Church-State Relations in Russia, China, and the West

Church-state relations in Russia continue to be the object much scholarly attention. Recently we've seen a number of books, including Wallace L. Daniel, The Orthodox Church and Civil Society in  Russia; John and Carol Garrard, Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia; and Benjamin Forest et al, eds., Religion And Identity In Modern Russia: The Revival Of Orthodoxy And Islam.

Now Cambridge University Press has recently brought out an edited collection that treats such relations in a wider context:

James D. Tracy and Marguerite Ragnow, eds., Religion and the Early Modern State: Views from China, Russia, and the West (Studies in Comparative Early Modern History) (CUP, 2010), 436pp.

About this book the publisher tells us;

How did state power impinge on the religion of the ordinary person? This perennial issue has been sharpened as historians uncover the process of 'confessionalization' or 'acculturation', by which officials of state and Church collaborated in ambitious programs of Protestant or Catholic reform, intended to change the religious consciousness and the behaviour of ordinary men and women. In the belief that specialists in one area of the globe can learn from the questions posed by colleagues working in the same period in other regions, this 2005 volume sets the topic in a wider framework. Thirteen essays, grouped in themes affording parallel views of England and Europe, Tsarist Russia, and Ming China, show a spectrum of possibilities for what early modern governments tried to achieve by regulating religious life, and for how religious communities evolved in new directions, either in keeping with or in spite of official injunctions.

 Three chapters in particular treat East-Slavic realities:

• 2. Ecclesiastical elites and popular belief and practice in seventeenth-century Russia by Robert O. Crummey
• 6. Orthodoxy and revolt: the role of religion in the seventeenth-century Ukrainian Uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Frank E. Sysyn, author of other important works on Ukrainian history in particular.
• 9. False miracles and unattested dead bodies: investigations into popular cults in Early Modern Russia by Eve Levin, author of a fascinating 1995 study Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700

In addition, the volume contains a chapter by the Cambridge historian Eamon Duffy:

• 12. The disenchantment of space: Salle church and the Reformation

Duffy is the author of not only what I regard as the best one-volume study of the popes, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes; Third Edition but also several other very important works that have dramatically corrected and revised our understanding of the English reformation, starting with a "micro" history,  The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (2003) and then expanded in his widely discussed The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580. More recently we've had from him a re-examination of so-called Bloody Queen Mary: Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor.

I look forward to seeing Religion and the Early Modern State: Views from China, Russia, and the West  reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies.

Byzantines and Armenians in Dialogue

Though, alas, the term "Byzantine" has entered English as a pejorative denoting extraordinary complexity and duplicity, the Byzantines were not (pace the slanders of those caricaturists Gibbon, Montesquieu, and Voltaire) always defamed for their wily diplomacy or supposed trickery. In some cases, their treatment of fellow Christians is much less than we would expect today--chiefly among the so-called non-Chalcedonians. A new volume explores the relationship between the Byzantine and the Armenian churches in particular in the latter part of the twelfth century:

I. Augé, Églises en dialogue: Arméniens et Byzantins dans la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle (Peeters, 2011), xxx+317pp.

About this new book, the publisher tells us:

Dans les années 1165-1178, les autorités religieuses et politiques byzantines et arméniennes entrent en contact de manière soutenue, dans le but de trouver un accord entre les deux Églises. De nombreuses missives sont alors échangées, missives qui ont été conservées pour partie en langue arménienne et compilées dans un recueil par Nerses Lambronac'i. Le présent ouvrage est une traduction commentée de ces textes, dix-neuf lettres au total, qui envisagent les questions théologiques débattues, mais apportent également des informations importantes sur le plan historique. À cet élément central s'ajoutent, en annexes, les traductions de trois documents importants pour l'étude de la controverse arméno-byzantine au XIIe siècle, un opuscule de Nerses Lambronac'i, le récit anonyme de la visite de ce même Nerses à Constantinople en 1197, et une Vie du catholicos Nerses Snorhali, l'un des principaux protagonistes, avec l'empereur Manuel Comnène, du rapprochement religieux arméno-grec. 

Icons in Venetian Crete

Ashgate has just sent me a wonderful new book on icons. As I have often noted before, we are seeing a steady stream of books emerging on icons and iconography today. But this text is one that no serious student of iconography will want to be without:

Maria Vassilaki, ed., The Hand of Angelos: An Icon Painter in Venetian Crete (Ashgate, 2010), 255pp.


This is a massive hardback book (a true "coffee table" book, though that should not deter people: it's not mindless picture-gazing while you wait in the dentist's office, but a volume of serious historical and iconographical scholarship) that does not stint on the colour plates, and for that we can be very grateful indeed. (Is there anything more dispiriting or illogical than a book devoted to iconography that has few or no plates, or only black and white plates?) This is a lavishly, handsomely illustrated volume of scholarship, with more than eighty illustrations. This belongs in every serious collection devoted to iconography.

About this book, the publisher provides a nicely detailed overview:

A tumultuous period in history, the late Byzantine era bore witness to bloody power struggles that dramatically changed the geographical, political and social landscape of a region and its people. Among the many shifts during this time of flux was the switch of major artistic production from Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, to Candia, the capital of Venetian-occupied Crete.

Exploring the life and work of Angelos Akotantos, the most significant artist active in Venetian Crete, The Hand of Angelos provides new insight into a key figure and the period in which he worked. Offering contextual discussion, the authors, all experts in their fields, cover a range of themes, including the contrasting economic and political fortunes of Constantinople and Candia, and the enduring cultural influence of the Byzantine Empire's capital within Crete.

Within this contextual framework, Angelos Akotantos provides the focus for this unique book. Due to the large number of first-class icons that can be accurately, and reliably, attributed to him, plus the existence of his will (reproduced in full here) and other documents which shed light on his personality, the scholars writing here successfully demonstrate, through both essays and catalogue entries, the high artistic quality of the works created by the 'Hand of Angelos' - pieces which demonstrate preoccupations with both Constantinopolitan painting and elements adopted from western art. At the same time these works are of great interest iconographically, as they established and crystallised motifs which are repeatedly seen in the work of artists from later generations.

We also get a sense of the scholarship included here by perusing the table of contents:

• Preface, Introduction: Professor Angelos Delivorrias, Director of the Benaki Museum; 
• Part 1: Historical and Artistic Context Before the Fall: 
• Political and economic conditions in Constantinople in the fifteenth century: Angeliki Laiou; 
• The history of Crete in the fifteenth century on the basis of archival documents: Chryssa Maltezou; 
• Candia between Venice, Byzantium and the Levant: The rise of a major emporium to the mid-fifteenth century: David Jacoby; 
• The Icon in Constantinople around 1400, Robin Cormack; From Constantinople to Candia: Icon painting around 1400: Maria Vassilaki.
• Part II: The Painting of Angelos:
• The Will of Angelos Akotantos: Maria Kazanaki-Lappa; 
• The Art of Angelos: Maria Vassilaki; 
• The legacy of Angelos: Nano Chatzidaki; 

O Lord and Master of My Life!

During the Great Fast, which ends this week on Lazarus Saturday (Holy Week being, as it were, a fast unto itself of especial strictness), Eastern Christians have been reciting regularly the great prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian with its prostrations.

The prolific pastoral theologian William Mills wrote a charming little book about Ephraim a couple of years ago, and I reviewed it for Logos: The Prayer of St. Ephrem: A Biblical Commentary

About this book, the publisher tells us:

St. Ephrem the Syrian (306-379) is perhaps one of the most prolific Fathers of the Eastern Church, composing four-hundred liturgical hymns and scriptural commentaries, earning him such titles as the Harp of the Spirit and the Pillar of the Church. St. Ephrem is best known for the short prayer, The Prayer of St. Ephrem, which is used throughout the season of Great Lent. The prayer outlines both the sins and virtues of community life: sloth, despair, lusting of power, idle talk; as well as chastity humility, patience, and love for the neighbor. The Prayer of St. Ephrem: A Biblical Commentary provides the reader with the scriptural background to the words and metaphors contained in this short but inspirational prayer. This book is a good resource for either personal devotion or for small group Bible Studies in the parish.

There is still time to order, read, and benefit from this book's great wisdom, and then to store it on your shelf for slow meditation not only during Great Lent of next year, but during the other fasting seasons later this year.

Prodigal Daughter

The University of Alberta Press has just sent me a copy of what looks to be a fascinating new book:

Myrna Kostash, Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium (U of A Press, 2010), 337pp.

Kostash, an Edmonton-based writer and author of such earlier works as All of Baba's Children, here provides what looks to be a charming mélange of memoir, travelogue, and spiritual-cultural commentary. Flipping through it, I am put in mind of William Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East or Victoria Clark's Why Angels Fall

About this book the publisher tells us:

A deep-seated questioning of her inherited religion resurfaces when Myrna Kostash chances upon the icon of St. Demetrius of Thessalonica. A historical, cultural and spiritual odyssey that begins in Edmonton, ranges around the Balkans, and plunges into a renewed vision of Byzantium in search of the Great Saint of the East delivers the author to an unexpected place—the threshold of her childhood church.

An epic work of travel memoir, Prodigal Daughter sings with immediacy and depth, rewarding readers with a profound sense of an adventure they have lived. This book will appeal to readers interested in Ukrainian-Canadian culture, the Eastern Church, and medieval history, as well as to fans of Kostash's bold creative nonfiction.

I look forward to seeing this discussed on here and reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies.

The Communion of the Churches

When I began my doctoral program, I worked for a time as research assistant to Catherine Clifford at Saint Paul University in Ottawa. She's a thoroughly lovely person and I not only enjoyed our work together, but greatly benefited from it as well. One of the things I did was to build an index for her first book: The Groupe des Dombes (Peter Lang, 2005). Much of Clifford's work has been devoted to the fascinating Groupe des Dombes, which was founded in 1937 by Abbé Paul Couturier to bring francophone Catholics and Protestants in Europe together in the search for Christian unity. Their methods are much more "personal" than the usual big conferences and bilateral or multilateral ecumenical dialogues, but all the more important because of that, I am convinced. As one who has attended his share of big--sometimes huge--ecumenical gatherings, I can attest that these less formal gatherings are often on a more "human" scale and, I would argue, sometimes more efficacious because of that.

The Groupe has, over the years, published a number of important statements, some of which have come into English through Clifford's editorship and translations skills, and the willingness of Eerdmans to publish them, including:

"One Teacher": Doctrinal Authority in the Church (Eerdmans, 2010), 184pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

In this book the Groupe des Dombes — a widely respected yet unofficial dialogue of Reformed, Lutheran, and Catholic scholars from French-speaking Europe — undertakes a comprehensive study of the complex issue of doctrinal authority in the church. This includes the role of Scripture, of confessional texts, of decision-making bodies, and of individual persons entrusted with authority in service to the unity of faith. While a number of previous ecumenical dialogues have studied the question of authority with a particular focus on the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, the Groupe des Dombes lays out the complex constellation of questions that is at issue in the differing ethos of Protestant and Catholic traditions. Its challenge to the churches reflects the agenda of ecumenical dialogue for decades to come.

The most recent one, which I have just received, is C. E. Clifford, ed. and trans., For the Communion of the Churches: The Contribution of the Groupe des Dombes (Eerdmans, 2010), 231pp.

What is especially useful and welcome about this volume is that it gathers together in one place six statements of the Groupe, from 1971 to 1991, which have not always been easily accessible, especially to ceux qui ne peuvent pas lire le français:

• Towards a Common Eucharistic Faith (1971) 
• Towards a Reconciliation of Ministries (1972)
• The Episcopal Ministry (1976)
• The Holy Spirit, the Church, and the Sacraments (1979)
• The Ministry of Communion in the Universal Church (1985) 
• For the Conversion of the Churches (1991)

That fifth statement of 1985, "The Ministry of Communion in the Universal Church," was a statement about papal primacy, which I read and drew on in an earlier version of my Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity. What makes the Groupe's statement unique is that it predates, by a decade, the landmark request by Pope John Paul II, in Ut Unum Sint, for new ways of conceiving and configuring the papal office. What is even more striking is that the statement called for the return to a renewed differentiation of papal roles, taking more seriously once again the office of Patriarch of the West, which title, in 2006, the Annuario Pontificio deleted for reasons that are still not clear.

What do those of us in the Christian East have to learn from this unique Groupe? I think that in addition to benefitting from the wisdom of their actual statements the greatest and most valuable insights are methodological, and in two ways. First, we can never underestimate the value of simple human relationships in informal gatherings, such as are the hallmark of Groupe encounters. To put it in a Levinasian vein, it is easier to succumb to the dangers of dehumanized abstraction ("those Catholics are heretics!" or "those Orthodox are schismatics!") until we have a face-to-face encounter with the other. The Groupe reminds us that seemingly quiet or informal conversations--sitting in front of a fire somewhere, relating as friends--are the necessary foundations to rebuilding shattered Christian unity.

Second,  as Clifford notes in her introduction to this volume, and with especial reference to "The Ministry of Communion" statement,  we have to learn how to re-read history, Tradition, and Scripture together. In this statement, the Groupe offered

an overview of significant historical developments in the life of the churches that have determined the shape of the papacy and resulted in serious differences concerning the understanding of its mission and authority. Only after this reconciling exercise of rereading history together, to arrive at a common understanding of the churches' various positions and biases, does the groupe des Dombes return to the source of Sacred Scripture (8).

This method, which deliberately eschewed polemical, tendentious, or "apologetical" readings of Scripture, Tradition, and history, is surely right. At a symposium in Rome in 2003, the Romanian Orthodox canonist Nicolae Dura, and the great Greek Orthodox theologian Metropolitan John Zizioulas both commended this type of re-reading and re-reception to Orthodox and Catholics--as did Walter Kasper in his introductory chapter. We need, to put it too simply, to examine anew our divided past in order to build together a united future. All three papers were published in Walter Kasper, ed., Petrine Ministry: Catholics And Orthodox In Dialogue.

In that Kasper volume, as in the earlier one, James Puglisi, ed., Petrine Ministry and the Unity of the Church and again more recently (as I noted on here in December) in James Puglisi, ed., How Can the Petrine Ministry Be a Service to the Unity of the Universal Church? Zizioulas has insisted repeatedly that apologetic readings of Scripture (especially the infamous Petrine texts of Matthew 16) have never been able to provide the basis for a Catholic-Orthodox agreement about the papacy. We cannot disregard history, of course, but neither will it solve our problems, especially when read tendentiously or in isolation from other Christians. (As Robert Taft often puts it, history is instructive but not normative.) So we need to re-read history together and only then attempt to theologize together about the papacy. (As Zizioulas has said, "the primacy of the bishop of Rome has to be theologically justified or else ignored altogether.")

And that theological justification cannot come in isolation: it can only be the fruit of our dialogue, our work together seeking the communion of the churches of Christ. All Christians, East and West, are in debt to the Groupe des Dombes for reminding us of this once more.

Syriac Ascetical and Mystical Literature

As I have had several occasions to note previously, we have seen, in the last two decades, a wonderful growth in scholarship on, and general interest in, the Syriac tradition of the Christian East. A recent volume has in fact spoken of a "renaissance," which is very welcome indeed insofar as knowledge of the Christian East in its Greek/Byzantine expressions remains low, but knowledge of Syriac realities lower still.

C. Fotescu Tauwinkl et al., eds., The Syriac Renaissance (Peeters, 2010), xii+408pp. 

About this volume, Peeters tells us that it:

contains the Acts of the Expert Meeting on the Syriac Renaissance. A Period of Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue, organized by the Institute of Eastern Christian Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen and the Pionier Programme in Syriac Christianity of the University of Leiden (Nijmegen, 2-4 June, 2005).

The Syriac Renaissance (11th-13th cent.) is a period which has received relatively little attention as such. Traditionally, the focus of attention has been on the literary production of individual authors as Barhebraeus or 'Abdiso' bar Brikha, without trying to study them in relation with other contemporary authors or within the context of the general theological, cultural and artistic orientations of this period. For this reason, the aim of the Expert Meeting was:

- To complete the picture of this presumed Renaissance by presenting the works of less known authors such as Khamis Bar Qardahe, Ghiwarghis Warda, Michael Badoqa, Abu Ghalib and Dioscorus d-Gozarto (David Taylor, Martin Tamcke, Gerrit Reinink, Hidemi Takahashi, Carmen Fotescu).
- To discuss the works of better known authors such as Michael the Syrian, Barhebraeus and 'Abdiso' bar Brikha from the intercultural, interreligious and interconfessional perspectives of this period (Dorothea Weltecke, Jan van Ginkel, John Watt, Peter Joosse, Helen Younansardaroud).
- To investigate whether these perspectives can also be found in the field of biblical interpretation, manuscript production, church construction (Bas ter Haar Romeny, Ray Mouawad, Nada Hélou, Bas Snelders, Mat Immerzeel) and to draw the attention to comparable developments among the Copts and the Armenians (Adel Sidarus and Jos Weitenberg).

The work is preceded by a general introduction to the renaissance (by Herman Teule).

Peeters is also bringing out another very useful volume for scholars of the Syriac tradition: 

G. Kessel and K. Pinggera, A Bibliography of Syriac Ascetic and Mystical Literature (Peeters, 2011), x+224pp.

The publisher provides the following blurb:

This book offers a complete bibliographical presentation of Syriac authors and texts in the domain of Syriac asceticism and mysticism. It also includes Greek texts that were translated into Syriac and profoundly influenced the spiritual life of Christians in the Near and Middle East. Among the Syrian Churches ascetic and mystical literature was flourishing over the centuries and witnesses the intensity of their religious life. It also enriched the spirituality of other Christian traditions. Therefore, the bibliography also indicates Medieval translations of Syriac texts into other languages.

The list of authors and texts ranges from Ps.-Clement of Rome and Antony the Great to the Chaldean Patriarch Joseph II (1696-1713/4). Editions (if available), translations and secondary literature are arranged in chronological order. Additionally, subject sections present surveys and introductions to the topic as well as literature about Syriac proto-monasticism, monastic anthologies, mystical experience and Messalianism in the Syriac tradition. The introduction of the book highlights the importance and originality of the Syriac ascetic and mystical literature.

Easter Delights for Adults

Lent is all about almsgiving, especially to poor starving authors. With only two weeks to go until Easter/Pascha, now is the time to give alms. Why not do so by purchasing 875 or so copies of Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity to give to 874 of your closest friends (while keeping one to read for yourself) as paschal presents? Feed their minds instead of rotting their teeth with cheap bonbons. 

The book enjoys critical approval from, inter alia, both Orthodox "families":

Oriental Orthodox: "John Paul II's remarkable encyclical Ut Unum Sint gives occasion for a comprehensive review and analysis of the steady, though often sputtering movement toward Orthodox and Roman Catholic rapprochement in our day. DeVille identifies the major voices, the churches involved, and assesses in particular the place and role of the Papacy in this process. Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy does a great service in promoting the ecumenical conversation, and will be an edifying resource to all that are interested in it" (Vigen Guroian, Armenian Orthodox theologian, University of Virginia)

Byzantine Orthodox: "Adam A. J. DeVille looks not only at the history of ecumenism from the Catholic side since Vatican II but also at more than a dozen of the leading Orthodox theologians internationally and their perspectives on the role and status of the bishop of Rome. Not since The Primacy of Peter: Essays in Ecclesiology and the Early Church, a collection of post Vatican II Orthodox views published over twenty years ago, has there been such an extensive and focused presentation of Orthodox points of view" (Michael Plekon, priest of the Orthodox Church of America and professor at Baruch College, City University of New York).

Paul and Sex

The questions of homosexuality, and especially of same-sex "marriage," are, of course, among the more heated and difficult of our time. Eastern Christian contributions to this discussion have been very limited. Apart from Thomas Hopko's Christian Faith And Same Sex Attraction: Eastern Orthodox Reflections we do not have a lot of current theologizing on these issues.  As I have argued before and elsewhere, what we need is not merely a ham-fisted reassertion of "what Tradition says" or a catena of supposed proof-texts from Scripture. What is needed more than anything is a thorough-going reflection on what God's purpose was in creating the human person in a sexually differentiated manner and why we must be obedient to that order and its telos. A new book comes out to raise the question of sexual differentiation in the Apostle: 

Benjamin H. Dunning, Specters of Paul: Sexual Difference in Early Christian Thought (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 272pp.  


About this book the publisher tells us:

The first Christians operated with a hierarchical model of sexual difference common to the ancient Mediterranean, with women considered to be lesser versions of men. Yet sexual difference was not completely stable as a conceptual category across the spectrum of formative Christian thinking. Rather, early Christians found ways to exercise theological creativity and to think differently from one another as they probed the enigma of sexually differentiated bodies.

In Specters of Paul, Benjamin H. Dunning explores this variety in second- and third-century Christian thought with particular attention to the ways the legacy of the apostle Paul fueled, shaped, and also constrained approaches to the issue. Paul articulates his vision of what it means to be human primarily by situating human beings between two poles: creation (Adam) and resurrection (Christ). But within this framework, where does one place the figure of Eve—and the difference that her female body represents?

Dunning demonstrates that this dilemma impacted a range of Christian thinkers in the centuries immediately following the apostle, including Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus of Lyons, Tertullian of Carthage, and authors from the Nag Hammadi corpus. While each of these thinkers attempts to give the difference of the feminine a coherent place within a Pauline typological framework, Dunning shows that they all fail to deliver fully on the coherence that they promise. Instead, sexual difference haunts the Pauline discourse of identity and sameness as the difference that can be neither fully assimilated nor fully ejected—a conclusion with important implications not only for early Christian history but also for feminist and queer philosophy and theology.

 I look forward to seeing this discussed on here and reviewed for Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. 

The Finest Revue in North America

We are finishing up the spring issue (vol. 52, nos. 1-2) of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. Alone of all Eastern Christian journals in North America, Logos manages to be published regularly and consistently every year on a twice-yearly schedule that incorporates the best scholarship and pastoral reflection from Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Catholic, Roman Catholic,  Protestant, and other scholars from around the world. It is not gratuitous bragging to note that no other comparable journal has the breadth of contributors that Logos does nor the ability consistently to publish in a timely manner on all aspects of Eastern Christianity in its manifold forms.

If through some inexplicable lapse you have not yet subscribed, or have let your subscription run out, have no fear: this link will let you sign up again so that you may feast on riches available nowhere else.

The spring issue will contain, inter alia, peer-reviewed articles, editorials, a necrology, and essays by, inter alia:

• Richard Rymarz on Ukrainian Catholics at World Youth Day
• Michael Plekon on Eastern Elements in Kierkegaard's Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses
• Andriy Chirovsky
• Vincenzo Poggi
• Daniel Galadza, and others.
  

In addition, of course, we have nearly thirty reviews of many new books, including:

•  B. ter Haar Romeny, ed., Religious Origins of Nations? (reviewed by Oxford's Sebastian Brock)

• A.E. Siecinski, The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) (reviewed by Robert Haddad)

• Barbara Skinner, Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia (reviewed by John-Paul Himka) 

• Gillian Crow, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh: Essential Writings (Modern Spiritual Masters)(reviewed by Roman Rytsar)

•  Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam (reviewed by John Bequette)

•  Thomas Mathews, Byzantium: From Antiquity to the Renaissance (reviewed by Emma Loosley)

•  Douglas M. Koskela, Ecclesiality and Ecumenism: Yves Congar and the Road to Unity (reviewed by Catherine Clifford)

• Anna Lisa Crone, Eros and Creativity in Russian Religious Renewal (Russian History and Culture) (reviewed by Judith Deutsch Kornblatt)

• Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, Divine Sophia: The Wisdom Writings of Vladimir Solovyov (reviewed by Robert Slesinski

• John Chryssavgis, Remembering and Reclaiming Diakonia: The Diaconate Yesterday and Today (reviewed by David Kennedy)

• Larry Wolff, The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (reviewed by Christopher Hann)

• Paul Collins, Partaking in Divine Nature: Deification and Communion (reviewed by Daniel Keating)

• Wallace Alston and Cynthia Jarvis, The Power to Comprehend with All the Saints: The Formation and Practice of a Pastor-Theologian (reviewed by Bill Mills)

• Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Song and Memory: Biblical Women in Syriac Tradition (reviewed by Bill Mills)

• Matthew Blastares, Sexuality, Marriage, and Celibacy in Byzantine Law: The Alphabetical Collection of Matthew Blastares: Selections from a Fourteenth-Century Encyclopedia of Canon Law, trans. Patrick Viscuso (reviewed by Alex Laschuk)

•  Peter Berger et al., eds., In Praise of Doubt: How to Have Convictions Without Becoming a Fanatic (reviewed by Michael Plekon)

•  Irina Yazykova, Hidden and Triumphant: The Underground Struggle to Save Russian Iconography (reviewed by Michael Plekon)

•  Christopher Pramuk, Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton (reviewed by Michael Plekon)

• Another dozen or so brief reviews are included, most of books already discussed on here.

Really, given this cornucopia, do you have any excuse for not subscribing--today?

The Parish

Among Eastern Christians, it was Alexander Schmemann of blessed memory who many years ago rightly noted that the one major problem in ecclesiology that almost nobody, in East or West, had ever bothered to examine seriously or systematically was that of the parish. More recently John Zizioulas has alluded to this as well. More recently still, a fascinating discussion on this very question has been going on at the Orthodox Church History site.

In the West, the famous debate between Walter Kasper and Joseph Ratzinger over the "local vs. universal" Church  did not treat, much less solve, the problem of the parish. With the legalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire in the early fourth century, and its subsequent wild growth, the early model of "one bishop to one city" became unworkable. Many things would change--success breeds its own, often quite difficult, problems--and gradually we would see the growth of what we today call the parish, which has for centuries occupied a very uneasy place in ecclesiological reflection--to the extent it has been considered at all.

Now a new book out seems set to look at the question. This book is from a Roman Catholic perspective but I suspect that much will, mutatis mutandis, be of great interest and applicability to Eastern Christians as well:

Thomas A. Baima, What is a Parish? Legal, Canonical, Pastoral and Theological Perspectives (Chicago: Hillenbrand/Liturgy Training Publications, 2011).  

About this book, the publisher tells us the following:

The parish is the venue in which both the mission of the Church is lived, and the relationship of Catholics to the local and universal Church is mediated. Catholics come to the parish, not to the diocese, to celebrate the sacraments, to be catechized and formed, and to receive pastoral care.  The parish is the "Church inserted into the neighborhood and the world," the place in which the Church encounters the world and the world encounters the Church. However, the parish is rarely examined theologically or understood from a pastoral perspective. 

This book has three objectives:

1. It frames the parish with respect to the theological, pastoral, canonical and civil status of the parish.
2. It outlines further theological work to be done; and
3. It proposes criteria for evaluating further theological, pastoral, and civil judgments and initiative concerning the parish and parish life.