The Florovsky Corpus and Its Editions

Florovsky’s works reached the English-speaking world through a fourteen-volume Collected Works published between 1972 and 1989 by Nordland and then by Büchervertriebsanstalt under the general editorship of Richard S. Haugh — an edition in which titles were changed without notice, single texts were split into several, whole sections were omitted, and the patristic volumes print substantial material for which no source is given. Andrew Blane judged it “often not reliable”; Alexis Klimoff documented the specifics. This file is a reader’s guide to the corpus and a warning about its standard edition.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration) / Pan-Orthodox

The Shape of the Corpus

Florovsky wrote no systematic theology, and this is the first thing a reader should know. What exists is:

Two patristic lecture courses in Russian: Vostochnye ottsy IV-go veka (The Eastern Fathers of the Fourth Century, Paris, 1931) and Vizantiiskie ottsy V–VIII vekov (The Byzantine Fathers of the Fifth to Eighth Centuries, Paris, 1933).
One large critical history: Puti russkogo bogosloviya (Ways of Russian Theology, Paris, 1937).
Several hundred essays, articles, addresses and reviews, in Russian, French, English, German and Serbian, published across sixty years in journals, symposia, Festschriften and conference proceedings.
A four-page manifesto: “Patristics and Modern Theology,” Athens 1936 (published 1939).

The essays are where the theology is. The best of them — “Creation and Creaturehood,” “Sobornost’: The Catholicity of the Church,” “St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers,” “The Lost Scriptural Mind,” “Antinomies of Christian History: Empire and Desert,” “Cur Deus Homo?”, “Le corps du Christ vivant” — are as good as anything in modern Orthodox theology.

The Collected Works

Fourteen volumes, published under the general editorship of Richard S. Haugh:

Vols. 1–5: Nordland Publishing Company, Belmont, Massachusetts, 1972–1979.
Vols. 6–14: Büchervertriebsanstalt, Vaduz, Liechtenstein, 1987–1989. Nordland declared bankruptcy in 1984, and Haugh established the successor imprint.

(Publication data as documented in “Republishing Florovsky: An Overview,” rocorstudies.org, 31 August 2019, summarizing Alexis Klimoff’s critical work.)

The volumes:

Vol.	Title
1	Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View
2	Christianity and Culture
3	Creation and Redemption
4	Aspects of Church History
5–6	Ways of Russian Theology, Parts One and Two (trans. Robert L. Nichols)
7	The Eastern Fathers of the Fourth Century
8–9	The Byzantine Fathers of the Fifth Century; The Byzantine Fathers of the Sixth to Eighth Century
10–12	The Byzantine Ascetic and Spiritual Fathers; Theology and Literature; Philosophy: Philosophical Problems
13–14	Ecumenism I: A Doctrinal Approach; Ecumenism II: A Historical Approach

[Disputed: the exact volume-by-volume publication years and the precise Nordland/Büchervertriebsanstalt split. Sources give slightly different breakdowns (e.g. vols. 1–5 with Nordland 1972–1979 and 6–14 with Büchervertriebsanstalt 1987–1989 in one account; a 1972–1989 range with an unspecified split in others). The overall range 1972–1989, the two publishers, and Haugh's general editorship are not in dispute.]

The Editorial Problems

These are documented, specific, and serious. The principal critical account is Alexis Klimoff, “The 14-Volume Collected Works of Father Georges Florovsky: Critical Comments,” originating in a paper given at Hellenic College / Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology; the findings are summarized in “Republishing Florovsky: An Overview” (rocorstudies.org, 31 August 2019). Andrew Blane — Florovsky’s biographer — judged the edition “often not reliable.”

The catalogued defects:

1. Titles altered without notice. Klimoff’s headline example: Florovsky’s 1951 Ingersoll Lecture, “The Resurrection of Life,” appears in the Collected Works as “The ‘Immortality’ of the Soul,” with scare quotes around “Immortality” that Florovsky did not write. Klimoff’s comment: “Nothing could have been further from Florovsky’s intention.” The alteration inverts the emphasis of a lecture whose whole argument is that Christian hope is resurrection and not the immortality of the soul. In volumes 13–14 the alteration of article titles is systematic.

2. Texts split into multiple pieces. Single articles are broken up and presented as several independent items, again in volumes 13–14 particularly. This makes an argument look like a set of observations.

3. Material omitted. Volume 12 (Philosophy) omits an entire concluding section — approximately six pages — from the 1926 essay “The Metaphysical Premises of Utopianism,” without indication.

4. Duplication and padding. Volume 11 (Theology and Literature) republishes four extracts already present in volumes 5–6 as though they were independent pieces, and adds forty-seven pages of Richard Haugh’s own unrelated articles.

5. Unsourced material in the patristic volumes. This is the most serious for scholarly purposes. The lectures on the early Fathers include extensive additional material for which no source is indicated and for which no published Russian original exists (with one exception). It is not possible, from the printed edition, to determine what is Florovsky and what is not.

Consequence. A citation to the Collected Works is a citation to a text that may have been retitled, truncated, spliced, or augmented. This does not mean the edition is worthless — it is what most readers have, and much of it is sound — but it means that load-bearing quotations should be checked against an independently published original wherever one exists, and that first-publication data derived from the edition should not be trusted without confirmation. This collection has been written on that assumption.

What Supersedes It

Brandon Gallaher and Paul Ladouceur, eds., The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky: Essential Theological Writings (London: T&T Clark, 2019), with a preface by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, gathers nineteen articles with modern editorial apparatus. This is where a new reader should begin, and where a scholar should look first for a properly edited text.

John Chryssavgis and Brandon Gallaher, eds., The Living Christ: The Theological Legacy of Georges Florovsky (London: T&T Clark, 2021) is a critical anthology of essays on Florovsky by an international group of scholars and church figures, and includes the first English translation of “Le corps du Christ vivant” (“The Body of the Living Christ: An Orthodox Interpretation of the Church”) — his major French ecclesiological study of 1948, previously untranslated (see Catholicity, Sobornost, and the Body of the Living Christ).

In Russian, five compilations appeared between 1998 and 2005, emphasizing the early theological writings and the faith-and-culture essays (“Republishing Florovsky: An Overview,” rocorstudies.org, 2019).

A new English translation of Ways of Russian Theology, Part One has appeared in recent years alongside the older Nichols version in the Collected Works; readers should check which translation they are using, since they differ.

A Reader’s Order

For someone starting from nothing:

“St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers” — the phronema, the open age of the Fathers, against the theology of repetition. Twelve pages that contain the program.
“Sobornost’: The Catholicity of the Church” (1934) — the ecclesiology, and the most accessible thing he wrote.
“Creation and Creaturehood” — the theology, and the best thing he wrote.
“Patristics and Modern Theology” (Athens, 1936) — four pages; read it after the others, so that the manifesto lands on a mind that knows what it is announcing.
“The Lost Scriptural Mind” and “Revelation and Interpretation” — Scripture and Tradition.
“Antinomies of Christian History: Empire and Desert” — the theology of history, and the essay most likely to surprise a reader who thinks he knows what Florovsky is.
Ways of Russian Theology — last, and with Section 08 beside it. It is a long book and a contested one, and reading it first tends to produce a reader who has learned a set of verdicts rather than a way of thinking.

The two patristic survey courses are handbooks; they are useful, they are superseded on most particular points by seventy years of subsequent scholarship, and they are the volumes most affected by the Collected Works’ textual problems.

Where the Papers Are

Florovsky’s papers are held at Princeton University, where he spent his last academic years. Andrew Blane’s 1969 interviews, which underlie most of the biographical literature, are the basis of the biographical essay in Blane, ed., Georges Florovsky: Russian Intellectual, Orthodox Churchman (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993). The Schmemann–Florovsky correspondence of 1947–1955 is published in Paul L. Gavrilyuk, ed., On Christian Leadership (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press; Russian edition Moscow, 2019).

References

Florovsky, Georges. Collected Works, 14 vols. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972–1979; Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987–1989. General editor Richard S. Haugh.
Klimoff, Alexis. “The 14-Volume Collected Works of Father Georges Florovsky: Critical Comments.” (Paper given at Hellenic College / Holy Cross; findings summarized in “Republishing Florovsky: An Overview,” rocorstudies.org, 31 August 2019.)
“Republishing Florovsky: An Overview.” rocorstudies.org, 31 August 2019. (Publication history of the Collected Works; Klimoff’s catalogue of defects; Blane’s “often not reliable” judgment; the Russian compilations; the Gallaher–Ladouceur volume.)
Gallaher, Brandon, and Paul Ladouceur, eds. The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky: Essential Theological Writings. London: T&T Clark, 2019.
Chryssavgis, John, and Brandon Gallaher, eds. The Living Christ: The Theological Legacy of Georges Florovsky. London: T&T Clark, 2021.
Blane, Andrew, ed. Georges Florovsky: Russian Intellectual, Orthodox Churchman. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993.
Gavrilyuk, Paul L., ed. On Christian Leadership: The Letters of Alexander Schmemann and Georges Florovsky (1947–1955). Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press. (Russian edition Moscow, 2019.)