In Search of the Beginning: For the 70th Anniversary of the Moscow Theological Academy Revival

Abstract

The Moscow Theological Academy recently celebrated its 325th anniversary since the foundation of the Slavic-Greco-Latin Academy (1685-2010), and the 200th anniversary of its residence at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra (1814-2014) and 700th anniversary of St. Sergius of Radonezh, the founder of Lavra (1314-2014), for which the joint efforts of the Church and state are preparing special events. For 200 years the Lavra and the Academy have been and still are in close cooperation, when the Lavra provides the Academy with excellent conditions for the organization of scientific and theological and teaching activities, being also engaged in spiritual care of teachers and students, and the Academy, in its turn, cares for theological education of the brethren and participates in the liturgical life of the Lavra and its missionary and educational projects. These anniversaries prove to be a link to the past, on the one hand close (for two or three centuries from the point of view of world history is not very long at all), but on the other hand distant, for in the last hundred years alone, both Russian and world history have changed radically. The twentieth century was the most violent and at the same time the most progressive century, a special time for the rampant evil and the triumph of the good.