Overview of the Russian Religious Renaissance of the Twentieth Century Dr. Paul Ladouceur Guest Lecture, Patriarchal Orthodox Theological Academy of Toronto, September 20, 2018 Annexes: Principal Personalities of the Russian Religious Renaissance & Important Milestones of the Russian Religious Renaissance My subject today is a religious renaissance in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. It is from this renaissance that almost all vibrant and fruitful Orthodox theology of the twentieth century, directly or indirectly, owes its origin. Russian Theology in the Late Nineteenth Century By the late nineteenth century, Russian theology existed in three broad religious and theological traditions, with complex and often conflicting relationships among them: Formal church or academic theology was the theology taught in the seminaries and theological academies and featured in official church publications. Academic theology suffered from major constraints. Externally, it was constrained by the close relationship of the Russian Orthodox Church with the imperial regime and was subject to censorship, while internally it suffered from Western methodological, philosophical and theological influences, especially scholasticism in dogmatic theology. Despite the constraints, the achievements of Russian academic theology were considerable in some domains, such as Biblical studies and translations and studies of the Fathers of the Church. Official church theology was marked by the repression of original thought and suspicion or outright rejection of the possibility of real dialogue with issues and thinking outside the Russian Orthodox Church. Most of the leaders of the Russian religious renaissance were lay philosophers and theologians, as well as artistic and literary figures, operating outside the formal framework of the church and hence freer to express themselves than academic theologians. Nonetheless in the early twentieth century this group included one priest, Fr Pavel Florensky, and Sergius Bulgakov, who became the most prominent of this group, was ordained in 1918. The leaders of the religious renaissance were part of a broad grouping within the educated echelons of Russian society known as the intelligentsia. The Russian intelligentsia was not educated people in general, but rather a broad intellectual, social and political movement characterized by several key features, notably a deep concern for Russia’s social problems, especially the situation of the poor and the oppressed; and a critical and even hostile attitude towards the government and the aristocracy, which maintained oppressive and unjust political and social structures. For many intelligenty, this configuration of ideas coalesced around one 2 central goal: the abolition of the monarchy and with it the entire aristocratic and autocratic socio-political structure of Russian society, and its replacement with a modern social, economic and political system inspired by Western models. Another characteristic of much of the intelligentsia was opposition to the church, at least to the church’s role in society because of its close association with the detested imperial regime. The failure of the imperial regime to move decisively towards genuine political and social reform, especially after the aborted revolution of 1905, served to radicalise even further wide segments of the intelligentsia, of whom the most radical were the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky. By the late nineteenth century many in the Russian upper classes, both the aristocracy and educated persons from lower social groups, had turned away from the church and from Christianity in general. The religious intelligentsia was thus intermediary between the church and the non-Christian intelligentsia, a group hard put to establish its credibility both to the “right” and to the “left.” To the “right,” the Russian Orthodox Church refused to see the religious intelligentsia as loyal “sons and daughters of the church,” and there was little contact between the Russian Orthodox Church and even the Christian intelligentsia. The Russian Orthodox Church looked askance at the rather personalised image of Christianity held by many Christian intellectuals and at their nominal or even non-existent adherence to the Orthodox Church. To the “left,” vis-à-vis the non-Christian intelligentsia, the religious intelligentsia sought to inject a Christian perspective and voice into the debates on Russia’s future, to be Christian witnesses among the intelligentsia. But for the non-Christian intelligentsia, Christianity simply had nothing to offer to the debate about Russia’s future. A related aspect of the religious intelligentsia was that it was never able to reach widely into Russian society. It remained a brilliant but mostly elite movement, largely restricted to the intellectual and literary circles of Saint Petersburg and, to a lesser extent, Moscow and Kiev. The third theological tradition was the continuity of Orthodox ascetic and spiritual theology, the mystical theology of Saint Seraphim of Sarov (1754-1833), the revival of hesychastic spirituality after the publication the Slavonic and Russian editions of the Philokalia, the startsi (elders) of Optino Monastery (between the 1830s and 1923), the saintly bishops Ignatius Briantchaninov (1807-1867) and Theophanes the Recluse (1815-1894), and manifested in the popular book The Way of the Pilgrim (1884) There were some contacts among the three streams of the Russian Orthodox theological tradition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but for the most part their exchanges were marked by misunderstanding and conflict. A Christian Intelligentsia The major figures of the Russian religious renaissance, sometimes referred to as “the Godseekers”, included many philosophers, lawyers, historians and publicists, and also literary figures, novelists, poets, artists and literary critics. Vladimir Soloviev was the most important single figure of the renaissance. Soloviev’s audacious and powerful ideas set the tone for a great deal of Russian Christian thought from his Lectures on Godmanhood in 1878 to the end of World War II. 3 Few of the Russian religious renaissance personalities were theologians in the modern sense, although several moved gradually into the theological domain, such as Sergius Bulgakov, initially an economist-philosopher. Pavel Florensky was a true polymath, at once a philosopher, mathematician, linguist, scientist and theologian. There were two broad groups among the Christian thinkers and writers in terms of relations with the Russian Orthodox Church. The first group, numerous prior to World War I, were on the fringes of the church or clearly estranged from the church. The most well-known personalities of this group included Soloviev and the novelist Leo Tolstoy, together with those loosely associated under the banner of the “new religious consciousness.” The second group consisted of those in formal relation with the church, which included initially only one priest, Fr Pavel Florensky, ordained in 1911. As a result of the “return to the church” movement prior to World War I, this group expanded slowly prior to the Revolution and more dramatically among the Christian intelligentsia in exile in the 1920s. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the novelists Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) and Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) expressed in their writings a fundamentally Christian view of Russia. The focus of both novelists was the search for meaning in life, which they saw in Christianity. There are important differences, however, between the two novelists. Tolstoy had a rather rationalist view of Christianity: he denied the divinity of Christ yet at the same time believed in Christ’s teachings as though Christ were indeed divine. Tolstoy was a moralist who accepted neither the church nor the state nor secularised society and he remained aloof from the institutional church. Conversely, in his later years Dostoyevsky’s faith was solidly Orthodox and he was closer to the church than Tolstoy. In the early years of the twentieth century, disenchantment with the failure of positivism, Marxism and other non-Christian or anti-Christian philosophies to account properly for the fullness of human existence, especially the human thirst for the absolute, the transcendental and the eternal, led several former atheists and Marxists to look to Christianity and to the Orthodox Church. Among these figured four leading Marxists, Nicolas Berdyaev, Sergius Bulgakov, Simeon Frank and Peter Struve. Both Nicolas Berdyaev (1874-1948) and Sergius Bulgakov (1871-1944) initially stayed in Russia after the triumph of the Bolsheviks in the Revolution of November 1917 and the civil war which ensued. In December 1922 the Bolshevik government expelled Bulgakov and Berdyaev and their families to Western Europe, together with other prominent opposition intellectuals. By 1925 both had settled in Paris. In addition to the four leading Marxists who returned to Christianity, several other prominent members of the Russian intelligentsia also reconciled with the Orthodox Church after a period of estrangement. These include the philosopher Nicolas Lossky (1870-1965), father of the more well-known Vladimir Lossky. Elizabeth Skobtsova (née Pilenko, Mother Maria, Saint Maria of Paris, 1891-1945) returned to the church in Paris in 1926. She was arrested in 1943 for helping Jews in German-occupied Paris during World War II and died in March 1945 in the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp in Germany. 4 Some Key Ideas of the Russian Religious Renaissance The dominant theme of the renaissance revolved around a search for a principle of “total unity,” a single principle unifying all existence. “Total unity” found its most dramatic expression in the ideas of Divine Sophia, whose presence Vladimir Soloviev claimed to have experienced in several visions, including one in the British Museum, while doing research on Sophia, and another in the Egyptian desert. The idea Divine Sophia or the Wisdom of God underwent considerable transformation in the thinking of Pavel Florensky and Sergius Bulgakov, who conceived of Sophia as the principal element linking God and creation. Other key ideas of the religious renaissance include Godmanhood (bogochelovechestvo), the implications for humanity and the cosmos of Christ, the Incarnation of the Logos of God; sobornost, the principle of conciliarity in the Church, based on unity and love; the Church as a universal expression of God’s love of his creation and the instrument of his plan for salvation; the uniqueness and infinite value of the human person; Christian moral philosophy or ethics in such crucial domains as legal, social and political theory, major preoccupations in the fatal years prior to the revolutions of 1917; apophatism or negative theology, a recognition of the limits of human knowledge about God; and the continuity or lack of meaningful distinction between philosophy and theology – hence the name “religious philosophy” attributed to many of the thinkers of this period. Soloviev’s ideas about Divine Sophia are generally considered to be outside the limits of Christian dogma. He was accused of seeing divine Sophia as a kind of fourth, feminine divine hypostasis but he defended himself against this accusation. Soloviev himself never considered that he was deviating from the Orthodox faith and it is unfortunate that later interest focused largely on his mystical experiences and his unconventional ideas of Sophia, the world-soul and the eternal feminine, distracting attention from equally if not more significant aspects of his thought, such as his Christian moral philosophy in areas such as law, social and political theology. Revolution and Exile Many of the Russian émigrés fleeing from the revolution initially arrived in Constantinople, Sofia and Belgrade, but few stayed long in Constantinople, while Sofia and Belgrade remained important émigré centres in the inter-war years, especially for more conservative political and ecclesiastical groups. Berlin and Prague quickly became the principal centres of the exiled Russian intelligentsia. But most of the former Christian intelligentsia soon departed for Paris, especially after the founding of the Saint Sergius Theological Institute in 1925. The initial faculty of Saint Sergius included the best minds of Russian theology in exile. Fr Sergius Bulgakov headed the school and he became professor of dogmatic theology. Among the younger staff members prior to World War II were Nicholas Afanasiev (canon law and ecclesiology; 1893-1966),), Georges Florovsky (patristics; 1893-1979), Cyprian Kern (liturgy and patristics; 1899-1960), and Leon Zander (philosophy; 1893-1964). Once in exile, many religious intellectuals of the pre-revolutionary era returned to the Orthodox Church, joining those who had returned to the church prior to World War I. 5 Nicolas Berdyaev’s major philosophical-theological themes during this period are the primal significance of the human person and its correlates, freedom and creativity; and analysis of the Russian revolution, Marxism and modernity. Berdyaev’s broad spiritual and intellectual culture and his Christian-inspired but not always explicitly Christian thinking on human existence and the modern world touched sensitive chords in European circles from the late 1930s until about the 1960s. During this period he was by far the most well known modern Orthodox religiousphilosophical thinker, but his popularity faded considerably in the last decades of the twentieth century. Undoubtedly Berdyaev’s failure to see in the Church Fathers the true source of Christian philosophy, together with a perception that he was an existentialist philosopher, contributed to the decline of his star in the wake of the revival of patristic theology in both Orthodox and non-Orthodox circles in the second half of the twentieth century. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Russian intellectuals in Western Europe had increasing contacts with sympathetic Western Christians – Anglicans, Catholics and Protestants. The nature of the church and the significance of ecumenism emerged as major areas of reflection and engagement. A number of the leading Russian theologians were very active in the ecumenical movement beginning in the late 1920s, especially Sergius Bulgakov, Georges Florovsky, Leon Zander and Nicolas Zernov, with whom was associated Fr Lev Gillet (1893-1980) (A Monk of the Eastern Church), a French Catholic priest who became Orthodox in 1928. The Decline of Religious Philosophy One of the most striking aspects of modern Orthodox theology is the rapid decline of the type of philosophical-theological thought represented by the leaders of the religious renaissance, even among theologians of Russian origin in exile. Several factors account for this development. First, the exile situation itself. Cut off from its roots in Russia, this mode of thought and its native social, cultural and political context were simply too foreign in the setting of intellectual, literary and personal exile in which the leaders of the religious renaissance found themselves after 1920. The brilliant but exotic flower of Russian religious thought could not bloom for long when it was transplanted unto a far-away soil. Religious philosophy developed in the intellectual ferment of the late imperial regime and it presented Christian perspectives on the future of Russia. This context was no longer relevant in exile. In exile, the Christian intellectuals were a poor social, cultural and religious minority in countries dominated by Western culture and Western Christianity. Secondly, it proved difficult to communicate the major interests and themes of Russian religious thought beyond the Russian context itself. With the exception of the books of Nicolas Berdyaev and some works of Sergius Bulgakov, during the 1930s and in the immediate post-war years, virtually all writings of the Russian exiles were published only in Russian, except those of Berdyaev and some by Bulgakov. This limited access to Russian Christian thinking by nonRussian audiences. With the growing internationalization of Orthodox theology in the second half of the twentieth century, Russian religious thought appeared to many as a somewhat provincial and dated attempt to develop a modern Orthodox theology. Thirdly, in the exile setting certain internal weaknesses and inadequacies in the religious philosophical-theological approach to Orthodoxy became more evident, especially its inadequate grounding in patristic theology, the Byzantine liturgical tradition, church history and 6 Orthodox spirituality. For many of the younger generation of Russian theologians, especially Georges Florovsky (1893-1979) and Vladimir Lossky (1903-1958), the major ideas of religious renaissance – notably all-unity and sophiology,– were perceived as too dependent on Western philosophy, too speculative in nature and too distant from Orthodox tradition contained in patristic thought, especially the theology of the Greek and Byzantine Fathers. In addition, the passing of generations weakened the mode of philosophical-theological thinking represented by the exiled leaders of the religious renaissance. The successors of the leaders of the renaissance, especially those of Sergius Bulgakov, were unable to sustain the intellectual momentum and creativity of the older generation, nor to communicate to a younger generation educated largely in the West the enthusiasm of the religious renaissance for ideas such as allunity and Divine Wisdom. Finally, for the younger Orthodox theologians, the gap between the approach and ideas of the philosopher-theologians and patristic theology was simply too great to satisfy the criterion of faithfulness to Orthodox tradition, and they set out to re-establish theology in more direct continuity with the patristic thinking. By the end of World War II, this alternate project for the renewal of Orthodox thought, centred on a return to patristic sources, was already well advanced, thanks to the work of Georges Florovsky and Vladimir Lossky in particular, as well others who promoted a revival of Palamite theology in Orthodoxy. This theological movement became known as neopatristic theology or the neopatristic synthesis. Despite the decline of religious thought, many of its basic ideas have carried forward in neopatristic theology, especially for example concerning the church (conciliarity and the universal nature of the church), the theology of the human person, and divine presence in creation. Greek Theology and the Russian Religious Renaissance Greek theology has no equivalent of Russian religious philosophy.in fact little of the work of the Russian religious philosophers and theologians is known in Greece, in part because there are few translations into Greek, with the exception of works of Nicolas Berdyaev and short extracts of others. As a result, for the most part Russian religious thought remains largely outside the purview of theology in Greece. Chronology provides a partial explanation. By the time that younger Greek theologians began to be aware of Orthodox theology outside Greece in the late 1950s and early 1960s, religious philosophy was in sharp decline and had already been largely superseded by the neopatristic approach to theology. No doubt too, the particularly Russian and philosophical context of religious thought had little attraction in Greece, whereas Greek theologians were more at ease with a theological approach which stressed Greek Fathers of the Church. Another reason for the absence of religious philosophy in Greece is that while eighteenth and nineteenth century Western philosophy, especially German idealism, had a considerable impact on Russian religious thought, it did not significantly influence Greek academic theology, which remained deeply enmeshed in a scholastic approach to theology well into the second half of the twentieth century. Vladimir Lossky was the key link between Russian theology and Greek theology, especially after the publication in Greek translation in 1964 of his classic work The Mystical Theology of the 7 Eastern Church. The neopatristic theology of Georges Florovsky and Vladimir Lossky, together with other patristically–included Orthodox theologians, served as models for what became known as the “theology of the 60s” in Greece, featuring such prominent Greek theologians as John Romanides, John Zizioulas and Nikos Nissiotis, and the philosopher Christos Yannaras. Conclusion The Russian religious renaissance of the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century represents an apex of Orthodox thought in the centuries after the fall of the Byzantine Empire. The leaders of the renaissance inherited the spirit of theological reflection from the mid-nineteenth century Slavophiles, but considerably broadened the scope of issues under consideration to a full range of dogmatic and moral questions, in response both to their own inquisitive spirit and to the needs of the times. They were Christian voices in the farreaching and increasingly urgent debates on the future of Russia, debates dominated by nonChristian and anti-Christian philosophies. The Russian Orthodox Church and its institutions, including the theological academies, were beholden to the imperial regime and proved incapable of responding to the existence of religious thought outside its own confines. The Church was unable to find common ground with other Christian groups in Russia. There were major differences in the conception of Christianity between the church officials and the leaders of the religious renaissance. But the Christian intelligentsia did not, like the positivists, materialists and other atheists who made up the majority of the intelligentsia, dismiss Christ and Christianity outright. All adhered to basic Christian and idealist values such as the uniqueness and inviolability of the person and the necessity of ethical norms, they accepted Christ and were sincere seekers after truth. The leaders of the Russian religious renaissance reflected an engagement with contemporary problems from a Christian perspective; they offered an applied theology. In the end, the philosopher-theologians and those grouped the new religious consciousness had a significant impact on the revolutionary movement – or the Russian Orthodox Church prior to the revolution. The most radical and violent faction of the intelligentsia, the Bolsheviks, triumphed in the October Revolution of 1917 and immediately turned against the more moderate intelligentsia, even their erstwhile socialist allies, eliminating them as potential ideological and political rivals. The fall of the imperial regime in the February Revolution of 1917 freed the Russian Orthodox Church from its subservience to the state. The Moscow Council of 1917-1918 of the Russian Church embodied the type of open attitude and reform spirit that the Christian intelligentsia had hoped for. This Council marked a partial reconciliation between the Church and leading representatives of the Russian religious renaissance. This reconciliation deepened in the exile situation in which many of the philosopher-theologians soon found themselves. But in exile the mode of theology represented by religious philosophy did not survive long after the passing of the older generation of Russian thinkers. By 1950 leadings figures such as Nicolas Berdyaev and Sergius Bulgakov had passed away and a younger generation of Orthodox theologians, led by Georges Florovsky and Vladimir Lossky, turned to patristic inspiration as the authentic and enduring source of Orthodox theology. 8 Patriarchal Orthodox Theological Academy of Toronto The Russian Religious Renaissance of the Twentieth Century Dr Paul Ladouceur September 20, 2018 ANNEXES PRINCIPAL PERSONALITIES OF THE RUSSIAN RELIGIOUS RENAISSANCE THE SLAVOPHILES THE EXILES Peter Tchaadaev (1794-1856) Alexis Khomiakov (1804-1860) Ivan Kireevsky (1806-1856) Alexander Ivanov (1806-1858) Nicholas Gogol (1809-1852) *Nicolas Lossky** (1870-1965) Peter Struve (1870-1944) *Fr. Sergius Bulgakov (1871-1944) Nicolas Berdyaev (1874-1948) *Anton Kartashev (1875-1960) Simon Franck (1877-1954) St. Ilya Fundaminsky (1880-1942) *Fr. Vasile (Basil) Zenkovsky (1881-1962) Myrra Lot-Borodine (1882-1957) *Georges Fedotov (1886-1951) *Nicholas Arseniev** (1888-1977) Nadejda Gorodetsky (1890-1985) St. Maria of Paris (Mother Maria Skobtsov) (1891-1944) *Constantine Mochulsky (1892-1948) Lev Zander (1893-1964) *Vladimir Weidle (1895-1979) Nicolas Zernov (1898-1980) *Fr. Cyprian Kern (1899-1960) *Peter Kovalevsky (1901-1978) Maxim Kovalevsky (1903-1988) *Constantine Andronikof (1916-1997) THE RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHERS Theodore Bukharev (1829-1871) Nicolas Federov (1828-1903) Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) Constantine Leontiev (1831-1891) Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900) Vasili Rosanov (1856-1919) Sergius Troubetzkoy (1862-1905) Eugene Troubetzkoy (1863-1920) Fr. Pavel Florensky (1882-1937) * Associated with the St Sergius Institute in Paris. ** Associated with St Vladimir’s Seminary in New York.
