CLEMENT, OLIVIER

CLEMENT, OLIVIER, lay theologian, author (17 November 1921– ). Born in the city of Aniane in Languedoc, a region with a tragic religious history involving the Cathari and Camisards, Clement received neither baptism nor religious education as a child. He graduated from the University of Paris, writing a thesis on Peter the Venerable, Abbe of Cluny. There he was a student of Alphonse Dupront, a founder of “religious anthropology,” and with whom he collaborated in the Resistance during the later years of World War II. Following the war he taught in Paris at the Lycee Louis le Grand.

After his conversion to Christianity in 1951 Clement participated in theological study organized by the Patriarchate of Moscow in which V. Lossky, L. Ouspensky, and S. Sakharov (qq.v.) were teaching. Due to the premature death of V. Lossky in 1958, Clement edited several of Lossky’s manuscripts which were subsequently published. At St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute (q.v.) Clement replaced Lev Zander as professor of comparative theology and Paul Evdokimov (q.v.) as professor of moral theology. He also has taught the history of the Ecumenical Councils (q.v.) and Byzantine theology, and continues at the Higher Institute of Ecumenical Studies, Paris. During the 1960s he formed a committee to help shed light on the condition of Christians in the USSR, and he protested with Pierre-Emmanuel in favor of Russian Christians. From 1976 to 1994 he was also president of the association of “Believer-Writers,” a group of Christian (all denominations), Jewish, and Moslem writers.

Clement has edited Desclee de Brouwer, the collection Theophanie, and the journal Contacts, a French-language Orthodox journal. He is author of The Spirit of Solzhenitsyn (trans. 1976), but his most influential book, recently translated into English, is a two-volume catechesis entitled The Living God. He has written Notes sur le temps a la lumiere de la tradition orthodoxe (1959), Byzance et le christianisme (1964), Dialogues avec le patriarche Athenagoras (1969, 1976), Le Christ terre des vivants (1977), Le visage interieur (1978), Le chant des larmes, essai sur le repentir (1983), Sources, les mystiques chretiens des origines (1983, 1989, 1992), Deux temoins: Vladimir Lossky et Paul Evdokimov (1985), Berdiaev, un philosophe russe en France (1991), Trois Prieres (1993), and Corps de mort et de gloire (1995). In addition, he has authored books on Western Christianity, modernity, and non-Christian religions, and has received honorary doctorates from the Institute of Theology of Bucharest and the Catholic University of Louvain.