Thursday, July 21, 2016

Met. Hierotheos (Vlachos) at Antiochian Clergy Symposium

I, along with almost anyone else who has read his works, am quite indebted to Met. Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos and Agios Vlasios for the depth and breadth of his scholarship. A lot of what he has written is in English and is required reading in our seminaries. Enjoy the below podcasts!


(AFR) - Held at Antiochian Village in Ligonier, PA, Metropolitan Joseph invited as his speaker His Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos and Agios Vlasios (also Ierotheos) He serves the Metropolis of Nafpaktos and Agios Vlasios in the Church of Greece. The them of his three lectures was Theology, Pastoral Care, and Psychology. The interpreter is Anastasios Filippides, Economist (B.A. Yale University, M.A. Georgetown University). Secondary interpreter is Dr. Christopher Veniamin – Professor of Patristics St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in South Canaan, PA. Also Founder and President of Mount Thabor Publishing.

Orthodoxy Theology and Western Theology

Orthodox Psychotherapy in Relation to Modern Western Psychology

Biology, Bioethics, and Biotheology

4 comments:

  1. I listen in the car on the way to prison. I need to be able to do download, when I have WiFi. Would you make the links available please?

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    1. Sure, Father.

      http://audio.ancientfaith.com/specials/clergysymp_2016/clergy_2016-metropolitanhierotheos1.mp3

      http://audio.ancientfaith.com/specials/clergysymp_2016/clergy_2016-metropolitanhierotheos2.mp3

      http://audio.ancientfaith.com/specials/clergysymp_2016/clergy_2016-metropolitanhierotheos3.mp3

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  2. Met. Hierotheos very much deserves the recognition he has received as an Orthodox scholar and as an accessible source for theological formation among English-speaking inquirers. However he must be read with caution - his presentation of Orthodoxy is frequently contingent on a "western" foil that is largely a straw man. Personally, I find this significantly undermines his credibility as a scholar - but not as an Orthodox dogmatist/theologian per se. His presentation of the Eastern & patristic sources is usually quite thorough, even if one does not agree with all of his conclusions.

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    1. "However he must be read with caution - his presentation of Orthodoxy is frequently contingent on a "western" foil that is largely a straw man. Personally, I find this significantly undermines his credibility as a scholar"

      I will have to disagree with this. While his understanding of the western Christian/secular landscape (as was Fr. John Romanides before him) is a *theological* view almost completely out of step with typical *historical* view that prevails in the west (and thus is often misunderstood or asserted to be a caricature) I think it is largely correct. The many exceptions (say, C.S. Lewis) merely prove the rule (the entire Protestant legacy with it's secular(ism) child). It is of course a dialectic or heuristic, and since people are not their culture or philosophy it can be wrong for any particular person, but as an explanatory formula it works quite well and is in no way a "straw man".

      Met. Hierotheos did some very important work at the meeting in Crete around explicating THE theological issue of the day (anthropology - what is a "person") as well as opposing the crude progressive elements who wanted to anathemize something called "fundamentalism". There should be much more engagement with his work and I would encourage you Reader Maximus to re-engage him on his theological interpretations of "the west"...

      Christopher

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