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Vladimir Lossky
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Vladimir Lossky

Vladimir Nikolayevich Lossky (/lski/; Russian:
; June 8[O.S. May 26]1903 February 7, 1958) was an influential
Orthodox Christian theologian in exile from Russia. He emphasized theosis
as the main principle of Orthodox Christianity.
Contents [hide]
1
Biography
2
Theology
3
Eastern theological definitions
3.1
Triune God in essence is the only uncreated being
3.2
God the Father
3.3
The Son of God
3.4
The Spirit of God
3.5

Created being
3.6
Energies of God
4
Mysticism and theology
5
Bibliography
6
See also
7
References
8
External links

Biography[edit]

Vladimir Nicolaevich Lossky was born on 8 June 1903 in Gttingen,

Germany. His father, Nikolai Lossky, was professor of philosophy in Saint
Petersburg.[1] Lossky was profoundly changed 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 Orthodox
Church.) [2] In 1920 he enrolled as a student in the faculty of Arts at
Petrograd University; but in 1922 he and his father were exiled from Soviet
Russia. From 1922 to 1926 he continued his studies at Prague, and in 1927
graduated at the Sorbonne in Paris in medieval philosophy.
Lossky settled in Paris. From 1942 until 1958 he was a member of the Centre
National de Recherche Scientifique. He served as the first dean of the St.
Dionysus Institute in Paris. He taught dogmatic theology and Church history
in this institute until 1953, and from 1953 to 1958 in the diocese of the
patriarchate of Moscow, "rue Ptel" in Paris. He was a member of the
Brotherhood Saint Photius and the ecumenical Fellowship of Saint Alban and
Saint Sergius. He is best remembered for his book, Essai sur la theologie
mystique de l'Eglise d'orient (1944) (English translation, The Mystical
Theology of the eastern Church (1957)).
Lossky died on 7 February 1958 in Paris.

Theology[edit]

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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 St John Climacus's Ladder of Divine Ascent, as well as works
by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, St Gregory of Nyssa, St Basil the Great,
St Gregory Nazianzen, and St Gregory Palamas. Father Georges Florovsky
termed Lossky's Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church a "neopatristic
synthesis".[1]
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."[2] 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).[1]
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 Saint
Dionysius the Areopagite 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 Father Georges Florovsky, was opposed
to the sophiological theories of Father Sergei Bulgakov and Vladimir Soloviev.
In the words of Lossky's own father N. O. 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
slavophil movement and its core concept of sobornost, which was later used
and developed by Vladimir Soloviev.

Eastern theological definitions[edit]

Lossky also expressed in The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church that
the Trinity is a doctrine with its technical terms rooted in Hebrew
hermeneutics, Greek Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy as well. The triune
God being of one essence or being, which is reflective of mankind
hypostatically, inside out. God and experience coming into the person from
the external world and into the soul by the influence of the Holy Spirit. The
freewill of man functioning as a means to choose good or evil and or choose
God or reject God (i.e. blasphemy the Holy Spirit). Hypostasis meaning
existence of God. Ousia as essence or being, is the aspect of God that is
completely incomprehensible to mankind and human perception, since it is
beyond created or is 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, "It is all that subsists
by itself and which has not its being in another".[3]

Triune God in essence is the only uncreated being[edit]

The concept of the Triune God being a single God in essence or Ousia (as
uncreated). A single God who as Father or infinite origin is an existence, as
Son or flesh is an existence and as Spirit is an existence. One God in one
Father.

God the Father[edit]

The Father of the Trinity is uncreated hyper-being (beyond being) in essence
or ousia as such is the truly infinite, primordial or original, uncreated origin,
the reality of which all things and beings originate from, as the Father
Hypostasis. The Father hypostasis in using the term God is used primarily as
the name for God. As the term God is interchangeable with the term Father.
As Jesus Christ is the Son of God, Son of the Father and the Holy Spirit is the
Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Father.[4]

The Son of God[edit]

The Son of God or Jesus Christ expressing the logos or perfection as the
highest ideal, in the material world and God in the flesh. Christ as well,
representing mankind, which he inherited from the Theotokos. Christ manifest
as generated and or begotten (not made) in essence uncreated, by and from
God the Father[5] as another reality, Hypostasis of God.

The Spirit of God[edit]

The Holy Spirit himself being light, life, animation and the source of the
uncreated light photomos, enlightenment and/or illumination, who proceeds or
is manifest by procession from God the Father as another Hypostasis of God.
The Holy Spirit and the Christ being the hands of God the Father, reaching in
from the infinite into the finite [6] (see St Irenaeus).

Created being[edit]
All things that are not God are created beings or are created in their essence.
Mankind possesses free will in his finite nature, mankind exists in an
indeterminate world.[7] Things as such in their subsistence, are dependent
upon something other than themselves. As such divine beings (such as
Angels) are created beings the origin of their being is ex nihilo. All things that
are not God, are created in essence or being. God as hyper-being, and or in
essence uncreated can be, by way of his existences, the infinite while
generating himself as a man and also be the spirit, that by procession (from
him God, Father), animates life.

Energies of God[edit]
See also: Essence-Energies distinction
All three hypostasis sharing a common essence or ousia or being, which is
referred to as God. The ousia of God being completely unknowable or

incomprehensible to mankind since it is uncreated where as nothingness as

well as mankind are created (see Nikolai Berdyaev). The energies of God the
Father having the same hyper-being in that they are without cause and or
uncreated (see Gregory Palamas). God's energies as uncreated and
indestructible. God the Father (the Father as the monarchos) in his being is
not self generated, nor generated from any other, hence the
incomprehensibility of God. The Trinity having existences (hypostasis) that
are comprehensible, but a being that is not created and beyond all things
(including nothingness) therefore God's hyper-being (ousia) is
incomprehensible. Lossky points out that God's existences can be spoken of
but not his being. If one then speaks of God's essence or being as anything
outside of incomprehensible, one speaks in direct contradiction to the theoria
of Christianity and as such are not true theologians and are instead speaking
of God through speculations, rather than experience.

Mysticism and theology[edit]

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).

Bibliography[edit]

'The Dispute about Sophia' [in Russian] (1936)

Essai sur la theologie mystique de l'Eglise d'Orient (1944) (English
translation, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church 1957, repr.
1991, 1997) ISBN 0-913836-31-1; ISBN 0-227-67919-9
Orthodox Theology: An Introduction (2001. SVS Press) ISBN
0-913836-43-5
In the Image and Likeness of God (1997. SVS Press) ISBN
0-913836-13-3
La Vision de Dieu (1961) (English translation, The Vision of God (1997.
SVS Press)) ISBN 0-913836-19-2
(with Leonid Ouspensky) The Meaning of Icons (1947; 2nd. ed. 1999
SVS Press) ISBN 0-913836-99-0
Sept jours sur les routes de France: Juin 1940 Cerf (1998) ISBN
2-204-06041-0
Theologie Negative et Connaissance de Dieu Chez Maitre Eckhart
(1960; Vrin, 2002) ISBN 2-7116-0507-8
Derived with permission from Vladimir_Lossky at OrthodoxWiki.
Being With God by Aristotle Papanikolaou (University of Notre Dame
Press February 24, 2006) ISBN 0-268-03830-9

See also[edit]

Hesychasm
Apotheosis
John Behr
Theophany
Michael Pomazansky
John S. Romanides
Phronema
Uniatism
Archimandrite Sophrony
Father John Meyendorff
Dumitru Stniloae
Olivier Clement
Henri Bergson
Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius

References[edit]
1

^ Jump up to:
History of Russian Philosophy By N.O. Lossky section on V. Lossky
Jump up
^ "The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine,"
originally 1948, in Vladimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, ed.
John H. Erickson and Thomas E. Bird, with an introduction by John E.
Meyendorff (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1974), p. 89.
Jump up
^ The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, SVS Press, 1997. (ISBN
0-913836-31-1) James Clarke & Co Ltd, 1991. (ISBN 0-227-67919-9) V
Lossky pg50-51
Jump up
^ Orthodox Church of America One God One Father
Jump up
^ John Damascus- Whatsoever the Son has from the Father, the Spirit also
has, including His very being. And if the Father does not exist, then neither
does the Son and the Spirit; and if the Father does not have something, then
neither has the Son or the Spirit. Furthermore, because of the Father, that is,
because the Father is, the Son and the Spirit are; and because of the Father,
the Son and the Spirit have everything that they have.[1]
Jump up
^ "Now man is a mixed organization of soul and flesh, who was formed after
the likeness of God, and moulded by His hands, that is, by the Son and Holy
Spirit, to whom also He said, "Let Us make man." Genesis 1:26." Against
Heresies (St. Irenaeus) Adversus Haereses (Book IV, Preface) http://
www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103400.htm
a b c

4
5

Jump up
^ The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics and Human Nature

External links[edit]

"Obituary by Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann" from St. Vladimir's

Seminary Quarterly, Vol. 2 - New Series, No, 2, Spring 1958, pp 4748
Free PDFs of some of Lossky's writings
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