 243 ‘theological will 241–4 on theologization 244 thesis on Herzen’s philosophy 8 on traditions and teachings 29 at Union Theological Seminary 11 validity of non-Orthodox sacraments 27 on Western theology 9 during World War II 8 works ‘Doctrine of Creation’ 242 ‘Doctrine of Redemption’ 242 The Eastern Fathers of the Fourth Century 239n10 ‘The House of the Father’ 24, 24n113 In Ligno Crucis 81–94 ‘The Limits of the Church’ 25, 25n116, 26n122 ‘The Patristic Doctrine of Atonement’ 65 The Ways of Russian Theology 9, 12, 179–80 Fourier, Charles 173n34 Frank, Semen L. 2 Frazer, James George 196, 196n10 freedom 38–9, 78, 102, 104, 108, 167 Frere, Walter (Bishop) 304 fullness 83, 85, 84, 127, 174, 226, 258, 264, 270–1, 314, 318 fundamentalism 190 future 213 see also time Galich, Aleksandr I. 146 Gass, Wilhelm 289, 289n1, 291 Gennadius und Pletho 289 Symbolik der Griechischen Kirche 289, 291 Gennadius (Archbishop) 130, 130n5, 131–2 Gentiles 122, 244n12 Gerasimov, Dmitrii 132 Gerhard, Johann Loci communes 140 Germany Idealism 145–6, 170, 173, 174, 190, 194 Romanticism 16, 257n1

361

Index theosophy 143 Giliarov-Platonov, Nikita P. 149–50 Gillet, Lev (Fr) 5 Gilson, Étienne 303 Giotto 189 glory, glorification 76, 82, 88, 258, 326 Glubokovsky, Nicholas 290 gnosimachy 163 Gnosticism 222n2, 319 God absolute and ordinary power 58 absolute freedom 22, 57 absolute incomprehensibility 229 action of 54, 231 active will 54 alienating from 39, 60, 93 attributes of 41, 44, 57 being of 41, 44, 55 calling from 60, 62, 336 contemplation 42, 48, 123, 149 counsel of 58, 59–60 and creation 22, 36, 37, 43, 44, 46 creation as a Trinity 56 creative intention and plan 58 creative will 39, 54, 62 de facto temporal change in 42 deeds 81, 93, 97, 193, 238, 338, 341 descends into the world 119 energies 49, 50, 51, 52, 55, 62, 53, 55, 55n105, 55n108, 57, 59, 154, 230, 231 essence of 49, 50–1, 229–30 eternity of being and consciousness 43 existence of 51–2 freedom 40–8, 63 free opposition to 40 gaze of 53 glory of 92, 107 goodness, and creation 42 goodness and love 52 grace of 61–2, 102, 326, 336 image of 17, 18, 42, 46, 57, 58, 59, 74, 86, 88, 116, 118, 125, 344 image of world 58 immutability 41, 42, 43, 58 knowing through his actions 230 love of 37, 44, 52, 58, 72, 76, 86, 88, 107, 110, 254 loving will 59

361

natural will 56 nature 38, 43, 49, 50–1, 55, 58, 62 omnipresence 51–2 ordinance 38, 233 perfection of 317 philosophization about 121 providence of 58, 341 redemption plan 57 relationship with the world 50 reunion with 89 revelation 44, 49, 51, 338 as a ‘second’ or ‘other’ nature 37 three Persons in 56 vision of 298 will 36, 45, 55, 56, 58, 61, 62, 85, 101, 110, 122, 212, 231–2 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 21, 67 Gogol, Nikolai 122n6, 173, 177n41, 189 Gogotskii, Silvester S. 146 Golden Age 226, 295 Golubinskii, Fyodor A. 146 Gontikakis, Vaseilos (Archimandrite) 5 good 81, 91, 120, 122, 169, 177–9, 210, 300, 322n39, 336 Good News (kerygma) 177, 178, 216, 223, 224, 293 Gore, Charles (Bishop) 304 Gorskii, Feofilakt Doctrina 141 Gospels 72, 107, 120, 122, 123, 266, 312, 339, 340 grace 51, 53, 60, 61, 62, 93, 103, 230, 234, 255, 325 Graeco-Slavic culture 133 gratitude 341 Great Councils of Constantinople 230 Greco-Turkish War 9 Greece, Greek(s) 123, 233, 235 see also Hellenism academic theology in 4 Catholic Church of 133, 291, 296 circular conception of the Universe 317–18 Fathers 68, 187, 235, 299 intellectualism 171 resurrection concept 74–5 tradition 66–7, 171, 186–7 vision of history 212 Greek philosophy 68, 315, 316

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identity 76 perception of time 76 as sculptural symbolism 321 Gregory of Nazianzus (St) 35n11, 38, 39n33, 45, 45n54, 50, 50n77, 60, 61, 72, 85, 95, 224, 228, 229, 230, 231–2, 256, 293, 300, 315, 340 Gregory of Nyssa (St) 34, 39, 50, 50n79, 54, 67, 75, 229, 254, 314 De Anima et resurrectione 322 Gregory Palamas (St) 53, 53n96, 53n99, 54, 54n102, 54n103, 55n105, 59, 154, 188, 227, 228, 230, 295 Gregory the Dialogos (St) 225, 295 Grensted, L. W. Short History of the Doctrine of the Atonement 69 Grote, George 207 habits, unwritten 333–4 Harnack, Adolf von 20, 67, 196, 196n10, 244n12, 318n21 Hebert, A. G. (Fr) 287 Hebrews (Epistle) 76 Hebraism 170, 244n12 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 190, 209, 244n13 Aesthetics 321 Hegelianism 170, 203 Heidegger, Martin 217, 244n13 Hellenism 20–3, 27, 66–7, 68, 123, 133, 157, 187, 217, 244n12, 318n21 see also Christian Hellenism acute hellenization 67, 318, 318n21 ancient 233–4 and the Church 168–72 ecclesialization of 122 and history 216 philosophy 68 polarization of 67–8 and revivals 67 and tradition 235–6 Hellenistic-Byzantine theological tradition 20 Herder, J. G. von 200n21 heresies/heretics 10n27, 26, 138, 163, 183, 195, 221–2, 251, 255, 255n7, 331 Herzen, Alexander 8, 18, 27, 181

hesychast 6, 53n96, 53n98, 63n145, 150n74, 165n17, 224n.7, 227, 296 heterodoxy 2, 9, 16, 19, 23, 25, 129, 133, 150, 163, 172, 173, 252, 268 Hilary of Poitiers (St) 187, 262, 331 historians see also Christian historians; history; history, study of ancient historiography 212–14 approach to mystery 211 Augustine (St) on 215, 217, 317 of art 209 biases 195–6 of Christ’s coming 215 of Church 111, 167–8, 179, 195, 217, 218, 219, 306 Collingwood on 203, 205 and eschatological events 214–15 and events 205, 207, 214 fragmentary vision 206 Greeks’ vision of 212 and Hellenism 216 historical documents, interpretation as signs 200 historical inquiries 197–8, 199, 203 historical interpretations 208 historical interpretations, and judgement 210–11 as history of man 203–4, 218 as inductive artists 207 interpretation of human life 200, 211, 218–19 and liberalism 195 man’s historicity 216 meaning of 209 morphology of 209 and New Testament 217 and the past 204–5 of philosophy 209 as process 205–6 questioning about meaning and significance 199 regarding mystic and tragedy history 219 as reporters 199 and retrospection 206, 207 revelation of course of events 219 Romans’ vision of 212 and Russian theology 168 of salvation 217, 313 and Scriptures 116–17

363

Index self-critical 202 singular events 215 as study of human past 199–200 sources of 197–9, 202 and theology 167–8 vision of 205, 207 vision in Bible 212, 215 history, study of biases 210 and chronicles 199 denial in 210, 211 disagreement among Christian interpreters 216 grasp the mind of the writer 201 historical awareness 20, 203–4 historical interpretation process 209–10 historical predictions 209 historical understanding 202–3, 210 human history and natural history 197 intellectual intuition and inductive imagination 201 meaning and sense 210 and past 197 prospective theme 215–16 retrospective theme 215 understand its meaning and significance 204 Hollatz, David 141 Holy Alliance 143, 143n54 Holy Eucharist see Eucharist Holy Spirit 15, 17, 44, 50, 60n125, 89n16, 112, 116, 190, 214, 225, 230, 237, 238, 238n4, 261, 298, 312, 332, 348n2 authority of 120 and the Church 222, 293 philosophy of 21–2, 124 power of 229 and self-realization 60 virtue of 248 and worship 342 Holy Writ see Bible; Scripture(s) Horujy, Sergey S. 1 human alienation from God 327 destiny of 112, 212, 315 existence 93, 258 freedom of 63, 102 and will of God 85

363

historicity 216 humanity 17–18, 59n122, 73–4, 91n24 love of 254 nature of 84 self-consciousness of 126 soul of 37 suffering 73, 77, 86 will, healing of 78 humanism 67n6, 200n24 humiliation (kenosis) 86, 91n26, 98n8 humility 178, 325, 326 hypostases 56, 59, 91 hypostatic union 77, 91, 97 ‘I,’ creative realization 60 Iavors’kii, Stefan 137, 137n33, 137n35 Rock of Faith 137, 144 identity 75, 76 Ignatius of Antioch (St) 238, 260 illegal congregations (parasynagogues) 26 Imago Dei see God, image of Immaculate Conception 102 immortality 73, 76, 77–8, 229, 325 Incarnation 72, 82, 83, 84, 86, 90, 99, 339, see also Jesus Christ catholic doctrine of 313 fact of versus idea of 88 God’s deed 97 personal implications of 97–8 and redemption 88 and resurrection 85 and revelation 72, 84, 258 as salvation 72 supralapsarian conception of 87 and symbolism 98 and Word 86 incorruption 89–90, 229 individualism 166 Inge, William (Dean) 266 intellectualism 171 intercommunion 27n127, 287n6 interpretations 201, 211–12 intuition 119n3 Irenaeus of Lyons (St) 16, 85, 86, 312n6, 330, 332 on Holy Spirit 277 on love 228 on Mary, the Blessed Virgin 100 recapitulation idea 101, 119

364

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on revelation 84 on soul 89 on tradition 125, 222, 235, 258, 265, 292 Isidore of Seville (St) 225, 295 Israel 81, 122, 336 Iurkevich, Pamfilii D. 146 Jaeger, Werner 213 Jerome (St) 67, 101, 187, 225, 294, 331 Jesus Christ 14, 20, 37, 59, 82–3, 85, 119, 313, 329, 339, 341 absolute identity 97 act of will and nature, distinction between 86 as alpha and omega 215 as Church 16 Church as 14–15 declination of political involvement 108 descendance into Hell 77, 78, 91, 92 disciples of 257, 335–6, 337 double ‘consubstantiality’ of 37, 83 earthly life 87 freedom from original sin 86 God-made-man 82–3, 84, 89, 90, 97, 143, 312–13, 338 as God-Man 258 as high priest 119 historical Jesus 98 human nature of 258 and identity of Church 18 incarnation and crucifixion, predetermined 57–8 Incarnation of (see Incarnation) knowledge of God 119 The Lamb of God 81–94, 88, 110 as the ‘Last Adam’ 85, 258, 311–12 life-bearing grave 300 as Life Everlasting 92 love of 337 Person 300–1 personal unity of 83 radiant joy of 326 as Redeemer 83–4 Resurrection 74, 88, 108, 155 sacred humanity of 99 sacrifice of 72–3, 76, 110–11, 313 Sermon on the Mount 336 sign of 108, 111 soul of 77

Spirit of 18 sublevel 17 supernatural birth 99 victory over death 92, 93 voluntary act of assuming sin 72, 77 as Word of Life 72 Jesus Christ, death of 69, 73, 74, 76, 77–8, 82, 89, 90, 97n7 see also Cross of Jesus freedom of 87 preordination 110 real death 77 as a sacrament 77 as sacrifice and an oblation 76, 110 as a sign and a token of divine love 109 voluntary act 72, 86, 89, 90, 92–3 Jews 107, 338 John (St) 49 John Chrysostom (St) 51, 67, 111, 258, 299, 300, 314, 320, 340–1, 344 Peri Akatalēptou 229 John Klimakos (St) 294 John of Damascus (St) 51, 52, 58, 67, 85, 187, 188, 225, 239n13, 295, 313 Catholic teaching 99 Christology 96 on creation 38, 45–6 on evil 39 on God’s counsel 45n56, 46n58 on God’s energies and actions 230 on God’s nature 49 on infinite chasm between God and creation 37 on Mary, as Mother of God 96 on Mary, the Blessed Virgin 97, 99, 104 on time 35, 35n10 John of Kronstadt (Fr) 275 Jonah (Prophet) 108 Journat, Charles 20 joy 326 Judaism 67 Jugie, Martin 291 Julian the Apostate 234 Justinian, Emperor 225, 234, 291 Justin Popovitch (St) 5, 101 Kant, Immanuel 169n24, 170 Karinskii, Mikhail I. 146 Karlovtsi Synod 126n10

365

Index Karpinskii, Iakinf Compendium 141 Karpov, Vasilii N. 146 Karsavin, Lev 2 Kattenbusch, Ferdinand 289–90, 289n2, 291 Keim, Karl Theodor 207 kenosis 85–6, 91, 91n26, 98n8 kerygma 194n5 Kesich, Veselin 11 Khomiakov, Aleksei 15, 16n57, 27, 147, 147n68, 189, 252, 252n5, 255–6, 264 The Unity of the Church 275 Khrapovitsky, Anthony (Metropolitan) 126, 129, 155, 181, 250–1, 262 Kierkegaard, Søren 244n13 Kireevsky, Ivan 15, 27 Kireevsky, Peter 160 Kittel, Gerhard 193, 244, 244n11 knowledge of God 119, 121, 123–4 Kopinskii, Isaiah 136, 136n31 Koukouzis, Iakovos (Bishop) 11 Kremlin, domes in 132 Krivoshein, Basil (Archbishop) 1 Kudriavtsev-Platonov, Viktor D. 146 Kurbskii, A. M. 134, 134n20 Lagrange, Marie-Joseph (Fr) 196, 196n10 The Lamb of God see Jesus Christ Last Judgement, 169 Last Supper 79, 340, 344 Latinism 134, 135–6, 137, 139–40 Latin scholasticism 4 Latin school 138 Lebedinskii, Sylvester Compendium 141 Lebreton, Jules (Fr) 196, 196n10, 303 Lelouvier, Yves-Noël 19, 20n81, 28 Leo (St) 97, 97n6 Leontius of Byzantium 76n10, 225n11 Lermontov, Mikhail 177n41 Levshin, Platon 142–3 Le Roy, Édouard 303 lex credendi, lex orandi 70n13, 190, 190n14, 298 Lialine, Clément (Dom) 239n11, 304 Libosus of Vaga 222n3 life, ‘churching’ of 17

365

Lithuania 133 liturgical/sacramental theory 70 Liturgists 70n15, 79, 130, 131n8, 133n17, 155n7, 168–9, 196n10, 299n31, 307, 344, 351n10 Byzantine 227, 235 Christian 235 de-Hellenizing 169 Eastern 296 patristic 79 Livingstone, Richard Winn 233n2 Logos 48n66, 49, 57n113, 76n10, 91n24 Losev, Aleksei Fedorovich 317n16, 321 Lossky, Nicolas 10 Lossky, Vladimir 1, 3, 4n14, 5, 7 Lot-Borodine, Myrrha 1, 229n17 Lotze, Hermann 169n24 love 17, 89, 161, 261–2, 326 Lubac, Henri de 20 Lucaris, Cyril (Patriarch) 135n26 Lycaeus, Proclus 234n3 Mabillon, Jean (Dom) 225, 225n8, 295 Macarius of Egypt (St) 37, 61, 61n137, 61n139 Magnalia Dei (mighty deeds of God) 81, 193, 341 Maine, Henry James Sumner 233n1 Makarios of Corinth (St) 227n14 Malevanskii, Sylvester (Bishop) 51, 145n60 Manning, H. E. (Cardinal) 195 Marcel, Gabriel 303 Marcus Aurelius 234 Maritain, Jacques 303 Mark of Ephesus (St) 55, 55n104 marriage 297 see also sacraments Marrou, H. I. 200–1, 200n24, 202, 203, 206 Marx, Karl 209 Mary, Mother of God, Blessed Virgin 95, 95n1, 99n9, 103n14 divine call 101 divine selection 99, 102 existential situation 104 final consummation of life 105 and freedom from original sin 103 freedom from passions and desires 104 freedom of 102 free gift of God 100 function in the Incarnation 100

366

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and grace 103 intimate experience of 103–4 motherhood 98 as Mother of God 95, 97, 106 and mystery of Incarnation 100 and mystery of redemption 99–100 obedience of 101, 102 position of 100 as representative of the race 102 as Second Eve 101, 102 truth of human maternity 98 virginity 104 Maximus the Confessor (St) 34, 46, 47, 52, 53n.99, 56, 60, 62, 85, 132, 226, 228, 229, 295, 315 Merezhkovsky, Dimitry 2 Methodius of Olympus (St) 42, 57, 75, 322 Meyendorff, John (Fr) 1, 12, 12n29, 13, 13n34, 224n7 Middle Ages 186 Mikhnevich, Iosif G. 146 modernism 2, 66, 306 Mogila, Peter (Metropolitan) 135–7, 135n27, 188n6, 289 Euchologion 136 Orthodox Confession 136, 144, 289 Möhler, Johann Adam 15, 15n49, 20, 27, 27n130, 189, 275 Die Einheit in der Kirche (Unity in the Church) 16 molecular action 288 Mommsen, Theodor 207 monasticism 188–9 mystical theology 5 Monod, Winifred 303 morality 69 mortality 73, 74, 88, 299–300 see also death mystery of God’s inner life 56 Jesus Christ 109, 298–9, 344 Mary 97, 106 Christian existence 85 the Church 82, 106, 277, 340 Holy Altar 79, 94 Incarnation 85, 88–9, 96, 105, 312 the Love Divine 85 worship 337 Mystical Body of Christ 105, 155, 189–90

mysticism 143, 218 Nadezhdin, Nikolai I. 146 Name of God 162n.10 natural sciences 197 nature, divinity by 61–2 Nellas, Panayiotis 1 neologism 177n41 neopatristic synthesis 1n2, 3, 5, 6, 27–30, 29, 191, 191n15, 242n5, 297–8 Neo-Platonism 67 Neopythagoreans, 213 Nestorius (Archbishop) 96 new dispensation 338 new humanity 93, 99 Newman, John Henry (Cardinal) 105, 105n15, 155–6, 166 New Testament 117, 120, 169–70, 194n5, 244, 331, 333 see also Bible; Scripture and history 217 Nicea 50, 226 Nicene Creed 57 Nicholas Velimirovitch (St) 5 Nicholls, William 286 Nietzsche, Friedrich 21, 67, 75n6, 209 Nikodimos the Hagiorite (St) 25, 227, 227n14, 227n15, 296 Novgorod 130, 131–2 Novitskii, Orest M. 146 obedience 179, 196 obscurantism 165 Old Testament 81, 116, 117, 124, 212, 318n21, 329, 331 see also Bible; New Testament omnes 125, 267–8 open communion see under communion and unity with God Optina, Monastery of 150n75 Origen 13, 41, 41n39, 42, 42n45, 75, 276, 314, 317–18, 322 original sin 86, 102–3, 161 Orthodox Church 23, 69–70, 133n17, 225, 227, 239n11, 294 see also Church modernism 291 non-Orthodox in 25, 26 Roman point of view 291 symbolic books 273n2, 289–90

367

Index true Church 285–8 Orthodox consciousness, division within 148 Orthodox theology 2, 3–4, 4–5, 28, 137n38, 173, 175, 187–8, 187–90, 190, 191 Ostrozhskii, K. K. 133–4, 133n18 Owen, Leslie 70n15 Palmer, William 252, 252n5 panentheism 22 pan-Orthodoxy 6–8, 10, 27 pantheism 22, 48 Paris School 5 particularism 210, 260 past 197, 213 see also time Patrick, Denzil G. M. 70n17 Patristic age 225, 295, 314 doctrine 69, 70, 155 Orthodoxy 129 scholars 187–8, 306–7 theology 169, 224, 293–4, 298 tradition 174 writings 70, 154, 156 Paul (St) 51, 82, 85, 86, 88, 92, 107, 108, 111, 112, 234, 238, 269, 320, 326 Paul V (Pope) Roman Missal 136 Pavlov, Mikhail G. 146 Pelikan, Jaroslav 1 penance 26, 297 see also sacraments Pentecost 15, 82, 125, 238 Pericles Pentēkontaetia 205n41 periodization 226 see also time personalities 100, 321–2, 335 personhood 123 Petavius, Dionysius 96, 96n3 Peter the Great 110, 137, 137n33, 137n35, 139, 163 Philalethes, Christopher 134 Philokalia 5, 227, 227n14, 296 philosophies 21, 68–9, 118n2, 122–3, 146n63, 154, 156–7, 209 Phoius (the Great) (St) 188 piety, pietism 96, 142, 143, 161, 162–3, 228–9, 296 Pigas, Meletius (Patriarch) 134 Plato 316, 322

367

Platonics 213 Platonism 48, 75, 321 Catechisms 142 The Orthodox Teaching, or, a Compendium of Christian Theology 142 Plotinus 234, 319 Pokrovskii, Aleksei Alekseevich 130n4 Poland 133 Polansdorf, Amandus Polanus von 140n45 Syntagma theologiae christianae 140 Pomazansky, Michael (Fr) Orthodox Dogmatic Theology 4 Popovka, Gerasim 130 populism religious populism 163–4 Porphyry Life of Plotinus 319 Porphyry of Tyre 234n3 Potii, Ipatii (Metropolitan) 134–5 Powicke, F. M. 243n9 prayer 116, 126, 224, 294, 326, 336, 337, 341, 344 see also worship predestination (prothesis) 58, 88, 99, 100, 207 pre-Nicean theology 49 Prestige, G. L. God in Patristic Thought 66, 66n3 procession 54 Prokopovich, Feofan (Archimandrite) 140–1, 140n44, 142, 146 Spiritual Regulation [Dukhovnyi Reglament] 140 Tractates 140 prophecy 109, 339 Protasov, Nikolay 144 Protestantism 4, 68, 96, 134, 142, 144, 167, 174, 188, 226, 281, 295 pseudomorphosis 4n.12, 137n38, 149, 188, 296 psychology 69 purification, and resurrection 76–7 Pythagoreans 316 Quenstedt, Johannes Andreas 141 Ramsey, Michael 287 Ranke, Leopold von 200, 200n22, 204–5 realism, psychological influence of 146

368

368

Index

reasons, reasoning 46n61, 48, 84, 121 redemption 72, 74, 74n5, 83–4, 87, 88, 93–4, 103, 238, 312–13, 315, 341 Reformation 68, 134, 135, 139, 140, 167, 218, 226, 281, 296 re-Hellenization 21 Reitzenstein, Richard August 196, 196n10 religio-philosophy 146–7 Relton, Herbert Maurice 70n14 remembrance 337–41 Renan, Ernest 196, 196n10, 207 repentance 78, 90, 93, 162, 164, 251, 279, 350 repetition, theology of 6, 19, 20, 75, 92, 155, 225–8, 242, 295, 316, 340 Resurrection 22, 74–5, 76, 78–9, 82, 90, 91, 93, 111, 313, 314, 319 Revelation 68, 72, 84, 88, 115, 117–18, 119, 121, 122, 124, 266 Reynders, D. B. 222n2 Ricciotti, Giuseppe 196, 196n10 Richardson, Cyril C. 217 Richter, Johann Paul Friedrich 122 Ritschl, Albrecht 169, 169n24, 172 Riviere, J. 69n12 The Dogma of Redemption 69 Robinson, John 240n14 Romanides, John (Fr) 1 Romano-Germanic civilization 7 Romans 212, 253, 296 Romanticism 27, 146 Rose, Seraphim (Fr) 5 Rozanov, Vasily 2 ‘rule of faith’ 333 Russia 160, 161 academic theology in 4 antireligious atmosphere 175 Athonite controversy 162 Byzantinism 166, 168 Eurasianism 7 historicism 159, 161–2 national spirit 161, 162, 171 obscurantism 165, 171 piety 166 rediscovery of traditional religious art 189 religious culture, and iconography 169 religious existence 149 religious renaissance 2, 5, 27, 244n13

return of philosophers to the Church 190 Revolutions 9 rootlessness of thought 181 Russian Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) 126n10 Russian School 5 Russian soul 160, 161, 165 and Revolution 175 temptations of 161 Russian Student Christian Movement 8 Russian theology and Byzantine Gnosticism 171 catholic and ecumenical tradition 164–5 distrust in 163 gnosimachy 163 and Hellenism 169–72 and history 168 loss of patristic texts in 166 and Orthodoxy 164, 179–80 and piety 162, 163 and populism 163–4 returning to the Fathers 172 revival of 176–8 Slavophilism 173 theologization of 175–6 and tradition 174 Western influences in 129, 162–3, 172–3 sacraments 27, 79, 254–5, 297 see also baptism; chrismation; communion and unity with God; Eucharist Sacred History 339 Saint Sophia (Hagia Sophia) 21, 67, 68, 234 saints, and catholic consciousness 18–19 Sakharov, Sophrony (Archimandrite) 1, 5 Salmon, Harold Bryant 239n13 salvation 79, 84, 85, 87, 88, 90, 102, 219, 231, 238, 253, 298, 311, 312, 326–7, 338, 341 and the Church 93, 258 and the Cross 109 and history of men 215 moralization of 69 and redemption 72 Salvation Army 282 Samarin, Iurii Stefan Iavors’kii i Feofan Prokopovich 141 Sanday, William 69n11

369

Index satisfaction theory 73n3 Saviour see Jesus Christ scepticism 196 Schelling, Friedrich W. J. 146, 146n43, 177n41, 190 schisms 26, 161, 174, 186, 280, 286 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 169n24 Schmemann, Alexander (Fr) 1, 11 scholasticism 4, 68, 143, 225, 296 Schopenhauer, Arthur 147 Schubert, Gotthilf Heinrich von 146n65 Geschichte der Seele 146 Schweitzer, Albert 207 Scripture(s) 15, 20, 109, 115–16, 116–17, 120, 265–6, 313, 329–33, 334 see also Bible; New Testament; Old Testament Second Coming 215, 312, 340, 345 sectarian separatism 260 self-assertion 263 self-consciousness 166, 263 self-denial 262 self-identification 166 self-love 262 self-realization 60 self-renunciation 325 self-will 179 Semitism 170 Seraphim of Sarov (St) 18, 238, 325 Shestov, Lev 2 Sidonskii, Fedor F. 146 sign 112 Silouan the Athonite (St) 18–19, 325, 326 sin 39, 73–4, 75, 86, 88, 89, 111, 218, 279 Skarga, Piotr 133–4 Slavic Greek Latin Academy 138 Slavophiles 27, 147, 147n67, 163, 173, 257n1 Smirnov, K. (Sergei) 142 sobornost 17, 19, 257n1, 259–71 see also community ; unity Society of Friends 282 socinianism 133n16 Socrates 96 Solovyov, Vladimir 2, 6, 8, 147–8, 147n69, 160n5, 173, 190 sophiology 10, 10n26, 12, 126n10, 147n69, 148n70 soteriology 299

369

Spáčil, Theophilus 291 Spengler, Oswald 137n38 spirituality 38n30, 75, 98n8, 139, 150n74, 297, 298, 325–6, 343 Stăniloae, Dimitru (Fr) 1 Stoicism 75n6, 213, 316 Strömberg, Bengt 71 substance 48 Sunday of Orthodoxy 226, 226n12, 299 Swedenborg, Emanuel 173n34 Symeon the New Theologian (St) 59, 155, 155n7, 188, 227, 229, 295 Taine, Hippolyte 207 Tareev, Mikhail 171 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 244n13 telos 117 temporal order 35 Tertullian 87, 187, 314 De praescriptione 331 testimonies 200 thanksgiving 116, 337–41 Theodore of Studium (St) 188, 225, 295 theology academic theology 3–4, 5 Cappadocian theology 298 of the Church 277 of the Cross 299 dialectical theology 169, 174, 174n37 existentialist theology 232 of glory 299 historical theology 18 and liberalism 194 liturgical approach to 191 and minimalism 267 and modernism 167–8 as not a self-explanatory discipline 224, 294 polemical theology 174 of repetition 6, 19, 20, 75, 155, 225–8, 242, 295, 316, 340 sacramental theology 252–3 true theology 191 vision of faith 224, 294 Theophan the Recluse (St) 63, 63n145, 146, 258–9, 297 theōsis see divinization Theotokos see Mary, the Blessed Virgin Thomas Aquinas (St) 87, 188, 274

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Index

Thomism 67, 139 Three Hierarchs 223 Tikhon of Zadonsk (St) 189 Tillich, Paul 11 time 34, 34n4, 35, 42, 43, 76, 215, 217, 316, 318 Todorskii, Simeon 142 Toynbee, Arnold 185n1, 296 Study of History 185, 185n1, 301–2 Tractarian Movement 67 tradition(s) 14–17, 124–5, 127, 147, 154, 168, 292–3, 307 and Church 125, 264–5, 293 double authority of 334 of the Fathers 296 and history 208 loyalty to 266–7 obedience to 196 preservation of 235–6 and Scripture 265–6 true tradition 222, 292 unwritten traditions 333 Trembelas, Panagiotis Dogmatics of the Orthodox Catholic Church 4 Trendelenburg, F. A. 202 Triduum 76, 339 Trinity 17, 58, 61, 82, 99, 247, 298, 300, 313 and Cosmology 49 and creation 37, 45, 56 divine names 52 dogma of 96, 97 ‘fulfilment of unity’ in the image of 125–6 and fullness of divine nature 57 of Hypostases 44, 53, 56 invocation of 78 Persons of 56 and subordinationism 50 unity of 16, 259, 262–3 and world 43 Troitskii, Matfei M. 146 Trubetskoi, Sergei N. 164, 166 truth 15, 121, 123, 124, 167, 222, 268–9, 270, 287, 292 Tübingen, Catholic school of 145n62, 275 Turretini, I. A. 141 Typikon 163n12

Ukrainization 138 Ultramontanism 173 uncreated 47n65, 53n96, 54n102, 62n143 Unia 133, 133n17, 135 union with the Godhead 72 see also communion and unity with God unity 16, 23, 127 of the God-man 123 of the Trinity 16 Universal Restoration 316 Upper Room 15, 340 Vafeidis, Aimilianos (Archimandrite) 5 Vatican I 270 Velichkovsky, Paisii (St) 150, 188 Vellanskii, Danilo M. 146 Verhovsky, Serge 11 Vincent of Lerins (St) 125, 221, 221n1, 222, 267–8, 292, 334 Commonitorium 334 virtue 195–6, 224, 294 Viskovatyi, Ivan Mikhailovich 132 Vlachos, Hierotheos (Metropolitan) 5 Vladislavlev, Mikhail I. 146 Ware, Kallistos (Metropolitan) 1 Wellhausen, Julius 196, 196n10 West 28–9 American scholar 187 definition of Church 274–5 influences in Orthodox theology 129– 51, 162–3 Western and Eastern Orthodox 186 Western theology 9, 28, 67, 174 Williams, Rowan (Archbishop) 27 Winslow, Bede (Dom) 304 wisdom 147–8 Wolff, Christian 140, 140n43 Word of God 57, 59, 61, 74, 90, 115–16, 117, 118 see also Bible world 36, 39, 42, 43, 58, 124, 208 see also creation World Council of Churches, 305 worship see also prayer ‘Book of Prayers’ 338 calling on God 338 commemorations 339 divine initiative 337 encounter and dialogue 341–5

371

Index essence of 341 Eucharist 341 faith and 341 goal and purpose of 342 Hellenism 157 historical dimension 339 historic character of 339 Holy Eucharist 340 lectio divina, the recitation of Scripture 338–9 prayer books 342

371 private and corporate 343 remembrance and thanksgiving 337–41 sacramental anamnēsis 340 and search and acquisition of Spirit 342 spiritual ‘individualism’ 343 treatise on sacraments 343–4

Zenkovsky, Vasily 2, 177n41 Zizioulas, John (Metropolitan) 1 Znamenskii, V. Petr 138

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