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the four theologians discussed when writing about the problem of evil.
Secondly, Men at times displays a measured reluctance to set out his own view
clearly, either out of enthusiasm for his readers to come to their own
conclusions, or due to a particular philosophical consideration: ‘He didn’t
believe in finished systems. He found joy precisely in understatement,
contradiction, and incompletion… this witnessed to [the idea’s] life’. 6
This aspect of Men’s work becomes even more relevant when we
consider the variety of genres in which Men operated. Many of the published
‘works’ of Alexander Men are in fact written records of his lectures, sermons or
‘discussions’ with his parishioners. Before the period of relative religious
freedom in the late 1980s, these may well have been given impromptu to a
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small group at home and written down either from a cassette or memory. The
‘discussion’ entitled About Good and Evil and the published question and answer
session The Strugle and Polarisation of Good and Evil, which we shall use as
sources in this essay are good examples. As Tavrov tells us in his book The Son
of Man: About Fr. Alexander Men, ‘I completely admit that in conversations with
different people, Father Alexander could speak out differently, that his words
could seem contradictory. When talking to someone, he always talked with a
specific personality and a specific situation and related to this kind of approach
as one of principal importance’. 8
Another potential methodological issue that does not seem to have been
discussed in the Russian literature on Men is the possibility of development in
Men’s thought itself. As we shall see in Part 2, there do seem to be some
differences between In Search of the Way, the Truth and the Life and even later
written works such as Isagogics and Bibliological Dictionary. This may be the
result of differences in intended readership, but it may also be that over the
twenty or so years between the writing of In Search of the Way, the Truth and the
Life and Bibliological Dictionary, Men’s views changed and adapted.
Secondary literature concerning Men generally falls into two categories:
first largely biographical works in English and Russian that only touch on the
content of his writings and lectures, such as Evdokimov: Fr Alexander Men:

6 Tavrov, Andrei. The Son of Man: About Father Alexander Men, p61. Тавров, Андрей. Сын
Человеческий: Об отце Александре Мене. [Книгоноша, Москва, 2014] [Knigonosha, Moscow,
2014]
7 Ilyushenko includes this kind of material in his book on Fr. Alexander Men, Father Alexander Men:
Life, Death, Immortality. Илюшенко, Владимир. Отец Александр Мень: Жизнь, Смерть,
Бессмертие. [Эксмо, Москва, 2013] [Eksmo, Moscow, 2013]
8 Tavrov, p61

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