Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky is a towering figure of the 20th century. He is recognised among many significant thinkers of the world’s cultural and philosophical panorama of the previous century. In the face of cultural repression and religious persecution of the Soviet regime, he preferred martyrdom to exile and not to deny his faith. The legacy of Florensky is incredibly multifaceted. His works span across the most varied fields of science and knowledge with clear competence. Florensky was the first scholar who attempted to combine Orthodox theology with modern logic. He argued that religious truth transcends known categories and Christianity tends to be antinomical. This article argues that a paradoxical notion would be more appropriate than antinomy in his thinking.
The authors introduce Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky to Western theology and share some thoughts of this much-neglected scholar. The focus is mainly on the spiritual vision of this Orthodox priest-scientist about Nature, exploring his legacy in the theology and science debate. Florensky taught us that there is a distinctive trait of the Christian faith’s attitude to Nature and that there always lies a surplus of meaning that remains inaccessible to reason alone and, therefore, Nature should be approached fundamentally with a contemplative approach and regarding a theology and science resonance, a creative mutual interaction could materialise.
The question could indeed be raised as to why does the debate regarding theology and science continue. This debate dates back to the early 19th century when scholars of nature began referring to their work as
The problem, however, arises when the differences between theology and science are underplayed or, even worse, ignored and a relationship of indifference emerges. Jürgen Moltmann, for one, mourns thus the fact that ‘faith and knowledge of the world are no longer in a conflict about the truth’ (Moltmann
Thomson (
[
The point is that it is one thing to say that everything is science, but another thing to say that science is everything. Miroslav Volf concurs with this: ‘The contrast is rather between religious-political pluralism and religious totalitarianism. The position I designate here as “religious-political pluralism” emerged within Christianity, but it is not
The religious scholarly market is loaded with publications describing, analysing and offering attempts to resolve this issue – so much so that I refrain from listing even the dozens and dozens of books on library shelves. A relatively recent article by Ted Peters, called, ‘Science and Religion: Ten Models of War, Truce, and Partnership’ (
Theologians, who reflect rationally on their religious faith, are naturally drawn to the rigors of scientific discourse. Theologians recognize a kindred spirit in scientists in pursuit of discovery, new knowledge, and expansion of our shared worldview. (p. 32)
Against this background, we have to take sincere notification of Alister McGrath’s assessment and guidance in his seminal work,
The fact that religion is a social construction with ‘little if any, scientific legitimacy’ (McGrath
There has been a growing realization that both the beliefs that we hold and the rationality through which we develop and assess these beliefs are embedded in cultural contexts. Rationality is thus increasingly coming to be seen as being dependent (though questions remain about the extent and nature of that dependency) upon its historical and cultural context, and best assessed in terms of the practices it generates. (p. 22)
The insight of McGrath that there is one reason, but multiple rationalities is based on Pierre Duhem’s notion of
From this, it should be clear that Ian Barbour’s (
The life and work of Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky (1882–1937) epitomise the contours of this
The extraordinary life and intellectual stature of Florensky are deeply rooted in the rich theological and spiritual tradition of Orthodox Christianity. From Basilio (329–379) to Gregory of Nyssa (335–395), from Gregory of Nazianzen (329–390 ca) to Maximus the Confessor (580–662), the Greek Church Fathers brought about a colossal synthesis between Greek natural philosophy and Christianity in an attempt to conceptualise Nature as the created cosmos. Moving from that legacy of Patristic thought, the Orthodox intellectual vision of the world would be inevitably marked by this double reference: on the one hand, the Hellenism of ancient culture and, on the other hand, the Christianity that has emerged to a significant extent from it.
Although the Greek Church Fathers rejected nothing of the natural science and literature of the ancient pagan Greek world, they emphasised the limited capacities of the human senses and rationality to obtain a complete understanding of physical realities without faith. This remains a distinctive trait of the Christian faith’s attitude expressed mainly in the East. In Nature, there always lies a surplus of meaning that remains inaccessible to reason alone and, therefore, Nature should be approached fundamentally with a contemplative approach.
In other words, through faith in God the Creator and in the light of the incarnation, the faithful seek an expansion of their human cognitive capacity to recognise the immanent spiritual dimension in the whole of creation. This gaze remains as the point of reference and the background against which Orthodox theology and spirituality will be articulated over the centuries about Nature.
This thinking made Florensky part of the so-called ‘Russian Religious Renaissance’ after the 1917 revolution (Moore
Since his childhood, Florensky was fascinated by the beauty and organisation of Nature. But what most attracted him was not so much the mechanics and its structure, but rather its mysterious and awe-inspiring aspect. It is truly a ‘contemplation’ in which his gaze meets that of Nature (with a capital N). He perceived the universe with a solid aesthetic component and mystical overtones (Florenskij
Of course, I knew perfectly well that the violet and I had nothing in common, just as I knew that the violet had no eyes […]. I well remember the sudden and anything but banal sensation of glances that meet, of eyes that stare at each other: something flashes, strong, and then ceases; after all, such a direct observation of the face of Nature could not last for long. Although fleeting, that feeling gave the absolute certainty of the authenticity of the encounter: we had seen each other and we understood each other; and not only did I understand her, but even more she understood me. And I knew that she knew me and saw me even better than I did, and above all I knew that she loved me […]. Where before there was nothing, suddenly a gaze appeared: now tender, deep and full of expectation towards me, now smart-cheerful, which told me that Nature and I knew what others did not know and should not know. (pp. 127–128)
This passage demonstrates powerfully how much Florensky’s relationship with Nature is rooted in his mystagogy. In his perception of reality, the phenomenon, although enlightening, points decisively beyond itself, leading to something greater. However, such a revelation is achieved only through personal love (Florenskij
Inside me I was convinced, my heart was convinced, that the flowers, my flowers, the ones I loved, loved me in turn and bloomed only for me and that my lack of attention to their beauty would be an offence, an injury, indeed, to their affection for me. (p. 154)
Thus described, that loving relationship opens up to an original approach to ecology, much in line with that of
The place of human beings in his vision becomes of infinite value as he writes (Florenskij
Both Nature and human beings are infinite, and for this reason their being infinite, and as equipotent, they can be mutually part of each other. I will say more, they can be part of themselves and equipotent parts between themselves and with the whole. Man is part of the world, but at the same time he is as complex as the world is. The world is part of man, but the world is also as complex as man is. (p. 210)
God can be seen as both part of the world and at the same time as transcending the whole reality. ‘The absolute being is usually said to be both immanent and transcendent’ (Rojek
Nature is fragmented as a result of original sin, and the implication is that all knowledge is contradictory and antinomic. Rojek (
Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky was born on 09 January 1882 in Evlach, Azerbaijan, to a Russian father and an Armenian mother. He described his childhood as serene, immersed in the mysterious, wild and fascinating Nature of the Caucasus. A solid reference to scientific thinking marked Pavel’s upbringing passed onto him, particularly by his father, who somehow sheltered his son from any particular religious education.
During his youth, Pavel showed a great sense of curiosity for nature. It was precisely in that relationship with nature that, alongside the scientific mentality, the fascination for what shone beyond the sensible surface soon emerged in him. Nature itself seemed to teach him, lovingly showing him her truth, beauty, and integrity, as he would describe years later (Florensky 2009):
The matter of the world taught me to love and admire her. And I loved her. However, not the matter of physicists, not the elements of chemistry, not the protoplasm of biology, I loved, but matter herself, with her truth and her beauty, and with her integrity. (p. 97)
After high school, Pavel graduated in Physics and Mathematics from the Moscow State University, where he had studied from 1900 to 1904. Pavel Florensky researched a thesis that aroused much surprise and interest:
If before I could not sleep at night, excited by the idea of the next day’s experiment, now that the experiment could have been really important and new, now that my intellectual horizon had been broadened and my intellectual habits formed, it had become an incumbency attributable more than anything else to the sense of duty and which only in flashes rekindled enthusiasm. I felt physics and what was connected to it like a suit that was not mine or like a dead skin that had now detached from me. But I didn’t dare confess to myself what had happened, and I tried to convince myself that it was a temporary state of mind. (p. 275)
This sense of incompleteness ignited in Florensky the desire for a deeper approach to life that will gradually lead him towards discovering a religious dimension of existence. Thus, he began to engage with the decisive challenge of his life: to conceptualise a synthesis between thought and life, between spirituality and universal culture, which would have culminated with his theological-philosophical masterpiece,
In 1904, Florensky entered the Theological Academy in Moscow, mainly dealing with Orthodox spirituality and symbolic logic. He did not abandon his interests in mathematics; on the contrary, he tried to investigate even more the relationship between finite and infinite, unity and multiplicity. In this new cultural context, his horizons widen, and his deepest desires are defined: ‘[
Florensky actively participated in the cultural life of Moscow with his distinctive intellectual character. His unified vision of the natural world rocked the suffocating materialistic culture of the Communist Party from its foundations, and this exposed him dangerously to the sanctions of the Soviet regime. After the revolution of 1917, the persecutions of Christianity intensified in Russia. Still, Pavel refused exile, as other intellectuals had done, but continued his scientific and cultural commitment by openly displaying his Christian faith. Although initially the regime leveraged Florensky’s scientific expertise by commissioning him research for Russia’s electrification and other works, eventually, the Stalinist dictatorship would no longer tolerate the faith of the priest-scientist who in 1933 had been arrested and deported to Siberia.
He spent the last three years of his life in a Soviet concentration camp before being fusilladed in 1937. The correspondence of those years with his family reveals, albeit in the drama of an authentic spiritual night, this extraordinary human’s spiritual and cultural calibre. In a letter to his son Kirill in 1933 from the concentration camp of Solovki, he wrote (Florensky
What did I do my whole life? I looked at the world, as a whole, like a united picture and reality, but in every given moment, or to be more exact in every stage of my life, under a certain corner of vision. I looked at the relations of a section of the world in a specific direction, in a specific plane, and tried to understand the construction of the world in this, in the given stage of my study, a sign. The plane of section changed, but one did not replace the other, and only enriched it. Change - an uninterrupted dialectical thought of change of the planes of divergence, with a constant setting on the world as a whole. (p. 231)
And in his spiritual testament, he appeals to the family so that they find in God the only sure reference (Florensky
I beg you, my dear ones, when you bury me, to take communion on that same day, or if this really is not possible, in the days immediately following. […] The most important thing I ask you is to remember the Lord and to live before him. With this all I want to tell you is said, the rest are just details or secondary things, but never forget this. (p. 440)
According to Florensky, the real, the concrete world in which we live, represents a first-rate cognitive challenge. His idea of the real is inseparably connected with the theme of contradiction and mystery. Florensky’s thought, with its emphasis on the complexity of reality and ontological symbolism, is configured as a critique of rationalism by proposing a new model of reasoning. In line with the Orthodox tradition, Florensky’s spirituality and thought is a mystagogy. He does not deny this world’s reality but instead invites to enlarge reason to widen up, which only can be perceived by the presence of mystery. For him, under the ‘mask’ of the visible, there is always an invisible mystery reality (Florensky (2009):
In the meanders of physical reality lies the mystery, which hides behind the corporeal but which is not corporeal, and the corporeal of the mystery not only does not erase the mystery itself, but on certain occasions can even be erased. (p. 225)
Therefore, every authentic scientific attitude towards knowable reality originates from the mystery’s perception and the questioning that this arouses interiorly. The enlargement of reason to charity is for Florensky the only way to begin to see and appreciate the world created and ‘held in place’ by God the Trinity. It is not surprising that Florensky – without wanting to confuse faith and science, religion and philosophy – considers
The integral understanding of reality represents one of the most characteristic traits of Florensky’s thought. For him, the real is constituted of
Florensky’s vision of the real is embedded in the Platonic tradition, where the phenomenon is always a manifestation of the spiritual. Zammit (
[…] The spiritual world beyond its own manifestation was understood by me in so far as not-manifested, existing in itself and for itself – not for me. The phenomenon is the substance itself (implied: in its manifestation), the name is the denominated itself (in the measure in which it passes into consciousness and becomes the object of knowledge). But the phenomenon (two-in-one spiritual-material), the symbol has always been dear to me in its immediateness, in its concreteness, with its flesh and its soul. In every fibre of its body I saw, I wanted to see, I sought to see, I believed to be able to see the spirit, the only spiritual substance. (p. 39)
As we have seen, contradiction or antinomism plays an integral role in Florensky’s thinking. In his opus magnum, Florensky (2017) contends:
We then get a powerful contradiction, i.e., at the same time we get:
A is A;
A is not A.
Not being in a position to harmonize actively these two parts of one proposition, we are compelled passively to surrender to contradictions that rip apart the consciousness. In affirming one thing, we are compelled at the same moment to affirm the opposite. In affirming the latter, we at once turn to the former. (p. 29)
Florensky (2017:27) believes that
Florensky thinks that his understanding of an antinomian truth manifests the revelation through formal logic. This means that ‘antimony is the
Florensky subsequently discards rather the priority of the law of identity and not the law itself. The law of identity is based on much more substantial than pure logic (Florensky 2017):
The law of identity, which pretends to absolute universality, turns out to have a place nowhere at all. This law sees its right in its actual givenness, but every given actually rejects this law
This Russian scientist and mystic delineates, therefore, a new understanding of science capable of unifying dichotomies through the notion of a symbol (Florenskij
All my life I have thought basically about one thing: about the relationship of the phenomena to the noumenon, of its manifestation, its incarnation. I am speaking of the symbol. All my life I have reflected on only one problem, the problem of the symbol. (p. 201)
Florensky wanted to create a ‘syncretic meta-language of theology, science, and art’ (Rojek
Florensky was very much a ‘quiet genius’ of his time. Able to navigate easily through mathematics, chemistry, physics, engineering, and geology, as well as being well versed in the humanities, his achievements in science are colossal to the point of being dubbed as the Pascal or the Leonardo da Vinci of Russia (Palini
Florensky had quite a critical approach to scientism and rationalism. To his children, he wrote, the law is the authentic fence of Nature, but even the thickest wall has very thin cracks through which the mystery infiltrates (Florensky 2009:243).
For Florensky the function of science is primarily that of providing a symbolic description. At the same time, it would be the task of philosophy – as already outlined by Heraclitus, Plato and more recently Hegel, Fichte and Schelling – to investigate for an explanation of the most intricate mechanisms in phenomena and reality. Science deals with surfaces, with the ‘outer shell’ of reality and does not deal with reality’s mystical internal dimension. Florensky remains convinced that science and philosophy and culture, in general, are based on and serve a fundamental unity, namely, the religious factor, or more precisely,
Florensky makes a significant conclusion when he says that contradictions fade away at the highest level as they conciliate. ‘And, then, in a state of spiritual illumination, there are no contradictions’ (Florensky 2017:358). True contradictions appear on the level of reason, but not rationality. The dichotomy of reason is only overcome by a person in spiritual enlightenment, asserts Florensky (2017:59).
Already as a child, Pavel perceives in the wildness of the Georgian countryside the mystery of the transcendence and the unity of Nature (Florenskij
It was then that I understood the fact that the division of space can only appear such and that, despite the outward appearance, there can be an inner unity that is unity and not unification. (p. 65)
The thoughts of Florensky manifest a truly mystical understanding of the natural world. He is convinced that natural mysticism transcends the fragmentation of the scientific. For him, the former surpasses the latter
Florensky’s achievements span across different disciplines, from theology to science. His humaneness and spiritual integrity impressed anyone who met him. Sergej Bulgakov observed in commemoration of his missing friend (cited by Misler
For me Father Pavel was not only a phenomenon of genius, but also a work of art, so harmonious and beautiful was his image. We would need the words, the brush or the chisel of a great master to tell the world about him. (p. 13)
His passionate search for the truth makes him a role model for the people of our time. Florensky was also mentioned by Pope John Paul II in the encyclical
Florensky did not seek essentially the how but rather the
We may live in a world that is an ontological unity, but this world is investigated and represented on the basis of an epistemological pluralism, offering us a
Concerning what Peters (
Consequently, the true scientist is obliged to establish their claims on religious convictions. It would be science and not religion that needs to be proven and justified. On the other hand, Florensky considers his scientific ideas as originating from the sense of mystery. He wanted to create an integral vision of reality (which he called ‘concrete metaphysics’) that could combine theocentric and scientific perspectives, even if his priority would always go to the first. Indeed paradoxical.
Dr Puglisi expresses his gratitude to have been invited to co-author in this project, ‘Theology and Nature’, and thanks Prof. Buitendag for the invitation.
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
Both authors contributed equally to this research article.
This article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects.
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors.
The first scholar to apply this expression was Andrew Dickson White, the young president of Cornell University, in an address in 1869 with the title ‘The Battle-Fields of Science’ and later, in 1896, he brought out a two-volume book,
Viewed 18 March 2021, from
Viewed 18 March 2021, from
Van Rooyen (
Some of the publications of Florensky are only translated into Italian and the spelling is ‘Florenskij’ in Italian. For the integrity of the bibliography, the authors have decided to maintain both versions.
For a formal biography, see Pyman (
The book is structured in 12 letters and according to the back cover, dedicated to a friend which could be understood symbolically as Christ. However, Kittredge Cherry (
Take note of Florensky’s advanced thinking. McGrath (
Ironically, yet deliberately, I use this expression from the works of Richard Dawkins: ‘Modern physics teaches us that there is more to truth than meets the eye; or than meets the all too limited human mind…’ (Dawkins
In my humble opinion, this paragraph of McGrath, well-phrased and properly thought-through it is, has the potential to be cited numerously as a synopsis of his whole thinking as did the last paragraph in Darwin’s ‘[On] The Origin of Species’ (1859).