Pavel Florensky--certainly the greatest Russian theologian of the last century--is now recognized as one of Russia's greatest polymaths. Known as the Russian Leonardo da Vinci, he became a Russian Orthodox priest in 1911, while remaining deeply involved with the cultural, artistic, and scientific developments of his time. Arrested briefly by the Soviets in 1928, he returned to his scholarly activities until 1933, when he was sentenced to ten years of corrective labor in Siberia. There he continued his scientific work and ministered to his fellow prisoners until his death four years later. This volume is the first English translation of his rich and fascinating defense of Russian Orthodox theology.

Originally published in 1914, the book is a series of twelve letters to a "brother" or "friend," who may be understood symbolically as Christ. Central to Florensky's work is an exploration of the various meanings of Christian love, which is viewed as a combination of "philia" (friendship) and "agape" (universal love). Florensky is perhaps the first modern writer to explore the so-called "same-sex unions," which, for him, are not sexual in nature. He describes the ancient Christian rites of the "adelphopoiesis" (brother-making), joining male friends in chaste bonds of love. In addition, Florensky is one of the first thinkers in the twentieth century to develop the idea of the Divine Sophia, who has become one of the central concerns of feminist theologians.

In Spirit and Reality, Nikolai Berdyaev explores the nature of spirit, describes how modernity has obscured the true meaning of spirit by distorting objectifications and symbolizations, and tells how human creative activity, in concert with divine activity, can overcome these distortions and lead us into the kingdom of authentic spiritual life. A great change is needed which will lead us into the kingdom of the spirit; and in this kingdom we will live in a form of ascending and descending spiritual realism; we will be active rather than passive in spirit. God will descend down to us, and we will ascend to him on the wings of our creative spirit. The Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) was one of the greatest religious thinkers of the twentieth century. His philosophy goes beyond mere thinking, mere rational conceptualization, and tries to attain authentic life itself: the profound layers of existence that are in contact with God's world. Berdyaev directed all of his efforts, philosophical as well as in his personal and public life, at replacing the kingdom of this world with the kingdom of God. According to him, we can all attempt to do this by tapping the divine creative powers which constitute our true nature. Our mission is to be collaborators with God in His continuing creation of the world. This is what Berdyaev said about himself: "Man, personality, freedom, creativeness, the eschatological-messianic resolution of the dualism of two worlds - these are my basic themes."

This book is about Divine Humanity, man's creative collaboration with God in the world. Nikolai Berdyaev's reflections on Divine Humanity lead him to outline a dramatic philosophy of destiny, a philosophy of existence which unfolds in time and passes over into eternity, into a state which is not death but transfiguration. He describes his method as existentially anthropocentric and spiritually religious; the dialectic of this book is a dialectic not of logic but of life, a living existential dialectic. He emphasizes that man must not only await a divine-human revelation, but work creatively to achieve one.

Written at the beginning of the world apocalypse which was World War II, The Beginning and the End is Nikolai Berdyaev's main book on eschatology. He describes his book as an "essay in the epistemological and metaphysical interpretation of the end of the world, of the end of history"; hence he calls it an "eschatological metaphysics." For Berdyaev the end of the world is a divine-human enterprise: man not only endures the end, but he also prepares the way for it. Man's creative activity is needed for the coming of the kingdom of God: God is in need of this activity and awaits it. Berdyaev tells us that the eschatological outlook is not limited to the prospect of the end of the world; it embraces every instant of life. This is how he puts it: "What one needs to do at every moment of one's life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world."

"So great is the worth of Dostoevsky that to have produced him is by itself sufficient justification for the existence of the Russian people in the world." This is Nikolai Berdyaev's assessment of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), the great Russian novelist, religious thinker, and prophet. Berdyaev's aim in this book is to examine Dostoevsky's spiritual side, to explore in all its depth the way in which Dostoevsky perceived the universe and to reconstruct out of these elements his entire world-view. Dostoevsky shows us new worlds, worlds in motion, by which alone human destinies can be made intelligible; and these worlds and these destinies can only be grasped by a spiritual analysis. Berdyaev provides such an analysis.

After passing through deism, pantheism, and sundry atheistic visions of life, Vladimir Solovyov emerged as a Christian thinker of irrepressible conviction and uncommon genius. "The Justification of the Good," one of Solovyov's last and most mature works, presents a profound argument for human morality based on the world's longing for and participation in God's goodness.

In the first part of the book Solovyov explores humanity's inner virtues and their full reality in Christ, weaving his moral philosophy with threads drawn from Orthodox theology. In the second part Solovyov discusses the practical implications of Christian goodness for such areas as nationalism, war, economics, legal justice, and family.

This edition of "The Justification of the Good" reproduces the English edition of 1918 and is the only new publication of this work since that date. The book includes explanatory footnotes by esteemed scholar Boris Jakim and a bibliography, compiled by Jakim, of Solovyov's major philosophical and religious works.

ALEXANDER BLOK (1880-1921) is the greatest Russian poet after Pushkin and perhaps the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language. This volume consists of translations of three collections of Blok's verse: Ante Lucem (1898-1900), Verses about the Beautiful Lady (1901-1902), and Crossroads (1902-1904). These poems describe Blok's visions of Sophia, the Beautiful Lady, who appeared to him at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Sophia is the mysterious feminine principle behind all creation; Blok calls her the Mysterious Maiden, the Empress of the Universe, the Eternal Bride, and he sees her in the blue sky and the sky full of stars as well as in the dawns and sunsets of Russia. He identifies the Beautiful Lady with a real girl, Liubov Dmitrievna Mendeleeva, whom he courts ardently in the woods and meadows of the countryside outside of Moscow as well as in the misty maritime setting of Petersburg.

Master translation of a neglected Russian classic into English Long before Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago came Dostoevsky's Notes from the House of the Dead, a compelling account of the horrific conditions in Siberian labor camps. First published in 1861, this novel, based on Dostoevsky's own experience as a political prisoner, is a forerunner of his famous novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. The characters and situations that Dostoevsky encountered in prison were so violent and extraordinary that they changed his psyche profoundly. Through that experience, he later said, he was resurrected into a new spiritual condition -- one in which he would create some of the greatest novels ever written. Including an illuminating introduction by James Scanlan on Dostoevsky's prison years, this totally new translation by Boris Jakim captures Dostoevsky's semi-autobiographical narrative -- at times coarse, at times intensely emotional, at times philosophical -- in rich American English.

In Orthodox theology both the icon and the name of God transmit divine energies, theophanies, or revelations that imprint God's image within us. In Icons and the Name of God renowned Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov explains the theology behind the Orthodox veneration of icons and the glorification of the name of God. In the process Bulgakov covers two major controversies -- the iconoclastic controversy (sixth to eighth centuries) and the "Name of God" controversy (early twentieth century) -- and explains his belief that an icon stops being merely a religious painting and becomes sacred when it is named. This translation of two essays "The Icon and Its Veneration" and "The Name of God" -- available in English for the first time -- makes Bulgakov's rich thinking on these key theological concepts available to a wider audience than ever before.

Esteemed translator Boris Jakim here presents for the first time in English two major theological essays by Sergius Bulgakov. In On Holy Relics, Bulgakov?'s 1918 response to Bolshevik desecration of the relics of Russian saints, he develops a comprehensive theology of relics, connecting them with the Incarnation and showing their place in sacramental theology in general. In On the Gospel Miracles (1932), Bulgakov presents a Christological doctrine of the Gospel miracles, focusing on the question of how human activity relates to the works of Christ.
Both works are suffused with Bulgakov?'s faith in Christian resurrection and with his signature religious materialism, where the corporeal is illuminated by the spiritual and the earthly is transfigured into the heavenly.

In this work, Berdyaev tells us that man's "I," his consciousness, is thrust up against a world of impersonal objects (the "objectified" world) and thus finds itself in a condition of alienation and isolation. In five ontological and epistemological meditations Berdyaev clarifies this condition of "objectification" and suggests ways it can be overcome, based on his "personalistic," "existential" philosophy. He shows how this philosophy can serve to counteract objectification and human isolation. Emphasis throughout is placed on modes of human communion and solitude in society. The Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) was one of the greatest religious thinkers of the twentieth century. His philosophy goes beyond mere thinking, mere rational conceptualization, and tries to attain authentic life itself: the profound layers of existence that are in contact with God's world. Berdyaev directed all of his efforts, philosophical as well as in his personal and public life, at replacing the kingdom of this world with the kingdom of God. According to him, we can all attempt to do this by tapping the divine creative powers which constitute our true nature. Our mission is to be collaborators with God in His continuing creation of the world. This is what Berdyaev said about himself: "Man, personality, freedom, creativeness, the eschatological-messianic resolution of the dualism of two worlds - these are my basic themes."