Abstract
An Orthodox seminary professor once quipped sarcastically: “Orthodox theology was invented in a 1930’s Paris salon.” With some adjustment, this cynical remark may be regarded as expressing a certain truth. The paradigm of Orthodox theology in the modern age—its “style,” the envisioning of its contemporary task—was indeed refashioned in the West, sometime around the third decade of the twentieth century. This refashioning is generally associated with the idea of “neopatristic synthesis.”
The antithesis of “West” and “East” belongs more to the polemical and publicistic phraseology than to sober historical thinking. For at least a millennium, there was one world, despite all schisms and tensions, and at that time tension between “East” and “West” was by no means stronger than certain internal tensions in the East itself.1
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Notes
Georges Florovsky, Review of Lev A. Zander, Vision and Action, in St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly 1:2 (Winter 1953), 28–34, at 32.
See, for instance, Alexander Schmemann, “In Memoriam Fr. Georges Florovsky,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 23:3–4 (1979), 133–138, at 133; and Andrew Louth, “The Patristic Revival and Its Protagonists,” in Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 188–203, at 193.
For the sharpest and most recent critique, see Brandon Gallaher, “‘Waiting for the Barbarians’: Identity and Polemicism in the Neo-Patristic Synthesis of Georges Florovsky,” Modern Theology 27:4 (October 2011), 659–691.
G. V. Florovsky, “Iz proshlogo russkoi mysli” [1912], in his Iz proshlogo russkoi mysli (Moscow: Agraph, 1998), pp. 8, 12. From the same period was also his long review essay, “Novye knigi o Vladimire Solov’eve” Izvestiya Odesskago bibliograficheskago Obshchestva pri Imperatorskom Novorossiiskom universitete 1:7 (1912), 237–255.
See especially Vladimir Solovyov, Russia and the Universal Church (London: The Centenary Press, 1948).
Literature on Eurasianism is growing. For introduction, see Marlène Laruelle, L’idéologie eurasiste russe ou comment penser L’empire (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999). For Russian scholarship on Florovsky’s relation to Eurasianism as well as his published Eurasian-era correspondence, see Matthew Baker, “Bibliography of Literature on the Life and Work of Father Georges V. Florovsky,” Transactions of the Association of Russian-American Scholars in the U.S.A. 37 (2011–2012) (forthcoming).
G. V. Ivannikov, “G.V. Florovskii—Samyi neevraziiskii evraziets,” Aktual’nye problemy gumanitarnykh i estestvennykh nauk 5 (2011), 274–276.
See Florovsky, “Breaks and Connections” and “The Cunning of Reason” in Ilya Vinkovetsky and Charles Schlacks (eds.), Exodus to the East: Forebodings and Events—An Affirmation of the Eurasians (Idyllwood, CA: Charles Schlacks, Jr., 1996), pp. 12–16, 30–40 (translation of the complete Eurasian volume Iskhod k vostoku [Sofia, 1921]).
See Florovsky, “Dva Zaveta,” Rossiia i latinstvo (Berlin: Logos, 1923), pp. 152–176. In the same article, Florovsky stresses that what separates Christian confessions is a discrepancy in the understanding of salvation, affecting religious life itself; while, on the other hand, Catholicism and Protestantism cannot be reduced to single doctrines, such as papal authority, or free inquiry. He also names charity (rather than persecution or religious compulsion) toward the heterodox as a mark of the apostolic Church.
Andrew Blane, Georges Florovsky: Russian Intellectual and Orthodox Churchman (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993), p. 39.
It cannot be stressed enough how Florovsky’s basic ecumenical outlook is tied to his personalist philosophy of freedom and the “creative deed” (tvorcheskii podvig) in history: being composed by free acting persons, the history of doctrine and spirituality in Christian schisms cannot be assumed to follow the pattern of quasi-organic laws of development or logical deductions; and being separated by a series of free acts, they may also be reconciled by a series of free acts. On this aspect of his philosophy of history, see Florovsky, “Evolution und Epigenesis. (Zur Problematik der Geschichte),” Der Russische Gedauke 1:3 (1930), 240–252.
By the late 1940s, other names such as Karl Adam, Yves Congar, and Henri DeLubac would be added to this list: see Florovsky, “Le corps du Christ vivant: Une interprétation orthodoxe de L’Église,” in F. J. Leenhardt et al., La Saiute Églίse Uuiverselle: Confrontation crcuméuique (Paris: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1948), pp. 9–57.
For recollections, see Eric Mascall, “Georges Florovsky (1893–1979),” Sobornost 2:1 (1980), 69–70; and Sarabaud: The Memoirs of E.L. Mascall (Herefordshire, England: Gracewing Publishing, 1992). Florovsky’s influence on Ramsey’s first book, The Gospel and the Catholic Church (1937), is palpable, particularly in its combination of a strong evangelical Christocentrism with a high sacramental doctrine of church order.
For references from Florovsky’s work on this theme, see Matthew Baker, “‘Theology reasons’—in History: Neo-patristic Synthesis and the Renewal of Theological Rationality,” Oεoλoyίa 81: 4 (2010), 81–118.
Florovsky, “Patristics and Modern Theology,” in Hamilcar Alivisatos (ed.), Procés-verbaux du Premier Congrès de Théologie Orthodoxe à Athènes: 29 novembre-6 décembre 1936 (Athens, 1939), pp. 238–242; reprinted in Diakonia 4.3 (1969), 227–232.
See Hilarion Alfeyev, “The Patristic Heritage and Modernity,” The Ecumenical Review 54 (2002), 91–111; and
Konstantin Gavrilkin, Church and Culture in the Thought of Father Georges Florovsky: The Role of Culture in the Making of Theology, MTh. thesis, St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 1998.
Very fittingly, Christoph Künkel, the author of the longest and most systematic study of Florovsky yet published, has encapsulated the subject of his work with an Augustinian phrase most beloved by Florovsky: Christoph Künkel, Totus Christus: Die Theologie Georges V. Florovskys (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991).
See Florovsky, “The Limits of the Church,” Church Quarterly Review 117:233 (October 1933), 117–133; “The Doctrine of the Church and the Ecumenical Problem,” The Ecumenical Review 2:2 (1950), 152–161; and “A Holy Calling,” The Student World 43:2 (1950), 169–171. Joseph Famerée emphasizes Florovsky’s originality here: “In an Orthodoxy generally hostile to Augustine, culpable, in its eyes, of having created the doctrine of the filioque and a theory of original sin judged incompatible with the Eastern doctrine…not only does he defend personally the Augustinian ecclesiology, but with a bit of quiet provocation he also invites all Orthodox theologians to embrace it in order to explicate the traditional ecclesial attitude concerning the sacraments of schismatics and heretics”: Joseph Famerée, SJ “Les limites de I’Eglise. L’apport de G. Florovsky au dialogue catholique-orthodoxe,” Revue théologique de Louvain 3 (2003), 137–154, at 147–148.
Florovsky, “The Doctrine of the Church and the Ecumenical Problem,” 156. Florovsky points to Augustine as a model of Christian Hellenism precisely because he did not attempt a “synthesis” of Christianity and Hellenism, but rather the latter’s “conversion”: see his comments in Edmund Fuller (ed.), The Christian Idea of Education (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), pp. 166–167. What is to be “synthesized” then, is not the Gospel and Greek philosophy, but the fruits of the latter’s conversion by the Gospel throughout history, in a creative, discriminating act of hermeneutic retrieval of Christian tradition.
This applies not only to Florovsky’s critics, but equally to his admirers. Regarding his student, the Greek American theologian John Romanides, Florovsky himself noted early on “a bias towards ‘isolationism’”: “He draws away from the West in everything and locks himself within the Byzantine tradition.” Letter to S. Tyshkevich, SJ, December 17, 1960, in A. M. Pentkovskii (ed.), “Pis’ma G. Florovskogo S. Bulgakovu i S. Tyshkevichu,” Sίmvol 29 (1993), 212.
Jean Daniélou, SJ, The Lord of History (London: Longmans, 1958), pp. 41–43.
Marko Markovit, in his La Philosophie de L’ίnégalité et les ίdées politiques de Nicolas Berdiaev (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1978), p. 18, claims that Danielou’s book took its inspiration from Florovsky. For a similar view of Christian Hellenism in the Roman Church, see
Hugo Rahner, SJ, Greek Mythos and Christian Mystery (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. xv.
On this, see Ute Possekel, Evidence of Greek Philosophical Concepts in the Writings of Ephrem the Syrian (Louvain: Peeters, 1999).
On this, see Marc Raeff, “Florovsky and Eurasianism,” in G. O. Mazur (ed.), Twenty-Five Year Commemoration to the Life of Georges Florovsky (1893–1979) (New York: Semenenko Foundation, 2005), pp. 87–100 (especially p. 91); and, in the same volume, Joseph Frank, “The Tragedy of Freedom,” 202–212.
Florovsky, “The Problem of Ecumenical Encounter,” in E. J. B. Fry and A. H. Armstrong, Rediscovering Eastern Christendom. Essays in Memory of Dom Bede Winslow (London: Dartman, Longman and Todd, 1963), pp. 63–76, at 68: “Not seldom Western manuals were directly used in Orthodox schools, in a rather promiscuous and eclectic manner, Roman and Protestant together. One may even speak of a certain ‘pseudomorphosis’ of Orthodox theology. And yet there was no real ‘encounter’ with the West. Influence and imitation are not yet ‘encounter.’ The study of the West in the East was limited to the needs of polemics and refutation. Western weapons were used to fight the West.”
Florovsky, “In Ligno Crucis: Kyrkofädernas Lära om Försoningen, Tolkad frán den Grekiskortodoxa Teologiens Synpunkt,” Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift 23 (1947), 297–308, at 297.
Florovsky, “The Patterns of Historical Interpretation,” Anglican Theological Review 50 (1968), 144–155, at 150.
Florovsky, “The Quest for Unity and the Orthodox Church,” Theology and Life 4:3 (August 1961), 167–208, at 206.
A Florovsky, “Terms of Communion in the Undivided Church,” in Donald Baillie and John Marsh (eds.), Intercommunion (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952), pp. 47–57, at 48.
A Florovsky, “Determinations and Distinctions: Ecumenical Aims and Doubts,” Sobornost 4:3 (Winter, 1948), 126–132, at 130.
Florovsky, “Reason and Faith in the Philosophy of Soloviëv,” in E. J. Simmons, Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955), pp. 283–297, at 284.
Florovsky, “Une vue sur L’Assemblée d’Amsterdam,” Irénikon 22:1 (1949), 4–25, at 13.
Florovsky, “Primitive Tradition and the Traditions,” in William S. Morris (ed.), The Unity We Seek (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1962), pp. 28–38, at 29–30; see also, Florovsky, “Znamenie Prerekaemo,” Vestnik Russkago Studeucheskago Khristiauskago Dvizheuiya no. 72–73, I–II (1964), 1–7.
See especially Florovsky, “Types of Historical Interpretation” [1925] in Louis J. Shein (ed.), Readings in Russian Philosophical Thought: Philosophy of History (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1977), pp. 89–108; and “The Predicament of the Christian Historian,” in Florovsky, Christianity and Culture (Belmont, MA: Nordland Press, 1974), pp. 31–66. For the most insightful discussion of this deeply neglected but crucial dimension of Florovsky’s thought, see Rowan Williams, “Eastern Orthodox Theology,” in David F. Ford (ed.), The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, UK: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 499–510, at 508–509.
Tyszkiewicz, SJ Compte-rendu: “R.E Georges Florovsky, Puti Russkago Bogosloviya,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 4 (1938), 288–291, at 290: “Concerning judgments regarding Catholicism, Fr. Florovsky is much more fair than the greater part of the other modern Orthodox theologians,”
See also, Dom Clement Lialine, Compte-rendu: “G. Florovskij.-Le problématisme de la réunion chrétienne,” Irénikon 11 (1934), 601–602.
A Williams, “Eastern Orthodox Theology,” p. 507. Williams’s unpublished doctoral dissertation still remains the most thorough study of Lossky’s theology: Rowan Williams, The Theology of Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky, DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1975.
Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of Truth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 82–83. In Lossky, this is also manifested in his view that “in the age to come” the Spirit, while “not having His image in another Hypostasis, will manifest Himself in deified persons: for the multitude of the saints will be His image”:
Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), p. 173.
— “The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine,” in Vladimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), pp. 71–97, at 88 and 71.
Ibid., p. 74. For a discussion of Florovsky’s views on the filioque, see Matthew Baker, “The Eternal ’spirit of the Son’: Barth, Florovsky and Torrance on the Filioque,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 12:4 (October 2010), 382–403.
See Vladimir Lossky. Théologie négative et connaissance de Dieu chez Maitre Eckhart (Paris: Vrin, 1973).
See, for instance, Vladimir Lossky, Review of E. L. Mascall, Existence and Analogy, in Soborпost 7 (Summer 1950), 295–297.
Vladimir Lossky, Sept jours sur les routes de France: Juin 1940 (Paris: Cerf, 1998).
The phrase belongs to Aidan Nichols, Light from the East (London: Sheed and Ward, 1999), p. 32.
John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985). Henceforth cited as BAC.
See Florovsky, “The Idea of Creation in Christian Philosophy,” Eastern Churches Quarterly 8:3 (1949), 53–77; and Zizioulas, BAC, pp. 83–86. The phrase “ontological revolution” originates from Florovsky (unpublished notes in my possession). On personhood and mask, compare Florovsky, “Revelation, Philosophy and Theology,” 34, with BAC, pp. 31–35. Similar to Florovsky, Zizioulas also critiques Lossky for introducing an exaggerated “understanding of apophatic theology unknown to Greek patristic tradition”: see Zizioulas, “The Being of God and the Being of Anthropos,” Synaxis (1991), 21–22. For a careful comparative study of Lossky and Zizioulas on this question, see Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006).
For two Roman Catholic appreciations, see Gaëtan Baillargeon, Perspectives orthodoxes sur L’Eglise-communion: Îoeuvre de Jean Zizioulas (Montréal: Éditions Paulines, 1989);
and Paul McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993).
See Zizioulas, “Primacy in the Church: An Orthodox Approach,” Eastern Churches Journal 5:2 (Summer 1998), 7–20; and “Recent Discussions on Primacy in Orthodox Theology” in
Walter Kasper (ed.), The Petrine Ministry (Paulist Press, 2006), pp. 231–246. Zizioulas’s influence is apparent in the “Ravenna Document” of October 13, 2007, “Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church.” In his insistence that the issue of primacy requires doctrinal development on the part of the Orthodox, Zizioulas echoes the view of Florovsky: see “On the Upcoming Council of the Roman Catholic Church,” in Florovsky, Ecumenism II, 206 (original publication: “O predstoiashchem sobore Rimskoi Tserkvi,” in Vestnik Russkogo Studentchestogo Khristianskogo Dvizheniia no. 52, I [1959], 5–10). Florovsky is reported to have said at Amsterdam in 1948, “quéntre les deux Eglises, orthodoxe et catholique, il n’y avait au fond qu’une question, celle du Pape”: Charles Boyer, SJ, Le Movement Oecuménique: les Faits—le Dialogue (Rome: Gregorianum, 1976), p. 109.
BAC, p. 43. See also BAC, pp. 45–46, f. 41; and Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2006), p. 103 (henceforth cited as CO).
Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, ed. Douglas Knight (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2008), pp. ix–x.
— “Philosophy formulates the questions implied in human existence, and theology formulates the answers implied in divine self-manifestation under the guidance of the questions implied in human existence.” Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), p. 61; and see further, p. 64.
On secularism and ecumenism, see Daniel P. Payne and Jennifer M. Kent, “An Alliance of the Sacred: Prospects for a Catholic-Orthodox Partnership against Secularism in Europe,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 46:1 (Winter 2011), 41–66. For Benedict’s neopatristic ecumenism, see
Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Franscisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 140–141, 143: “Thomas Aquinas and the other great scholastics of the thirteenth century are ‘Fathers’ of a specifically Roman Catholic theology from which the Christian churches of the Reformation consider themselves completely separated and which, for the churches of the East, also expresses an alien mentality. But the teachers of the ancient Church represent a common past that, precisely as such, may well be a promise for the future. This thought must not be esteemed too lightly, for it is, in fact, to be regarded as the catalyst that can help to solve the problem of the relationship between patristic and modern theology… We are fairly certain today that, while the Fathers were not Roman Catholic as the thirteenth or nineteenth century would have understood the term, they were, nonetheless, ‘Catholic’ and their Catholicism extended to the very canon of the New Testament itself… Who would deny that Thomas Aquinas and Luther are each Father of only one part of Christianity? … And so the question remains: If these Fathers can be Fathers for only a part of Christianity, must we not turn our attention to those who were once the Fathers of all?”
Zizioulas has also celebrated Florovsky’s achievement in an article, John Zizioulas, “π. Γεώργιος Φλωρόφσκυ: ὁ ο ἰ κουμενικός διδάσκαλος,” Θεολογία 81: 4 (2010), 31–48.
The representative work here is Paul Valliere, Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov: Orthodox Theology in a New Key (Edinburgh: T&T Clark; Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000). Though not Orthodox himself, Valliere has recently exercised a strong influence on Orthodox academics in the English-speaking world with his championing of what he calls “liberal Orthodoxy.”
Emilianos Timiadis, “Georges Florovsky 1893–1979,” in Ioan Bria and Dagmar Heller (eds.), Ecumenical Pilgrims: Profiles of Pioueers in Christian Reconciliation (Geneva: WCC, 1995), pp. 94–95. Robert Bird registers a similar ecumenical caution regarding the attempt of such scholars as Valliere and Rowan Williams to promote the thought of Bulgakov: “The point would seem to be that Bulgakov’s theological method represents a victory of modern, liberal values…a politically and culturally acceptable replacement for establishment Orthodoxy. But if any encounter is to occur between East and West, such replacement is inadmissible.” Robert Bird, “The Tragedy of Russian Religious Philosophy: Sergei Bulgakov and the Future of Orthodox Theology,” in J. Sutton and W. P. van den Bercken (eds.), Orthodox Christianity aud Contemporary Europe: Selected Papers of the International Conference Held at the University of Leeds, England, in June 2001 (Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2003), pp. 223–224.
Indeed, there are some among the Athonites who would count Florovsky himself as a father of the church: see Alexander Golitzin, “‘A Contemplative and a Liturgist’: Father Georges Florovsky on the Corpus Diouysiacum,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 43:2 (1999), 131–161, at 158. For an appreciation by an Orthodox ecumenist of latitudinarian strain with long experience in the WCC, see Thomas Fitzgerald, “Florovsky at Amsterdam: his ‘ecumenical aims and doubts,” Sobornost, 21:1 (1999), 37–51.
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Baker, M. (2014). Neopatristic Synthesis and Ecumenism: Toward the “Reintegration” of Christian Tradition. In: Krawchuk, A., Bremer, T. (eds) Eastern Orthodox Encounters of Identity and Otherness. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137377388_16
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