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Florovsky Georges, Creation and Redemption, Pournaras, Thessaloniki, 1983.

The sum of the advanced, deep theological problematic on issues of creation, evil and the possibility of its transcendence through the salvation in Christ, constitutes the content of this volume, which Fr. Georges Florovsky authored under the title: Creation and Redemption.

Clarifying once again his theological scholarship, this great Russian theologian, reflects, through a dialectic of revelation and experience and based on the patristic testimony, on the mysteries of creation, evil and redemption.

The revelation of God in the Scripture and the personal existence of the faithful becomes a holy collateral in the body of the Church. This collateral reveals to all of us the world as creation. A change (according to the intelligent observation of Gregorios of Nyssa), of non-existence into existence. However, according to the patristic thought, the reality of creation quickly turned from object of admiration to object of theological research. The connection to the supreme rhetoric of Origenis seems unbreakable.

          The question about the initial and final limits of creation begs an answer. Can we think of the almightiness and sovereignty of God in the ex nihilo situation before creation? From the “mental occasion” introduced by Gregory of Nyssa, the world as a thought of the divine Intellect, according to Gregory the Theologian, to the theory of “the word of beings” of Maximus, the problem of creation remains a mystery, which eucharistically engrafts everything in God.

A similar mystery to that of creation is the one of evil. An “unsown grass without root”, according to Gregory of Nyssa, (phenomenon omnino non fundatum), an irrationalism and a malevolent existence, evil seeks its “foundation” in the lack of judgment of human will and the easily overturned human nature. Thus, evil reveals itself as narcissistic self-reference and self-love of man. It is a reality, which is created through persons and exists within the framework of human actions.

Its revelation as pain and sadness, as attrition and death does not define an environment that must be devitalized from the Greek understanding of apathy, but one that should be infused with a hypostatic intervention “beyond good and evil”.

At this point, Florovsky introduces, after a rather traditional analysis of good and evil, the need of salvation in Christ. A salvation intricately linked to incarnation as the response of God to the problem of evil and the drama of history.

In this volume, readers meet a deep and detailed narrative, which includes almost the whole of Christology and soteriology. Fr. Georges Florovsky will attempt to carry in our times a multitude of theological and philosophical problematic about time, nature and its restoration, attrition and death, the immortality of the soul and resurrection, the renewal of everything and eschatology. Issues always topical, in a fertile and creative discourse.

Florovsky Georges, Holy Scripture – Church – Tradition, Pournaras, Thessaloniki.

The translation by late professor G. Tsamis and the circulation in Greece of the study by the outstanding contemporary orthodox theologian Fr. Georges Florovsky has been a landmark and for many a criterion for our indigenous theological self-consciousness. This is not so much because it was one of his most widely read books, but because it is a subversive reading in terms of established domestic perceptions about the “source or sources of faith” and the priority or not of the Bible over the Holy Tradition.

The Holy Scripture, as the content of the Old and New Testament, which is the revealed God in His relation to man, the historical incidents of its writing, the ways and methods for its interpretation, are dealt with in the first part of the book, as these preoccupied, historically, the people of God from the beginning of their historical course. Even though the Scripture is “a book sealed by seven seals”, the tug-of-war between its historical and allegoric interpretation tends to unite, in the thought of Florovsky, in an open synthetic super-methodology that salvages history and Revelation.

A necessary precondition is to recover the “missing biblical belief” of a living, even unknowingly, tradition which preaches the dogmata and the chief fraudulent dogma that “the Redeemer is not human, but God Himself”. We are called upon to avoid the Scylla of the philological-religious and scientific absolutification of the Scripture, as well as the Charybdis  of its “spiritual”, unhistorical, unearthly version.

We must constantly keep in mind that the revelation was realized in the Church, which constitutes the unique arc of salvation and in which the antinomy of freedom and authenticity is nullified by the unmediated experience of spiritual life. The ecclesiastical authority equals to the perseverance and empirical presence of this spiritual life.

Through an extensive presentation of the nature, function and importance of the ecclesiastical catholicity, its position as new creation comes to the negotiation of a rather prickly problem. That of the ecclesiastical tradition.

The Vincentian definition of Tradition, presents, through its minimalistic apophthegms, the last as permanence and stability of the ecclesiastical faith and life. A stability and unanimity, which is, however, dynamic and everlasting and must every time solve hermeneutic problems and reformulate the canon of faith as canon of worship and truth. Thus, we return to the issue of the Church as interpreter of the Scripture.

The study closes with some views on the value and way of appeal to the “authority” of the Fathers, as well with some views of Gregorios Palamas on the patristic tradition, with his attitude towards theosis as head of the spear.

Georges Florovsky, Issues of Ecclesiastic History, Pournaras, Thessaloniki, 1979.

            Some special studies, published in various scientific journals and conferences, infused with the wealth of the patristic thought, as well as with the mobility and historic dynamics of modern years, always under a central prevalence of historicity, constitute the content of the volume, titled: Issues of Ecclesiastic History.

In this volume Fr. Georges deals with a variety of issues. With his usual authority and depth of work, he deals with the tendencies and particularities of theology in our days, as well as with cutting-edge issues of the patristic thought and problematic.

The presentation of the so-called “Greek dogma” by W. Gass as a gradual deviation and falsification of the ancient Christian faith constitutes the starting point for the development of Fr. Georges’ thought on the meaning of tradition. It also constitutes an ideal opportunity to realize the causes and challenges, that is the pretexts, for the formulation of dogma, during the period of the united Church, as well as for the understanding of the dogmatic formulation as guarding of the saving truth and Its self-consciousness. The expression «επόμενοι τοις αγίοις πατράσιν» (the Fathers are next to the saints) is not just a declaration of compliance to Tradition, but also a creative re-employment of the latter, and its use today, in the face of all types of challenges.

This is the kind of logic also used by the Fathers to deal with the Old Testament. Justine reaches the point of saying, as the author notes, that this book belongs to the Judeans no more, but to the Christians. The connection of faith and theology to worship and Christian life seems to be a safety valve that saves, time and again, the originality, but also the authenticity of patristic thought.

In this volume, too, as of course in others, Fr. Georges Florovsky does not miss the opportunity to deal with the dogma of creation (here on the occasion of Athanasios), which constitutes a Christian novelty in the field of philosophy. The creation of the world ex nihilo, solely by the holy creative command, does not constitute just the specific distinction of Christian faith and thought compared to previous philosophical and religious concepts, but constructs a whole pattern–framework of the biblical revelation and ecclesiastic experience. The distinction between “creation” and “genesis”, as well as the notions of salvation and restoration of creation, emerge organically from such questions.

The dynamics, however, of the sotiriological fact was impossible to exhaust itself, according to the patristic thought, in shapes and expressions of the philosophical thought. The resurrection of the dead and the salvation of the world are eschatological experiences, which define the effort of Fr. Florovsky to describe the central pillars of patristic eschatology. An eschatological hope, founded on the faith in Christ the Saviour and leads, with a sense of internal necessity, to the hope of the future century.

With the same systematic rigor and the same theological depth, he deals with the modern expressions of the life and history of the Church. The Russian missions, for example, or any western influences in the Russian theology mostly during the 18^th century, the roads of Russian theology from the middle of the 16^th century of the detachment from the Byzantine birthplace, to Gogol, Dostoevsky and the Slavophiles, the history of the theological thought in Russia reflects a recent problematic and the course towards the modern era and its problems.

For Florovsky, as a historian, the “world theological constant” of a creative, yet not arbitrary and subjective course, is the patristic theology. And the “return to the Fathers” constitutes the continuous command every time any theological truth is at risk from the temptation of deterioration and corruption.