Professor at St. Sergius

In 1953 Evdokimov joined the faculty of the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, where he had been a student a quarter-century earlier, and taught there until his death in 1970 — a married layman holding the chair of moral theology in a seminary, and lecturing on the history of Western Christianity. In 1959 the Institute gave him its doctorate in theology for L’Orthodoxie, the synthesis that remains his most systematic book.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration)

The Appointment of 1953

Evdokimov became a professor at the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris in 1953 (Wikipedia, “Paul Evdokimov”; Encyclopædia Universalis, “Paul Evdokimov,” which places the professorship after the years of directing refugee centres). He was fifty-two, a widower, and still running a CIMADE house; he would not marry Tomoko Sakai until the following year.

The Institute he rejoined was not the one he had entered in the 1920s. Bulgakov, its founding dean and Evdokimov’s teacher, had died in 1944; the great generation of the 1930s — Florovsky, Kartashev, Afanasiev, Zander, Kern — had dispersed or aged, and Florovsky and Schmemann had gone to America. St. Sergius after the war was smaller and poorer than it had been, and it was in the middle of the long argument between the sophiological inheritance and the neo-patristic programme that had displaced it. Evdokimov, who had a foot in each camp, was in a sense the Institute’s natural mediator (see How Much Sophiology, and the Counter-Reading).

What He Taught

The subjects are recorded consistently. Evdokimov held the chair of moral theology, and he also taught the history of Western Christianity (OFPRA, “Paul Evdokimov, theologian”: “Evdokimov became a professor at Saint Serge Institute, teaching Western Christian history and moral theology”; OrthodoxWiki, “Paul Evdokimov,” describes him as “professor of moral theology at St. Sergius Orthodox Institute in Paris”). Both assignments say something.

Moral theology, in the curriculum of a seminary, is the discipline that answers the question a priest is actually asked: how is a Christian to live? That a layman held this chair — a married man with children, a widower, a remarried man, a hostel warden — is not an administrative detail. It is the institutional form of Evdokimov’s central conviction. The Orthodox tradition has always taught that holiness is one and that the counsels of the Gospel bind all the baptized; but the literature of the spiritual life is overwhelmingly monastic in authorship and in address, and its transposition to lay conditions has usually been left to the reader. Evdokimov’s whole project — set out in 04 — Interiorized Monasticism — was to make that transposition explicitly, and he made it from the chair of moral theology, to men preparing to hear the confessions of laypeople.

Western Christian history was equally characteristic. Evdokimov was among the most Western-conversant Orthodox theologians of his time — a Sorbonne-trained philosopher who read Aquinas, Anselm, Luther and Karl Barth, and who engaged, unusually for an Orthodox of his generation, with the French Catholic nouvelle théologie and its nature–grace debate (on this engagement see the study by the New Blackfriars article “Apophaticism or Analogy in Anselm’s Argument? Paul Evdokimov’s Contribution to La Nouvelle Théologie and the Nature–Grace Debate,” Cambridge University Press). He did not teach the West as an adversary to be refuted. He taught it as a Christian world with which the Orthodox student would have to live.

L’Orthodoxie and the Institute’s Doctorate

In 1959 Evdokimov published L’Orthodoxie (Neuchâtel: Delachaux et Niestlé), and the St. Sergius Institute conferred its doctorate in theology upon him for it (Wikipedia, “Paul Evdokimov,” noting L’Orthodoxie (1959) as the work “for which Evdokimov received a doctorate from the St. Sergius Institute”; OrthodoxWiki, “He received his doctorate in theology from St Sergius for the publication of Orthodoxy in 1959”). He thus held two doctorates: the philosophical one from Aix (1942) for the Dostoevsky thesis, and the theological one from his own Institute for this book. He later received a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Thessaloniki (Wikipedia, “Paul Evdokimov”). [Disputed: the first-edition date of L'Orthodoxie. The overwhelming weight of the sources gives 1959. The English publisher's note to the 2011 New City Press translation states that the book "was first published in French in 1965" and that the translation renders the revised edition of 1979. The 1959 date is used throughout this guide; the discrepancy most likely reflects a later French edition or reprint being taken for the first.]

L’Orthodoxie is Evdokimov’s one attempt at a complete synthesis — a single volume covering the Trinity, creation, the Incarnation, the Church, the sacraments, the liturgy, the icon, eschatology and the spiritual life. Olivier Clément, who wrote the foreword to the English edition, describes it as an “original synthesis of Orthodox theological thinking” that engages the Fathers creatively while drawing in twentieth-century Russian religious philosophy and the theology of the divine energies (Clément, foreword to Evdokimov, Orthodoxy, trans. Jeremy Hummerstone, New City Press, 2011; summarized in the notice at Eastern Christian Books, “Paul Evdokimov and Olivier Clement,” 2011). That formula names the book’s method exactly: patristic sources, Palamite energies, Russian philosophy, in one frame.

It should be read, on this collection’s methodological principle (§4.1), as Evdokimov’s presentation of Orthodoxy and not as the Church’s own dogmatic manual. It is a personal synthesis by a gifted layman, warmly received and widely translated, and it carries his characteristic emphases — beauty, the feminine, the eschatological transfiguration of the world — in proportions that other Orthodox systematicians would not have chosen. Compare, for the same period, the very different balances struck in Vladimir Lossky’s Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1944) and Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae’s Dogmatics.

Seventeen Years

From 1953 to 1970 the pattern of his life was fixed: the Institute, the hostel, and the books, which came in a sustained rush — La Femme et le salut du monde (1958), L’Orthodoxie (1959), Gogol et Dostoïevski (1961), Le Sacrement de l’amour (1962), Les Âges de la vie spirituelle (1964), La Connaissance de Dieu selon la tradition orientale (1968), L’Esprit-Saint dans la tradition orthodoxe (1969), Le Christ dans la pensée russe (1970), and the posthumous L’Art de l’icône (see The Evdokimov Corpus). It is a formidable output for a part-time academic, and it was written almost entirely in French, for a readership that was as much Western as Orthodox.

He was also, in these years, a fixture of the Orthodox intellectual life of France: associated with the review Contacts, with the Fraternité orthodoxe, and with the circle around Vladimir Lossky and the young Olivier Clément, who would later write the two of them up together as the “two passeurs” — the two who ferried the Orthodox tradition across into the French language and the Western mind (Clément, Orient–Occident: Deux passeurs, Vladimir Lossky et Paul Evdokimov, Labor et Fides, 1985).

A Note on Titles

Evdokimov is sometimes described in publishers’ blurbs and secondary literature as having been “Director of the Centre of Orthodox Studies” and “Director of the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey.” [Disputed: these titles. That he taught at the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey and at the Institut Catholique de Paris is well attested (OrthodoxWiki: "he was a teacher at both the Ecumenical Institute in Geneva and the L'Institut Catholique in Paris"). The claim that he *directed* Bossey — which had its own succession of directors — appears in publisher's copy for the St. Vladimir's Seminary Press editions and is not corroborated in the scholarly notices consulted; it is more likely a compression of "taught at" or of a departmental role. This guide says that he taught at Bossey and does not claim the directorship.]

References

Clément, Olivier. Orient–Occident: Deux passeurs, Vladimir Lossky et Paul Evdokimov. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1985.
Clément, Olivier. Foreword to Paul Evdokimov, Orthodoxy, trans. Jeremy Hummerstone. New City Press, 2011.
Eastern Christian Books. “Paul Evdokimov and Olivier Clement.” May 2011. (Clément’s characterization of Orthodoxy as an original synthesis engaging the Fathers, Russian religious philosophy and the theology of the divine energies; Evdokimov’s place among Francophone Orthodox thinkers; Plekon’s role in making him available in English.)
Encyclopædia Universalis. “Paul Evdokimov (1901–1970).” (Direction of refugee centres before the Saint-Serge professorship; the synthesis of patristic tradition with Berdyaev and Bulgakov.)
Evdokimov, Paul. L’Orthodoxie. Neuchâtel: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1959. English: Orthodoxy, trans. Jeremy Hummerstone, foreword by Olivier Clément. New City Press, 2011.
New Blackfriars (Cambridge University Press). “Apophaticism or Analogy in Anselm’s Argument? Paul Evdokimov’s Contribution to La Nouvelle Théologie and the Nature–Grace Debate.” (Evdokimov’s engagement with Western Catholic theology.)
Office français de protection des réfugiés et apatrides (OFPRA). “Paul Evdokimov, theologian.” (Professor at Saint-Serge teaching Western Christian history and moral theology.)
OrthodoxWiki. “Paul Evdokimov.” (Professor of moral theology at St. Sergius; teacher at the Ecumenical Institute in Geneva and the Institut Catholique in Paris; the theological doctorate from St. Sergius for Orthodoxy, 1959.)
Wikipedia. “Paul Evdokimov.” (Professorship from 1953; the St. Sergius doctorate for L’Orthodoxie; the honorary doctorate from the University of Thessaloniki; the publication sequence 1958–1970.)