Eastern Orthodox Theology and Lacanian Psychoanalysis

I was of course very excited upon espying notice of the impending publication of this new book, which unites two of my most closely held intellectual and clinical interests. So I shall be glad when my review copy shows up and I have a chance to read Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Eastern Orthodox Christian Anthropology in Dialogue by Carl Waitz  and Theresa Tisdale (Routledge, October 2021), 172pp. 

About this new book the publisher tells us this: 

This book vigorously engages Lacan with a spiritual tradition that has yet to be thoroughly addressed within psychoanalytic literature―the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition.

The book offers a unique engagement with a faith system that highlights and extends analytic thinking. For those in formation within the Orthodox tradition, this book brings psychoanalytic insights to bear on matters of faith that may at times seem opaque or difficult to understand. Ultimately, the authors seek to elicit in the reader the reflective and contemplative posture of Orthodoxy, as well as the listening ear of analysis, while considering the human subject.

This work is relevant and important for those training in psychoanalysis and Orthodox theology or ministry, as well as for those interested in the intersection between psychoanalysis and religion.

Orthodox Nationalism and Intolerance in SE Europe

Focus on nationalism and Orthodoxy has been a staple of scholarly discussions for decades, and given the revival of nationalism all over the world, including in Orthodox Europe, it is no surprise that scholarly studies continue to emerge, including S.P. Ramet, ed., Orthodox Churches and Politics in Southeastern Europe: Nationalism, Conservativism, and Intolerance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 267pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Orthodox Churches, like most religious bodies, are inherently political: they seek to defend their core values and must engage in politics to do so, whether by promoting certain legislation or seeking to block other legislation. This volume examines the politics of Orthodox Churches in Southeastern Europe, emphasizing three key modes of resistance to the influence of (Western) liberal values: Nationalism (presenting themselves as protectors of the national being), Conservatism (defending traditional values such as the “traditional family”), and Intolerance (of both non-Orthodox faiths and sexual minorities). The chapters in this volume present case studies of all the Orthodox Churches of the region.

A Very Short Introduction to Orthodox Christianity: An Interview with A.E. Siecienski

It is always an unfailing pleasure to read anything A.E. Siecienski writes.

We were on a panel together at IOTA in Romania in January and I learned a great deal from his fascinating paper, as I have learned a very great deal over the years from reading his books on the papacy and the filioque, both of which should be in every serious library. They are models of scholarship: comprehensive in their sources, judicious in their analysis, and cogent in their style and composition. I have returned to them often, and you will too if you have not managed to buy and read them yet.

He has another one just out, also from Oxford University Press, but this, by design, very different in size, style, and focus. As part of their long-running series of books "A Very Short Introduction," he brings us Orthodox Christianity: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2019), 124pp. The book itself is scarcely bigger than my hand, so this is a very short and very small introduction, but no less worthwhile. (As OUP says: "The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.")

About this book in particular the publisher tells us this:

To many in the West, Orthodoxy remains shrouded in mystery, an exotic and foreign religion that survived in the East following the Great Schism of 1054 that split the Christian world into two camps--Catholic and Orthodox. However, as the second largest Christian denomination, Orthodox Christianity is anything but foreign to the nearly 300 million worshippers who practice it. For them, Orthodoxy is a living, breathing reality; a way of being Christian ultimately rooted in the person of Jesus and the experience of the early Church. Whether they are Greek, Russian, or American, Orthodox Christians are united by a common tradition and faith that binds them together despite differences in culture. True, the road has not always been smooth -- Orthodox history is littered with tales of schisms and divisions, of persecutions and martyrdom, from the Sack of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire and seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch, to the experience of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Soviet Union. Still, today Orthodoxy remains a vibrant part of the religious landscape, not only in those lands where it has made its historic home (Greece, Russia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe), but also increasingly in the West. Orthodox Christianity: A Very Short Introduction explores the enduring role of this religion, and the history, beliefs, and practices that have shaped it.

I've previously interviewed the author here. With the publication of this new book, I sent him some questions about it, and am delighted to reproduce his thoughts below.

AD: Tell us about your background

A.E. Siecienski: I am a New Jersey native, and received my BA in theology and government from Georgetown University in 1990. After graduation I attended St. Mary’s Seminary and University, where I received a STB and MDiv in 1995.  I earned my PhD in historical theology from Fordham University in 2005 and have been teaching at Stockton University since 2008, where I am Clement and Helen Pappas Endowed Professor of Byzantine Civilization and Religion.  I am married with two children, enjoy European football (COYS!) and am active in both my parish and local BSA troop.  And yes, I am Orthodox.

AD: Tell us what led you to this book, Orthodox Christianity: A Very Short Introduction

AES: The simple answer is that the editors at OUP asked me to do it, and I said yes.  It wasn’t something I planned on writing, since I was still working through my trilogy on East-West issues.  However, once I said yes I took a break from azymes, beards, and purgatory and started work.

AD: After writing two wide-ranging, lengthy, highly detailed historical works on the papacy and the filioque clearly intended for a scholarly audience, how difficult was it to shift gears and write a very different book like this—introductory, no footnotes, just over 100 rather small pages? 

In some ways it was incredibly challenging, as I was constantly tempted to throw around theological lingo, assuming people knew what these terms meant.  One of the first things I did when I finished the initial draft was to give it to people — my father and our friend Stacy — who are very smart but know nothing about theology.  They circled words and phrases that I, a theologian, used all the time but (surprise!) weren’t known by people outside the field.  However, I’ve been teaching introductory courses in Christian theology and history for over fifteen years, so targeting a different audience wasn’t too big a stretch once I eliminated or explained the jargon.

AD: Over the last two decades, a number of other introductory texts to Orthodoxy have come out in English. Did you make any conscious decisions as to how yours might differ from those of, e.g., David Bell or John Garvey or James Payton or Katherine Clark?

I never made a conscious decision to make the book similar to, or different from, other introductions, although having read Metropolitan Kallistos’s The Orthodox Church early in my own journey I did appreciate how he presented Orthodoxy to the wider world.  A lot of my thinking about structuring the book was dictated by the VSI series and its goals, since its purpose is not to provide a “So you’re thinking about becoming Orthodox” guide but instead a very basic introduction to the topic aimed at those who know nothing about it.  I know that the “history, beliefs, and practices” approach to studying religions is sometimes considered trite and has its critics, but I use it when I have to teach comparative religions at my university (e.g., Abrahamic Faiths) and even when I taught Eastern Christianity a few years back.  In fact, my notes for that course provided the backbone of the book.

AD: Ch. 5 on sources of Orthodox thought takes a fairly strictly historically delimited approach, concerning itself with the Scriptures and Fathers as well as liturgy. But there was no mention of thinkers from Palamas onward, including the burgeoning of Orthodox thought in the 20th century under prominent people like Bulgakov, Zizioulas, Staniloae and others. Was that an approach dictated by word counts or other factors? 

Not so much by word count but rather because of the material I would have had to introduce and cover.  Obviously everyone you mentioned has helped shape the modern Orthodox intellectual tradition, but the minute you start introducing ideas like “neo-palamism,” “sophiology,” and the “ontology of personhood” you start losing people.  The real problem was dealing with Orthodoxy outside Europe, since American Orthodox (myself included) tend to focus on what’s happened, historically and theologically, on the continent.  Dr. Michael Azar, who read early drafts of the book, reminded me that I had to include something about Orthodox Christianity in the Middle East and Africa.

AD: I really appreciated your bluntness in ch. 11 on Orthodoxy in the modern world and the divisions that have opened up on questions like abortion, the council in Crete, ecumenism, etc. Did you feel any sort of “apologetic” urge to downplay such issues?

AES: No, like I said before, this was not supposed to be a “Welcome to the Orthodox Church” pamphlet handed out to perspective converts at the church door, but rather an objective look at Orthodoxy, warts and all.  Orthodoxy has its problems, and some are so glaring — e.g., the fact that half the Church is not currently in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch— that not mentioning it would simply be silly.  I must admit that I was a bit nervous about this particular chapter since it wasn’t in my original plan for the book and, being more of a dogmatic historian, I’m more comfortable with the past than the present.  I had a few people more familiar with modern Orthodoxy  — Drs. George Demacopoulos and Paul Gavrilyuk — double check that chapter to make sure that what I presented was, to their minds, accurate.

AD: Tell us a bit about your hopes for the book, and who would benefit from reading it

AES: Well, the editors at OUP designed the VSIs so that anyone who hears about a subject and wants a good, quick, clear introduction  — in 35,000 words or less — can avail themselves to the books in the series.  In many ways that is my hope as well.  That said, I also hope that the book could be used by university students, curious onlookers, and (most especially) by Orthodox Christians themselves.  When I was writing the book I did an adult education class at my own church (Orthodox Church of the Holy Cross in Medford, NJ) and so many people  — cradle Orthodox and converts — told me that a lot of this stuff was all new to them.  I have pre-teen and teenage children, so if they eventually use this book to learn about their own faith, I’d see that as a win.

AD: Having finished such a book as this, what is next for you? What are you working on now? 

AES: Now it’s back to Purgatory, Beards, and Azymes: The Other Issues that Divided East and West.  I’m about halfway through the first draft, so it will be a few years before it’s in print.  The idea is to have trilogy of books covering the issues that divided East and West so that if we can’t heal the schism we can at least figure out how we got there in the first place.  I’m having a lot of fun writing this one.

A.E. Siecienski on Orthodox Christianity

Some of the best books in Eastern Christian history are written by A.E. Siecienski, whom I've been delighted to interview on here in the past about his book on the papacy, which is an outstanding work I've often returned to. He and I were on a panel together in Romania in January at the inaugural IOTA conference. We were both talking about papal primacy, albeit from very different angles.

So I sat up and paid special notice when Oxford UP recently sent me their catalogue of forthcoming works later this summer and fall, and included in it is Orthodox Christianity: A Very Short Introduction by A. Edward Siecienski (OUP, 2019), 144pp.

My own introductory course on Eastern Christianity is due for a bit of an overhaul, and I rather suspect that after I've had a chance to read this book, I'll be adopting it for my classes. We'll see.

In the meantime, here is what the press tells us about this book:

To many in the West, Orthodoxy remains shrouded in mystery, an exotic and foreign religion that survived in the East following the Great Schism of 1054 that split the Christian world into two camps--Catholic and Orthodox. However, as the second largest Christian denomination, Orthodox Christianity is anything but foreign to the nearly 300 million worshippers who practice it. For them, Orthodoxy is a living, breathing reality; a way of being Christian ultimately rooted in the person of Jesus and the experience of the early Church. Whether they are Greek, Russian, or American, Orthodox Christians are united by a common tradition and faith that binds them together despite differences in culture. True, the road has not always been smooth -- Orthodox history is littered with tales of schisms and divisions, of persecutions and martyrdom, from the Sack of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire and seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch, to the experience of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Soviet Union. Still, today Orthodoxy remains a vibrant part of the religious landscape, not only in those lands where it has made its historic home (Greece, Russia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe), but also increasingly in the West. Orthodox Christianity: A Very Short Introduction explores the enduring role of this religion, and the history, beliefs, and practices that have shaped it.

Hindu and Orthodox Iconology

The last few decades have seen a slow but steady increase in inter-religious dialogue between Orthodoxy and other traditions. Oftentimes Orthodoxy is the last great Christian tradition to enter such dialogues, Catholics and Protestants having been involved in such endeavors for many decades before Orthodoxy.

A recently published book puts Orthodoxy into conversation with a tradition from the far East: The Human Icon: A Comparative Study of Hindu and Orthodox Christian Beliefs by Christine Mangala Frost  (James Clarke & Co., 2017), 368pp.

About this book the publisher tells us the following:

Despite the history that divides them, Hinduism and Orthodox Christianity have much in common. In The Human Icon, Christine Mangala Frost explores how both religions seek to realise the divine potential of every human being, and the differences in their approach. Frost, who has experienced both the extraordinary riches and the all-too-human failings of Hinduism and Orthodox Christianity from the inside, is perfectly placed to examine the convergences and divergences between the two faiths. Inspired by a desire to clear up the misunderstandings that exist between the two, The Human Icon is a study in how two faiths, superficially dissimilar, can nevertheless find meeting points everywhere. The powerful intellectual and spiritual patristic traditions of Orthodox Christianity offer a rare tool for revitalising too-often stalled dialogue with Hinduism and present the chance for a broader and more diverse understanding of the oldest religion in the world. Tracing the long history of Orthodox Christianity in India, from the Thomas Christians of ancient times to the distinctive theology of Paulos Mar Gregorios and the Kottayam School, Frost explores the impact of Hindu thought on Indian Christianity and considers the potential for confluence. With a breadth of interest that spans Hindu bhakti, Orthodox devotional theology, Vedānta and theosis, as well as meditational Yoga and hesychastic prayer, Frost offers a fresh perspective on how the devotees of both faiths approach the ideal of divinisation, and presents a thoughtful, modern methodology for a dialogue of life.

Eastern Orthodox Divorce and Remarriage

It was a good four years ago now, perhaps longer, that I was first asked by a Catholic publisher for my thoughts on the debate over marriage, divorce, and re-marriage that was then heating up in the Catholic Church. Asked to recommend reliable authors who treated these topics in an Orthodox context, I came up with a short list of names of those who had treated certain aspects in the past, but was aware of just how much work yet needed to be done, and how easily it could be done badly.

What was then lacking, and has since been remedied, is a wide-ranging, historically comprehensive, and scholarly judicious study of these endlessly messy and complicated matters. Such a study has now emerged in very impressive form, and based on my read of it, it promises to be an enormously helpful book, not least for its clarity, careful sifting of sources, and vast bibliography (running more than 60 pages!), inter alia. In the coming weeks I hope to run an interview with Kevin Schembri, author of Oikonomia, Divorce, and Remarriage in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition (Valore Italiano SRL, 2017), 336pp.

About this book and its author the publisher tells us the following:

Over the last fifty years, the Eastern Orthodox position on oikonomia, divorce and remarriage was the subject of numerous studies. This volume builds on this research and attempts to offer a comprehensive systematic presentation of these topics. By doing so, it adds to the already rich tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and presents the Western Churches with a valuable resource in their pursuit of ecumenical dialogue with the Orthodox East, in their dealing with the ever-growing reality of mixed marriages, and in their ministry to the divorced and remarried members of their faithful.

Kevin Schembri is a lecturer in canon law at the University of Malta. He holds a licentiate in sacred theology from the same university and a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University. He is a Catholic priest and serves as promoter of justice and defender of the bond for the Archdiocese of Malta.

Re-Introducing Eastern Christianity?

I have already contacted the editor, Amir Azarvan, requesting an interview about his newly published collection, Re-Introducing Christianity: an Eastern Apologia for a Western Audience (Wipf and Stock, 2016), 210pp. With any luck, we'll be able to hear from him in answer to my questions in a few weeks.

About this book, released this month, the publisher tells us:

"Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. . . . And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction" (Bill Maher). Many seem unaware that contemporary critiques of Christianity are relevant mostly to its modern offshoots (whose followers have to some extent earned Bill Maher's unflattering caricatures). To its detriment, Christianity is increasingly identified in people's minds with these more recent expressions. As a result, a growing number of people are turning away from Christianity and, indeed, religious faith altogether. Drawing from an eclectic group of theologians, clergy members, monastics, and lay scholars, this edited volume re-introduces Christianity to a modern audience. It presents a more authentic, experiential side of Christianity to the religious skeptic; a side that eschews blind faith, legalism, and judgment; a side that is rarely given a hearing in the ongoing debate with today's skeptics. Re-Introducing Christianity is also directed at modern Christians, and refutes their most frequently expressed criticisms of what the contributors boldly, but humbly, call the Apostolic Faith.

The book is divided into seven sections, often with several essays in each, covering such topics as theosis, the communion of saints, the process of salvation, icons, sacraments, the reality of the resurrection, women in the Orthodox Church, and much else besides.

Louis Bouyer's Memoirs (II): the Christian East

When we were last gathered together, I mentioned some of the works of Louis Bouyer I had read over the years and gave a bit of context for his Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After, to which we now turn in some detail.

It is striking how quickly the Christian East immediately factors into Bouyer's life in ways I had either not known about or else forgotten. Already in the early pages of the Preface to this English edition (much of whose material, we are told in a footnote, is borrowed from the "Postface" in Jean Duchesne's French original published in Paris in 2014 by Cerf), we are told of Bouyer's friendship with the great Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov (about whom more later), and in particular his even deeper relationship with "A Monk of the Eastern Church," that is, Lev Gillet.

Gillet is of course a fascinating figure himself, and Peter Galadza and I collaborated on editing his correspondence with Met. Andrey Sheptytsky in a book also published in Paris in 2009. In Bouyer's long move out of Protestantism, it seems that for a time he contemplated becoming Orthodox, and thus we are told that from Gillet he received the sacraments of Chrismation, Confession, and the Eucharist at one point notwithstanding his doubts about doing so. He would continue to receive the Eucharist from Gillet, though with decreasing frequency and increasing worry about the propriety of what he was doing.

All this was, of course, during a period when such boundaries were much more strictly policed by most Catholics and Orthodox than they are today, at least on the Catholic side. As I have written on here and elsewhere several times, part of what I admire most about Gillet is precisely his almost impish (some would, of course, say impious) willingness deliberately to blur those boundaries in a recognition that the Catholic and Orthodox Church is at heart one, appearances and ideologies of division notwithstanding. Gillet began as a French Roman Catholic, became Eastern Catholic under Sheptytsky (to whom, for the rest of his life, even in Orthodoxy, he referred as "my spiritual father"), and then finally Orthodox. (See the winsome biography of him written by another equally fascinating figure, Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, Lev Gillet: A Monk of the Eastern Church.)

Gillet deploys all these arguments to work on Bouyer for a time, telling him that all Bouyer need do is believe the faith of the "undivided Church," the "faith of the Ecumenical Councils" in order to receive the sacraments from Gillet. Bouyer is suspicious of these arguments, but goes along for a time, later regretting that he doubted his doubts. He would eventually come to find Gillet's arguments a bridge too far.

Bouyer's journey thereafter would be more straightforward: he would be received into the Roman Catholic Church and go on to become one of her most prolific theologians. But during his more uncertain phase, when he encounters Gillet, Bouyer gets pulled into the interesting and messy inter- and intra-Orthodox squabbles of the inter-war period, many of them provoked by the divisions following on from the Bolshevik revolution.

What I found prescient about his comments on peoples and their projects from this period is how early and easily he sees right through the fraudulent attempt, especially in France, to gin up some kind of "hazy Occidental Orthodoxy," as he puts it, complete with "its dress-up costume clergy." As an historian, Bouyer knew too much to be taken in by such transparently tendentious projects as pretending there was a "Gallic Orthodox Church" in the first millennium or other such fantasies. That, however, has not stopped many later proponents from attempting to invent such things right down to our own day.

Though skeptical of some of Gillet's arguments, and aware of the problems in Orthodoxy, Bouyer in his Catholic period is not grudging when he comes to recognize the spiritual genius of the East precisely in not breaking or undermining the link between theology and spirituality, which Bouyer regards as so fundamental but so often weakened in the West. Here Bouyer explicitly cites the genius of Vladimir Lossky ("one of the most solid minds it has ever been granted me to come near to") in the modern period, and before him Sts. Symeon the New Theologian and St. Gregory Palamas.

The other figure of prominence singled out for high praise is Sergius Bulgakov, whom Bouyer calls "the unquestionable genius that he was--an intellectual genius above all, to be sure, but whose intellectualism was shot through with the most unquestionably Christian, if not Christic, religion." Here again, however, Bouyer knows too much and is aware of the controversy surrounding Bulgakov, to which he seems to refer off-handedly by noting "ill-exorcized gnosticism...in Bulgakov's and his group's synthesis."

Finally, the other Orthodox figure who comes in for more critical discussion late in the book is Aleksei Khomyakov and his ecclesiology, especially his notion of sobornost found in The Orthodox Doctrine On the Church. Bouyer notes that he early on found Khomyakov's vision compelling but his experience at Vatican II disabused him of this positive assesment.

In addition to his knowledge of the major contemporaries of Orthodoxy in France, Bouyer seems to have known everybody who was anybody in Catholicism, having met many of the most prominent theologians of the 20th century, but also not a few Anglican and Orthodox hierarchs and of course several popes, including John XXIII who asked Bouyer to be involved in one of the commissions at Vatican II (the one on seminaries, headed by Cardinal Pizzardo, of whose idiocy Bouyer has not a doubt, as he makes clear in comments almost as scathing as Congar's).

But it was in taking on the assignments given him by Pope Paul VI that Bouyer would find himself pulled into what was the Great Swindle and the Great Catastrophe of 20th-century Catholicism: the vandalistic "reform" of the Latin liturgy. In the next installment, we shall see what Bouyer thought of that.

To be continued. 

Augustine Casiday on Worlds within Orthodox Worlds

Late last year I commented in some detail here on a most impressive new collection I had just received: Augustine Casiday, The Orthodox Christian World (Routledge, 2012), 608pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Over the last century unprecedented numbers of Christians from traditionally Orthodox societies migrated around the world. Once seen as an ‘oriental’ or ‘eastern’ phenomenon, Orthodox Christianity is now much more widely dispersed, and in many parts of the modern world one need not go far to find an Orthodox community at worship. This collection offers a compelling overview of the Orthodox world, covering the main regional traditions of Orthodox Christianity and the ways in which they have become global. The contributors are drawn from the Orthodox community worldwide and explore a rich selection of key figures and themes. The book provides an innovative and illuminating approach to the subject, ideal for students and scholars alike.

At last I've been able to interview the author about this excellent and fascinating collection he has published--a book that truly does deserve a place in every serious institutional and personal library with an interest in Eastern Christianity. Unlike other collections, this one, as we shall see, takes a unique and much more expansive approach, and that is greatly to be welcomed.

AD: Tell us a bit about your background:

AC: I am a native of Alabama and an alumnus of the University of Alabama and a Bama fan (more by default than by conviction: I studied there during pretty lean years for football and that’s been difficult to forgive). I had a major in Psychology (BS) and a double major in Classics and Philosophy (BA). For graduate work, I went to Washington University in St Louis where I earned my MA in Classical Philology. In 1999, I began my doctoral research – on John Cassian’s theology – at Durham University under the supervision of Prof. (now Fr.) Andrew Louth. After completing it, I took up a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge, where I catalogued the literary sources available to St Aldhelm of Malmesbury as evident from his De virginitate, prosa. It wasn’t glamorous work, but one outcome was a discovery that enables us to push back the date that the Passio s. Thomae was circulating in the British Isles by about 200 years. And in any case it was very satisfying to put my Latin to good use. In fact, Latin is the golden thread through my education. I started studying it when I was 13 years old and after about a quarter of a century and exposure to roughly a dozen more languages (to varying degrees) Latin never ceases to impress me for its lucidity, expressiveness, subtlety, and beauty. But I am digressing. 

After the fellowship in Cambridge, I returned to Durham and secured a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship that enabled me to return to the writings of the Desert Fathers. I wrote a monograph on John Cassian’s contemporary, Evagrius Ponticus, which Cambridge University Press has just published. In 2006, I took up a lectureship in historical theology in the University of Wales, Lampeter, as it was called at the time. The past three years have been tumultuous for higher education in Wales and that university was merged, with far-reaching consequences for its provision of theology. In September 2013, I became Lecturer in Greek at Cardiff University, though I am still living in Lampeter. 

When I am home, I worship at Three Holy Hierarchs Greek Orthodox Church, in the Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain. It is a small, friendly parish. Considering how rare Orthodox communities are in Wales, we may very well be unique for the amount of Welsh in the liturgy, though I have to admit I don’t know how things are at the Greek parish in Cardiff. 

AD: What led you to work on The Orthodox Christian World in particular? 

When I arrived in Cambridge in 2002, Marcus Plested invited me to join him editing a brief encyclopaedia on Orthodox Christianity for Routledge Press. Those plans were overtaken by internal changes at Routledge and, as a result, the Press cancelled that project. Some months later, I was contacted by the editor for Routledge Worlds. She knew about the proposed book and thought something like it might be suitable for her series. So she approached me. After lots of fruitful conversations, and more than a little guidance as to what books in that series should be like, I worked up a proposal. The core of that proposal was my decision to treat ecclesiology as one theme among many – something that one of the readers of the proposal found pretty outrageous. Happily, my editor allowed herself to be persuaded by my counter-argument, which was in essence very simple: She’d asked me to edit a book about the Orthodox Christian WORLD, not the Orthodox Christian Church or better the Orthodox Christian Churches. The implications of that shift in emphasis were far-reaching. For instance, chapters in the first part of the book (‘Orthodox Christianity around the world’) have a formulaic title: the Greek tradition, the Russian tradition, the Coptic tradition, the Syriac tradition. That was no accident. I wanted the contributors to be able to account for their subjects without having to adhere to an arbitrary normative pattern and without having to wreath their chapters in apologies if ever they introduced anything not strictly reducible to the Church as such. What’s more, I wanted to be clear to the readers that Orthodox Christianity in itself is more than its Byzantine heritage. That message is, I hope, plain and intelligible in the editor’s introduction. 

And, thanks to the invaluable help of Fr Vrej Nersessian in his (former) capacity in the British Library, it is also communicated by the image of St Luke on the book’s cover. Above and beyond the challenge and joy of thinking about Orthodox Christianity as broadly as I possibly could, the foundational work I did in planning the book was meaningful to me because (as well as being an academic) I am a parent and as such I feel an acute sense of responsibility to my children – who like me are Orthodox Christians and like me are culturally Western – to help them understand that being an Orthodox Christian does not necessarily mean being alienated from life in Wales, or England, or America. In other words, we aren’t obliged to pretend that we are Byzantines. 

AD: As you know, the past few years have seen an explosion in books about Orthodoxy, including, not last, major volumes from Wiley-Blackwell--a dictionary, and more recently an encyclopedia on Orthodoxy. What do you think explains such an increase in interest, especially from major academic publishers? 

To judge from the directions my editor gave me, the presses are aware that if they publish a book on Eastern Christianity then it will find a big market in North America. The greater the likelihood a book might become required reading for a course in a North American university, the more the publishers like it. (Just how that impacts upon the way a book is priced is a question that I’d very much like to have answered myself, but that’s a separate matter.) What drives the demand? I expect there are more answers to that question than there are readers of these books. But I’m confident that I can identify one factor: Orthodoxy has all the appeal of an exotic religion, with the enormously important factor more exotic religions lack – it is centrally about Jesus Christ. There’s a comparison to be made with St Augustine’s initial attraction to philosophy, which was checked by his realization that “that the name of Christ was not in it” (Conf. 3.4.8). What’s more, our ability to travel and to communicate rapidly over vast distances, together with patterns of migration across the planet, mean that Orthodox Christianity is visible in places where it doesn’t quite fit in with the local culture. Certainly in my own life, and I suspect for other people, too, the encounter with a church that is so unfamiliar elicits a strong desire to know more about it.

AD: To a reader coming fresh to Orthodoxy and picking up your book as well as John McGuckin's Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, what would you say differentiates your volume from his? 

The major difference is in the format. The Orthodox Christian World consists in essays that are on the whole much lengthier than the entries in Fr McGuckin’s Encyclopedia. His book has really precise treatments of a range of topics and, along with them, clusters of bibliographies. Coverage in his book is much more straightforward than it is in mine. But what my book lacks in straightforward coverage it makes up for in its longer, more discursive sections, which I think have great potential to inspire further thinking.

AD: Your introduction sounds several very commendable notes about not discriminating on the basis of Chalcedon, not taking refuge in some romanticized past, and not treating Orthodoxy as monolithic. In light of all those things, I'm wondering if it's possible to speak of scholarship on the Christian East as entering a new, perhaps third phase, a phase that is more balanced and above all self-critical? It seems to me we had books, until roughly the early 20th century, that were few and far between and treated Orthodoxy as exotica seen through Western, often colonial eyes; the second phase has been from the 1960s onwards (with Kallistos Ware's landmark The Orthodox Church), offering introductions by Orthodox themselves. Can one say that your book is in the vanguard of new developments in scholarship? 

I would certainly welcome developments along those lines! What will, I hope, drive it forward is a careful and serious interest in theology as such. Let me explain why I think profounder attention to theology matters. Your thematization of books about the Christian East is accurate. The second phase as you describe it – the internal perspective – challenges the imposition of extrinsic categories that characterizes the first phase. There is, however, a danger posed by resting content with internal perspectives, which I’ll borrow an expression from an anecdote an old friend told me and call the ‘Come and See’ problem. If insiders’ reports about Orthodox Christianity are the final word, then the standards for communicating about Orthodoxy shift. The conversation becomes enclosed and, not incidentally, within that conversation the inscrutables proliferate: experience, perspective, mystery all come to the fore – old terms but bearing new significance. Those terms don’t simply refer to the vantage from within Orthodoxy and how things seem from that vantage. 

In addition, all too often they also absolve the person who uses them from responsibility within the conversation. The burden for understanding shifts from the voice internal to Orthodoxy, who would normally be expected to provide meaningful explanation. Burden shifts onto the audience or readers, with the implicit (perhaps sometimes even explicit) suggestion that passing into Orthodoxy, participating in Orthodox life, and in fact taking up the internal point of view will bring them to understand more. Hence, ‘Come and See’ – an invitation that can bring a premature end to communicating. However hospitable it might seem, that invitation hides a harmful derogation of Christian responsibility to have a ready answer, to spread the good news, to go out into the highways and hedges. Don’t misunderstand me. Participation does open fresh possibilities for understanding. But in all honesty why would someone want to participate? That is the question that needs answering. And my expectation is that the answer needs to be communicated in terms that are theologically comprehensible. I believe theology is key since it enables us to talk intelligibly about God, and Orthodoxy exists principally in its relation to the Father through the Son in the Spirit. Theology is not for that reason the totality of Orthodoxy, nor does everything Orthodox need to have a strict theological justification. It is hugely important, though, for all that as a discipline for conversation with and about God.

AD: Having finished this book, and taking stock of the current state of scholarship, which areas in Eastern Christianity still stand in great need of critical study and scrutiny? 

I’m going to answer with a note of specification, hoping that won’t make me seem evasive. Critical research into Eastern Christianity seems to me to be proceeding smoothly on far more fronts than I could hope to survey. But there are several areas where further critical attention from Eastern Christianity will benefit us all. I would start by identifying philosophy of history, Western Christianity (Orthodoxy’s great “Other”), theological literacy, and political discourse. None of these topics is totally ignored right now, of course. And yet in many cases the articles and books that are published on them are pre-critical in significant respects. I am reaching back to the terms of your fifth question when I say there is still a huge amount of Orthodox work that doesn’t seem particularly self-critical. Essays, suggestions, tantalizing hints of the perspective from a different vantage all have their place. I doubt anyone would seriously dispute the value of lucid statements from Orthodox commentators. After a while, though, it becomes impossible to ignore the limitations of “an Orthodox perspective” on X, Y, and Z. In my view, it would be really interesting to see what would happen if there were a moratorium on the use of confessional markers in English-language publications, so that the origins in Eastern Christianity of such publications can enrich them instead of marginalizing them as specimens of identity politics. 

AD: What were some of the criteria by which you selected the figures in part II, "Important Figures in Orthodox Christianity"? Many of the selections make eminent sense and their relevance is obvious, while a few others (e.g., Takla Haymanot) are more recondite, and still others whom one might expect to see (e.g., the Cappadocians, Paisius Velichkovsky or John Zizioulas) are treated in a number of scattered places, but do not have their separate entries. 

In making those decisions, I used a method that evolved gradually. I wanted the contents of this section not to leave any enormous gaps in coverage with respect to chronology and geography. The figures – almost all of them men, but I’ll come back to that point in a moment – were selected in part to illustrate particular moments and places in Orthodox Christianity. It often seems to me that a few eras and regions are privileged (fourth-century Asia Minor, eleventh-century Kyiv, fifteenth-century Constantinople, nineteenth-century Russia….) and the rest is simply presumed to be filled with more of the same. From the inception of my planning, I wanted this book to document the variety and vitality of Orthodoxy, so I couldn’t merely round up the usual suspects. Because I’d committed myself to including non-Byzantine traditions, it was important to include significant figures from those other traditions. 

You mentioned Abuna Takla Haymanot, who has fascinated me since seeing an icon reproduced in, I think, one of those extraordinary publications that Wallis Budge prepared for Lady Meux. Maybe it was an abuse of editorial privilege, but I thought what I had was basically an unmissable opportunity to get an expert to prepare a brief piece about him. So, thanks to Prof. Getatchew’s contribution, readers can take a close look into a transitional period in the history of Christian Ethiopia that complements the survey written by Fr Ranieri and, in the process, learn about a major figure in Ethiopian Orthodoxy. Prof. Takahashi’s chapter (‘Barhebraeus’) similarly opens up for detailed consideration a fascinating place and period that many initial presentations of Orthodox Christianity overlook. 

Likewise, the chapter on St Raphael Hawaweeny enriches the book’s presentation (not least thanks to Fr. Herbel’s chapter) of Orthodoxy in North America – and has the further benefit that Bishop Basil, who wrote it, was also directly involved in the canonisation of St Raphael. Another factor that figured into the roster for Part II was my preference against including chapters on persons still living. Perhaps the bias of a classical education is overactive here, but it seems to me that judgments on contemporary figures often age poorly. Consider some of the books that appear about modern theology. Without being too indiscreet, I don’t mind relating that when I discuss them with other academics and friends we sometimes guffaw at the names that have been included: “Surely Professor [INSERT NAME HERE] is more relevant as media phenomenon than as a theologian,” or words to that effect. That isn’t to say that I avoided controversy. Two chapters about near-contemporary figures – Sergii Bulgakov and Matta al-Miskîn – clearly indicate that they were controversial during their lives and remain so now. 

I mentioned the overwhelming preponderance of men in Part II. One reader recommended by name two women that should be included. Without going into detail, the only distinctive feature I could identify in either case was the sex of the person in question. I felt that came uncomfortably close to tokenism. I took two measures to redress these problems. First, I commissioned a thematic chapter on women in Orthodox Christianity. The presence of that chapter allowed the contributor to address a host of issues directly, which seemed to me far preferable to hoping that those issues would somehow be resolved by including a chapter or two that were dedicated to one given Orthodox woman or other. The second was to include chapters written by women, whenever possible. It turns out that was easily possible on several occasions. Even so, my sense that something is very much amiss remains. Can I revisit my answer to your seventh question? I’d like to add another topic that needs more attention: the place, and service, of laity within Orthodox Christianity. 

AD: Yes, the question of the laity does deserve greater attention. I'd note that the former Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury turns to that question in his essay in the just-published Festschrift for Michael Plekon. And someone else in the Festschrift also wrote an article for you: Antoine Arjakovsky's fascinating article in The Orthodox Christian World on the Paris School puts forth the argument that Orthodoxy will not achieve internal reconciliation and unity until it moves from seeing itself as an "institution" instead of a "style of life." That seems to me to capture something of the spirit of your book--yes? If Arjakovsky is right, what challenges does such a transformation pose? Are there some major things in Orthodoxy that would have to change for this to happen?

I hadn’t made that connection myself, but I’m sympathetic to it. And it is entirely in line with a suite of decisions I made about the book following from the decision to emphasize that its subject is the Orthodox Christian world. In the course of answering your questions, though, I keep coming back to the thought that the past doesn’t furnish us with much by way of concrete examples of how intelligent, articulate lay Orthodox Christians should live in pluralist societies. I have loaded as many non-clerical, non-monastic qualifiers into that sentence as it will bear. My sense is that at present Orthodox churches valorise clergy and monks (sometimes nuns) in a way that makes non-clerical, non-monastic Orthodox Christians seem defective. And that has to be wrong. A confident, educated laity would by no means detract from the Church. To the contrary, Orthodox laity must have an incomparably greater role to play in extending Orthodox Christianity into society. 

AD: A couple of common areas not covered in your book are liturgy and iconography. I assume that is because, arguably, these areas more than others have seen enormous coverage in hundreds of books in the last few decades? 

That’s a reasonable assumption. One of the factors that guided my editorial decisions was the intention that the resulting book should not duplicate content readily available elsewhere. It was on that basis that I opted not to commission a chapter on iconography. I also didn’t commission a chapter on monasticism for similar reasons. As for liturgy, a chapter was commissioned – but, as is often the way in projects of this sort, the chapter simply didn’t materialize. It was not the only such chapter. Initial conversations for a chapter on the Bulgarian tradition went very positively, even though in the end that chapter was not forthcoming.

AD: What are you up to now? What projects are underway currently, and where do you hope to focus your energies now? 

Earlier today I responded to questions about my contribution to Peter Bouteneff’s “Foundations” series, which is published by St Vladimir’s Seminary Press. The title is Remember the Days of Old: Orthodox Thinking on the Patristic Heritage and it should be available soon. I’ve also frantically been reading books and articles about Zoroastrianism, the origins of Israelite monotheism, and the tragic life of Akhenaten – all by way of preparing for the module “Monotheism from Moses to Freud” that I’m delivering this autumn in Cardiff. Soon, I need to assemble a few applications for grants to support further research. Shortly before November, I will start work in earnest on an intellectual biography of Boethius that I hope to publish in 2017 or thereabout. I’m also research the legends that gave rise to the Life of St Barlaam and Joasaph. In the meantime, I try to keep up as best I can with some trashy television and with a few novels and collections of poetry I’ve been reading lately.

Met. Hilarion on Orthodoxy

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, perhaps the most prominent Russian Orthodox theologian alive today, will later this month see St. Vladimir's Seminary Press issue a translation of the second volume of his work Orthodox Christianity Volume II : Doctrine and Teaching of the Orthodox Church (SVS Press, 2012), 597pp.

About this book the publisher says:

This is the second volume of a detailed and systematic exposition of the history, canonical structure, doctrine, moral and social teaching, liturgical services, and spiritual life of the Orthodox Church. The purpose of this series is to present Orthodox Christianity as an integrated theological and liturgical system, in which all elements are interconnected. Theology finds its expression and is shaped in the liturgical experience and church art—including icons, singing, and architecture. The services, in their turn, influence the ascetic practice and the personal piety of each Christian; they shape the moral and social teaching of the Church as well as its relation to other Christian confessions, non-Christian religions, and the secular world.
The first volume provided an account of the historical arc of the Orthodox Church during the first ten centuries after Christ’s nativity, then examined the canonical structure of the Orthodox Church. This volume examines the sources of Orthodox doctrine in Scripture and Tradition; its teaching on God in Trinity and Unity, in his essence and in his energies; on the world and man; on Jesus Christ, the incarnate God; on the Church, the body of Christ; on the Theotokos, Mary; and on eschatology, the last things.
Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev has authored numerous works on theology and church history, and is an internationally recognized composer of liturgical music. In the words of Patriarch Alexei II of blessed memory, “his many years of service to the mother church, his rich creative activity, and his broad perspective enable him to present the tradition of the Orthodox Church in all its diversity.”

We had his first volume reviewed and our reviewer, Lewis Patsavos of Holy Cross College in Brookline, noted that it was very good if a bit Russo-centric in focus. 

Orthodox Christian Worlds

I was talking recently with Augustine Casiday, the editor of a book whose official publication date is today. I am eagerly looking forward to receiving from the publisher The Orthodox Christian World (Routledge, 2012), 608pp.

About this book the publisher tells us: 

Over the last century unprecedented numbers of Christians from traditionally Orthodox societies migrated around the world. Once seen as an ‘oriental’ or ‘eastern’ phenomenon, Orthodox Christianity is now much more widely dispersed, and in many parts of the modern world one need not go far to find an Orthodox community at worship. This collection offers a compelling overview of the Orthodox world, covering the main regional traditions of Orthodox Christianity and the ways in which they have become global. The contributors are drawn from the Orthodox community worldwide and explore a rich selection of key figures and themes. The book provides an innovative and illuminating approach to the subject, ideal for students and scholars alike.

Casiday has already agreed to do an interview about this book, and I hope to feature his thoughts later in the year.  

Changing Churches

One of the most influential essays I read in the late 1990s was by the priest Richard John Neuhaus of blessed memory: "The Unhappy Fate of Optional Orthodoxy." Using John Shelton Reed's book Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism as his point de départ, Neuhaus, with his usual wonderful style, made many good points, but his central thesis was that in the liberal realignment of Christianity at the end of the twentieth century, orthodoxy and catholicity were no longer viable in Lutheran and Anglican traditions especially: they could only be underwritten by Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Projects of "traditionalist" Lutherans or "continuing" Anglicans were doomed to incoherence, schism, infighting, and failure. As anyone who has followed the unhappy agonies of the Anglican Communion in the last decade and more must admit, Neuhaus was right. 

Such unhappy developments in many Protestant traditions have often led to the growth in both Catholicism and Orthodoxy in recent years as many people leave for either Rome or Constantinople in search of apostolic Christianity. (Amy Slagle treats converts to Orthodoxy in her recent splendid book, which I discussed here.) In the coming weeks, I hope to feature an interview with the two authors of a new book detailing their own exodus from Lutheranism: one for Catholicism and the other for Orthodoxy. New from Eerdmans we have Mickey Mattox and A.G. Roeber, Changing Churches: An Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran Theological Conversation (February 2012), 368pp.


About this book the publisher tells us:

Sharp controversies — about biblical authority, the ordination of women, evangelical "worship styles," and the struggle for homosexual "inclusion" — have rocked the Lutheran church in recent decades. In Changing Churches two men who once communed at the same Lutheran Eucharistic table explain their similar but different decisions to leave the Lutheran faith tradition — one for Orthodoxy, the other for Roman Catholicism.

Here Mickey L. Mattox and A. G. Roeber address the most difficult questions Protestants face when considering such a conversion, including views on justification, grace, divinization, the church and its authority, women and ministry, papal infallibility, the role of Mary, and homosexuality. They also discuss the long-standing ecumenical division between Rome and the Orthodox patriarchates, acknowledging the difficult issues that still confront those traditions from within and divide them from one another.

As I say, stay tuned for an interview with Mattox and Roeber. 

Daniel Buxhoeveden and Gayle Woloschak on Orthodoxy and Science

A recent publication from Ashgate looks set to begin filling a considerable gap in the science-religion debate: Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Under the editorship of Daniel Buxhoeveden and Gayle Woloschak, this volume brings together numerous scholars reflecting on some of the most pressing questions today:

Contents: Preface; Part I Science and Orthodox Christianity: Compatibility and Balance: Living with science: Orthodox elders and saints of the 20th century, Daniel Buxhoeveden; Science and the Cappadocians: Orthodoxy and science in the 4th century, Valerie Karras; Divine action and the laws of nature: an Orthodox perspective on miracles, Christopher Knight; Ecology, evolution and Bulgakov, Gayle Woloschak. Part II Science and Orthodox Christianity: Limitations and Problems: Science and reductionism, Thomas Mether; Limitations of scientific knowledge and Orthodox religious experience, Daniel Buxhoeveden; Discerning the spirit in creation: Orthodox Christianity and environmental science, Bruce Foltz; Orthodox bioethics in the encounter between science and religion, John Breck. Part III Science and Orthodox Christianity: Selected Topics: The broad science-religion dialogue: Maximus, Augustine, and others, Gayle Woloschak; Technology: life and death, Gayle Woloschak; Apophaticism and political economy, C. Clark Carlton; Towards an Orthodox philosophy of science, Thomas Mether; Bibliography; Index.

I asked both the editors for an interview to discuss this book and the issues it addresses. Here are their thoughts:

AD: Tell us about both your backgrounds:

Daniel: I received my BS from the State University of New York, Stony Brook with a major in philosophy and minor in physical anthropology; my MS and Ph.D. in biological anthropology from the University of Chicago; and a JD from Loyola University, New Orleans. My scientific specialty is the minicolumnar organization of the neocortex and I have researched differences between humans and nonhuman cortex as well as differences between controls and individuals with autism, Asperger's syndrome, Down syndrome, and schizophrenia in extant populations.

My focus in the last few years has been religion and science. I received a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and the Virginia Farah Foundation to pursue this topic in the Orthodox Church. I am director of the science and religion initiative at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. I began this endeavor some 6-7 years ago with about 8 faculty and now have over 30 faculty on a mailing list.

Gayle: I received my Ph.D. from the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo and did post-doctoral training at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. I worked at  Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago as a senior scientist, and then moved to Northwestern as a professor about ten years ago. I teach radiation oncology to residents, and nanotechnology and molecular biology to graduate students. I have a lab group of about fifteen people and enjoy my research in nanotechnology and radiation biology.

I also teach several science-religion courses at the Zygon Centre for Religion and Science at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, and am associate director of the Centre. I am a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA and active in a number of groups within the Church in the US. 

AD: How did you come to work together on this particular volume?

Daniel: One of the aims of the grants, especially from the Virginia Farah Foundation, was to complete a book on science and the Orthodox Church. I asked Gayle if she would work with me on this project since we have worked together since I first began my science and religion initiative. Gayle is probably the single most qualified Orthodox person in North America on the topic of science and religion and I was fortunate to have her help.

Gayle: Dan had a Templeton Grant to work on this, and I was a collaborator on his grant and we had agreed to do this book as part of the grant funding. Dan and I have known each other for at least five or six years now, and so collaboration was natural.

AD: For whom did you put together this volume--did you have a particular audience in mind?

Daniel: The primary audience would be scholars and academics. This was not aimed specifically for a lay audience. Having said this, the goal of the book is to engage the Orthodox community beginning with Orthodox scholars. The Orthodox Church lags behind the efforts of other Christians in the dialogue with science and this book is an attempt to turn this around.

Gayle: I think we were hoping for a scholarly audience of people who are interested in the interface of science and religion within the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Church does not have as much dialogue on this issue as needed in the face of the many technological issues that are coming up. The book was part of a plan to engage Orthodox and other Christians in the discussion more intensely. These sorts of discussions will require an interdisciplinary approach and our goal was to try to bring different people with different backgrounds together for discussion.

AD: This book seems in many respects to be ground-breaking. Work on science
and religion has not often been done from an Eastern Christian perspective.
What areas especially remain under-explored?

Daniel: What I am hoping for is to stimulate interest in and discussion among the Orthodox community. The lay people may rightly be confused if they do not have a sense of where the Orthodox church stands on some important issues. I used the word ‘Church’ in the title rather than theology precisely because I think this is a Church issue and not one that needs to be addressed only by theologians and scholars, though they need to lead the way. Gayle would have a better grasp of what is lacking in the Orthodox Church in this regard than I would. However, I would say that the topic of biological evolution cannot be avoided. Another vital and under- explored area is neuroscience and the question of consciousness and brain. The latter topic is especially critical for theology. A more general but equally important theme that needs to be openly addressed is what is our approach to modern science (and technology)? Is it one of hostility, dialogue with mutual respect? Can science ever inform theology and vice versa? Is modern science fundamentally at odds with an Orthodox understanding of life as some claim? So I see both fundamental questions like this as well as specific issues that need to be addressed in an atmosphere of mutual respect that involves scientists, Church scholars, other academic disciplines, and clergy among others.

Gayle: It would be easy for me to come up with a huge laundry list here, but I think you can find Orthodox scholars who have written on many of the issues engaged by modern science. The broader issue is the need for discussion on these topics. Few problems can be resolved by a single scholar writing a single book or article. The hope is always that a work of scholarship elicits more discussion to help the Orthodox faithful gain a consensus on a given issue. I gave a workshop recently to a parish on stem-cell research, and I did a survey before and after the presentation. I was stunned at how much of a convergence of ideas there was after the presentation, mostly as a result of discussion that took place during and after the presentation. Within our parishes there is a huge need to engage many of the topics discussed in Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church and others as well. We need to create space where these discussions can be done openly and honestly.

AD: Are there unique perspectives on science that Orthodoxy has to offer that may have been overlooked or are otherwise missing from Western Christian
discussions and treatments?

Daniel: I think so. Certainly work by people like Alexei Nesteruk is a different approach that utilizes a definition of theology as knowledge of God rather than its more academic understanding. I think the emphasis on the experiential aspect of Orthodox experience of God may be different than many other Christian perspectives and actually remove a sense of conflict with science. This kind of approach (knowledge of God as experiential and hence ‘positive’ as opposed to speculative and rationalistic) is argued by a number of modern Greek theologians as well. Another persective is that historically there has not been the antagonism and problems with modern science that arose in the West.

Gayle: Because of my position at the Zygon Center, I am often asked to attend and speak at Lutheran Church conferences in bioethics, science and religion, and on other topics. There are some common grounds that can be found among Christians and perhaps all believers on particular issues--e.g., respect for the earth, love and caring for the other, respect for life, and others. Nevertheless, the Orthodox Church brings a unique perspective to these discussions.  Among Christians, the Orthodox view is often highly respected as being well-grounded in the Fathers and Tradition of the Church. I often tease my Lutheran colleagues that we may get to the same place on particular issues after all but we will probably get there differently, calling to mind different teachings and perspectives than they would.

AD: In the US there is a debate now going on 80 years or more about whether
theories of evolution can or should be taught in school. What perspectives
does Orthodoxy bring to those debates?

Daniel: In high schools we teach the current models used in the sciences. My approach is that if biological evolution is a model in science then that is what we use. We do not make exceptions for those we do not like. The problem is multifaceted but includes a misunderstanding of what biological evolution is, what the evidence is, the nature of a model in science, what kind of knowledge scientific knowledge is, as well as the literal approaches to Genesis that seem unnecessary and un-Orthodox. Coming to Orthodoxy I found in general a much more open approach to evolution, to science, and an appreciation that Genesis is not a book that is concerned or focused on geology, biology, or physics.

Gayle: This question would take me a long time to answer. I wrote an article for St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly recently on the issue and some of the chapters in the book also touch on the matter.  I do not believe that the Orthodox Church ever accepted a literal interpretation of Scripture and an acceptance of the Genesis 1 account of creation as literal would negate the many other creation accounts found in the Old Testament, including those in Genesis 2, Psalms, Job, and others. As a scientist I believe that the evidence for evolution is not refutable and therefore I can find no grounds as to why it would not be taught in schools. Evolution is the unifying model for all of biology, and without it nothing in biology makes sense (to paraphrase the evolutionary scholar and Orthodox Christian Theodosius Dobzhansky). Most of medicine uses evolution--we test drugs on chimpanzees and not on frogs because chimps are evolutionarily more related to us; thus rational drug design uses evolutionary tools and more.

AD: One area where Orthodoxy seems to have made a particular and manifest
mark recently is in the religion-ecology debate, led in no small part by the so-called Green Patriarch, His All-Holiness Bartholomew of Constantinople. What is unique about the Orthodox contributions to this debate? Who else is doing work in the area from an Orthodox perspectives.

Daniel: I just reviewed a new book by a host of Orthodox scholars on this topic. I was very impressed with the scope of discussion and look forward to the publication of this work. The best answer I can give to that is to take a look at Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church. This is a topic that easily fits into an Orthodox ethos and at the same time Orthodoxy can rescue the ‘ecological movement’ from excesses like pantheism misanthropy.

Gayle: There is a large number of scholars working in this area, and you can find some of them in our book. I know that Fr. Deacon John Chryssavgis and Bruce (Seraphim) Folz have been trying to complete a book edited from a conference on Orthodoxy and ecology held several years ago.  The Orthodox Society of the Transfiguration has worked for many years to bring an ecological consciousness to the Orthodox Church. Many parishes have green activities including several that have gone to solar panels and other means of ecological awareness.  

AD: It has almost become a truism that technology today far outstrips our moral reflection. That is, we can do things, but the question of whether we should do them remains unexplored or under-explored. Which issues in particular do you think Orthodoxy should be more deeply addressing in the twenty-first century?

Daniel: One of them may be transhumanism, the use of technological replacements for the human body. At the extreme some call for going beyond the human with the merging of biological aspects to machines. This mindset sees the body as weak and the machine as enduring and is also associated with attempts to prolong life indefinitely. The latter is also something we should examine: the notion of trying to prolong human life beyond the traditional norms. Another is the use of communication devices and their effects on loss of the personal. One writer described our age as one in which communication has increased immensely while 90% of what is being communicated is banal in nature. There is also the question of technology and privacy and the overall problem of how to fit our devices into a sacramental world view and personal life. Can it be done? Is there anything inherently wrong with our technological ‘progress’ or is it merely how it is used?

Gayle: I work in a medical school so perhaps I am most aware of technological issues in that context. I touched upon some of those in one of my chapters in Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Overall I believe that issues of stem-cell research and in-vitro fertilization, questions of genetic selection of offspring, genetic testing of individuals: these are issues really at the front line of life today that need to be examined. As technology increases, the number of decisions in a person's life also increases. When there was no in-vitro fertilization, the childless couple could decide to adopt or not. Now it is not just a question of whether to adopt or not, but then do we have a baby by in-vitro fertilization, do we have surrogate parents, do we do genetic testing of our child, do we do genetic selection of our child, and what do we do with unused fertilized eggs? These are just a few of the complex issues that most priests are not trained to address. I highly support the development of parish teams that include the priest and other professionals (doctors, nurses, scientists, etc.) to provide advice and counsel on these matters.

AD: Some people automatically assume the truth of the caricature that "science" is always antithetical to "religion," the former being ostensibly objective and evidence-based, and the latter subjective and superstitious. How can Orthodoxy help to overcome this divide?

Daniel: There are maybe four general ways to view the science and religion interface. One of them is the conflict model. Historians now discard this model as having no sound historical basis. Rather it was derived from two influential but highly biased and inaccurate books written in the 19th century and is also known as the Draper-White conflict thesis. Atheist and agnostic scholars seem to agree that there is no inherent conflict here. That being said, too many lay people and academics hold this view. A recent study of scientists (physical, biological, and social) at elite universities found that 47% of them believed in God. On the one hand, this is far lower than the national average but on the other it does not show an across-the-board hostility. Education is the key, which is why I am involved in the science and religion dialogue. We need to talk about this so the perceived divide does not become wider. Inherent in this is a proper understanding of what scientific knowledge is. We have to move away from what atheist philosopher of science Mary Midgley (and others), refer to as ‘imperial science.’ The key is that there is more than one form of knowing, one approach to reality, to what IS. The physical aspects of a Monet painting (the chemistry, oils, canvas, etc) are true as such but do not ‘explain’ the entirety of what the painting as a thing IS. Monet was not doing chemistry or physics: he was creating art. It depends on the question being asked: is this good art? How do we help prevent deterioration from the elements? The answer derives from different forms of knowledge. On the other hand, the physical attributes are hardly at war with the object as art--that would be silly. They help give rise to the art. We need perspective and balance.

Gayle: Francisco Ayala, the winner of the Templeton Prize for Science and Religion two years ago and a Catholic priest and scientist, wrote that science is one way of knowing, but it is not the only way--we derive knowledge from many other sources including spiritual reflection, artistic expression, and others. To limit ourselves only to what is scientific limits us to the material dimension only. For Orthodox Christians, as humans we are spiritual and physical creatures both, undivided. I do not think this division between science and religion, which is the perception of much of the culture around us, is natural for humans, and certainly not natural for Orthodox. It is somehow a product of a limited way of looking at the world.

AD: Sum up for us the main themes and achievements of the book.


Daniel: The main theme is perhaps the fact that we have Orthodox scholars in North America who are willing to engage this topic. I envisioned this as only a start and hope to see follow up editions with other authors added. Most books of this kind in English are not only scarce but written by one author. I wanted to get multiple views so no one person dominates the discussion or attempts to speak for the Church at large. This is the beginning of what I hope will be a nationwide discussion. If the book helps move this along in anyway, it will have achieved its primary purpose.

Gayle: Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church was the work of a group of Orthodox scholars who showed their tremendous commitment to the science-religion debate by their willingness to put their thoughts and ideas to words in a cohesive way. This was exciting for me personally. The quality of the scholars and the work that was done is truly amazing and it is a credit to their talents that the book was completed. I hope that this is the first of many such projects to engage discussion on science and religion together.