Conclusion

The Conclusion offers a brief account of the fate of the thinkers whose work has been analysed after the 1917 revolution and the further development of deification as a motif in the post-revolutionary work of Berdiaev and Bulgakov. It considers the ‘modernism’ of Russian religious thought of the inter-revolutionary period in light of the inter-war debate between the ‘modernists’ in exile and the younger generation, the representatives of the ‘neo-patristic synthesis’ (V. Lossky and G. Florovsky). Whilst it was this younger generation that introduced deification to the ‘West’ and made possible its emergence as a major topic of theological scholarship (which it remains to this day), its achievement rests on foundations laid by the protagonists of this book. Finally, the Conclusion sums up the main ideas that the book has attempted to express.