The personalistic ecclesiology of arcftpriest Sergey Bulgakov, arcftpriest Georges Florovsky and V. N. Lossky

Contemporaries and prominent representatives of the theology of the Russian diaspora - Archpriest Sergey Bulgakov, Archpriest Georges Florovsky and V. N. Lossky - each proposed an interesting and significant solution to ecclesiological problems in their own way. At the same time, although Florovsky and Lossky were critical of the sophiology of Fr. Sergey Bulgakov, this did not mean by default that they were in solidarity with each other in resolving other issues of ecclesiology. In addition, all three authors could be united by the concept of “personalistic ecclesiology”, since all of them, one way or another, built into their concepts the idea of the life of the Church in the image of the Holy Trinity, which in practice meant relying on the ideas of the human person characteristic of personalism, a) by the properties of the non-identity of separate human hypostases (individuals), b) by virtue of overcoming individual isolation in a way that is open and transparent for other individuals. Comparison of the concepts of these authors shows that, given the same initial premises, due to the genetic community, going back to the ideas of the academic “new Russian theology” of the early 20th century, the differences in ecclesiological theories of Fr. Sergey Bulgakov, Fr. Georges Florovsky and V. N. Lossky are largely due to their attitude to the problem of the language of theology, that is, the conceptual apparatus that theology uses to reveal the truths of the Revelation.