SVETLOV, PAVEL JAKOVLEVIČ. — Archpriest, one of the most important recent Russian theologians, born in 1861. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, there is no further information about him. He pursued his studies and received a degree in theology at the Ecclesiastical Academy of Moscow. From 1890 he was a professor at the University of Kiev.
He is known especially as an apologist and soteriologist. S. fought for religious freedom (including that of Catholics and Protestants) in Russia and belonged to those theologians who, starting from the Bonn negotiations (1874–75), sought union with the Old Catholics and Anglicans on the basis of the first 7 ecumenical councils, declaring the subsequent controversies to be matters of disputable opinion. He fought boldly against the traditional methods and classical manuals of theology in Russia. Especially in soteriology, drawing inspiration from the works of Chomjakov, he polemicized against what he regarded as Catholic or Protestant juridicism or anthropomorphism.
Among his numerous works, the following may be cited as the most important: The Meaning of the Cross in the Work of Christ; Essay on the Explanation of the Dogma of Redemption (his dissertation; Kiev 1893), 2nd enlarged edition, with a polemical appendix against Prof. A. D. Beljsev, under the title: The Cross of Christ, etc. (there 1907); Essay in Apologetic Exposition of the Orthodox-Christian Doctrine of Faith (2 vols., there 1896 and 1898); 2nd enlarged edition, under the title: The Doctrine of the Christian Faith Presented in an Apologetic Manner (there 1910–12; vol. I, 4th ed., there 1914); the shorter Course of Apologetic Theology (there 1900; 2nd ed. 1905); Where Is the Universal Church? On the Question of the Union of the Churches, and on the Doctrine Concerning the Church (Serghiev Posad 1905); The Idea of the Kingdom of God in Its Significance for the Christian Conception of the World (there 1905); What Should One Read in Theology? A Systematic Index of the Apologetic Bibliography in Russian, German, French, and English (Kiev 1907).