Search Results (663)

This paper examines the evolution of modern Greek Orthodox dogmatic theology, highlighting its transition from early twentieth-century scholasticism to the diverse neo-patristic and existential approaches that shaped its later renewal. It begins with Panagiotes Trembelas, whose comprehensive but manualist synthesis safeguarded doctrinal continuity while limiting historical and experiential depth. After the Second World War, Greek theology encountered Russian émigré thought and rediscovered the Palamite tradition, inspiring a “return to the Fathers” and a search for authentic patristic expression. This movement produced multiple trajectories: John Romanides emphasized historical and experiential purification, Christos Yannaras redefined dogma as personal and relational existence, and John Zizioulas developed a Eucharistic and relational ontology grounded in communion. Rather than representing rupture, these approaches reflect a creative struggle to articulate Orthodox faith within modern intellectual contexts. Overall, this paper presents modern Greek dogmatics as a dynamic field negotiating tradition, modernity, and ecclesial identity. Full article

‘Irregular gout’ is an obsolete term that was used in the past to describe both trivial and serious health issues seemingly related to gouty arthritis. This article looks back at what physicians such as George Cheyne, William Oliver, William Cullen and William Heberden thought about ‘irregular gout’. It examines to what degree the concept is still relevant, knowing what we now know about uric acid and the local and systemic inflammatory effects of urate crystal formation. In parallel, the article traces the trajectory from Cullen’s ‘asthenic gout’ to nineteenth century ‘uric acid poisoning’ and thence to possible hidden consequences of asymptomatic hyperuricaemia. ‘Irregular gout’ in its various guises has greatly influenced both orthodox and unorthodox treatments over the years. Although the term is no longer used, the concept is by no means dead. Full article

This study examines the political discourse and practices of the Greek Cypriot political party ELAM and the Turkish Cypriot political party YDP within the framework of populism. The findings of the study demonstrate that ELAM frames the Greek Cypriot community as part of “Judeo-Christian civilization” and portrays this civilization as being under threat from “Islamic civilization,” including Türkiye, Turkish Cypriots, and “illegal immigrants.” YDP, in turn, conceptualizes the Turkish Cypriot community as part of “Islamic civilization” and claims that “the West”—comprising actors such as Greek Cypriots, Greece, Israel, the EU, and the USA—is waging a comprehensive campaign against “Islamic civilization.” ELAM accuses the Greek Cypriot left of acting against the interests of “Western civilization” and Hellenic Orthodox values, while YDP similarly charges the Turkish Cypriot left with acting contrary to the interests and values of the Turkish-Islamic world. Moreover, while ELAM opposes Turkish Cypriots and “illegal immigrants” benefiting from the resources of the Republic of Cyprus, the right-wing government in which YDP is a coalition partner is frequently criticized for having contributed to the deterioration of the living standards of foreign workers. ELAM adopts a sharply oppositional stance toward the expansion of LGBTIQ+ rights, whereas YDP prefers not to foreground this issue. The study concludes that the discourses of both parties largely correspond to the concept of “civilizational populism.” Full article

Since the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the question of whether ordinary beings (fanfu 凡夫) could attain rebirth in Amitābha’s Pure Land became a central concern in Chinese Buddhism. In the Chen and Sui periods, exegetes of the She lun 攝論 and some Di lun 地論 masters generally denied this possibility. By the seventh century, however, Master Huai’gan 懷感, building on the teachings of Shandao 善導, systematically addressed these doubts in his Treatise on Resolving Doubts about the Pure Land (Shi jingtu qunyi lun 釋淨土群疑論). He refuted the Yogācāra (Weishi zong 唯識宗) claim that only bodhisattvas can be reborn there, insisting that all beings, though differing in spiritual capacities, are able to attain rebirth in Pure Land. Against the Three Stages teaching (Sanjie jiao 三階教), which regarded beings of the degenerate age as wholly evil and unfit for Pure Land practice. Huai’gan stressed the role of bodhicitta and argued that Buddha recitation eradicates karmic obstacles, enabling even perpetrators of the Ten Evils or slanderers of the Dharma to be reborn. Reconciling discrepancies between the Sūtra of Infinite Life and the Contemplation Sūtra on the issue of the five grave offenses, he highlighted the criterion of ten invocations as sufficient for rebirth. Huai’gan effectively universalized the Pure Land path by reconciling the Yogācāra-based theory of the Transformtion Land with the orthodox Pure Land view of the Reward Land (baotu 報土) as a literal reality generated by Amitābha Buddha’s Vow-power. In doing so, Huai’gan shifted pre-Tang restrictive views toward a more inclusive Pure Land vision, paving the way for the open orientation of early Tang Pure Land thought. Full article

This study examines the dialectic between “navigating secularism” and “lived religion” in the context of modern Jewish Orthodoxy, focusing on the rulings of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (1910–1995) regarding secular Jews. The research relies on two analytical models: Ravitzky’s theological model, based on the Chazon Ish’s distinction between a “full wagon” and an “empty wagon”; and the phenomenological model of Zohar and Sagi, which examines the halakhic distinction between belonging to the religious collective versus the ethnic collective. Contrary to the consensus of 20th-century halakhic authorities, who applied the category of “captured child” (tinok shenishba) to modern secular Jews, Rabbi Auerbach rejects this categorical expansion and reinstates the traditional halakha: one who publicly desecrates the Sabbath has the status of a gentile in all matters. This normative decision yields far-reaching halakhic implications: prohibition of a secular person’s contact with wine, prohibition of inviting a secular person for festivals, and more. The study identifies an internal tension in Rabbi Auerbach’s rulings: theoretically, he considers whether it might be preferable to die than to live as a gentile, but practically, he permits saving secular Jews on the Sabbath based on extra-halakhic theological reasoning. This tension reflects a conflict between his loyalty to halakhic deontology and his humane character. The study classifies Rabbi Auerbach within the ahistorical approach, which views the halakhic conceptual system as an eternal entity. Nevertheless, the religious public perceives him as a lenient authority toward secular Jews. This gap is explained through Wolfgang Iser’s hermeneutics and the category of “textual indeterminacy”: readers interpret his words through the prism of an expectation for tolerance, based on their perception of his warm personality, thereby creating a subjective textual meaning. Full article

During his address to the World Council of Religions for Peace in the summer of 2025; Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople; the leading voice for ecological awareness in the Eastern Orthodox Church; issued a profound call for people of faith to unite together in common cause to develop a ‘new natural philosophy’ that unites the scientific and the spiritual and which can serve as a framework for what he called a “common sacred flourishing.” This essay seeks to contribute to this task in two ways. First; by proposing a science-engaged theological framework for the Orthodox Christian tradition; I will argue that Orthodox theology is compatible with the emerging scientific fields of biosemiotics and biomimicry; which I will suggest may serve as the basis for the new natural philosophy the Patriarch describes. Secondly; I will propose that we adopt the term euzoia to refer to this common sacred flourishing as a new ecologically synergistic state of thriving and will argue that we can work toward achieving it by following the “canon of nature’s laws” described by the biomimetic thinker Janine Benyus. In doing so; I will conclude with a discussion of how each of these “natural laws” may be applied to the organization of our social and moral lives as we all collectively pursue our common sacred flourishing. Full article

This article examines the influence of tradition, particularly Orthodox thought and icons, on the “Russian” and Soviet avant-garde. This field of research was systematically initiated in the 1990s and continues to this day, as evidenced, among others, by recent articles in the Arts Journal. The present article contributes to this field by broadening the perspective, which has overwhelmingly focused on art. The step towards architecture is taken with a case study on the famous Soviet architect Ivan Leonidov. The article positions him in the context of contemporary debates on icons led by theorists Evgeniy Trubetskoy, Pavel Florensky and Nikolay Tarabukin, but also in connection with the emergence of Suprematism, which was introduced by Kazimir Malevich and further developed by El Lissitzky. Leonidov’s geometric bodies, which dynamically “float” in space, prove to be relevant to “Russian”/Soviet aesthetic interpretations of icons and “Russian”/Soviet artistic forms of expression. Just as the icon aimed at bringing believers closer to God, or Suprematism sought to reveal to the masses a higher spiritual or scientific truth, Leonidov’s architecture offered a metaphysical spectacle for a corresponding universalist goal: the creation of a pan-humanist utopia. Full article

With the collapse of the post-Cold War bipolar world order, religious institutions regained their public role in the socialist and people’s republic states of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Religion not only regained its social influence, but also once again became a decisive factor in shaping national identity. During the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, religion did not merely attempt to fill the ideological void left by the crisis of the socialist value system; it also actively contributed to the reconfiguration of national values, culture, identity and political discourse. This study examines the religious factors that contributed to the sacralisation of national identity; the consolidation of the ‘Us’, ‘Them’, and ‘Us versus Them’ narratives; and the justification of wartime violence during the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). In this context, ‘Us’ refers to the dominant religious/ethnic community of a given member republic, while ‘Them’ denotes the ethnic majority and their confessional affiliations living in other member republics. This mainly refers to the three largest religious/ethnic communities, Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Bosnia and Herzegovina Muslims. The ‘Us versus Them’ confrontation escalated tensions and ultimately played a central role in the disintegration of the SFR of Yugoslavia. The study concludes that religion played a dual role: on the one hand, it supported the preservation of community identity and social cohesion; on the other hand, it fostered exclusion, the ethnicisation of loyalty, the political instrumentalisation of religion, and the legitimisation of war discourses on the other. Full article

This paper examines the cinematic portrayals of ascetic women within contemporary film. Historically, the early desert fathers and mothers are venerated figures who embody a life of ascesis—spiritual discipline amidst the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. Renowned as spiritual mentors and referred to as Abba (father) for men and Amma (mother) for women, they exemplify a way of Christian life rooted in ascetic practice. Their teachings, preserved in texts such as The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, offer profound insights into Christian spiritual praxis. This spiritual praxis has been vividly depicted through iconography and asceticism continues to hold reverence, particularly within Eastern Orthodox Christianity, where it serves as the basis of spiritual–liturgical life. While the core goal and meanings of asceticism have been conveyed through ascetic iconography and aesthetics, cinematic portrayals of ascetic life and ethos remain a relatively under-researched area. The focus of this study is on the film A Cross in the Desert, adapted from a literary source, which dramatises the hagiography of St. Paraksevi the New, also known as Sveta Petka and St. Paraskevi of the Balkans (Epivates 944–1012). Through the analysis of film language, this paper aims to shed new light on the ways in which iconographic language has been translated into cinematic language, assessing the ways in which women ascetics have been depicted from a contemporary perspective. The film’s representation of a woman ascetic offers valuable insights into the conceptualisations of the notion of gender as a virtue—embodying sanctity—and potential site of desecration—representing iniquity—as these are experienced as both embodied and spiritual realities. The study offers an analysis of how cinematic language operates, focusing on the visual techniques used to depict the intersection of gender, holiness, and spiritual discipline, thereby contributing to a deeper understanding of how film functions as a medium for engaging with complex religious and gendered identities. The analysis of film will provide novel understandings of how cinema depicts and challenges gender within the context of asceticism, exploring how these representations influence contemporary perceptions of women’s spirituality. Full article

The scientific activity and outputs of the neurosciences are fascinating and, for the most part, uncontroversial. However, there have been sustained claims that neuroscientific findings represent a powerful challenge to historic, orthodox Christian teaching concerning human ontology. While philosophers had long debated the “mind/brain” problem, the rise of “eliminative materialism” (in the specific form of “neurophilosophy”) in the last quarter of the 20th century evoked various responses to the proposition that a mature neuroscience would forever banish familiar “folk science” entities like beliefs and desires as well as immaterial souls or minds. These would all be shown to play no role in a thoroughly materialistic, mature, neuroscientific understanding of ourselves. One aspect of the response to such claims within Christian scholarship was a turn to non-reductive physicalism and theological monism prompting a reassessment of biblical teaching concerning human ontology, seeking a position that would be consistent both with neuroscience (or its alleged implications) and Christian teaching. The aim of this paper is to review neuroscientific, philosophical and theological developments in order to establish where theological anthropology currently stands. In part this requires an assessment of contemporary neuroscience (including the subfield of “consciousness studies”) because while the science continues to generate intriguing hypotheses and data, it has fallen some way short of the eliminative materialists’ hopes of forty years ago. Additionally, important methodological criticisms of the science have emerged concerning such issues as reproducibility and participant selection. This may have contributed to the twenty-first century resurgence of interest in the sort of dualism long a key component of theological orthodoxy, as well as highlighting the need for a reassertion of theological values, methods and perspectives. The apparent non-elimination of theology indicates a need to rebalance theological and neuroscientific perspectives in developing our understanding of the person. Full article

This article analyzes the historical relationship between Orthodox Christianity and nation formation. In past centuries, most adherents to the faith lived in the Ottoman and Russian Empires, under the Moscow and the Ecumenical Patriarchates. These two empires followed different historical trajectories as they entered the modern world of nations, and their ecclesiastical institutions evolved very differently. This article uses historical experience, and the model developed in 19th century Southeastern Europe (SEE) to interpret the relationship between faith and nation in post-Soviet Europe. In SEE, the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (EP) fragmented because of rising national movements. Over the 19th century, as Greece, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria became independent or autonomous states, they adopted a new blueprint for the relationship between church and nation. In contrast, the USSR superseded Holy Russia. Abolished in 1721, the Moscow Patriarchate was revived in 1917 but faced Soviet persecution for decades. Within the post-Soviet nations that emerged after the USSR’s 1991 dissolution, ecclesiastical institutions duplicated the model originally developed in 19th century SEE. National and religious conflicts became intertwined, and national antagonisms were disguised as ecclesiastical disputes. This article offers a guide for understanding post-1991 religious conflicts in Estonia, Moldova, and Ukraine, as well as the 2018 schism between the Moscow Patriarchate and the EP. Full article

The pivotal moment of 23 August 1944 thrust Romania into alliance with the Soviet Union and launched over four decades of communist rule. The Romanian Orthodox Church actively resisted communist ideology, but was swiftly targeted by state oppression. Soviet troops entering Banat executed atrocities, seized property, arrested citizens, and terrorized communities. These actions marked the start of communist domination. A critical review of this era shows that authorities deliberately and systematically dismantled the Church and other Romanian institutions in Banat. Most significantly, they dissolved the Caransebeş Diocese, the principal ecclesiastical authority for Romanians in South Banat. Authorities shut down theological academies in Caransebeș and Timișoara, and forced hierarchs Veniamin Nistor and Vasile Lăzărescu into exile. These actions severely crippled the Church’s role. Collectively, these measures devastated the Banat Church’s religious, educational, and social capacities. Full article

The Israel–Hamas War, which erupted with the horrifying events of 7 October 2023, stands as one of the pivotal breaking points in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict since its inception. Both sides have been left battered, pained, and devoid of any trust or hope for peace. Among the local immediate social grassroots responses to repairing the fractured relationship was the production of a special prayer booklet focused on coexistence and shared life liturgy produced by the Reform Movement in Israel, a non-Orthodox Jewish community. In this article, I analyze four prayers for peace included in this booklet, written by Israeli female religious leaders. I examine how these women crafted prayers to promote a message of peace. The texts establish a maternal dialogue to foster a space of trust and security, aiming to replace the exclusive focus on the God of Israel with a deity encompassing all nations. Through these liturgical creations, the authors challenge both the Israeli Orthodox establishment, which excludes non-Orthodox identities and expressions, and the hegemonic national order, which suppresses discussions of coexistence during times of conflict and marginalizes women’s political involvement. Therefore, I conclude that the creators of these prayers emerge as significant gendered political actors in an era marked by distrust, anger, hostility, and fear. They demonstrate that a message of coexistence can resonate within the religious sphere. Full article

The Byzantine iconoclastic controversy (726–843) has sparked a debate among Byzantine scholars. The literature on iconoclasm and Byzantine history links the onset of the Iconoclasm period to various indirect factors, including the dual nature of Christ, the ban on idols in the Old Testament, the expansion of the Muslim empire, natural disasters, schisms, Leo III’s political motives, and many others. Debates in the Iconoclasm age between iconodules and iconoclasts created confusion in the literature, and researchers concluded that iconodules altered records of the first phase of iconoclasm by introducing theological concepts. However, theological debates over the nature of Christ obscured the iconoclastic emperors’ political intentions, as theology was generally exploited as a political tool in the Byzantine Empire. The complex interaction between Orthodox and Muslim religions, the wealth of monasteries, and the political ambitions of both Byzantine and Umayyad emperors were some of the leading causes of the process that led to the development of iconoclasm. This study proposes that theological arguments were used to conceal the emperors’ political motives by blaming others for violating the pillars of Christianity. Secrecy in foreign policy and covert operations contributed to the lack of direct evidence, hiding political motives behind theological arguments. Full article

This paper reconfigures the theme of divine encounters in the literature by examining the intersection of pantheism, vitalism, and ecological imagination, with a particular focus on Percy Bysshe Shelley. Far from depicting the divine as transcendent, Shelley envisions it as an immanent force permeating nature, matter, and life itself. In poems such as “Queen Mab”, “Mont Blanc”, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”, “Ode to the West Wind”, or “The Cloud” Shelley translates vitalist science into poetic vision, challenging orthodox religious beliefs and contemplating the divine as inherent in natural processes. The study also situates Shelley’s thought within a broader genealogy that extends through John Ruskin’s vitalist aesthetics, Henri Bergson’s élan vital, and into contemporary posthumanist philosophy, neomaterialism and ecocriticism, along with scholars who have contributed to reviving and transforming vitalist traditions, reframing human-nonhuman relations in the Anthropocene. The paper shows the importance of the Romantic period in the development of vitalist approaches in various fields of knowledge, anticipating ecological concerns. The study is framed as a genealogical and epistemological problem attempting to articulate connections while situating poetic practice as a privileged site where vitalism is negotiated. Full article