Abstract

Scholars commonly separate Georges Florovsky's patristic scholarship from his treatment of Russian religious thought. Gavrilyuk reconnects these two sides of Florovsky's career by showing how the program of a "return to the Church Fathers" offered a solution to the problem of the western pseudomorphosis of modern Russian theology. The paper shows that Florovsky's participation in the Eurasian movement and his experience of emigration shaped his polemical construction of the East/ West dichotomy. Gavrilyuk points out methodological parallels as well as points of contrast between Harnack's account of the Hellenization of early Christian theology and Florovsky's account of the Westernization of Russian religious thought. The paper charts the methodological and theological contours of the neopatristic synthesis and concludes by charting two directions in which Florovsky vision takes Orthodox theology today.

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