7KLQNLQJ2UWKRGR[LQ0RGHUQ5XVVLD Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch Published by University of Wisconsin Press For additional information about this book http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780299298937 Access provided by Indiana University Libraries (12 Aug 2014 16:03 GMT) Chapter 3 k Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and Pavel Florenskii on Spiritual Experience, Theology, and the Name-Glorifiers Dispute Scot t M. Kenworthy A favorite maxim for modern Orthodox theologians is the statement by Evagrius Ponticus that “[i]f you are a theologian, you will pray truly; if you pray truly, you will be a theologian.”1 This statement is frequently appealed to by such theologians to claim that Orthodox theology is rooted in direct personal experience of God, which they contrast to Western theology as primarily an academic and rational endeavor.2 Just a century ago, however, a major controversy erupted in the Russian Orthodox Church that centered precisely on issues of how theology is to be articulated, who counts as a “theologian,” and whether one must be a theologian to speak on matters of faith. This controversy was over the “name of God,” and in the battle between the Church’s Holy Synod and the Russian monks on Mount Athos, it apparently pitted “those who pray” against theologians. It was in the context of this debate, at least in part, that modern theologians began to construct Orthodox theology as mystical and experiential rather than academic and rational. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been a revival of interest in the Name-Gloriiers debate, but recent analysts have, on the whole, inherited the binary interpretations of the events that were shaped in the heat of the polemics at the time. A range of scholars and theologians view the dispute primarily as a conlict between the scholastic academic theology that dominated the prerevolutionary theological schools and mystical theology rooted in the Eastern Church Fathers.3 Although such a way of characterizing the dispute 85 86 S c ot t M . K e n wo rt h y might apply to some of the actors, it obscures much of what was in fact at stake. Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), one of the leading opponents of the Name-Gloriiers, was not a representative of Russian academic theology at all, but in fact had spent his life and career promoting the very same spiritual traditions that the Name-Gloriiers embraced. By focusing on Archbishop Nikon’s critique of the Name-Gloriiers, and Florenskii’s responses to Nikon, this essay seeks to uncover some of the complexities obscured by such binary interpretations. Moreover, contrary to the prevailing image among Western scholars of the monolithic nature of Russian Orthodoxy, an analysis of a theological dispute such as this one makes it clear that there were signiicant divergences and lively debate among leading proponents of Russian Orthodoxy on such basic questions as how to understand God, on the nature and role of religious experience, religious language and symbols, and even the philosophical presuppositions that lay behind their theologizing. Perhaps even more fundamental were difering views about religious authority and who was in a position to speak for the Church—and whether such authority was rooted in the Church’s ordained hierarchy, belonged to those trained as theologians, or was to be found above all in those who had direct experience of spiritual things. Background Nineteenth-century Russia witnessed a remarkable revival of monasticism and in particular hesychast spirituality.4 The revival of Hesychasm actually began on Mount Athos, the peninsula and monastic republic in Greece, at the end of the eighteenth century, and later lourished in Russia, whence it then lowed back to Athos. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the number of Russians on Athos skyrocketed, exceeding 5,000 by the turn of the twentieth century.5 In 1907, former Athonite schemamonk Ilarion published a book on prayer and the spiritual life, In the Caucasus Mountains (Na gorakh Kavkaza), which immediately enjoyed great popularity among Russian monks on Athos. Criticism arose over the book’s expression that “the name of God is God Himself,” which sparked intense debate on Mount Athos between defenders and detractors of the book and even divided communities. By 1912, the debate spread to ecclesiastical periodicals in Russia. In May 1913, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church condemned the Name-Gloriiers position. The schisms in the Athonite communities grew worse at the very moment that the political situation on Mount Athos was dramatically changing, and the Holy Synod and the Russian government felt compelled to restore peace and resolve the conlict. The Synod sent a delegation to Athos that included Archbishop Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and Pavel Florenskii 87 Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), but its mission failed, and a month later the Russian government restored peace on Athos by force, as the Russian Navy removed over 800 monks from the Holy Mountain.6 Ilarion’s In the Caucasus Mountains was on the theme of contemplative prayer, focusing particularly on the practice and meaning of the Jesus Prayer. Although much in the book was in keeping with Orthodox spiritual traditions, what was distinctive about it was its exclusive focus on the Jesus Prayer (above other prayers and practices) and also the assertion that the power of the prayer resided precisely in the name Jesus Christ itself, and that it was the name that transformed the person in prayer and brought about his mystical communion with Christ.7 In order to defend the Name-Gloriiers’ teaching against criticisms, the former hussar turned Athonite monk, Antonii Bulatovich, composed one of the key works in the debate, Apology of Faith in the Name of God and in the Name of Jesus (1913). In essence, the Name-Gloriiers’ position was symbolized by the statement that “the Name of God is God Himself ” (Imia Bozhie est’ Sam Bog). Generally they understood this to mean that God is present in his name. The name is not identical to God, but neither can the divine name be separated from God himself. The Greek theological school of Halki was the irst to critically examine Imiaslavie, as the teaching of the Name-Gloriiers was known, and after their assessment the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople condemned its teachings. The Russian monks refused to recant, however, so the Russian Holy Synod intervened. Three reports were commissioned and presented to the Synod in May 1913, and then the Synod issued its own declaration on the matter. Archbishop Antonii (Khrapovitskii) prepared the second report; he was a highly unusual bishop in that he came from an aristocratic background, and had distinguished himself by a brilliant if contentious career as both a theologian and a church leader. Archbishop Antonii was the leading instigator of the attack against the Name-Gloriiers, and his report was highly polemical, comparing the Name-Gloriiers with Russian sectarians instead of seriously engaging with them theologically. S. V. Troitskii, who prepared the third report, was a young theologian who was a specialist in canon law, not dogmatic theology; nevertheless, he gave serious, if critical, consideration to the Name-Gloriiers’ position. Archbishop Sergii (Stragorodskii), future patriarch of the Russian Church and archnemesis of Antonii (Khrapovitskii) after the revolution, prepared the inal declaration (epistle) of the Holy Synod; in 1913, Sergii was (together with Antonii) highly respected as among the most theologically sophisticated of the Russian bishops. The Synod’s epistle, however, took a hard line against the 88 S c ot t M . K e n wo rt h y Name-Gloriiers, declaring it a “heresy” (which of the three only Antonii Khrapovitskii’s report had done), banning the books by Ilarion and Bulatovich, and censuring the monks who refused to comply.8 Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and his report will be the focus of this article, because both his person and his argument (together with Florenskii’s detailed responses that particular report) reveal the shortcomings of the prevailing binary interpretations. The controversy, and its forceful resolution, received widespread coverage in both the secular and ecclesiastical press, mostly to the detriment of the Holy Synod and particularly Archbishop Nikon. The episode was covered in all the major newspapers, and even conservative ones—not to speak of liberal papers— harshly criticized the use of force in resolving the conlict; leading intellectuals of the day, such as Nikolai Berdiaev, expressed similar sentiments.9 A circle of intellectual supporters of the Name-Gloriiers formed in Moscow in 1912–13 around Mikhail Novoselov that included Pavel Florenskii, Sergei Bulgakov, Vladimir Ern, and others.10 Florenskii collaborated in ensuring the publication of Bulatovich’s Apology and contributed to the preface, though, cautious as he was when it came to controversial topics, he did so anonymously. The preface to Bulatovich’s Apology explicitly appealed to the distinction developed by Hesychast theologian Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) between the “Essence” and “Operations” or “Energies” of God, and also asserted that the name has a real connection to the thing named, and therefore has a reality, following a Platonic conception of ideas. These intellectuals asserted that the dispute represented a clash between “realism” and “nominalism”—using the categories of medieval Latin scholastic debates—which, for them, was the same as a clash between idealism and mysticism on the one hand and “rationalism,” “positivism,” and even “materialism” on the other.11 After the publication of the Synod’s three reports and the Synod’s inal epistle, Florenskii prepared a detailed commentary particularly on Nikon’s report by pasting the pages of the reports on one side of a notebook and writing his responses on the facing pages. These commentaries were not apparently meant for publication, hence the visceral tone of his reactions to Nikon both personally as well as intellectually, and were irst published only in 1995 in the journal Nachala. It is here, however, that Florenskii expanded in greater detail the ideas that were articulated in his only publication on the issue in 1913 (the preface to Bulatovich’s Apology), and since their publication these commentaries have had a profound inluence on shaping the way in which the Imiaslavie debate has been interpreted.12 Florenskii’s responses will be brought into conversation with Nikon’s report in the analysis that follows. Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and Pavel Florenskii 89 P revailing Binary Interpretations The basic paradigm of interpreting the dispute as one between “mysticism” and “rationalism” has subsequently been iltered through the lens of Georges Florovsky’s critique of prerevolutionary Russian theology as alienated from the Greek patristic tradition and instead subjected to a “Western captivity,” together with the tendency of twentieth-century Orthodox theologians such as Vladimir Lossky and John Meyendorf to assert Orthodox theology as rooted in spiritual experience in contrast to rationalistic Western theology.13 Ilarion Alfeev has produced the most exhaustive study of the Name-Gloriiers, which on the whole is very judicious and balanced. Nevertheless, he tends to oversimplify the conlict as a clash between rationalistic academic theology and mystical theology. This shapes his interpretation of the work of Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) in particular. Alfeev interprets Nikon as arguing that the exposition of the teaching on the divinity of the name of God was the business of theology and not asceticism, and concludes that “such a positing of the question is very characteristic for academic theology at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: mysticism and asceticism are the lot of simpletons and ignoramuses, and theology should be practiced by enlightened people who have no relationship either to asceticism or to mysticism.”14 Alfeev thus claims that, for Nikon, theology and spiritual life have nothing to do with one another, and that theology should entirely follow the laws of “common sense” (zdravii razum), reason, and logic. Paul Ladouceur similarly views the conlict as one between academic theology, “to which belonged most of the Church hierarchy,” and which was “characterized by a rational approach to theology inherited from Western scholasticism,” on the one hand, and the mystical tradition that can be traced through Orthodox spirituality from the Desert Fathers to the “Philokalic revival” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, on the other.15 Dimitrii Leskin asserts that all of the Name-Gloriiers’ opponents are “uniied by a single general trait”: the unwillingness to take the dogmatic dispute seriously, and the “academic” or “rationalistic” assessment of the mystical movement.16 For him, the questions are all interconnected: Imiaslavie’s opponents were rationalists who denied not only the divinity of the divine names, but also the Palamite doctrine of the divinity of the energies of God. Consequently, they did not believe in the reality of communion between God and the human person in the act of prayer, but rather viewed all experiences during prayer as purely subjective; therefore they also denied the possibility of deiication. Much of this interpretation was shaped by Florenskii; indeed, Leskin’s analysis of Nikon’s report to the Synod is 90 S c ot t M . K e n wo rt h y quite clearly shaped by Florenskii’s commentary, though without attribution.17 In this line of argument, it is obviously the Name-Gloriiers that are taken to be on the side of authentic Orthodox tradition and therefore vindicated, by contrast with their Western-inluenced rationalist opponents.18 Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdest venskii) Archbishop Nikon does not, however, it neatly into these binary categories and deies the paradigm by which the debate continues to be interpreted. At one level he is the type of Russian hierarch that appears easy to stereotype: he was a member of both the Holy Synod and the State Senate and therefore a representative of the power of the Church and its alliance with the state.19 He was ultraconservative or even reactionary on social and political issues; contemporaries characterized him as rigid, narrow-minded, intolerant, a severe “inquisitor.” He was, however, a complex igure with a less than typical episcopal career; recent interpreters who have overlooked dimensions of his life and work have read into Nikon’s arguments those of other critics of Imiaslavie and misunderstood much of what Nikon was attempting to argue. Contrary to Alfeev’s claims, he was in fact a supporter of asceticism and mysticism rather than a disparager of it. Born Nikolai Rozhdestvenskii in 1851, he was the son of a Moscow lower clergyman. After graduating irst in his class from Moscow Spiritual Seminary, instead of pursuing the path of “educated monasticism” and going on to the Spiritual Academy, he chose to become a simple monk and entered the TrinitySergius Monastery (Lavra). In 1879, while still a novice, he began publication of one of the most inluential popular periodical editions in Russia, Trinity Lealets (Troitskie listki).20 He was a very active leader during his monastic career at the Trinity Monastery, which included the establishment of the monastery’s printing house. In 1902–3, he participated in an intense debate in ecclesiastical periodicals about the purpose of monasticism, defending the primacy of contemplative monasticism over those who sought to make monasteries more socially “useful” by transforming them into charitable institutions.21 He was only ordained to the episcopate in 1904, at the age of ifty-three and after more than twenty-ive years in the monastery, which was highly unusual for prerevolutionary Russian bishops, who typically followed a very diferent career trajectory that included study in a spiritual academy followed by teaching and administrative duties, but not actual monastic experience.22 He became bishop of Vologda in 1906, a member of the State Council in 1907, and a member of the Holy Synod in 1912. Nikon retired from actively governing Vologda diocese in Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and Pavel Florenskii 91 1912 for reasons of health; in 1913 he was elevated to archbishop and from 1913 to 1916 served as chairman of the Holy Synod’s Publishing Council. He retired from both the Synod and Senate in 1916 and died on December 30, 1918, at the Trinity-Sergius Monastery.23 By the time he was elevated to the episcopate in 1904, Nikon was widely regarded as the “defender of monasticism” and was highly respected in monastic circles as the foremost hierarch who had extensive personal experience of the monastic life. He organized and led the First All-Russian Congress of Monastics, held at the Trinity-Sergius Monastery in 1909, which discussed issues in the revitalization of monastic life based on contemplative prayer and spiritual eldership.24 Nikon was not a representative of academic scholastic theology who had no sympathy for mystical, hesychastic spirituality; indeed, it was none other than Nikon who, in 1911, published the manuscript containing the continuation of the popularized treatise on the Jesus Prayer (irst published in 1884), The Way of a Pilgrim.25 Nikon was in fact a supporter and leading popularizer of the tradition of Seraim of Sarov, the Optina elders, and Feofan the Recluse. The root of his opposition to Imiaslavie, therefore, did not derive from rational academic theology (of which he was not a representative), nor from any lack of sympathy for asceticism, mysticism, and the practice of the Jesus Prayer, as Alfeev and others assume; rather, it must be sought elsewhere. Nikon’s central arguments against Imiaslavie, together with Florenskii’s responses, reveal the nuances of the debate. These arguments focused on the nature of religious authority, the role of reason in deining doctrine, difering theories of language, the relationship between spiritual experience and formal theology, the nature of spiritual experience, and the distinction between the essence and energies of God. Archbishop Nikon’s R ep ort to the Holy Synod In contrast to Antonii (Khrapovitskii)’s report to the Holy Synod, which mocked rather than engaged Imiaslavie, Nikon’s report never accuses the Name-Gloriiers of heresy (he will only do this after encountering them on Athos in the summer of 1913), and attempts to engage Imiaslavie in a respectful and theologically serious way. Moreover, he is far from rejecting all aspects of Imiaslavie; rather, he speciically objects to the formula “the name of God is God Himself ” and especially to their assertion that their teaching is a “dogma.” Indeed, it was perhaps the very speed with which this handful of Athonite monks were willing to declare their own ideas as “dogma” that was most alarming to Nikon. In his report to the Synod, Nikon clearly prefers to think of the teaching on the name 92 S c ot t M . K e n wo rt h y of God as neither a “heresy” nor as a “dogma,” but something still under the Church’s consideration, a “teaching” that “has not been precisely formulated by the Church in its expositions of the faith either positively or negatively.”26 He was cautious precisely because the Church had not declared a position one way or the other: “I am afraid to accept some sort of ‘dogma,’ not expressed clearly by the Church, not accepted by the fullness . . . of the Church, not [yet] formulated, so long as the Church itself has not clariied its relationship to it.”27 In short, Nikon was not declaring Imiaslavie to be a heresy, but he also rejected its formulation as a dogma, preferring instead a cautious approach that ultimately deferred to the judgment of the entire Church. A key issue lying behind the debate was precisely who had the authority to speak for the Church. Nikon asserted that “the Church is infallible not in its separate members, but in its fullness.”28 Since the Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs in 1848 in response to papal claims, the Orthodox certainly had a notion that the “protector” or “preserver” of the purity of the faith was not just the hierarchy, but the “body of the Church,” that is, the entirety of the people including the laity.29 Nikon’s language of “fullness of the Church” echoes these concepts. Yet who could speak as representative of this “fullness”? It was generally accepted that Church Councils, especially Ecumenical Councils, could do so: but what about in the absence of such Councils? This was perhaps why, in May 1913, Nikon still wanted to be cautious about declaring any teaching on the divine names “heresy” or “dogma.” His position changed only after his encounter with the monks on Mount Athos; then he was quite willing to declare: “For the representatives of the Church, for the Church authorities— our Holy Synod and the Ecumenical Patriarch—there are no doubts whatsoever that this new teaching is a heresy.”30 Here he no longer speaks of a vague “fullness” of the Church, but rather the “representatives” of the Church who are clearly identiiable as the legitimate ecclesiastical authorities; even if their authority is not declared to be infallible, it is still to be obeyed. Paradoxically, the Name-Gloriiers drew on the same general understanding of Church authority and its “infallibility” to declare that the Synod and the Ecumenical Patriarch did not speak for the whole Church; they claimed that true spiritual authority derived from their own direct personal experience of God, from which their teachings derived. Florenskii dismissed Nikon’s arguments as one who was not a “legitimate” bishop (since he retired as bishop of Vologda, he no longer had a “lock”), was not an academically trained theologian, and (according to Florenskii) lacked spiritual experience. “With what does he undertake to teach and why should his voice be recognized as an Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and Pavel Florenskii 93 oracle? And if the Synod . . . is constituted out of ten such Nikons, then why should . . . [it] be identiied with the Truth Itself?”31 He also took Nikon’s comments about the “fullness of the Church” as if Nikon were asserting that the Synod had pretensions of infallibility, of being the “fullness of the Church,” though it is not at all clear this is what Nikon intended.32 Certainly, however, the Name-Gloriiers refused to recant their teaching because they did not regard the Russian Holy Synod as having the authority to speak for the “fullness of the Church,” and precisely for that reason the issue continued to be debated, and still continues to be. The Role of R e as on in Theolo gy; P hilosophy of L anguage Nikon begins from the methodological basis that “all dogmas, notwithstanding all their mystery and incomprehensibility to our mind, nonetheless never contradict the laws of our reason. Incomprehensibility is not yet logical contradiction.”33 From this starting point, Nikon proceeded to present his own general understanding of language: the name is a conventional sign that is a mental conception about the object named, but which only exists subjectively in the mind and has no objective reality. It is virtually the same as the “equator” is for a geographer: an abstract idea that exists in and for human understanding, but does not have objective reality. If God is “the most real Being,” then how can the “name”—which does not have any objective reality—“be” God?34 Hence the Name-Gloriiers’ claim that “the name of God is God” simply does not make sense. Florenskii vehemently objected to Nikon’s argument that dogmas should not contradict reason. Indeed, Florenskii’s project in many important ways was precisely counter to rationalism, and he saw in Nikon’s presentation everything he opposed.35 According to Florenskii, “The characteristic feature of dogma is precisely in that it demands the overcoming of reason for faith in it. Where there is not contradiction to reason, there is nothing to believe. . . . That which ‘does not contradict’ is not dogma.” When Nikon asserts that the formula “the Name of God is God” contradicts “common sense,” Florenskii wonders “what would remain of any dogma” if one applied “Nikonian criteria” to them; “Virgin and Mother,” bread that is actually the Body of Christ, and other core beliefs contradict “common sense.” Nikon’s line of argument brings one to “Tolstoyanism” according to Florenskii.36 Indeed, Florenskii regarded Russian theology as dominated by “rationalism” and reacted to Nikon by projecting all of his criticisms of the seminary system onto him, often in quite visceral language.37 94 S c ot t M . K e n wo rt h y In addition to Nikon’s assertion that dogmas must not contradict reason, Florenskii vigorously objected to Nikon’s philosophy of language. It was perhaps on the very philosophy of language in the most basic sense—and indeed, the meaning of symbols in general—that the proponents and opponents of Imiaslavie were constructing irreconcilable arguments because they were working from completely diferent philosophical presuppositions, much like the debates between Realists and Nominalists in the medieval West. For Florenskii, the name has a real existence and an essential connection to ideas, which are also real (in the Platonic sense), and also an essential connection to the object named, whereas for Nikon the name was only a conventional symbol that existed in the human mind but had no reality and was not connected in any essential way with the object named.38 According to Florenskii, if praying the name of God can bring the one praying closer to God, then the name must exist as something that connects the two (the person praying and God); otherwise there would be no possibility of communion between them. Nikon is arguing that the name has no reality in and of itself, no essential connection to God, because he wants to avoid any magical connotation by which merely calling on the name of God places one in relationship to God. Florenskii counters that every time one calls on the name of God, one puts oneself “in ontological relationship to God”; but the key question is what kind of relationship, and that depends on how one calls upon God. In fact, he argues, the human mind has no way to think about God or approach God other than the name. Florenskii explicitly asserts that Nikon is approaching the whole matter, if unconsciously, from a “Kantian positivistic point of view,” which he contrasts with the Platonic approach that he implicitly accepts.39 Spiritual Experience versus Academic Theolo gy Because the Name-Gloriiers’ teaching was not logical, according to Nikon, they had to appeal to “mysticism” and “authorities” (avtoritety). In their appeal to mysticism, “they say that in doctrine about the spiritual life experience is more important than scholarship” (nauka). Nikon counters that “exposition of doctrine about the divinity of the names of God is the business of Orthodox theology, and not ascetics.” However, rather than disparaging the role of spiritual experience, as Florenskii, Alfeev, and others claim, Nikon argues that “experience in the spiritual life is a great thing, and many theologians drew grace-illed help of God from it in understanding and articulating truths of the faith in their writings, but this is not given to every ascetic.”40 Nikon maintains that spiritual Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and Pavel Florenskii 95 experience is important for theology, but that it is not enough; one also needs theological education, which of course most monks and ascetics in prerevolutionary Russia did not have since the majority came from the peasantry and had only a basic education.41 Nikon also argued that the very spiritual writers to whom the Name-Gloriiers appealed as authorities “spoke with great audacity” of their spiritual experience but did not try to present that as “precisely expounded” dogmas; conveying one’s experience admitted greater freedom of expression than formal doctrine allowed. Moreover, he claimed that “not one teacher of the Church dared to call his personal opinion a dogma, even if he found something in other Church writers that supported his opinion.”42 Thus, for Nikon, spiritual experience is important for theologians but does not automatically make every monk qualiied to be a theologian. Moreover, it was permissible to express one’s experience and opinions in personal terms, but an entirely diferent matter to articulate doctrine for the whole Church. In other words, Nikon’s disagreement with the Name-Gloriiers was not with what they claimed they experienced, but with their attempt to make dogmatic assertions based on that experience. Although the paradigm of “mysticism” versus “academic theology” has become so central in the interpretation of Imiaslavie, Florenskii’s reaction to these passages in Nikon’s report are also complex. Florenskii certainly interprets Nikon as valuing “scholarship” over “spiritual experience” and disdaining mysticism. However, his line of critique is not so much against Nikon’s position, as against Nikon’s person, by asserting that Nikon has neither spiritual experience nor theological training. Although theologians may lack spiritual experience, they can at least “boast” of their knowledge, “but Nikon is a monk, having promised to give himself to ‘mysticism’ which he hasn’t fulilled, and swaggers of scholarship, which he hasn’t even snifed. What impudence!”43 In fact, however, Florenskii’s position is hardly diferent from Nikon’s. He asserts that spiritual experience and a spiritual life are necessary for “for the precise exposition of the faith,” but it is also “desirable” or “even necessary” to have “philosophical development.”44 He regards intellectual preparation as well as spiritual experience as necessary for doing theology, which is not necessarily given to everyone who has spiritual experience alone. But for Florenskii, it also mattered what kind of intellectual preparation one had, and the Russian seminaries and academies, in his view, were inadequate. In short, neither for Nikon nor Florenskii is spiritual experience alone suicient for articulating doctrine. Perhaps both would revise Evagrius’s famous dictum like this: “if you are a theologian, you will pray truly, although not everyone who truly prays will be a theologian.” 96 S c ot t M . K e n wo rt h y The Nature of Spiritual Experience The importance of the names of God, for Nikon, is precisely in the realm of the “inner person,” or “psychology,” rather than in the realm of dogmatic theology.45 Nikon discusses the Jesus Prayer and the process by which the mind is brought into the heart in a passage that is key to the debate because of what is understood to take place during prayer. Contemporary interpreters assert that Nikon (as other opponents of Imiaslavie) has only a psychological view of prayer, denying any divine action, and consequently negating the possibility of deiication.46 Nikon wrote: The practitioners of the Jesus prayer witness that “when the mind is enclosed in the heart,” when all the spiritual being of a person becomes concentrated on thoughts of God, then thought, with the cooperation of the grace of God, stands reverently, as it were [kak by], before the invisibly present God. . . . Then the heart of the person is ignited by the grace of God that touches him and the very name of the Lord Jesus Christ becomes sweet to the one praying to hold in his mind, or better to say: in the heart. . . . This condition, experienced by the person in prayer, gives him the certainty that the Lord heeds his prayer and that the He, the merciful one, is here, near him.47 The human mind, Nikon continued, wants to embrace this presence of God, as it were, and searches for a “place” to locate this presence; when concentrated on the divine name, the person feels the “touch of grace in his heart,” the presence of God. “And his thought takes hold of the most sweet name of God as if it were the garment of Christ, as if it were His most pure feet.”48 This experience happens so quickly that the person identiies the presence of God with the name. Florenskii focuses on the repetition of the phrase “as if ” (kak by) in the passage—“as if ” standing before God, “as if ” grasping the garment of Christ or his feet—and interprets these as meaning that, for Nikon, what is happening in prayer is purely subjective and the communion with God appears only “as if.” His reading of the irst sentence captures his interpretation of Nikon’s understanding of prayer: “There, in these supposed synonymous expressions, is contained to the whole of Nikonism. Nikon interprets ‘when the mind is enclosed in the heart’ positivistically, in the form of a simple concentration of attention. The objective moment in cognition, that is the union of the cognizer with the cognized, for Nikon is completely missing.”49 These comments get at the very heart of the dispute: Florenskii maintains that if the “name” has only a subjective reality, a conventional symbol for the mind’s cognition (like the equator for the Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and Pavel Florenskii 97 geographer), then the experience of prayer is also a purely subjective one, and there is no real communion between God and the person praying. Although this critique may in fact apply to some of Imiaslavie’s opponents, such as Antonii (Khrapovitskii)—who evidently had little understanding of or sympathy for this kind of mystical approach—this is not what Nikon was arguing.50 Florenskii unfairly pounces on Nikon’s “as if ” phrases—“‘as if the feet’—means ‘not the feet,’ but the equator,” in other words if the person in prayer does not literally touch God then there is no contact with God at all and the experience only exists in the person’s mind.51 But even those who believe in the reality of communion with God in mystical prayer surely do not actually believe that they are literally touching Christ’s garment or feet, so that Nikon’s “as if ” in this case seems entirely appropriate; it is, after all, only an analogy. Nikon repeatedly speaks of the heart being touched by grace: “When reverent thought turns to God, calling his most holy name, then the Lord in that very moment heeds the one in prayer, and more than that, He Himself gives prayer to the one praying.” For sure, Nikon asserts that the person does not have direct experience of the divine essence, but rather what he calls a “certain divine power called grace.” Nikon is not arguing that the experience of God in prayer is purely subjective, but rather that the one praying the Jesus Prayer focuses his entire being (and not just thoughts, as Florenskii reads him) on God by focusing on the name of Jesus Christ, and by focusing his being on Christ opens himself up to the grace of God (which he truly experiences), so that the practitioner concludes that the grace is inherent in, derives from, or is inseparable from the name, and it is only this latter aspect that Nikon wants to question. God is present to the one in such a state of prayer, just not automatically in the name. He is also arguing that God’s grace appears to one in prayer not because of the name—as if mechanistically repeating the name itself would bring the power or presence of God—but because the person praying “pronounced it with suicient reverence and faith, and also directing his heart to God.”52 Even if Florenskii has exaggerated Nikon’s position, there are clearly still important diferences. Florenskii asserts that prayer itself is an action of synergy, although he does not use this term: if God “gives” prayer to the one praying (in Nikon’s phrase), then Florenskii asserts that prayer is not just a human activity, but that it is both human and divine (bozhestvenna), that is, it is the energy of God that is operating from within the person praying. Florenskii objected to Nikon’s emphasis on the inner condition of the person praying for the reception of grace. Rather, “we are as if surrounded by grace,” but one can only receive it, the “window” is only opened up, when one calls upon God. (Here Florenskii 98 S c ot t M . K e n wo rt h y himself uses the same “as if ” language that he objects to so strongly in Nikon.) Calling upon the name of God automatically puts one in relation to God, but what efect it has upon the person depends upon his inner condition; if one calls upon the name of God in cursing or blaspheming, then one is calling upon himself judgment and condemnation. Any act of calling on the name of God is not simply “a physical or psychological process,” but rather “an ontological process of union with the Divine energy, which cannot be inefective and, consequently, either saves or singes.”53 In short, for Florenskii, either the power is in the name itself, in the prayer itself, or it depends upon our inner attitude, and in the latter case it is inevitably pure subjectivism and not real communion with God. But that is the way he construes it; Nikon can disagree with the notion that the power is inherent in the name without believing that prayer and contemplation are merely subjective processes. D i v i n e Na m e s a n d D i v i n e E n e rg i e s Both the Name-Gloriiers and contemporary interpreters have drawn parallels between the Imiaslavie controversy and that over Hesychasm in fourteenthcentury Byzantium. At that time, critics of Hesychasm asserted that the experience of Hesychast mystics was not directly of God, for God was transcendent and unapproachable. Gregory Palamas gave theological defense to the Hesychasts: according to Palamas, the outpouring of God’s energies, his actions toward creation, his grace toward creatures, was not the essence of God, which always remained absolutely transcendent and incomprehensible; nevertheless these energies of God were truly God and not something that belonged to the created order. Therefore Hesychast experiences of communion with God in contemplative prayer were truly experiences of God himself, though not of God’s essence.54 The distinction between the essence and operations (or energies) of God became central to the debate about Imiaslavie because the Name-Gloriiers identiied the divine names with the operations of God and therefore claimed that their formula “the Name of God is God” was correct. It must be noted, however, that the theology of Gregory Palamas had fallen into complete neglect in prerevolutionary Russia; the revival of hesychast spirituality in nineteenth-century Russia was not accompanied or informed by a revival of Palamite theology, which was virtually unknown either in monastic circles or among Russian theologians. Indeed, the irst translation of the Philokalia into Slavonic by Paisii Velichkovskii at the end of the eighteenth century included no writings by Palamas. The nineteenth-century translation by Feofan the Recluse excluded Palamas’s “One Hundred and Fifty Chapters,” the most Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and Pavel Florenskii 99 theological of the texts in the Greek Philokalia, precisely because they contained much that was “diicult to understand”; Feofan included only those texts that spoke directly to the practice of prayer rather than doctrine.55 Moreover, S. V. Bulgakov’s standard handbook for clergy included an inaccurate characterization of Hesychasm, which it listed in the category of heresies and schisms, although elsewhere in the same book he gives a positive, if also inaccurate, account for the Church’s liturgical commemoration of Saint Gregory Palamas during Lent.56 Although there was some treatment of Palamas’s theological legacy, beginning with the work of Igumen Modest (Strel’bitskii) in 1860 and furthered by Bishop Poririi (Uspenskii) some years later, these had virtually no impact on dogmatic theology in Russia.57 It is quite clear from the Imiaslavie debates that Palamas’s theology was not well known or understood; indeed the debates principally focused on the “Chapters against Barlaam and Akindynus” in the Synodicon of Orthodoxy, a text read liturgically on the Sunday of Orthodoxy (the irst Sunday of Great Lent), rather than on any of the writings of Palamas himself.58 Given the general ignorance of Palamas’s theology, therefore, it should not be surprising that the Synod’s reports and inal epistle were inconsistent and contradictory in the ways in which they grappled with the distinction between the essence and operations of God. Nikon likewise struggled to deine his position. While Florenskii identiies the attributes of God with the operations of God, Nikon asserts that the attributes of God are only abstract mental conceptions about God whose essence transcends all such conceptualizations. Therefore, for Nikon, the divine names are conventional symbols for the divine attributes, which themselves are only abstract concepts, so that the names are twice removed from God himself.59 Much of the dispute revolved around the interpretation of the ifth anathema in the Synodicon of Orthodoxy, which rejects the teaching of those who declare that the term theotis (Godhead, divinity) applies only to the divine essence and not also to the divine operations. The debate centered especially on how to translate the term theotis: Bulatovich translated it as “God” (Bog), so that the divine operations are called “God.”60 Nikon, together with the other reports to the Synod and its inal epistle, asserted that this was a mistranslation, that the operations of God are “divinity” (Bozhestvo or Bozhestvennost’), but not “God” (Bog) because the anathema refers to the divine operations as theotis, but not theos.61 Nikon was ready to agree that the divine names are holy and “Divine as belonging to the one God,” though evidently using the term “divine” in a broad sense as one would also speak of the “Divine Liturgy.”62 Nikon’s central concern is to 100 S c ot t M . K e n wo rt h y maintain the distinction, and avoid confusion, between the divine operations and God’s essence. He equates the term “God” (Bog) with God’s “Person” (Lichnost’), which he uses interchangeably with God’s “Essence” (Sushchestvo). Therefore the divine operations or energies (Nikon uses both the terms deistviia and energiia) can be considered “divine” as belonging to or characteristic of God, but cannot be called “God” because that would blur the distinction with the divine essence. Thus he declares that “the power of God, called grace, is of course a manifestation of God’s energy (energiia)—an energy uncreated, and on the contrary itself possessing creative power—nevertheless in no way can it be completely identiied with the essence of God,”63 just as our own activities are not identical to our person or essence but a manifestation of our characteristics. He uses the analogy of the sun and its rays; the sun’s rays give heat and light, which are actions of the sun, but they are not identical to the sun itself. Arguing that one should not declare God’s energies to be “God,” he states: “not separating the ‘activity’ of God from God, we also do not identify them with God as with his Person when we speak about them.”64 In short, he is willing to deine the energies as “divine” and as belonging to God, but asserts that it is incorrect to call them “God” because he equates this term with the divine essence. Although Nikon is aware of the distinction between the essence and operations of God, he (like others in the debate) was only supericially familiar with the theology of Gregory Palamas and therefore was groping for language and concepts to articulate that the energies are divine and yet not the same as God’s essence. The result is confused and contradictory. Much of the confusion, and a point of diference between Nikon and Florenskii, lay in the deinition of the very word “God.” Nikon opposed the claim that “the name of God is God Himself,” because that would be tantamount to identifying the name with God’s essence, which is unnameable. Florenskii has a series of objections to Nikon’s line of argumentation here. To begin with, he argues that the attributes are properties of God and not mere abstract concepts about God; because they are the way in which God manifests or reveals himself, they are God and the only way God can be known. Therefore the divine names are also names of God and not just this or that attribute, because each one ultimately points to the totality of God. Similarly, the names— as with images and all symbols—have a real connection to what they signify because without them we would have no way of knowing the signiied at all; a true image gives “true cognition” of God.65 He objects to the way in which Nikon speaks of God as Person, and particularly the way in which he uses “Person” and Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and Pavel Florenskii 101 “Essence” interchangeably. Rather, Florenskii asserts that God is not “Person” but “tri-person” (trilichnost’). He asserts emphatically that the Name-Gloriiers do not identify the name with the divine essence, that all the discussion is about the divine energies. Further, “God and the Divine Essence are not synonyms.” We turn to God in prayer, not to the divine essence, which is unknowable.66 According to Florenskii, divine manifestations “can be called God (theotis), that is, with the same term as the Divine Essence. . . . This is because all our terms in the strict sense of the word are related to the energy, not the essence,” because the essence is only made known by or through the energies. He therefore accepted Bulatovich’s translation of theotis as “God” as well as calling the divine energy “God,” asserting that calling it “divinity” (bozhestvennost’) was inadequate because it was too imprecise.67 For him the term “God” was inclusive of both the divine essence and the energies, in contrast to Nikon who equated it only with the divine essence. This point has continued in more recent debate, in which Alfeev and others assert that the opponents of Imiaslavie did not understand the theology of Palamas, which made no irm distinction between theos and theotis, and that it would be proper to term the divine energies “God.”68 It is worth noting, however, that Florenskii—like the other Name-Gloriiers and their opponents—nowhere cites the writings of Gregory Palamas directly when disputing the Synod’s interpretation of the essence and energies of God.69 C onclusion Nikon ends his report to the Synod on a note that was echoed both by the report of Antonii (Khrapovitskii) and the Holy Synod’s epistle, namely that the real problem was less the actual teachings of Ilarion and Antonii Bulatovich, than the ways in which it could be understood by their more simple-minded followers. Nikon admits that Bulatovich does not identify the divine names with the divine essence. However, he is concerned that Bulatovich’s followers will lose this distinction and, confusing the name of God with God’s essence or person, will turn the name into a magical word or talisman that can have miraculous efects on its own, even used mechanistically.70 In particular, Nikon feared that what lay behind the “new teaching” was a desire to ind an “easier path to salvation”: that one could simply repeat the prayer mechanically, “without the participation of the heart,” and it would work to purify and transform the person and save him. By contrast, Nikon claimed that the “main thing is not in the sounds or the words of the prayer in themselves, not in this or some other name of God, but in a humble-repentant disposition of the heart, which attracts the grace of God,”71 thereby echoing the works of other modern Hesychast 102 S c ot t M . K e n wo rt h y writers.72 In other words, Nikon objected to Imiaslavie not out of a lack of understanding or sympathy for asceticism, but precisely because he believed that it would have a detrimental efect upon ascetical efort. Recent interpretations of the Imiaslavie controversy as a clash between mystical theology and rational academic theology are following an interpretation that was irst shaped by partisans in the dispute, particularly Pavel Florenskii and other intellectual supporters of the Name-Gloriiers, and has been repeated rather uncritically. Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) was not a representative of academic theology; far from disparaging the Orthodox tradition of contemplative prayer, he had been one of its major defenders and popularizers. Although he did appeal to reason, “logic,” and “common sense” in his argument—which left him open to Florenskii’s criticisms and perhaps misinterpretations—Nikon was far from asserting that the experience of prayer was purely subjective or denying the reality of communion with God. Nikon’s critique should not be dismissed as “rationalism” and “academic theology”; his line of argument in fact raised very important issues and indicates signiicant divergences in the way in which leading Orthodox thinkers understood fundamental issues. For both Nikon and Florenskii, the essence of God is totally unknowable and unnamable. For Nikon, the divine names are human symbols to indicate human conceptions about God (the divine attributes), and although they are to be venerated as representing God, God remains transcendent. However, this does not mean that there is no possibility of connection between God and creation: Nikon speaks of God’s “power” or “actions,” which he usually terms “grace,” which do touch the person in prayer. What ultimately drove Nikon’s interpretation, however, was the concern that calling the divine names “God” would mean the person praying only has to call on the Name and is automatically given the power of God, because he saw this as a spiritual short cut. Rather what mattered for him above all was not the names or words used in prayer but the inner disposition of the person praying and the ascetic struggle necessary for that. Florenskii had a diferent set of concerns that was driven by his reaction against European philosophical traditions of rationalism, by his Neoplatonic philosophical presuppositions, and by his interest in symbols. For him, the attributes of God are identiied with the operations of God, by which God manifests and reveals himself, and therefore they are real, in fact they are God and all humans can know of God. The divine names are real because without them we have no other way of knowing God, there is no other connection between the human mind and God. The divine names “are” God in the same way that Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and Pavel Florenskii 103 one looks at a portrait of Peter and says “that is Peter,” not that Peter is a picture, but we see Peter in the picture.73 The Names give true “cognition” of God; in the deepest prayer there is communion of the “cognizer” and the “cognized,” which is only made possible by the link that is the Name. Far from the prevailing image of a monolithic Orthodoxy, a debate such as that over the name of God demonstrates that there were important diferences among leading proponents of Orthodoxy and vigorous debate between them. However, the more signiicant of these diferences are obscured if one simply dismisses the opponents of Imiaslavie as representatives of rationalist academic theology who had no sympathy for mysticism. On the contrary, Nikon’s concerns were precisely to defend contemplative practice from the potentially harmful implications he saw in the Name-Gloriiers’ teachings. Florenskii, by contrast, was in fact more concerned with abstract philosophical issues regarding epistemology and the meaning of symbols, and in this arena he was certainly a far more sophisticated thinker than Nikon. The tragedy of the episode was that neither side proved capable of listening to the other; the “conversation” broke down and degenerated into polemics that obscured, rather than clariied, the driving concerns and real points of disagreement. Note s 1. Robert E. Sinkewicz, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 199. 2. See, for example, Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin, 1993), 206–7; Hilarion Alfeyev, The Mystery of Faith: An Introduction to the Teaching and Spirituality of the Orthodox Church, trans. Jessica Rose (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2002), xiii–xvii; Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: L. Clarke, 1957); John Meyendorf, The Orthodox Church: Its Past and Its Role in the World Today (New York: Pantheon Books, 1962), 190–97. 3. See Scott M. Kenworthy, “Debating the Theology of the Name in Post-Soviet Russia: Metropolitan Ilarion Alfeyev and Sergei Khoruzhii,” in Orthodox Paradoxes: Heterogeneities and Complexities in Contemporary Russian Orthodoxy, ed. Katya Tolstaya (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). 4. Scott M. Kenworthy, The Heart of Russia: Trinity-Sergius, Monasticism, and Society after 1825 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Irina Paert, Spiritual Elders: Charisma and Tradition in Russian Orthodoxy (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010). 5. Nicholas Fennell, The Russians on Athos (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2001). 6. Key collections of sources include E. S. Polishchuk, Imiaslavie: Antologiia (Moscow: Faktorial Press, 2002); Ilarion Alfeev, Spory ob imeni Bozhiem: Arkhivnye dokumenty 1912–1938 godov (St. Petersburg: Oleg Abyshko, 2007); A. M. Khitrov and O. L. Solomina, Zabytye stranitsy russkogo imiaslaviia: Sbornik dokumentov i publikatsii po afonskim sobytiiam 1910–1913 gg. i dvizheniiu imiaslaviia v 1910–1918 gg. (Moscow: 104 S c ot t M . K e n wo rt h y Palomnik, 2001); Antonii Bulatovich, O pochitanii imeni bozhiia (St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2013); S. N. Bulgakov, Filosoiia imeni (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1998); and Sergius Bulgakov, Icons; And, The Name of God, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2012). A. F. Losev, Imia: Izbrannye raboty, perevody, besedy, issledovaniia, arkhivnye materialy (St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 1997); Konstantin Borshch, ed., Imiaslavie: Sbornik bogoslovsko-publitsistecheskikh statei, dokumentov i kommentariev, 3 vols. (Moscow, 2003–2005); and the journal Nachala, nos. 1–4 (1995) and nos. 1–4 (1998). See also A. Gorbunov, “Kratkaia istoriia imiaslavskikh sporov v Rossii nachala XX veka,” Tserkov’ i vremia, no. 12 (2000): 179–220; Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor, Naming Ininity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Helena Gourko, Divine Onomatology: Naming God in Imyaslavie, Symbolism, and Deconstruction (Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag, 2009); Zh. L. Okeanskaia, Iazyk i kosmos: “Filosophiia imeni” ottsa Sergiia Bulgakova v kontekste poeticheskoi metaiziki kontsa novogo vremeni (Moscow: BBI, 2008); Anna Reznichenko, O smyslakh imen: Bulgakov, Losev, Florenskii, Frank, et dii minores (Moscow: Regnum, 2012); Michael Hagemeister, “Imjaslavie—imjadejstvie: Namenmystik und Namensmagie in Russland (1900–1930),” in Namen: Benennung, Verehrung, Wirkung; Positionen in der europäischen Moderne, ed. Tatjana Petzer and Elke Dubbels (Berlin: Kadmos, 2009); Konstantinos Papoulides, Hoi rosoi onomatolatrai tou Hagiou Orous (Thessalonica: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1977). 7. Ilarion, Na gorakh Kavkaza: Beseda dvukh startsev pustynnikov o vnutrennem edinenii s Gospodom nashikh serdets cherez molitvu Iisus Khristovu ili dukhovnaia deiatel’nost’ sovremennykh pustynnikov (1907; repr., St. Petersburg: Voskresenie, 1998). See G. M. Hamburg, “The Origins of ‘Heresy’ on Mount Athos: Ilarion’s Na Gorakh Kavkaza (1907),” Religion in Eastern Europe 23, no. 2 (2003): 16–47. 8. Antonii (Khrapovitskii), “O novom lzheuchenii, obogotvoreiaiushchem imena, i ob ‘Apologii’ Antoniia Bulatovicha,” Pribavleniia k Tserkovnym vedomostiam, no. 20 (1913): 869–82; S. V. Troitskii, “Afonskaia smuta,” Pribavleniia k Tserkovnym vedomostiam, no. 20 (1913): 882–909; “Bozhieiu milostiiu, Sviateishii Pravitel’stvuiushchii Vserossiiskii Sinod vsechestnym bratiiam, vo inochestve podvizaiushchimsia,” Pribavleniia k Tserkovnym vedomostiam, no. 20 (1913), reprinted in Polishchuk, Imiaslavie, 161–69. 9. For overview, see Ilarion Alfeev, Sviashchennaia taina tserkvi: Vvedenie v istoriiu i problematiku imiaslavskikh sporov, 2nd ed. (St. Petersburg: Olega Abyshko, 2007), 577–90. 10. See Perepiska sviashchennika Pavla Aleksandrovicha Florenskogo i Mikhaila Aleksandrovicha Novoselova (Tomsk: Volodei, 1998) for private exchanges between members of this circle. 11. See the preface “Ot redaktsii” to Bulatovich’s Apologiia very vo Imia Bozhie i vo Imia Iisus, which has been reprinted in Polishchuk, Imiaslavie, 12–18; Pavel Florenskii, Sochineniia v chetyrekh tomakh (Moscow: Mysl’, 1999), 3:1:287–94. 12. “Primechaniia sviashchennika Pavla Florenskogo k stat’e arkhiepiskopa Nikona ‘Velikoe iskushenie okolo sviateishego Imeni Bozhiia,’” Nachala, nos. 1–4 (1995): 89–175, reprinted in Florenskii, Sochineniia, 3:1:299–344. Citations are from the latter edition. 13. Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, part 1, trans. Robert L. Nichols (Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing, 1979); for Florovsky as a lens through which Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and Pavel Florenskii 105 Imiaslavie is interpreted, see V. M. Lur’e, “Posleslovie,” in Zhizn’ i trudy Sviatitelia Grigoriia Palamy: Vvedenie v izuchenie, by John Meyendorf, ed. I. P. Medvedev and V. M. Lur’e, trans. G. N. Nachnikin (St. Petersburg: Vizantinorossika, 1997), 336–43. 14. Alfeev, Sviashchennaia taina tserkvi, 495. 15. See Paul Ladouceur, “The Name of God Conlict in Orthodox Theology,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 56, no. 4 (2012): 415–36, esp. 431–33. 16. Dimitrii Leskin, Spor ob imeni Bozhiem (St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2004), 91. 17. Ibid., 114–23. 18. Of recent scholarly examinations, only Sergei Khoruzhii difers signiicantly from this line of interpretation, although he does so primarily by arguing the inconsistency between Florenskii and Palamas without reference to the Holy Synod’s critique of Imiaslavie. S. S. Khoruzhii, “Imiaslavie i kul’tura serebrianogo veka: Fenomen Moskovskoi shkoly khristianskogo neoplatonizma,” in his Opyty iz Russkoi dukhovnoi traditsii (Moscow: Parad, 2005), 287–308. 19. J. Eugene Clay, “Orthodox Missionaries and ‘Orthodox Heretics’ in Russia, 1886– 1917,” in Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, ed. Robert P. Geraci and Michael Khodarkovsky (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 65. 20. Kenworthy, Heart of Russia, 192–94. 21. See Scott M. Kenworthy, “To Save the World or to Renounce It: Modes of Moral Action in Russian Orthodoxy,” in Religion, Morality, and Community in Post-Soviet Societies, ed. Mark Steinberg and Catherine Wanner (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008); Kenworthy, Heart of Russia, 227–32. 22. Jan Plamper, “The Russian Orthodox Episcopate, 1721–1917: A Prosopography,” Journal of Social History 34 (2000): 5–34. 23. Kenworthy, Heart of Russia, 132, 192–94, 263–66, 278–81. 24. Ibid., 232–38; Scott M. Kenworthy, “Pervyi Vserossiiskii s”ezd monashestvuiushchikh v 1909 g.,” in Troitse-Sergieva lavra v istorii, kul’ture i dukhovnoi zhizni Rossii: Materialy II Mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii, 4–6 oktiabria 2000 g., ed. T. N. Manushina and S. V. Nikolaeva (Sergiev Posad: Sergievo-Posadskii gos. muzei-zapovednik, 2002), 166–84. 25. Aleksei Pentkovsky, “Introduction,” in The Pilgrim’s Tale (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 28. Florenskii was clearly aware of these aspects of Nikon’s work and accused him of contradicting himself; see the article originally published anonymously, and later under Novoselov’s name, though evidently penned by Florenskii: “Arkhiepiskop Nikon— rasprostranitel’ ‘eresi’,” in Florenskii, Sochineniia, 3:1:348–50 (and notes, 573–74). 26. Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), “Velikoe iskushenie okolo sviateishego imeni Bozhiia i plody ego,” Pribavlenie k Tserkovnym vedomostiam, no. 20 (1913): 853–69, reprinted in Polishchuk, Imiaslavie, 355–77, citation from latter edition, 356. 27. Ibid., 367. 28. Ibid., 361. 29. Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848), A Reply to the Epistle of Pope Pius IX, “to the Easterns,” can be found at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1848orthodox encyclical.asp. 30. From the preface to his Synodal report added when he reprinted the article later, in Polishchuk, Imiaslavie, 355. 106 S c ot t M . K e n wo rt h y 31. Florenskii, “Primechaniia,” 321. 32. Ibid., 324. 33. Nikon, “Velikoe iskushenie,” 356. 34. Ibid., 357. 35. On Florenskii, see Avril Pyman, Pavel Florensky: A Quiet Genius; The Tragic and Extraordinary Life of Russia’s Unkown da Vinci (New York: Continuum, 2010); Andronik (Trubachev), Obo mne ne pechal’tes’ . . . Zhizneopisanie sviashchennika Pavla Florenskogo (Moscow: Sovet Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi, 2007); Andronik (Trubachev), Put’ k Bogu: Lichnost’, zhizn’ i tvorchestvo sviashchennika Pavla Florenskogo (Moscow: Gorodets, 2012–). 36. Florenskii, “Primechaniia,” 300, 317. 37. See, for example, Florenskii, “Primechaniia,” 311. 38. Ibid., 301–3, 319. 39. Ibid., 302, 304, 316. 40. Nikon, “Velikoe iskushenie,” 359, 360. 41. Kenworthy, Heart of Russia, 117–39. 42. Nikon, “Velikoe iskushenie,” 360. 43. Florenskii, “Primechaniia,” 321. 44. Ibid. 45. Nikon, “Velikoe iskushenie,” 365. 46. Alfeev, Sviashchennaia taina tserkvi, 478, 505–6; Leskin, Spor, 120–22. 47. Nikon, “Velikoe iskushenie,” 361. 48. Ibid. 49. Florenskii, “Primechaniia,” 325. 50. Compare the very diferent treatment of the same issue by Archbishop Antonii (Khrapovitskii), “O novom lzheuchenii,” 870. 51. Florenskii, “Primechaniia,” 326. 52. Nikon, “Velikoe iskushenie,” 358–59. 53. Florenskii, “Primechaniia,” 311. 54. John Meyendorf, St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974); Meyendorf, A Study of Gregory Palamas (London: Faith Press, 1974). 55. Sergey Nedelsky, “Palamas in Exile: The Academic Recovery of Monastic Tradition” (MTh thesis, St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 2006), 18–23. 56. S. V. Bulgakov, Nastol’naia kniga dlia sviashchenno-tserkovno sluzhitelei (Kiev: Tip. Kievo-Pecherskoi Uspenskoi Lavry, 1913), 570–71, 1622. 57. Nedelsky, “Palamas in Exile,” 25–28; Lur’e, “Posleslovie,” 327–32. 58. Indeed, even Florenskii—who seems to have been interested in Palamas’s theology—cites only secondary sources about Palamas in his major book. See The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters, trans. Boris Jakim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 468–69. 59. Nikon, “Velikoe iskushenie,” 358. 60. Bulatovich, Apologiia very, 21. 61. Nikon, “Velikoe iskushenie,” 363–64; for the epistle of the Synod, see Polishchuk, Imiaslavie, 163–64; Antonii (Khrapovitskii), “O novom lzheuchenii,” 876; S. V. Troitskii, “Afonskaia smuta,” 877–88. Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and Pavel Florenskii 107 62. Nikon, “Velikoe iskushenie,” 364. 63. Ibid., 366. 64. Ibid., 370. 65. Florenskii, “Primechaniia,” 308–15. 66. Ibid., 303, 312. 67. Ibid., 316, 331. 68. Alfeev, Sviashchennaia taina tserkvi, 522; Leskin, Spor, 92–94; Leskin explicitly accuses Nikon of “anti-Palamism,” 119–20. 69. Florenskii, “Primechaniia,” 331–33; see also his commentary on Troitskii’s report, 345–47. 70. Nikon, “Velikoe iskushenie,” 373–74. 71. Ibid., 376. 72. Kenworthy, Heart of Russia, 148–51. 73. Florenskii, “Primechaniia,” 315.