Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Synodality and Crete

This summary for this book is almost breathless and promises more than I think it can possibly delivery. I neither think that the milquetoast pronouncements of Crete started an "entirely new [chapter]" in the history go the Church nor do I think a collection of theologians can yet write the definitive text that gives us the "right answer" to the what transpired.


(St. Sebastian Orthodox Press) - Synodality: A Forgotten and Misapprehended Vision Reflections on the Holy and Great Council of 2016, Sebastian Press 2017. Price $20.

The Orthodox Church will never be the same after June 26th, 2016. On that day, when the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church held at Crete (Greece) finished, one big chapter of its history was concluded, or perhaps, an entirely new one has been opened. The most important question, perplexing the whole Orthodox world, before the Council was summoned and after it ended, is: What exactly is this thing? Metropolitans Kallistos Ware, Amfilohije Radović, and Chrysostomos Savvatos, Bishop Maxim Vasiljević, Fr John Behr, Fr Cyril Hovorun, Deacon Nicholas Denysenko, and Еvagelos Sotiropoulos, give us the right answer!

4 comments:

  1. No living author may truly be called a theologian in the Orthodox sense. Without Met Hierotheos and others of his calibre and deep knowledge of history and the fathers, this volume cannot truly proclaim the "right" answer to anything! And since only the Church over time assures that anything is "right" , such a claim seems to be a warning of the spirit of those asserting it.

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  2. The majority of the contributors are academics often working at RC affiliated institutions (and thus $paid$ by RC's). There life's work appears to be very very "modern" in the sense that they are out to "fix" what is wrong with Orthodoxy. If they were not spitting out books like this, those whom they work for would question their "productivity". It's best to ignore them...

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  3. "The Orthodox Church will never be the same"..? Really? Sounds like someone who has bought into the insidious myth of progress. Therefore wrong on all counts.

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