SFI Theology Faculty Master’s Degree Students Defend Their Final Theses

Ilona Skorobogatova presented her thesis on “The Ministry of Laypeople in the Church as Seen in the Works of Nikolay Afanasiev”. The work presents the views of this well-known 20^th c. theologian and developer of eucharistic ecclesiology with special attention to how they pertain to the service of laypeople in the Church. Skorobogatova considers Fr. Nikolay’s conception as a possible approach for discerning norms for the standing of faithful members in the contemporary Orthodox Church. Her work, which lays out how Christian ministry is understood in Fr Nikolay’s theology, provides the broad context for the sources of his thought, as well showing how it developed over time.

Nadezhda Mikhajlovskaja’s research continues the work she presented at the bachelor’s level, on the history of Orthodox liturgical worship in Serbia. Her masters thesis is entitled “Funeral and Burial Liturgies in the Serbian Orthodox Church from the 12^th to 17^th Century: Establishment of the Serbian National Tradition”. She considers the order of rites for burial and associated cultic traditions within this context. She independently sourced and studied more than 20 manuscripts of Serbian origin, making use of comparative material from ancient Russian and Greek sources.

Doctor of Eastern Church History, Professor Aleksej Pentkovskij of the Moscow Theological Seminary, noted that Mikhajlovskaja succeeded not only in pinpointing the primary stages of the rites development and their particular attributes, but also in identifying particularities of the Serbian tradition that distinguish it from other Slavonic traditions (middle-Bulgarian, Ancient Russian) and the Constantinopolitan Byzantine and Western Byzantine tradition, which had a significant influence on the early development of Slavonic liturgical worship.

“This topic has particular relevance today, in connection with the renewal of burial as a sacramental practice of the church,” said Zoya Dashevskaya, who is senior instructor at SFI and member of the Eastern Liturgical Society. “The study of liturgical actions within the Serbian practice with anointing with chrism and the associated pronouncements that point to the fulfilment of the sacrament of Baptism make it possible to learn more about the full meaning of the rite of burial, as a whole. A more thorough acquaintance with the Serbian national liturgical tradition deepens our current understanding of local Orthodox liturgical practices and makes it possible to do more comparative analysis of practices across the whole Slavic region.”

Ksenia Suslova, from Ekaterinburg, based her master’s research on local material from two of the largest unions of Old Believers in the Ural region – the “Dissentients” or "Confession of Chapels” (Chasovennye) and the Pomorians – looking at their liturgical practices from the second half of the 18^th to the beginning of the 20^th century. Suslova made use of a wide range of archival sources and research literature.

Suslova attempts to hear the voices of Old Believers from the Urals even despite their great diversity. Her work looks at their views on celebration of church sacraments, considers basic forms for celebration and compares these with the rites which are accepted within the universal tradition of the Orthodox Russian Church.

“This work was especially complex given that the student needed to take into account not only source materials based on handwritten and printed texts (“top down” Liturgics), but also consider a practice of sacramental worship which underwent transformation over many decades. In other words, she needed also to do “bottom-up” research into liturgies which aren’t “fixed” to this day,” commented Zoya Dashevskaya, who advised the student during her research.

The state attestation commission for these defenses worked under the chairmanship of Prof. Dmitrij Bogatyrev, PhD, Rector of the Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy. All theses presented were successfully defended.

Also on the 19^th of June, Deacon Pavel Strokov completed a continuing education programme on the History of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 20^th century, successfully defending his final course work, entitled “The Opposition to the Renovationist Movement in the Diocese of Voronezh between 1922 and 1926”.