07 — The Name-of-God Controversy (Imiaslavie)

The collection’s dispute flagship. Ilarion’s On the Mountains of the Caucasus (1907) and the confession “the Name of God is God Himself”; the Athonite quarrel of 1912–13; the condemnations of Constantinople and the Russian Synod; the forcible removal of over eight hundred monks in July 1913; the 1914 mitigation; the unfinished review at the Moscow Council of 1917–18; the sympathies of Florensky, Bulgakov, and Losev — with the dogmatic question left where the Church left it: formally unresolved.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox / Athonite (intra-Orthodox dispute, formally unresolved)

This section is written under the strictest application of METHODOLOGY §4.2: an intra-Orthodox dispute the Church herself has not settled. Both parties’ positions are reported in their own terms with proponents named; contested figures are attributed to their sources (Alfeyev’s tallies); the synodal condemnation, its administrative mitigation, and the adjourned conciliar review are stated as the exact juridical record; and neither reading is adjudicated.

Files in This Section

File Description
the-athonite-dispute-1912-1913.md The book, the quarrel on Athos, Bulatovich’s Apologia, the patriarchal and Synodal condemnations (Epistle of 18 May 1913), the deportations of July 1913, and what was and was not decided.
the-unfinished-question.md The 1914 mitigation; the 1917–18 Council’s adjourned review; Florensky, Bulgakov, Losev; the two readings stated fairly with proponents named; the question’s present status and why it belongs in this compendium.

See Also