The Fourth Council of Constantinople and its Acts

I have previously and regularly hailed the efforts of Liverpool University Press to bring out volumes in their series Translated Texts for Historians. The beginning of May of this year will give us another: The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 869-70, trans. Richard Price and Federico Montinaro (LUP, 2022), 520pp.

Readers with better memories than mine will recall, as I seem vaguely to do, that the late John Meyendorff once pleaded with Christians, Catholics especially, to bring this council in from the cold and see it as an important tool to resolving the impasse over papal primacy. I'm sure Meyendorff's views are cited at greatly revealing length in this loser's book.

Anyway, about this new translation we are told this:

The Council of Constantinople of 869-70 was highly dramatic, with its trial and condemnation of Patriarch Photius, a towering figure in the Byzantium of his day, and the tussle of wills at the council between the papal legates, the imperial representatives and the bishops. It was church politics and personalities rather than issues of doctrine, such as icon veneration, that dominated the debates. Out of all the acts of the great early councils, the acts of this council, of which this edition is the first modern translation, are the nearest to an accurate and complete record. Its protest against secular interference in ecclesiastical elections was taken up later in the West and led to this council's being accorded full ecumenical status, although it had been repudiated in Byzantium soon after it was held. No early council expresses so vividly the tension between Rome's claim to supreme authority and the Byzantine reduction of this to a primacy of honour.

The Oxford Handbook of Naughty Studies

A decade ago now I was delighted to be asked to contribute to a book that has just been published. I worked dutifully and submitted my chapter by the early 2012 deadline as agreed. And then the wait began.

As a long-time editor myself, I am aware how much we editors are at the mercy of contributors. I have, through long and sometimes unpleasant experience editing many international volumes over the last 19 years developed a rough rule:

c. 75% of contributors will both agree and deliver their materials on time;

c. 10% of contributors will agree and then, with maximal rudeness damning them to a long purgatory, never be heard from again;

c. 15% of contributors will agree, beg for an extension, promise to have it in by the new deadline; beg again; promise again; go silent for a while; and then finally at the very last possible minute after increasingly stern remonstrations from a sorely vexed editor, submit their contribution with excuses of varying, and generally very low, plausibility. It is these latter who can hold up your entire book for years, as I know only too well.

This, I know, from the one remaining editor, is precisely what happened to this just-released Handbook which I received in the mail last week. In fact, so much longer than expected did this book take to finish that the senior of the two original editors has now been dead for over a year. 

This Handbook focuses on a topic at which it has been far too easy to take cheap and ignorant pot-shots for decades now. Indeed one of the words in the title, The Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies, remains a very naughty word that arouses the worst sorts of disordered desires and logismoi in all sorts of unpleasant people. I learned this in 1991 when I went to Australia for the seventh general assembly of the World Council of Churches. There I saw up close that crazy American evangelicals and crazy post-Soviet Orthodox had unwittingly formed their own bilateral partnership as unhappy allies in this new and nasty movement that denounced ecumenism as a "pan-heresy," as the work of the "anti-Christ" that would lead us all to a "one world church" under the domination of the UN or something. It was then, and remains today, utterly tiresome nonsense. 

There is nothing optional about being, as I unapologetically am, a uniate for that is the mandate of the Lord to seek and sustain unity among His followers. Anyone who refuses this mandate, who promotes and exults in division, is demonic. 

About this new collection the publisher tells us this:

The Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies is an unparalleled compendium of ecumenical history, information and reflection. With essay contributions by nearly fifty experts in their various fields, and edited by two leading international scholars, the Handbook is a major resource for all who are involved or interested in ecumenical work for reconciliation between Christians and for the unity of the Church. 

Its six main sections consider, respectively, the different phases of the history of the ecumenical movement from the mid-nineteenth century to the present; the ways in which leading Christian churches and traditions, Orthodox, Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Baptist, and Pentecostal, have engaged with and contributed to the movement; the achievements of ecumenical dialogue in key areas of Christian doctrine, such as Christology and ecclesiology, baptism, Eucharist and ministry, morals and mission, and the issues that remain outstanding; various ecumenical agencies and instruments, such as covenants and dialogues, the World Council of Churches, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Global Christian Forum; the progress and difficulties of ecumenism in different countries, areas and continents of the world, the UK and the USA, Africa, Asia, South America, Europe, and the Middle East, ; and finally two all-important questions are considered by scholars from various traditions: what would Christian unity look like and what is the best method for seeking it? This is a remarkably comprehensive account and assessment of one of the most outstanding features of Christian history, namely the modern ecumenical movement.

In this volume, I am alongside distinguished Orthodox scholars whom I am delighted also to be able to call friends: John Jillions has a chapter (and you really should read his recent book about which I interviewed him here) and so does Radu Bordeianu (whom I interviewed here about his superlative book on ecclesiology, which I have used in ecclesiology courses for nearly a decade now); and the new (to me) Orthodox scholar Tamara Grdzelidze, who has been very prolific in the field of ecumenical studies.

The Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies

The annual "unity octave," more recently and popularly known as the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, ends today, which is as fine a time as any to draw your attention to a forthcoming international collection from the most prestigious academic publisher in the world: The Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies, eds., Geoffrey Wainwright and Paul McPartlan (OUP, June 2021), 696pp.

I was asked nearly a decade ago now to contribute a chapter, which it was my pleasure and honour to do: I wrote on The Church, showing ecumenical advances in ecclesiology. My chapter was submitted in 2012. 

The final production, however, has been so long delayed that one of the editors, Geoffrey Wainwright, died last year before this book was in print. Parts of it have been available electronically for some time, but now we shall soon have the whole thing in print, which is how God intended for books to be read. I mention all this not in any critical way whatsoever, but merely to commiserate with Prof. McPartlan, for I, too, have often been in the position he has been in, waiting on contributors to send in much-delayed chapters only to have some of them utterly disappear, submitting nothing (long may they roast in Purgatory!); others to promise and promise you a chapter, dragging things out indefinitely; and so on. 

In fact, my forthcoming Married Priests in the Catholic Church also saw its first stirrings of life back in 2012, and was, I hoped, going to be in print at least 3 years ago. But we editors are at the mercy of contributors and other forces we can only rarely, and often never, dragoon to our deadlines. So things always take much longer than one plans and hopes, leading me to the longstanding if counterintuitive realization that writing a book as solo author is always much easier and faster than editing a collection even if your overall word-count is far different. 

In any event, here is what the publisher tells us about this forthcoming collection: 

The Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies is an unparalleled compendium of ecumenical history, information and reflection. With essay contributions by nearly fifty experts in their various fields, and edited by two leading international scholars, the Handbook is a major resource for all who are involved or interested in ecumenical work for reconciliation between Christians and for the unity of the Church. Its six main sections consider, respectively, the different phases of the history of the ecumenical movement from the mid-nineteenth century to the present; the ways in which leading Christian churches and traditions, Orthodox, Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Baptist, and Pentecostal, have engaged with and contributed to the movement; the achievements of ecumenical dialogue in key areas of Christian doctrine, such as Christology and ecclesiology, baptism, Eucharist and ministry, morals and mission, and the issues that remain outstanding; various ecumenical agencies and instruments, such as covenants and dialogues, the World Council of Churches, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Global Christian Forum; the progress and difficulties of ecumenism in different countries, areas and continents of the world, the UK and the USA, Africa, Asia, South America, Europe, and the Middle East, ; and finally two all-important questions are considered by scholars from various traditions: what would Christian unity look like and what is the best method for seeking it? This is a remarkably comprehensive account and assessment of one of the most outstanding features of Christian history, namely the modern ecumenical movement.

On Receiving--or Not--the Great Schoolman Thomas Aquinas

One of the most fascinating books I read in the last decade was and remains Marcus Plested's Orthodox Readings of Aquinas, about which I interviewed him on this blog. It must surely be counted as a key piece of scholarship in dismantling the bogus and tendentious tales told by Orthodox apologists about the Big Bad Schoolmen, and in that way serving as "ecumenical scholarship" of the most precious sort. 

Plested now teams up with the indefatigable Matthew Levering to bring us, early next year, The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas. The book contains several chapters on Eastern, Byzantine, and Orthodox responses to Aquinas in a variety of different historical contexts--along with many other riches. About this book the publisher further tells us this: 

The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas provides a comprehensive survey of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant philosophical and theological reception of Thomas Aquinas over the past 750 years.This Handbook will serve as a necessary primer for everyone who wishes to study Aquinas's thought and/or the history of theology and philosophy since Aquinas's day. Part I considers the late-medieval receptions of Aquinas among Catholics and Orthodox. Part II examines sixteenth-century Western receptions of Aquinas (Protestant and Catholic), followed by a chapter on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Orthodox reception. Part III discusses seventeenth-century Protestant and Catholic receptions, and Part IV surveys eighteenth- and nineteenth-century receptions (Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic). Part V focuses on the twentieth century and takes into account the diversity of theological movements in the past century as well as extensive philosophical treatment. The final section unpicks contemporary systematic approaches to Aquinas, covering the main philosophical and theological themes for which he is best known. With chapters written by a wide range of experts in their respective fields, this volume provides a valuable touchstone regarding the developments that have marked the past seven centuries of Christian theology.

Stolen Churches? Borrowed Bridges?

I was invited to give a lecture at this "Stolen Churches" conference in Germany last summer, but was unable to take up the invitation. Nonetheless, I look forward to reading, upon their publication early next year, the proceedings, forthcoming as Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy?: Volume 1: Historical and Theological Perspectives on the Orthodox and Eastern-Catholic Dialogue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, 409pp.), eds.Vladimir Latinovic and Anastacia Wooden.

About this volume the publisher tells us this:

Throughout their shared history, Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches have lived through a very complex and sometimes tense relationship – not only theologically, but also politically. In most cases such relationships remain to this day; indeed, in some cases the tension has increased. In July 2019, scholars of both traditions gathered in Stuttgart, Germany, for an unprecedented conference devoted to exploring and overcoming the division between these churches. This book, the first in a two-volume set of the essays presented at the conference, explores historical and theological themes with the goal of healing memories and inspiring a direct dialogue between Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches. Like the conference, the volume brings together representatives of these Churches, as well as theologians from different geographical contexts where tensions are the greatest. The published essays represent the great achievements of the conference: willingness to engage in dialogue, general openness to new ideas, and opportunities to address difficult questions and heal inherited wounds.