Orthodoxy in Dialogue has launched the Reformation 500 Series, for which a separate category has been created on the Archives by Author page before the alphabetized list of authors.

We invite Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox clergy, bishops, theology students, and theology professors to write a 1000-word reflection on Reformation 500, whether you take a more positive or less positive position. We ask only that you avoid a polemical, confrontational, or triumphalistic tone in your writing. Read More

This article represents the first in our proposed Reformation 500 Series, in which Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox writers are invited to reflect on the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses and the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

I credit the Orthodox theologian, Father John H. Erickson, for teaching me that ecclesial anniversaries are tricky occasions to prepare. As he noted at the June 1997 Orientale Lumen Conference between Catholics and Orthodox:

What some of those touched by such events remember with joy, others remember with a sense of anguish and pain. Specific incidents which some may have completely forgotten, others take as the key for interpreting the entire occasion.

I think this probably describes pretty much the different ways that Catholics and Lutherans might view the Reformation 500 anniversary.

For many Lutherans, the anniversary may be an occasion for much pride and joy: a touchstone moment to celebrate all that Martin Luther stood for and all that has been accomplished in his name and in the name of Lutheranism over the centuries, and to dream of what may still be possible in the Lutheran Church today. Read More

Sergei Semionovich Troitsky

This is not an essay about sexuality, but about biography and history, and honouring the actual lived experience and wishes of those who have departed this life before us.

On May 2 Public Orthodoxy published my “Conjugal Friendship,” which summarizes and comments upon Father Pavel Florensky’s 1914 “Friendship” and its inspiration, his earlier relationship with the deceased Sergei Troitsky. The explosive reactions that ensued compelled me to write a sequel, “Conjugal Friendship: An Appeal for a Conversation.” This appeared on July 5 on the University of Toronto Press Journals Blog.

None of the respondents who took me to task for my interpretation of “Friendship” produced a single sentence from Florensky’s text to show me where I had gone wrong. They appeared to base their arguments on no more than pious conjecture.

No one who excoriated my portrayal of Florensky’s relationship with Troitsky took into account my dependence on Avril Pyman’s 2010 biography, Pavel Florensky: A Quiet Genius, or her reliance on the letters and diaries of the principal actors in the story.   Read More

The unnamed dedicatee and addressee of Father Pavel Florensky’s 1914 The Pillar and Ground of the Truth was his fellow seminarian, roommate, and intended life-companion (спутник жизни, “husband”), the deceased Sergei Troitsky.

Florensky was obliged to delete “Friendship” from his master’s thesis at the Moscow Theological Academy because his academic supervisor deemed it to be too controversial to pass the examining board. His contemporaries understood that this was no theology of friendship in any conventional sense of the word.

When he reinstated the chapter for publication he was a married man, an ordained priest, and the father of his first child, still grieving the loss of his greatest love. He did not replace “Friendship” with a theology of marriage.

Two Worlds — Два Міра

Pavel Florensky and Sergei Troitsky (Age 24 and 25 respectively)

My meek, my radiant friend!

Our vaulted room greeted me with coldness, sadness, and loneliness when I opened its door for the first time after my trip.

But, alas, I entered it alone, without you.

But you are not with me, and the whole world seems deserted. I am alone, absolutely alone in the whole world. Read More