06 — Theology and Preaching

St. Philaret of Moscow (1782–1867) was not a builder of dogmatic systems but a theologian of the word: his greatness lies in his celebrated sermons — the Slova i rechi — and in a turn of method, away from the Latin-scholastic manuals inherited from the post-Petrine academies and back toward Scripture and the Greek Fathers. This section examines the dense, “philological” character of his preaching and his nuanced theology of grace and freedom, then situates his patristic, anti-scholastic dogmatics within the nineteenth-century Russian theological awakening — reporting Florovsky’s admiring-but-critical assessment of a figure who began to free Russian theology from its “pseudomorphosis” yet remained marked by the reserve of his age.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Synodal period)

Philaret’s theological significance is easily mislocated. He wrote no Summa, founded no school in the formal sense, and left his dogmatic mind scattered across sermons, resolutions, catechetical texts, and an immense correspondence rather than gathered into a treatise. Yet Georges Florovsky, the sharpest modern reader of Russian theology, placed him at the hinge of its whole modern history — the man with whom “a new and decisive era in the history of Russian theology begins” (Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, Part One, ch. 5). The reason is double. First, his preaching: he is by wide consent one of the greatest preachers the Russian Church has produced, and his sermons are a sustained exercise in the close reading of the scriptural word, a theology done by meditation on single terms and their meanings. Second, his method: at a moment when Russian academic theology was still taught in Latin out of Protestant- and Catholic-derived manuals, Philaret pressed it back toward Scripture and the Fathers and toward the Russian language, and so stands at the source of the renewal that runs through the nineteenth-century academies and into the later religious thinkers.

This section takes those two aspects in turn. The first file examines the manner of his theology — the “philological preacher,” his celebrated sermons, his treatment of grace and freedom, and Florovsky’s analysis of his reticence. The second examines its direction — the patristic, anti-scholastic tendency, his place in the theological awakening, and the contested question of just how “modern” or how reserved he finally was.

Files in This Section

File Description
The Philological Preacher Philaret as one of the greatest Russian preachers; the Slova i rechi and the dense, intellectual, “philological” character of his pulpit — a theology built on the exposition of the scriptural word; his sermons at coronations, funerals, and feasts; his nuanced doctrine of grace and freedom (synergy); and Florovsky’s assessment of his meditative restraint.
Dogmatics and the Fathers His patristic, anti-scholastic theology and the move away from the Latin-scholastic manuals of the post-Petrine academies; his place at the source of the nineteenth-century Russian theological awakening; his influence on theological education, the turn to Russian, and the patristic translation projects; and Florovsky’s nuanced judgment, with the scholarly dispute over his “modernity” versus his “scholastic residue.”

See Also

References

  • Florovsky, Georges. Ways of Russian Theology, Part One. Trans. Robert L. Nichols. Vol. 5 of The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky. Belmont, MA: Nordland / Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1979. (The Philaret section, Part One, ch. 5, “The Struggle for Theology.”)
  • Philaret (Drozdov), Metropolitan of Moscow. Slova i rechi (Sermons and Discourses). Multiple Moscow editions, 19th c.
  • Select Sermons by the Late Metropolitan of Moscow Philaret. Trans. of representative sermons into English (19th-c. and later anthologies).
  • Nichols, Robert L. “Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow and the Awakening of Orthodox Russia.” Essays on the Synodal Church.