Georges Florovsky, Landmarks of Russian Theology, Pournaras, Thessaloniki, 1983.
This book constitutes a systematic and rigorous overview of the course of the Russian Christianity. From the idolatry period until modern times, at the end of the 19th century, Florovsky follows, with objectivity and historical impartiality, as well as with the consciousness of the historian who participates in the formation of historical facts, the course of the theological thought and spiritual – ecclesiastical life of the Russian people in the course of history.
We follow contradictions and palinodes, the crisis of the “Russian Byzantinism” as an attempt to come of age, the blooming of translations and domestic philology, the development of monasticism and mostly of eremitism.
The apotheosis of mysticism to the point of exaggeration, which reveals the quality of the Russian soul, western and eastern influences, Peter the Great and Baroque inform of the size of the confusion and the lack of criteria and are indicative of a course in the search for truth. A course, which, through mistakes and palinodes, but also with the anxiety of seeking the truth on the road to authenticity, concludes, in the mind of the author, in a case of demonstrating and clarifying the criteria. These criteria, according to Fr. George Florovsky, are no other than the emergence of the authentic patristic tradition, in its fertile and creative transposition to the needs and demands of each time. The authentic patristic teaching and its equally authentic historical experience constitute, for the Harvard professor, the only credible impetus of theological life and the ecclesiastic experience in the course of history.
This reality is so stable and alive in the mind of the Russian theologian and intellectual that he will not hesitate to instigate, in the face of the revival of theological studies in his days, the “return to the Fathers”, as a return to the living, practical, but also creative theology.