The Paris School of Theology: Unity or Multiplicity?
By Paul Valliere (Butler University)

Conference on ‘La Teologia ortodossa e l’Occidente nel XX secolo: Storia di un incontro,Seriate, Italy, October 30-31, 2004

The problem which I would like to discuss may be termed the homogenizing mentality in the presentation of theological ideas. By this I mean the tendency to submerge significant, even crucial, theological disagreements in reverential simplifications, the tendency to deny the importance of differences of opinion in theology.

Undoubtedly, this tendency is motivated by a concern for the unity of Orthodoxy, a concern that expresses itself in the belief that the vocation of the Orthodox theologian is always and everywhere to promote the unity of the Church. Unfortunately, this type of behavior usually results in blurring the distinction between unity and uniformity and, consequently, in limiting theological creativity.

The notion of a "Paris School" of Orthodox theology is an example of what I am talking about. The concept invites us to look back at a complicated series of phenomena, namely the activities and writings of Russian Orthodox thinkers in Paris beginning in the 1920s, and to assume that there was some sort of theological unity to be found there. But was there?

The notion of a "Paris School" is retrospective, that is to say, backward-looking rather than contemporary with respect to its subject matter. I am not aware of the phrase being used by Russian theologians in the 1930s or 40s, although I am willing to be corrected on this point. Some of you know more about this than I do. But I believe that my criticism applies fairly accurately to the use of the phrase “Paris School” since the 1960s. Since that time, Orthodox theologians have tended to minimize the differences that existed among the Paris-based Russian theologians and in the Russian Orthodox diaspora generally.

Let me begin with a recent example. Last year Father Michael Plekon of the Orthodox Church in America published an English edition of parts of Zhivoe predanie, a sbornik of essays by Paris-based Russian theologians published in 1937.[1] Zhivoe predanie arose from the theological quarrels connected with the attacks on Father Sergii Bulgakov's dogmatic theology and the rise of the Neopatristic movement led by Father Georges Florovsky. Most of the authors of Zhivoe predanie sympathized with Bulgakov's approach to some extent, and most of them had doubts about the adequacy of Florovsky's approach. The sbornik thus documents the diversity of theological views in the Russian Orthodox diaspora. In the "Afterword" to the English edition, however, Peter Bouteneff feels compelled to minimize these differences. For example, he correctly observes that the Zhivoe predanie group responded to the ecumenical problem of divided Christendom with "a sense of urgency and hope, as well as the freedom to put forward “as suggestions” proposals that for most Orthodox today are unthinkable." Nevertheless, in his conclusion he appears to deny that fundamental differences on the ecumenical problem existed between the Zhivoe predanie group and the Neopatristic school, assuring us that "Florovsky was in an essential union with the conclusions of the other authors about, for example, the relationship of non-Orthodox churches to the Orthodox Church."[2]

To be fair to Peter, I would have to hear more about what he means by "essential union" before taking this discussion any further. Here I cite the case simply as an illustration of the tendency of contemporary Orthodox theologians to downplay the significance of historic differences of opinion, to present often sharp conflicts as an "essential unity." The problem with this tendency is that it takes the edge off of important distinctions, to the detriment of the creative energy which the same theologians usually wish to affirm. Bouteneff, for example, strongly endorses the urgency of the Zhivoe predanie group about the ecumenical problem, challenging his readers to ask: "Is there a way that we can recover their sense of urgency to the problem of divided Christendom, and their creativity in continuing to seek ways of expressing the nature and boundaries of the Church in the pursuit of unity?"[3] An excellent question! But Bouteneff seems not to recognize that the debates and disagreements which he smoothes over were one of the necessary expressions, even one of the engines, of that urgency and creativity.

The theological differences in the Russian Orthodox diaspora, in Paris and elsewhere, were many. I have just mentioned the differences concerning the ecumenical question, where I would distinguish between the prophetic ecumenism of Bulgakov, Zander, Berdiaev and others, and the priestly ecumenism of Florovksy. Father Kiprian Kern's two types of pastoral ministry, the prophetic and the levitical, represent a similar distinction in another area. There were also very different approaches to Orthodox social and political ethics. Father Sergii Bulgakov, G. P. Fedotov, A. V. Kartashev, Nikolai Berdiaev and many others believed that the unprecedented situation of Orthodoxy in the modern world demanded a complete transformation of Orthodox social and political ethics. Florovsky, Lossky and most of the Neopatristic theologians believed that the new situation of Orthodoxy freed the Church from having to worry about formulating a social and political ethic, and that theologians should direct their attention elsewhere. If this seems to you like an unfair judgment, I ask you to name some major works of theological ethics “theological analyses of society, politics, or law” by Neopatristic theologians in the last sixty years. The absence of such works is one of the most striking facts about the Neopatristic movement.

Other disagreements arose in connection with the theology of culture. In this area we see a difference between a theology of engagement with secular culture and a theology of cultural pessimism (the latter quite typical of cultural philosophy elsewhere in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s). Neopatristic theologians were concerned to explore and restore certain forms of ecclesiastical culture, but they doubted that a dialogue with secular culture could ever be theologically productive. The important culturological works of the Russian diaspora “by B. P. Vysheslavtsev, V. V. Veidle, N. A. Berdiaev, E. V. Spektorskii and others” came from individuals who were indebted first and foremost to the religious-philosophical culture of late imperial Russia (Soloviev and his heirs). Needless to say, there were also profound disagreements among diaspora theologians about the theological value of philosophy as such and of Russian religious philosophy in particular. The sharply contrasting presentations of the subject in Florovsky's Puti russkogo bogosloviia and Father V. V. Zenkovsky's A History of Russian Philosophy document these disputes.

Still another disagreement concerned the issue of "development of dogma." Appreciation of this issue is made difficult today by the widespread feeling among contemporary Orthodox theologians that this issue has been settled. The solution is: while the forms or means of expressing dogma may and indeed must change in response to changing circumstances, the substance of dogma does not and cannot “develop.” As a theory, of course, this view is defensible. It belongs in the debate. Unfortunately, a great many Orthodox theologians today accept this view as axiomatic and for all practical purposes undebatable. This, in turn, makes it difficult for them to hear, much less hold in esteem, alternative views even when they are clearly stated by Orthodox theologians of earlier times. For an example, I turn again to Peter Bouteneff, who translated Bulgakov's essay on "Dogma and Dogmatics" for the English edition of Zhivoe predanie. Consider the following sentence in Bulgakov's text: "Zapodozrit' ili zhe dazhe zapretit' novuiu problematiku, a sootvetstvenno i novuiu doktrinu, oznachalo by vpast' v antiistoricheskii talmudizm, a vmeste i v svoeobraznuiu patristicheskuiu eres'." Now consider Bouteneff’s English translation: "To be suspicious of new problems and their consequent doctrines, or to forbid them somehow, would mean falling into antihistorical Talmudism and into a kind of patristic heresy." [4] By eliminating the adjective "new" from Bulgakov's phrase "novuiu doktrinu," Bouteneff takes the edge off what Bulgakov was saying, namely, that the Church must be prepared to formulate new doctrine. True, Bulgakov did not say “new dogma,” so we would still have to discuss the relation between "doctrine" and "dogma." But to speak of new doctrine, not just new problematics, clearly indicates a move from the formal to the substantive level in dogmatic theology. This becomes even clearer when we consider Bulgakov's notion of new doctrine in its historical context, namely, in connection with the debates about sophiology. Sophiology is a prime example of what Bulgakov had in mind when he pleaded for discussion of new doctrine in the Church. The bitterness of the debates about sophiology cannot be explained by the particular objections which theologians had to Bulgakov's proposals. It resulted from the clash between two different orientations to the dogmatic tradition as such: Florovsky's "return to the Fathers" on the one hand, and the Russian School's "beyond the Fathers" on the other.[5]

Now in the abstract, of course, just about all Orthodox theologians would agree that unity should not be confused with uniformity in the Church. The distinction is well known in modern Orthodox personalism. Already in the thought of the early Slavophiles, the sobornost of the Church was presented as a unity that did not repress freedom or enforce homogeneity, a unity in which the unique spiritual gifts and special vocation of each person was affirmed. Indeed, the criticism of modern Western individualism by the Slavophiles was prompted to a considerable extent by their suspicion that the so-called individualism of the modern West, because it defined human beings in terms of material and utilitarian needs rather than in spiritual terms, was actually a formula for routinization and homogeneity, for the appearance rather than the reality of freedom. Orthodox personalism in the 20th century carried this insight further. As as result, I think it is fair to say that Orthodox theologians are nearly unanimous about the necessity of distinguishing unity from uniformity in moral theology and spirituality.

When it comes to dogmatic theology, on the other hand, the distinction between unity and uniformity seems much more difficult for Orthodox theologians to accept. The Creed, after all, is uniform in practice: it is always and everywhere recited in the same words, without additions or subtractions. Should it, then, be regarded as uniform also in theory, in which case the distinction between unity and uniformity seems to disappear? To state the challenge in another way, what does "creativity" mean in dogmatics? Certainly not alteration of the fundamental dogmas of the Church. To what, then, does creativity apply? Only to the means of expressing the meaning of the dogmas? But this solution is not as simple as it sounds. To express the meaning of something is to interpret it; and, as the process of interpretation continues, significant differences of interpretation may and usually do develop. If these differences can be tolerated, even if they cannot be reconciled conceptually, then indeed we have a distinction between unity and uniformity. But more often than not in modern Orthodox theology, the demand for the reconciliation of differencesfor a synthesis of some kind, a unitary mind of the Fathershas prevailed over the coexistence and dialogue of conflicting dogmatic-theological approaches.

The overarching question is: to what extent can the unity of the Church be expressed theologically? There seems to me to be a confusion in Orthodox theology, and elsewhere, between the unity of the Church and the unity of theology. Naturally, theologians should aspire to express the unity of the Church. But the unity of the Church is mystical, transcendent, a mystery of the world to come. It is a larger truth than any theologian or theological school can grasp in its fullness. If this is the case, then it follows that the unity of the Church cannot be, and should not be expected to be, reflected in a unity of theology. On the contrary, we should expect a variety of attempts to express it, all of them succeeding by virtue of certain gracious insights, and all of them falling short by virtue of the grandeur of their object.

Orthodoxy is rightly proud of the high degree of liturgical and hierarchical unity which it has preserved for many centuries. Moreover, in the depths of the sacramental life, the unity of Orthodoxy offers a foretaste of the unity of the heavenly Church. But the gift of unity is misappropriated if it leads Orthodox theologians to insist on a comparable unification of Orthodox theology. The Apostle Paul tells us that “there is one body and one Spirit, . . . one hope, . . . one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Eph. 4:4-6). But one theology? One mind of the Fathers? That is a tempting inference, but it is a temptation that must be resisted if one accepts the proposition that there will always be a gap, some sort of incommeasurability, between the unity of the Church and the theology of the Church.

The assumption that theological unity follows from ecclesiastical unity is the mistake which is enshrined in the notion of the "Paris School." The mistake was reinforced by Neopatristic theologians, who sought to construct a historical-theological synthesis based on a singular mind of the Fathers, and by Neo-hesychastic theologians, who seek a theological synthesis based on a singular type of contemplation. The dominance of these two experiments in contemporary Orthodox theology makes it quite difficult for many in the Church to appreciate, or even to see, the theological diversity that flourished in the Russian Orthodox diaspora.

Now, I can readily imagine a completely different sort of critique of the notion of a "Paris School" from the one which I have just made. This critique would focus on the term "school" and would reject it as something that has no place in theology, something too academic, too divisive in its implications, too scholastic. The life of the Church is life in the Spirit. How can the gifts of the Spirit be institutionalized in a school? If we admit schools into the Church, will we not soon admit "parties?" And what then becomes of the loving, personal, Spirit-filled community which the Church is called to be? Are not prayer and liturgy “not the academy” the seedbed of theology?

This argument carries considerable weight, but it ignores a basic reality of Orthodox theology since at least the 17th century. Consider the terms used to name the centers of higher learning in modern Orthodoxy. They are not ecclesiastical or patristic, but academic terms, beginning with “academy," the name adopted by Peter Moghila for the first such institution in the Russian lands and used ever since for the higher schools of the Russian Orthodox Church. Consider also the name of Saint-Serge, the flagship of the Paris School: L'Institut de Théologie Orthodoxe. Where does it come from? Again, some of you know more about this than me, but the name appears to parallel LInstitut Catholique. In any case, its pedigree is Latin.

These observations touch on the so-called "pseudomorphosis" or "Western captivity" of Orthodox theology in modern times. For Florovsky, who was the first to formulate the problem, the solution was to return to the Fathers, to affirm Orthodox authenticity and independence from the West on the basis of a certain type of exegesis of patristic sources. No one can deny that this step inaugurated an enormously creative movement in modern Orthodox theology. It also made possible a new level of comfort for Orthodox theologians in the West in so far as the Neopatristic synthesis was based not on Russian culture or some other national ethos but on the ancient patrimony of Christendom. It facilitated conversions to Orthodoxy by making clear that conversion to Orthodoxy did not demand the adoption of an alien culture, and it facilitated conversations with Catholic and Protestant Christians on the basis of a shared heritage, a shared Christian discourse.

At the same time, the Neopatristic rejection of the "Western captivity" of Orthodox theology failed to reckon with the complexity, not to say irony, of Orthodoxy's relationship to the modern West. Father Alexander Schmemann stated the case very clearly:

Paradoxical as it sounds however, it is this very 'westernization' of the Russian theological mind that forced it into a new search for its Orthodox identity and brought about a genuine revival of Orthodox theology, the first since the breakdown of the Byzantine tradition. The intellectual discipline and method acquired in the school, a creative participation in the great spiritual adventure of western culture, a new sense of history ‘all this, little by little, liberated the Orthodox theologians from a mere dependence on the West and helped them in their attempt to reconstruct a genuinely Orthodox theological perspective.’ [6]

Father Alexander always confessed his profound debt to Florovsky, and one can sense it in his enthusiasm for "a genuinely Orthodox theological perspective," to which Schmemann himself contributed. But there is another object of enthusiasm in this passage also, namely, "the great spiritual adventure of western culture" language which would sound quite out of place in an essay by Florovsky. Schmemann clearly saw what I would call the interdependence of modern Orthodox theology and modern Western civilization. Interdependence suggests a very different set of dynamics than the model of "Western captivity" (with its associations of "Babylonian captivity"). Among other things, it suggests that a break with the West in the name of a creative Orthodox alternative will undermine the creativity of Orthodoxy, precisely because the creativity of Orthodoxy is dependent on substantive dialogue with the West with the Christian West on the basis of a shared faith, and with the secular West on the basis of the shared predicament of modernity. This interdependence is nicely encoded in the names of most of the leading Orthodox theological schools of modern times. And it is dramatically attested by the fact that Saint-Serge, greatest of the Orthodox theological schools in the Russian diaspora, was founded with the help of two Protestant ecumenical organizations, the World Student Christian Federation and the YMCA.[7]

In this paper I have focused on the disagreements in the Russian diaspora. But my overall point about the benefits of diversity in theology extends to other types of diversity as well. It extends, for example, to the exploration of new frontiers in theology, that is to say, to subjects, themes, or even whole disciplines that did not exist in pre-modern epochs of Orthodox theology. Biblical studies is a good example. Father Alexander Schmemann is one of many who have observed that biblical studies is "the weakest area in modern Russian theology,"[8] an observation that may be extended to modern Orthodox theology as a whole. It is interesting to ask why such little progress has been made in this field, especially when one considers the rapid advance of biblical studies in late imperial Russia and the enormous resources in biblical studies available to Orthodox theologians in Western Europe and America. As in the case of social and political ethics, I believe that the explanation lies in the Neopatristic dominance in Orthodox theology for the last sixty years. The Neopatristic method provides little motivation for the development of either social ethics or biblical studies as independent theological disciplines.

The problem of Orthodox biblical studies in the Neopatristic period is evident in two essays on the subject by Florovsky, both published in 1951, "The Lost Scriptural Mind" and "Revelation and Interpretation."[9] Both contain important suggestions for how to use patristic-theological ideas to interpret the Bible, a connection which is presumably fundamental to an Orthodox approach to biblical interpretation. But in neither essay do we find actual, concrete engagement with the biblical text. In "The Lost Scriptural Mind" the author does not cite the text of Scripture even once. In "Revelation and Interpretation," the problem is the strange disconnection between the Old Testament and the New, even though the integral connection between the two testaments is one of Florovsky's themes. The author cites the New Testament 22 times, the Old Testament only once. And that sole reference is to Genesis 1:1, not exactly a locus that takes us very far into the text. Now I realize that counting biblical citations may seem to you a very crude and Protestant way of making a theological point. Please know that I am doing this simply as a kind of shorthand because there is no time for a longer discussion. There is a serious point at stake here, however. The application of patristic concepts “themselves profoundly biblical, of course” to biblical intepretation is certainly something that Orthodox biblical scholars will contribute to the discipline. And they will insist, with Florovsky, that "the book and the Church cannot be separated."[10] Nevertheless, this point carries little weight if it is not presented through actual, concrete engagement with the text of Holy Scripture in both Testaments. Or to put it another way, what Orthodox theology needs is not so much lamentation over a “lost” scriptural mind as the discovery of a new scriptural mind and as a follower of Bulgakov, I would strongly underscore “new.” I suspect that little progress will be made in Orthodox biblical studies by simply applying the Neopatristic method in a new area. Orthodox biblical scholars would do better to take a closer look at the work of some of the pioneers of biblical studies in the Paris diaspora, such as Archimandrite (later Bishop) Kassian and A. V. Kartashev.

Another frontier is the whole subject of theology of the laity and related issues, such as the vocation of women in the Church. The pioneering work on the last-mentioned topic by Elisabeth Behr-Sigel is a good example of the creative interaction of Russian diaspora thinkers and Western converts to Orthodoxy. In Madame Behr-Sigel’s case, and others like it, it is important to see that the relationship was “and should be” one of mutual transformation, a transformation of substance, not merely a reception of Orthodoxy in its fullness by a West emptied of theological content and initiative.

If you accept my basic point that the accommodation of disagreements “disunity” in theology is an essential condition of theological creativity, then a few points follow in conclusion. First, we should reject misleading simplifications, such as “Paris School,” which promise or proclaim unity in theology where it does not exist. Second, we need to make a more careful analysis “and more candid assessment” of the many important disagreements that have divided, and continue to divide, modern Orthodox theologians, recognizing that some of these are substantive disagreements, that is to say, unreconcilable, at least at the present time. Third, we need to consider the ecclesiological implications of the two points just made, lest we abuse such profound concepts as sobornost and koinonia by harnessing them to simplistic proclamations of Orthodox (and Christian) unity. Finally, we need to pay more attention to “frontier” situations in modern Orthodox theology, precisely because of the diversity of experience which they represent. The Paris diaspora was one of these, and it merits the attention given to it. But other diaspora centers also demand attention, including the communities represented by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Andsince we have mainly been discussing 20th century Orthodox theologythe theological creativity of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Soviet period demands fresh attention. Orthodox theology found itself in a frontier situation, in internal exile, in Russia itself during the Soviet period. The riches of that exile for modern Orthodox theology are only beginning to be discovered. [11] In short, the story of modern Orthodox theology is very complicated and not at all peaceful or harmonious. But the Spirit broods over the abyss. If we look with a candid and faithful eye, we can expect light to break.


[1] Tradition Alive: On the Church and the Christian Life in Our Time/Readings from the Eastern Church, ed. Michael Plekon (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003).

[2] Tradition Alive, pp. 260-61. Cf. the very different assessment of Father Alexander Schmemann, “Russian Theology: 1920-1972, An Introductory Survey,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 16 (1972): 190-91. Schmemann wrote: “On the one hand we find theologians who acknowledge the Ecumenical Movement as, in a way, an ontologically new phenomenon in Christian history requiring a deep rethinking and re-evaluation of Orthodox ecclesiology as shaped during the ‘non-ecumenical’ era. Representative names here are those of Sergius Bulgakov, Leo Zander, Nicholas Zernov, and Paul Evdokimov. This tendency is opposed by those who, without denying the need for ecumenical dialogue and defending the necessity of Orthodox participation in the Ecumenical Movement, reject the very possibility of any ecclesiological revision or adjustment and who view the Ecumenical Movement mainly as a possibility of an Orthodox witeness to the West. This tendency finds its most articulate expression in the writings of Florovsky.”

[3] Tradition Alive, p. 260.

[4] Tradition Alive, p. 73. For the Russian text see Zhivoe predanie: Pravoslavie v sovremennosti (Moscow: Sviato-Filaretovskaia moskovskaia vysshaia pravoslavno-khristianskaia shkola, 1997), p. 17.

[5] The characterization (and phraseology) is Schmemann’s, “Russian Theology: 1920-1972,” p. 178.

[6] “Russian Theology: 1920-1972,” p. 174.

[7] Dr. John R. Mott was an officer of both institutions when he became “the real founder and father of our school,” as A. V. Kartashev called him. See Donald A. Lowrie, Saint Sergius in Paris: The Orthodox Theological Institute (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951). Kartashev is quoted on p. 8.

[8] “Russian Theology: 1920-1972,” p. 176.

[9] The essays are reproduced in Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View, vol. 1 of The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (Belmont, Massachusetts: Nordland Publishing Company, 1972), pp. 9-16 and 17-36, respectively.

[10] “Revelation and Interpretation,” p. 18.

[11] As usual, Schmemann long ago anticipated this point. In 1972 he wrote: “The vitality of even ‘official’ theology can be seen from the six volumes of Bogoslovskie Trudy (Theological Works) published by the Moscow Patriarchate.”  “Russian Theology: 1920-1972,” p. 192, n. 98.