Brandon Gallaher

The only comprehensive critical anthology of theological and historical aspects related to Florovsky's thought by an international group of leading academics and church personalities. It is the only book in English translation of Florovsky's key study in French-"The Body of the Living Christ: An Orthodox Interpretation of the Church". The contributors tackle a broad range of subjects that comprise the theological legacy of one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century. The essays examine the life and work of Florovsky, his theology and theological methodology, as well as ecclesiology and ecumenism. A must-have volume for those who study Florovsky and his legacy. Companion volume to The Patristic Witness of Georges Florovsky, the Reader of his key works (https://www.amazon.com/Patristic-Witness-Georges-Florovsky-Theological/dp/0567697711/ref=pd_sbs_1/136-4412741-2610617?pd_rd_w=9HnR6&pf_rd_p=823f75d3-b996-4a9c-b5f9-0ccf7e5a48d7&pf_rd_r=ZBVR04GJ3SBK05PSWBET&pd_rd_r=6984aaeb-970c-46a4-8e81-c938e3bda255&pd_rd_wg=Tehos&pd_rd_i=0567697711&psc=1)

Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Living-Christ-Theological-Georges-Florovsky/dp/0567701859/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1631537768&sr=8-4

Table of Contents: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/living-christ-9780567701855/

Preface: His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I
Foreword: John Zizioulas (Metropolitan of Pergamon, Ecumenical Patriarchate)
Introduction: John Chryssavgis and Brandon Gallaher.

PART I GEORGES FLOROVSKY: LIFE AND WORK
1.The Theological Legacy of Archpriest Georges Florovsky
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
2.The Diachronic Significance of Fr. Georges Florovsky's Theological Contribution
Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon
3.Three Witnesses: Bulgakov, Florovsky, Lossky*
Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia
4.Georges Florovsky and the Sophiological Controversy*
Alexis Klimoff
5.Georges Florovsky and Sergius Bulgakov: "In Peace Let Us Love One Another”
Paul Ladouceur
6.Father Georges Florovsky and Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov: A Theological Encounter
Nikolai Sakharov
7.The Newly Published Correspondence between Fr. Georges Florovsky and Fr. Alexander Schmemann: Reflections on Leadership
Paul L. Gavrilyuk
8.A “Theology of Facts”: Christ in the Theological Thought of Fr. Georges Florovsky and Fr. John Meyendorff
Joost van Rossum

PART II NEOPATRISTIC SYNTHESIS: THEOLOGY AND METHODOLOGY
9.“Waiting for the Barbarians”: Identity and Polemicism in the Neopatristic Synthesis of Georges Florovsky*
Brandon Gallaher
10.Neopatristic Synthesis and Ecumenism: Toward the “Reintegration” of Christian Tradition*
Matthew Baker (+2015)
11.The Ecclesial Hellenism of Fr. Georges Florovsky*
Christos Yannaras
12.The Emergence of the Neopatristic Synthesis: Content, Challenges, Limits*
Marcus Plested
13.Christian Hellenism in the Neopatristic Synthesis of Archpriest Georges Florovsky
Metropolitan Chrysostomos (Savvatos) of Messinia
14.Apophaticism, Cataphaticism, Mystical Theology and the Christian Hellenism of Fr. Georges Florovsky*
Pantelis Kalaitzidis
15.Florovsky's “Predicament of the Christian Historian” and the Orthodox Church's Predicament with History Today
Vassa Larin
16.From Synthesis to Symphony
John Behr

PART III THEOLOGY AND ECCLESIOLOGY:HISTORY AND MISSION
17.Beginning with Christ: the Key to Anthropology in the Dogmatic Work of Florovsky
Alexis Torrance
18.Creatio ex nihilo and creatio ex amore: Florovsky, Bulgakov, and Zizioulas in Dialogue on Theological Methodology
Nikolaos Asproulis
19.Ecclesiology in Relation to History: Church and World in the Christian Vision of Fr. Georges Florovsky
Will Cohen
20.Overcoming Florovsky's Opposition of the Charismatic to the Canonical in “On the Limits of the Church”*
Alexander Rentel
21.Fr. Georges Florovsky and Mission: Witness “To,” “With,” or “Beyond” “Sacred Hellenism”?
Athanasios N. Papathanasiou
22.The Timeliness of the Patristic Thought, and the Contribution of Fr. Georges Florovsky to Contemporary Theological Dialogue
Metropolitan Gennadios (Limouris) of Sassima
23.Georges Florovsky and the World Council of Churches
Archbishop Job (Getcha) of Telmessos
24.Fr Georges Florovsky's Understanding of the New Mission in the West
Ivana Noble

PART IV THE BODY OF THE LIVING CHRIST: AN ORTHODOX INTERPRETATION OF THE CHURCH
25.Introduction to Georges Florovsky's The Body of the Living Christ: An Orthodox Interpretation of the Church
Robert M. Arida
26.The Body of the Living Christ: An Orthodox Interpretation of the Church331
Georges Florovsky

Bibliography
Index

Georges Florovsky (1893-1979) was one of the most prominent Orthodox theologians and ecumenists of the twentieth century. His call for a return to patristic writings as a source of modern theological reflection had a powerful impact not only on Orthodox theology in the second half of the twentieth century, but on Christian theology in general. Florovsky was also a major Orthodox voice in the ecumenical movement for four decades and he is one of the founders of the World Council of Churches. This book is a collection of major theological writings by George Florovsky. It includes representative and widely influential but now largely inaccessible texts, many newly translated for this book, divided into four thematic sections: Creation, Incarnation and Redemption, The Nature of Theology, Ecclesiology and Ecumenism, and Scripture, Worship and Eschatology. A foreword by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware presents the theological vision of Georges Florovsky and discusses the continuing relevance of his work both for Orthodox theology and for modern theology in general. The introduction by the Editors provides a theological and historical overview of Florovsky theology in teh context of his biography. The book includes explanatory notes, translation of patrisitc citations and an index. Georges Florovsky was a major 20th-century theologian, historian, ecumenist and patristic scholar.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Editorial Introduction xv

Introduction 1

Part 1 Creation, Incarnation and Redemption 31
1 Creation and Createdness 33
2 Preface to In Ligno Crucis 65
3 In Ligno Crucis : Th e Church Fathers’ Doctrine of Redemption 71
4 Th e Lamb of God 81
5 The Ever-Virgin Mother of God 95
6 The Stumbling-Block 107

Part 2 The Nature of Theology 113
7 Revelation, Philosophy and Theology 115
8 Western Influences in Russian Theology 1 29
9 Patristics and Modern Theology 153
10 Breaks and Links 159
11 The Legacy and the Task of Orthodox Theology 185
12 The Predicament of the Christian Historian 193
13 Saint Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers 221
14 The Christian Hellenism 233
15 ‘On the Authority of the Fathers’ 237
16 ‘Theological Will’ 241

Part 3 Ecclesiology and Ecumenism 245
17 The Limits of the Church 247
18 Sobornost: Th e Catholicity of the Church 257
19 The Body of the Living Christ 273
20 Confessional Loyalty in the Ecumenical Movement 279x
21 The Ethos of the Orthodox Church 289
22 The Ecumenical Dialogue 303

Part 4 Scripture, Worship and Eschatology 309
23 Eschatology in the Patristic Age 311
24 Starets Silouan 325
25 Scripture and Tradition 329
26 The Worshipping Church 335

Epilogue: ‘Let Us Choose Life’ 347

Index 353

Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology examines the tension between God and the world through a constructive reading of the Trinitarian theologies and Christologies of Sergii Bulgakov (1871-1944), Karl Barth (1886-1968), and Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988). It focuses on what is called 'the problematic of divine freedom and necessity' and the response of the writers. 'Problematic' refers to God being simultaneously radically free and utterly bound to creation. God did not need to create and redeem the world in Christ. It is a contingent free gift. Yet, on the other side of a dialectic, he also has eternally determined himself to be God as Jesus Christ. He must create and redeem the world to be God as he has so determined. In this way the world is given a certain 'free necessity' by him because if there were no world then there would be no Christ. A spectrum of different concepts of freedom and necessity and a theological ideal of a balance between the same are outlined and then used to illumine the writers and to articulate a constructive response to the problematic. Brandon Gallaher shows that the classical Christian understanding of God having a non-necessary relationship to the world and divine freedom being a sheer assertion of God's will must be completely rethought. Gallaher proposes a Trinitarian, Christocentric, and cruciform vision of divine freedom. God is free as eternally self-giving, self-emptying and self-receiving love. The work concludes with a contemporary theology of divine freedom founded on divine election.

Executive Summary

• This project investigated issues of sexual diversity within the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. These present some of the most complex and contentious questions facing the Orthodox Church today and and public debate over them is often polarised.

• Responses of the Orthodox Church to questions of sexual diversity must be contextualised within the church’s distinctive theological tradition, history, and contemporary geopolitical setting, noting especially the prevalence of anti-Western sentiments today.

• The attitude of most Orthodox Christians towards issues of sexual diversity may be characterised as “conservative” in comparison with prevailing attitudes in the secular West. Despite wide consensus, there is diversity in pastoral practice and thought.

• Theologians can find it difficult to agree on the reasoning and sources that under-gird received teachings and practices. For some, questions of sexual diversity are settled as first principles of Orthodoxy, whereas for others they are secondary and contextual.

• This project demonstrated that polarisation of discourse on controversial religious issues can be overcome through the careful construction of spaces for dialogue. This relies, above all, on a willingness of organisers not to foreclose difficult conversations.

• Civil society actors can advance the work of this project through educating them-selves and others, co-operation with religious actors, enabling more deep conversations, using our project resources, promoting our project’s work, and patronising further research. 

https://www.fordham.edu/download/downloads/id/14755/Exeter_Fordham_BV_Final_Report.pdf

https://www.fordham.edu/orthodoxy/bridgingvoices

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• The Eastern Orthodox Church (EOC) is one of the largest Christian bodies in the world today. It is a family of independent churches which regard themselves collectively and individually as the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” The EOC is neither Protestant nor Catholic; it is also distinct from the Oriental Orthodox churches (e.g. Armenian, Ethiopian, and Coptic churches). Its approximately 200 million members are today mostly found in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, but there is a large and influential “diaspora” located mainly in Western Europe, North America, and Australia. The primus inter pares of Orthodox bishops is the Ecumenical Patriarch.

• Today, the EOC remains committed to models of gender and sexuality and related disciplines which were formulated in pre-modernity. Many Orthodox subscribe to a version of “gender essentialism” which regards biological sex, gender, and gender roles, as stable, transhistorical realities, such that all human beings are essentially and permanently either male or female. The Church’s disciplines include, among other things, an understanding of marriage as the union of a male and a female and only sexual activity within its bounds is morally sanctioned. Other gender identities and sexualities, whether publicly acknowledged and actualized or not, are officially condemned, but pastoral responses vary, especially according to country and culture.

• Most Orthodox (especially those in post-Soviet Eastern Europe) accept the Church’s teachings and disciplines on sexuality as part of a complete package of received traditions which is beyond scrutiny. These teachings and disciplines are widely believed to derive from a universal and univocal Orthodox discourse on gender and sexuality that is clearly and unquestionably manifest in the Church’s tradition (which includes the Bible). It is popularly believed that the truth of current Orthodox teachings, disciplines, structures, and practices can be “proven” by demonstrating their historical continuity within the Church as an institution. In many cases, attitudes to sexual diversity correspond to a generally socially-conservative attitude.

• Many of the same Orthodox (in Eastern Europe, but also some Western converts) regard the Church’s opposition to sexual diversity not only as a de facto reality but as a matter of dogmatic truth, which must be defended in the contemporary world against the decadent secularism of “the West” and its rejection of “traditional values.” Defenders of current practice often regards the Church as being under attack. The small number of Orthodox who do speak or act publicly against the Church’s current teachings often face exclusion from Church life and in some cases they are subjected to defamation of character, harassment, and threats (and acts) of violence. In many traditionally Orthodox countries, rejection by the Church is sometimes accompanied by rejection by family, friends, and the wider community, according to wider social norms.

• A minority of Orthodox today publicly challenge the Church’s teachings and disciplines concerning sexual diversity, and more hold contrary opinions in private. The status quo is often questioned, in the first instance, as a result of pressing pastoral realities on the ground. Some accommodation of sexual diversity already occurs in the shadows and without open acknowledgment, particularly outside Eastern Europe. A very small number of communities both practice open hospitality towards LGBTQ+ persons and many more pastors practice functional inclusion while maintaining the official positions of the Church when pressed to do so. In some larger cities, “LGBTQ+ friendly” parishes exist with the knowledge of the bishop and his blessing for the priest to extend as much pastoral and sacramental care as possible.

• The 2017 Pew report on Orthodox Christianity in the 21st Century shows that a majority of Orthodox in the USA and Greece say society should be more accepting of homosexuality, and a majority in the USA (which has civil same-sex marriage) are in favour of allowing gay couples to marry. At least one local Orthodox Church in Western Europe permits the celebration of a service of celebration for same-sex couples in civil marriages and integrates gay couples into many of its communities. There is a noteworthy difference of opinion on many topics between post-Soviet and non-Soviet countries.

• Among Orthodox theologians, there is a wide range of opinion on the received teachings and a growing recognition that these realities need to be grappled with openly. A small but growing number advocate for the open inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in Church life and same-sex marriage. Intellectual challenges are often expressed in terms of the historical contingency of theorizations of gender and sex (and especially shifts between pre-modernity and modernity) and the absence or inconsistency of theological reasoning in this area.

https://www.fordham.edu/download/downloads/id/14010/BV_Report.pdf

https://www.fordham.edu/orthodoxy/bridgingvoices

Godmanhood vs Mangodhood: An Eastern Orthodox Response to Transhumanism

This article distances the classic Patristic teaching of Eastern
Orthodoxy on theosis from the pseudo-religious ideology of Western
transhumanism. By appealing to the Silver Age of Russian theologians
a century ago, today’s transhumanist vision is dubbed Mangodhood, an
idolatrous construction of a technological Tower of Babel. In contrast,
the classical Orthodox teaching of deification or theosis relies on the
spiritual grace of the true God, rendering the true goal of religion to be
Godmanhood.

The article is a personal theological reflection on ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue by one of the commission of drafters of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s 2020 social teaching text For the Life of the World: Toward an Orthodox Social Ethos (=FLOW). The text argues that FLOW, despite being innovative for Orthodoxy, needs its boundaries expanded theologically. The section on Christian ecumenism is still quite conservative in character. It acknowledges that the Orthodox Church is committed to ecumenism but it does not explicitly acknowledge the ecclesiality of non-Orthodox churches. The author puts forward a form of qualified ecclesiological exclusivism that affirms that non-Orthodox churches are tacitly Orthodox containing “a grain of Orthodoxy” (Sergii Bulgakov). Strangely, FLOW’s section on inter-religious dialogue is much more radical than its section on ecumenism. The author builds theologically on FLOW’s positive affirmation of other religions as containing “seeds of the Word”, in particular, Islam containing ‘beauty and spiritual truths’ and Judaism as being Orthodoxy’s “elder brother.” The essay ends by sketching a Trinitarian theology of other religions drawing on ideas from Maximus the Confessor, Bulgakov, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Raimundo Panikkar amongst others.

It is argued that those who uphold Ecumenism and Anti-Ecumenism in the Orthodox Church share much more in common than is normally thought to be the case. Both groups see the Orthodox Church as the Una Sancta of the Creed and that Orthodoxy must always witness to itself as the fullness of the Christian faith. They also both see ecumenical encounter (whether in dialogue or in condemnation of the Other) as being a species of civilisational dialogue between two very different realities of Christian East and West. Ultimately, it is contended, both parties have much to learn from one another so that their opposition is not a sterile but a creative antinomy.

It is argued that those who uphold Ecumenism and Anti-Ecumenism in Eastern Orthodoxy share much more in common than is normally thought to be the case. Both groups see the Orthodox Church as the Una Sancta of the Creed and that Orthodoxy must always witness to
itself as the fullness of the Christian faith. They also both see ecumenical encounter (whether in dialogue or in condemnation of the Other) as being a species of civilisational dialogue between two very different realities of Christian East and West. Ultimately, it is contended, both parties have much to learn from one another so that their opposition is not a sterile but a creative antinomy.

This article distances the classic Patristic teaching of Eastern Orthodoxy on theosis from the pseudo-religious ideology of transhumanism. By appealing to the Silver Age of Russian theologians a century ago, today's transhumanist vision is dubbed Mangodhood, an idolatrous construction of a technological Tower of Babel. In contrast, the classical Orthodox teaching of deification or theosis relies on the spiritual grace of the true God, rendering the true goal of religion to be Godmanhood.

The author reviews the sophiological thought of Vladimir Solov’ev, Sergii Bulgakov and John Milbank to suggest that there is congruence between the first two, as Orthodox theo- logians, and that of John Milbank, as founder and proponent of Radical Orthodoxy, insofar as all agree in rejecting any notion of nature that can be thought other than under the sign of grace. Milbank’s recent essay “Sophiology and Theurgy: the New Theological Horizon,” is discussed at length, and Milbank’s indebtedness to Solov’ev and Bulgakov is analyzed in depth. The history and problems of sophiology in the twen- tieth century are detailed, and a possible “Christological cor- rective” to some of them is offered.

Vladimir Solov'ev (1853–1900) is one of the major influences on Sergii Bulgakov's “sophiology” and has been praised by both Hans Urs von Balthasar and John Milbank. However, his theology has often been read as a mere “religious philosophy” unduly influenced by Gnosticism and German Idealism. The article argues that Solov'ev's theology is more accurately understood as a unique form of Christology which integrates Gnostic and Idealist thought into Chalcedonian orthodoxy. Solov'ev's most important contribution is a sophiological reading of Christology which attempts to found the created on the uncreated without collapsing one into the other or ontologically juxtaposing them.

Georges Florovsky (1893–1979), with his “neo-patristic synthesis”, is perhaps the most influential modern Orthodox theologian, having mentored and/or taught such theologians as Lossky and Zizioulas. However, his theology enshrines a troubling paradigm where a Pan-Orthodox Eastern identity (“Christian Hellenism”) is asserted over against the heterodoxy of an Other which is often the West. The article traces this paradigm then argues that Florovsky's construction of Eastern Orthodoxy is dependent on German Romanticism and that his polemicism blinded him to this fact. It briefly suggests, on the basis of the Chalcedonian definition, a new "dialectical" theology of ecclesial identity where identity is established in an encounter with the Other, rather than in demonizing it.

The paper argues that Sergej Bulgakov’s sophiology was an attempt, via antinomism or the philosophy of antinomies, to overcome the rationalism, monism, and determinism (in a word, “pantheism”) of Vladimir Solov’ëv’s philosophy of the Absolute understood as an abstract Trinitarianism. After detailing Solov’ëv’s thought on the Trinity and Bulgakov’s criticisms of it, the study then describes Bulgakov’s antinomism and its application to the doctrine of God. However, it is contended that Bulgakov’s antinomism ultimately falls into the same problems with pantheism found in Solov’ëv and so the last part of the paper tentatively proposes resources in his work, stated in the form of a suggested “fourth (Bulgakovian) antinomy” between ousia (divine Being as such) and Sophia (the revelation in God and the world of the divine Being), that might help to avoid a collapse of God and the world by making the divine Being proper utterly transcendent and unknowable.

Vladimir Lossky (1903–58) and Sergii Bulgakov (1871–1944) are normally taken as polar opposites in modern Orthodox theology. Lossky's theology is portrayed as being based on a close exegesis of the Greek Fathers with an emphasis on theosis, the Trinity and the apophatic way of mystical union with God. Bulgakov's ‘sophiology’, in contrast, if it is remembered at all, is said to be a theology which wished to ‘go beyond the Fathers’, was based on German Idealism and the quasi-pantheist and gnostic idea of ‘sophia’ which is a form of the ‘Eternal Feminine’ of Romanticism. In short, Lossky's theological approach is what people normally think of when they speak of Orthodox theology: a form of ‘neo-patristic synthesis’ (Georges Florovsky). Bulgakov's theological approach is said to be typical of the exotic dead end of the inter-war émigré ‘Paris School’ (Alexander Schmemann) or ‘Russian Religious Renaissance’ (Nicolas Zernov). Lossky, we are reminded, was instrumental in the 1935 condemnation, by Metropolitan Sergii Stragorodskii of the Moscow Patriarchate, of Bulgakov's theology as ‘alien’ to the Orthodox Christian faith. Counter to this widely held ‘standard narrative’ of contemporary Orthodox theology, the article argues that the origins of Vladimir Lossky's apophaticism, which he characterised as ‘antinomic theology’, are found within the theological methodology of the sophiology of Sergii Bulgakov: ‘antinomism’. By antinomism is understood that with any theological truth one has two equally necessary affirmations (thesis and antithesis) which are nevertheless logically contradictory. In the face of their conflict, we are forced to hold both thesis and antithesis together through faith. A detailed discussion of Lossky's apophaticism is followed by its comparison to Bulgakov's ‘sophiological antinomism’. Lossky at first appears to be masking the influence of Bulgakov and even goes so far as to read his own form of theological antinomism into the Fathers. Nevertheless, he may well have been consciously appropriating the ‘positive intuitions’ of Bulgakov's thought in order to ‘Orthodoxise’ a thinker he believed was in error but still regarded as the greatest Orthodox theologian of the twentieth century. Despite major differences between the two thinkers (e.g. differing understandings of reason, the use of philosophy and the uncreated/created distinction), it is suggested that Lossky and Bulgakov have more in common than normally is believed to be the case. A critical knowledge of Bulgakov's sophiology is said to be the ‘skeleton key’ for modern Orthodox theology which can help unlock its past, present and future.

THE FUNDAMENTALIST IDEOLOGY OF THE
"RUSSIAN WORLD" AS AN HERETICAL DOCTRINE
AND THE JUSTIFICATION OF RUSSIA'S WAR
AGAINST UKRAINE

The article reveals the essence of the Russian political doctrine of «Russian World», which is a modern form of ethnophyletic and ethnonationalist fascism, as deadly as Nazi ideology. This heresy is sometimes mistakenly equated with the Orthodox faith and the Orthodox Church. The heresy of the Russian World endangers the faith professed by the Orthodox Church by including it in the official church teaching of the largest Orthodox Church in the world, because it has been systematically preached and proclaimed by Patriarch Kirill and various senior hierarchs of the Russian Church – and is a violent teaching used nto harm the innocent in Ukraine.

’64: Crete, the West and its ‘Churches’: Fr Georges Florovsky and Orthodox Ecumenism as Civilizational Dialogue’ in The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church: Orthodox Theology in the 21st Century: Proceedings of 8th International Conference of Orthodox Theology Under the Auspices of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, School of Theology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 21-25 2018 (Thessaloniki: University of Thessaloniki, 2020).
http://www.orthodoxconference.theosch.auth.gr/index_eng_bul.htm
http://www.orthodoxconference.theosch.auth.gr/keimena_final/64_Gallaher_Brandon.pdf

Within the corpus of writings of The Philokalia, and in the broader Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition of Hesychasm, there is a traditional teaching that argues that it is possible that one can see, hear, smell, taste and even touch God with certain 'spiritual senses' (often seen as ‘senses of the Mind’). In early Chinese Chan Buddhism (the predecessor to Japanese Zen), in turn, there is a distinction made between ‘pure mind’ and the ‘impure mind.' The impure mind is ruled by the ‘six thieves’ of the sense faculties that lead to becoming attached to myriad objects and forming evil deeds. This blocks off one from seeing true Suchness and Awakening to reality, which is the path of liberation to one's Buddha nature with ‘purified’ senses of the pure mind. We shall argue that these two traditions are at one in terms of seeing their respective spiritual senses as the fruit of the transformed deified/enlightened life, the crown of the saints/bodhisattvas. However, the underlying vision of the cosmos and soteriological thrust of the spiritual senses is so radically different in both traditions, that one must ultimately say the two forms of spiritual senses are “false friends” or only roughly analogous.

‘灵性感知传统的延续和转变/靈性感知傳統的延續和轉變 [The Continuity and Transformation of the "Spiritual Senses" Tradition]’in 感同身受 - 中西文化交流背景下的感官与感觉/感同身受 - 中西文化交流背景下的感官與感覺 [Feeling the Same Way: Senses and Feelings in the context of Chinese-Western Cultural Exchanges], ed. 董少新/Dong Shaoxin and trans. Ling Chen (Shanghai: 复旦大学出版社/University of Fudan, 2018), 75-97.

'(29) Fr. Sergius Bulgakov' in Orthodox Handbook on Ecumenism: Resources for Theological Education: “That they all may be one” (John 17,21), eds. Pantelis Kalaitzidis, Thomas FitzGerald, Cyril Hovorun, Aikaterini Pekridou, Nikolaos Asproulis, Guy Liagre and Dietrich Werner (Volos, Greece: Volos Academy Publications in cooperation with WCC Publications, Geneva, and Regnum Books International, Oxford, 2014), 201-206.

‘A Tale of Two Speeches: Secularism and Primacy in Contemporary Roman Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy’ ed. John Chryssavgis, Primacy in the Church: The Office of Primate and the Authority of the Councils, Volume 2: Contemporary and Contextual Perspectives (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2016), pp.807-837.

(This essay was originally delivered as a public talk at the June 2015 Fordham/OTSA conference on the upcoming Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church. It was part of a panel on “The Contribution of the Orthodox Church to the Realization of Justice, Freedom, Brotherhood, and Love among Peoples.”)

On March 13, 2022 (Sunday of Orthodoxy), Orthodox theologians and scholars from around the world issued an unprecedented theological declaration that draws on both the Barmen Declaration (1934) and the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, and is directed against the ethnophyletist and nationalist “Russian world” ideology that serves as the religious underpinning for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This ideology, fundamentalist in character, was developed by Patriarch Kirill (Gundiaev) of Moscow and both Putin and Patriarch Kirill repeatedly reference it in their active support of the Russian invasion. Having briefly outlined the Russian world ideology, the Declaration identifies the ideology’s main propositions, which are declared “heretical”
from an Orthodox theological perspective. By contrast, the Orthodox scholars systematically outline affirmations drawn from Scripture and the Holy Tradition of Orthodox Christianity. Finally, the declaration calls all to be mindful of the theological principles outlined in their decisions in church politics.