Translation of Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky’s Orthodox Dogmatic Theology

Fr. Seraphim Rose’s English translation of Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky’s Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (Pravoslavnoye Dogmaticheskoye Bogosloviye), published posthumously in 1983 by the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, made the standard ROCOR seminary textbook available to English-speaking Orthodox Christians for the first time. The translation served as a foundational text for a generation of English-speaking converts and seminarians, providing a systematic, patristically grounded presentation of Orthodox doctrine that avoided both Western scholastic distortions and modernist reinterpretation. Rose’s work as translator involved not merely rendering Russian into English but navigating the considerable challenges of expressing Russian theological terminology in a language that lacked an established Orthodox theological vocabulary.

Tradition: ROCOR-specific (in institutional context), with broad pan-Orthodox use

The Original Work

Pomazansky’s Orthodox Dogmatic Theology

Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky (1888–1988) composed his Orthodox Dogmatic Theology as a seminary textbook for Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary in Jordanville, New York, the principal institution of theological education within ROCOR. Pomazansky, who had been educated at the Zhitomir Theological Seminary and the Kiev Theological Academy before the Revolution, brought to his work the theological formation of pre-revolutionary Russian Orthodoxy – a formation that was rigorously patristic, liturgically grounded, and suspicious of both Western scholastic methodology and speculative Russian religious philosophy.

The work was originally written and used in Russian. It served as the core dogmatics text at Jordanville for decades, shaping the theological formation of ROCOR clergy in the emigration. The Russian original was published by Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, in 1963 and revised by the author in 1973; Rose translated from this revised text.

For a detailed treatment of Pomazansky’s life, theological method, and the content of his dogmatics, see the entry in the orthodoxy guide: Pomazansky.

The Structure of the Work

Pomazansky’s dogmatics is organized as an Introduction followed by two large parts – Part I, “On God in Himself,” and Part II, “On God Manifest in the World.” Within these two parts the material follows the traditional order of Orthodox systematic theology, divided into numbered sections:

Introduction: The nature and sources of Orthodox theology. Pomazansky identifies the sources of Christian doctrine – Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition (the latter expressed in the symbols and confessions of faith, the canons and definitions of the Ecumenical Councils, the writings of the Church Fathers, and the liturgical tradition) – insisting that these are not independent sources but expressions of a single, unified Tradition.
Part I, “On God in Himself”: Our knowledge of God (the dogma of faith, the divine essence and attributes, the unity of God), and the dogma of the Holy Trinity. Pomazansky follows the Cappadocian formulation rigorously: one essence (ousia) in three hypostases (hypostaseis), with the monarchy of the Father. He rejects the Filioque clearly and concisely.
Part II, “On God Manifest in the World”, which gathers the remaining material under successive sections:
- God and Creation: creation ex nihilo, the angelic world, and man as the crown of creation, made in the image and likeness of God.
- The Providence of God.
- Concerning Evil and Sin: the Fall in the angelic and human worlds, ancestral sin (praroditelskiy grekh – carefully distinguished from the Augustinian doctrine of original sin), the nature of evil as privation rather than a positive substance.
- God and the Salvation of Mankind: the Incarnation of the Son of God, the dogma of redemption, and the Resurrection of Christ. Pomazansky presents the atonement in terms of Christus Victor (victory over death and the devil) and healing (restoration of human nature), while acknowledging the sacrificial dimension, and explicitly avoids the strictly juridical, penal satisfaction model associated with Anselm and the Reformers.
- The Church of Christ.
- The Holy Mysteries (sacraments).
- Prayer, including divine grace understood as uncreated, following the patristic distinction between essence and energies.
- Christian Eschatology: death, the fate of the soul after death, the Second Coming, the general resurrection, the Last Judgment, and eternal life. In an addendum, Pomazansky treats the toll-houses tradition as part of the received teaching while noting the diversity of patristic views.

(Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, table of contents and passim; full text, IntraText)

Rose’s Role as Translator

The Decision to Translate

The decision to translate Pomazansky’s work into English was driven by a practical need: by the 1970s, ROCOR was increasingly receiving English-speaking converts who had no Russian language ability. The Jordanville seminary was beginning to offer instruction in English, and the growing English-language parishes needed a foundational dogmatic text. No adequate English-language Orthodox dogmatics existed at the time – the available works were either Greek-tradition texts (often untranslated), specialized academic works, or brief catechetical summaries.

Rose undertook the translation at Platina as part of the St. Herman Brotherhood’s broader publishing mission, with the blessing of Archbishop Averky of Syracuse and Holy Trinity Monastery. The work was a labor of years, carried out alongside his other writing, editorial, and monastic responsibilities. The translation was substantially complete at the time of Rose’s death in 1982 and was published posthumously, as a first English edition, in 1983 by the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood.

The Challenges of Theological Translation

Rose’s translation work involved several significant challenges:

1. The Absence of an Established English Orthodox Theological Vocabulary

When Rose undertook the translation, English lacked a standardized Orthodox theological vocabulary. Terms that had clear, well-understood meanings in Russian, Greek, or Church Slavonic had no established equivalents in English. Rose had to make decisions about how to render:

Bogosloviye (theology): a direct rendering, but the English word “theology” carries connotations from Western academic usage that differ from the patristic meaning
Obozhenie / theosis: Rose used “deification” or “divinization,” terms that required careful explanation to avoid misunderstanding by Western readers unfamiliar with the concept
Praroditelskiy grekh: Literally “ancestral sin” – a crucial distinction from the Western “original sin” (pervrodny grekh), which Rose preserved to maintain the theological precision of Pomazansky’s argument
Blagodat: “Grace” – but in Orthodox theology grace is uncreated (the divine energies), not a created gift as in much Western theology. Rose had to render the term in a way that preserved this distinction
Tserkov: “Church” – but Pomazansky’s ecclesiology is specifically Orthodox, identifying the Orthodox Church with the one Church of the Creed, not with a “branch” of a divided Church
Tainstva: “Mysteries” (sacraments) – Rose used both “sacraments” and “mysteries,” with a preference for the latter as more faithful to the Orthodox understanding

Rose’s translation choices helped to establish conventions that subsequent English-language Orthodox publications would follow. His work was, in this sense, foundational for the development of an English Orthodox theological vocabulary (Christensen, Not of This World, on Rose’s translation and publishing labors at Platina).

2. Rendering Russian Theological Precision in English

Russian theological language, shaped by centuries of patristic study and liturgical use, possesses a precision that is difficult to reproduce in English. Rose worked to preserve Pomazansky’s careful distinctions – for example, the distinction between sushchnost (essence) and ipostasi (hypostasis), or between blagodatny (grace-filled) and estestvennyy (natural) – that are theologically essential but easily blurred in English translation.

3. Avoiding Western Theological Connotations

Many English theological terms carry connotations from Western (Catholic or Protestant) theology that do not apply in an Orthodox context. For example:

“Salvation” in English often connotes a juridical transaction (being “saved” from punishment), while the Orthodox spaseniye encompasses healing, restoration, and theosis
“Grace” in English often implies a created gift, while Orthodox blagodat refers to the uncreated divine energies
“Sin” in English often implies personal guilt in the Augustinian sense, while the Orthodox understanding emphasizes corruption, mortality, and the distortion of the divine image

Rose had to find ways to use these familiar English words while redirecting their meaning toward Orthodox content – a task that required both linguistic skill and theological depth.

4. Rose’s Approach

Rose’s translation method can be characterized as follows:

Faithfulness to the original: Rose aimed for accuracy over literary elegance, preferring to preserve Pomazansky’s meaning even at the cost of somewhat formal English prose
Theological precision: Where a choice had to be made between readability and theological accuracy, Rose chose accuracy
Explanatory notes: Rose added footnotes and translator’s notes to clarify points where the English rendering might be misunderstood by readers unfamiliar with Orthodox theology
Consistency of terminology: Rose maintained consistent terminology throughout the translation, building up a reliable vocabulary for English-speaking readers

The Book’s Content: Key Theological Positions

On the Trinity

Pomazansky presents the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in strict accord with the Cappadocian Fathers (Sts. Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa). Key points as rendered in Rose’s translation:

The Trinity is one God in three Persons (hypostases), not three gods and not merely three modes of one Person
The Father is the sole cause (aitia) and source (pege) of the Godhead
The Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father
The Filioque is rejected as both canonically illegitimate and theologically erroneous

(Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part I, “On God in Himself,” section “The Dogma of the Holy Trinity”)

On Ancestral Sin

Pomazansky’s treatment of ancestral sin (praroditelskiy grekh) is one of the most significant portions of the work for Western readers. He carefully distinguishes the Orthodox teaching from the Augustinian/Western doctrine:

Humanity inherits from Adam the consequences of his sin: mortality, corruption, the inclination to sin, subjection to the devil
Humanity does not inherit Adam’s personal guilt in the Western Augustinian sense
Infants are not born “guilty” but are born into a fallen world and a corrupted nature that inclines toward sin
Baptism is not primarily the remission of inherited guilt but the incorporation into Christ and the restoration of the possibility of theosis

This distinction, carefully preserved in Rose’s translation, has been widely cited in English-language Orthodox apologetics and catechesis.

(Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, “On God Manifest in the World,” section “Concerning Evil and Sin”; cf. Ancestral vs. Original Sin)

On the Atonement

Pomazansky presents the Orthodox understanding of Christ’s redemptive work as primarily Christus Victor – the victory of Christ over death, the devil, and corruption:

Christ conquers death by dying and rising: “trampling down death by death”
Christ heals human nature by uniting it to the divine nature in His own Person
Christ’s sacrifice is real but is not to be understood in the strictly juridical terms of Western “satisfaction” or “penal substitution”
The atonement is an act of divine love, not of divine punishment

Rose’s rendering of this section has been particularly influential in English-language Orthodox discussions of soteriology, providing a concise, authoritative statement of the Orthodox alternative to Western atonement theories.

(Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, section “God and the Salvation of Mankind,” “The Dogma of Redemption”)

On Eschatology

Pomazansky’s eschatological section covers the particular judgment, the intermediate state, the toll-houses (presented as part of the tradition without dogmatic insistence on a literalistic interpretation), prayer for the dead, the Second Coming, the general resurrection, and the final judgment. Rose’s translation made this material available to English readers at a time when Fr. Seraphim’s own The Soul After Death (1980) had generated intense interest in Orthodox eschatology.

(Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, section “Christian Eschatology”)

How the Translation Served English-Speaking Orthodox Converts

Rose’s translation of Pomazansky became, alongside the writings of Metropolitan Kallistos (Timothy) Ware and the works of Frs. Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff, one of the foundational English-language texts for Orthodox formation in America. Its specific contributions include:

A systematic overview of the faith: For converts coming from Catholic or Protestant backgrounds, Pomazansky provided a complete, systematic presentation of Orthodox doctrine in a format familiar from Western dogmatics textbooks – but with specifically Orthodox content.
A ROCOR perspective: The work’s specifically ROCOR character – its conservative patristic methodology, its rejection of Western theological influence, its sobriety and precision – gave English-speaking readers access to the distinctive theological voice of the Russian Church Abroad.
A primary source, not a secondary summary: Unlike many popular introductions to Orthodoxy, Pomazansky’s work is a primary theological text written by a professional dogmatician. Rose’s translation gave English readers a text of genuine theological weight.
A reference work: The systematic organization and comprehensive coverage made the work useful not only for sequential study but as a reference to which readers could turn for the Orthodox position on specific doctrinal questions.

The Significance for ROCOR’s English-Language Mission

Rose’s translation of Pomazansky was a key element in ROCOR’s transition from a predominantly Russian-language diaspora church to a church capable of receiving and forming English-speaking converts. The availability of a standard dogmatic text in English meant that:

Seminarians at Jordanville could study dogmatics in English
Catechumens preparing for reception into the Church had a foundational text
Parish clergy could use the work for adult education and catechesis
The distinctive theological voice of ROCOR could be communicated to English speakers without distortion

The translation thus served not merely an academic function but an ecclesial and missionary one – it was an instrument of ROCOR’s mission to the English-speaking world.

Pomazansky’s Theological Method and Its Influence on Rose

The influence was not merely one-directional (Rose translating Pomazansky); the process of translation also shaped Rose’s own theological development:

Systematic rigor: Pomazansky’s systematic presentation of Orthodox doctrine reinforced Rose’s commitment to theological precision and his insistence on grounding every claim in Scripture, the Councils, and the Fathers.
Patristic sobriety: Pomazansky’s method – stating clearly what the Church teaches, supporting it with patristic citations, and refraining from speculation – is the same method Rose employs in his own theological works.
Anti-Western awareness: Pomazansky’s careful identification of points where Western theology diverges from Orthodoxy (the Filioque, original sin, created grace, penal substitution) sharpened Rose’s own awareness of these distinctions.
The priority of the Tradition: Pomazansky writes as a transmitter of the received faith, not as an innovator. Rose adopted the same self-understanding: his task was not to create new theology but to faithfully present what the Church has always taught.

In this sense, the translation of Pomazansky was not a peripheral activity but an integral part of Rose’s theological formation and vocation.

References

Pomazansky, Michael. Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: A Concise Exposition. Translated and edited by Hieromonk Seraphim Rose. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1983 (first English edition). Translated from the Russian original published by Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, NY, 1963, revised by the author 1973. Full text available via IntraText (ENG0824).
Christensen, Damascene. Not of This World: The Life and Teaching of Fr. Seraphim Rose. Forestville, CA: Fr. Seraphim Rose Foundation, 1993.
Florovsky, Georges. Ways of Russian Theology. Translated by Robert L. Nichols. Vaduz: Buchervertriebsanstalt, 1979.
The Orthodox Word. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1965–1982. Various issues.