Tareev, Mikhail Mikhailovich

TAREEV, MIKHAIL MIKHAILOVICH. - Russian theologian and philosopher (1867-1934).

A doctor of theology and professor of moral theology at the Ecclesiastical Academy of Moscow, he was, according to Florovskii, the extremist representative of moralism in Russian theology and, according to Glubokovskii, of a subjectivist, individualist, anarchic mentality. T. sought to change theology into a "Christian philosophy," into a "system of Christian thought." Alongside objective dogmatics — stripped, however, of its scholastic heritage and changed into a true science, that is, into a historical doctrine on the dogmas — he recognized as the highest discipline the moral doctrine on Christianity, itself subjective.

Already in his first book: The Temptations of the God-Man as the Sole Redemptive Activity of the Whole Earthly Life of Christ, in Connection with the History of Pre-Christian Religions and of the Christian Church, Moscow 1892, he outlines his system. For the guiding idea of this book he drew inspiration from Dostoevsky (the legend of the Grand Inquisitor). Decisively opposing natural and historical life to the spiritual one, he distinguishes between moral temptation (the force of the threefold concupiscence) and religious temptation (provoked by the contrast whereby man, the image of God, is subjected to the restricted conditions of this life). Christ, in order to redeem man, enclosed his divine life within the conditions and laws of human life, that is, he humbled himself (kenosis), and by this he conquered religious temptation. T.'s principal work is the 4 vols. of the Foundations of Christianity (I, Christ; II, The Gospel; III, Christian Contemplation of the World; IV, Christian Freedom, Sergiyev Posad 1908). A complementary volume follows with the title The Religious Life, Sergiyev Posad 1910-11. T.'s system met with harsh criticism on the part of theologians; among other things he had to defend himself against the accusation of teaching, with too much dependence on Merezhkovsky and Rozanov, the "freedom of the flesh," false doctrines on the power of the Church, etc. His defense against these accusations is collected in the book The Philosophy of Life, Sergiyev Posad 1916, and in a series of articles in the journal Theological Messenger (ibid., 2 [1917], pp. 108-16, 254-68, 385-410; cf. also the appeal of the protopresbyter I. L. Janýšev to the Holy Synod, ibid., pp. 410-17). In his last book Christian Philosophy (1917), T. denies the principle of the patristic tradition, which he called "gnosticism and asceticism, the accursed enemies of the Russian genius," and recognizes, as the sole principle in theology, the word of God.

T. sought to give an organic, thorough, original overall view of the work of Christ. Even as a writer he belongs among the most noteworthy of recent Russian theologians.

Bernardo Schultze