04 — The Neo-patristic Synthesis

This is why Florovsky matters. At the First Congress of Orthodox Theology in Athens (29 November – 6 December 1936) he read a paper, “Patristics and Modern Theology,” calling for Orthodox theology to be rebuilt on patristic foundations — not by quoting the Fathers but by acquiring their mind, and not backwards but forwards. The program that grew from it, the neo-patristic synthesis, became the governing paradigm of Orthodox theology for the rest of the twentieth century. This section sets out the Athens call and the two doctrines that give it content: the phronema of the Fathers, and “Christian Hellenism.”

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

What This Section Covers

• Athens 1936 and the Call — the congress, the paper, what was actually said and resolved there, the vexed question of when the phrase “neo-patristic synthesis” was coined, and how the program spread.
• Christian Hellenism and the Mind of the Fathers — the two theses: that following the Fathers means acquiring their phronema, and that Hellenism is a permanent dimension of the Church rather than a discardable husk. The most admired and the most attacked of his positions.

The Standing of the Program (METHODOLOGY §4.1)

Said once here, plainly, and assumed thereafter.

What the Church confesses: the faith of the Fathers; the dogmatic definitions of the seven Ecumenical Councils; that Tradition is the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church and not an archive; that the Fathers are authoritative witnesses to the faith once delivered.

What Florovsky proposed: a method for doing theology in the twentieth century, and a diagnosis of why the existing method had failed. The neo-patristic synthesis is a theologian’s program. It has been embraced by an extraordinary range of Orthodox theologians across every jurisdiction; it has also been contested by Orthodox theologians, in a live intra-Orthodox dispute (see Section 08, and the repository’s staging of the same debate in The Neopatristic Synthesis and Its Critics). It is not dogma, and this collection does not present it as such.

The distinction matters practically. A reader who concludes that Florovsky’s program has limits has not thereby concluded anything about the authority of the Fathers.

Agreement with the Rest of the Repository

This section’s staging of the neo-patristic synthesis and its critics is deliberately consistent with:

• The Neopatristic Synthesis and Its Critics — the Church Fathers collection’s §09 treatment, which narrates the Volos 2010 / Piraeus 2012 controversy;
• The Patristic Revival — the hub essay;
• Vladimir Lossky — the synthesis’s other master, treated in his own collection.

Where those files summarize, this section expands; nothing here contradicts them.

See Also

• Ways of Russian Theology — the diagnosis the program answers
• Creation, History, and the Church — the program executed on actual doctrinal questions
• The Critique — the case against
• Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae — the synthesis in its Romanian key
• Holy Tradition — the doctrine of Tradition the program presupposes

References

• Florovsky, Georges. “Patristics and Modern Theology.” In Procès-verbaux du premier Congrès de théologie orthodoxe à Athènes, 29 novembre – 6 décembre 1936, ed. Hamilcar S. Alivisatos, 238–242. Athens: Pyrsos, 1939. Reprinted in Gallaher and Ladouceur, eds., The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky, London: T&T Clark, 2019.
• Florovsky, Georges. “St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers.” In Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View, Collected Works vol. 1. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972.
• 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.