Jeremy Pilch's research investigates the concept of ‘divine-humanity’ in the thought of the great Russian philosopher Vladimir Solov'ev (1853-1900). Pilch sets out a triple objective: first, to show how deification is the dominant theme of Solov'ev's thought, especially under the term bogochelovechestvo (Godmanhood, or Divine Humanity); secondly, to illustrate that the thinking of Solov'ev, rooted in the Eastern patristic tradition, integrates also Western reflection on grace; and finally to demonstrate ‘the potential for both the renewal and unity of Christendom through a deeper understanding of Solov'ev's thought’ (p. 1) – hence the title of the book: ‘Breathing the Spirit with Two Lungs’ inspired by an expression used by Pope John Paul II.
The first chapter examines the scriptural and patristic sources of Solov'ev's philosophy, outlining in particular the ‘hermeneutic key’ of the Christological formula of Chalcedon throughout his thought. The following three chapters delineate the evolution of Solov'ev's thinking through three works to which they are respectively devoted. Chapter II, on the Lectures on Divine Humanity (1878-81), while situating the work of Solov'ev in the context of the Russian theological and spiritual renewal of the 19th century, shows how these Lectures are inspired by the thought of Saint Maximus the Confessor. Chapter III, on The Spiritual Foundations of Life (1882-84), reflects on how Solov'ev deepens his conception of deification by applying it to ecclesiology. The fourth and final chapter, on The Justification of the Good (1897) outlines how Solov'ev proposes a moral approach to deification applying the notion of deification to social life and combining, in an unprecedented synthesis, the Eastern paradigm of deification with Western approaches to grace. Throughout his work Pilch presents biographical elements illustrating the evolution of the thought of Solov'ev, who was initially close to the Slavophiles, but who approached Catholicism at the end of his brief life. As the author himself summarizes in the presentation of his book: ‘The over-arching thrust of this work is that Solov'ev's concept of deification started as a reflection of the mystical and cosmic expressions of deification characteristic of the late Greek patristic period but develops so to be expressed in the western terminology of grace and focuses on the active implementation of deification in the world, taking the teaching out of its original monastic context’.
Very clear, well-constructed and well-argued, Pilch's study testifies to a very broad knowledge of the recent literature on Solov'ev (although a status quaestionis in the current Russian literature would also have been welcome), and more generally on the question of deification and grace, including St. Thomas Aquinas (one notes amiably in passing that the author, referring to the recent researches by Fr. Luc-Thomas Somme and Fr. Antoine Lévy, comments that ‘Francophone Dominican life in the twenty-first century remains in good health as in the twentieth century’, p. 11!).
A particularly interesting point is the analysis of Solov'ev's ecclesiology – often apprehended from another of Solov'ev's works, Russia and the Universal Church (1889), but little on the basis of The Spiritual Foundations of Life or on The Justification of the Good. Pilch shows convincingly that The Spiritual Foundations develops an ecclesiology based on the Christological notion of divine-humanity, which he places in the context of the beginnings of the Catholic ecclesiological renewal and the thought of Johann Adam Möhler. One could have wished that Pilch had emphasized to a greater degree the role of Solov'ev's contemporary Russian ecclesiologists, who also applied the notion of divine-humanity to the Church, such as Alexander Katanskij (1836-1919) and especially Evgenij Akvilonov (1861-1911), who was one of the first, in the circles of the Russian Theological Academies, to define the Church as a ‘theandric organism’. But the interest of Pilch's research is above all to show the evolution of the notion of deification in Solov'ev's thought, and its application at the social level (state and ecclesial) in his fascinating – and often disregarded – book, The Justification of the Good.
Pilch's research is not only an excellent introduction to Solov'ev's thinking from the key notion of deification, but also a remarkable and original effort to show how his thought is deeply ‘ecumenical’. One can only hope that Pilch will continue his research in this area. His study testifies once more that Russian thought is never so fertile, and never so Russian, than when it embodies the fruitful meeting of the West and the East.
