This article offers an overview of the main ideas of Georges Florovsky (1893–1979), one of the most renown Eastern Orthodox theologians and historians of the twentieth century. Here, two interconnected subjects are addressed: a vision of intellectual and ecclesiastical renewal which Florovsky himself defined as neopatristic synthesis originating from his conceptualization of (salvation) history as a core of Christian experience and the crucial dimension of Divine revelation. Concerning history, the author of this article finds those ideas to be consequently explained and almost omnipresent in Florovsky’s writings, The Predicament of the Christian Historian (1959) being the most representative text. On the other hand, Florovsky’s neopatristic synthesis, despite its application in the monumental study Ways of Russian Theology (1937) and influence on the (post)modern Eastern Orthodox thought, seems to rely on generalizations, for example, the call to adopt the ʻmindʼ of the (Greek) Church fathers. In this way, the author accentuates the importance of history as a complex reality both in a spiritual-ecclesiological and empirical-historiographical perspective.
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