Florovsky at the Crossroads: Imagining Byzantine Renaissance from Morningside Heights
Journal Title: Social Evolution & History - Year 2014, Vol 13, Issue 1
Abstract
Georges Florovsky, an influential theologian, came to New York City in 1948 to be dean of the Russian St Vladimir Theological Seminary. At Morningside Heights, Florovsky taught about what went wrong in Russia in 1917 and what needed to be done about it. His ideas prefigure the critique of European Enlightenment and its Orientalism formulated by Edward Said. Florovsky argued that Russia, imitating Western Europe, gave up its own Hellenic heritage of the Church Fathers, and replaced it with the western style of the Renaissance of ancient Hellenic philosophy. His remedy for this condition was ‘the return to the fathers’, establishing a direct philosophical connection with Russia's Hellenic herit-age, thus by-passing the West. These ideas of Hellenic patristic revival also run into problems at Morningside Heights, in the World Council of Churches and with the powerful theological figures at Union Theological Seminary. Florovsky misread the changing political situation in the late 1950s. American theology and politics were becoming influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr, who was not interested in the nuances of Church History. The new American priorities were the homogenization of ethnic churches into a union. Florovsky's ideas about the Russian religious revival, once popular at the height of the Cold War now became outdated. Thus, Florovsky was removed from the deanship of St Vladimir Theological Seminary in 1955 and a more Americanized generation took over the leadership, while his ideas found fertile soil in more nationalistic circles
Authors and Affiliations
Alexander Mirkovic
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