Georges Florovsky - Life

Life

Florovsky was born in 1893 at Odessa, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), as the fourth child of an Orthodox Christian priest. Inspired by the erudite environment in which he grew up, he learned English, German, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew while still a schoolboy. At eighteen, he started to study philosophy and history.

After his first graduation, he taught for three years at high schools in Odessa, and then made his full graduation including the licentia docendi at all universities in the Russian empire. In 1919, he began to teach at the University of Odessa.

But in 1920 his family was forced to leave Russia. The young Florovsky realized at that time that there would be no return for him, because Marxism did not accept the history and philosophy he taught. Florovsky thus became part of the emigration of Russian intelligentsia, which also included Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Nicholas Lossky and his son Vladimir Lossky, Alexander Schmemann, and John Meyendorff - the latter two of whom would later follow Florovsky as Dean of Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary.

In the 1920s Florovsky had a close personal and vocational friendship with Nikolai Berdyaev. The two became more distanced in later years, largely through Berdyaev's not understanding Florovsky's entering Holy Orders, and also because of the critical attitude to Berdyaev's philosophy of religion expressed in Florovsky's "Ways of Russian Theology".

In 1925 Florovsky was appointed professor of patristics at the St. Serge Institute of Orthodox Theology in Paris. In this subject he found his vocation. The lively debates of the thinkers of the early Church became for him a benchmark for Orthodox Christian theology and exegesis, as well as a source for many of his contributions and critiques of the ecumenical movement. Despite not having earned an academic degree in theology (apart from several honorary degrees he was awarded later), Florovsky would spend the rest of his life teaching at theological institutions.

In 1932 Florovsky was ordained priest of the Orthodox Church. During the 1930s, he undertook extensive researches in European libraries and wrote his most important works in the area of patristics as well as his magnum opus, Ways of Russian Theology. In this work he questioned the Western Christian influences of scholasticism, pietism, and idealism on Orthodox, and especially Russian, Christian theology, and called for a re-evaluation and reformulation of that theology in the light of patristic writings. The work was received with either enthusiasm or condemnation - there was no neutral attitude to it among Russian émigrés. One of his most prominent critics was Nikolai Berdyaev, the religious philosopher and social critic.

In 1949 Florovsky moved to New York City to take a position as Dean of Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary. Florovsky's oversight of the development of the theological curriculum led to the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York granting the Seminary an Absolute Charter in 1953. He was fired as Dean in 1955.

Among prominent students and successors of Florovsky is Metropolitan John Zizioulas.