Christ as the Watermark of Divine Love: Expanding the Boundaries of Eastern Orthodox Ecumenism and Interreligious Encounter

The article is a personal theological reflection on ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue by one of the commission of drafters of the Ecumenical Patriarchate's 2020 social teaching text For the Life of the World: Toward an Orthodox Social Ethos (=FLOW). The text argues that FLOW, despite being innovative for Orthodoxy, needs its boundaries expanded theologically. The section on Christian ecumenism is still quite conservative in character. It acknowledges that the Orthodox Church is committed to ecumenism but it does not explicitly acknowledge the ecclesiality of non-Orthodox churches. The author puts forward a form of qualified ecclesiological exclusivism that affirms that non-Orthodox churches are tacitly Orthodox containing “a grain of Orthodoxy” (Sergii Bulgakov). Strangely, FLOW's section on inter-religious dialogue is much more radical than its section on ecumenism. The author builds theologically on FLOW's positive affirmation of other religions as containing “seeds of the Word”, in particular, Islam containing ‘beauty and spiritual truths' and Judaism as being Orthodoxy’s “elder brother.” The essay ends by sketching a Trinitarian theology of other religions drawing on ideas from Maximus the Confessor, Bulgakov, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Raimundo Panikkar amongst others.

La dimensione gnomica dell’uomo nel pensiero di Massimo il Confessore. Gli scritti dal 628-640

The Gnomic Dimension of Human Being in the Conception of Maxim the Confessor. Writings between 628-640. It is certain that any of the patristic researches regarding the thought of St. Maximus the Confessor must explore the philosophical, biblical and patristic roots of the Maximian Corpus. This is the main purposes of the present article: to explore the theological thinking of Maximus, throughout his writings, which were drafted between 628-640. It is useful for our research to highlight the historical process of the development of his anthropological perspective, in order to better understand the concept of gnome (γνώμη). Keywords: will, gnome, anthropology, Maximus Confessor, philosophy, patristic theology.

Some Notes on “playing Logos” in Ambiguum 71 of St Maximus the Confessor

In the Ambigua to John 71, Maximus the Confessor discusses a passage of Gregory Nazianzen describing divine Logos that “plays in all kinds of forms.” The article emphasises four main approaches of the Ambiguum 71 to ‘acquit’ the image of ‘playful’ God. Firstly, St Maximus involves the hyperbolic language of Pseudo-Dionysius to indicate the superiority of divine ‘game’ over any kind of prudency or playfulness. Secondly, God’s playing can be discovered in His providence towards the sensible creations. The third step introduces all the material world as a God’s plaything, which can nevertheless be an object of natural contemplation. The fourth approach is merely moral, and its pathetic language conceals tensions between St Maximus’ and St Gregory’s patterns of thinking. Finally, all four parts are linked in a single structure derived from the triad “practical philosophy – natural contemplation – mystical theology,” which was often used by St Maximus.

Eastern Church Fathers on Being Human—Dichotomy in Essence and Wholeness in Deification

The article traces the formation of Eastern Christian anthropology as a new religious and philosophical tradition within the Early Byzantine culture. The notion “Patristics” is reasoned as a corpus of ideas of the Church Fathers, both Eastern and Western. The term “Eastern Patristics” means the works by Greek-Byzantine Church Fathers, who in the theological disputes with the Western Church Fathers elaborated the Christian creed. Based on an analysis of the texts of Greek-Byzantine Church Fathers, the most important provisions of Eastern Patristics are deduced and discussed, which determined the specificity of Christian anthropology. In this context, different approaches of the Eastern Fathers to the explanation of the Old Testament thesis on the creation of man in God’s image and likeness and the justification of the duality of human essence are shown. Particular attention is paid to considering the idea of deification as overcoming the human dualism and the entire created universe, the doctrine of the Divine Logoi as God’s energies, and the potential elimination of the antinomianism of the earthly and Divine worlds. The article reflects the anthropological ideas of the pre-Nicene Church Father Irenaeus, the non-canonical early Christian work The Shepherd of Hermas, and the teachings on the man of the classical Eastern Patristics period by Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor.

«One Energeia» in Cyril of Alexandria (Commentary on John 6, 53)

В настоящей статье анализируется одно выражение свт. Кирилла Александрийского (ок. 378-444). В своём «Толковании на Евангелие от Иоанна» (Ин. 6, 53) святитель, объясняя действие Евхаристии через сравнение с воскрешением дочери Иаира (Лк. 8, 53-54) посредством повеления Христа и протягивания Его руки, называет животворящую ἐνέργεια одной и сродной. В VII в. это место было введено моноэнергистами для доказательства того, что во Христе есть только одна ἐνέργεια. В статье сначала рассматривается, какое значение придавалось выражению «одна и сродная ἐνέργεια» различными поборниками моноэнергизма, прп. Максимом Исповедником (579/580-662), а также несколькими богословами Нового времени. После этого исследуется, что именно подразумевал сам свт. Кирилл, когда писал этот фрагмент. Автор приходит к выводу, что одна ἐνέργεια - это божественная ἐνέργεια, которая действует как через повеление, так и через прикосновение. Это не синтез божественной и человеческой энергий. Человеческая ἐνέργεια не упоминается в этом контексте, но из других мест становится ясным, что, согласно свт. Кириллу, Христос имеет также и человеческую ἐνέργεια. This article analyzes one expression of St. Cyril of Alexandria (c. 378-444). In his Commentary on John 6, 53, the archbishop elucidates the working of the Eucharist by comparing it with the raising of Jairus’s daughter through Christ’s command and the stretching of his hand. In this context St. Cyril calls the life-giving ἐνέργεια one and cognate. In the seventh century, this passage was adduced by the Monoenergists to argue that in Christ there was only one ἐνέργεια. In this article, at first it is studied what meaning was given to the phrase “one and cognate ἐνέργεια” by various Monoenergist protagonists, by Maximus the Confessor (579/80-662), and also by a few modern theologians. After that the author investigates what St. Cyril himself will have had in mind when he wrote this passage. He comes to the conclusion that the one ἐνέργεια is the divine ἐνέργεια, which is at work both through the command and through the touch. It is not a synthesis of the divine and human ἐνέργειαι. The human ἐνέργεια is not mentioned in this context, but from other passages it is made clear that according to St. Cyril, Christ also had a human ἐνέργεια.