Category: Ecclesiology

Two Schools: What the Council of Crete Means for the Future of Orthodox Theology

· Seraphim Danckaert
Various media reports and editorials have described the controversies before, during, and after the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, recently held during Pentecost on the island of Crete. Some have concluded that the Council’s difficulties were the result of geopolitics, and can therefore be explained away as little more than an ecclesial version of the larger political and cultural…

Chalcedonian Orthodoxy and Non-Chalcedonian Heterodoxy

· Guest Author
The title of this essay may startle many who assume that union of the Orthodox with the Non-Chalcedonians (the historic Coptic, Ethiopian, Eritrean, West Syrian (Syriac/Jacobite), Armenian, and Indian (Malankara) churches) is imminent. Such an assumption is due to ignorance among many Anglophone Orthodox of the criticism to which eminent Orthodox theologians in other countries have subjected the dialogue between the Orthodox…

A New Ecclesiology for the Orthodox Church?

· Seraphim Danckaert
Orthodox Christians often find themselves answering the following question: why is Orthodoxy divided along ethnic lines into different churches? At least officially, the answer to that question has been quite clear: we are not divided; we are one Church, united in faith and worship, with an administrative structure that organizes itself along local lines, in accordance with the ancient traditions and canon…

Is Orthodoxy Really United?: A Question from a Reader

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
I recently received the following question from a reader (slightly edited to remove identifying details): I am aware of one Orthodox church parish leaving one Orthodox group to go to another Orthodox group because of some issue. Doesn’t this kind of dispel the idea of the Orthodox being a unified church organization as it is in the case of the Roman Catholics?…

The Problem of Authority: How Do We Know What Is True?

· Guest Author
By Mark Meador When formerly Protestant converts to Orthodoxy (or Roman Catholicism) recount the theological reasons for their conversion, it is not uncommon to hear among those reasons that they were persuaded by “the authority of the Church.” Once you become convinced of the Church’s authority, the telling goes, everything else falls into place. While this seems to be sufficient for the…

Georges Florovsky’s Model of Orthodox Ecclesiology

· Guest Author
By Dr. Lewis Shaw From Window Quarterly 2, 3 (1991); ACRAG c. 1991. (Source) Editors’ note [from Window Quarterly]: George Florovsky (1892-1979) is one of the most eminent Russian theologians of this century. The son of a Russian priest, he graduated in arts at Odessa University (1916), subsequently lecturing there in philosophy (1919-20). Leaving Russia in 1920, he went first to Sofia…

Orthodoxy and the Problem of Choice: Converting Out of Postmodern Pluralism

· Richard Barrett
C. S. Lewis once famously remarked that “mere” Christianity, as he conceived of it, …is… like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms…[and] it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a…

Did the Ecumenical Patriarch say that the Church is divided?: Response to an Anonymous Greek Orthodox Priest

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
An anonymous piece by a self-identified Greek Orthodox priest entitled “On the Recent Events in Jerusalem and their Ecclesiological Underpinnings” has recently been circulating in response to the recent meeting in Jerusalem by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Francis, especially regarding certain statements by the Ecumenical Patriarch about the Church being “divided in time” and its ecclesiological ramifications. It’s been republished in…

Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy and “Ecumenism”: An Editorial

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Recent discussions on some posts on this weblog, as well as some I’ve seen elsewhere on social media, have spurred questions about what the official positions of this site are, what my own positions are, etc. I have even had a few instances where commenters quoted to me from Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, attempting to catch me in a contradiction with something I…

Do They See the Difference in Our Lives?: Encyclical on Ecumenism, the Pope and the Patriarch

· Guest Author
Translator’s Note: His Eminence Nicholas (Hatzinikolaou) is metropolitan bishop of Mesogaia and Lavriotiki, suburban areas of Athens, Greece. He studied physics in Thessaloniki, Harvard, and MIT (receiving his PhD from the latter), and went on to work for NASA. His career took a decidedly different turn, however, when, after several years on Mt Athos, he became a monk in 1989 at the…