Fatherland on Earth or Heaven? A Problem of Localization of the Holy Tradition

Abstract

The author tries to discern temporal and eternal in the Holy Christian Tradition. He proceeds from the opinion that the theological activity of some canonized hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Synodal period constitutes the most complete representation of a common Tradition of the Church.In a case like this, one has to measure the parameters of Tradition according to the degree of its proximity to our present ecclesiastical factors — linguistic, cultural, historical and hierarchical. As an alternative reason one could propose a period nearer to us from the historical point of view — an experience of perception and continuation of Tradition in theological work of Russian Silver Age and Russian Expatriate period that offers lavish data for the specification of the inner structure of the Holy Tradition. The main theological conceptions, such as sophiology, and methodological programs, such as the concept of neopatristic synthesis, make it possible to speak about some kind of dynamics in the Holy Tradition, its universal or historical and vertical or pneumatological dimensions. Occasionally the author touches upon the understandingof theneopatristic program proposed by G. Florovsky — the principle of Hellenism that becomes clearer in the light of the still unpublished materials of Florovsky’s Archive deposited at Princeton University. The author also appeals to different conceptions of the Holy Tradition, such as the Catholic experience of its interpretation (J. A. Moehler, M. Blondel, Y. Congar), and considers ashis final task some data for formulating the general points of the theology of the Holy Tradition — its unique (local), universal and vertical dimensions.

Keywords

• The Holy Tradition
• Russian emigration
• ecclesiology
• pneumatology
• f. PavelFlorensky
• f. SergeyBulgakov
• f. Georges Florovsky
• V. N. Lossky
• J.-A. Moehler
• M. Blondel
• Y. Congar