Theology in the Russian Diaspora Theology in the Russian Diaspora CHURCH, FATHERS, EUCHARIST IN NIKOLAI AFANAS'EV (i893-1966) AIDAN NICHOLS, OP Professor of Dogmatic and Ecumenical Theology, Pontifical University of St Thomas, Rome The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE NEW YORK PORT CHESTER MELBOURNE SYDNEY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521365437 © Cambridge University Press 1989 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1989 This digitally printed version 2008 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library ISBN 978-0-521-36543-7 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-09147-3 paperback Contents Preface page vii 1 The background: Russian theology and the idea of the Church i Russian Scholasticism 3 The Slavophiles 17 The jin-de-siecle revival 24 2 The life of Nikolai Nikolaevich Afanas'ev 34 Russia (1893-1920) 34 Serbia (1920-1929) 48 France (1929—1966) 55 3 The main monuments of Afanas'ev's ecclesiology: the inter-war years 62 Studies of the councils (1927-1932) 62 A theology of canon law (1933-1936) 75 Two ideas of the Church universal (1934) 83 4 The main monuments of Afanas'ev's ecclesiology: the war years and afterwards 94 Church of the Holy Spirit (1940—1971) 94 The Table of the Lord (1952) 113 Further ecclesiological soundings (1949—1966) 117 Peter and the Roman bishop (1955—1960) 127 5 Afanas'ev and contemporary Russian ecclesiology 135 Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdiaev (1874—1948) 135 vi Contents Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (i 871—1944) 145 Georgii Vasil'evich Florovskii (1893—1979) !53 6 An ecumenical evaluation of Afanas'ev's ecclesiology 163 Eucharist and Church 163 The One and the Many 177 Council and reception 188 The 'church that presides in love': Afanas'ev's theol- ogy of primacy and the dogmatic constitution Pastor aeternus 204 Conclusion 222 Abbreviations used in endmatter 224 Appendix: An inventory of Afanas'ev's writing 227 Notes 238 Select bibliography 284 Index 291 Preface The founder of the Order of Preachers looked to the East, and since his lifetime, Dominicans have figured prominently in the relations of the Latin and Oriental churches. Though it was from the tomb of saint Dominic that this work burst forth, it was already there in seed in the venerated Patriarch's attraction to the Gospel, and to the Conferences - so Palestinian in flavour - of Cassian, as well as in Dominic's ardent desire to preach to the peoples of the East.1 In the lifetime of the first Dominican generation, contact was made with Eastern Christians through the founding of a Province 'de Terra Sancta' in 1228.2 Finding Eastern churches in a situation of ruptured communion with the Holy See, they natur- ally devoted themselves to the work of reconciliation. A number of clergy and laity of the Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian churches resolved on full union with the see of Rome through their efforts.3 In the difficult circumstances following the Fourth Crusade of 1204 the Order established a presence in the world of the Chalcedonian Orthodox also, laying the foundations of the 'Latino- phrone' movement of Byzantine theologians in the fourteenth century.4 At some point in the later 1220s, Jacek Odrowar, known in the West as Hyacinth of Cracow, journeyed to Kievan Russia, though his work there left no lasting result.5 Contact with the Armenian church in first Cilicia and then Greater Armenia produced more substantial fruits, and the Fratres Uniti Armeniae would endure as a Dominican congregation until the eighteenth century.6 vii viii Preface In view of all this activity, it is not surprising that the Order committed itself enthusiastically to the project of a reunion Council. Peter of Tarantaise's contribution to the making of the 1274 Second Council of Lyons was such that on the death of Pope Gregory X, he was elected to the papal office taking the name of Innocent V.7 Thomas Aquinas was on his way to the Council when he died, leaving behind him the little treatise later entitled 'Contra errores Graecorum'.8 That title does less than justice to the eirenic fashion in which St Thomas approached the Byzan- tines, and follows a literary fashion set by the Carolingian divines in the Filioque dispute of the ninth century.9 While it is only a false ecumenism that slurs over obstacles to unity, a useful corrective might have been found in the Opus Tripartitum of the master- general Humbert of Romans.10 In this memorandum submitted to the 1274 Council, Humbert not only criticised the Latin church for its failure to communicate its own position intelligently. He also claimed freedom for the Orientals in whatever did not touch the dogmas of faith. In the mid fourteenth century, the expansion of the Polish State under Casimir the Great permitted Dominicans to work in Little Russia where by 1612 the Province of Russia possessed seventy houses, three of them beyond the Dniepr. The work of the Dominican Veniamin in translating the Bible into Old Russian for the use of the (Orthodox) church of Novgorod in the late fifteenth century is a splendid example of ecumenical cooperation in an age when reunion was fraught with dangers.11 The Council of Basle in sending John Stoikovic of Ragusa to Constantinople in 1431 looked ahead to the Reunion Council of Florence eight years later.12 At that Council John of Turrecremata (Juan de Torque- mada) played a major part, defending the eventual decree of union in his Apparatus super decretum Florentinum unionis Graecorum.13 After the failure of reunion, the retention of a Dominican presence on certain Greek islands where Catholic and Orthodox popu- lations lived side by side proved of help to Eastward-looking Dominican scholars in the seventeenth century.14 Thus Jacques Goar was enabled by his period as prior of San Sebastian in Chios to study the rites of the Greek church which led to his Euchologion Preface ix of 1647, tne herald of a number of studies of Byzantine history later in his life.15 About the same time, two other French Dominicans, Frangois Combefis and Michel Lequien, were pro- ducing editions of the Greek Fathers, including such early Byzan- tine figures as Maximus the Confessor and John Damascene, while Lequien's Oriens Christianus is a storehouse of material on the history of the Eastern churches.16 While the partition of Poland in 1733 led to the formation of a new Province Utriusque Galiciae in Habsburg Ruthenia, the sun- dering of the Russian houses from their natural motherhouse at Lvov led to a slow decline. By 1917 only the house in St Peters- burg remained, more as a basis for chaplaincy work among foreign diplomats than as an integral part of Russian society.17 However, the founding of the Dominican sisterhood of Mother Ekaterina Sienskaia Abrikosova in Moscow at the end of the old regime showed the attraction of the Dominican charism to Orientals determined to maintain their spiritual and liturgical inheritance in Catholic union.18 In 1923, at the request of Pope Pius XI, the Order took charge of the Russian—Byzantine semin- ary at Lille, while in 1927 the Province of France founded the still extant centre Istina, an equipe devoted to the search for ways to reunion.19 Its journal, originally entitled Russie et Chretiente, and now bearing the name of the centre itself, provides a useful service of information and reflection on ecumenical relations, its spirit well summed up in the Votes de Vunite chretienne of its founder, the Archimandrite Christophe Dumont.20 From visits to Istina and the bi-ritual monastery of reunion at Amay-sur-Meuse (later Chevetogne) emerged the ecumenical vocation of Pere Yves Congar. Congar moved into the brilliant Russian circle in Paris which included on the Orthodox side Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdiaev and on the Catholic side Andre Gratieux who intro- duced Congar to the ecclesiology of Aleksei Stefanovich Khomia- kov.21 Khomiakov's thought bulks large in the background of the theology of Nikolai Nikolaevich Afanas'ev, the subject of this work. I would like to see this book as a modest contribution to this great Dominican tradition in East—West relations. The author who is at its centre, the Russian priest-theologian