This masterful treatment of Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance comes as a worthy addition to the Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology Series. In it we are treated to Gavrilyuk's close and wide reading of the sources (including archival material) and a resultant narrative which does much to challenge popular opinion surrounding ‘the ways’ of modern Eastern Orthodox theology. The popular account speaks of a Western captivity of Eastern Orthodox thought which took hold in the centuries following the fall of Constantinople, a tendency coming to dangerous fruition in the Russian religious philosophy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The solution to this predicament was (and is) for Eastern Orthodoxy to return to its patristic and Byzantine past in order to regroup and speak to the world anew with the authentic voice of the Christian past. This prevailing narrative is, as Gavrilyuk repeatedly emphasises, one which has Georges Florovsky as its chief architect. Among the core theses of the book is that, far from representing an unadulterated and pristine notion of Christian tradition over against the tainted and dangerous waters of Russian religious philosophy, Florovsky's notion of ‘neo-patristic synthesis’ emerged from, and should be considered an integral part of, the very same Russian Religious Renaissance it claimed to be combating. As Gavrilyuk puts it, Florovsky's programme needs to be understood ‘as a theological option within the Renaissance, not merely as a theological alternative to the Renaissance’ (p. 271). It is this Renaissance, he argues, which provides Florovsky with the intellectual equipment, the questions and ideas, that he would use to work out his concept of neo-patristic synthesis. Even the focus on patristics, he notes, is not necessarily a departure from the principles of the Renaissance: ‘the debate between the generation of Bulgakov on the one hand and the generation of Florovsky on the other was not whether patristic theology was foundational . . . but rather how to engage the patristic tradition this side of modernity’ (p. 3).

Gavrilyuk structures his work by skilfully laying out Florovsky's intellectual biography in roughly chronological order, using each step not only to elaborate Florovsky's theological and philosophical positions, but also to demonstrate their indebtedness to broader contemporary Russian and Western intellectual currents, as well as subject them to critique. Topics dealt with include Eurasianism, the philosophy of history, personalism, sophiology and creation, Western pseudomorphosis, Christian Hellenism and ecclesiology. Gavrilyuk underscores the importance of each of these topics for Florovsky's overall vision and gives insightful summaries of Florovsky's intellectual development on each issue. He ultimately argues, however, that many of these themes sit in an uneasy alliance, and that when scrutinised may raise more questions than they answer.

Gavrilyuk repeatedly takes Florovsky to task on the specifics of his thought, portraying him as inconsistent on such issues as his philosophy of history, Christian Hellenism, and concept of pseudomorphosis. If there is a driving force to these critiques, it seems to be to ‘dethrone’ Florovsky as the univocal mouthpiece of modern Orthodox thought and place him within a broader spectrum, or to use Gavrilyuk's image, to treat him as a ‘counterpoint’ within ‘the magnificent polyphony of the twentieth-century Russian Religious Renaissance’ (p. 271). There is much to be said for the project of contextualising the person and thought of Florovsky, something so ably achieved by this volume. But whether or not this should in turn permit or lead us to forge a reconciliation between theological contradictions (in the end, such contradictions – not simply ‘antinomies’ – still exist between Florovsky and most representatives of the Russian Religious Renaissance) is a prospect this reviewer is not so ready to embrace.