KIRÉEV, ALEKSANDR ALEKSÉEVIČ. - Cavalry general (1833-1911). A noted Russian theologian. In 1862 he served as aide-de-camp to Grand Duke Constantine, governor of the Kingdom of Poland. Later he attended the University of St. Petersburg, was elected deputy for the Moscow district, and secretary of the Society of Lovers of Spiritual Culture. From that time (1874-75) he held meetings with the leaders of the Old Catholics (Döllinger, Langen, etc.), in the hope of spreading “Orthodoxy” in the West.
K. was a convinced Slavophile and wrote as such on political questions after having known in his youth Khomyakov, the Kiríevsky brothers, and Aksakov. In his theological writings he posited as an ideal the ancient universal Church (before the schism between East and West). His work *On Papal Infallibility* (Moscow 1889) was translated into many languages. Notable are his controversies, among others, with V. S. Solovyov (on Slavism and the union of Christians) and with Sergius, later Russian patriarch (d. 1944). K. was a liberal theologian; he denied the absolute authority of the two principal Symbolic Books, namely the Confession of Peter Mogila and that of Patriarch Dositheus. He distinguished between fundamental dogmas (those defined in the first seven Ecumenical Councils) and theologoumena (i.e., free opinions), which, in his view, were the cause of dissensions among Christians; only to the doctrine of the Roman Primacy did he refuse to grant the status of a free theologoumenon.