The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought. Edited by Caryl Emerson, George Pattison, and Randall Poole
In 1939 Winston Churchill said of the role the Soviet Union might play in World War II: ‘I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’. The editors of this handbook perhaps echo his sentiment when they write: ‘From the Western point of view, Rus...
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| Format: | Electronic Review |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2021
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| In: |
The journal of theological studies
Year: 2021, Volume: 72, Issue: 2, Pages: 1070-1072 |
| Further subjects: | B
Book review
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In 1939 Winston Churchill said of the role the Soviet Union might play in World War II: ‘I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’. The editors of this handbook perhaps echo his sentiment when they write: ‘From the Western point of view, Russia has persistently appeared enigmatic, mysterious, and indefinable, its mentality defined by the infinite horizons of the steppe and its polity by a seemingly unshakeable penchant for authoritarian rule.’Russia’s mentality has also been defined by the Orthodox Church. In 988 Kievan Rus’ under Prince Vladimir accepted Christianity from Constantinople as a ready-made package, including Justinian’s notion of the symphony of church and state. The four chapters of Part I, ‘Historical Contexts’, take the reader from the conversion of Rus’ to the present, describing the relationship between the Russian state and its official religion. There was to begin with little if any original religious thought. John Meyendorff, a Russian Orthodox historian, once remarked that the Rus’ succeeded in assimilating Greek Orthodox liturgical practices, but found Byzantine theology too hard to absorb. The study of Russian religious thought begins therefore only in Part II, ‘The Nineteenth Century’. A series of chapters deals with the influential theologians and theological movements in that century, beginning with Metropolitan Filaret, the development of the clerical academies, and the revival of patristic studies. The Slavophil movement in the mid-century sought to distinguish sharply Russian Orthodoxy from Western Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant. In the latter part of the century Vladimir Soloviev was a highly influential religious philosopher, while the great novelists Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy were noted for their religious thought, in the case of the latter moving so far from official Orthodox teaching that he was finally excommunicated by the Holy Synod. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4607 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of theological studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jts/flab125 |