“Theology should not be a profession”

— Alexander Mikhailovich, it’s a pleasure. Tell us how you view an ideal applicant for SFI’s Theology Faculty? Is it necessary that there be some sort of restrictions – a sort of censor on who can be accepted into the programme for bachelor’s and master’s degrees – other than the corresponding basic education that precedes these degrees, of course.

— I can’t speak about an ideal applicant, but I can say something about the potential applicant. An “ideal applicant” is almost a pagan concept: the “idea of an applicant”. And I think you’ll agree, it’s hard to image how ideal applicants could sit and listen to lectures, in well-formed rows… In the Book of Job we see “Behold, He [the Lord] puts no trust in His servants, and He charges His angels with folly” (Job 4:18).  That’s why I believe our potential applicant is any person who doesn’t necessarily want to “become a theologian” (only a few are truly called to be theologians) but simply wants to receive a theological education.  In the process of preparing for entrance exams, a person will inevitably come to an understand of whether this is the right path for them or not. And if they’re not particularly attentive, they’ll figure it out during their course of study.  But I would never set any preliminary barrier by saying that this or that person is not allowed to study here.  Perhaps the only exception would be someone who is aggressively unbelieving. Why would such a person need a theological education? If someone firmly stands in unbelief, that’s their right—but they have no business studying theology.

So anyone can apply to us—anyone who is stirred by the words “theology,” “theologia,” anyone who feels that here they will be able to acquire something truly important. People of any age are welcome. We have had students well over sixty.  I remember one student who said: “You know, studying was easy until I turned seventy; after that it got harder.” She defended her bachelor’s thesis at the age of seventy-two.  Another student of ours, a PhD in Maths and Physics who had defended her doctoral dissertation at age forty, defended her bachelor’s degree in theology at SFI when she was around seventy. From the perspective of her spiritual journey this was perfectly natural.

It is clear that if a person is well over seventy or has serious health issues, they can consult with one of the instructors and work out an individual plan for their spiritual education.  Something similar existed at SFI in the first years of its existence. It was created as a new type of higher educational institution which was quite unlike theological courses, seminaries, or academies.  The goal of study was not the formal acquisition of knowledge, skills, and abilities, but to consistently drive deeper in coming to know one's own faith and enter more and more into the tradition of the Church.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when we still had neither state nor church accreditation and lacked even our own premises there were no lectures. Instead, students were given reading assignments which they then discussed in seminars with our only instructor of that time — Fr. Georgy Kochetkov.  For each subject there was one primary book for reading and summary. Students were not simply to retell its contents, but to identify key emphases and central ideas. All other literature was supplementary.  This system proved extremely fruitful. Out of it later came our Institute with lectures, seminars, practical classes, study guides, and exams.  Yet the approach that lay at the foundation of our original approach to learning remains just as relevant today, because the most important thing for a Christian is to deepen his faith and enter more fully into the treasury of the Church. This can be done in different ways.

Of course, one’s basic education and life experience also matter a great deal. This applies to the theological education in spiritual schools as well.  To be honest, I don’t think it’s normal when a boy goes straight from high school into seminary. He should first get a secular education and work seriously somewhere — facing real life strengthens his faith in the process.  It’s no coincidence that according to the canons one cannot be ordained at age twenty-two, which is the approximate age at which those who enter seminary right after school would be completing their seminary studies. A person must needs some maturity to become a priest.  And maturity is determined not only by the number of years lived; to a great extent it is also determined by education. After a secular education the candidate for priesthood will find seminary study much easier.

Each year I survey the students taking my Church Art course about their prior education. Usually, more than ninety percent of the students at our institute already have a higher education degree.  And last year, on the first-year course, sixty percent of the students had two higher education degrees, which made me very happy.

A person entering theological study should have faith, experience in acquiring knowledge, and life experience.  I defended my dissertation in the Pedagogy of Art, and I know well that “pedagogy,” in its literal sense, means “child-guidance.” The discipline that deals with the education of adults, however, is called andragogy, and it employs different approaches. The word “andragogy” comes from the Greek root ἀνδρός, meaning “adult man.” Here the emphasis is no longer so much on “guidance” as on dialogue and communion.  Adults, unlike children, are usually seriously motivated. Yes, an adult’s memory works less efficiently than that of a young man or woman, but it is selective — adults already have something with which to compare new information.  If knowledge is not simply “loaded” into the head as separate fragments, but is assimilated as a living, integral system, then a person, while gaining spiritual experience, is renewed. This is a very grace-filled process.

— Should any faithful Christian receive a theological education?

— Yes. I have thought a lot about this and am convinced that they should.  The Constantinian period in the history of the Church has come to an end. This was a time when a people grew up in a believing society, when Christian culture itself largely formed and nourished people.  Today, as a rule, a person is brought up and lives in an environment where he is surrounded by unbelievers. Therefore, if he becomes a Christian and acquires faith, an inner thirst awakens. He wishes to know his faith and to know the world that has now been revealed to him as God’s creation. All of this requires serious study.  Not everyone needs to defend a dissertation, but everyone should receive a theological education in one form or another.  At our Institute, for example, we have a Theological College. This is not only preparation for higher education in things spiritual but also a complete education in itself — just shorter and simpler.

— Does theological education provide any sort of opportunities for serving God and the Church?

— I’d go further: without a theological education it won’t be possible to seriously serve God and the Church.

— Martyr Saint Sergiy Mechev used to tell his spiritual children that these are not times when one goes looking for spiritual fathers:  “Turn to one another instead: edify one another, strengthen one another, comfort one another. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2).  Does theological education help a person acquire these essentially pastoral qualities? And if so, does this apply equally to women — our sisters — who also study in considerable numbers with the theological faculty at SFI?

— I might not use the word “pastoral” here. Fr. Sergiy was speaking in the 1930s. Since then the situation has changed quite radically. There is no longer a need to literally look for spiritual fathers in one another.  Today there are no longer startsi (elders), as there once were. But there are spiritual guides and mentors. To some degree your neighbor can also be a mentor if he is spiritually more mature than you are and more experienced, if he serves God and the Church, if he leads a life that — despite all our sins, or, as Fr Vitaly Borovoy liked to say, “despite all our wretchedness”— is whole and undivided. If he or she leads a life of faith. Such a life always inspires others.  And for your own life to be able to give something to your neighbor, to strengthen his spiritual life—theological education is very much needed.

As for our sisters: we have long had a saying at our Institute: “our best brothers are the sisters”… They set a wonderful example for our brothers. And in a certain sense, this is a challenge.  After the terrible 20th century, men have somehow grown weaker; they need to be revived. Theological education greatly contributes to that as well.

— And what else can a theological education provide from a practical point of view?

— A theological education provides something else that extends to all spheres of human life, which is a holistic view of life itself.  As we know, universities originally included theological faculties which were not just one faculty among others, but the primary faculty. As a believing person — whether you are a physicist, chemist, botanist, or art historian — you cannot do without theological reflection on your knowledge.  “Orthodox Physics” is, of course, a joke. And I'm afraid that “Orthodox Art History” is too.  But in any case: secular, secularized art still stands “on the shoulders” of art born out of faith — at the very least, upon faith in something higher than man. The absolute majority of the world’s cultural monuments are connected with faith, and very many of them with the Christian faith.

I’m not saying that all physicists must have a theological education, but serious scholars should at least look in that direction.  We have been greatly enriched by our ten-year experience of a lengthy and ongoing seminar on “Theology and Physics,” which ran at SFI between 2013 and 2023. We jokingly called it “Physicists and Clerics”. Every three months, prominent scientists — doctors and PhD candidates — came to our Institute. This included Academician Alexei Starobinsky, one of the fathers of modern cosmology. We would drink tea, talk, and converse.  At the first meetings the emphasis was on the achievements of contemporary science: the physicists told us how our universe came to be and what modern scientists think about it. But very quickly thereafter, they —and above all Alexei Alexandrovich himself — began asking us what theologians think about the relationship between good and evil, about the nature of creativity, about freedom, about the relationship between God and man. It turned out to be interesting and important to our scientist colleagues.

— You mentioned your experience of teaching Church Art. What place does this discipline hold amongst other theological disciplines? Is it possible to be a theologian without knowledge of church art?

— No, one cannot be a theologian without knowing church art.  Of course, Theology is the summit, and church art is derivative of this. But when a person ignores church art he becomes an iconoclast, and iconoclasm was rejected by the Church as early as the 8th century at the Seventh Ecumenical Council. 

Of course the problem, however, runs much deeper. Nikolai Berdyaev spoke of the tragedy of creativity and called culture a “great failure,” because in it is revealed “the impossibility of achieving the creative transfiguration of being”; instead of new life, what often appears are merely “products of culture.”  Art is beautiful; it can contain theological revelations. But still, art — like culture in general — is a “middle kingdom.” In our attitude toward art and culture it is important not to lose our sobriety.

The task of art is both lofty and humble at the same time.  Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy has a poem that goes like this:

No, every rustle of the grass, 
Each trembling of the leaf will show 
A deeper meaning comes to pass, 
Another beauty all may know. 
I hear in nature other tongues; 
Though mortal breath is what I draw, 
I gaze on earth with love that clings 
Soul yearning up towards greater awe.

Here is the task of art, and especially of church art: to direct the soul upwards. That is why there can be no true theologian without love for church art and without a deep understanding of it. There must be more than mere knowledge; there must be understanding.

— What theological disciplines do you consider to be high priority?

— As we jokingly say in such cases: starting with the letter “ф” — “фсё” (everything)…  But seriously, of course, it is the entire body of New Testament texts.  Unfortunately, the people in our church are practically ignorant of Scripture; they don't hear Scripture in a comprehensible language.  It is wonderful that in at least some churches Scripture has begun to be read in Russian, facing the people. But this is only the tip of the iceberg; scriptural depth can be grasped only through serious study.

— And what role does philosophy play in the study of Theology?

Philosophy is, after all, a kind of analogue to Theology; they are very close. Sometimes they are practically the same thing. It’s just that the philosopher, as a rule, stands a little to the side, above the problem; he always asks questions. That’s why Philosophy should not replace Theology. A philosopher can sometimes become too enclosed in his own philosophy; after all, an idol can be fashioned not only from gold, but also from lofty ideas. And this sort of idol is worse than the golden calf.

— In which disciplines can a person find answers to practically relevant questions about church life?

— If we're speaking about questions concerning the Christian faith itself, then under normal circumstances a person should already have resolved initial questions during the process of entering the Church (voctserkovlenie). In a theological institute, on the other hand, questions should be posed to the student, rather than by the student. And these questions become more difficult from course to course, especially once we reach the master's level, when a person encounters controversial and complex matters. For example, he is surprised to learn that even the Church Fathers did not agree with each other on everything, and that some of their opinions continue to provoke disputes, even today.

In 1936, Mother Maria (Skobtsova) wrote that sooner or later the official persecution of the Church in Russia would cease, and people brought up under Soviet power would come to the Church. At first, they would listen open-mouthed to everything they were told, but then they would say: “How can ‘this’ and ‘that’ both be right? No, tell us what is the one and only correct way.” Such thinking can hardly be called spiritual or Christian. To such challenges one must provide a theological response, i.e. one must not appeal to one or another period in church history with its “correct” answers, but to turn directly to Christ Himself to go into the depths.

The most important thing for a theological school is to tune and orient a person toward service, not toward professional work. Because one can “work” as a priest in a purely professional way — and the same goes for being a theologian. But when a person engages in theology in response to an inner calling, he can do a tremendous amount of good, even if he is not exceptionally brilliant and even if his cultural background is rather modest. In my experience, I've had students who were by no means stellar geniuses. Yet during their studies, it was as if some husk fell from their eyes. They themselves testified to this, saying: “I have acquired something serious; my spiritual backbone has grown stronger.

That is when true service becomes possible — not along the principle of "now I’ll take up this or that" — but service as catching where the Lord is leading you and where the Church is calling you.

— In the Theology Faculty’s Master’s Programme, students learn how to study problematic issues in Theology and learn to solve them. Can you provide some examples of such issues?

— Our contemporary age raises such issues, because we live in a time that is unlike anything that has come before. In addition, there are controversial and complex issues both in Theology itself and in the Church’s theological heritage.

I teach Christian aesthetics at the master's level. Of course, in terms of volume, this is not a full university course; it is significantly smaller at only 16 hours. Nor is it a brief course in world aesthetics. In principle, I don't believe that a 'short history of art,' or a 'short general theology,' or a 'short dogmatics' can even exist; these would be contradictions in terms. We need a different approach.

In our aesthetics course, we deal exclusively with controversial questions. For example, there is the well-known phrase by A.P. Chekhov: "Everything of a person should be beautiful: the face, the clothes, the soul, and the thoughts." At first glance, these words sound like a slogan. But if you open Uncle Vanya and see who says this phrase, in what context, and why, you immediately understand that it has a completely different meaning. It's more of a cry: "How wonderful it would be if it were so!" And so the question arises: so if this is, at least, possible, then how?

There is a wonderful example from Viktor Vasilyevich Bychkov, who taught me Aesthetics. He titled a section in his book about ancient church art "The Aesthetics of Asceticism". Can there really be Aesthetics in asceticism? It turns out yes, there can — because literal "mortification of the flesh" is pagan asceticism. Christian asceticism, on the other hand, arises when a person who is freed from things superfluous becomes transfigured; when simple things begin to shine with an unearthly beauty. This is a simplicity through which spiritual depth breaks through. Somewhat imitating Viktor Vasilyevich, I wrote an article titled 'The Asceticism of Aestheticism'. It is about Mother Maria (Skobtsova); using her thoughts and poetry as examples, the article shows how we need not reject aestheticism but can instead transfigure it.

One might also recall the oft-quoted saying of the ancient Roman satirical poet Juvenal: "a healthy mind in a healthy body." But what Juvenal wrote was, in fact, something completely different: "You should pray for a healthy spirit in a healthy body!" As you see, it’s the exact opposite. Juvenal, though a pagan, is here speaking the absolute truth. And we try to arrive at a reflection on what a truly healthy body is, and how a healthy spirit can manifest itself in a body that is far from healthy. When we do this, we expand our consciousness.

— How would you, if you were an SFI student, answer your friends and relatives who ask why you are studying at the SFI Theology Faculty? Why do you need this?

— I would say that I was hungry and that now I have something to feed on and am not being disappointed. Come and try, yourself!

— You mentioned that often SFI students have one or two other educational degrees, are often adults with families and other serious commitments. In such cases the study of Theology often comes at a high price. Where can these students find the energy and how do they manage to shift this enormous boulder in their lives?

— We are told in the Gospel that if you have faith, you will shift not just this boulder, but even boulders much greater that this one (cf. Matt 17:20). Besides, look just around you —  people before you have already moved this very boulder. Among them were undoubtedly quite ordinary people who were likely less gifted than you. But they moved it. Why should you be any worse off? What matters is faith, trust in God, consistency in your actions, perseverance, and patience. Then you will accomplish whatever needs to be done — the Lord will help, one way or another, all at once or little by little. Look at those who have already walked this path: it’s an inspiring sight!

— Thank you very much!