Vladimir Lossky

""Since the latest XIX century one of the main interests of the Russian philosophy became theological questions. Even though such a questioning was violently suppressed in Russia, due to the well known historical reasons, the philosophical legacy of the Russian religious thought, flourishing at the beginning of the XX century, nowadays is still bearing fruit in Europe, after the famous scholars expulsion of 1922.
John Zizioulas (1931), metropolitan of Pergamon, is one of the most remarkable successors of the so called “neopatristic synthesis” announced by G. Florovsky. It was under the supervision of this illustrious Russian theologian that Zizioulas did his doctoral research at the Harvard University. The fundamental characteristic of Florovsky’s theology consists in its relation with the thought of the Fathers of the Eastern Church, belonging to the early ecumenical councils period, before the Church split. Zizioulas considers this great Russian theologian as his teacher, dedicating him some of his works. Indeed, many of his reflections, as those concerning Trinitarian questions, Eucharist, Church and many others, do really indicate this strong influence. In any case it would be better to get concentrated on the most important and specific point of the Zizioulas’ theological theory.
The Florovsky’s ideas of the division between the essence of God and the God’s will, of the creation of the manhood, composed by free and active persons, as a consequence of kenosis of the divine will, a result of an infinite love that God has for its creatures are all present in the Zizioulas’ own theology.
We are going to analyze one of the pivotal themes that can be found amongst the Zizioulas’ works: the ontology of the Person, strictly connected with the concept of Otherness – ideas inherited from the Russian neopatristics.
Our intention is to discuss the influence by Florovsky on the theory of Person by Zizioulas. It will be interesting to understand the birth of the same Florovsky’s theory, rooted in the diatribe against S. Bulgakov, P. Florensky and the sophiology in general as well as the controversy between Zizioulas and V. Lossky. The point of the discussion is going to be the idea of Otherness with its importance for the mankind and for the ecumenical dialogue.
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Juin 1940. Demain je serai enfin soldat. J’aurai ma place modeste, mais définie, précise, nette, dans l’ensemble de ceux qui doivent résister. J’aurai mon matricule sans nom, « soldat inconnu » parmi tant d’autres. Je ne serai plus en marge de l’œuvre commune, je ne serai plus un intellectual à l’écart de la grande route nationale – instrument fragile et sensible, qui revient sans cesse sur lui-même pour méditer, être dans lequel la vie s’arrête pour donner lieu à la pensée. / Июнь 1940. Завтра наконец-то мне суждено стать солдатом. У меня появится свое непритязательное, зато определенное место, строго установленный уклад жизни, я встану в один строй вместе с теми, кто уже присягнул, чтобы сопротивляться врагу. Мне дадут безымянный порядковый номер – «неизвестный солдат», среди множества других. Я не буду больше выброшен за пределы общего дела, мне уже не быть больше интеллектуалом вне событий грандиозной всенародной борьбы, находящимся на обочине великого национального пути – хрупким и чувствительным орудием познания, вечно рефлексирующим, постоянно осознающим себя существом, останавливающим ход жизни, с целью уступить место мысли.

The recently released, 2011 Palme d'Or winner The Tree of Life is nothing short of an ambitious cosmic epic and a hymn to life in which we recall the life of a small town family, from innocence to lostness, through the fractured memories of suffering and the life of the universe. The film stars Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain, and is Malick's second collaboration with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Y Tu Mamá También, Ali, The New World, Children of Men).

La partecipazione dell’uomo alla vita divina non è premio da conquistare ma svelamento di ciò che già siamo, del nostro essere profondo, di quella particella del divino che è in noi sin dalla creazione. Solo celata dalla opacità della nostra condizione mortale e che sarà pienamente manifestata quando ogni cosa sarà trasfigurata e unificata in Dio.

The words we determine for God; form the God determined by words: Dare we speak of God? The possibility and potency of this question, lies not only in what can be said of God, but how it can be spoken; whether through positive terms of affirmation, or through finding a way beyond words by negating their defining ability. These two approaches positive/negative, kataphatic/apophatic, not only cut through the use of theological language, but down to the very heart of who we say God is (not). Religion prides itself on the positive pronouncements it can make on God, however in the postmodern return to religion a resurgence of interest among thinkers has opened up toward negative theology, seeking to find what religion cannot say. Works such as Caputo's The Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought, Rollins's How (Not) to Speak of God, and Keller's Cloud of the Impossible, have all incorporated aspects of negative theology with philosophy in a postsecular context. This creative flirtation between philosophy and negative theology has helped spark a colour and a play between both these disciplines of thought. However, on the whole, an eastern apophatic tradition has remained largely foreign and little grasped, even by western theologians let alone continental philosophers. It is these different traditions of negative theology, east and west, that I want to briefly explore in this article: how they differ in approach, their distinctive features, and the types of problems encountered in apophatic theology. Moreover, is there perhaps something in negative theology that, if we are not careful, instead of returning us to the hidden depth of God, only reinforces our dependence on dogmatism?

This article examines ideas about human personhood, the Church, and ecumenicism in the thought of the Romanian theologian Dumitru Stăniloae (1903-1993). It argues that Stăniloae developed his thinking on these issues during two different periods of his life. His interwar writings discuss the debates in nationalist terms, while those works written in the 1970s and 1980s describe Christian unity through a Trinitarian framework. Despite the extremely different logic behind them, Stăniloae’s two ecclesial models are remarkably similar. In order to emphasize how profoundly historical context has shaped Orthodox thinking about the Church, the article briefly compares Stăniloae’s work to that of Nikolai Afanasiev, Vladimir Lossky, and John Zizioulas, three Orthodox theologians who wrote extensively about ecclesiology and ecumenicism.

This article addresses the Orthodox Christian representation of reality, or doctrine of creation, and the possible need to rephrase and communicate its meaning within the parameters of contemporary scientific culture. To redraft the traditional Orthodox worldview today is both necessary and largely unproblematic. Rephrasing the doctrine of creation is demanded by the pastoral and missionary exigency to reaching out to audiences conditioned by contemporary cosmology. Given the earlier successive reformulations of the Orthodox doctrine of creation throughout history and within various cultural frameworks, this task, I suggest, does not pose any insurmountable difficulty.
© 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press

This Master’s thesis will explicate, analyse and discuss the Orthodox doctrine of the essence/energies distinction in three prominent 20th century theologians, namely, Vladimir Lossky, Kallistos Ware and Dumitru Staniloae. This is urgent because of the central position this doctrine occupies in contemporary Orthodoxy, together with the lack of precision one usually encounters when references are made to this distinction.
Methodologically, it will proceed by a careful reading of primary sources in order to explicate and clarify, in each theologian, the most important lines of thought concerning the essence/energies distinction. It will also explicate details which may affect, elucidate, or even put into question, these major lines of thought. As secondary sources, other Orthodox theologians as well as Greek Church fathers will be consulted.
Lossky and Staniloae, respectively, present rather clear visions about the relationship
between God’s essence and energies. As it turns out their positions are quite far from each other and, at some points, even incommensurable. Ware, on the other hand, affirms traditional and contemporary formulations, yet without providing any clear definition of his own opinion.
As regards God’s energies towards creation, the opinions of the three theologians are
pretty close; but regarding God’s eternal energies, their differences become apparent. Lossky affirms an antinomic relationship between God’s essence and energies, according to which they are mutually exclusive yet virtually identical. The essence is completely void of activity, whereas all activities are contained by the energies. Thus, even the inter-trinitarian love is outside of the essence. Staniloae affirms, on the contrary, that God’s essence is identical to the divine persons and their communion of inter-trinitarian love, through which they give themselves to each other completely. Ware remains unclear about the precise character of his opinion, and it is virtually impossible to tell whether he would prefer Lossky’s or Staniloae’s solution.

This essay outlines the key stages in the study of Dionysius in twentieth-century Greek Orthodox theology and scholarship. After an introductory overview of this topic, the complexities of the Greek scene are presented since there is considerable diversity in the handling of this ancient author by Greek theologians. The section that follows focuses on specific political and social factors that have or could have affected the development of the engagement with patristic literature in the universities of Athens and Thessaloniki but also in the public sphere. It provides some specific examples of how that is reflected in the Greek scholarly and religious bibliography relating to this ancient Christian author. The fourth and longest section examines three readers of his writings from the interwar and postwar periods: Emmanouel Karpathios (1888–1972), Christos Yannaras (b. 1935), and John Zizioulas (b. 1931). It compares the approach of these three readers: the first followed a different method from the other two, who adopted a similar theological methodology but developed very different views on this subject of research or more accurately on this aspect of the Orthodox tradition.
Keywords: Christian mysticism, Orthodox hagiography, Western influences, twentieth century philosophy, Greek theology, Russian émigré religious thought, neopatristic synthesis, Emmanouel Karpathios, Christos Yannaras, John Zizioulas.

This paper was delivered in the context of:
https://www.academia.edu/27395788/Corpus_Dionysiacum_Areopagiticum_Ancient_and_Modern_Readers_Final_Programme

If you are interested in reading this essay, feel free to contact me by e-mail for a digital copy of it.

In this paper I will explore three different visions of ecumenism found in three Orthodox thinkers of the last century, Nikolai Berdyaev, Fr Sergius Bulgakov and Vladimir Lossky. With the exception of Bulgakov, they are not the most frequently cited figures in relation to the ecumenical movement, and yet they all were deeply engaged in conversations and cooperation with Christians from other churches, and tried to spell out what these relationships meant for them and in what sense they made visible both already existing and desired unity. As they all are related to the controversial figure of Vladimir Solovyov, I will first briefly turn to him. Then I turn to Berdyaev's discovery of creative and free Orthodoxy, which should be instrumental in overcoming the divided life of the Christian world, followed by Bulgakov's sophianic and pastoral concepts of unity, and finally to Lossky's mystical-eschatological reading of the Christian sources and his devotion to various saints which did not follow divisions into confessional camps. In the conclusion I will ask what of these ecumenical visions could be fruitfully revived to provide inspiration in our search for unity, and strengthen our focus on what is experientially real.

Vladimir Lossky (1903–58) and Sergii Bulgakov (1871–1944) are normally taken as polar opposites in modern Orthodox theology. Lossky's theology is portrayed as being based on a close exegesis of the Greek Fathers with an emphasis on theosis, the Trinity and the apophatic way of mystical union with God. Bulgakov's ‘sophiology’, in contrast, if it is remembered at all, is said to be a theology which wished to ‘go beyond the Fathers’, was based on German Idealism and the quasi-pantheist and gnostic idea of ‘sophia’ which is a form of the ‘Eternal Feminine’ of Romanticism. In short, Lossky's theological approach is what people normally think of when they speak of Orthodox theology: a form of ‘neo-patristic synthesis’ (Georges Florovsky). Bulgakov's theological approach is said to be typical of the exotic dead end of the inter-war émigré ‘Paris School’ (Alexander Schmemann) or ‘Russian Religious Renaissance’ (Nicolas Zernov). Lossky, we are reminded, was instrumental in the 1935 condemnation, by Metropolitan Sergii Stragorodskii of the Moscow Patriarchate, of Bulgakov's theology as ‘alien’ to the Orthodox Christian faith. Counter to this widely held ‘standard narrative’ of contemporary Orthodox theology, the article argues that the origins of Vladimir Lossky's apophaticism, which he characterised as ‘antinomic theology’, are found within the theological methodology of the sophiology of Sergii Bulgakov: ‘antinomism’. By antinomism is understood that with any theological truth one has two equally necessary affirmations (thesis and antithesis) which are nevertheless logically contradictory. In the face of their conflict, we are forced to hold both thesis and antithesis together through faith. A detailed discussion of Lossky's apophaticism is followed by its comparison to Bulgakov's ‘sophiological antinomism’. Lossky at first appears to be masking the influence of Bulgakov and even goes so far as to read his own form of theological antinomism into the Fathers. Nevertheless, he may well have been consciously appropriating the ‘positive intuitions’ of Bulgakov's thought in order to ‘Orthodoxise’ a thinker he believed was in error but still regarded as the greatest Orthodox theologian of the twentieth century. Despite major differences between the two thinkers (e.g. differing understandings of reason, the use of philosophy and the uncreated/created distinction), it is suggested that Lossky and Bulgakov have more in common than normally is believed to be the case. A critical knowledge of Bulgakov's sophiology is said to be the ‘skeleton key’ for modern Orthodox theology which can help unlock its past, present and future.

The theological polemics of the late-fourteenth century, which arose out of the confrontation between certain followers of Gregorios Palamas and the brothers Prochoros and Demetrios Kydones, found a certain echo in the fifteenth century. Anti-Palamite figures, such as Manuel Kalekas, continued to evoke Palamite reactions in the decades prior to the Council of Ferrara-Florence. During the council conflicts arose between followers of Palamas’s teachings and certain Dominicans who were opposed to Palamas. In the aftermath, Georgios-Gennadios Scholarios commented on works of Thomas Aquinas in order to adjudicate the matter and argue for the orthodoxy of the Palamite position on the essence and energies of God. Scholarios can, in a number of senses, be classed a Thomistic thinker but he parted ways with Aquinas on the dogmatic question of the essence and energies. Instead, after Scholarios began to reconsider his pro-unionism at the Council of Ferrara-Florence, he turned to a number of other Scholastic sources in order recast Aquinas’s work into a Scotistic mold. For this reason he interpolated portions of Aquinas’s philosophical work De ente et essentia with a number of excerpts emanating from Franciscan theologians. These selections were designed to argue for a quasi-real or robust formal distinction in accord with the developments of the Scotist, François Meyronnes. While Scholarios had early in life benefitted from a Palamite formation and returned to this intellectual tradition by allying with Markos Eugenikos some years after the Council of Ferrara-Florence, Scholarios nonetheless remained greatly attached to Scholastic learning, especially Aquinas. Nevertheless, Scholarios admitted that the philosophical underpinnings of Aquinas’s metaphysics of God were theologically opposed to official Orthodoxy. As a result, Scholarios wrote additional treatises in philosophical theology that can be designated as scholastic and speculative. These original works were designed to justify Palamism in scholastic terms that would have been understood as an endorsement of Scotus’s theology of God among Renaissance Latin theologians of the scholae. Scholarios has historically been received and celebrated in the Greek Orthodox Church as one of its premier theologians since his death. Scholarios’s penchant for Thomism made him an attractive figure for Neo-Thomism, particularly the figures of Martin Jugie and Sebastian Guichardan. However, these apologetic theologians of the twentieth century were not totally accurate in their assessment of Scholarios’s theology of God. In addition to uncovering new sources for Scholarios’s works and to filling in biographical lacunae in Scholarios’s biography, this work also evaluates and critiques some of Jugie’s and Guichardan’s work as either insufficient or mistaken with respect to the question of the essence-energies question in Scholarios.

The CD has made an indelible mark on the development of the Byzantine Orthodox tradition and the overall tenor of Orthodox theology. Although much in the CD could justifiably provoke controversy, the incorporation of the CD into the canon of patristic writings was surprisingly quick and met with relatively little resistance. 1 Commenting on this peculiar development, Jaroslav Pelikan wrote:

This article examines the literary appearance of a theological trope across three scholars in Francophone texts written at approximately the same time: Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jean Daniélou, and Vladimir Lossky. The trope is that Gregory of Nyssa’s polemic against Eunomius of Cyzicus represents Gregory’s rejection of Origen’s hermeneutic for Christian philosophy and for “knowing God”. Each author constructs an antinomy between Gregory and “Eunomius” (who equals “Origen”); each author understands Gregory’s opponent “Eunomius/Origen” to be the personification of rationalism, evacuating Christian theology of its distinct religious content; each author takes Gregory’s relationship to philosophy  to represent an exemplary Christian doctrinal and hermeneutical engagement with philosophy. Unlike Gregory, or Eunomius, the authors will decline to link their theology of “knowing God” (their théologie mystique) with their Trinitarian theology. The bracketing off of a doctrine of Trinity from a doctrine of “gnoseology” is conspicuous when the historical exemplar for true gnoseology is Gregory’s engagement with Eunomius, a controversy that argued – on both sides – gnoseology via Trinitarian theology (or vice versa).

John Henry Newman spearheaded one of the first modern retrievals of the Christian doctrine of the Christian doctrine of deification. This article argues that, precisely because of the early date of Newman’s rehabilitation, his treatment is not tinted by the polemics surrounding theosis that developed in the late nineteenth century between Eastern and Western Christianity. To Newman, deification is not an Eastern doctrine, it is not cause for division between East and West, and it does not supplant justification. Instead, it is arises from a broad patristic consensus, it is a tool for union among the churches, and it provides resources for understanding justification properly.

The chapter argues that the twentieth-century neopatristic theologies were not purely historical exercises, but theologically motivated enterprises. More specifically, Georges Florovsky's 'neopatristic synthesis' was a response to his 'modernist' predecessors, such as Pavel Florensky and Sergius Bulgakov. The organizing principle of Florovsky's neopatristics was Chalcedonian Christology. In contrast, Vladimir Lossky's reconstruction of 'mystical theology' had the vision of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Gregory Palamas as two focal points. It is argued that Alexander Schmemann's liturgical theology may be likewise considered as a version of neopatristic theology with the emphasis on liturgical practice, and especially the eschatological dimension of the Eucharist, as the primary locus of theologizing. Thus, neopatristic theology cannot be regarded as a monolithic entity, but as a conglomerate of distinct theological visions, each with their own methods and organizing principles, which took as their inspiration the concept of a 'return to the Church Fathers' and creative appropriation of patristic heritage.

A paper delivered at the conference entitled, “Contemporary Eastern Orthodox Identity and the Challenges of Pluralism and Sexual Diversity in a Secular Age,” in Oxford, England on August 17, 2019. The paper explores Vladimir Lossky's attribution of sexedness/gender to the human nature (physis) as an attribute shared by all human persons (hypostaseis), a move that undercuts gender essentialist claims that locate sex and gender at the hypostatic level.

I compare the role of the Bible in the thought of two prominent negative theologians, Dionysius the Areopagite and Vladimir Lossky. I attempt to discover why, if Lossky views Dionysius as the paradigm of good negative theology, Lossky removes Scripture from the prominent place it holds in Dionysius' thought. I theorize that this is due to the intervening influence of Gregory Palamas and the development of the concept of Tradition in the East.

Φιλοσοφεῖν: ἐπιστήμη, εὔνοια, παρρησία Ιανουάριος 2017 (15) 1 Βλ. Ν. Russell, «Christos Yannaras», Key Theological Thinkers: From Modern to Postmodern, edited by S.J. Kristiansen and S. Rise (Αldershot; Farnham, VT: Ashgate, 2013), 726 κ. εξ. 2 Για πιο συστηματική προσέγγιση του όρου και ανάλυση της σημασίας του στην ανατολική παράδοση με εμφανή αφετηρία το εγχείρημα του Γιανναρά, ας ανατρέξει κανείς στο παλαιό άρθρο: M.P. Begzos, «Der Apophatismus in der ostkirchlichen Theologie: Die kritische Funktion einer traditionellen Theorie heute», ΕΕΘΣΠΑ, 27 (1986), 179-216.

This article explores how the Hesychast practices of prayer expand the notion of lex orandi as well as bringing lex orandi and lex credendi into an equal relationship of mutual exchange. It concentrates on the contributions of two theologians of the Neo-Patristic renewal, Vladimir Lossky and Fr Dumitru Stăniloae. Their understanding of the relation between the apophatic and the kataphatic dimensions of spiritual life and theology helps to expand the notion of lex orandi and to rediscover the antinomic character of the lex credendi, foundational for the discernment of what is and what is not Christian orthodoxy.

Vladimir Lossky's theology has been extensively studied by scholars but his commitment to ecumenism still remains an insufficiently researched domain. This article fills this lacuna by shedding light on an important chapter of Lossky's ecumenical activity: his involvement in the Parisian Dieu Vivant circle and its ecumenical journal. The article argues that Lossky's editorial work for the Dieu Vivant journal represents an important episode of the ecumenical interactions between the representatives of the Orthodox Neo-Patristic movement and the architects of the French Catholic Ressourcement. Moreover, Lossky's willingness to be a member of the editorial board of the Dieu Vivant journal cannot be understood apart from the affinity which existed between his theological vision and the agenda of the French periodical: the priority of the eschatological consciousness of Christianity.

The postmetaphysical context of the contemporary philosophy emphasizes the sustained refusal of metaphysics, pointing to the lack of legitimacy for modernity’s meta-narrations. The reason loses its power, allowing the development of new religious movements, without dogmatic foundations and more sentimental and experiential. Jean-Luc Marion’s thinking is one of the contemporary possibilities for the dialog between theology and postmetaphysical philosophies. Concepts like "God without being", "idol", "icon" and "distance" offer a coherent phenomenological answer to the weak thought. Starting from these considerations, my paper analyses Vladimir Lossky’s apophatic theology, arguing for the paradoxical status of thought in the Tradition of Orthodox Church: first, a dogmatic strong thought, very important for the Christian faith; second, a thought that needs to become weak in order to remain strong, being overcome by the negative theology and the mystical experience.

It has become an unfortunately typical Orthodox strategy, following the surge of "neo-Palamite" theology in the twentieth century, to pit Aquinas and Palamas polemically against each other as opposed archetypes of Western and Eastern theology.1 Many Orthodox commentators, in adopting this strategy, have singled out Palamas's distinction between the divine essence and energy (ούσια and ενέργεια) as a point of central incompatibility between his theology and that of Aquinas, and have argued that the latter's failure to draw such a distinction ultimately leads him to construe God's relation to creation in a manner anathema to Eastern theology. Although this charge of incompatibility between Palamas and Aquinas perhaps possesses a prima facie plausibility, it deserves critical reexamination for two major reasons. First, as Marcus Plested has recently demonstrated, several of Palamas's earliest Byzantine followers openly admired and drew from Aquinas in their own "Palamite" writings, and apparently perceived no insurmountable conflict between Aquinas's theology and that of their teacher.2 It is only in the modem era, Plested argues, that Orthodox commentators have begun to vilify Aquinas with

The article is devoted to a comparative analysis of some of the key ideas ofG. Florovsky and A. Schmemann. The article calls into question P. Gavrilyuk's assertion that the liturgical theology of Father A. Schmemann is a kind of neo-patristic synthesis.The author emphasizes that the works of the holy fathers were not for A. Schmemann a fundamental element of his theological thought. He was quite critical of monasticism and the works of such Byzantine mystics as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. There is also a noticeable discrepancy between the A. Schmemann and Father G. Florovsky in relation to"Christian Hellenism". The author, nevertheless, claims that there are aspects where the intuitions of Florovsky and Schmemann coincided. For example, Father Alexander believed that in order to imitate the Holy Fathers in theology, Orthodox theologians must return to their experience, the source of which, in his opinion, is contained in the liturgy and the Eucharist. The conviction that Orthodox theology cannot be limited only to the academic plane, but should organically combine with the experience of communion with God and express it, was also characteristic of G. Florovsky and V. Lossky. Taking into account the serious differences between Florovsky and Schmemann, the author comes to the conclusion that the liturgical theology of Fr. Alexander is not a form of neo-patristic synthesis as Fr. George understood it

The article, in Romanian, begins by highlighting some of the issues pertaining to modern anthropocentrism and secular naturalism, like the dissolution of the inner life and of society. It then explores the main elements of ecclesial anthropology, like its theocentric, personalist, synergetic and communional dimensions, alongside reviewing the most important anthropological contributions associated with the neopatristic movement.

The paper argues that Sergej Bulgakov’s sophiology was an attempt, via antinomism or the philosophy of antinomies, to overcome the rationalism, monism, and determinism (in a word, “pantheism”) of Vladimir Solov’ëv’s philosophy of the Absolute understood as an abstract Trinitarianism. After detailing Solov’ëv’s thought on the Trinity and Bulgakov’s criticisms of it, the study then describes Bulgakov’s antinomism and its application to the doctrine of God. However, it is contended that Bulgakov’s antinomism ultimately falls into the same problems with pantheism found in Solov’ëv and so the last part of the paper tentatively proposes resources in his work, stated in the form of a suggested “fourth (Bulgakovian) antinomy” between ousia (divine Being as such) and Sophia (the revelation in God and the world of the divine Being), that might help to avoid a collapse of God and the world by making the divine Being proper utterly transcendent and unknowable.

Within two years of each other, Hans von Balthasar (1942), Jean Danielou (1944), and Vladimir Lossky (1944) each published books on the subject of a "theologie mystique" which focused on Gregory of Nyssa as an exemplar of this proposed category of theology. Each author found in Gregory's writings an existential theology of encounter, and each saw Gregory as writing against a rationalist, propositions-based theology. Gregory's struggle mirrored their own. All three authors argued that Gregory encountered a vigorous rationalist theology in the person of Eunomius of Cyzicus -- and all three argued that Eunomius was, for Gregory, the avatar of the principle source of rationalist theology, Origen. The aurgument(s) for identifying the theologies of Eunomius and Origen as rationalist or "scientific" functioned simultaneously to defend Gregory himself against this characterization -- one promulgated in early 20th century scholarship by Adolf von Harnack and Harold Cherniss. These three books, all written in French, exhibit a kind of argument that will become fundamental in "Ressourcement" theology -- namely, that true Christian theology transforms the pagan philosophy it appropriates (rather than being transformed -- i.e., "Hellenized"), and in that "transformation" continues upward in a living encounter with God. The theologies of these three modern Christians, otherwise quite different, intersect in the meaning they find in Gregory's conflict with Eunomius.

“The De Trinitate of St. Boethius and the Structure of St. Thomas’ Summa Theologiae,” a paper for the International Congress of Boethian Studies held in Pavia, Italy, October 1980; published in Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Studi Boeziani, ed. L. Obertello, (Roma:  Herder, 1981), 367–375.
St. Thomas Aquinas has been both praised and criticised for introducing a distinction within the theological treatment of God between his unity and the Trinity of Persons and for beginning theology with the unity. His supporters see in this the appropriate rational order through which revelation is made intelligible by means of its proper praeamble in natural reason. His critics oppose this same rationality and think that through it the distinctively Christian revelation of the triune God is reduced by an abstract and merely natural reasoning to the unity of an impersonal first principle. They maintain as well that the vitality and concreteness of a proper Christian understanding of the Trinity is thereby lost. We will consider briefly at the end of this paper the justification of aspects of this praise and blame, but before doing so, the statement of facts on which both are based needs examination for it is capable of doubt.
The Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner gives a full statement of the received view in which he is followed by the Protestant Eberhard Jüngel. Their position accords with that of the Orthodox Vladamir Lossky. The account has then weighty ecumenical authority. According to it the distinction between the de deo uno and the de deo trino was first made by Thomas and it « only came into general use since the Sententiae of Peter Lombard were replaced by the Summa. »  The division and order of the two treatises goes back to the Augustinian and western conception of the Trinity  which is said to start with the one single nature of God as a totality.  This procedure is held to be the inverse of that of the eastern Fathers, who treating the nature of God in general when considering the Person of the Father, may be represented either as commencing with the Persons or with the unity and triad simultaneously. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite is for Professor Lossky the epitome of the Orthodox tradition. In elevating a negative mystical theology to the highest rank, Dionysius finally celebrates God not only as simultaneously unity and Trinity, but also, as beyond being known in either of these categories. His eastern followers are held to be moving in the direction opposite to that the west is travelling. Despite the authority of this common account the actual history seems to be its contrary.

This paper will consider the concept of participation as an ethical concept that can be deployed in a western, Lutheran context.  First, this paper traces the historical, theological roots of the Trinitarian concept of participation, and the historical, philosophical and theological reasons that the concept of God’s ontological, Trinitarian goodness and the praxis of life were ever divided in the west.  Secondly, John Milbank’s concept of the ‘gift exchange’ will be explored as a proposed possibility for bridging the ‘ontological gap’ between faith and the praxis of the Christian life, specifically his concept for the ‘poetic re-narration’ of faith and works.  Milbank’s critique of Luther will be considered, specifically regarding the role that Luther played in the divide between faith and works.  Thirdly, the work of Tuomo Mannermaa and the Finnish School of Luther Studies will be explored as a means to interpret Luther’s understanding of participation, sacramental mediation between faith and works, and the poetic cycle of faith and works that exists within Luther’s theology in light of Milbank’s patristic, Trinitarian framework.  Finally, I will suggest the notion of ‘poetic participation’ be explored as a concept to re-narrate the participatory ethical life of the churches of the Augsburg Confessions.

This brief study presents the life and thought of the Russian intellectual Myrrha Lot-Borodine (1882-1957), who lived and worked as a writer in Paris, examining some of the aspects of her writings on Greek patristics that are of theological interest. Like other prominent representatives from the Russian diaspora who contributed to the study of the Orthodox tradition, Lot-Borodine did not initially pursue studies in theology; however, she played a role in bringing to the fore and establishing Greek patristic thought in an inter-Christian context. She made a unique contribution to the field of patristics and Orthodox theology in general, because her work was connected to some intellectual trends of the contemporary theological thought of western Europe. This study presents the reasons for her interest in the sources of the eastern Christian tradition. Moreover, it highlights the key influences in this specific aspect of her work as a student of history and of Christian theology. In addition, her role in shaping the vision of an Orthodoxy as an ‘open proposal’ to European thought and culture is critically appraised. Two important contributions are her studies of the establishment of the dogma of deification in Greek patristics, and Byzantine liturgical theology and spirituality. Attention is drawn to some original aspects of her approach to these topics in comparison to some western Orthodox and non-Orthodox theological writers, as well as some Greek writers of about the same period. By way of conclusion, readings of Dionysius the Areopagite and Gregory Palamas by thinkers who either belonged to the Russian diaspora or were inspired by its renewalist tendencies are presented as examples of the backdrop against which Lot-Borodine’s work should be viewed.
Keywords: Myrrha Lot-Borodine, Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, Western theology, Russian diaspora, deification, ecumenism, feminism, neopatristic synthesis, French scholarship, medieval history, Greek Patristics, Dionysius the Areopagite, Nicholas Cabasilas, Gregory Palamas, modern Greek theology.

In this essay we discuss Williams’s notion of the self as a social mediation. The argument is made that from early on Williams was influenced by different streams of thought that directed him to analogous conclusions regarding language and personhood. I will show that through internalizing of Augustine, Wittgensteinian philosophy and
certain strands of Eastern Orthodox thought, Williams came to an understanding of language that was grounded in the particulars of human interaction, one that is finally kenotic since the imago dei is reflective of the imago trinitatis. It is within this context that one should place Williams own relationally-centred, non-egocentric construal of
human personhood that finds its centre in the dynamic exteriority of love.