LOPUCHIN, ALEKSANDR PAVLOVIČ. — Russian theologian, master in theology and professor at the Ecclesiastical Academy of Saint Petersburg. Born in the Saratov Governorate in 1852, died on 22 Aug. (Old Style) 1904. Son of a priest, he studied at the Seminary of Saratov and, from 1874 to 1878, at the Ecclesiastical Academy of Saint Petersburg. From 1879 he served as a chanter in the Russian Church of New York. In 1882 he returned to Russia to defend his dissertation: Roman Catholicism in North America (1881). From 1882 he taught comparative theology, and from 1885 ancient civil universal history.
He translated several works by the English theologian F. W. Farrar (1831–1903), composed the extensive Biblical History in the Light of the Latest Research and Discoveries (Saint Petersburg 1892–1895), and wrote numerous articles, especially for the theological and ecclesiastical journals Strannik (The Pilgrim), Tserkovnyj Vestnik (Church Herald) and Khristianskoe Chtenie (Christian Reading); he was, for a time, editor of the first and, for ten years, editor of the latter two. He inspired the complete Russian translation of the works of Chrysostom. He also edited the work History of the Christian Church in the 19th Century (I–II, Saint Petersburg 1900–1901) and, in particular, the first five volumes of the Orthodox Theological Encyclopedia (which was continued up to volume XII by N. N. Glubokovskij in a more scholarly manner).
He devoted special attention to the reunion of separated Christians (first of all Russians with Anglicans, Old Catholics and Nestorians) and took a particular interest in contemporary biblical questions. He sought to broaden the horizons of Russian theologians by making known theological developments abroad, while at the same time popularizing theology. Some reproached him for this popularization of theology and for not sufficiently yielding to the rationalistic tendencies of the time in biblical matters. Among his other works he published a Handbook of Biblical History of the Old Testament (Saint Petersburg 1888) and a Handbook of Biblical History of the New Testament (ibid. 1889).