Glory to God for All Things

The Akathist of Thanksgiving, “Glory to God for All Things,” is the most remarkable modern hymn in the akathist form — a hymn of gratitude composed in the darkest years of the Russian Church’s twentieth-century persecution. This file treats the hymn and researches carefully its genuinely contested authorship: the ascription to Metropolitan Tryphon (Turkestanov) and the widespread popular attribution to Fr. Gregory Petrov, whose relation to the text is the source of the error.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (20th-c., under Soviet persecution)

A New Akathist from the Age of Persecution

Of the countless akathists composed since the great original (see Akathist Saturday and the Genre), none has traveled further or moved more readers in the modern world than the Akathist of Thanksgiving, known by its refrain and opening, “Glory to God for All Things” (Russian Slava Bogu za vsyo). It is an akathist in the full classical form — an introductory kontakion, alternating oikoi and kontakia, the long oikoi closing in chains of “Rejoice…” salutations and the short kontakia in “Alleluia” — but its subject is neither a saint nor a feast: it is a sustained hymn of thanksgiving to God for the whole of creation and of life, sung from within suffering (Legacy Icons, “Glory to God for All Things”; the Akathist text at saintjonah.org and pravoslavie.ru/50045.html). Its oikoi praise God for the light of the sun, the song of birds, the taste of water, the love of friends, the beauty of the world — and, most strikingly, for sorrow itself, for the hymn was composed in the years when the Russian Church was being crushed, and it takes as its whole burden the confession that God is to be glorified for all things, the bitter with the sweet.

The Title from Chrysostom’s Last Words

The hymn’s title is not original but a quotation of St. John Chrysostom’s last words. According to the tradition, as Chrysostom lay dying in exile at Comana in 407, having been driven from his see and worn down by his enemies, his final utterance was “Δόξα τῷ Θεῷ πάντων ἕνεκεν” — “Glory to God for all things” (Legacy Icons, “Glory to God for All Things”; the standard Lives of Chrysostom, reporting his death in exile in 407; and see The Divine Liturgy, on the saint of the Liturgy). The modern akathist takes that dying confession of a persecuted bishop and unfolds it into a whole hymn — so that the title binds the twentieth-century Russian martyrdom to the fourth-century one, and the hymn becomes a bridge across fifteen centuries of Christians glorifying God from within their afflictions. The choice of title is itself a theological act: it claims Chrysostom’s serenity in exile for the age of the Gulag.

The Contested Authorship

The authorship of the Akathist of Thanksgiving is genuinely contested, and the confusion is instructive enough to be set out with care, because it is a textbook instance of how a misattribution arises and hardens (METHODOLOGY §3).

The attribution now generally given: Metropolitan Tryphon (Turkestanov). The scholarly and increasingly the popular consensus assigns the composition of the akathist to Metropolitan Tryphon (Turkestanov) (1861–1934), a Russian bishop of aristocratic (Georgian princely) descent, a former chaplain and a much-loved pastor, who lived through the Revolution and died in Moscow in 1934. On this account he composed the akathist in the late 1920s — one source dates the composition to 1929 — as a hymn of gratitude wrung from the years of persecution, “his personal spiritual testament” (Legacy Icons, “Glory to God for All Things,” giving 1929; pravoslavie.ru/50045.html; the Orthodox Church of the Mother of God, churchmotherofgod.org). This is the attribution most current sources treat as correct.

The popular misattribution: Fr. Gregory Petrov. The akathist is very widely — and, on the now-standard account, incorrectly — attributed to Protopresbyter Gregory Petrov (d. 1940), a priest who died in a Soviet prison camp in Siberia. The reason for the misattribution is documented and specific: a copy of the text was found among Fr. Gregory Petrov’s personal effects after his death in the camp in 1940, and because the manuscript was discovered with him, the authorship was popularly assigned to him as the akathist spread, secretly copied, through the underground Church and was first published abroad around 1970 (Legacy Icons; saintjonah.org; orthocath.wordpress.com, 2011). Petrov was the bearer and transmitter of the text at the moment it surfaced, not (on this account) its author — but the circumstances of its discovery naturally attached his name to it.

[Corrected / Disputed: the authorship of the Akathist of Thanksgiving “Glory to God for All Things.” The now-standard attribution is to Metropolitan Tryphon (Turkestanov) (d. 1934), who is held to have composed it c. 1929 (Legacy Icons, “Glory to God for All Things”; pravoslavie.ru/50045.html; churchmotherofgod.org). The widespread popular attribution to Fr. Gregory Petrov (d. 1940 in a Soviet camp) is generally regarded as a misattribution, arising because a copy of the text was found among Petrov’s effects after his death, from which it spread and was published abroad c. 1970 (saintjonah.org; orthocath.wordpress.com, 2011). The Petrov ascription is thus explicable and still common in print, but the evidence — the text’s association with Tryphon and the mere discovery-with-Petrov of a copy — points to Tryphon as author. This collection reports the correction and its ground, while noting that the attribution rests on the transmission history rather than on an autograph, and that the Petrov ascription remains widespread.]

The disposition here is Corrected with a residual note of Disputed: the weight of the sources now favours Tryphon and explains the Petrov error, but the evidence is the transmission history of a text that circulated underground and anonymously in a time of persecution, not a signed manuscript — so the attribution to Tryphon, while well-grounded and now standard, is itself of the “traditional-and-reconstructed” evidence class rather than documentary proof, and honesty requires saying so.

The Theology of the Hymn

Whatever the resolution of its authorship, the akathist’s theology is its enduring achievement, and it belongs squarely within the Orthodox tradition of thanksgiving. Its governing conviction — that God is to be glorified for all things, including suffering — is the ascetic and eucharistic heart of Orthodox spirituality, the same conviction that makes the Divine Liturgy a eucharistia, a thanksgiving, and that the desert and Athonite fathers express as the giving of thanks in all circumstances (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “in everything give thanks”). What is distinctive is the register: the akathist praises God not in the abstract but through the concrete beauty of the created world — sunsets and birdsong, the faces of children, the taste of bread — and insists that this beauty is a revelation of God even, and especially, to a man in a prison camp. It is a hymn that finds the whole creation transfigured, “the world as sacrament,” and that answers the age of atheist persecution not with polemic but with gratitude. That a hymn of such radiant thanksgiving should come out of the Soviet terror is the fact that has made it beloved far beyond Orthodoxy, and it is treated further, with its translations and its reception, in Translation and Assessment.

See Also

References

  • “Glory to God For All Things: The Akathist of Thanksgiving.” Legacy Icons (legacyicons.com). (The attribution to Metropolitan Tryphon Turkestanov, composition c. 1929; the discovery among Petrov’s effects; the misattribution; the title from Chrysostom’s last words; publication abroad c. 1970.)
  • “The Akathist Hymn: ‘Glory to God for All Things.’” saintjonah.org/services/thanksgiving.htm; and pravoslavie.ru/50045.html. (The Akathist text; the transmission and attribution.)
  • “The Akathist of Thanksgiving: Glory to God for All Things.” Orthocath (orthocath.wordpress.com), 2011. (The discovery among Petrov’s belongings and the misattribution.)
  • “Akathist Hymn, Glory to God for All Things.” Orthodox Church of the Mother of God (churchmotherofgod.org). (Metropolitan Tryphon as author.)
  • Scripture and Fathers: 1 Thessalonians 5:18 (“in everything give thanks”); St. John Chrysostom’s death in exile at Comana, 407, and his reported last words “Glory to God for all things.”