Modern and Traditional Tendencies in the Religious Thought of the Russian and Greek Diaspora from the 1920s to the 1960s

Abstract

The Paris School and the Neopatristic Synthesis were two dominating but antagonistic schools of thought in Orthodox theology in the period under investigation. In this article I identify some criteria according to which modern and traditional tendencies are to be determined in the history of thought. With these criteria in mind, I study the basic tenets of the two aforementioned schools and present their most representative exponents, especially Sergei Bulgakov and Georges Florovsky (for the Paris School and the Neopatristic Synthesis respectively). I identify the Paris School as theologically modern and politically tending to liberal positions. Theologically speaking, the Neopatristic Synthesis appeared originally to be a back-to-the-roots reaction to the modern issues raised by the Paris School. Subsequently, however, the Neopatristic Synthesis adopted, although reluctantly, some of these issues. The Neopatristic Synthesis remained a movement overtly alien and sometimes hostile to social innovations, and expressed on the political level a traditional and conservative stance.