November 19, 2013

The Way: Religious Thinkers of the Russian Emigration in Paris and Their Journal, 1925-1940 (by Antoine Arjakovsky)

I’m away from the office this week and will return to the Chancellor’s Diary next Monday, November 25th. But today I’d like to draw attention to the publication of the English translation of Antoine Arjakovsky’s seminal book on the history and thought of “The Paris School”. .

The Way

Through Georges Florovsky, Alexander Schmemann, John Meyendorff, Nicolas Arseniev, Serge Verhovskoy and others we in North America directly inherited the work of the Paris School. The book focuses on the journal Put’ (The Way) edited by Nikolai Berdyaev, who managed to bring together a wide range of voices.

Arjakovsky himself is the grandson of Father Dimitri Klepinin, who worked closely with Mother Maria (Skobtsova) of Paris and like her was executed by the Nazis. The French original of the book was published in 2002 and was quickly recognized as the best account of this fruitful and creative period in Orthodox thought.

The English edition was translated by Jerry Ryan and edited by Father Michael Plekon and myself. Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote the foreword.

It is salutary for a Western reader to see how integrally theological and political or philosophical questions are bound together in these pages. Neither Berdyaev nor all his contributors were conventional orthodox (or Orthodox) believers, but they shared the view that fundamental issues of value, judgment and virtue could not be intelligently pursued without reference to theology. They rightly saw the direct relevance of theology to all of the most basic issues around the definition of the human, and whatever their personal commitment to the Church, they were prepared to involve theology in these discussions and to take it with complete critical seriousness.

This is a scholarly work of great detail and is therefore not always easy reading (583 pages, plus another 150 pages of notes). But for those who wish to have a window on to a laboratory of Orthodox thinking in the 20th century, reading Arjakovsky’s book will be a rich experience.