Fr. Georges Florovsky on Fr. Pavel Florensky

Many speak of modern Russian religious philosophy as if it was a distinct, sui generis manifestation of the Russian creative spirit. That is fundamentally not true. On the contrary, the attempt to replace theology with 'religious philosophy' is characteristic of Western Romanticism, especially of the German Romantics. We could see this in the Catholic speculative theology of the Romantic epoch. It was also one of the most Westernised periods of Russian theological thought.

It is very telling that Nikolai Berdyaev finds the most inspiration in German mysticism and philosophy of this kind; he cannot break that vicious German circle. We could see this very clearly in his most important book of the pre-war period, 'The Meaning of the Creative Act' (1916). In that work, he once again took a step away from 'historical Christianity' and towards the esotericism of speculative mysticism, towards Jakob Böhme and Paracelsus; he almost forcefully pushed the patristic thought away. 'But today the asceticism of the Fathers has faded—it has become a mortal prison for the new man, for our new times'. Berdyaev was subsumed in his visions of German mysticism, and it even obscured the Church's tradition for him. This is one of the main temptations faced by the Russian theological thought, this new phase of the utopian lure.

The spirit of pre-war decade was perfectly expressed by the Moscow group of religious philosophers associated with the Religious-Philosophical Society of Vladimir Solovyov (started in 1907). Their profoundly religious approach towards philosophical questions set them apart from the earlier Psychological Society, where the same people would discuss similar religious issues. We should name here Sergei Bulgakov and Nikolai Berdyaev, both coming from Marxism, as well as Vladimir F. Ern, Valentin Sventsitsky and Pavel Florensky. The previous generation was represented by Prince Eugene Trubetskoy. Andrei Bely was also part of the Religious-Philosophical Society, as were some other philosophers and writers of Moscow. The Moscow Religious-Philosophical Society was more of a religious salon, or a religious-aesthetic club. It was founded as such.

It is still quite difficult to write the history of that period; it is, perhaps, way too early as well. The creative path of many people who were once a part of that movement has not yet come to an end. I cannot summarise their work. Out of that entire group, only Pavel Florensky and Sergei Bulgakov proceeded to work on theological topics. They were close friends, and both became priests. Bulgakov only starts writing about theology in his book 'The Unfading Light' (1917). We should be interpreting this book in the context of his subsequent spiritual growth.

That period is much better characterised by Bulgakov's other books, in particular his 'Two Cities' (1911) and 'Philosophy of Economy' (1912). Bulgakov's spiritual growth was massively influenced by Vladimir Solovyov, and it was from him that he got the centrepiece of his religious philosophy, the teaching about Sophia. This is where his work meets that of Florensky as well. It was also from Solovyov that Bulgakov took the other topic his work is centred arouns, that is, the problem of church culture and Christian praxis in history. He took a step back from Solovyov towards Schelling and the Neoplatonists, but then also towards the Church Fathers and the historical Church. The influence of German philosophy can also strongly be seen in Bulgakov. There is a lot of Schelling in his philosophy of economy, and even Kantian transcendentalism in the very way he poses the religious-philosophical problem in his 'Unfading Light' ('How is religion possible?'). His Romantic worldview greatly limits his religious natural philosophy; he is ever drifting towards the philosophy of absolute identity [Schelling's Identitätsphilosophie]. Yet eventually Bulgakov confidently walked away from religious philosophy and back to theology. Therein is his historical advantage.

Fr. Pavel Florensky's book The Pillar and Ground of the Truth (1914) remains the most symptomatic work of the pre-war epoch. It also perfectly embodies and illustrates the full ambiguity and flimsiness of the religious-philosophical movement.

Florensky’s book is intentionally and overly subjective. It is not a coincidence that it is structured as a letter exchange between two friends. That, of course, is just a literary device, and yet it perfectly embodies and expresses the tonality of his spiritual type. It seems fitting for Florensky to indulge in theology when writing to a friend. He is too strongly overcome with this pretentiousness of intimacy, of psychological esotericism, of snobbery almost in friendships. Florensky talks a lot about ecclesiality and sobornost, yet sobornost is precisely what is missing the most from his book. His book is that of a writer who is trapped inside himself. His loneliness is always evident in his reflections and arguments. He can only overcome it through friendships, through some sort of romantic adelphopoiesis. The Church’s sobornost, for him, breaks down into a multitude of close two-person friendships; and so the duality of personal friendship psychologically replaces sobornost for him. He dwells in his own quiet, hidden corner, and prefers to stay there, in this aesthetic seclusion. He leaves the tragic crossroads of life and hides away in his small, cozy cell. He was, however, a part of the Union of Christian Struggle in his youth, that peculiar attempt at a religiously charged idealistic revolutionism.

Florensky does not have a sense of history; he is not living in history, he lacks historical perspective, he does not have a natural understanding of the historical process. He approaches the historical past like a museum; he enjoys its aesthetics, he wanders around and contemplates it, always according to his own personal preferences and tastes. Florensky has often been accused of having a partiality for theologoumena, for private theological opinions; and that is, indeed, a very important observation. He definitely has a much stronger preference for theologumena than dogmas. Dogmas, apparently, seem to him too common and collegial, aimed at everyone, too obvious and too loud, whilst he prefers the hushed whisper of a personal opinion.

The experience Florensky talks about in his book is a deeply psychological one. It is a stream of personal ruminations. He claims to be renouncing himself and everything that is his; he promises to be focusing only on what is common and pertains to the entire Church. Yet he never actually lives up to his claims and never keeps his promise. He always speaks for himself. He remains subjective even when he would like to be objective, and in that lies his ambiguity. He is presenting a book of personal revelations as a witness of a communal, collegial experience. There is a very distinct tang of theological prelest to all of his arguments. Florensky's book feels weirdly unwieldy; it is almost like two incompatible arguments were forcefully merged together. His book starts with a letter on doubt. The quest for truth starts not even with mere doubt, but actual despair, some kind of pyrrhic fire. At some point, whilst wandering through this torturous maze, Florensky suddenly sees the current of revelation. He observed that in this, he is very similar to Archbishop Serapion Mashkin and his unpublished book.

We could also remember Pascal here...

So what kind of experience, what kind of path are we presented with? Are we talking about the tragedy of the incredulous mind? Or the dialectics of the Christian mindset? In either case, the way the question is posed, one could think the most important thing was to bring yourself to overcome doubt. It could seem that you could only ever find God through doubt, despair and sorrow. Almost the entirety of Florensky's gnosiology comes down to the problem of conversion. He never touches on what comes after: how do you attain the knowledge of God? That question is also psychological; for Florensky, everything is about feelings and personal experiences. The book starts in the spirit of Kantian skepticism and half-skepticism. Florensky also follows in Kant's footsteps with his interesting teaching on antinomies. For Florensky, truth itself turns out to be an antinomy.

Yet the second part of the book is written in the spirit of Platonism and ontologism. How is it possible to reconcile Pyrrhonism and Platonism, antinomianism and ontologism? The teaching on Sophia and the sophianicity of Creation implies our world is that of perfect logical harmony, and therefore antinomies are impossible in it by definition. For the intellect must be adequate and commensurable with being. The overly excessive antinomianism in Florensky's work was previously pointed out by Eugene Trubetskoy, even though he never fully developed his objections. As he correctly observed, Florensky's antinomianism is but an 'undefeated scepticism, a bifurcation of thought treated as a principle, as the norm'. But in Christianity, 'the intellect is transformed, not disfigured'.

Sophia, according to Florensky’s definition, is the 'Hypostatic System of the world-creating thoughts of God'. How is it possible, then, that the final mystery of the thought turns out to be not a system but an antinomy?.. The teaching on sin does not resolve this aporia. For, according to Florensky, it is not only the weak, sinful conscience that is antinomic, but even the truth itself: 'Truth is an antinomy'. The choice between 'yes' and 'no' turns out to be completely impossible. Why is the Christian mind also still in captivity and plagued by ignorance? Strangely enough, Florensky never once mentions antinomies whilst discussing Sophia and sophianicity.

The mind can find refuge from doubt in knowing the Holy Trinity. Florensky speaks about this with great fervour, presenting the meaning of the Trinitarian dogma as a truth of reason. Yet strangely enough, he somehow skips over the Incarnation, and goes from the Trinitarian chapters straight to the teaching about the Comforter Spirit. Florensky's book quite plainly does not have any Christological chapters, and the 'essay in Orthodox theodicy' is somehow structured without Christ. The image of Christ, of the God-man becomes a hazy shadow in the background. Could that be the reason why there is so little joy to be found in Florensky's book? The beauty of his reflections and arguments is an autumnal, dying, despondent beauty. For Florensky is not as much rejoicing in Christ's coming as he is drearily waiting for the Comforter, hoping for the Spirit. He is not rejoicing in the Comforter who has already come, for he wants much more. It is almost as if he does not feel the ever-abiding presence of the descended Spirit in the world; the Church's view on the Spirit seems to him too dull, lifeless and bland. He sees the revelation of the Spirit in the chosen few, but not in the 'everyday life of the Church'. It is as if the salvation of the world has not yet taken place: 'The miraculous moment flashed blindingly, and then it apparently was no more'. It is as if the world still dwells in darkness, with just some bleak pre-dawn rays of sunshine that bring no warmth yet dimly shining from the outside in. Florensky's book talks surprisingly little about the sacraments. Florensky is not in what has been accomplished, but in a never-ending anticipation...

The heart yearns for what has never been, and so Florensky is languishing in the face of history. A certain weariness of despondency overcomes and possesses him, with his soul still outstretched towards the moment that has no yet come. This feels like out-of-the-blue rehashes of Merezhkovsky or Novalis. One of Andrei Bely's early poems dedicated to Florensky (The Holy Days, 1901) comes to mind: 'Despondency! O brethren, pay heed to despondency! For holy is despondency in these fateful days!'. Bely chose Mark 13:19 as the epigraph: 'For in those days there will be such suffering as has not been since the beginning of the creation that God made until now and will never be again.'

In his early years, Florensky also wrote poetry that closely resembled that of Andrei Bely, especially his Gold in Azure. 'The air is getting thinner. The world, drunkenly wobbling, is spinning, careening...'. There was a certain unity of lyrical experience between them.

The 'second covenant' is too cramped, crowded and stuffy for Florensky. For the Logos is indeed the 'universal, all-embracing Law of the World'. And therefore the revelation of the Second Hypostasis does not liberate the world; on the contrary, it confines it to a logical lawfulness. The revelation of the Logos, for Florensky, is the basis of scientificity, and thus the Christian world is harsh and ruthless; it is a world of lawfulness and continuity, and there is no beauty and freedom in it yet. It still remains unclear what Pentecost means for Florensky. It is precisely a new revelation that he is waiting for, and not just its fulfilment. And, at the End of History, he is expecting not Christ's Second Coming but the Spirit's Revelation. In any case, Florensky has no sense of the neo-testamentary Epiphany being absolute and does not discuss it. It does not bring him fulfilment, and so he keeps yearning and waiting. The deadly poison of romanticism possesses him...

There is again, undoubtedly, a certain inconsistency here. Yearning very peculiarly intertwines with rejoicing. For in one sense, the word has not yet been transformed; yet in the other, in its eternal root, it is divine. 'Objectivity exists. It is God's creation' (cf. a very interesting interpretation of Platonism in Florensky's 1914 study 'The Meaning of Idealism').

Florensky's hope lies not in the fact that God came to us and revealed to us the path to Life Eternal, found in Himself; it is in that in eternity and by its own nature 'creation goes into the intra-Trinitarian life'. In its original reality the world, as a 'Great Being', is already a 'fourth person' of a certain kind, the fourth hypostasis. Florensky speaks of Sophia much more forcefully and stridently than Vladimir Solovyov. He sees the highest revelation of Sophia in Theotokos, whose image is somehow separated from that of the Child—and even obscures him in a way... Florensky's 'theodicy' is somehow missing the Saviour. The world is 'saved' without Him.

Florensky's book is very symptomatic and important as a psychological document, as a relic of the period. There are quite a few compelling observations to be found in it; it has quite a few gripping pages and reflections. Yet Florensky could never give us anything more than a literary confession. It is a unique book, but it is far from powerful; it is dreary and angst-ridden. Moreover, Florensky is not coming from a place of true, genuine Orthodoxy. He is still a foreigner in the Orthodox world. It is a profoundly Western book in spirit. It is a book of a Westerniser who is seeking illusory aesthetic refuge in the East. Florensky feels much more at home with the Western culture's affinity for tragic romanticism than he does with the genuine Orthodox teaching.

It is also very telling that in this work, he would often take a few steps back, away from Christianity, and explore Platonism and ancient pagan faith. Sometimes he would take a few steps to the side as well and look into occultism and magic. He would even assign those to his students as dissertation topics; for example, Karl von Prel, Dionysus and Russian folklore. Florensky himself wanted to present a translation of Iamblichus with his commentary as his master's thesis. In 1922 we saw an abstract of his new book, 'At the Watersheds of Thought: The Elements of a Concrete Metaphysics'. At this point, you could barely even assume this was a book written by a Christian philosopher. It was never published.

In Florensky, aestheticism and natural mysticism intertwine in a very peculiar manner, as was common in late romanticism. There is no genuine development of thought in his work; instead, he is ultimately just weaving his aesthetic lace. This is what causes all the ambiguity. As Berdyaev correctly observed: 'Those who believed in Sophia but never believed in Christ would eventually find themselves unable to discern realities'. He was talking about [Alexander] Blok and other Symbolists, yet these words are also true for both Florensky and Solovyov. The religious experience discussed here had, no doubt, a distinct murkiness to it; a murkiness of ambiguous thoughts and feelings, a murkiness of erotic prelest. The temptation of aestheticism was looming over Russian theology, as the temptation of moralism had before, and Florensky's book was one of the most vivid symptoms of that temptation...