God, Man and the Church

God, Man and the Church is a penetrating examination of the human relationship – both as an individual and in society – with God. For Solovyev, personal religion can only be satisfied in social religion. Private prayer finds its fulfilment in the Church's liturgy, and the Church is the highest expression of humanity's religious aspirations. Here Solovyev's mystical understanding of the Church provides the basis for a fundamental analysis of the idea of the state from a Christian viewpoint. During the years after its first publication in Russian in 1885, God, Man and the Church rapidly established a reputation as a seminal work of Russian theology. Donald Attwater's translation, first published in 1937 and which made the work available in the English language for the first time, has become a classic in its own right.