Bonn, Paris, and the Two Doctorates

Between 1964 and 1971 Yannaras studied in Bonn and Paris and took two doctorates: one in theology at Thessaloniki in 1970, on the ontological content of the notion of the person, which became Person and Eros; one in letters at the Sorbonne, on the metaphysics of the body in St John Climacus. An earlier attempt at a doctorate in Athens was refused. He never held a chair in a Greek theological faculty; the chair he held for twenty years was in philosophy, at a school of social and political sciences.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox

Leaving for Europe

Yannaras left the Zoë brotherhood in 1964 and “dedicated himself for some years to philosophical and theological studies in his own country and abroad (Bonn and Paris)” (Basilio Petrà, Christos Yannaras: The Apophatic Horizon of Ontology, trans. Norman Russell [Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2019], 1). His first degree was in theology from the University of Athens; the postgraduate work was in philosophy, at Bonn and at Paris (Norman Russell, “Modern Greek Theologians and the Greek Fathers,” Philosophy & Theology 18, no. 1 [2006]: 82).

The Paris years are usually dated 1967–1970. The Saint-Serge memorial notice adds a detail worth having: he worshipped at the crypt on the rue Daru, under its rector Fr Pierre Struve, and from the 1970s to the 1990s he was a recurrent speaker at Saint-Serge and at the Orthodox congresses of Western Europe (Institut Saint-Serge, “In memoriam: Christos Yannaras [1935–2024],” 2024). This matters for the shape of his thought: the Paris of the late 1960s was still saturated with the influence of Vladimir Lossky, who had died in 1958, and it was there that Yannaras met at first hand both the Russian émigré theology and the philosophical currents — Heidegger, Sartre, phenomenology — that he would spend his life setting against each other (Nicolas Prevelakis, “Theologies as Alternative Histories: John Romanides and Chrestos Yannaras,” Classics@ 10, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University; Andrew Louth, “Some Recent Works by Christos Yannaras in English Translation,” Modern Theology 25, no. 2 [2009]: 336–37, on Lossky’s continuing influence in Paris when Yannaras arrived).

The Athens Refusal

Before either successful doctorate, Yannaras submitted a thesis to the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and it was rejected — on a charge of atheism. The datum is reported by Jonathan Cole, his translator, in the Political Theology Network memorial: “His first PhD attempt at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens was rejected on charges of ‘atheism’”; unable to secure a post in the Greek theological schools, he found an academic home only later, and elsewhere (Cole, “Remembering Christos Yannaras [1935–2024],” Political Theology Network, 2024). [Disputed: this episode is well known in Greek accounts but is thinly documented in English; Cole is the source used here, and the date and exact grounds of the refusal are not given by him.]

The episode is not merely biographical color. Louth notes, as a plain fact about Yannaras’s standing, that “he has never held a position in one of the university faculties of theology” (Louth, 331). A theologian whose life’s work was a critique of academic theology spent his career outside the academic theology he criticized.

The Thessaloniki Doctorate, 1970

The doctorate in theology was taken at the Faculty of Theology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in 1970. The thesis was entitled To ontologikon periechomenon tēs theologikēs ennoias tou prosōpou [The Ontological Content of the Theological Notion of the Person] and was printed in Athens in 1970 (Louth, 336 and n. 11 — Louth records with thanks that his own copy of “this rare book” was lent to him by Rowan Williams).

It was a short work — “of less than 100 pages, written in katharevousa (‘purified’) Greek, as would have been required then for a university thesis” (Louth, 336). It is the seed of everything: through a journal version in Devkalion in 1974, an edition in 1976, and the “fourth edition” of 1987, it grew into the nearly four-hundred-page To prosōpo kai ho erōs [Person and Eros] (Athens: Domos, 1987), translated by Norman Russell as Person and Eros (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2007). Louth’s comparison of thesis and final book is the best short account of how Yannaras worked: the argument and structure are already there in 1970; what the successive revisions add is philosophy (Plato, Saussure, Wittgenstein), a much heavier use of Maximus and Dionysius, and a far more substantiated engagement with scholastic theology (Louth, 336–38).

The 1970 thesis had one immediate and consequential reader in England. Rowan Williams, then at the beginning of his career, devoted a long study to it: “The Theology of Personhood: A Study of the Thought of Christos Yannaras,” Sobornost 6 (Winter 1972): 415–430. Williams’s essay is admiring and unsparing in about equal measure, and is treated in The Ontology of the Person and in Section 08.

The Sorbonne Doctorate

The second doctorate was taken in the Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines of the Sorbonne (Paris IV), with a thesis entitled La métaphysique du corps chez saint Jean Climaque, supervised by the great Hellenist Marguerite Harl (Institut Saint-Serge, “In memoriam,” 2024). [Disputed: the year. Petrà writes that Yannaras "was able to pursue a doctorate in the Arts Faculty of the Sorbonne (1970)" (Petrà, 1); the Saint-Serge memorial notice and French bibliographic records give 1971. The two are probably describing the submission and the defence, but this guide does not know that and gives both.] The Greek version was published as Hē metaphysikē tou sōmatos: Spoudē ston Iōannē tēs Klimakos [The Metaphysics of the Body: A Study on John Climacus] (Athens: Dōdōnē, 1971).

It is worth pausing on what this second thesis was not. A widespread shorthand has it that Yannaras took a Paris doctorate on Heidegger and Dionysius the Areopagite. [Corrected: the Heidegger–Areopagite book was an earlier and separate work — Hē theologia tēs apousias kai tēs agnōsias tou Theou (Athens, 1967), translated into French as De l'absence et de l'inconnaissance de Dieu d'après les écrits aréopagitiques et Martin Heidegger, trans. Jacques Touraille, preface by Olivier Clément (Paris: Cerf) — not the Sorbonne thesis, which was on John Climacus.] The Cerf edition is dated 1970 in some catalogue records and 1971 in others, and this guide has not been able to resolve which is the true year of issue; both dates appear in the French review literature indexed on Persée. Rowan Williams, writing in 1972, describes the 1967 Greek book as “now available in a French translation” (Williams, “The Theology of Personhood,” 415–16).

That the young Yannaras’s Sorbonne work was on St John Climacus — on the body, in the Ladder — is important for reading him rightly. His theology of eros and of the body is not, in origin, a borrowing from French existentialism; it comes out of a monastic ascetic text, and he read that text closely enough to write a doctorate on it (see Eros, Ekstasis, and the Body; The Philokalia).

Panteion, 1982–2002

Excluded from the theological faculties, Yannaras was appointed to the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens, where he was Professor of Philosophy from 1982 to 2002 and thereafter Professor Emeritus (Wikipedia, “Christos Yannaras,” and the standard biographical notice reproduced on OrthodoxWiki; Louth, 331, describes “the post from which he recently retired” as “a chair of philosophy in the Pantion University of Social and Political Sciences”). Cole describes the chair as one in political science; the discrepancy is minor and probably reflects the shape of the faculty rather than a disagreement about the facts (Cole, “Remembering Christos Yannaras,” 2024). [Disputed: whether the chair is best described as philosophy or political philosophy; the university's own designation, followed here, is philosophy.]

He was a layman all his life, and married; the announcement of his death was made by his son Spyros (OrthoChristian, “Christos Yannaras, noted professor and theologian, reposes in the Lord,” 26 August 2024).

Honors and Death

Yannaras received honorary doctorates from several institutions, among them St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, the University of Belgrade, and Hellenic College Holy Cross. In 2019 the Ecumenical Patriarch conferred on him the lay office (offikion) of Archon Grand Rhetor of the Holy Great Church of Christ (OrthoChristian, 26 August 2024).

He died on 24 August 2024, aged 89. [Disputed: the place. Several Greek and international reports give the island of Kythira; OrthoChristian's notice says Athens. The funeral was held on Thursday 29 August 2024 in the Church of St Irene, Athens, and he was buried in the First Cemetery of Athens.] The World Council of Churches, on whose ecumenical periphery he had moved for decades, issued a notice of mourning (World Council of Churches, “WCC mourns loss, celebrates life of renowned Orthodox theologian Prof. Christos Yannaras,” 2024).

References

Petrà, Basilio. Christos Yannaras: The Apophatic Horizon of Ontology. Trans. Norman Russell. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2019.
Louth, Andrew. “Some Recent Works by Christos Yannaras in English Translation.” Modern Theology 25, no. 2 (April 2009): 329–340. (On the 1970 thesis and its development, 336–38.)
Williams, Rowan (R. D. Williams). “The Theology of Personhood: A Study of the Thought of Christos Yannaras.” Sobornost 6 (Winter 1972): 415–430.
Russell, Norman. “Modern Greek Theologians and the Greek Fathers.” Philosophy & Theology 18, no. 1 (2006): 77–92.
Yannaras, Christos. To ontologikon periechomenon tēs theologikēs ennoias tou prosōpou. Athens, 1970.
Yannaras, Christos. Hē metaphysikē tou sōmatos: Spoudē ston Iōannē tēs Klimakos. Athens: Dōdōnē, 1971.
Yannaras, Christos. De l’absence et de l’inconnaissance de Dieu d’après les écrits aréopagitiques et Martin Heidegger. Trans. Jacques Touraille, preface by Olivier Clément. Paris: Cerf, 1970/1971.
Institut de Théologie Orthodoxe Saint-Serge. “In memoriam: Christos Yannaras (1935–2024).” Paris, 2024.
Cole, Jonathan. “Remembering Christos Yannaras (1935–2024).” Political Theology Network, 2024.
OrthoChristian. “Christos Yannaras, noted professor and theologian, reposes in the Lord.” 26 August 2024.
World Council of Churches. “WCC mourns loss, celebrates life of renowned Orthodox theologian Prof. Christos Yannaras.” 2024.