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Highly praised for the clarity of his writing style by Zenkovsky and Nicholas Lossky in both their classic histories of Russian philosophy (and again rated overall by Zenkovsky as the greatest Russian philosopher), Frank nonetheless was criticized by them, especially by Lossky (also a prominent contemporary Russian philosopher) for articulating a sense of "total unity" allegedly at odds with Christian distinctions between God and Creation. Another prominent contemporary Russian philosopher, Nikolai Berdyaev, likewise [http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1939_446.html praised Frank’s overall contribution to Christian philosophy, while criticizing what Berdyaev called a monism inadequately taking into account the nature of evil], although Berdyaev's own anti-ascetic charismatic emphasis is alleged to fall outside of Orthodox tradition by Fr. Seraphim Rose among others.
Frank’s writings as they relate to cosmology and anthropology arguably are not problematic from the standpoint of Orthodoxy when read in light of recent scholarship on St. Maximus the Confessor's work, which they closely parallel, and to the application of hesychasm to psychology articulated by Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos and others. Frank’s philosophy parallels Vlachos’ writings in not emphasizing individual personalism in the same way as Berdyaev (along with commonalities), stressing personhood in the unfathomable “hidden God” of the Cross and Resurrection. Unlike the philosophical writings of two prominent contemporary Russian Orthodox priests, Fathers Sergius Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky, Frank's work never was condemned as heretical; he did not develop Sophianism or Sophiology as they did. He shared some of the same influences but with his own specific intellectual genealogy as noted above.
In terms of theodicy, Frank in his works ''The Fall of the Idols'' and ''The Meaning of Life'' shows keen awareness of the suffering and disruption of Russian Orthodox life amid the unleashing of great evil, which he identifies with demonic idolatry, in its objectifying self and others unto death. His biographer has said his approach to evil as of inconsequence in the face of love may also reflect Frank's need for tranquility amid the turmoils of both 20th-century refugee life. He criticized Western Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin as a source of disconnect from experiential Christian faith that he saw as the root of 20th-century totalitarian ideologies and a certain type of heartless Western rationalism, and upheld Orthodox Trinitarian teaching as distinct from Catholic theology. Frank disagreed with Berdyaev's brief post-World War II reconciliation with the Soviet state as naive, seeing the Soviet system as totalitarian evil, although he had earlier in exile defended the post-Tikhonite Moscow Patriarchate's situation under the Soviets. While he wrote hopefully amid Communist and Nazi threats to Christianity of a potential Christian universalism, highly praised the writings of the ancient Sufi Muslim mystical writer Hussayn ibn-Mansur al-Hallaj, and had connections in the diaspora with the YMCA press and the World Council of Churches as sources of refugee aid, he was not active in organized ecumenism, and resisted American Protestant influence on the YMCA Russian youth movement among emigres.
