PAUL VALLIERE

August 29, 2001, 7.45 AM, Moscow

On Amazon.com I've found another book of the same author: Change and Tradition in Russian Civilization. Westland, Michigan: Hayden-Mcneil Publishing, 1995. 138 pages.

Editor's information: " Working almost exclusively from Russian language primary sources, Valliere explores the many creative ideas devised or adapted by the Russian school, such as the humanity of God, kenotic christology, sophiology, panhumanity, free theocracy, church-and-world dogmatics, and prophetic ecumenism. Offering the first account in English of Bukharev�s thought and the most complete analysis of Bulgakov�s dogmatic theology, this volume is the best study of Russian theology now available."

I have no possibility to get these books (it's a pity for me). I've recieved the note that in the introduction the author is trying "to drive a wedge between the "philosophical Orthodoxy" of the "Russian School", on the one hand, and the so-called "Neopatristic Orthodoxy" of people like Fr. Georges Florovsky and Vladimir Lossky."

I am a bit sceptical about Vladimir Losskiy and Florovsky as "Neopatristics." I prefer to call them Neobyzantines. They are very anti-ecumenical and anti-Catholic (and anti-Protestant as well.) Florovsky was very active in the World Council of Churches, but he was an open enemy of Fr. Sergey Bulgakov's line towards reconciliation and intercommunion. Florovsky was the founder and ideologist of the modern Russian Orthodox "ecumenism" as "witnessing" to non-Eastern Orthodox about how fine we are and that Christianity is only in the Eastern Orthodoxy. Florovsky and Lossky differed from Western Neopatristic movememnt because they've rejected Western Fathers as the source of all Western "deviations."

It is interesting that both used the authority of Fathers to oppose and criticize the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox church (all denominations.) I am afraid Fathers were (and are for modern "Neobyzantines") only a way to find freedom from real Church life, to become a sort of prophets or staretzs, with ancient theological tracts instead of canons.