Turning to Tradition

I spent the better part of a day reading and thoroughly enjoying a new book by the Orthodox priest and historian D. Oliver Herbel, whom I previously interviewed about his last book (and whom I hope to interview in the coming weeks about this present work). His latest work is Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church (Oxford UP, 2014), 256pp.

This is church history at its best: an outstandingly well written scholarly book that is carefully researched, crisply written, and free of polemics. It is not a romanticized founding mythology, and in fact it carefully and calmly skewers a few such mythologies on offer about American Orthodox history. While written by someone who is obviously himself Orthodox, and who therefore brings a sympathetic "insider's" perspective to bear at certain points, the author has managed to be commendably objective and even-handed in dealing with issues and personages that are still today controverted for some. This is anything but a work of what another historian, Robert Taft, calls "confessional propaganda," and we have every reason to be grateful to Fr. Oliver for that. His book reveals considerable scholarly acumen, but it is also something that the proverbial person in the pew could easily access, not least because it is (almost!) blessedly free of jargon and abstruse theorizing.

In five compact chapters, the author reviews individuals of significance in the ongoing historical development of Orthodoxy in the United States, beginning with Alexis Toth, the former Greek Catholic chased out of his Church by Latin chauvinism and intransigence over the question of a married priesthood (even though--adding to the ineffable absurdity of it all--the man was widowed by the time he came to the attention of the infamous Archbishop John Ireland).

Chapters two and three deal, respectively, with Raphael Morgan and Moses Berry, both involved with various efforts to bring African Americans into contact with Orthodoxy, and vice versa. These two figures were the least known to me and I read these chapters with especial interest.

Chapter four deals with history closer to our own day, and I had read some of this more than fifteen years ago when I first came across Peter Gillquist's work leading evangelicals into Orthodoxy. Herbel amplifies, clarifies, and expands the "founding narratives" of the evangelicals-cum-Orthodox, whose lead apologist, Gillquist, left out crucial details in his book Becoming Orthodox. But Fr. Oliver has unearthed some staggering details in this chapter connected to the first rebuffs by the Greeks, the painful Ben Lomond situation in California, and the scandals surrounding the Antiochian priest Joseph Allen, who remarried in violation of the longstanding canon that no widowed priest can re-marry and remain a priest--but remain he did and does as a priest in the Antiochian Archdiocese. (Along the way, we also hear some of the details of how the Orthodox Study Bible came to be--a version with many problems.) In lesser hands, this could have been simple muckraking, but in Fr. Oliver's hands one never has the sense that he is either downplaying these scandals apologetically or sensationalizing them polemically. Instead, he simply and calmly narrates the various stories, whose juicier details I will not mention here--you need to read the book to get those.

What makes this study so worthwhile is Herbel's use of the concept of "anti-traditional tradition" to show, again and again, how those interested in, and eventually converts to, Orthodoxy often saw themselves as moving towards a very "traditional" expression of Christianity, one which was going to stand against the currents of the age, and this has some truth to it, especially for Christians coming from, say, Anglicanism or other "liberalizing" Western traditions. But as Herbel shows, these converts, for all their "traditionalism," were in fact radicals, that is, they were engaging in a quintessentially modern American act of venturing off on their own in search of new roots in a new church that was, in fact, one of the oldest expressions of apostolic Christianity on offer. The fact that some of these new Orthodox have turned around and denounced their former traditions, and indeed this country, is no surprise because the American experience is full of such people doing precisely that at the various "revival" (or, as Herbel prefers, "restorationist") movements that have periodically swept this country. Such is the way of all converts it seems--whether to some form of Christianity, or to a political cause like Prohibition or the abolition of slavery.

In sum, Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church is an excellent study and deserves a place on every bibliography and library shelf devoted to religious history, American exceptionalism, and of course Orthodox history as well as relations between Orthodoxy and other Christian traditions.

Stay tuned for an interview with Fr. Oliver next week....

I Believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic....Community?

Who among us has not heard people describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious"? Or as not believing in "organized religion"? Or as saying "Jesus yes, church no!" Every semester I struggle to help my students see that Christianity from the very beginning has been communal and ecclesial. The idea that you could be a Christian and never go to Church, nor need regular fellowship with other believers, is a modern fantasy of American individualism disconnected from apostolic Christianity.

A recent hefty collection explores some of these understandings of "community" in ecclesiology today. Many chapters look interesting, as the table of contents (PDF here) shows, but the collection happily features no fewer than six chapters devoted to Orthodox and other Eastern Christian reflections and realities. Peter de Mey et al, eds., Believing in Community: Ecumenical Reflections on the Church (Peeters, 2013), 622pp.

About this book we are told:

Two important events this year make it clear that ecclesiology still deserves a prominent place on the theological agenda. Pope Francis announced the creation of a council of cardinals to assist him in governing the world-wide Catholic Church. During the next assembly of the World Council of Churches the long awaited Faith & Order statement on The Church: Towards a Common Vision will be officially received. In this volume more than 40 authors (among whom well-known theologians such as André Birmelé, William Cavanaugh, Michael Fahey, Bradford Hinze, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Paul Murray, Bernard Prusak, Ioan Sauca, Myriam Wijlens, Susan Wood and many others) engage in an ecumenical reflection on the Church, focusing on four major themes. The book starts with several essays by authors representing different fields in the humanities dealing – often from a postmodern perspective – with ‘Community, Individualization, Belonging’. The second part of the book, ‘Strengthening Roman Catholic Ecclesiology’, offers reflections on important topics such as the sinfulness of the Church, the sacramentality of the Church, lay ministries, theologians and the magisterium, to end with contributions on eschatological ecclesiology and the link between ecclesiology and the Catholic Church in dialogue with people of other faiths. In the next part Protestant and Orthodox scholars offer contributions to the renewal of their own ecclesiologies. In the final and longest part of the volume the reader is provided with ‘Reflections on the Future of the Ecumenical Dialogue’.

History: Instructive but not Normative?

As I have often commented on here (see here, here, and here, inter alia), the problems of how we use and abuse history remain a serious concern and ongoing question to me. This is far from being an exclusively "Eastern" problem, either, as debates among Catholics over such issues as liturgical changes and papal authority easily reveal. In the coming days, I hope to have an interview with the Orthodox historian and priest D. Oliver Herbel about his new book that touches on some of these questions. But in the meantime, a recent collection of essays explores some of these questions, particularly the question of how theology relates to history and vice-versa: T. Merrigan et al, Tradition and the Normativity of History (Peeters, 2013), x+215pp.

About this book we are told:

This collection of essays by some of the world’s leading theological voices aims at unfolding and reflecting upon the complex relationship between theology and history, with a special focus on the development of tradition. The articles gathered here make it clear that the role of historical consciousness within theology and the contribution of historical studies to the theological disciplines, are of paramount importance, and fundamentally alter the shape of the theological enterprise. Rather than destroying theology, tradition and theological truth claims, historical consciousness contributes to the deconstruction of all facile appeals to history in order to support theological claims, and works to prevent us from proposing simplistic readings of tradition in terms of continuity or discontinuity. Moreover, it offers new opportunities to theology to engage in the process of recontextualization in the contemporary context, taking into account its sensibility to historicity, contingency and particularity. It allows us, for example, to think resurrection anew, and to constructively criticize our forgetfulness of dangerous memories. It is not by overcoming these features of the contemporary age that theology will succeed in its striving after theological truth, but by discerning how such truth is revealed precisely within, and thanks to, particular and contingent histories, and not in spite of historicity, contingency and particularity. When this is done, the dialogue between theology and history/historical studies contributes to a contemporary reconsideration of the radical dialogical character of revelation, that is, of the way in which God reveals Godself in history. It is the hope of this collective volume that it will further deepen the understanding of revelation that was developed in Vatican II’s constitution on divine revelation, Dei verbum.

Religion, Ethnicity and Contested Nationhood in the Post-Ottoman World

2014 marks, of course, as I have noted several times recently, the centenary of the outbreak of the so-called Great War, the conflict which, at its end, saw several empires--the Russian, the Habsburg, and the Ottoman--in ruins. As the latter of these empires collapsed, what fate befell its various ethnic groups? How long was the shadow of the Ottoman collapse? Did it extend to our own day? A recent publication I just came across helps us explore these questions more deeply: Jørgen S. Nielsenet et al, Religion, Ethnicity and Contested Nationhood in the Former Ottoman Space (Brill, 2011), 294pp.

About this book we are told:

There has been a growing interest in recent years in reviewing the continued impact of the Ottoman empire even long after its demise at the end of the First World War. The wars in former Yugoslavia, following hot on the civil war in Lebanon, were reminders that the settlements of 1918-22 were not final. While many of the successor states to the Ottoman empire, in east and west, had been built on forms of nationalist ideology and rhetoric opposed to the empire, a newer trend among historians has been to look at these histories as Ottoman provincial history. The present volume is an attempt to bring some of those histories from across the former Ottoman space together. They cover from parts of former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece to Lebanon, including Turkey itself, providing rich material for comparing regions which normally are not compared.

Who Are These Pan-Heretics Practicing the Arch-Sin of "Ecumenism"?

Each year during this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, I pause to do what old Latin manuals for confession call an "examination of conscience," asking whether any significant advances towards the goal of unity have been made over the last twelve months. Can we report any "successes?" Or should we instead confess any failures--either new ones, or exacerbations (or an unsatisfactory mitigation) of existing ones?

I made the mistake before Christmas of getting entangled in a Facebook "discussion" with a few especially embittered Orthodox who denounced me, and all non-Orthodox, as heretics at best, dwelling in unmitigated darkness without even so much as the grace of baptism to save my soul. I am guilty, inter alia, of subscribing to the "pan-heresy of ecumenism," which means I am also ipso facto a "modernist," a Latin "neo-papalist," and in general someone who has not followed the apparently infallible and all-knowing "Holy Fathers" who were, we are cheerfully led to believe without a shred of evidence, against all these things--however anachronistic it is to claim such. As I never tire of pointing out (and did this week to my graduate students in ecclesiology), if we really practiced the pan-heresy of ecumenism in the manner ascribed to us, we would have achieved a perfectly useless and totally anemic "unity" a long time ago. The fact we are still not united is evidence that most if not all of us are not willing to compromise on fundamental truth-claims.

What was striking was how widely these charges were applied on certain Facebook fora to others within Orthodoxy as well. When I posed a simple question asking for a definition of these charges in clear and commonly accepted terms (Catholics, a century on, still do not agree on a shared definition of what the "modernism" was against which Pius X raged), and for concrete evidence of them, including names of real live human beings who openly and admittedly subscribe to these views, I was of course given none. Instead one person stormed off with the predictable and amusing charge that she wouldn't supply evidence because, as a non-Orthodox, I was too blinded by "pride" and heresy to be able to accept the evidence with "humility." That, of course, is just a cowardly dodge and it meant what I had long suspected: she was dealing in caricatures and indulging in demonization of those who do not accept the particularly virulent ideology she and others have substituted for genuine faith practiced with real charity instead of hostility.

Before Christmas, when I was discussing the outstanding new book Orthodox Constructions of the West, I began by noting the importance which Robert Taft puts on confessing one's sins against unity and being honest about them. Taft lamented that not many do that in the Christian East. Well one historian and Orthodox priest has just done that in an outstanding reflection. Fr. Oliver Herbel writes a powerful and eloquent reflection here, and I very much urge you to go read it. (I will have an interview in the coming days with Fr. Oliver about his new book, Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church.)

And if you are inclined to wait a bit, and reflect on where we have come in the past century, and where we are headed ("we" being those of us committed to propagating and vigorously advancing the "pan-heresy of ecumenism" in the belief that our Lord wants us all to be united [cf. John 17]), then you may want to hold out until April for the publication of Michael Kinnamon,  Can a Renewal Movement Be Renewed?: Questions for the Future of Ecumenism (Eerdmans, 2014), 176pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

There is no doubt that ecumenism occupies a prominent place in the history of the church in the twentieth century: countless churches have been renewed through encounter with Christian sisters and brothers in other confessions and cultures. But it is not clear that this ecumenical impulse will continue to figure prominently in the church’s story.

In this book Michael Kinnamon argues that the ecumenical movement, which has given such energy and direction to the church, needs to be reconceived in a way that provides renewing power for the church in this era -- and he shows how this might happen. He names the problems with ecumenism, identifies strengths and accomplishments upon which the church now can build, and suggests practical, concrete steps we can take in the direction of revitalization.

The Politics of Iconoclasm and the Modernity of the Nation-State

A quarter-century ago now, Alasdair MacIntyre, widely recognized as the most influential moral philosopher of the last half-century, wrote that "no coherent political imagination is any longer possible for those condemned to inhabit, and to think and act in terms of the modernity of the twentieth-century nation-state." For that nation-state has been created by, and in the image of, the liberalism of the so-called Enlightenment and it has such monopolistic powers that it obviates all alternatives, leading to the "imaginative sterility of the modern state," which can only be resisted and outwitted through the creation of new local forms of community beyond the state's reach and imaginative power, a power that is such that it arouses in the hearts and minds of millions the willingness to kill themselves on its behalf, as MacIntyre puts it in a famous passage frequently quoted:

The modern nation-state, in whatever guise, is a dangerous and unmanageable institution, presenting itself on the one hand as a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services, which is always about to, but never actually does, give its clients value for money, and on the other as a repository of sacred values, which from time to time invites one to lay down one’s life on its behalf… [I]it is like being asked to die for the telephone company ("Poetry as Political Philosophy: Notes on Burke and Yeats," published in 1988 and republished in 2006 in The Tasks of Philosophy: Volume 1: Selected Essays).

This is not, of course, some kind of "conservative" rant against "big government" or the "welfare state" or some kind of "liberal" rant against "militarism." MacIntyre argues that all politics is flawed today: "Modern systematic politics, whether liberal, conservative, radical, or socialist, simply has to be rejected from a standpoint that owes genuine allegiance to the tradition of the virtues; for modern politics itself expresses in its institutional forms a systematic rejection of that tradition" (After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory).

These thoughts of MacIntyre, who has done more to shape my own thinking about politics and philosophy than anyone (but whose political arguments are not without problems, as this very perceptive essay carefully shows), came back to me recently as I just finished reading a compelling and fascinating new book: James Noyes, The Politics of Iconoclasm: Religion, Violence and the Culture of Image-Breaking in Christianity and Islam (I.B. Tauris, 2013), 288pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

From sixteenth-century Geneva to urban developments in Mecca today, The Politics of Iconoclasm offers a bold and original history of image-breaking and of the culture of violence and its paradoxical roots in the desire for renewal. Examining these dynamics of nationhood, technology, destruction and memory, a historical journey is described in which the temple is razed and replaced by the machine.

This is a fascinating book whose central thesis is that any outbreak of iconoclasm--whether in Calvinist Geneva, Wahhabist Afghanistan, revolutionary France, Nazi Germany, or the Balkans in the 1990s--is always the prelude to political reconfigurations and the emergence of a new state or new state actors. The theological arguments about icons and iconoclasm are in fact secondary in this book: "a study of iconoclasm must examine such acts as political statements against authority as much as theological statements against the mediation of divine beauty" (12). He goes on to note that in many cases it is difficult if not impossible to isolate one single cause of, or reason for, iconoclasm, but that it is often motivated by a tangle of theo-political reasons. In, e.g., Geneva of the sixteenth century, "beginning with the attack on Geneva's St. Pierre Cathedral in 1535," it was then, and remains today among historians, difficult to know "whether Calvinist iconoclasm had primarily religious or political motives" (14).

This mention of the cathedral of St. Pierre brought back a powerful memory for me. I was in Geneva in 1992 as a freshman undergraduate attending a meeting of the World Council of Churches, and I wandered over one afternoon to the cathedral to see it. At that time, I had never heard of "iconoclasm" and knew nothing about it in its Byzantine expressions; my ignorance of Calvinism was only slightly less--though I had heard hoary tales about Calvinists in Scotland from my Glaswegian grandmother, who thought them rather insufferable and who used to suffer their taunts at being a "crypto-papist" for belonging to the Scottish Episcopal Church (which has rarely if ever been a hotbed of "high" church practices comparable to the so-called Anglo-Catholics). I had heard, too, of how the churches of the continental Reformation, particularly in Switzerland, were usually much more spartan inside than the relatively "high" Anglican church of my upbringing with its wonderful carved rood-screen, neo-Gothic structures, stained glass windows, and frescos and mosaics covering virtually every inch of wall space. Having come from such a sensually rich parish, nothing prepared me for the shock of the cathedral in Geneva: I found it an acutely cold and barren place for reasons I could scarcely articulate then. Indeed, I have never, before or since, been in such a frigid, vacuous building, though I have been in many Protestant churches of various traditions. The Geneva cathedral felt as though there remained in her cold, lapidary walls a palpable memory of the "iconographic violence" done to them and the rest of the building.There was indeed a very strong sense of an "absent presence" so to speak. I could not wait to leave the building, and could not then, nor certainly now, understand how anyone could find such a place a warm, inviting, or remotely compelling place to worship. I know that one can worship God in a forest, in Auschwitz or the Gulag, in jail, or in much more modest surroundings than, say, the Vatican basilica or Hagia Sophia or Westminster Abbey or Chartres, but why would one want to? If, to use the familiar line from Dostoevsky, "beauty will save the world," then the house of God should be as beautiful as possible.

But let me not lapse here into sermonizing. Let me instead commend this book that insightfully traces the complex relations between Church and state--or, better, between "religion" and "politics"--in various times and places. It is an important book and deserves a place in courses not only on iconoclasm, but also political theology, and art history. If time permits, I will say more about Noyes' book in the weeks ahead as I am preparing a public lecture on iconoclasm.

Syriac Christianity in India

Too often today when people think of the "Middle East" they think it's a Muslim stronghold--which in many places it is, and may well become totally given the persecution of Christians in places like Egypt and Syria--but there are of course longstanding Christian roots there. And too often when people think of India they think it's a Muslim-Hindu country, which it is in large part, but here again there is a substantial Christian majority. In both places, Syriac Christianity has played a long and large role, and a new book published this month helps us understand that tradition which Sebastian Brock famously called the "third lung" (apart from the Latin and Greek) of apostolic Christianity: Dietmar Winkler, Syriac Christianity in the Middle East and India: Contributions and Challenges (Gorgias Press, 2014), 182pp.

About this book we are told by the publisher:

The present volume acknowledges the contributions of Syriac Christians in the fields of culture, education and civil society throughout the history in the Middle East and India, and examines the challenges of living and professing the Christian faith as a minority in a multi-religious and pluralistic society, giving special attention to religious freedom and personal status. It deals with the experience of Christian-Muslim co-existence in the context of the present states of the Middle East, and with the experience of Christian-Hindu co-existence in India. The book also elaborates the vital problem of continuous emigration of Christians from India and the Middle East, which is particularly for the latter a serious problem and challenge. To support Christianity in the Middle East and the dialogue of the Churches among themselves and with Judaism and Islam, Pope Benedict XVI visited the Holy Land in 2009. Frans Bowen gives a profound analysis of the visit and the perspectives after the Pope’s visit in the last part of the book.

The publisher also gives us a detailed table of contents, which you may read here.

Iconoclasms Past and Present

With a colleague, an art historian expert in Renaissance Roman Catholic art, especially in Italy, I'm giving a lecture next month on "iconoclasms past and present." One of the people I'm drawing on, of course, is Leslie Brubaker, co-editor of a recent book: Stacy Boldrick, Leslie Brubaker et al, eds., Striking Images, Iconoclasms Past and Present (Ashgate, 2013), 236pp.

About this book we are told:

All cultures make, and break, images. Striking Images, Iconoclasms Past and Present explores how and why people have made and modified images and other cultural material from pre-history into the 21st century. With its impressive chronological sweep and disciplinary breadth, this is the first book about iconoclasm (the breaking of images) and the transformation of broader sets of signs that includes contributions from archaeologists, curators, and museum conservators as well as historians of art, literature and religious studies. The chapters examine themes critical to the study of iconoclasm: violence, punishment, memory, intentionality, ruins and relics and their survival. The conclusion shows how cross-disciplinary debate amongst the contributors informed Tate Britain's 'Art Under Attack' exhibition (2013) and addresses the challenges iconoclasm presents to the modern museum.By juxtaposing objects and places usually considered in isolation, Striking Images raises provocative questions about our understandings of cross-cultural differences and the value of representational objects from the broken swords of pre-historical bog graves to the Bamiyan Buddhas and contemporary art. Are any such objects ever 'finished', or are they simply subject to constant transformation? In dialogue with each other, the essays consider this question and expand the field of iconoclasm - and cultural - studies.

The Old Testament in Orthodox Tradition

Oxford University Press has just released the latest book by Eugen J. Pentiuc, professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline: The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition provides a general overview and a detailed analysis of the primary ways in which the Old Testament has been received, interpreted and conveyed within Eastern Orthodox tradition.

About this book we are told:

"This work is a major event: the first comprehensive and thorough analysis of the role of the Old Testament in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, written by the foremost Eastern Orthodox scholar of Scripture, internationally respected within both Church and Academy alike. Opening up the scriptural culture of Eastern Orthodoxy in all its dimensions, this illuminating volume will richly reward every reader," V. Rev. Dr. John Behr, Dean and Professor of Patristics, St. Vladimir's Seminary.
The book fills a vacuum in scholarly literature on the history of biblical interpretation. A special emphasis is placed on the hallmarks of Eastern Orthodox reception and interpretation of the Old Testament, including:

• the centrality of Scripture within Tradition
  
• a blend of flexibility and strictness at all levels of the faith community
  
• integrative function and holistic use of the sacred text
  
• a tensed unity of discursive and intuitive modes of interpretation
  
• a dynamic synergy between formative and informative goals in the use of Scripture.
  

According to Michael Coogan, editor of The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Books of the Bible, "In this extraordinarily learned book, Pentiuc sheds much-needed light on an often neglected aspect of the history of interpretation of the Bible. Appropriately, he discusses not just texts, but ritual and art as well, so that reading his book is like walking into a lavishly ornamented Eastern Orthodox church where the Divine Liturgy is being celebrated. This view from the inside is an invaluable contribution."

The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition is divided into two parts: Reception and Interpretation. Reception addresses issues such as unity and diversity of the Christian Bible, text, canon, and Tradition. Interpretation focuses on discursive and intuitive Eastern Orthodox modes of interpretation. Patristic exegesis serves as a case study of the discursive modes. The intuitive modes representing the so-called "liturgical exegesis" are subdivided into aural (hymns, psalmody, lectionaries) and visual (portable icons, frescoes, mosaics).

This book offers the first comprehensive examination and analysis of the receipt, transmission, and interpretation of the Old Testament in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. In Orthodoxy, the Old Testament has commonly been equated with the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Jewish Bible attested by fourth- and fifth-century Christian manuscripts. As Eugen Pentiuc shows throughout this work, however, the Eastern Orthodox Church has never closed the door to other text-witnesses or suppressed interpreters' efforts to dig into the less familiar text of the Hebrew Bible for key terms or reading variants.

The first part of the book examines the reception of the Old Testament by the early Church, considering such matters as the paradox of the inclusion of the Jewish scriptures in the Christian Bible, as well as the Eastern Orthodox views on text, canon, and the relationship between Scripture and Tradition. Pentiuc's investigation is not limited to the historic-literary sources but extends to the visual, imaginative, and symbolic aspects of the Church's living tradition. In the second part of the book he looks at the various ways Orthodox Christians have sought to assimilate the Old Testament in the spiritual, liturgical, and doctrinal fabric of their faith community. Special attention is given to liturgy (hymnody, lectionaries, and liturgical symbolism), iconography (frescoes, icons, illuminations), monastic rules and canons, conciliar resolutions, and patristic works in Greek, Syriac and Coptic.

This wide-ranging and accessible work will serve not only to make Orthodox Christians aware of the importance of the Old Testament in their own tradition, but to introduce those who are not Orthodox both to the distinctive ways in which that community approaches scripture and to the modes of spiritual practice characteristic of Eastern Orthodoxy.

xford University Press will release the latest book by Rev. Dr. Eugen J. Pentiuc, Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, on January 9, 2014. The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition provides a general overview and a detailed analysis of the primary ways in which the Old Testament has been received, interpreted and conveyed within Eastern Orthodox tradition.
"This work is a major event: the first comprehensive and thorough analysis of the role of the Old Testament in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, written by the foremost Eastern Orthodox scholar of Scripture, internationally respected within both Church and Academy alike. Opening up the scriptural culture of Eastern Orthodoxy in all its dimensions, this illuminating volume will richly reward every reader," V. Rev. Dr. John Behr, Dean and Professor of Patristics, St. Vladimir's Seminary.
The book fills a vacuum in scholarly literature on the history of biblical interpretation. A special emphasis is placed on the hallmarks of Eastern Orthodox reception and interpretation of the Old Testament, including:

• the centrality of Scripture within Tradition
  
• a blend of flexibility and strictness at all levels of the faith community
  
• integrative function and holistic use of the sacred text
  
• a tensed unity of discursive and intuitive modes of interpretation
  
• a dynamic synergy between formative and informative goals in the use of Scripture.
  

According to Michael Coogan, editor of The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Books of the Bible, "In this extraordinarily learned book, Pentiuc sheds much-needed light on an often neglected aspect of the history of interpretation of the Bible. Appropriately, he discusses not just texts, but ritual and art as well, so that reading his book is like walking into a lavishly ornamented Eastern Orthodox church where the Divine Liturgy is being celebrated. This view from the inside is an invaluable contribution."
The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition is divided into two parts: Reception and Interpretation. Reception addresses issues such as unity and diversity of the Christian Bible, text, canon, and Tradition.
Interpretation focuses on discursive and intuitive Eastern Orthodox modes of interpretation. Patristic exegesis serves as a case study of the discursive modes. The intuitive modes representing the so-called "liturgical exegesis" are subdivided into aural (hymns, psalmody, lectionaries) and visual (portable icons, frescoes, mosaics).
- See more at: http://www.hchc.edu/about/news/news_releases/oxford-university-press-to-publish-rev.-dr.-pentiucs-the-old-testament-in-eastern-orthodox-tradition#sthash.WDcKW57P.dpuf

Oxford University Press will release the latest book by Rev. Dr. Eugen J. Pentiuc, Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, on January 9, 2014. The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition provides a general overview and a detailed analysis of the primary ways in which the Old Testament has been received, interpreted and conveyed within Eastern Orthodox tradition.
"This work is a major event: the first comprehensive and thorough analysis of the role of the Old Testament in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, written by the foremost Eastern Orthodox scholar of Scripture, internationally respected within both Church and Academy alike. Opening up the scriptural culture of Eastern Orthodoxy in all its dimensions, this illuminating volume will richly reward every reader," V. Rev. Dr. John Behr, Dean and Professor of Patristics, St. Vladimir's Seminary.
The book fills a vacuum in scholarly literature on the history of biblical interpretation. A special emphasis is placed on the hallmarks of Eastern Orthodox reception and interpretation of the Old Testament, including:

• the centrality of Scripture within Tradition
  
• a blend of flexibility and strictness at all levels of the faith community
  
• integrative function and holistic use of the sacred text
  
• a tensed unity of discursive and intuitive modes of interpretation
  
• a dynamic synergy between formative and informative goals in the use of Scripture.
  

According to Michael Coogan, editor of The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Books of the Bible, "In this extraordinarily learned book, Pentiuc sheds much-needed light on an often neglected aspect of the history of interpretation of the Bible. Appropriately, he discusses not just texts, but ritual and art as well, so that reading his book is like walking into a lavishly ornamented Eastern Orthodox church where the Divine Liturgy is being celebrated. This view from the inside is an invaluable contribution."
The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition is divided into two parts: Reception and Interpretation. Reception addresses issues such as unity and diversity of the Christian Bible, text, canon, and Tradition.
Interpretation focuses on discursive and intuitive Eastern Orthodox modes of interpretation. Patristic exegesis serves as a case study of the discursive modes. The intuitive modes representing the so-called "liturgical exegesis" are subdivided into aural (hymns, psalmody, lectionaries) and visual (portable icons, frescoes, mosaics).
- See more at: http://www.hchc.edu/about/news/news_releases/oxford-university-press-to-publish-rev.-dr.-pentiucs-the-old-testament-in-eastern-orthodox-tradition#sthash.WDcKW57P.dpuf

Female Deacons in the East

Nearly twenty years ago now the late Pope John Paul II declared that the question of the presbyteral ordination of women was an officially closed question, but that did not touch the question of diaconal ordination, for which, as several reputable Eastern Christian historians have repeatedly provided evidence, we have a good deal of proof in the first millennium. A short new book, to be published at the end of this month, reviews some of that evidence for us: Phyllis Zagano, ed., Ordination of Women to the Diaconate in the Eastern Churches: Essays by Cipriano Vagaggini (Michael Glazier, 2014), 64pp.

About this book we are told:

The question of restoring women to the ordained diaconate surfaced during the Second Vatican Council and continued to resound in academic and pastoral circles well after Pope Paul VI restored the diaconate as a permanent state for the church in the West in 1967. Available for the first time in English, these two documents by Cipriano Vagaggini, OSB. Cam., on the historical details of women ordained as deacons in the Greek and Byzantine traditions demonstrate that women were sacramentally ordained to the major order of deacon over the course of many centuries in many parts of the Greek and Byzantine East. Vagaggini introduces the conclusions to his study by noting that "in Christian antiquity there were different beliefs and tendencies distinguishing between ministry and ministry, ordination and ordination, with regard to the nature and significance of the respective orders or ranks."

The Crusades: A Reader

As I have often noted, few events in history (apart, perhaps, from the sack of Constantinople in 1204, not unconnected to the Crusades) have been as consistently, tendentiously misinterpreted in our time as the Crusades. In April, the second edition of a book some years ago will help us understand the uses and abuses to which present politics subjects the Crusades: S.J. Allen, Emilie Ant, eds., The Crusades: A Reader, Second Edition (University of Toronto Press, 2014), 496pp.

About this new edition we are told:

Over ten years have passed since the first publication of The Crusades: A Reader. In that time, interest in the crusades has increased, fuelled in part by the global interactions of the Muslim world and Western nations. It could be argued that the crusades, more than any other medieval event, have become inextricably linked to present-day political and religious debates.This long-anticipated new edition of The Crusades: A Reader features a chapter that addresses the history of perceptions of the crusades in the modern period, from David Hume and William Wordsworth to World War I political cartoons and crusading rhetoric circulating after 9/11. New Islamic material includes Al-Sulami's The Book of Jihad, a record of Frederick II's visit to Jerusalem in 1229, and a selection of sources detailing the homecoming of those who had ventured to the Holy Land.

Byzantine Bibliophilia

For those interested in books as such, the University of Toronto, which just sent me their new catalogue, has two new books of interest. The first is edited by Barbara Rosenwein, Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World, Second Edition (U Toronto Press, 2013), 552pp.

About this book we are told:

Covering over one thousand years of history and containing primary source material from the European, Byzantine, and Islamic worlds, Barbara H. Rosenwein's Reading the Middle Ages, Second Edition once again brings the Middle Ages to life. Building on the strengths of the first edition, the second edition contains 40 new readings, including 13 translations commissioned especially for this book, and a stunning new 10-plate color insert entitled "Containing the Holy" that brings together materials from the Western, Byzantine, and Islamic religious traditions. Ancillary materials, including study questions, can be found on the History Matters website

The second is William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (U Toronto Press, 2013), 416pp.

About this book we are told:

Lying now under the sand 300 kilometres south of the coastal metropolis of Alexandria, the town of Oxyrhynchus rose to prominence under Egypt's Hellenistic and Roman rulers. The 1895 British-led excavation revealed little in the way of buildings and other cultural artefacts, but instead yielded a huge random mass of everyday papyri, piled thirty feet deep, including private letters and shopping lists, government circulars, and copies of ancient literature.

The surviving bookrolls - the papyrus rolls with literary texts - have provided a great deal of information on ancient books, ancient readers, and ancient reading. Examining only those texts that survive in full form in medieval manuscripts, William Johnson has analysed over 400 bookrolls to understand the production, use, and aesthetics of the ancient book. His close analysis of formal and conventional features of the bookrolls not only provides detailed information on the bookroll industry - manufacture, design, and format - but also, in turn, suggests some intriguing questions and provisional answers about the ways in which the use and function of the bookroll among ancient readers may differ from modern or medieval practice. Meticulously erudite, this work will be of great importance to all papyrologists, classicists, and literary scholars.

The Creation of Modern Ukraine and Russia

The recent and ongoing turmoil in Ukraine, where I spent my summer in 2001 and have ever after longed to return to, continues to engender a good deal of commentary in the West, much of it misguided and ignorant. It also raises the perennial questions of what constitutes a country whose very name means "borderland" and how such a country understands itself, not least vis-à-vis its much more powerful neighbor to the East with its well-developed nationalism. A recent book may shed some light on these vexed issues: Faith Hillis, Children of Rus': Right-Bank Ukraine and the Invention of a Russian Nation (Cornell UP, 2013), 348pp.

About this book we are told:

In Children of Rus’, Faith Hillis recovers an all but forgotten chapter in the history of the tsarist empire and its southwestern borderlands. The right bank, or west side, of the Dnieper River—which today is located at the heart of the independent state of Ukraine—was one of the Russian empire’s last territorial acquisitions, annexed only in the late eighteenth century. Yet over the course of the long nineteenth century, this newly acquired region nearly a thousand miles from Moscow and St. Petersburg generated a powerful Russian nationalist movement. Claiming to restore the ancient customs of the East Slavs, the southwest’s Russian nationalists sought to empower the ordinary Orthodox residents of the borderlands and to diminish the influence of their non-Orthodox minorities.
Right-bank Ukraine would seem unlikely terrain to nourish a Russian nationalist imagination. It was among the empire’s most diverse corners, with few of its residents speaking Russian as their native language or identifying with the culture of the Great Russian interior. Nevertheless, as Hillis shows, by the late nineteenth century, Russian nationalists had established a strong foothold in the southwest’s culture and educated society; in the first decade of the twentieth, they secured a leading role in local mass politics. By 1910, with help from sympathetic officials in St. Petersburg, right-bank activists expanded their sights beyond the borderlands, hoping to spread their nationalizing agenda across the empire.

Exploring why and how the empire’s southwestern borderlands produced its most organized and politically successful Russian nationalist movement, Hillis puts forth a bold new interpretation of state-society relations under tsarism as she reconstructs the role that a peripheral region played in attempting to define the essential characteristics of the Russian people and their state.

Religious Aspects of the Great War

The historian Philip Jenkins, author of a number of books of interest, has a new book coming out in May on--what else in this centenary year?--World War I. His book, however, takes a directly theological angle, as evidenced by the title: The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade (HarperOne, 2014), 448pp.

About this book we are told:

On the centennial of the outbreak of World War I, historian and religious expert Philip Jenkins delivers a groundbreaking and controversial look at the hidden religious motivations that sparked the conflict and reveals how it reshaped religion for the next century. The Great and Holy War presents a new theory of religious change—mirroring the biological theory of punctuated equilibrium in which long periods of stability are interrupted by a sudden, cataclysmic event—showing how the years of the First World War, 1914-1918, constituted a worldwide spiritual revolution that created the world’s religious map as we know it today.

Throughout history, secular disasters—wars and natural catastrophes—have ignited influential new movements, fundamental shifts in religious consciousness, fervent revivalism and awakenings, and apocalyptic expectation. As Jenkins connects numerous remarkable incidents and characters, from Karl Barth to Carl Jung, he creates a powerful and persuasive narrative that brings together global politics, history, and spiritual crisis as never before and shows how religion informed and motivated circumstances on all sides of the war. As it illuminates the dramatic changes initiated by the First World War, The Great and Holy War offers fresh and much-needed insight into the religious, political, and cultural climate that gave rise to the devastation of 1914-1918. Illustrated with 40-50 black-and-white images throughout.

Given my abiding interest in military history in general, and the Great War in particular, I look forward to reading this book later in the spring.

Thomas Torrance and Orthodoxy

Matthew Baker at Fordham e-mailed me in late December about a new volume he has worked on, dealing with Orthodoxy and Thomas Torrance. The table of contents features an impressively diverse set of interlocutors--St. Athanasius the Great, St. Ephraim the Syrian, George Dion Dragas, Dumitru Staniloae, John Zizioulas, the Cappadocians, Georges Florovsky, and others. In his e-mail to me he tells me the following about this collection, which you may read here: 

The issue brings together scholars -- mostly Orthodox, but a couple Protestants and one RC too -- from 7 countries (Bulgaria, Denmark, England, Greece, Russia, Serbia, US) to explore and extend further different aspects of Torrance's engagement with the Fathers, science-theology dialogue, and modern Orthodox systematics. Among other things, the issue should gain attention for the essay we have included from Fr Nicholas Loudovikos, responding to Zizioulas' important paper on Maximus last fall in Belgrade.

Did John Moschos Ever Have to Mow that Spiritual Meadow of His?

Next month Ashgate will publish a book by an author familiar to readers of this blog: Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen, John Moschos' Spiritual Meadow: Authority and Autonomy at the End of the Antique World (Ashgate, 2014), 208pp.

About this book we are told:

John Moschos' Spiritual Meadow is one of the most important sources for late sixth-early seventh century Palestinian, Syrian and Egyptian monasticism. This undisputedly invaluable collection of beneficial tales provides contemporary society with a fuller picture of an imperfect social history of this period: it is a rich source for understanding not only the piety of the monk but also the poor farmer. Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen fills a lacuna in classical monastic secondary literature by highlighting Moschos' unique contribution to the way in which a fertile Christian theology informed the ethics of not only those serving at the altar but also those being served.Introducing appropriate historical and theological background to the tales, Llewellyn Ihssen demonstrates how Moschos' tales addresses issues of the autonomy of individual ascetics and lay persons in relationship with authority figures. Economic practices, health care, death and burials of lay persons and ascetics are examined for the theology and history that they obscure and reveal. Whilst teaching us about the complicated relationships between personal agency and divine intercession, Moschos' tales can also be seen to reveal liminal boundaries we know existed between the secular and the religious.

Byzantine Subversion

One of the little-noticed but deeply significant parts of the Westminster parliamentary system is that the major second party, which does not garner enough seats to form a government, is styled "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition." That adjective is important for Christians and others inclined towards ideological thinking never to forget: opposition is not of itself evidence of "disloyalty." Indeed, it may in fact be evidence of a far deeper loyalty.

The role of opposition in Byzantium has not been well studied, but a recent academic conference, and the even more recent publication of its proceedings, aim to change that: Dimiter Angelov and Michael Saxby, eds., Power and Subversion in Byzantium: Papers from the Forty-Third Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Birmingham, March 2010 (Ashgate, 2013), 299pp.

About this scholarly collection we are told:

This volume addresses a theme of special significance for Byzantine studies. Byzantium has traditionally been deemed a civilisation which deferred to authority and set special store by orthodoxy, canon and proper order. Since 1982 when the distinguished Russian Byzantinist Alexander Kazhdan wrote that 'the history of Byzantine intellectual opposition has yet to be written', scholars have increasingly highlighted cases of subversion of 'correct practice' and 'correct belief' in Byzantium. This innovative scholarly effort has produced important results, although it has been hampered by the lack of dialogue across the disciplines of Byzantine studies. The 43rd Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies in 2010 drew together historians, art historians, and scholars of literature, religion and philosophy, who discussed shared and discipline-specific approaches to the theme of subversion. The present volume presents a selection of the papers delivered at the symposium enriched with specially commissioned contributions. Most papers deal with the period after the eleventh century, although early Byzantium is not ignored. Theoretical questions about the nature, articulation and limits of subversion are addressed within the frameworks of individual disciplines and in a larger context. The volume comes at a timely junction in the development of Byzantine studies, as interest in subversion and nonconformity in general has been rising steadily in the field.

A second book recently published treats many of the same themes: Phil Booth, Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity (University of California Press, 2013), 416pp.

About this book we are told:

This book focuses on the attempts of three ascetics—John Moschus, Sophronius of Jerusalem, and Maximus Confessor—to determine the Church’s power and place during a period of profound crisis, as the eastern Roman empire suffered serious reversals in the face of Persian and then Islamic expansion. By asserting visions which reconciled long-standing intellectual tensions between asceticism and Church, these authors established the framework for their subsequent emergence as Constantinople's most vociferous religious critics, their alliance with the Roman popes, and their radical rejection of imperial interference in matters of the faith. Situated within the broader religious currents of the fourth to seventh centuries, this book throws new light on the nature not only of the holy man in late antiquity, but also of the Byzantine Orthodoxy that would emerge in the Middle Ages, and which is still central to the churches of Greece and Eastern Europe.

A Guide to the Perplexing Origen

I have frequently noted on here new works about the great, if still sometimes somewhat controverted, Origen of Alexandria. Late in this new year, we will have a new introductory volume to him and his writings: Paul R. Kolbet, Origen: A Guide for the Perplexed (T&T Clark, October 2014).

About this book we are told:

Origen was the first Christian to relate fundamental theological and philosophical commitments systematically to a coherent reading of the whole Christian Bible. His prodigious writings evidence an outstanding education in Greek and Christian literature, classical philosophy, and even Jewish traditions. Under Roman persecution (at times intense), he formulated an intellectually daring spirituality emphasizing existential freedom, moral rigor, and a personally transformative spiritual reading of the Bible. Writing many of the first verse-by-verse biblical commentaries, Origen is without peer in shaping the Christian reading of Old Testament books. Finding profound wisdom in such ancient Jewish texts, Origen’s thought would prove to be a steady, comprehensive, thoroughly intellectual rejection of both Gnostic and simplistic forms of Christianity.

We are also provided with a detailed table of contents:

Introduction
This chapter provides Origen’s essential biographical information and outlines the largest obstacles to understanding his writings. This includes a discussion of his massive influence upon later centuries that included among other things: repeated condemnations of his writings, ongoing efforts to preserve his work, and continual rethinking both of the theological problems he raised and his proposed strategies to meet them.

1. Finitude and Philosophy
Origen’s sense of human finitude, ignorance, and death is profound and largely determines the shape of his intellectual project. His understanding of the indeterminacy afflicting human knowledge of ultimate things leads him to engage in daring modes of intellectual activity that readers can find unsettling. The all-too-human efforts we call philosophy and theology were not distinct fields for him. Their purpose and value were not primarily to provide answers or generate doctrines, but were essentially a particular kind of human activity or practice that is deeply transforming. When (later) readers read Origen for right “doctrine,” they gravely distorted his project.

2. The Bible in Three Dimensions
Origen’s understanding of scripture is so complex that it was difficult even for his contemporaries to follow his reasoning. Rather than seeking conclusions simply to be believed, Origen ordinarily approached biblical texts as exercises in interpreting the text, oneself, society, and the universe. These exercises had a progressive quality where one began with the biblical surface (or narrative meaning) only to delve more deeply into matters of the soul and eventually into the Spirit itself. By learning to read scripture in all its dimensions, one learns how superficial one’s ordinary perception of everything else truly is. This chapter also addresses the vexed question of what Origen means by “literal” and “allegorical” ways of reading and their relationship to the practices of ancient grammarians.

3. The Triune God and the Cosmos
A chapter devoted to Origen’s God in relationship to the world including the problem of how the “Incorporeal” relates to matter, various solutions to that problem proposed by Origen’s contemporaries involving ideas of mediation, and Origen’s notion of “incarnation.” This chapter also addresses Origen’s convictions about the relationship between divine providence, human freedom, and evil.

4. Abraham and the Moral Life
The first of three programmatic chapters explaining the notion of human development (or spiritual progress) that informs everything Origen wrote. For the sake of presentation, I will emphasize one of Origen’s preferred modes of understanding this progression, namely, by means of the lives of the biblical patriarchs. Each stage has both theoretical and practical content. The first stage, therefore, has to do with the process of moral conversion as each of us undertakes Abraham’s migration (with our minds rather than our feet). By conforming our desires to divine law, our emotions and cognitive perception stabilize which promotes our physical flourishing.

5. Isaac and Knowledge
The moral ordering of one’s inner life makes possible a truly intellectual inquiry that seeks to understand the causes and nature of the created order. This inquiry produces in us a keen awareness of creation’s goodness, limits, and contingency. According to Origen, when one joins Isaac in “digging wells of vision” and pushes one’s five senses and rational capacity to their limits, one not only acquires knowledge of oneself and the world, but also discovers a longing to understand more than created things.

6. Jacob and the Dynamics of Love
In the third stage, vision rises beyond visible things, their weakness and finitude, to the divine itself. Rather than being a new desire for us, Origen boldly insists that this yearning “to see God” is continuous with innate human “eros.” It is the completion of human nature and not its abolition. The vision of God in this life, however, is not the direct experience of the divine presence, but the mature love of those chastened by knowledge. In this case, perfection looks more like the longing of the lovers in the Song of Songs, or like the patriarch Jacob who was drawn by love of his family into Egypt even as he yearned to abide in the land of Israel.

7. Christ’s Body and the Travails of Political Life This chapter examines Origen’s highly speculative, even other-worldly, thought in relationship to the exigencies of the society in which he lived. It is shown to be deeply implicated in the life of his Christian community, the Roman Empire, the pressing issues of torture, martyrdom, Roman citizenship, and the nature of Christian hope.