The Charges and the Defence

§4.2 flagship (b). Named Orthodox critics — Prof. Alexei Osipov, Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev, Priest Daniil Sysoev, Feliks Karelin, the writer publishing as Archbishop Sergei Antiminsov, and the traditionalist journal Blagodatny Ogon — have charged Men with syncretism, modernism, a defective Christology, crypto-Catholicism, and a formation that slights repentance and asceticism. Named defenders — Bishop Seraphim Sigrist, Michael Plekon, Wallace Daniel, Yves Hamant, Randall Poole — answer each. This file states both at full strength and adjudicates neither.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Moscow Patriarchate)

The Frame

Two facts should be established before the charges, because they bound the dispute at both ends.

The Church has not censured him. The Moscow Patriarchate has never condemned Men or his writings, never placed his books under any prohibition, and never disciplined him in his lifetime. He was buried by his diocesan metropolitan; the Orthodox Encyclopedia, the Patriarchate’s own reference work, carries a substantial and non-hostile article on him; and his works circulate freely (OrthodoxWiki, art. “Alexander Men,” noting that “the Moscow Patriarchate has not censured Men or his writings”; Православная энциклопедия, art. “Мень”). This is a decisive difference from the case of Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, whose sophiology was formally condemned in 1935 by both Moscow and ROCOR (see Fr. Sergius Bulgakov). Nothing of that kind has happened to Men.

Nor has the Church endorsed him. The same Orthodox Encyclopedia article records the qualification that Men sometimes expressed views “which cannot be characterized as unconditionally shared by the entire fullness of the Church” — a formula of considerable precision, which neither condemns nor commends but marks his opinions as opinions (Православная энциклопедия, art. “Мень Александр Владимирович”). [Disputed: the article attributes this qualification to the Patriarch; the sources consulted here do not establish with certainty whether the reference is to Patriarch Alexy II or to the message from Patriarch Kirill read at the Fifth “Men Readings” on 9 September 2010, and the exact wording of the original could not be verified against the primary text.]

The dispute below therefore takes place in the space between those two facts: a priest neither condemned nor endorsed, whose books are read everywhere and recommended by some and warned against by others.

The Charges, at Full Strength

1. Syncretism

The charge. That Men’s framework — the religions of humanity as stages of a single search fulfilled in Christ — relativizes the uniqueness of the Incarnation and treats non-Christian religions as vehicles of saving truth. The traditionalist journal Blagodatny Ogon published the charge in this form, citing Men’s statements that “seeds of divine truth are scattered throughout all religions,” that God “opens himself differently to everyone,” including to Muhammad and to Hindu teachers, and that “in each religion there are sacred texts of high spiritual flight — for example, the Bhagavad Gita.” The author, Tatyana Petrova, a former follower, terms the result “theoretical super-ecumenism” which dilutes Orthodoxy with Western theology and rationalism (Благодатный огонь, “Куда способны увести наставления протоиерея Александра Меня”). [Disputed: Petrova’s quotations are drawn from a 1994 pamphlet by Mark Makarov collecting Men’s lectures and interviews rather than from his published books; the fidelity of that intermediate source is not independently established here.]

Priest Daniil Sysoev (1974–2009), the missionary priest later murdered in his Moscow church, went further, considering Men a heretic and listing nine beliefs he held incompatible with Orthodoxy, including syncretism, Manichaeism, acceptance of evolution, and rejection of biblical inerrancy (OrthodoxWiki, art. “Alexander Men”; summary in the Medium essay “The Theological and Ecclesiastical Controversy Surrounding Father Alexander Men”).

The force of the charge. It is not frivolous. Orthodoxy confesses one Incarnation, one Church, and salvation in Christ; a schema in which the Gita and the Gospel differ in degree along a single ascending line would indeed be a different religion. The critics are defending something the Church genuinely holds.

2. Modernism and a defective handling of Scripture

The charge. That Men adopted Western critical scholarship uncritically, subordinating the Church’s reading of Scripture to the academy’s; that he treated the Gospels as documents to be reconstructed rather than as the Church’s own word; and that his re-narration of the Gospel material softens what it should confess. The harshest formulation comes from the writer publishing as Archbishop Sergei Antiminsov, who accused Men of a lack of academic integrity, of denying biblical authority, of having “arbitrarily changed the wording and meaning of Scripture, thus diminishing the divinity of Christ,” of setting aside biblical miracle and eschatology, and of introducing “a spirit of demonic pride instead of a humble carrying of the cross”; he alleged that Men’s work reflected “Arianism, Manichaeism, Pelagianism, and Nestorianism” (“Aleksandr Men: Current Criticism and Defense,” East–West Church and Ministry Report). [Disputed: the identity of “Archbishop Sergei Antiminsov” is not established in the accessible sources and the name may be a pen-name; the charges are reported as they are made, with their source named as it presents itself.]

The force of the charge. The specific accusations of ancient heresies are extreme and are contested even by other critics of Men. But the underlying concern — that a life of Christ written in the modern narrative genre, using historical-critical tools, will be governed by the assumptions of that genre — is a serious concern with a long Orthodox pedigree, and it is the same concern that animates the wider Orthodox debate about the historical-critical method (see The Historical-Critical Method).

3. Crypto-Catholicism

The charge. That Men was, in substance, not an Orthodox but an Eastern-rite Catholic. Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev has argued precisely this — not that Men was a heretic, but that his liberal broad-mindedness caused him to lose the distinctiveness of Christianity, and that he was in effect an Eastern-rite Catholic (“Aleksandr Men: Current Criticism and Defense,” East–West Church and Ministry Report). Kuraev also expressed bewilderment at Men’s openness toward parapsychology, extrasensory perception, UFOs and astrology as subjects of discussion.

What is adduced for it. Men published through the Catholic-sponsored Brussels house Zhizn s Bogom; he was on friendly terms with Catholic scholars, one of whom (Yves Hamant) wrote his biography; his ecumenical hopes were expansive; and the KGB itself, in Andropov’s 1974 memorandum to the Central Committee, described him as heading “a group of pro-Catholic-minded priests” (English Wikipedia, art. “Alexander Men”; see Novaya Derevnya and the KGB).

The force of the charge. The Orthodox Church has examined and not received the Roman doctrines of papal supremacy and infallibility, the Filioque, and the Immaculate Conception (see Orthodoxy and Catholicism; The Filioque). A charge that a priest was materially Roman Catholic is therefore a serious charge and not a matter of taste.

4. A pastoral formation that slights repentance and asceticism

The charge. That Men’s catechesis emphasized breadth, culture and intellectual accessibility at the expense of repentance, the fear of God, and ascetic labor, and that converts so formed were left without defences. Tatyana Petrova makes the charge autobiographically: she attributes her own subsequent years in a sect to a formation under Men that had not given her what she needed (Благодатный огонь, “Куда способны увести наставления протоиерея Александра Меня”).

The force of the charge. This is the reservation that most resembles the traditionalist unease about Mother Maria of Paris (see St. Maria of Paris — The Contested Saint). Orthodoxy holds the ascetic and liturgical life at its center; a Christianity that is chiefly explanation is not Orthodoxy, whatever else it is.

The most consequential form of the criticism is not an accusation but a recommendation. Prof. Alexei Osipov of the Moscow Theological Academy and Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev — two of the most widely heard catechetical voices in the post-Soviet Russian Church — do not recommend Men’s books to those seeking to become acquainted with Orthodoxy (as reported in the survey of the controversy in the Medium essay “The Theological and Ecclesiastical Controversy Surrounding Father Alexander Men,” and in the Wikipedia summary of the criticism). For a body of work whose entire purpose was to introduce inquirers to the faith, that is the sharpest possible judgment, and it is delivered without any need for a formal censure.

The Defence, at Full Strength

1. The charges are not in the texts

Bishop Seraphim Sigrist, replying directly to the accusations of Arianism, Manichaeism, Pelagianism and Nestorianism, answers that they “are not” in Men’s actual work, which “evidences a very strong Christology”; that Men’s respectful engagement with evolution and with biblical criticism is common in Orthodox seminaries and unremarkable; and that Men’s universality is precisely his Orthodoxy — “Because of it, Father Men was in the truest sense Orthodox, because he was, in a word, simply Christian” (“Aleksandr Men: Current Criticism and Defense,” East–West Church and Ministry Report).

OrthodoxWiki adds the methodological complaint that Men’s critics “lack specific textual citations” — that the charges tend to be assertions about his tendency rather than demonstrations from his pages (OrthodoxWiki, art. “Alexander Men”).

2. The framework is Soloviev’s, and it is Russian Orthodox

Men’s schema of the history of religion as a search fulfilled in Christ is not an importation from Western liberalism but an inheritance from Vladimir Soloviev, to whom he dedicated the work, and from the Russian religious renaissance more broadly — Bulgakov, Berdyaev, Florensky (Randall A. Poole, “Fr. Alexander Men and the Traditions of Russian Religious Thought,” Northwestern University Forum, 2026, who argues that Men was “the best representative of the traditions of Russian religious thought” in the post-Stalinist period). On this reading the charge of syncretism is a charge against a whole Russian tradition, and should be argued at that level rather than by quotation-hunting in a catechetical lecture.

The defence concedes, and must concede, that this tradition is itself contested: the neo-patristic current of Florovsky and Lossky regarded the Solovievian inheritance as the problem (see Vladimir Lossky; Fr. Sergius Bulgakov). But that is an old and respectable intra-Orthodox argument, not a matter of heresy.

3. The conditions

Men wrote for readers who had been denied religious education for two generations, without a library, without an editor, without a legal publisher, and without the possibility of correction by peers. His defenders argue that a corpus produced under those conditions should be read as catechesis under siege, and judged by whether it brought people to the font and the chalice — which, by every account, it did in very large numbers (see The Small Groups and the Baptisms).

4. The ecclesial facts

He was ordained canonically, served thirty-two years without discipline, published in the Patriarchate’s journal, was buried by his metropolitan, has a respectful article in the Patriarchate’s encyclopedia, and is commemorated in an annual scholarly conference held with the blessing of the ruling hierarch of the Moscow diocese (Православная энциклопедия, art. “Мень”; on the “Men Readings,” see The Question of Glorification). Whatever the critics say, the Church has not acted, and has repeatedly acted in ways inconsistent with regarding him as outside her.

5. The scholarly assessment

The academic literature — Wallace Daniel, Yves Hamant, Michael Plekon, Elizabeth Roberts and Ann Shukman, Randall Poole — is broadly sympathetic, and treats Men as the most significant Russian Orthodox religious thinker of the late Soviet period. Michael Bourdeaux called him the “unofficial patriarch”; Mikhail Epstein ranked him the most prominent Orthodox Christian thinker of the 1970s–80s (as summarized in Poole, 2026).

Why This Collection Does Not Adjudicate

The reasons are those of METHODOLOGY §4.2, and three of them are specific to Men.

The dispute is live and the Church has not spoken. No Orthodox synod has assessed Men’s writings. The Orthodox Encyclopedia’s formula — views “which cannot be characterized as unconditionally shared by the entire fullness of the Church” — is precisely a refusal to close the question. For this collection to close it would be to claim an authority that the Russian Church has declined to exercise.

The reservations are principled. They touch the uniqueness of Christ, the authority of Scripture in the Church, the difference between Orthodoxy and Rome, and the necessity of repentance and ascesis. A treatment that dissolved them into obscurantism would fail both the critics and the reader.

And the defence is substantial. A priest who catechized thousands under persecution, wrote the books that carried a generation into the Church, was buried by his bishop and has never been censured is not disposed of by a list of charges either.

The rule this collection follows is therefore the same as in the Mother Maria file: state both sides at full strength, name the parties, pin the facts, and leave the weighing to the reader and to the Church’s continuing reception.

See Also

References

  • “Aleksandr Men: Current Criticism and Defense.” East–West Church and Ministry Report (eastwestreport.org/articles/ew07302.htm). (Feliks Karelin on the Jewish national calling and “double consciousness”; “Archbishop Sergei Antiminsov” on Arianism, Manichaeism, Pelagianism and Nestorianism, the alteration of Scripture and the “spirit of demonic pride”; Andrei Kuraev on parapsychology, ESP, UFOs and astrology and on Men as an Eastern-rite Catholic; Bishop Seraphim Sigrist’s defence and his judgment that Men’s work “evidences a very strong Christology.”)
  • OrthodoxWiki, art. “Alexander Men.” (Daniil Sysoev’s nine alleged incompatibilities, including evolution, rejection of biblical inerrancy and syncretism; the Moscow Patriarchate has not censured Men or his writings; critics lack specific textual citations; the fifteen-volume collected works.)
  • Благодатный огонь [Blagodatny Ogon], “Куда способны увести наставления протоиерея Александра Меня,” by Tatyana Petrova (blagogon.ru/digest/105). (Syncretism, “theoretical super-ecumenism,” the Bhagavad Gita quotation via Mark Makarov’s 1994 pamphlet, and the charge that Men’s formation slighted repentance and asceticism.)
  • Православная энциклопедия [Orthodox Encyclopedia], art. “Мень Александр Владимирович” (pravenc.ru/text/2562996.html). (The qualification that Men expressed views “which cannot be characterized as unconditionally shared by the entire fullness of the Church”; criticism of his openness to non-Orthodox traditions and of his approach to Jewish audiences; the popularity of his works; funeral and burial; the “Men Readings” since 2006.)
  • Kriger, Boris (Bruce). “The Theological and Ecclesiastical Controversy Surrounding Father Alexander Men: A Critical Analysis.” The Orthodox Faith (Medium). (Survey of the controversy: accusations of syncretism, Manichaean influence and theological liberalism; Osipov and Kuraev not recommending his books; Sysoev’s charge of heresy.)
  • Poole, Randall A. “Fr. Alexander Men and the Traditions of Russian Religious Thought.” Northwestern University Forum in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought, 2026. (Men as the best representative of the traditions of Russian religious thought in the post-Stalinist period; Bourdeaux’s and Epstein’s assessments; the Solovievian framework.)
  • Daniel, Wallace L. Russia’s Uncommon Prophet: Father Aleksandr Men and His Times. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016.
  • Roberts, Elizabeth, and Ann Shukman, eds. Christianity for the Twenty-First Century: The Life and Work of Alexander Men. London: SCM Press, 1996.
  • Hamant, Yves. Alexander Men: A Witness for Contemporary Russia (A Man for Our Times). Trans. Steven Bigham. Oakwood Publications, 1995.
  • METHODOLOGY.md §4.1–4.2, this repository.