08 — The Contested Legacy

§4.2 flagship (b). Men is deeply revered by many Orthodox and sharply criticized by others, and the criticism is not marginal: named theologians and priests of the Russian Church have accused him of syncretism, modernism, crypto-Catholicism, a defective handling of Scripture, and worse. This section states those charges in their proponents’ own terms, states the defence at full strength, and adjudicates nothing. It also names — as a fact and not as a position to be balanced — the antisemitic strain in the attacks on him.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Moscow Patriarchate)

What Kind of Dispute This Is

Men’s case is closely analogous to the one the repository treats in St. Maria of Paris — The Contested Saint, and the discipline followed here is that file’s discipline. It is not a source-critical problem: we have Men’s books, his lectures, and his critics’ published texts. It is a problem of contested reception — whether a figure many Orthodox regard as the outstanding Russian evangelist of the twentieth century is instead, as others hold, a modernist whose work should not be recommended to inquirers.

Three lines are drawn at the outset, following METHODOLOGY §4.1 and §4.2.

Men’s theology is his. He was a priest and a writer, not a council. His distinctive theses — the history of religion as a single search fulfilled in Christ, his personalism, his openness to biblical criticism and to evolution, his ecumenical hopes — are expounded here as his own theological work, attributed to him, and never presented as the teaching of the Orthodox Church. Where the Church has spoken dogmatically, her teaching stands and is not revised by anything in this collection.

The intra-Orthodox dispute gets both sides. The criticism of Men is a live dispute within Orthodoxy between people who are all inside the Church. It is therefore given the §4.2 treatment: charges stated at full strength with their proponents named, defence stated at full strength with its proponents named, no verdict.

The antisemitic attacks are not a side. Some of what has been said and written against Men is not theological criticism at all but the use of his Jewish descent as an accusation. That is named for what it is. It is not weighed against anything, and it is not permitted to contaminate the treatment of his serious critics, who are entitled to be read as making arguments.

Section Contents

• The Charges and the Defence — the flagship: syncretism, modernism, crypto-Catholicism, Christology, asceticism; the critics named; the defence stated
• Ecumenism, Scripture, and the Antisemitic Attacks — the two substantive fronts, and the antisemitic strain named as what it is

See Also

• St. Maria of Paris — The Contested Saint — the repository’s model for a contested modern reception
• 04 — The Writings — the texts every charge and every defence is about
• 09 — Veneration and Assessment — where the dispute leaves his standing
• The Ecumenism Debate — the wider intra-Orthodox argument
• METHODOLOGY.md — §4.1 confessional standpoint, §4.2 both-sides scope