09 — The Critique and Assessment

The §4.2 flagship of this collection. Afanasiev’s ecclesiology has been criticized from four directions at once: by John Zizioulas, who took the eucharistic principle and argued that Afanasiev’s version of it dissolves the universal Church and cannot ground conciliarity or primacy; by historians and patrologists, who contest the Cyprian reconstruction; by Orthodox writers who reject the ecumenical conclusions; and by those who think his account of law leaves the Church without order. It has been defended, mostly recently, by Michael Plekon, Viktor Alexandrov, and Anastacia Wooden, and audited with mixed conclusions by Aidan Nichols. This section names the positions, states the arguments, and adjudicates nothing.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration; the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Western European exarchate)

Files in This Section

File Description
The Critique Zizioulas’s case, set out in his own words and in Alexandrov’s reply; Meyendorff’s early objection; the historiographical objection; the ecumenical objections; and the defence of Plekon, Nichols, Alexandrov, and Wooden
Assessment A closing weighing: what is durable, what is vulnerable, what is unfinished, and what the reception history has cost

The Discipline of This Section

METHODOLOGY §4.2 governs both files. Every dispute is reported with its proponents named and its arguments given in the terms those proponents use. Neither file rules on who is right. Where a critic has demonstrably misdescribed Afanasiev’s position, that is a matter of fact and is stated as one; where the disagreement is theological, it is left standing.

The criticism came before the evidence. This is the structural oddity of Afanasiev’s reception and it is registered throughout. Zizioulas’s dissertation criticizing Afanasiev was defended in 1965. The Church of the Holy Spirit was published in 1971 in Russian, 1975 in French, 2007 in English. Zizioulas himself stated that he had access to only five of Afanasiev’s essays and none of the Russian works (Zizioulas, Eucharist, Bishop, Church, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001, 36 n. 47). That is a fact about the state of the sources in 1965, not an accusation; but it bears on how much weight the resulting critique can carry.

Afanasiev is not a saint and this is not an apologia. He was a scholar who made large claims, some of which have not stood up. The point of the section is precision, not vindication — and equally not the reverse.

See Also