The author, a professor at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy of the early 20th century, uses the example of the work of the Western theologian and philosopher John Scotus Erigena, who translated into Latin the works of St. St. Maximus the Confessor and Dionysius the Areopagite, examines the peculiarities of the Eastern and Western Christian worldviews characteristic of theologians of the fourth and seventh centuries, and shows how and in what way the specific features arose that later divided the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

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The Influence of Eastern Theology on Western Theology in the Works of John Scotus Erigena

From the publisher

Alexander Ivanovich Brilliantov was born in 1867 in the family of a priest of the Ilyinskaya Church in the village of Tsypino, Kirillov district, Novgorod diocese. He studied at the Kirillov Theological School and the Novgorod Seminary. In 1887–1891 he was a student, and in 1891–1893 he was a professorial scholar of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. In 1893-1900, he taught the history and exposure of the Russian schism at the Tula Theological Seminary, at the same time performing the duties of a diocesan missionary. In 1893, he presented to the Council of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy his master's thesis "The Influence of Eastern Theology on Western Theology in the Works of John Scotus Erigena", which was successfully defended by him in 1898.

In April 1900, A. I. Brilliantov was elected associate professor at the Department of General Church History of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy instead of the deceased V. V. Bolotov. From 1904 he was extraordinary, and from 1914, after the award of his doctoral degree, he was an ordinary professor of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, in which position he held until the closure of the Academy in September 1918. Synod on the Old Catholic and Anglican Questions. For a number of years, he was also the chairman of the Library Commission of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. He was a member of the Pre-Council Presence at the Holy Synod. In the spring of 1917, he was nominated as one of the candidates for the election to the cathedra of the ruling bishop of the Petrograd diocese.

After the closure of the Higher Theological School in Petrograd, A. I. Brilliantov made great efforts to preserve the academic library, from the funds of which the First Department of the State Public Library in Petrograd was later formed. From 1921 he was a librarian of the First Department, and from 1925 he was the chief librarian of the GPB. In 1920–1923 he was a professor at the Petrograd Theological Institute. Since 1919 he was a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (since 1924 of the USSR Academy of Sciences). He took part in the scientific activities of the Russian Palestine Society and the Byzantine Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences. During the period of church turmoil and disorder of the 1920s, Alexander Ivanovich firmly remained faithful to the canonical hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church. His opinion on the issues of ecclesiastical reality of that time was highly valued by his numerous admirers – hierarchs, clergy and church scholars. On June 10, 1930, A. I. Brilliantov, along with many other academic workers, was arrested and soon died (according to some testimonies - in July of the same year, according to others - in 1933) from dysentery during the stage on the way to Svirlag.

Apart from the dissertation, Brilliantov did not publish any other particularly important works. However, this fact does not detract from his importance as a scientist. The world-famous "Lectures on the History of the Ancient Church" by V. V. Bolotov were his brainchild and cost him twelve years of painstaking work. As for his "Readings on General Church History," which is a fairly processed and quite solid academic course, he did not intend to be published. Of his other published works, the most famous are: On the Characteristics of the Scientific Activity of Professor V. V. Bolotov as a Church Historian. HCh, 1901, ch. 1 i otd. ed., St. Petersburg, 1901, 33 p.; The origin of Monophysitism. HCh, 1906, ch. 1 i otd. St. Petersburg, 1906, 30 p.; Professor Vasily Vasilyevich Bolotov. Biographical sketch. HC, 1910, chch. 1, 2 and otd. St. Petersburg, 1910, 75 p.; The works of V. V. Bolotov on the question of the Filioque and the polemics on his theses on the Filioque in Russian literature. KhCH, 1913, part 1, pp. 431–457; On the History of the Arian Controversy before the First Ecumenical Council. KhCH, 1913, ch.2 i otd. St. Petersburg, 1913, 51 p.; Emperor Constantine the Great and the Edict of Milan of 313. HC, 1914, 1915 and 1916 and otd. ed., Pg., 1916, VII, 197 p.; On the Place of Death and Burial of St. Maximus the Confessor. KhV, 1918, No 1 and otd. Ed. In addition, he prepared for publication in the "Christian Reading" more than a dozen works left by V. V. Bolotov.

Brilliantov's work "The Influence of Eastern Theology on Western Theology in the Works of John Scotus Erigena" (ed.: St. Petersburg, 1898, LVIII, 514 pp.) and to this day, as the abbot rightly points out. Innocent (Pavlov), "is perhaps the best study devoted to the theological views and literary activity of Erigena, this most interesting representative of the religious thought of the Middle Ages. [1] In addition, it contains detailed characteristics of the theological views of Bl. St. Augustine, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximus the Confessor and the works attributed to St. Dionysius the Areopagite. Analyzing the teachings of these church thinkers, A. I. Brilliantov comes to the conclusion about the fundamental difference in Western theology, the main ideas of which were expounded by Bl. Augustine, from the Eastern, expressed in the most distinct form in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and St. Augustine. Maximus the Confessor. The psychologism of Bl. Augustine and ontologism of the Areopagiticus and St. According to A. I. Brilliantov, these are not just particular features of the teaching of this or that theologian, but are a manifestation of the essential features of Western and Eastern theology, respectively, which later developed into a difference between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox ways of knowing God and worldview.

The personality of John Scotus Erigena was taken for study by A. I. Brilliantov not by chance. As a man of Western culture, Erigena was brought up in the Augustinian tradition, but with a perfect knowledge of Greek, he was able to read and translate into Latin a number of works by the Byzantine Church Fathers, which also had a great influence on him. At the intersection of these theological traditions, which are often very different from each other, the paradoxical thought of Erigena develops. Perhaps it was this interest in Orthodox theology, which was not quite characteristic of the subsequent medieval scholastics, that gave rise to such an unusual theological and philosophical teaching for the West, which in many moments preceded the positions of Western philosophy by several centuries.

Although exactly one hundred years have passed since the date of the first publication, the book by A. I. Brilliantov has not lost its scientific significance at all. On the contrary, now, when the threads of the continuity of theological thought have been largely broken in Russia, this study can become an invaluable aid for the modern reader both for the study of the theology and philosophy of John Scotus Erigena, and for understanding the complex and diverse paths of development of Christian theology in general, both Eastern and Western.