Abstract
This is an erudite and informative account of the work of Vladimir Lossky, one that, whilst focusing on his later works, does not neglect to provide a cohesive and comprehensive account of Lossky’s thought as whole. Yet Aidan Nichols starts his summary of the life and work of Vladimir Lossky with somewhat of caveat. The first line of the preface notes that ‘this book should really have been written by Archbishop Rowan Williams (now Lord Williams of Oystermouth), the peerless master of its subject-matter’ (p. vii). Williams’s thesis on Lossky, an exposition and a critique of Lossky’s theology, still resides in the Bodleian. The thesis took issue with Lossky’s critique of Aquinas, arguing that his account of the Trinity misunderstands and mislabels the Western doctrine of the Trinity, a debate also engaged with by another great interpreter of Lossky, Aristotle Papanikolaou. Papanikolaou’s exposition of Lossky brought him into dialogue with the contemporary theologian John Zizioulas, and the need to bring Lossky into dialogue with other thinkers is also present here.
The primary thinker is Sergei Bulgakov. Nichols, whilst noting that he is not completely sympathetic to Bulgakov, is more sympathetic to Bulgakov than he is to Lossky, and is uneasy with Lossky’s ‘rough treatment’ of his older contemporary. This is in part due to Lossky’s hostility towards Bulgakov’s sophiology and philosophy. The book shows that Lossky was not only exiled from Russia but also semi-exiled from the Russian community in Paris, working at the comparatively Western facing St Denys rather than the more established, famous, and Russian St Serge. This sympathy towards Bulgakov, whilst not being a direct topic in the book, haunts the book, especially in its later chapters. But Bulgakov is not the only interlocutor that Nichols brings in. Meister Eckhart and Hans Urs von Balthasar also feature as influences and foils for Lossky.
This cross-denominational approach is, perhaps, inevitable. The Western study of Orthodox theology is cacophonous with the echoes of conflicts past. These echoes increase in volume whenever an Orthodox thinker has to engage with the West, either positively or negatively, although it is usually the latter. This is shown in the extreme through the anti-Western political and theological thought of the Bonn and Paris-educated Christos Yannaras, who engages with Western philosophical and theological thought in order to show its limitations. Something similar but more tempered occurs with Lossky, who studied mediaeval philosophy at the Sorbonne, and who write his dissertation on the heterodox thinker Meister Eckhart. Lossky rejected the direction that Catholic thought had gone post-Aquinas, and took issue with Aquinas’s definitions of essence and persons in relation to the Trinity. Instead, Lossky seeks to return to the Fathers, especially the Cappadocians and their expositions of the Trinity, who always tempered their talk of ousia and hypostases with a stress on the unknowability of the ousia of God.
Whilst the book is more expositional than argumentative, there is an interesting case that the book could be seen to be making, with this introduction of Eckhart and Balthasar. This is that, despite Lossky’s turn to the Fathers and stress on the cohesiveness of Orthodox apophaticism in contrast to Western definitions and stress on essence, Lossky was more Western than he thought he was. Nichols provides a comprehensive overview of Lossky’s dissertation on Meister Eckhart, and devotes a chapter of the book to an exposition of Eckhart and his place in the Latin tradition, arguing that whilst Eckhart’s relation to the Thomistic tradition is complex and not straightforward, Lossky shows more generosity to this Latin mystic than to his own compatriot Bulgakov.
From there, Nichols engages in a detailed account of the particularities of Lossky’s mystical, apophatic theology. The chapters that follow engage with the discrete aspects of Christian theology —christology, anthropology, pneumatology—and all are informed and informative. The chapter on saints and the Mother of God is enjoyable in how it approaches its subjects through Lossky’s work on icons, showing how Lossky’s theology is informed and enriched not only by the theoretical work, but also by the emphasis on representation and praxis. The material for these chapters is largely drawn from Lossky’s posthumously published lecture course, Théologie dogmatique, and the focus on the later works of Lossky is in part due to Nichols’s continuing concern over Bulgakov.
Having provided a comprehensive and largely sympathetic overview of Lossky’s life and work, the book ends with Bulgakov again. It is at the end that Nichols notes that Lossky and Bulgakov are indebted to the theologian and priest Father Pavel Florensky. Lossky, in The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, denigrates Bulgakov and is favourable to Florensky, something Nichols finds unusual considering the closeness of Bulgakov’s thought to Florensky. Nichols seeks, in the conclusion, to bring together Lossky and Bulgakov, to redeem the latter by way of the former’s work, a task hinted at throughout the work. This thread, although present throughout the work, is unfortunately not given enough time to develop. Considering the book ends on this note, I would have appreciated a fuller comparison of the thought and influences of Lossky and Bulgakov. As it is, and reading this book on its own, you are left wanting to know more, both about Lossky’s particular disputes with Bulgakov and about the thought of Bulgakov himself.
Thus, whilst the book is impressive in its scope, and how it details and makes comprehensive the intricacies and difficulties of Lossky’s theology, it is as if there are two books being written: one, an exposition of Lossky’s later thought, and the other, a defence of Bulgakov contra Lossky. Both are worth reading, but I find the latter more intriguing.