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The Tension between an Eschatological and a Utopic Understanding of Tradition: Tillich, Florovsky, and Congar*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2016

Ivana Noble
Ivana Noble*
Affiliation:
Charles University
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Extract

The theme of this article takes us to the field of ecumenical theology understood as a dialogue between theologians from particular Christian traditions. These theologians relate through their common roots in Scripture and early Christian heritage, but they interpret these roots in their own particular way. In our case the focus will be on the German Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich (1886–1965), the Russian Orthodox theologian George Florovsky (1893–1979), and the French Catholic theologian Yves Congar (1904–1995), who all, at one time, shared the same premises, though not necessarily the same opinions.

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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 109 , Issue 3 , July 2016 , pp. 400 - 421
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Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2016 

The theme of this article takes us to the field of ecumenical theology understood as a dialogue between theologians from particular Christian traditions. These theologians relate through their common roots in Scripture and early Christian heritage, but they interpret these roots in their own particular way. In our case the focus will be on the German Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich (1886–1965), the Russian Orthodox theologian George Florovsky (1893–1979), and the French Catholic theologian Yves Congar (1904–1995), who all, at one time, shared the same premises, though not necessarily the same opinions.

The engagement with theologians from different churches on one theme stems from a desire both to contribute towards an understanding of Christian tradition as a common heritage, and a desire to see how the diversity of this heritage is only partly structured according to the confessional origins of the contributors. While each of the theologians to be studied fully inhabited his own ecclesial space, none of them desired to approach the meaning and truth of the theological themes that they investigated solely from within their own confessional boundaries. In this sense, it will be argued that they do not represent confessional positions. Thus, in the article I will not speak primarily from my own particular Hussite perspective,Footnote 1 nor will I comment on the respective positions as if they represented the Protestant, Orthodox, or Roman Catholic perspectives. This kind of ecumenical “perspectivist” approach, although fashionable,Footnote 2 has, in my view, two main inherent weaknesses: first, it adheres to established confessional boundaries;Footnote 3 second, it presupposes clear-cut confessional identities, artificial in their expression.Footnote 4 All three theologians under discussion were influenced by the Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic approaches to Scriptures and tradition, as well as by the culture of their time. But these were not the only, and at times not even the dominant influences. Likewise, reception of the fruits of their work reached far beyond their confessional families. I will mention, mainly in the footnotes, how each of them was engaged in the ecumenical movement, and which particular voices and actions of other Christians were imprinted in their lives and theologies, but my main aim will be to offer a detailed reading of a question they had in common—namely, in what sense can tradition be understood as eschatological? In doing this, it will become apparent how their responses to the question, including the problems inherent in them, can be seen as forming one texture woven from various interrelated threads. Ecumenical theology, thus, far from being a confessional substitute, will be seen as a common theology, without assuming that the far-reaching embrace has to squash the particularities.

Through the subject of traditionFootnote 5 these theologians help us to enter past worlds and in them look for the threads from which our understanding and our own symbolic world are woven. In their concepts, however, tradition at the same time anticipates and co-creates the future. I will focus on how tradition, in their interpretations, mediates between that which is contextual, and therefore conditioned by our existence in a particular time and space, and that which transcends this conditionality and reflects into it traces of what is eternally valid. Here, when speaking about the eschatological understanding of tradition, I will refer to both meanings of the term eschatos: “the last,” in the chronological sense, and “the most significant,” in the metaphorical sense.Footnote 6

It should be stated first of all that tradition is not eschatological in the sense that it comes from the future, as though from a place where everything is already whole and complete, as the future does not yet exist. To consider the future “completed” and to derive from it a “completed” tradition is a utopic dream. It is projecting a “perfected” idea of our time and space beyond it, without, however, being freed from the ambiguity of our existence resulting from the creation and fall. But a utopic understanding of tradition has yet more expressions, among these being the desire to “capture” life, in its transience, and to “fix” knowledge and understanding that change in time and space.

In this way I will talk of a utopic understanding of tradition as the idealization and absolutization of tradition itself, as a claim to the eternal validity of something that is tied to a particular time or place, be it past, present, or future. I will set an eschatological understanding of tradition against what the Synoptics and Paul understand negatively as the “tradition of the fathers,” which puts the contextual in the place of the absolutely valid and thus limits the space for God's living Word and life-giving Spirit.Footnote 7 I will at the same time, however, bear in mind the twofold meaning of the term “utopia” posited by João Batista Libanio, according to whom ouk-topos (“no place”) needs to be complemented by eu-topos (“good place”), as only in this way will we discover the tension between the non-realizable in our time and space and that which gives direction to our desire for change for the better and the projects based on that desire; both of these, however, need then to be subordinated to eschatological hope, which cannot be reduced to utopia.Footnote 8

Paul Tillich: Tradition as Participation in the Ultimate Reality

Although Paul Tillich sees the Bible as a primary source for doing theology, and he admits that his theology is expressed within the context of the whole of the classical Christian tradition,Footnote 9 what he means by that tradition is not defined by references to particular scriptural passages, but rather by reference to church history and the histories of philosophy, of religion and culture, and of social conditions. These contexts represented for him insights into why some thoughts and expressions became normative for the life of the churches, while others were rejected, marginalized, or lost their ability to communicate meaning, and so died out. For him tradition, as a living background to theology, is always plural, never free of arbitrary elements within it, and yet without it the content of Christian faith cannot survive without mutilation. Footnote 10

Tillich demonstrates how deeply Protestantism is connected with traditionFootnote 11 and stresses that the Reformation did not battle against tradition itself but against its distortions. It criticized claiming the absolute validity for that which was not absolute.Footnote 12 It protested when tradition was exchanged for heteronomously understood authority, which estranged people from themselves by asking them to subject themselves to it without helping them understand why.Footnote 13 “It is a general characteristic of prophetic criticism”—in which Tillich sees the essence of the Reformation—“that it does not come from outside but from the centre of the tradition itself, fighting its distortions in the name of its true meaning. There is no reformation without tradition.”Footnote 14

First, Tillich attempts to capture the meaning of tradition for Protestantism in the correlation between what he calls the “Protestant principle” and the “Catholic substance.”Footnote 15 The “Protestant principle” is, according to Tillich, a prophetic (corrective) principle that does not make sense on its own, but only in relation to that which it criticizes and from which it derives its foundations—that is, from the “Catholic substance.” By this, Tillich means a constructive, liturgical-sacramental, dogmatic, and institutional system, in which it is not only possible, but vitally important, to mediate the divine as substantially present in our human relativity.Footnote 16 Understood this way, the correlation enables Tillich to enter into dialogue with what he describes elsewhere as “positivistic tradition,” connected with heteronomous authority and religious sacramentalismFootnote 17 —in other words, with pre-conciliar Catholicism as he encountered it in his youth in Germany. The “Catholic substance,” according to this understanding, is static and singular. Dogma, ritual, and institution here represent a certainty perceived as something that has been laid down once and for all time.Footnote 18 A dynamic nature and also therefore the ability to react to the demands of the time are then ascribed only to that side of the correlation represented by the “Protestant principle.”Footnote 19

In addition to Tillich's attempt to approach the meaning of tradition through the correlation between the “Protestant principle” and the “Catholic substance,” which is ultimately unsatisfactory, we find in Tillich an alternative that allows for an eschatological understanding of tradition. Tillich admits to having first experienced this alternative existentially and only subsequently having dealt with it theoretically.Footnote 20

Returning from the First World War, Tillich carried with him two new and fundamentally important experiences on which he later drew in his theological work: first, the experience of existential estrangement, destitution, and ruin, for which a formalistic understanding of religion was of no help;Footnote 21 and second, the experience of meeting with the power of symbolic tradition. In his autobiographical work, “One Moment of Beauty,” Tillich describes his encounter with this tradition and the comfort it brought. Gesa Thiessen points out that first of all it was an encounter not with the word of tradition but with its image, largely thanks to the cheap artistic reproductions in the magazines Tillich used to buy from the field bookstores, which “took his mind off ‘the mud, blood and death of the Western Front.’” Among these pictures, Tillich gave a special place to Botticelli's “Madonna with Singing Angels,” the original of which he saw in Berlin after the war. He wrote about this encounter as follows: “something of the divine source of all things came through to me. . . . That moment has affected my whole life, given me the keys for the interpretation of human existence, brought vital joy and spiritual truth.” Tillich then compares this ecstatic encounter with the stream of living tradition to prophetic revelation when “prophets were grasped in the power of the Divine Presence.”Footnote 22

When he had thought through this experience theoretically, Tillich then drew on a Byzantine understanding of the relation between a symbol and the divine reality being symbolized.Footnote 23 With the help of icons and Byzantine mosaics, Tillich showed how it is possible, through a symbol, to “express the divine ground of all things” in which we participate, without venerating the human as though it were divine.Footnote 24 Tillich speaks about the transparency of symbols, which is not the same as their idealization. In Byzantine icons and mosaics we will not find Jesus portrayed as the contemporary ideal of beauty; the divine majesty, however, will be visible throughout. Tillich suggests that in this way “the Eastern Church represents something that we have lost.”Footnote 25 The West, on the other hand, maintained openness towards the human condition and the existential questions that stem from it, an openness without which the symbols of divine reality would, in our world, be mute.Footnote 26

Tradition, which provides the key to the interpretation of human existence, and which brings essential joy and spiritual truth, is based, according to Tillich, on the correlation between the inner-historical and trans-historical levels of our being. In this sense it is eschatological; it is defined by “the question of the inner aim, the telos of everything that is.”Footnote 27 The symbols on which tradition draws in order to provide answers to existential questions are born of the ambiguity of the flow of history, and it is not possible to separate them from this ambiguity: they were born in it, they live in it, and they will die in it, but while they live, they mediate that which transcends history.Footnote 28 In these symbols, “the eternal now” is fully transparent; in them, past and future meet in the present but are not swallowed up by it. Tillich states that “in this way, eschaton becomes a matter of present experience without losing its futuristic dimension: we stand now in face of the eternal.”Footnote 29

Tradition, understood eschatologically, is a living stream that is to us “as natural. . . as the air we breathe” and that requires us to participate in what we are seeking to understand.Footnote 30 It is important here to mention that Tillich experienced this participation in tradition in his mystical-aesthetic experience—in ecstatic encounters with something of the divine source, as he would put itFootnote 31 — rather than in the liturgy and the sacraments. Here, rather than wrestling with the tension between what is non-realizable in our time and space and what gives direction to our desire for transformation, he practically opts for non-representable transcendence to the degree that what he wishes to defend escapes his reach.

Although in his work he pleads for Protestantism not to reject liturgical-sacramental tradition but rather, at least in forms cleansed of idolatry, to accept it,Footnote 32 he himself remains at the level of theoretical understanding, which he does not base on existential understanding.Footnote 33 He suggests, perhaps because he did not participate existentially in a liturgical-sacramental tradition, that mysticism is closer to Protestantism, that like the “prophetic-protesting type of religion, [it] goes beyond the sacramental basis of all religious life,” and that “its pattern is the criticism of a demonically distorted sacramental system in the name of personal righteousness and social justice.”Footnote 34 For eschatology, therefore, Tillich's understanding of the liturgical-sacramental tradition ultimately represents a utopic danger.

Tillich speaks about the danger of idolatry in “sacramental religion” when “it shows ultimate reality as present here and now in particular objects” and attempts to “make a sacramentally consecrated reality into the divine itself.”Footnote 35 Such an exchange of “penultimate reality” for “ultimate reality,” eschatology for utopia,Footnote 36 leads, according to Tillich, to a loss of that which is pivotal and to “existential disappointment,” which consequently, and unavoidably, comes to the surface.Footnote 37 Thus, Tillich does not, ultimately, get beyond the pre-conciliar Catholic liturgical-sacramental theology that stands behind his concept of “Catholic substance.” Similarly, an Orthodox understanding of liturgy and the sacraments will remain foreign to him, although, at the theoretical level, he does link Orthodoxy more with the living tradition.Footnote 38

We will now see how this flaw was corrected by Tillich's younger Orthodox colleague at Harvard Divinity School,Footnote 39 George Florovsky, but equally how the tension between an eschatological and a utopic understanding of tradition will also manifest itself in Florovsky's work.

George Florovsky: The Existential Retrospective and the Universal Validity of Tradition

Father Florovsky coincided with Tillich for six years at the Harvard Divinity School, from 1956 to 1962. Both men had been through the experience of emigration, Tillich having left Germany for America because of the arrival of Nazism, and Florovsky having left Russia after the arrival of Communism. Florovsky settled first in Sofia in Bulgaria, then Prague, and from 1926 to 1948 he lived and lectured in Paris at the Institute of St. Sergius. Following the sophiological controversies, he left for America where he helped to give a new, academically grounded form to St. Vladimir's Theological Seminary in New York. Further conflicts forced him to leave once more, and he then accepted the post of Professor of Eastern Church History at Harvard.Footnote 40 In 1959, Florovsky published a paper—in a volume in honor of Paul Tillich entitled Religion and Culture—in which he, indirectly, comments on Tillich's eschatological understanding of tradition. In this study, “The Predicament of the Church Historian,” Florovsky accepts an existential understanding of history but argues against the kind of mystically understood participation on which Tillich bases his understanding of eschatological tradition. According to Florovsky, we need to give up the idea that we can participate in the past directly.Footnote 41

Florovsky's existential approach is retrospective and defines itself in contradiction to “idealism and mysticism.”Footnote 42 Florovsky sees idealism and the mysticism nourished by it as a “relapse” into pre-Christian Hellenism, essentially unhistorical, and this for Florovsky means also unbiblical.Footnote 43 His own concept of the relationship between Scripture and tradition is expressed by means of Christian Hellenism and involves what George H. Williams calls an “Orthodox-biblical view of history.”Footnote 44

Mysticism is for Florovsky represented by modern Russian religious philosophy, especially by sophiology, against which he led a lifelong polemic,Footnote 45 but also by hesychast practices.Footnote 46 Movements like sophiology,Footnote 47 with their appeal to mystical encounters with the divine reality, represented for him “a new mythology,” dreamy and unhealthy.Footnote 48 Sophiology for Florovsky represents the pinnacle of the “new religious consciousness,” which appeared in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. Then, through the development of Solovyov's metaphysics and the way it was approached by the symbolists, it led to the eschatological “pseudomorphosis of Christian tradition,” in which religious asceticism and esotericism prevailed over the teaching about Christ.Footnote 49 Florovsky's relationship to hesychasm is more complex. On the one hand, he highly valued the theology of St. Gregory Palamas as grounding the Orthodox victory over nominalism and secularism; on the other hand he mistrusted appeals to the mystical experience of the visibility of the divine deifying grace, even if it was what Palamas testified and defended. Likewise, we have no account that Florovsky ever practiced the Jesus prayer, and while he had a high regard for the Orthodox ascetic and monastic tradition, he was skeptical to its being translated into the language of mystical theology and thus practiced in the West.Footnote 50

Against the idealistic-mystical understanding of tradition, Florovsky posits his historical understanding of tradition, in which eschatology is subordinated to history.Footnote 51 Thus, the ultimate reality reveals itself only retrospectively, and only when we immerse ourselves into the mind of the Fathers will we find a sense of direction that may, in their own immediate experiencing of events, have remained concealed for them.Footnote 52 Although we cannot participate directly in this “ultimate reality,” in mystical experience we can enter it mediated by the liturgy and sacraments. It is here where tradition is “living,” and only here where the retrospective view is complemented by the prospective, history by eschatology.Footnote 53

For Florovsky, Scripture comes alive in the liturgical and sacramental tradition by the power of the Spirit.Footnote 54 From lex orandi grows lex credendi, apostolic testimony interpreted by the church fathers, rooted in Christ, and made alive by the same power of the Spirit.Footnote 55 The tradition that connects lex orandi and lex credendi provides spiritual orientation and teaches piety and holiness.Footnote 56

Participation is conditional, however. Believers must first undergo a process of “spiritual hellenization (or re-hellenization),” as in order to be properly Orthodox they must become more Greek.Footnote 57 Although when Florovsky speaks of the enduring value of Christian Hellenism he is not referring to a language, or to the national superiority of Greeks, or to the ecclesiastical superiority of Orthodoxy, the condition is nonetheless problematic. In Florovsky's understanding, an objectified part of tradition is removed and becomes that by which other parts of tradition are measured. He thus divides tradition into higher and lower. Florovsky tries to ameliorate this predicament by removing Christian Hellenism from its historical context and calling it a “catholic transfiguration,” meaning the givens of time and space were, for the Greek church fathers, overshadowed by the everlasting proclamation of the Christian faith.Footnote 58 As Pantelis Kalaitzidis points out, however, it is here that Florovsky moves onto dangerous ground, which he tried to avoid in his historical conception: by stripping the particular of its particularity, he exchanged tradition for mythology.Footnote 59

In Florovsky's understanding of tradition, “the way to the roots” takes two forms: eschatological and utopic. On the one hand, it is a way that leads forward with the church fathers, not backward. In his lecture on “Patristics and Modern Theology,” given at the First Congress of Orthodox Theology in Athens in 1936, Florovsky said: “Holy Fathers are still leading the way, one has to walk further, and many views quite unexpected do appear, but the road is still the same, the kingly way of the catholic understanding.”Footnote 60 Similarly, in Ways of Russian Theology, he writes that a return to the Fathers is a return forward “to the power giving rebirth and affirmation to life,” where the creative spirit of the Fathers can inspire us.Footnote 61

On the other hand, it is a way to a construction for which Florovsky uses the terms “patristic” or “neo-patristic synthesis.”Footnote 62 In this synthesis, Florovsky includes selected subjects from the Fathers from the fourth to eighth centuries, that is, from the time when differences between Latin and Byzantine Christianity were becoming more apparent.Footnote 63 He then ascribes normativity to the synthesis he created from his selection and excludes voices that do not fit into it. Here, “spiritual re-Hellenization” means, in fact, conformity with his vision of what constitutes the authentic continuation of tradition and the pseudomorphosis of tradition. This absolutization, and therefore “utopicization,” of tradition builds—without acknowledgement—on Hegel's understanding of history. When Florovsky speaks of (neo)patristic synthesis, he is using Hegel's dialectics and philosophy of Absolute Spirit. His methodology is therefore dependent on German idealism, which, in his controversies with Russian religious philosophy and especially with sophiology, he so vehemently rejected.Footnote 64 Florovsky's weakness is not, however, that he uses Western philosophical methods, but that he adopts them uncritically and without reflection.Footnote 65

For Florovsky, as an Orthodox priest, liturgical-sacramental tradition was a lived reality, which is why he understood it dynamically and did not reduce it to its objectified forms. But the same cannot be said about mystical tradition, even though, at the theological level, Florovsky contributed to the rehabilitation of one of its main defendants, Gregory Palamas.Footnote 66 With Florovsky, tradition suffers, theologically, from the conflict within his understanding of the way to the roots. For an eschatological understanding of tradition to correct a utopic understanding, more attention needs to be given to the plurality within tradition, and we need to relate better to the operation of the Spirit, which includes both what we are able to see and comprehend, and what is beyond our sight and comprehension.

In the final part of the paper, we will consider the views of the Roman Catholic Dominican priest and theologian Yves Congar, who knew Florovsky from the 1930’s when they attended Berdyaev's lectures at his apartment in Paris, at which Orthodox and Catholics discussed theological and philosophical questions.Footnote 67 Florovsky very much respected Congar's work, as is apparent from the fact that, after the war, when Florovsky participated in the founding of the World Council of Churches, he requested that Congar be among the unofficial Roman Catholic observers at the gathering in Amsterdam in 1948.Footnote 68 As we will see, what these two theologians had in common was their attempt to rehabilitate the living tradition. Congar's understanding also differed from Florovsky's, however, especially concerning his view of the relationship between the unity and plurality of tradition and the way he understood the kenosis of the Spirit in relation to tradition.

Yves Congar: Tradition and the Spirit

Yves Congar O.P. first encountered Orthodox liturgy and spirituality while studying at the Dominican theological faculty of Le Saulchoir in Belgium, which enjoyed close co-operation with the Russian (Uniate) Seminary of St. Basil, and then, in Paris, where he was more able to devote himself to the study of Orthodox theology, especially Khomyakov and Solovyov, and also to participate in the various forms of ecumenical sharing that existed at the time, not only with the Orthodox but also with Protestants.Footnote 69 These experiences imprinted themselves into his understanding of tradition.

In 1974, Congar published an article in a volume entitled The Ecumenical World of Orthodox Civilization, one of whose editors was Florovsky. In this article he addresses the relationship between unity and plurality, the importance of which is underestimated in the works of Florovsky. Congar begins his article, “Eglise de Pierre, Eglise de Paul, Eglise de Jean: destin d'un thème oecuménique,” by analyzing Solovyov's eschatological vision of unity based on spiritual foundations, and he asks to what degree this vision is, in Russian theology, connected to a messiah complex. Is it the case that Catholicism, represented by the authority of Peter, and Protestantism, represented by the faith of Paul, will ultimately be incorporated into Johannine Orthodox Christianity, in which, as the Slavophiles say, the church will be based on the joining together of truth and love, and where freedom will reign?Footnote 70

Congar demonstrates the problematic nature of such a “synthesis of Peter and Paul and John”Footnote 71 and shows that an eschatological vision based upon it contains messianic-utopic elements.Footnote 72 According to Congar, it is not possible to carry out a synthesis based on the absolutizing of just one of the traditions, and he suggests that Uniatism represents one such unsuccessful attempt from the Western side.Footnote 73 Instead, Congar suggests a kind of non-synthesized dialectic in which the charismas of the particular traditions are preserved, so that they enrich one another. One condition of such co-existence is, however, that nothing that does not constitute ultimate reality can be described as though it did. In other words, the last and highest place will be reserved for God. Congar is referring here to Isaiah's vision in which people come from different backgrounds to “springs of water” and see that the Lord makes “all [his] mountains a way” and that his “highways shall be raised up.”Footnote 74 In this way, the unity lived in plurality promised to us can provide direction in particular forms, Western or Eastern, but only if these forms are freed of power interests and of “romantic notions and sentimental simplification.”Footnote 75

For Congar, understanding tradition eschatologically means focusing on what is most fundamental: that which comes through the Holy Spirit as a gift and opens the source of salvation in Christ and brings new life.Footnote 76 In La tradition et les traditions,Footnote 77 Congar shows that even though this tradition has, throughout history, had many visible expressions—in other words, is pluralistic—it nonetheless represents one theological reality. Congar suggests that in the singular we can speak of tradition as the active presence of revelation, about the activity of the Holy Spirit in a living subject, that is, the church. In the plural, he then speaks of the “monuments” of tradition that comprise its pluralistic foundation. It is in these monuments that we discover that which comprises the knowledge and practice of salvation that the church hands down and in which it lives. The unity of tradition, however, rules out the reducing of tradition to any one of its component parts.Footnote 78

However attractive this position is, it needs to be asked how the active presence of revelation, the tradition in the singular, is tangible otherwise than through the plurality of its “monuments.” Is the tradition in the singular a mystical vision or a regulative idea? Or have we reached with words to the realm where language breaks down, where the Spirit “intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words”?Footnote 79 The tradition in the singular in Congar embodies the tension between what is non-realizable from our end and what gives direction to our desire for breaking with the limited and limiting partial expressions of Christianity. Tradition in the singular in Congar's theology, though it is necessary to counterbalance fragmentation, is open to utopias and as such needs to be subordinated to eschatological relativization. Congar himself does not go this way; instead he attempts to mend this weakness of the conceptual grasp of tradition in the singular—that which goes beyond concepts—by his theology of the Spirit.

In Congar the Spirit carries liturgy, sustains it, and founds and reforms the institution of the church, which throughout history expounds and actualizes biblical, liturgical, and patristic tradition. The Spirit is wedded to tradition to such a degree that without it tradition would be dead. But while tradition is dependent on the Spirit, the Spirit, in relation to tradition, is transcendent. For Congar, therefore, the Spirit is the transcendent subject of tradition, actively present in the church.Footnote 80

By this, Congar attempts to free tradition from the supernatural-legal understanding criticized by Tillich and to incorporate those forms, such as mystical experience, which Florovsky all but ruled out as unrealistic. In his essay, “Langage des Spirituels et Langage des Théologiens” (“Language of Mystics and Language of Theologians”), Congar suggests that both mediated and immediate participation in the ultimate reality to which tradition bears witness are possible. Thus, according to Congar, direct experience of the “absolute” must be transmitted via a different relationship between the experienced and the expressible than those forms of tradition that work with mediated experience.Footnote 81 This direct experience is present both in Western and in Eastern Christianity, although there is a different language used about it in each. Congar believed that the Western emphasis on the divine missions and the Eastern emphasis on deification communicated one profound mystery of human transformation. The language of mystics and spiritual masters in each of the traditions, be it St. Francis of Assisi or St. Seraphim of Sarov, came out of prayer and was often expressed in terms of prayer, a prayer deepening human spiritual life as well as contact with others, making both real. Like iron that in contact with fire becomes fire, or like air glowing when penetrated by the sun, the direct mystical experience testified to the transforming union going beyond any theological articulation.Footnote 82 Congar's understanding of the plurality of tradition will therefore broaden out in a way that was not possible with Tillich, for whom liturgical-sacramental tradition was viewed as a constant potential source of idolatry, or with Florovsky, for whom mystical practice was a cause for skepticism.

Congar is, in my opinion, unjustly criticized for identifying the Spirit strongly with tradition, thereby limiting, so it is said, the Spirit's transcendence.Footnote 83 He himself returns to this subject, however, in his later work, Je Crois en l‘Esprit Saint (I Believe in the Holy Spirit).Footnote 84 In it, Congar refers back to his earlier emphases: the particular understanding of the “sector of the Spirit” that is dependent neither on tradition, nor on the church, nor even on the Son, although it is also true that where one person of the Trinity acts, the whole Trinity acts; he then develops his understanding of the kenosis of the Spirit,Footnote 85 by which the Spirit gives up its visibility and glory in order to enable the bond of love between God and human person and among people. So the Spirit acts and is at the same time silent about itself. This is, for Congar, part of the “philanthropy of God.”Footnote 86 Just as the Son of God, “penetrated” by the Spirit, did not cling to his equality with God and so brought us salvation,Footnote 87 so the Spirit gives life not only by enabling us to see what kind of life it is, but also by concealing his identity during his work in order for us to understand and accept God's gifts.Footnote 88 It is, then, in certain situations, also possible for people to participate in the life of the Spirit without participating in the tradition that bears witness to that life. The kenosis of the Spirit is the other side of the transcendence of the Spirit; in Congar's interpretation, it is therefore a particular expression of the fact that the Spirit is not, in his work, dependent on tradition and can therefore operate freely within it.Footnote 89

Congar hints at the implications of the kenosis and transcendence of the Spirit for theology and for church practice but does not offer a detailed analysis.Footnote 90 Readers must come to their own conclusions about how such kenosis and transcendence will shape and expand the treasure of tradition, so that what is invisible within it, or even may not seem to belong to it, is given its place. They will also have to decide what conversion from a utopic understanding of unity to an eschatologically open understanding might look like. Finally, they will have to determine how in particular such eschatologically open conversion will relativize people's attempts to control tradition and allow the living God to speak not only through, but also outside of, tradition.

Conclusion

The work of these three distinguished theologians demonstrates that it is impossible to free tradition from the tension between an eschatological and a utopic understanding. With Tillich, we need to appreciate his emphasis on prophetic critique that helped him to free tradition from those utopic elements that, according to him, bordered on idolatry. Paradoxically, Tillich admits that without them, talking about that which comes into our life as the most important is empty. It lacks words, images, and the symbolic mediation that all enable participation in the ultimate reality. He himself participates in this mediation only to a certain degree; in practice he is more open to art and culture than to liturgical and sacramental life. Moreover, he places mystical experience, in his case grounded in the artistic/ecstatic encounter with something he sensed as of divine origin, above experience mediated and cultivated by tradition. We could therefore say that for Tillich, the eschatological understanding of tradition predominates but is depleted of eu-topoi, good places, which in non-reified form give depth, structure, and direction to Christian hope.

For Florovsky, priorities are laid out in exact contradiction to Tillich: liturgy and the sacraments enable participation in divine reality. They are a privileged expression of lex orandi, the law of prayer, from which grows lex credendi, the law of belief. In the liturgical-sacramental tradition, a retrospective view meets with the prospective: through what we take on from the past, a way to the future opens up. According to Florovsky, direct mystical participation, represented for him primarily by the following of German idealism, but also by hesychasm and its appeal to deifying grace, is utopic, even though he himself rehabilitates the Eastern Fathers, who advocated such participation. In this way, Florovsky is already reducing the plurality of tradition within lex orandi itself. A further reduction then occurs within lex credendi, when Florovsky defines neo-patristic synthesis and declares it normative. His eschatological understanding of tradition is thus subordinated to utopia, although not entirely. Tradition, as a living way leading forwards to the roots, contains within itself the potential to correct each of the previous two weaknesses, but it is nonetheless necessary to link the Holy Spirit's activity within tradition with its unity and plurality.

This subject was brought into our discussion by Congar. Despite the vulnerability of his usage of the concept of tradition in the singular to utopic appropriations, and despite the missing consequences of the kenosis and transcendence of the Spirit for theology and for church practice, we can appreciate what he emphasizes. This includes living tradition, which carries within itself a degree of eschatological urgency purified of power interests or romanticizing simplifications. This tradition is “one” only in terms of its source and its direction: it stems from the Holy Spirit, which unifies it and brings it to life; it leads, through Christ's salvation, to communion with God and within creation. The mystics and the spiritual masters of both East and West, according to Congar, testified to the transforming union with God and of all in God. The concrete expression of this unity in history is, however, always plural, multiple, and none of its component parts can be extracted and absolutized without exchanging the eschatological dynamics of tradition for utopia. Plurality in tradition cannot be replaced by synthesis without losing communication within that plurality, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, while tradition without the Holy Spirit is dead, the Spirit cannot be reduced to tradition. The Spirit's work is both inside and outside of tradition, both revealing and concealing its source.

As I have criticized the synthetic approach in Florovsky, in the conclusion, I will not attempt to create a synthesis of the three theologians from their three different traditions. To do so would be to deny the very principles that I have attempted to defend in this paper. It is sufficient, I believe, in a dialogue, to allow one position to shed light on the other; the light in which we too participate, as Tillich would say; the light of the Holy Spirit, as Congar would add. Through the findings of those who have gone before us, and despite the objectification of these findings, we can, in this light, discern eschatological signs that constitute our understanding of that which is of ultimate significance and that which is not, of that which is and is not absolute. Furthermore, the “way forward to the roots,” which Florovsky defended, will teach us that in order to be able to walk in this way, we burn with the same fire as those who witnessed it for us.

Footnotes

*

This article is part of the research project, “Symbolic Mediation of Wholeness in Western Orthodoxy,” GAČR P401/11/1688. It is an expanded version of a professorial lecture delivered at the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague on March 15, 2013, published in Czech as Ivana Noble, “Napětí mezi eschatologickým a utopickým pojetím tradice v teologiích XX. století: Tillich, Florovskij, Congar,” Teologická Reflexe 19 (2013) 34–52, and translated into English by Pavlína and Tim Morgan.

References

1 For the amalgam of the theological heritage of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, see Noble, Ivana, “Various Christian Traditions in One Ecclesial Body,” Baptistic Theologies 5 (2013) 68–83 Google Scholar.

2 The ecumenical perspectivist approach has been largely influenced by experiences of bilateral and multilateral ecumenical dialogues, in which it has had its legitimate place. Problems arise, however, when this approach is taken as normative for any studying and presenting theology ecumenically. See, e.g., Bekehrung und Identität: Ökumene als Spannung zwischen Fremdem und Vertrautem (ed. Dagmar Heller; Beiheft zur Ökumenischen Rundschau 73; Frankfurt: Lembeck, 2003); The Unity We Have and the Unity We Seek: Ecumenical Prospects for the Third Millennium (ed. J. Moriss and N. Sagovsky; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2003); Charting Churches in a Changing Europe: Charta Oecumenica and the Process of Ecumenical Encounter (ed. Tim Noble et al.; Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006); Nüssel, Friederike and Sattler, Dorothea, Einführung in die ökumenische Theologie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008)Google Scholar; Avis, Paul, Reshaping Ecumenical Theology: The Church Made Whole? (New York: T & T Clark, 2010)Google Scholar.

3 This aspect is criticized, for example, by Höschele, Stefan, “Defining Ecumenics Fifty Years after Mackay,” Communio Viatorum 55 (2013) 105–136, at 112Google Scholar.

4 I have dealt with this problem in Ivana Noble, “Re-imagining Religious Belonging: Ecumenical Responses to Changing Religiosity in Europe,” in Religiöse Bindungen – neu reflektiert: Ökumenische Antworten auf Veränderungen der Religiosität in Europa (ed. I. Noble, U. Link-Wieczorek, and P. De Mey; Beiheft zur Ökumenischen Rundschau 73; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2011), 19–36.

5 The noun “tradition” (Greek paradosis, Latin traditio) means a “handing on,” or “passing on,” but also “narrative.” It appears, for example, when Paul speaks of “passing on” what he “received from the Lord” (1 Cor 11:2, 23). The Greek verb paradidonai (Latin tradere) includes the meaning “to entrust for safekeeping,” or “deliver,” as, for example, in 1 Cor 15:3, but it can also imply handing over to the enemy that which was entrusted, as in the passage about Judas's betrayal in John 6:71.

6 In the gospels, the relationship between what is “last,” in a spatial or temporal sense, and what is “the most important,” is captured in discourses on the Kingdom of God (in Matthew, more usually the “Kingdom of Heaven”). So, for example, at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, the Kingdom of Heaven is said to have “come near” (Matt 3:2; 4:17; Mark 1:15; Luke 4:43); or in the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer, the kingdom is understood as something that is yet to come, that must be asked for, that must be sought. It is a kingdom, as John says, that is not of this world (John 18:36) but that nonetheless enters into this world (Matt 12:28; Luke 11:20) and even suffers violence in this world (Matt 11:12). Another eschatological New Testament theme that is relevant here is “new life” (or “new creation”), which must be made room for here and now (for example, Matt 9:16–17; Mark 2:21–22; Luke 22:20; John 13:34–35; 1 Cor 5:7–8; 11:25; Gal 6:15) and that fills up the old with the new (Matt 1:22; 5:17), even though there is a certain sense in which the new is also different, as the rift between the good and evil in that which is old has passed away (2 Cor 5:17; 2 Pet 3:13; Rev 3:12; 21:1–5).

7 See, for example, Matt 15:2–6; Mark 7:8; Gal 1:14; 2 Cor 3:17.

8 See Libanio, João Batista, “Hope, Utopia, Resurrection,” in Systematic Theology: Perspectives from Liberation Theology (ed. Sobrino, J. and Ellacuría, I.; London: SCM, 1996) 279–90, esp. 281Google Scholar; see also idem, “The Current State of Theology,” The Month 9–10 (2000): 351–56. For a detailed analysis of Libanio's position, see Noble, Tim, The Poor in Liberation Theology: Pathway to God or Ideological Construct? (Cross Cultural Theologies; Sheffield: Equinox, 2013) 53–60 Google Scholar.

9 See Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951) 35, 40, 47, 66Google Scholar.

10 The classical Christian tradition is, according to Tillich, indebted both to Judaism and to Hellenism; it rose as a protection of the Biblical message that Jesus was the Christ. In the early church, until the movement of the Christian Apologists, the rest of the Christian message was relatively fluid. Only in the struggles with gnostic groups and their emphases on the secret traditions did Christian tradition as the public teaching of Christian churches have to be formulated. The early Catholicism that Tillich tracks back to Irenaeus and Tertullian, in particular, relying especially on Johaninne and Pauline scriptural texts, placed the Logos doctrine formulated by the Apologists into the framework of Bible and tradition. See Tillich, Paul, A History of Christian Thought (ed. Braaten, Carl E.; New York: Harper and Row, 1968) 21, 34, 37Google Scholar.

11 Tillich criticizes the “Protestant feeling,” whereby the concept of tradition itself has become “suspect.” At the same time, he shows that churches that grew out of the Reformation cannot do without tradition: “Even the Protestant criticism was possible only with the help of particular elements in the Roman Catholic tradition; the Bible, Augustine, the German mystics, the humanistic underground, and so on.” Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology III: Life and the Spirit, History and the Kingdom of God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963) 184 Google Scholar.

12 Tillich is referring here to the meaning of the principle of reformation: “The principle of reformation is the corrective against the demonic suppression of the freedom of the Spirit by a tradition that is vested with absolute validity, in practice or by law; and since all churches have a tradition, this demonic temptation is actual and successful in all of them.” Tillich, Systematic Theology III, 185.

13 See Tillich, A History of Christian Thought, 139–40.

14 Tillich, Systematic Theology III, 196.

15 This correlation is strongly inspired by Schelling, according to whom the stable principle of the law, which was given to us by Peter, and the dynamic principle of reform, which we have from Paul, will be superseded when John's Church comes. See Schelling, Friedrich, “Philosophie der Offenbarung II,” in Sämtliche Werke (Abt. II, Bd 4) (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1858) 298–344 Google Scholar. See also Tillich, Paul, “The Permanent Significance of the Catholic Church for Protestantism (1941),” in Main Works 6: Theological Writings (ed. Humme, Gert; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1992) 235–45Google Scholar, esp. 237–38; “Our Protestant Principles (1942),” in Main Works 6, 247–54.

16 André Gounelle emphasizes that Tillich, in his notion of “Catholic substance,” insists on “the substantial presence of God in certain places,” while the Protestant approach claims that “God is to be found beyond all we can touch, imagine, or think. God situates Godself outside and above even that which manifests God's presence.” André Gounelle, “Tillich: A Vision of Protestantism for Today,” in Paul Tillich's Theological Legacy: Spirit and Community (ed. Frederick J. Parrella; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995) 161–63. See also Frederick J. Parrella, “Paul Tillich's Life and Spirituality: Some Reflections,” http://www.metodista.br/ppc/correlatio/correlatio06/paul-tillich-s-life-and-spirituality-some-reflections.

17 See Tillich, A History of Christian Thought, 139; Systematic Theology I, 85; “Art and Ultimate Reality (1960),” in Main Works 2: Writings in the Philosophy of Culture I (ed. Michael Palmer; Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990) 316–32, esp. 320–21.

18 See Tillich‘s interpretation of the objectifying of tradition in the late Middle Ages and at the First Vatican Council. In both cases there was a synthesis of the “one definite tradition” that was set in opposition to other movements and interpretations; in the case of the First Vatican Council, it was, furthermore, proclaimed as definite. Thus, “living tradition” was positively defined and therefore ceased to be truly alive. See Tillich, A History of Christian Thought, 140, 219.

19 See Tillich's demand that Protestant theology should not become “a-kairos,” thus “missing the demand of the historical moment.” Systematic Theology III, 6.

20 We find this differentiation between an existential and theoretical understanding in another of Tillich's autobiographical works: Tillich, Paul, “What Am I? An Autobiographical Essay: Early Years,” in My Search for Absolutes (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967)Google Scholar Chapter 1.

21 Jan Štefan writes: “The proximity of death and the experience of the meaninglessness of life led to a double nervous breakdown of the German idealist and patriot, awarded the Iron Cross, First Class, and to a break from the values of the world and the lifestyle of bourgeois society. . . . He went to war a monarchist, idealist, and puritan; he came back from the war a revolutionary socialist, cultural pessimist, and Bohemian man-of-the-world.” Štefan, Jan, Karl Barth a ti druzí: Pět evangelických teologů 20. století: Barth–Brunner–Tillich–Althaus–Iwand (Brno: CDK, 2005) 319–20Google Scholar.

22 See Thiessen, Gesa, “Converted through an Image: Paul Tillich's Theology of Art,” in Konverze a konvertité (ed. Hanuš, Jiří and Noble, Ivana; Brno: CDK, 2009) 61–69, esp. 62Google Scholar; Tillich, Paul, “One Moment of Beauty (1950),” in On Art and Architecture (ed. John and Dillenberger, Jane; New York: Crossroad, 1987) 235–83Google Scholar. See also Arther, Don, “Paul Tillich as a Military Chaplain,” Newsletter of the North American Paul Tillich Society 26 (2000) 4–11 Google Scholar; Pauck, Wilhelm and Pauck, Marion, Paul Tillich: His Life and Thought I: Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1976) 41–51 Google Scholar.

23 Tillich writes: “This is the principle of Byzantine culture, namely to transform reality into something which points to the eternal, not to change reality as in the Western world.” Tillich, A History of Christian Thought, 95–96.

24 Ibid., 96; he analyzes the relation between the veneration of icons and Christological dogma at 89–90.

25 See Ibid., 96–97.

26 Tillich suggests that in Western thought, too, existentialism is a necessary complement to essentialism. Here he admits that there were three determinant influences for him: the Platonic-Augustinian tradition, from which he borrowed the participatory theory that enabled him to understand how the finite can participate in the infinite; Hegel's philosophy of Absolute Spirit, which enabled him (Tillich) to speak about the spiritual foundation (essence) of philosophy and our participation in it; and existentialists, whose reaction against Hegel provided Tillich with the second, dynamic pole of dialectics—with what is unquantifiable. See Tillich, Paul, “Philosophical Background of My Theology (1960),” in Main Works 1: Philosophical Writings (ed. Wenz, Gunter; Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989) 411–20, esp. 414–15Google Scholar. Tillich criticizes Eastern theology for its utopically understood theological anthropology, which works with the concept of “innocence” as “non-actualized potentiality.” According to Tillich, this is saying that before the fall, Adam was equal to Christ. For Tillich, this is an absurdity in Eastern thought, which makes the fall incomprehensible. “Mere potentiality or dreaming innocence is not perfection. Only the conscious union of existence and essence is perfection, as God is perfect because he transcends essence and existence.” Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957) 33–34 Google Scholar (italics in original).

27 Tillich, Systematic Theology III, 298.

28 See Tillich, Paul, “The Dynamics of Faith (1957),” in Main Works 5: Writings on Religion (ed. Scharlemann, Robert P.; Berlin: De Gruyter, 1988) 231–90Google Scholar; “The Religious Symbol / Symbol and Knowledge (1940–41),” in Main Works 4: Writings in the Philosophy of Religion (ed. John Clayton; Berlin: De Gruyter, 1987) 253–72; “Oprávnění a význam náboženských symbolů,” Theologická Revue 20 (1987) 109–15; “Existenciální analýza a náboženské symboly,” Theologická Revue 21 (1988) 179–88.

29 Tillich, Systematic Theology III, 396 (italics in original). Tillich's eschatology includes classical themes such as the ultimate destiny of the world and of each human person. His main emphasis, however, is not on the final stages of history; he rather concentrates on what he sees as eternal, and eternally transformative. See ibid., 361, 395, 398. Štefan points out that in Tillich's eschatology, his Lutheran understanding of participation in the redemption of Jesus Christ meets “eschatological pan-en-theism,” where Tillich explains the theological term apokatastasis (from which he eventually distances himself) using Schelling's philosophical term “essentification.” Redemption that exists fully “only within the Kingdom of God, which comprises the universe,” means at the same time “a creative synthesis of a being's essential nature with what it has made of it in its temporal existence,” or more accurately, to accept—in despair over what it did not manage to make and over its estrangement from its essential nature—the grace that “conquers sin . . . and bridges the gulf of estrangement.” We can also, according to Tillich, perceive this synthesis in phenomena of which Protestantism is suspicious, such as depictions of the image of Christ, the apostles, or the saints in icons, or the practices of Catholic folk religion connected with belief in purgatory. See Štefan, Karl Barth a ti druzí, 359–60, 366, 371; Here Štefan cites Tillich, Systematic Theology III, 421; I, 147; III, 401; The Shaking of the Foundations (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962) 163.

30 See Tillich, A History of Christian Thought, 138.

31 See n. 20 above. Tillich's accounts of what a mystical experience might mean are complex. They range from participation in the reality to which Christian tradition refers, especially in its Augustinian/Franciscan/realist expressions, and about which we have spoken in relation to Tillich's approach to images, to the vague mysticism that Štefan justly criticizes when demonstrating how Tillich's apologetics developed from an emphasis on the justification of the sinner–doubter in the 1920’s, to the reinterpretation of faith as “the courage to be” in the 1950’s, and how, initially through a jumble of dialectic relations, and subsequently through vague mysticism which transcended theism, his theological statements gradually lost their sense of Christian specificity. See Štefan, Karl Barth a ti druzí, 349–51. And yet, even what is criticized as vague mysticism has its grounds in Tillich's theology. He goes back to German mystical writers, especially to Friedrich Schelling and Jakob Böhme, from whom he takes the feeling for the depth of the divine life, but also the emphasis on the spiritual unity perceptible through the principle of Logos. See Carl E. Braaten, “Paul Tillich and the Classical Christian Tradition,” in Tillich, A History of Christian Thought xiii-xlii, esp. xxix.

32 See Tillich, The Dynamics of Faith, 236–37.

33 See Tillich, A History of Christian Thought, 139–40.

34 Tillich, “Art and Ultimate Reality (1960),” 323.

35 Ibid., 320–21.

36 Tillich addressed both the ritual-metaphysical form of utopia, in which the particular grasping of the good, which is more whole and more perfect than that which people find in their surroundings, was situated into our world, and, in more detail, the ethical-political form. Here Tillich relates utopia to the totalitarian systems of Nazism and communism, but we will also find elements of it in his understanding of religious socialism. See Paul Tillich, “Eschatologie und Geschichte (1927),” in Main Works 6, 107–25; he deals critically with political utopia in his “Politische Bedeutung der Utopie im Leben der Völker (1951),” in Main Works 3, 531–82.

37 See Tillich, The Dynamics of Faith, 236–37.

38 See Tillich, Systematic Theology III, 184.

39 See Blane, Andrew, Georges Florovsky: Russian Intellectual, Orthodox Churchman (ed. Blane, Andrew; Crestwood: St. Vladimir‘s Seminary Press, 1993) 114 Google Scholar. Matthew Baker kindly pointed out to me that Florovsky and Tillich already knew each other from when Tillich was at Union Theological Seminary and Florovsky at St. Vladimir's Seminary. Florovsky taught some classes on the iconoclast controversy as part of Tillich's course on Church History.

40 Tillich accepted a professorship at Harvard in 1954 and lectured on Protestant theology there between 1955 and 1962. Florovsky arrived in 1956 and stayed until 1964. The six years when they both lectured at the Harvard Divinity School coincided with a time when the Harvard president, Nathan Pusey, aspired towards cooperation between the main streams of Christian tradition. Roman Catholicism was represented by Christopher Dawson, an English convert who was concerned with the history of European culture and education. See Blane, Georges Florovsky, 37–114.

41 According to Florovsky, “The knowledge of the past is necessarily indirect and inferential. It is always an interpretation.” The first rule of good interpretation, then, is that “we have to grasp the mind of the writer; we must discover exactly what he intended to say.” Understanding is not possible without a certain degree of “intellectual or spiritual sympathy,” but it is not a “real meeting of minds.” An historical approach to tradition is not existential in the sense of experiential participation in what we interpret, but in the sense of a “knowledge of subjects—of ‘co-persons,’ of ‘co-partners’ in the quest of life.” See Florovsky, Georges, “The Predicament of the Church Historian,” in Religion and Culture. Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich (ed. Leibrecht, Walter; New York: Harper, 1959) 140–66Google Scholar, esp. 143–47, 150 (italics in original).

42 Ibid., 164.

43 See ibid., 163.

44 See Williams, George H., “The Neo-Patristic Synthesis of Georges Florovsky,” in Georges Florovsky (ed. Blane) 287–340Google Scholar, esp. 319. This does not mean that Florovsky would offer any systematic treatment of the scriptural texts. He approaches the Bible as a coherent record of divine revelation in history, reaching its climax when “the Word was made flesh.” This sacred history, sealed when “the Comforter descended into the world for its cleansing and sanctification” continues in the church up until now, according to Florovsky. See Florovsky, “The Predicament of the Church Historian,” 164. Referring to Hilary of Poitiers, as well as to Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius, and Basil, Florovsky describes tradition in terms of a comprehensive understanding of the Scriptures. Tradition is, for him, primarily a “prescribed usage” and a “formal doctrine” (credal statements, for example) where the Fathers were all in accord, as they discerned the “ecclesial sense” against Gnostics, Arians, and others who reduced Scripture to proof-texts of their positions. Tradition is a catholic synthesis, and the function of tradition is to preserve the sound interpretation of Scripture against its misuse, and thus to pass on the apostolic faith and practice. This was embodied in Christian Hellenism, and continues as the Holy Spirit breathes in the Church. See Florovsky, “The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church,” GOTR 9 (1963) 181–200.

45 See Bauerová, Kateřina, “Zkušenost a teologie ruských emigrantů,” in Noble, Ivana et al., Cesty pravoslavné teologie na Západ (Brno: CDK, 2012) 259–96, esp. 284–93Google Scholar.

46 The concept of hesychasm, referring to the spiritual tradition stemming from the Desert Fathers, comes from the Greek hesuchía, which means stillness, silence, peace. The hesychasts were people who sought for the life of prayer and attention to God in silence, who embraced specific physical and mental ways of uniting their powers on ascending into their hearts, understood as centers of the human person, and of invocation of the name of Jesus, while journeying towards full union with God. The first hesychasts appeared in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in the fourth century. Hesychasm then experienced a revival in Byzantium in the first half of the fourteenth century. Its name comes from Mount Athos, and its teaching and practice were systematized and defended by the monk and later bishop of Thessalonica, Gregory Palamas (ca. 1296–1359).

47 The early concept of sophiology comes from Vladimir Solovyov. He referred to his mystical experience of an encounter and conversation with Holy Wisdom—Sophia—whom he saw as the integral organic and sense-giving principle of the cosmos. After his conversion to Christianity, Solovyov re-worked this experience into a philosophical-theological system, which mixed concepts taken from Platonism, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and from the Greek church fathers. His insights were further developed by Sergei Bulgakov, Nikolai Lossky, and Pavel Florensky. For more detail, see Bauerová, “Zkušenost a teologie ruských emigrant,” 284–93.

48 See Florovsky, “The Predicament of the Church Historian,” 164–65.

49 See Florovsky, George, Пути Русского Богословия, “Предисловие автора” [The Ways of Russian Theology, “Author's Preface”] (Paris: YMCA Press, 1937)Google Scholar, http://www.vehi.net/florovsky/puti/index.html; Florovsky borrowed the term “pseudomorphosis” from the biologist Oswald Spengler. See Louth, Andrew, “Is Development of Doctrine a Valid Category for Orthodox Theology?” in Orthodoxy and Western Culture: Collection of Essays Honoring Jaroslav Pelikan on his Eightieth Birthday (ed. Hotchkiss, Valerie and Henry, Patrick; Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2005) 45–63 Google Scholar, esp. 46.

50 I am grateful for the comments of Matthew Baker, who defends Florovsky's attitude to the ascetic and Hesychast tradition even in the West and points to the studies from the 1930s dedicated to St. Seraphim of Sarov and St. Paissy Velichkovsky in Puti Russkogo Bogosloviia and to his unpublished lecture on Nil Sorsky. Florovsky also wrote the preface to the first English edition of Archimandrite Sophrony (Shakarov), The Undistorted Image: Staretz Silouan 1866–1938 (London: Faith Press, 1958). Baker also refers to an interview in Russian with Paul Valliere, in which he talked about visiting Florovsky in the 1970’s at Princeton and asking him what to read in order to understand Orthodox theology. Florovsky replied simply: “Read Silouan.” See personal correspondence with Matthew Baker, 23 June 2014. See also Ivana Noble, “Ruské pravoslaví vstupující do moderní doby,” in Ivana Noble et al., Cesty pravoslavné teologie, 73–107, esp. 85–90.

51 Florovsky writes: “Christianity is an eschatological religion and, for that very reason, is essentially historical.” Florovsky, “The Predicament of the Church Historian,” 161 (italics in original). And yet, against historical absolutizations, whether Marxist, Liberal, or papal Catholic, Williams reminds us, Florovsky stressed eschatology. Florovsky understands the eschaton, like creation, literally, as a meta-historical event. The final judgment of humankind and the universal perfection of humanity in the new creation are his Christian counterpart of hyper-historical utopianism. In his expositions of eschatology Florovsky refers mainly to Origen, Methodius of Olympus, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, and Nicholas Cabasilas. See Williams, “The Neo-Patristic Synthesis of Georges Florovsky,” 290, 294.

52 See Florovsky, “The Predicament of the Church Historian,” 151, 155, 157; A very similar argument occurs in his lecture at the First Congress of Orthodox Theology in Athens in 1936, “Patristics and Modern Theology.” See advance proof copy from The Acts of the First Congress of Orthodox Theology, Athens, 1936 (Athens: Pyros, 1938) 1-7. In his letter of December 12, 1963 to Dobbie-Bateman, Florovsky writes: “The ‘authority’ of the Fathers is not a dictatus papae. They are guides and witnesses, no more. Their vision is ‘of authority,’ not necessarily their words” (italics in original). See Gallaher, Brandon, “Georges Florovsky on reading the life of St. Seraphim,” Sobornost 27 (2005) 58–70, esp. 62Google Scholar; see Ross J. Sauvé, Georges V. Florovsky and Vladimir N. Lossky: An Exploration, Comparison and Demonstration of Their Unique Approaches to the Neopatristic Synthesis (Ph.D. diss., Durham University, 2010) 70.

53 But it is not “a subjective re-orientation of man in time,” but that “in the light of Christ's coming, history now appears as a ‘pro-gress,’ inwardly ordered toward ‘the end,’ to which it unfailingly precipitates.” Florovsky, “The Predicament of the Church Historian,” 162, 161 (italics in original).

54 Florovsky places Scripture into tradition, especially into the context of liturgical and sacramental life. For Florovsky, only in this context of the community of the true faith and proper liturgical practice was it possible to interpret Scripture correctly. See Florovsky, “The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church,” in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky I: Bible, Church, Tradition (Belmont, MA: Norland, 1972) 73–92, esp. 77, 84, 86, 89.

55 Florovsky ascribes to patristic thought not only normativity but also an existential character, which, according to Ross Sauvé, consists in his “vision of faith” and “spiritual comprehension” that leads to an “encounter with the Living Christ,” in which lies the sense of the Orthodox understanding of tradition, which would otherwise be “spiritually irrelevant.” See Sauvé, Georges V. Florovsky and Vladimir N. Lossky, 68–69.

56 See Florovsky, Georges, “Patristic Theology and the Ethos of the Orthodox Church,” in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky IV: Aspects of Church History (Belmont, MA: Norland, 1975) 11–30 Google Scholar, esp. 18. See Sauvé, Georges V. Florovsky and Vladimir N. Lossky, 69.

57 See Florovsky, “Patristics and Modern Theology,” 7. In a previous paper, co-authored with my husband, we showed that Florovsky enables the appropriation of this claim in Latin Christianity. See Ivana and Noble, Tim, “A Latin Appropriation of Christian Hellenism: Florovsky's Marginal Note to Patristics and Modern Theology and its Possible Addressee,” SVTQ 56 (2012) 269–87Google Scholar.

58 See Florovsky, “Patristics and Modern Theology,” 5.

59 See Kalaitzidis, Pantelis, “Return to the Fathers and Modern Orthodox Theology,” SVTQ 54 (2010) 5–36 Google Scholar, esp. 8–11.

60 Florovsky, “Patristics and Modern Theology,” 5.

61 See Florovsky, Пути Русского Богословия, “Предисловие автора;” in English, Florovsky, Georges, Ways of Russian Theology I (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1979)Google Scholar xviii.

62 I have explored this subject in detail in previous papers. See Noble, Ivana, “History Tied Down by the Normativity of Tradition? Inversion of Perspective in Orthodox Theology: Challenges and Problems,” in Tradition and the Normativity of History (ed. Boeve, Lieven and Merrigan, Terrence; Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 263; Louvain: Peeters, 2013) 283–96Google Scholar; eadem, “Patristic Synthesis or Non-Synthetic Dialectics? A Critical Evaluation of John Meyendorff's Contribution,” in L'héritage du Père Jean Meyendorff: érudit et homme d'Eglise (1926–1992) (ed. Joost van Rossum and Goran Sekulovski; Paris: YMCA, forthcoming).

63 George H. Williams remarks that “originally Florovsky spoke of ‘the patristic synthesis’ of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Period in contrast to the ‘ambiguity of the third century.’” “Neo-patristic synthesis,” the term Florovsky uses more often in ecumenical dialogues, refers primarily to “a reworking of the Fathers from the fourth through the eighth centuries” and overlaps with his term “Christian Hellenism.” See Williams, “The Neo-Patristic Synthesis of Georges Florovsky,” in Georges Florovsky (ed. Blane), 287–340, esp. 291–92, referring to Florovsky, ‘Томление духа,’ Путь 10 [1930] 102–7.

64 Compare with Florovsky's criticism of Hegelianism in Sauvé, Georges V. Florovsky and Vladimir N. Lossky, 72–77.

65 This is in contrast to Tillich, who criticized Hegel's philosophy of history for subordinating history to an artificially created system. Tillich says: “History has also been subordinated to the system which Hegel has construed. The elements of the eternal which the philosopher knows appear in history. They are present in the mind of the philosopher, and so the philosopher knows what history is. Now this is, I would call it with a Greek word—hybris—philosophical arrogance because history always transcends anything we know; it has in itself the element of the incalculable, of the merely existential.” Tillich, “Philosophical Background of My Theology,” 415 (italics in original).

66 See Georges Florovsky, “St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers,” in Collected Works I, 105–20.

67 When Congar came to Paris in January 1932 to complete his studies, he joined a French–Russian circle that used to meet in Berdyaev's home in Clamart, where Orthodox and Catholics discussed theological and philosophical questions and shared their existentially and spiritually relevant versions of a “return to the roots,” which meant, for Maritain and Gilson, for example, a return from neo-scholasticism to Thomas Aquinas or to the church fathers. See von Aretin, K. O., The Papacy and the Modern World (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1970) 231 Google Scholar; Aradi, Z., John XXIII: Pope of the Council (London: Burns and Oates, 1961) 144 Google Scholar. There is a more extensive treatment of the lectures in Martin Warner, “Nicolas Berdyaev: A Consideration of His Thought and Influence,” (Ph.D. diss., Durham University, 1986) 188; until 1928, Protestants were also part of this circle, but when the Roman Catholic hierarchy banned it, and it moved underground, they ceased to belong to it. See Noble, Tim, “Springtime in Paris: Orthodoxy Encountering Diverse Others Between the Wars,” in Den Blick Weiten: Wenn Ökumene die Religionen begegnet; Tagungsbericht der 17. Wissenschaftlichen Konsultation der Societas Oecumenica (ed. Pierce, Andrew and Schuegraf, Oliver; Beiheft zur Ökumenischen Rundschau 99; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2014)Google Scholar; see Berdyaev, Nicolas, Dream and Reality: An Essay in Autobiography (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1950) 163 Google Scholar; Lowrie, Donald, Rebellious Prophet: A Life of Nicolai Berdyaev (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960) 200 Google Scholar; Blane, Georges Florovsky, 54–55. As a Dominican priest, Congar participated in Life and Work in Oxford in 1937 (which Tillich also attended), and Faith and Order in Edinburgh in 1938 (where he again met Florovsky), both of which predated the founding of the World Council of Churches. See Stransky, Tom, “Yves Congar,” in Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement (ed. Lossky, Nicholas et al.; Geneva: WCC, 2002) 241–42Google Scholar.

68 On 13 February 1948, Florovsky wrote an official letter to Congar, making this request. The Geneva office (W. A. Visser ‘t Hooft) supported Congar's participation, but it was ultimately disallowed following intervention from Rome. See Famerée, Joseph, “Orthodox Influence on the Roman Catholic Theologian Yves Congar, O. P.: A Sketch,” STVQ 39 (1995) 409–16Google Scholar, esp. 413–14; see Congar, Yves, Une passion: l'unité: Réflexions et souvenirs 1929-1973 (Paris: Cerf, 1974) 65–71 Google Scholar.

69 Pius XI charged the Dominicans at the Russian Seminary of St. Basil with the formation of Uniate clergy and with the task of educating them in Russian religious culture. In Paris, where Congar moved in 1932 to finish his studies, he met Berdyaev's circle, to which Florovsky belonged, and also Lev Gillet, a Roman Catholic priest who converted to Orthodoxy. At the Institut Catholique, he attended courses on Khomyakov and the Slavophile movement and came into contact with Dom Lambert Beauduin and through him with the monastery of Amay (later Chevetogne) in Belgium, where both the Western and Eastern (Uniate) liturgies and forms of monasticism were practiced alongside each other and where the journal Irénikon was published. Congar also participated in the annual “French-Russian recollections” at which students of different confessions used to meet during Pentecost. Congar lectured publicly and took part in debates at both the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute and the Federation of Protestant Students, from where, in 1937, his book Chrétiens désunis emerged. See Congar, Une passion, 11; see Destivelle, Hyacinthe, “Le Père Congar et l'Orthodoxie Russe: Un Dialogue de Vérité,” Bulletin de Littérature Ecclésiastique 106 (2005) 377–400 Google Scholar; Famerée, “Orthodox Influence,” 409–11; Fouilloux, Les Catholiques et l'unité chrétienne, 218–31.

70 See Congar, Yves, “Eglise de Pierre, Eglise de Paul, Eglise de Jean: Destin d'un thème oecuménique,” in The Ecumenical World of Orthodox Civilization (ed. Florovsky, Georges, Blane, Andrew, and Bird, Thomas; Russia and Orthodoxy 3; The Hague: Mouton, 1974) 163–79Google Scholar, esp. 163, 165.

71 Ibid., 165.

72 Congar analyzes these elements using the sources from which they arose. One of these was the influence of the twelfth-century mystic, Joachim of Fiore, which then came via Lessing to the Slavophiles. Joachim's concept of three ages, of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, suggests that the age of the Spirit has now dawned, during which spiritual people will live a higher form of unity, and in which the old divisions and dependency on institutions will be overcome. From Schelling then comes the conviction about the transitory forms of Catholicism and Protestantism (the Churches of Peter and Paul respectively), which would be superseded by the Church of John. See ibid., 165–67.

73 See ibid., 172–73. Congar already had a rich experience of Uniatism from his time as a student. See nn. 68 and 70 above.

74 See Is 49:10, 11. Congar does not quote the reference but paraphrases it. See “Eglise de Pierre, Eglise de Paul, Eglise de Jean,” 173.

75 Ibid., 173.

76 Gabriel Flynn points out that Congar's treatment of eschatology is less developed than his notions of tradition, his ecclesiology, and pneumatology. And yet, the appeal to eschatology enables him to relate together the permanent and the provisional. According to Flynn, Congar, by affirming at the same time attributes between which there is a tension, is able to construct a dialectical approach that does not end up in a synthesis. Thus he upholds at the same time the holiness and the need for reform, the presence of the Kingdom of God already and the waiting for and working towards the glory of its reign. See Flynn, Gabriel, Yves Congar's Vision of the Church in a World of Unbelief (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004) 179 Google Scholar.

77 This is composed of two parts, initially published separately. See Congar, Yves, La tradition et les traditions I: Essai historique (Paris: Fayard, 1960)Google Scholar; La tradition et les traditions II: Essai théologique (Paris: Fayard, 1963). The first part, “Essai historique,” had been written, in its first edition, by 1958, a time when Congar was prohibited from lecturing publicly and from meeting with Protestants; it was revised two years later when Pope John XXIII rehabilitated him and invited him into the preparatory commission for the Second Vatican Council. The second part, “Essai théologique,” followed in 1963, during the time of the Council. In it we find attitudes that are also, under Congar's influence, reflected in conciliar documents relating to the understanding of revelation, religious freedom, mission, ecumenism, and the church's role in the modern world. See Pesch, Otto Hermann, Druhý vatikánský koncil 1962–1965: Příprava, průběh, odkaz (Praha: Vyšehrad, 1996) 135, 145–46Google Scholar, 174, 309, 318, 376–77.

78 See Congar, La tradition et les traditions II, 28, 207. Although Congar says here that “tradition is a synthesis comprising documents and realities that come from the life of the Spirit,” by synthesis he does not mean harmonization into one new totality that will overcome the tensions and contrasts of both poles of the dialectic. See ibid., 213.

79 See Rom 8:26.

80 Congar writes that the Spirit is the transcendent subject of tradition: not only a principle but also a person. See La tradition et les traditions II, 101–8. John Webster criticizes Congar for identifying the Spirit so closely with tradition that its transcendence is in fact suppressed. See Webster, John, “Plurality and Plenitude: Evangelical Reflections on Congar's Tradition and Traditions ,” in Yves Congar: Theologian of the Church (ed. Flynn, Gabriel; Louvain: Peeters, 2005) 43–65 Google Scholar, esp. 63.

81 See Congar, Yves, “Langage des Spirituels et langage des Théologiens,” in Situation et tâches présentes de la Théologie (Paris: Cerf, 1967) 135–58Google Scholar, esp. 142. The text is from 1961.

82 For more detail, see Groppe, Elisabeth Teresa, Yves Congar's Theology of the Holy Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 97 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 See, for example, Webster, “Plurality and Plenitude,” 63.

84 See Congar, Yves, Je crois en l‘Esprit Saint I-III (Paris: Cerf, 1979–1980)Google Scholar.

85 Groppe shows that in the 1970s and 1980s, Congar spoke about the dual establishment of the church, through Christ and through the Spirit, but that at the same time he partly reserved space for the “free sector” of the Spirit, which he earlier described as the “autonomous Spirit's activity,” and which was now more a part of the work of Trinity, but cannot be reduced to the work of the other two Persons. See Groppe, Yves Congar's Theology of the Holy Spirit, 74.

86 Congar, Je Crois en l'Esprit Saint II, 28.

87 See Phil 2:6-11.

88 See Groppe, Yves Congar's Theology of the Holy Spirit, 9, 57; see also 1 Cor 14:45.

89 The Spirit's operation independent of and outside church structures is mentioned in Congar's early and later works. See Congar, Yves, “Le Saint-Esprit et le corps apostolique, réalisateurs de l‘oeuvre du Christ,” Revue de Sciences Philosophiques et Theologiques 36 (1952) 613–25Google Scholar; “Le Christ dans l’économie salutaire et dans nos traités dogmatique,” Concilium 2 (1966) 11–26, esp. 24; see Groppe, Yves Congar's Theology of the Holy Spirit, 74.

90 I am grateful to my husband, Tim Noble, for this observation.