Welcome to our first article of 2019!

In our Looking Ahead to January we solicited reflections on the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. We thank Father Jillions for being the first to respond.

Without tampering with any church’s ecclesiological assumptions, there is nothing that should prevent churches from being generous and self-emptying, following the pattern set by the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied Himself [ekenosen], taking the form of a slave. (Phil 2:4–7)

Kenotic ecumenism begins with a conscious rereading of the Gospels, and seeing that Jesus regularly consorts with the “wrong” types of people. He puts the Kingdom of God and the pastoral needs of real people ahead of ideology and rules, in line with a vision that placed mercy above sacrifice (Mt 12:7). Read More

DECEMBER 2018

Francis to Bartholomew: Unity Is a Sign of Hope in a World Wounded by War

Looking Ahead to January

Rue Daru Responds: Communiqué of the Archdiocesan Council of the Russian Archdiocese of Western Europe

The Bible and Its Many Uses in Byzantium

Women of the Church: Faith, Service, and Leadership

Sexuality, Gender, and Christian Tradition: A Course Outline

Call for Videos!

On the Incarnation: She Is the Ladder by Which God Descended to Earth

Orthodoxy and Ecumenism: Come Now, Let Us Reason Together

The Russian Church’s Rush to Spiritual Bankruptcy: War Priests & a Cathedral Resembling an Army Tank Read More

Orthodoxy in Dialogue editor Giacomo Sanfilippo has been invited to become a regular contributor of Orthodox Christian commentary at the Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s English-language newspaper and winner of the 2014 Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism. Its global audience peaked at more than 65 million pageviews in 2014.

Worse than 1054? A Schism of Moscow’s Own Making

In his 1996, “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,” Samuel P. Huntington predicted the rise of Russia’s “political Orthodoxy” as a global geopolitical threat no less worrisome than political Islam. Some 15 or so years later, Patriarch Kirill and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the transplant of “Byzantine symphonia” — a model of church-state “co-voice” which produced ambivalent results in Orthodox Byzantium — in 21st-century Russia. The current escalation of Russian military aggression against Ukraine on the eve of the Ukrainian Church’s reception of autocephaly from Constantinople leaves us no choice but to take them at their word: Patriarchate and Kremlin speak with one voice in Russia.

This brief essay focuses on the Patriarchate’s half of that unified voice.

In the wake of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s announcement that it intended to move forward with the grant of autocephaly to the Ukrainian Church, Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department of External Church Relations, responded swiftly with a “prediction” of violence in Ukraine and a worldwide schism “worse than 1054.” Read More

Note that the Orthodox Church of Ukraine celebrates the Nativity of Christ on January 7.

Metropolitan Epiphanius (Epifaniy) of Kyiv and All Ukraine

To the Most Reverend Archpastors, the God-loving Pastors, the Honourable Monastics,

and All the Orthodox Faithful of Ukraine

Dear brothers and sisters!

Christ is born! Let us glorify Him!

Such short and simple words in this our traditional Christian greeting, yet how deep, because they testify to our faith that the promise of God has been fulfilled, the Saviour of the world has truly appeared, the second Person of the Holy Trinity—the pre-eternal Son of God—is born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, becoming also the Son of man. “For to us a Child is born, to us a Son is given” (Is 9:6), the holy Isaiah prophesies, showing that the birth of Jesus Christ has come to pass even for us. 

It is this thought that St. Gregory the Theologian explains when he says of the Saviour’s birth:

He appears for our sake, being born, so that as He gave us existence, He would also grant us blessed existence…. This is what we celebrate, this is what we glorify this day: the coming of God to men so that we might change place, or better, return to God…so that, taking off the old man we might put on the new one (Eph 4:22-24), and as we died in Adam so might we live in Christ (1 Cor 15:22), being also born, crucified, buried, and raised with Christ. Read More