Vladimir Lossky

Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky was born on 8 June (OS 26 May) 1903 in Göttingen, Germany.[12] His father, Nikolai Lossky, was professor of philosophy in Saint Petersburg.[13] Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky enrolled as a student at the faculty of Arts at Petrograd University in 1919, and, in the spring of 1922, was profoundly struck when he witnessed the trial which led to the execution of Metropolitan Benjamin of St Petersburg by the Soviets. Metropolitan Benjamin was later canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.[6]

In November 1922, Lossky was expelled from Soviet Russia with his entire family. From 1922 to 1926, he continued his studies in Prague, and, subsequently, at the Sorbonne in Paris, where in 1927, he graduated in medieval philosophy. He married Madeleine Shapiro on 4 June 1928.[14]

Lossky settled in Paris in 1924.[15] From 1942 until 1958, he was a member of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He served as the first dean of the St. Dionysius Institute in Paris.[16] He taught dogmatic theology and ecclesiastical history in this institute until 1953, and, from 1953 to 1958, in the diocese of the patriarchate of Moscow, "rue Pétel" in Paris. He was a member of the Brotherhood Saint Photius and the ecumenical Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius. His best-known work is Essai sur la theologie mystique de l'Eglise d'orient[17] (1944) (English translation, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1957).

Lossky died of a heart attack on 7 February 1958 in Paris.[18]

Lossky's main theological concern was exegesis of mystical theology in Christian traditions. He argued in The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1944) that theologians of the Orthodox tradition maintained the mystical dimension of theology in a more integrated way than those of the Catholic and Reformed traditions after the East–West Schism because the latter misunderstood such Greek terms as ousia, hypostasis, theosis, and theoria. In illustration of his argument he cites the collection known as the Philokalia and John Climacus's Ladder of Divine Ascent, as well as works by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen, and Gregory Palamas. Georges Florovsky termed Lossky's Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church a "neopatristic synthesis".[19]

The genius of Eastern mystical theology lay, he contended, in its apophatic character, which he defined as the understanding that God is radically unknowable in human, thus philosophical, terms. Consequently, God's special revelation in Scripture must be preserved in all of its integrity by means of the distinction between the ineffable divine essence and the inaccessible nature of the Holy Trinity, on the one hand, and the positive revelation of the Trinitarian energies, on the other. "When we speak of the Trinity in itself," said Lossky, "we are confessing, in our poor and always defective human language, the mode of existence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one sole God who cannot but be Trinity, because He is the living God of Revelation, Who, though unknowable, has made Himself known, through the incarnation of the Son, to all who have received the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father and is sent into the world in the name of the incarnate Son."[20] The Trinitarian processions in revelation thus produce the energies which human beings experience as grace and by which they are sanctified or "deified". In his Mystical Theology he argued that the theologians of the undivided Church understood that theosis was above knowledge (gnosis).[21]

This was further clarified in his work, Vision of God (or theoria). In both works Lossky also stresses the differences between Christian thinkers such as Pseudo-Dionysius and such thinkers as Plotinus and the Neoplatonists, asserting that Christianity and Neoplatonism, though they share common culture and concepts, have very different understandings of God and ontology.

Vladimir Lossky, like his close friend Georges Florovsky, was opposed to the sophiological theories of Sergei Bulgakov and Vladimir Soloviev. In the words of Nicholas 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 had its origin in the works of the slavophile movement and its core concept of sobornost, which was later used and developed by Vladimir Soloviev.

Lossky argued in The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church that the technical terms of the Trinity doctrine are rooted in Hebrew hermeneutics, Greek Platonic philosophy and Neoplatonic philosophy. In his theology, God is triune but has only one essence, which is reflective of mankind hypostatically, inside out. In much Eastern Orthodox theology, ousia, as essence or being, is the aspect of God that is completely incomprehensible to mankind and human perception, since it is understood to be beyond the created world, i.e. uncreated. The essence of God, being in the Father (primordial origin) and then given to the Son (begotten of the Father not made) and the Holy Spirit (which proceeds from the Father) both as the hands of God. Ousia as essence or being, defined as "all that subsists by itself and which has not its being in another."[24] God and experience enter into a person from the external world and into the soul by the influence of the Holy Spirit. The free will of man functions as a means to choose God or reject God, which would amount, in many Christian views, to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

For Lossky, Christian mysticism and dogmatic theology were one and the same. According to Lossky mysticism is Orthodox dogma par excellence. The Christian life of prayer and worship is the foundation for dogmatic theology, and the dogma of the church help Christians in their struggle for sanctification and deification. Without dogma future generations lose the specific orthodoxy (right mind) and orthopraxis (right practice) of the Eastern Orthodox path to salvation (see soteriology).

• "The Dispute about Sophia" [Споръ о Софіи : "Докладная записка" прот. С. Булгакова и смыслъ Указа Московской патриархіи] (1936)
• Sept jours sur les routes de France: Juin 1940 Cerf (1998) ISBN 2-204-06041-0
• Essai sur la théologie mystique de l'Église d'Orient (1944) (English translation, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church; 1957, reprinted many times) ISBN 0-913836-31-1; ISBN 0-227-67919-9
  • Lossky, Vladimir (1957). The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1. ed.). London: J. Clarke. ISBN 9780227675366.
  • Lossky, Vladimir (1976) [1957]. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Crestwood: St Vladimir's Seminary Press. ISBN 9780913836316.
  • Lossky, Vladimir (2005) [1957]. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. ISBN 9780227905098.
• Theologie Negative et Connaissance de Dieu Chez Maitre Eckhart (1960; Vrin, 2002) ISBN 2-7116-0507-8
• La Vision de Dieu (1961) (English translation, The Vision of God; 1964, repr. several times) ISBN 0-913836-19-2
  • Lossky, Vladimir (1964). The Vision of God. London: Faith Press.
• Lossky, Vladimir (1974). In the Image and Likeness of God. Crestwood: St Vladimir's Seminary Press. ISBN 9780913836132.
• Lossky, Vladimir (1978). Orthodox Theology: An Introduction. Crestwood: St Vladimir's Seminary Press. ISBN 9780913836439.
• (with Leonid Ouspensky) The Meaning of Icons (1947; 2nd. ed. 1999 SVS Press) ISBN 0-913836-99-0
• Being With God by Aristotle Papanikolaou (University of Notre Dame Press 24 February 2006) ISBN 0-268-03830-9
• Seven Days on the Roads of France, June 1940 (St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2012) ISBN 9780881414189

• Free PDFs of some of Lossky's writings