Pavel Gavrilyuk

The paper discusses the problem of Orthodox‐Catholic disunity by naming non‐theological and discussing theological issues behind the issues in bilateral dialogues between the Churches. The main theological issue is the absence of agreement on which doctrinal differences should or should not count as church‐dividing. The author argues that the concept of the ‘hierarchy of truths’, introduced by Vatican II's Unitatis Redintegratio is a promising heuristic tool for distinguishing the doctrines that pertain to the ‘fundamental Christian faith’ and other important doctrines that do not have the same authoritative status. The author proposes that the agreement on the ‘Nicene faith’ could function as a sufficient condition for the Eucharistic communion between the two Churches on two grounds of the use of the Creed in the rites of initiation and the liturgy. The author subsequently articulates three potential objections to his proposal, responds to these objections, and finishes the paper with what could be called a ‘Nicene Formula of Reunion’. The proposed Formula includes a commitment to seeking an increasingly greater convergence on doctrinal and ecclesiastical issues on which there is continuing, although not church‐dividing disagreement.

The article explains that the ideology that fuels Russia's war against Ukraine was produced within the bosom of the Russian Orthodox Church and had Kirill Gundiaev, the Patriarch of Moscow, as its major proponent. The ideology of the so‐called “Russian World” denies to the Ukrainian state a right to independent existence. This ideology also postulates a clash of civilizations between the Holy Rus’ as a defender of the traditional Christian values and the secular West. The most recent pro‐war statements of Patriarch Kirill are analyzed in light of this dichotomy.

The paper explores a connection between discernment and spiritual perception. The discussion proceeds in four main steps. First, discernment as a practice underlying most Christian practices is introduced. Second, a distinction is made between judgment and perception, and it is argued that discernment involves both. Third, the concept of spiritual perception is introduced and the models of such perception are briefly discussed. Finally, drawing on John Climacus’ Ladder of Divine Ascent, a connection is established between discernment and spiritual perception.

In contemporary scholarship, deification is so universally assumed to have been an abiding feature of the Eastern Orthodox tradition that it strains historical imagination to conceive of a time when the idea of deification would have been largely forgotten. This article demonstrates that the rediscovery of deification as a structurally indispensable concept of patristic thought was made by the Russian patristic scholar Ivan Popov in a trilogy of essays published in 1903-1909. The article considers different cultural registers within which the deification motif surfaced in the nineteenth century: the Greek Philokalia and its Slavonic and Russian editions, Dostoevsky's prophecy about the self-divinization of humanity in revolutionary socialism, the Spiritual Diary of St. John of Krondstadt, and Vladimir Solovyov's concept of Godmanhood. While these sources held a great potential for the theoretical development of deification, the importance of deification for Orthodox theology was not appreciated in nineteenth-century Orthodox academic theology. The situation changed dramatically after Popov (who briefly studied with Harnack in Germany) published his essays arguing for the centrality of deification in patristic thought, providing a detailed analysis of the concept in the fourth-century patristic authors (dwelling at length on Athanasius and the Macarian Homilies), and offering a taxonomy of the two main types of deification: realistic and idealistic. This article discusses Popov's influence on Pavel Florensky, Sergei Epifanovich, Lev Karsavin, Georges Florovsky, Myrrha Lot-Borodine, and Vladimir Lossky.

The article offers information on the Inaugural Conference of the International Orthodox Theological Association (IOTA) held in Iasi, Romania on January 9-12 2019. Topics include relations of the Orthodox Church with the Christians, Orthodox leaders to dismiss ecumenism as a heresy without challenging the authority of the Council itself, and the Council of Crete has resolved the issue of ecumenism.

The article discusses Florovsky’s approach to the history of Russian philosophy, focusing on his un-published article ‘Russkaia filosofiia v emigratsii’ (‘Russian Philosophy in Emigration’, finished in 1930).In this article, Florovsky interprets the expulsion of many philosophers from the Soviet Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 as a political and spiritual act, amounting to the government’s rejection of creativity and freedom. He takes up the issue of continuity and discontinuity in Russian intellectual history and reaches a conclusion that it is émigré thought, especially religious philosophy, which stands in continuity with the philosophical heritage of pre-revolutionary Russia. In contrast, he interprets the communist ideology developed inside the Soviet Russia as a disruption of this intellectual tradition.