“Creation: Day Five” (Cappella Palatina. Palermo, Sicily. 1140-70.)

“We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for surely there is no such splendour or beauty anywhere on earth. We cannot describe it to you; we only know that God dwells there among men….” (Grand Prince Vladimir’s envoys on their impressions of Hagia Sophia and its liturgy)

Beauty—what is it? Something quite indefinable that is often taken for granted, whether by laymen or professionals in the area of æsthetics: something that is nevertheless there, whose presence beholders admit without any full or clear explanation. The beauty of an object or living creature may unite people in a moment of consensus, whether silent or verbalised, who would never agree with each other on any other kind of subject.

This world was created by God, and God saw that it was very good. The Septuagint’s καλὰ λίαν (kala lian) can equally well be translated as very beautiful . Living in our post-lapsarian world we can understand the general idea that there is good and evil, beauty and ugliness, difficult though it is to get into details. Some might say that there is more beauty in a young deer than in an octopus; others can add that there is more beauty in an octopus depicted on a Mycenaean vase than in a living prototype. Ancient Greeks definitely knew something about beauty, and we are still applying the laws that they discovered. “Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not”—these words of Protagoras of Abdera (c. 490-c. 420 BCE), together with the Canon of Polykleitos, give us no choice but to admit that Man is the key. Read More

This interview was conducted on August 4. It introduces our readers to Father Martin’s Building a Bridge, released earlier this year. The first part of his book expands upon a lecture that he delivered last year to New Ways Ministry in the wake of the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando.

In publishing this interview the editors of Orthodoxy in Dialogue ask if such a conversation as Father Martin advocates is possible and necessary in the Orthodox Church. 

GIACOMO: Father Jim, thanks so much for making the time to discuss your new book with me. You and I share a concern that our respective Churches adopt a more pastorally responsive approach to questions of same-sex love. (See my recent articles here, here, and here.)

FATHER JIM: It’s my pleasure to talk with you. Thanks for giving me the chance to speak more about this outreach to our LGBT Catholic brothers and sisters.

GIACOMO: Let’s begin by talking about your long experience of priestly ministry with Catholics who are oriented spiritually, emotionally, and intimately to their own gender. Have any Orthodox ever approached you for pastoral care on this issue? Have they shared their experiences in the Orthodox Church with you? Read More

This article marks the official launch of Orthodoxy in Dialogue. 

St. Symeon the New Theologian’s First Vision of Uncreated Light

When we speak of doing theology in an Orthodox context, we are always presented with a difficulty. In the holy tradition of Orthodoxy, theologians are those who have seen God in the uncreated light, and have spoken from their experience of this union. All of these persons whom we recognise as theologians are now canonised saints, from whose writings we trace the forms of their vision of God. The rest of us, though we stand upon the shoulders of giants, merely engage in discourse about theology. Some are great academics, others are articulate people of strong opinions; but in the final analysis, none of us are genuinely theologians in an Orthodox sense.

This reality generates a sort of dissonance in the lives of those who engage in academic theology, and in their relation to those people of other Christian traditions who proudly wear the title of “theologian.” At the end of the day, Orthodox theology is fundamentally and inescapably mystical, which puts it at an odd and difficult relationship with other traditions of doing theology.

In many ways Orthodox faithful have an identity crisis, and none more so than those who engage in theology. Today in the West, Orthodox believers live in societies that are distinctly alien to an Orthodox ethos, while in traditional Orthodox nations of Eastern Europe believers are living in a post-communist era, in many ways little different than it was. In the rubble of fallen totalitarian systems the Orthodox Churches are striving to rebuild an Orthodox culture. Read More

The editors of Orthodoxy in Dialogue wish to commend the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America for its thoughtful, articulate response of August 18 to last week’s disturbing events in Charlottesville. (See the Assembly’s statement here). We see the statement as a significant moment in the Assembly’s history and, by extension, the history of the American Orthodox Church. It represents—let us hope and pray!—the modest beginning of a critical pivot in our institutional self-awareness as the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ not only in, but of and for, America.

The Assembly has demonstrated that it possesses the mechanism, when it also has the will, to produce a reasonably timely response to emergent crises in national life. Certain things simply cannot wait until the Assembly’s next annual meeting. Read More