The Minority Report of 1936 and the Silence

Florovsky’s one formal act of opposition to Bulgakov is a document: the minority report of Metropolitan Evlogy’s commission, dated 6 July 1936, prepared by Archpriest Sergius Chetverikov and signed by Florovsky, holding that Bulgakov’s views “provoke great anxiety” and were a danger to Orthodox thinking. Beyond it there is silence — no published refutation, no named attack, in forty-three years. That silence is the most scrutinized fact about him, and the readings of it run from collegial decency to institutional prudence to evasion. The literature has not settled it.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration)

The Commission

After the Moscow Patriarchate’s ukazy and the ROCOR Council of Bishops’ determination of October 1935 (see The Condemnations of 1935), Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievsky) — Bulgakov’s own bishop, and since 1931 exarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Western Europe — declined to extract the public renunciation ROCOR had requested and appointed instead a theological commission, chaired by Archpriest Sergius Chetverikov and drawn largely from the St Sergius faculty.

The commission divided.

The majority report (June 1936), prepared by A. V. Kartashev, V. V. Zenkovsky and others, rejected the charge of heresy while registering serious objections to Bulgakov’s formulations.
The minority report (6 July 1936), prepared by Chetverikov and signed by Fr. Georges Florovsky, held that Bulgakov’s views “provoke great anxiety” and constituted a danger to Orthodox thinking.

(These findings and dates follow the repository’s account at Evlogy’s Commission and the 1937 Conference, which rests on Alexis Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, nos. 1–2 [2005]: 67–100, and on the hub essay Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy.)

A conference of the jurisdiction’s bishops on 26–29 November 1937 concluded that the accusation of heresy was unproven, but that Bulgakov’s opinions showed serious flaws requiring correction. No formal condemnation was issued in his own jurisdiction. Both halves of that finding are the finding.

What the Minority Report Is and Is Not

Precision matters here, because the document is regularly overstated in both directions.

It is: a formal dissent from the majority of a commission appointed by the competent hierarch, stating that a named priest’s published theology endangers Orthodox thinking. That is a serious act by a junior colleague against a senior one, in writing, with his signature on it.

It is not: a charge of heresy, a demand for discipline, or a published refutation. It is an internal document of a diocesan commission. Florovsky did not take it to the press, did not build on it, and did not repeat it.

It is “the closest thing to a public act of opposition that Florovsky ever made against his senior colleague, and it is the document to which discussions of Florovsky’s conduct in the controversy always return” (Evlogy’s Commission and the 1937 Conference).

The Silence

Around that single document lies the fact that generates the debate: Florovsky never published a direct refutation of Bulgakov’s sophiology. Not in 1936, not in the four decades afterwards. He expressed his opposition instead:

through scholarly essays on the doctrine of creation, in which the sophiological alternative is refused without being named (above all “Creation and Creaturehood”; see Creation and Creaturehood);
through Ways of Russian Theology (1937), which makes the case against the whole sophiological tradition — Solovyov, Florensky, and the religious-philosophical renaissance — without making Bulgakov the personal target;
and through the minority report.

(Klimoff, “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy,” 2005; Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, chs. 5–6.)

Vladimir Lossky, by contrast, named Bulgakov directly and at length in Spor o Sofii (Paris: Brotherhood of St Photius, 1936). Lossky was in the Moscow Patriarchal jurisdiction and in the Brotherhood of St Photius; he had no institutional relationship with Bulgakov and no post to lose (The Critics: Lossky, Florovsky, and After). Florovsky taught in Bulgakov’s institute, under Bulgakov’s bishop, and later under Bulgakov’s deanship.

The Three Readings

The literature offers three interpretations of the restraint. The repository reports them and adjudicates none (METHODOLOGY §4.2).

1. Collegial Decency

On this reading the silence is a virtue. Florovsky said what he believed to the body appointed to hear it, in writing, over his name — and then declined to prosecute a colleague in public while ecclesiastical authorities were seized of the matter. He continued to serve with Bulgakov, did not campaign, did not brief journalists, and did not attack him after his death. A man may believe another’s theology is dangerous and still not think it his office to destroy him.

Supporters of this reading also note that Florovsky’s substantive opposition was never concealed. Anyone who read “Creation and Creaturehood” or the last chapters of Ways of Russian Theology knew exactly what he thought; he simply declined to make it personal.

2. Institutional Prudence

On this reading the silence is explicable rather than admirable. Florovsky was a junior professor without a theological degree, in a tiny institution dominated by the man in question, dependent on Evlogy for his position and on the Institute for his salary, in an emigration where there were perhaps three jobs in his field on the continent. He wrote the book instead, which said everything without saying the name — and which, in 1937, could not be answered without conceding its premises.

This reading does not accuse him of cowardice; it observes that the constraints were real and that the conduct is fully explained by them.

3. Evasion

The harshest reading holds that the indirection was a way of having the argument both ways: the substance of a devastating attack, with no personal responsibility for it and no obligation to meet Bulgakov’s replies. Bulgakov could not answer a book that did not name him; Florovsky was never required to defend his reading of Bulgakov’s texts against Bulgakov. On this view Ways of Russian Theology is a polemic conducted at one remove, and the removal is not a virtue.

[Disputed: how to read Florovsky's conduct in the sophiological controversy. Readings range from collegial restraint through institutional prudence to evasion, and the scholarly literature does not settle the question (Klimoff, "Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy," 2005; Gavrilyuk, *Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance*, 2013, ch. 6). The repository records the range and adjudicates none of it — as does the parallel note in [The Critics: Lossky, Florovsky, and After](../../sergius-bulgakov/08-the-modern-reappraisal/the-critics-lossky-florovsky-and-after.md).]

What Is Documented and What Is Not

Worth separating, because the episode attracts speculation.

Documented: the commission, its two reports, their dates, Florovsky’s signature on the minority report, the bishops’ finding of 1937, the absence of any published refutation, the publication of Ways of Russian Theology in 1937, the 1933 intercommunion disagreement.

Not documented, and not asserted here: what was said between the two men privately; whether Florovsky was pressed to sign or to refrain; whether the deterioration of his position at St Sergius after 1937 was a consequence of the book, of the report, or of temperament. Accounts that narrate these confidently are narrating beyond the evidence.

The Consequence for Florovsky

The 1936–1937 period cost him Paris. Relations at the Institute did not recover; Bulgakov became dean in 1940 and held the office until his death in 1944; Florovsky spent the war outside France and returned in December 1945 to an institution in which his future was limited. The move to America in 1948 was, among other things, the conclusion of this.

It should be said, against a certain kind of retrospective drama, that this is not a story of persecution. Florovsky was not disciplined, not censured, not removed. He was a man who had written a book that judged his colleagues, and his colleagues had read it.

References

Klimoff, Alexis. “Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy.” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49, nos. 1–2 (2005): 67–100. (The commission, the two reports, Florovsky’s signature, and the 1937 conference.)
Gavrilyuk, Paul L. Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. (Ch. 6 on Florovsky’s conduct.)
Florovsky, Georges. Puti russkogo bogosloviya. Paris, 1937.
Florovsky, Georges. “Creation and Creaturehood.” In Creation and Redemption, Collected Works vol. 3. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1976.
Lossky, Vladimir. Spor o Sofii. Paris: Brotherhood of St Photius, 1936.
Evlogy’s Commission and the 1937 Conference. Repository file, ../../sergius-bulgakov/06-the-defense-and-the-aftermath/evlogys-commission-and-the-1937-conference.md.
Fr. Sergius Bulgakov and the Sophiology Controversy. Repository hub essay, ../../orthodoxy/04-russian-orthodox-tradition/theologians/bulgakov-sophiology.md.