09 — Legacy and Assessment
Fifty-five years after his death, Evdokimov’s standing is uneven in an interesting way: the book that made him famous is the one least defended today, while the ideas that have travelled furthest — interiorized monasticism, the sacrament of love, the theology of beauty — were not the ones he was chiefly known for in his lifetime. This section assesses that reception and provides a working guide to his corpus and its English translations.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration)
Files
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Influence and Reception | His influence East and West, the shape of his reputation now, and a sober assessment |
| The Evdokimov Corpus | A guide to the books, French titles and dates, English translations, and where to begin |
The Standard Applied
This collection assesses Evdokimov as a theologian, by the criteria proper to that: the quality of his arguments, the accuracy of his use of sources, the fruitfulness of his ideas, and the honesty of his engagement with the questions he took up. It does not assess him as a saint, because the Church has not raised that question, and it is not this guide’s to raise. What can be said about his life — the refusal of naturalization, the wartime work, the twenty-three years of hostels, the layman’s fidelity to a lay vocation — is said in Sections 01–03 as biography, not as hagiography.
See Also
- 08 — The Critique — the criticism this assessment weighs
- Russian Orthodox Theologians — the hub essay on his generation
References
- Louth, Andrew. Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present. London: SPCK / Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015.
- Plekon, Michael. Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002.