The International Symposium, entitled ‘The legacy of Father John Meyendorff, scholar and clergyman (1926-1992)’, will honour the 20th anniversary of the death of Protopresbyter John Meyendorff, one of the most renowned Orthodox theologians of the last century and will be held at Institute Saint-Serge, Paris, from 9–11 February 2012.
Born February 17, 1926 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, into a family belonging to the Baltic aristocracy, Baron Ioan Théophilevich spent his childhood and adult years amongst Russian émigrés in Paris. Having completed his secondary education, the young Meyendorff was enrolled in 1944 at the Institut Saint-Serge. The latter was then the home of the revival of Orthodox theology, counting among his teachers some of the greatest intellectuals of Russia who had been forced to emigrate or who had simply been expelled from their homeland, such as Fr Serge Bulgakov, Georges Florovsky, Cyprian Kern, Nicolas Afanassieff, and Professor Antoine Kartashov. Among his fellow students at the Institute was the future Fr Alexander Schmemann, with whom he had already made friends since childhood. During this period Ioan Meyendorff was already beginning to take courses at the Sorbonne and after completing his studies at the Institute taught at church history and Greek at Saint-Serge. He crowned his studies with a doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne on the Byzantine theologian Gregory Palamas in 1958. The following year he was ordained to the priesthood and went with his family to the United States, having been invited by Fr Georges Florovsky to teach at St Vladimir’s Seminary in New York. There he continued his academic activities and church until the end of his life, still not yet officially naturalised. He taught Patrology and Church History at St Vladimir’s Seminary, and Byzantine History at Fordham University in New York.
With his thesis on Palamas, published in 1959, the French version of which is long out of print, Fr John earned a significant reputation, not only amongst Orthodox, but also in the academic world. The book that bears the modest title ‘Introduction to the Study of Gregory Palamas’ still remains today a classic book which no student of Byzantine theology can do without. Fr John was instrumental in the rediscovery of this great and important Byzantine theologian of the 14th century, already begun by the works of Fr Dumitru Staniloae, Fr (later Archbishop) Basil Krivoshein, Cyprian Kern and Vladimir Lossky. Fr John is widely recognized as one of the main representatives of the current in Orthodox theology known as the “neo-patristic synthesis” (the term of Fr Georges Florovsky), the “neo” indicating that it is not a simple return to the study of the Fathers of the Church or a “theology of repetition,” but a creative rediscovery of the living Tradition of the church. The theological works of Fr John Meyendorff are deeply marked by a historical approach that has left its mark on the Orthodox theology of the twentieth century. In this he shows himself the disciple par excellence of Fr Georges Florovsky.
The activities of Fr John Meyendorff were not limited to the academic world or the world of theological and historical studies. He was engaged in the life of the Church and therefore earned great respect in the ecclesiastical world, both Orthodox and ecumenical. He was co-founder and president of "Syndesmos", the World Federation of Orthodox Youth Movements, was a member of "Faith and Order" and chaired this section of the World Council of Churches for almost ten years, from 1967 to 1976. In the United States he contributed, with his colleague and friend Fr Alexander Schmemann, to the establishing of the autocephaly of the “Russian Metropolia” in 1970, since given the name “Orthodox Church in America” (OCA).
At the conference in February 2012 the Institute of Saint Sergius will honour the memory of its former student and teacher, organising a round table and communications relating to various fields where he worked: his theology in all its aspects, the history of the Church (Byzantine and Slavic) and the Church in the world today.