History of Eastern Orthodox theology in the 20th century

Vladimir Lossky's main theological concern was exegesis on mysticism in the Orthodox tradition. He stated in The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church that the Orthodox maintained their mystical tenets while the West lost them after the East-West Schism. A loss of these tenets by the West was due to a misunderstanding of Greek terms such as ousia, hypostasis, theosis, and theoria. He cites much of the mysticism of the Eastern Orthodox Church as expressed in such works as the Philokalia, St John Climacus's Ladder of Divine Ascent, and various others by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, St Gregory of Nyssa, St Basil the Great, St Gregory Nazianzus, and St Gregory Palamas. Father Georges Florovsky termed V Lossky's Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church as a "neopatristic synthesis".[10]

Lossky's main tenet of the Mystical Theology was to show through reference to the Greek Fathers works of the ancient Church that their theosis was above knowledge (gnosis).[10] This was further clarified in his work Vision of God (or theoria). In both works Lossky shows some of the differences between Eastern Orthodoxy i.e. Saint Dionysius the Areopagite's work and Plotinus and the tenets of Neoplatonism. Asserting that Eastern Orthodoxy and Neoplatonism, though they share common culture and concepts, are not the same thing and have very different understandings of God and ontology.

Lossky, like his close friend Father Georges Florovsky, was opposed to the sophiological theories of Father Sergei Bulgakov and Vladimir Soloviev. In the words of Lossky's own father N. O. Lossky, "One characteristic of his theology that should be underscored, is that he was not, and always refused to be, a direct descendant of the famous Russian "religious philosophy"1. The term Russian religious philosophy being Neoplatonic as such, having its origin in the works of the slavophile movement and its core concept of sobornost, which was later used and developed by Vladimir Soloviev.

During the 1930s, Georges Florovsky 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 massive work, he questioned the Western influences of scholasticism, pietism, and idealism on Russian theology and called for a re-evaluation of Russian theology in the light of patristic writings. One of his most prominent critics was Nikolai Berdyaev, the religious philosopher and social critic.

John Meyendorff's doctoral dissertation on Palamas is considered to have transformed the opinion of the Western Church regarding Palamism. Before his study of Palamas, Palamism was considered to be a "curious and sui generis example of medieval Byzantium's intellectual decline". Meyendorff's landmark study of Palamas however, "set Palamas firmly within the context of Greek patristic thought and spirituality" with the result that Palamism is now generally understood to be "a faithful witness to the long-standing Eastern Christian emphasis on deification (theosis) as the purpose of the divine economy in Christ."[14]

Roman Catholic Jean-Yves Lacoste describes Meyendorff's characterization of Palamas' theology and the reception of Meyendorff's thesis by the Orthodox world of the latter half of the 20th century:

For J. Meyendorff, Gregory Palamas has perfected the patristic and concilar heritage, against the secularizing tide that heralds the Renaissance and the Reformation, by correcting its Platonizing excesses along biblical and personalist lines. Palamitism, which is impossible to compress into a system, is then viewed as the apophatic expression of a mystical existentialism. Accepted by the Orthodox world (with the exception of Romanides), this thesis justifies the Palamite character of contemporary research devoted to ontotheological criticism (Yannaras), to the metaphysics of the person (Clement), and to phenomenology of ecclesiality (Zizioulas) or of the Holy Spirit (Bobrinskoy).[15]

A number of notable Orthodox theologians, such as John Romanides have criticized Meyendorff's understanding of Palamas as flawed. Romanides argued that Meyendorff's entire characterization of Palamas' teachings was erroneous, criticizing what he called Meyendorff's "imaginative theories concerning Palamite monistic prayer and anthropology, and Incarnational and sacramental heart mysticism." According to Duncan Reid, the theme of the debate between Meyendorff and Romanides centered on the relationship between nominalism and Palamite theology.[16] Romanides characterized Meyendorff as engaged in an "obsessed struggle to depict Palamas as an heroic Biblical theologian putting to the sword of Christological Correctives the last remnants of Greek Patristic Platonic Aphophaticism and its supposed linear descendants, the Byzantine Platonic-nominalistic humanists." Orthodox theologians such as John Romanides, Alexander Golitzin, and Andrew Louth have argued against Meyendorff's interpretation of the works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and have strenuously asserted the Orthodoxy of the Dionysian corpus.[17]

John Romanides contributed many speculations, some controversial, about the cultural and religious differences between Eastern and Western Christianity, and how these divergences have impacted the Church's development and influenced the Christian cultures of East and West. He was especially concerned about ways in which Western intellectual culture had, in his view, compromised Greek national identity.

His theological works emphasize the empirical basis of theology called theoria, or vision of God, as the essence of Orthodox theology. He identified hesychasmas the core of Christian practice and studied extensively the works of 14th-century hesychast and theologian St. Gregory Palamas.

His research on dogmatic theology led him to examine the close links between doctrinal differences and historical developments. Thus, in his later years, he concentrated on historical research, mostly of the Middle Ages but also of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Romanides criticized Meyendorff's understanding of Palamas as flawed. Romanides described Myendorff as engaged in an "obsessed struggle to depict Palamas as an heroic Biblical theologian putting to the sword of Christological Correctives the last remnants of Greek Patristic Platonic Aphophaticism and its supposed linear descendants, the Byzantine Platonic-nominalistic humanists."

The main volume of Yannaras' work represents a long course on study and research of the differences between the Greek and Western European philosophy and tradition. Differences that are not limited at the level of theory only, but also define a mode (praxis) of life.