LOGOS: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Fall 2015

I am delighted to be putting the finishing touches on the upcoming fall issue of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, the oldest academic revue of its kind in North America whose editor I am. We have two interesting articles, several shorter essays, and a nice array of book reviews and notices.

Articles:

The lead article is especially fascinating: it treats relations between Orthodox and Greek Catholic clergy in Soviet Ukraine, showing the messiness and complexity of those relations after the forced pseudo-sobor of 1946. Some UGCC clergy wanted to regard others who went over to Russian Orthodoxy as "Judases" while others had a much more sympathetic view and co-operated with them unofficially at the parish level. Entitled "After 'Reunion': Soviet Power and the 'Reunited' and 'Non-Reunited' Greek Catholic Clergy in Eastern Galicia (1950s-1960s)," the article is written by Kateryna Budz, a doctoral candidate in history at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Kyiv, Ukraine) and, until the end of this month, holder of a scholarship at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany. She draws on original archival research in a variety of repositories in Ukraine to see what official records among Soviet state agencies reveal as well as ecclesial bodies and their own archives. Some figures in this story are well known--e.g., Josyf Slipyj--but others have not received much scholarly attention until now. 

The second article by Timothy Wilkinson treats the phenomenon of Christians appropriating Jewish traditions as seen in the popularity of celebrating a "seder" supper in many Protestant traditions over the last two decades.Entitled "The Contemporary Protestant Seder: An Orthodox Critique," the article reviews the rise of seder suppers and what they say about a late-modern Christian understanding of church and Jewish history, Jewish-Christian relations ancient and modern, and contemporary Western liturgical theology, which is critiqued gently in light of such Orthodox figures at Alexander Schmemann.

Notes/Essays/Lectures:

In the Notes/Essays/Lectures section, we feature three pieces. The first is an up-to-the-moment report from Andriy Chirovsky on the recent patriarchal sobor and synod of bishops, both held in and for the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church in Ivano-Frankivsk this August. 

The second is a short excerpt from my lecture at OTSA at Fordham this past June in which I treat the questions of memory and "forgetting" in Orthodox-Catholic relations, focusing on the upcoming 70th anniversary in 2016 of the pseudo-sobor of Lviv which saw the Stalin-approved destruction of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church with the collusion of the Russian Orthodox Church.This is a

Finally, Augustine Casiday, author of the invaluable landmark work Reconstructing the Theology of Evagrius Ponticus: Beyond Heresy (whom I interviewed about this very book here) has a fascinating and learned essay treating the uses and abuses of Evagrius' famous definition of theology and a theologian from his treatise On Prayer. This maxim, which I have myself quoted regularly, and which seems to be a staple of contemporary Eastern spiritual and apologetical literature, is often used as little more than a thinly disguised sneer at intellectual work--as a cloak for anti-intellectual obscurantism in other words. Casiday's treatment of what Evagrius really meant is important and not to be missed. 

Book Reviews: 

Finally, in this section we have reviews by the Orthodox scholar Will Cohen of Maximos Vgenopoulos' important study (which I read in draft form before publication), Primacy in the Church from Vatican I to Vatican II: An Orthodox Perspective.

Daniel Galadza of the University of Vienna reviews the hefty scholarly collection Languages and Cultures of Eastern Christianity: Georgian, one of the latest installment in this invaluable series of books from Ashgate to which I have drawn attention on here before.

Michael Plekon reviews a new French-language publication of autobiographical "notes" from Sergius Bulgakov. 

And finally we have two review essays: the first by the Orthodox priest-historian D. Oliver Herbel (whom I interviewed here about his recent outstanding book) looks at two books both published recently and both treating the question of Orthodox identity: Orthodox Identities in Western Europe: Migration, Settlement and Innovation and Eastern Orthodox Encounters of Identity and Otherness: Values, Self-Reflection, Dialogue.

The second review essay is mine, reviewing two recent treatments of papal primacy and Orthodox-Catholic searches for unity: the first is from the Orthodox philosopher and Greek priest, John P. Mannoussakis, whom I interviewed here about the book, For the Unity of All: Contributions to the Theological Dialogue between East and West.

The second is by the Roman Catholic theologian Paul McPartlan,A Service of Love: Papal Primacy, the Eucharist, and Church Unity. Both are short but valuable contributions from scholars noted for their clarity of argument and their charity in engaging those they disagree with. 

All told then, given this cornucopia of riches, what keeps you from subscribing today?