03 — Ways of Russian Theology

Puti russkogo bogosloviya (Paris, 1937) is Florovsky’s largest book and the one that made his name: a critical history of Russian theological thought from Kievan Rus’ to the eve of the Revolution, argued as the story of a long estrangement from the patristic mind and closing with a call to return. This section treats the book in two files — its shape and its verdicts; and the “pseudomorphosis” / “Western captivity” thesis that is its engine and the most contested thing he ever wrote.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration)

What This Section Covers

• The Book and Its Argument — what the book is, how it is organized, whom it judges and how, the famous concluding call, and the reception it met in the emigration.
• Pseudomorphosis and the “Western Captivity” — the borrowed Spenglerian term, what Florovsky meant by it, the specific historical claims it organizes, and the substantial modern challenge to it as historiography.

Publication Facts

• Russian original: Puti russkogo bogosloviya, Paris, 1937. [Disputed: the imprint. Bibliographies variously give "Paris: YMCA-Press, 1937," "Paris, 1937" without imprint, and "Paris–Belgrade, 1937"; the year and the place of publication (Paris) are not in dispute. A YMCA-Press reprint appeared at Paris in 1981.]
• English translation: by Robert L. Nichols, in two parts as Collected Works vols. 5 (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1979) and 6 (Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987). The translation carries the general editorial problems of the Collected Works (see The Florovsky Corpus and Its Editions).
• Length: the Russian original runs to some six hundred pages of dense text plus a very large apparatus of bibliographical notes — one of the reasons the book has been more cited than read.

The Status of the Book’s Thesis

The point on which this collection is most careful, per METHODOLOGY §4.1.

Ways of Russian Theology is a work of history and theological criticism by a private theologian. It is not a conciliar document, it carries no ecclesial authority, and its verdicts on Peter Mogila, Feofan Prokopovich, Metropolitan Filaret, Khomiakov, Solovyov, Florensky and Bulgakov are Florovsky’s judgments, some of which other Orthodox scholars regard as unjust. Its influence has been so great that its theses are sometimes repeated in Orthodox writing as though they were settled facts about the Church’s history; they are not. They are a powerful and contested interpretation.

That the Church confesses the faith of the Fathers is dogma. That Russian theology between roughly 1650 and 1900 was in a state of “Western captivity” is Florovsky’s thesis about the history of an academic discipline, and it is debated by historians on evidential grounds (METHODOLOGY §4.2).

See Also

• The Neo-patristic Synthesis — the constructive program the book’s last chapter announces
• Florovsky and Bulgakov — the book’s most consequential target, never named as such
• The Critique — the modern challenge to the historiography
• Fr. Sergius Bulgakov — the sophiology the book’s last chapters place at the end of the captivity
• The Church Fathers — the patristic norm the book invokes

References

• Florovsky, Georges. Puti russkogo bogosloviya. Paris, 1937. English: Ways of Russian Theology, trans. Robert L. Nichols, Collected Works vols. 5–6. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1979; Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987.
• Gavrilyuk, Paul L. Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
• Ladouceur, Paul. Modern Orthodox Theology: Behold, I Make All Things New. London: T&T Clark, 2019.