Paul Evdokimov

This article by Paul Evdokimov, drawn from a lecture delivered at the Sorbonne in 1967, offers an Orthodox reading of the Epistle to the Romans (Rom 8:28-30), focusing in particular on the notions of foreknowledge and predestination. Through a theological and historiosophical approach, Evdokimov brings Eastern patristic tradition into dialogue with Western Augustinianism and its Reformed extensions. The central idea is that the Eastern tradition rejects any restrictive predestination in favor of a universal call to salvation, grounded in the "mad love" of God — the *manikon eros* of Nicholas Cabasilas — which respects and even conditions human freedom. The article makes a twofold contribution: it offers an ecclesiological and universalist rereading of Romans 9, dissociating the historical destiny of Israel from individual salvation, and it puts forward Eastern theology as an ecumenical resource for moving beyond the impasses of Western determinism.

This previously unpublished article by Paul Evdokimov addresses the question of the new man at the crossroads of the contemporary religious crisis and modern anthropologies. Drawing on engaged theological meditation, the text confronts the great secular ideologies — positivism, Nietzscheanism, Marxism, existentialism — with the Christian vision of man. The central idea is that atheistic humanism, despite its Promethean ambitions, fails to produce a genuine human renewal, as it remains prisoner of the "old man." Only the "second birth" in Christ, understood as participation in divine holiness, constitutes an authentic transcendence. The theological contribution of the article lies in the articulation between patristic anthropology, ecclesiology and eschatology: holiness, the universal vocation of the baptized, is presented as the Orthodox response to the modern quest for a new man, rooted in the tradition of the Fathers and open to dialogue with the contemporary world.