FLOROVSKY, GEORGES V

FLOROVSKY, GEORGES V., priest, theologian, church historian, educator, ecumenist (28 August 1893–11 August 1979). Son of a priest and educator, as a theologian and church historian he was primarily an autodidact, since his studies at the University of Odessa were in philosophy and science. In 1919 to 1920 he was philosophy lecturer at that university, and from 1922 to 1926-after he and his family had fled from Russia to Sofia, Bulgaria, then to Czechoslovakia-he taught philosophy of law in the Russian Faculty of Law at Prague and in 1923 received a Phil. Mag. degree there.

From 1926 to 1948 he was a professor of patristics and systematic theology at St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute (q.v.). He opposed the sophiological (theological) orientations of both Frs. Bulgakov and Florensky (qq.v.), considering the position unjustifiable in terms of iconography and liturgical texts (qq.v.). In 1932 he was ordained a priest under the canonical jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (q.v.), and for the rest of his life remained affiliated with it. In 1948 he settled in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1954. From 1948 to 1955 he was a professor of divinity at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (q.v.) and its dean from 1950 to 1955. Concurrent to his deanship he was adjunct professor of history and theology of Eastern Orthodoxy at Union Theological Seminary, New York, and adjunct professor of religion at Columbia University.

In 1955 he left St. Vladimir’s to become associate professor of Orthodox church history and dogma at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Theological School (qq.v.), Brookline, Massachusetts, where he remained until 1959, returning from 1963 to 1965 to be professor of patristic theology and the philosophy of religion. From 1956 to 1964 he was professor of Eastern church history at the Harvard Divinity School, and professor emeritus there from 1964 until his death. From 1964 to 1972 he was visiting professor of religion and Slavic studies at Princeton University, and a visiting lecturer at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1972 until his death. Profoundly committed to the concept of the Orthodox Church as the universal Church, he was very active in ecumenical (q.v.) encounter. A founding member of the World Council of Churches, serving on provisional committees until 1948, he was a member of the Central and Executive Committees from 1948 to 1961. He had a decisive influence on the pro-Orthodox outcome of the WCC Toronto Statement of 1950. From 1954 to 1957 he served as vice president of the National Council of Churches in the United States.

His writings are typified by their Christological and patristic (qq.v.) emphasis-he spent his adult life attempting to construct a neo-patristic synthesis-while he tends to be more of an essayist in approach than a writer of monographs. Chief works are Human and Divine Wisdom (1922), The Death on the Cross (1930), and The Eastern Tradition in Christianity (1949). His collected works in English began appearing in 1974, currently numbering fourteen volumes. Of these, the most important are the four volumes on the Eastern and Byzantine fathers and the two volumes entitled Ways of Russian Theology.