St Symeon was one of the most remarkable advocates of the mystical experience. He addresses such themes as predestination, the knowledge of the saints in the world to come, the day of judgment as the "day of the Lord, " and the experience of the sacraments. Includes index.

Following a survey of the biblical and classical background, Wisdom in Christian Tradition offers a detailed exploration of the theme of wisdom in patristic, Byzantine, and medieval theology, up to and including Gregory Palamas and Thomas Aquinas in Greek East and Latin West, respectively. Three principal levels of Christian wisdom discourse are distinguished: wisdom as human attainment, wisdom as divine gift, and wisdom as an attribute or quality of God. This journey through Wisdom in Christian Tradition is undertaken in conversation with modern Russian Sophiology, one of the most popular and widely discussed theological movements of our time. Sophiology is characterized by the idea of a primal pre-principle of divine-human unity ('Sophia') manifest in both uncreated and created forms and constituting the very foundation of all that is. Sophiology is a complex phenomenon with multiple sources and inspirations, very much including the Church Fathers. Indeed, fidelity to patristic tradition was to become an ever-increasing feature of its self-understanding and self-articulation, above all in the work of its greatest exponent, Fr Sergius Bulgakov (1871-1944). This 'unmodern turn' (as it is here christened) to patristic sources has, however, long been fiercely contested. This book is the first to evaluate thoroughly the nature and substance of Sophiology's claim to patristic continuity. The final chapter offers a radical re-thinking of Sophiology in line with patristic tradition. This constructive proposal maintains Sophiology's most distinctive insights and most pertinent applications while divesting it of some its more problematic elements.

This book explores the history and evolution of Inochentism, a controversial new religious movement that emerged in the Russian and Romanian borderlands of what is now Moldova and Ukraine in the context of the Russian revolutionary period. Inochentism centres around the charismatic preaching of Inochentie, a monk of the Orthodox Church, who inspired an apocalyptic movement that was soon labelled heretical by the Orthodox Church and persecuted as socially and politically subversive by Soviet and Romanian state authorities. Inochentism and Orthodox Christianity charts the emergence and development of Inochentism through the twentieth century based on hagiographies, oral testimonies, press reports, state legislation and a wealth of previously unstudied police and secret police archival material. Focusing on the role that religious persecution and social marginalization played in the transformation of this understudied and much vilified group, the author explores a series of counter-narratives that challenge the mainstream historiography of the movement and highlight the significance of the concept of 'liminality' in relation to the study of new religious movements and Orthodoxy. This book constitutes a systematic historical study of an Eastern European 'home-grown' religious movement taking a 'grass-roots' approach to the problem of minority religious identities in twentieth century Eastern Europe. Consequently, it will be of great interest to scholars of new religions movements, religious history and Russian and Eastern European studies.

This book examines and compares, from an interdisciplinary perspective of Religious Studies and International Relations, the conduct and rhetoric of the Orthodox Churches of Greece and Cyprus vis-a-vis the process. This study focuses on the conditionality of their "sense of belonging" in the European Union (EU) as their predisposition is dependent, in part, on their sense of "being", as well as on their perception of an ideal type of Europeanness. In this context, this book offers insights on how the Greek and Cypriot Churches, as soft power actors of domestic and European capacity, perceive Europeanness and Otherness; thereby, the compatibility of the personified Greek and Cypriot states with the EU as a post-Westphalian political-cultural entity comes into view.

Shenoute the Great (c.347-465) led one of the largest Christian monastic communities in late antique Egypt and was the greatest native writer of Coptic in history. For approximately eight decades, Shenoute led a federation of three monasteries and emerged as a Christian leader. His public sermons attracted crowds of clergy, monks, and lay people; he advised military and government officials; he worked to ensure that his followers would be faithful to orthodox Christian teaching; and he vigorously and violently opposed paganism and the oppressive treatment of the poor by the rich. This volume presents in translation a selection of his sermons and other orations. These works grant us access to the theology, rhetoric, moral teachings, spirituality, and social agenda of a powerful Christian leader during a period of great religious and social change in the later Roman Empire.

Book & DVD. This book presents for the first time the complete chant repertory of an orally transmitted repertory of church hymns for the celebration of the Byzantine Rite in Sicily. This body of chant has been cultivated by the Albanian-speaking minorities since their predecessors from Albania and northern Greece arrived in Sicily as refugees in the late fifteenth century, as a result of the Turkish invasion of the Balkan region. Bartolomeo di Salvo (19161986), a Basilean monk from the monastery of Grottaferrata, prepared the transcriptions for the series Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae in the 1950s, but they were never published. Girolamo Garofalo, ethnomusicologist from Palermo, and Christian Troelsgard, secretary of the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Copenhagen, have discovered the transcriptions and related documents in archives in Sicily, Grottaferrata, Rome and Copenhagen. As a result of their findings, this unique chant collection is now being made available for the first time. The languages used in the book are English / Italian (front matter and indices) and Greek (the chant texts).

"The Teachings of Modern Orthodox Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature" examines how modern Orthodox Christian thinkers have answered the most pressing political, legal, and ethical questions of our time. It discusses the enduring teachings of important Orthodox Christian intellectuals of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Leading contemporary scholars analyze these thinkers' views on the nature and purpose of law and authority, the limits of rule and obedience, the care of the needy and innocent, the ethics of war and violence, and the separation of church and state, among other themes. A diverse and powerful portrait of Orthodox Christian legal and political thought, this volume underscores the various ways Orthodox Christian intellectuals have shaped modern debates over the family, the state, religion, and society. The book concentrates on Russian philosophers Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900) and Vladimir Lossky (1903-1958); Russian theologian Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948); Russian nun and social reformer Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891-1945); and Romanian theologian Dumitru St?niloae (1903-1993).

"In a Different Place" offers a richly textured account of a modern pilgrimage, combining ethnographic detail, theory, and personal reflection. Visited by thousands of pilgrims yearly, the Church of the Madonna of the Annunciation on the Aegean island of Tinos is a site where different interests--sacred and secular, local and national, personal and official--all come together. Exploring the shrine and its surrounding town, Jill Dubisch shares her insights into the intersection of social, religious, and political life in Greece. Along the way she develops the idea of pilgrimage-journeying away from home in search of the miraculous--as a metaphor for anthropological fieldwork. This highly readable work offers us the opportunity to share one anthropologist's personal and professional journey and to see in a "different place" the inadequacy of such conventional anthropological categories as theory versus data, rationality versus emotion, and the observer versus the observed.

Dubisch examines in detail the process of pilgrimage itself, its relationship to Orthodox belief and practice, the motivations and behavior of pilgrims, the relationship between religion and Greek national identity, and the gendered nature of religious roles. Seeking to evoke rather than simply describe, her book presents readers with a sense of the emotion, color, and power of pilgrimage at this Greek island shrine.

This book explores how traces of the energies and dynamics of Orthodox Christian theology and anthropology may be observed in the clinical work of depth psychology. Looking to theology to express its own religious truths and to psychology to see whether these truth claims show up in healing modalities, the author creatively engages both disciplines in order to highlight the possibilities for healing contained therein. Dynamis of Healing elucidates how theology and psychology are by no means fundamentally at odds with each other but rather can work together in a beautiful and powerful synergia to address both the deepest needs and deepest desires of the human person for healing and flourishing.

The Church of Jerusalem, the 'mother of the churches of God', influenced all of Christendom before it underwent multiple captivities between the eighth and thirteenth centuries: first, political subjugation to Arab Islamic forces, then displacement of Greek-praying Christians by Crusaders, and finally ritual assimilation to fellow Orthodox Byzantines in Constantinople. All three contributed to the phenomenon of the Byzantinization of Jerusalem's liturgy, but only the last explains how it was completely lost and replaced by the liturgy of the imperial capital, Constantinople. The sources for this study are rediscovered manuscripts of Jerusalem's liturgical calendar and lectionary. When examined in context, they reveal that the devastating events of the Arab conquest in 638 and the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009 did not have as detrimental an effect on liturgy as previously held. Instead, they confirm that the process of Byzantinization was gradual and locally-effected, rather than an imposed element of Byzantine imperial policy or ideology of the Church of Constantinople. Originally, the city's worship consisted of reading scripture and singing hymns at places connected with the life of Christ, so that the link between holy sites and liturgy became a hallmark of Jerusalem's worship, but the changing sacred topography led to changes in the local liturgical tradition. Liturgy and Byzantinization in Jerusalem is the first study dedicated to the question of the Byzantinization of Jerusalem's liturgy, providing English translations of many liturgical texts and hymns here for the first time and offering a glimpse of Jerusalem's lost liturgical and theological tradition.

Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent is the first book to fully explore the expansive and ill-understood role that Russia's ancient Christian faith has played in the fall of Soviet Communism and in the rise of Russian nationalism today. John and Carol Garrard tell the story of how the Orthodox Church's moral weight helped defeat the 1991 coup against Gorbachev launched by Communist Party hardliners. The Soviet Union disintegrated, leaving Russians searching for a usable past. The Garrards reveal how Patriarch Aleksy II--a former KGB officer and the man behind the church's successful defeat of the coup--is reconstituting a new national idea in the church's own image. In the new Russia, the former KGB who run the country--Vladimir Putin among them--proclaim the cross, not the hammer and sickle. Meanwhile, a majority of Russians now embrace the Orthodox faith with unprecedented fervor. The Garrards trace how Aleksy orchestrated this transformation, positioning his church to inherit power once held by the Communist Party and to become the dominant ethos of the military and government. They show how the revived church under Aleksy prevented mass violence during the post-Soviet turmoil, and how Aleksy astutely linked the church with the army and melded Russian patriotism and faith. Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent argues that the West must come to grips with this complex and contradictory resurgence of the Orthodox faith, because it is the hidden force behind Russia's domestic and foreign policies today.

In The Way of a Pilgrim, an unknown pilgrim describes his wanderings through mid-nineteenth century Russia and Siberia, from one holy place to another, in search of the way of prayer. R. M. French's superb translation conveys the charm of the original text, as well as brilliantly communicating the spiritual truths of the gospel. In the much-loved sequel, The Pilgrim Continues His Way, the narrator shares more of his story, as desire burns within him to discover deeper experiences of prayer, and to draw closer to the heart of God.

This is a collection of documents on church-state relations in modern history. It collects virtually all of the major documents associated with the evolution of the post-Reformation churches - Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox - in their relationship to the simultaneously developing modern state in the West.

Shenoute the Great (c.347-465) led one of the largest Christian monastic communities in late antique Egypt and was the greatest native writer of Coptic in history. For approximately eight decades, Shenoute led a federation of three monasteries and emerged as a Christian leader. His public sermons attracted crowds of clergy, monks, and lay people; he advised military and government officials; he worked to ensure that his followers would be faithful to orthodox Christian teaching; and he vigorously and violently opposed paganism and the oppressive treatment of the poor by the rich. This volume presents in translation a selection of his sermons and other orations. These works grant us access to the theology, rhetoric, moral teachings, spirituality, and social agenda of a powerful Christian leader during a period of great religious and social change in the later Roman Empire.

'Why anyone would pick up a book with that formidable title eludes me,' writes Philip Yancey of G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. 'But one day I did so and my faith has never recovered. I was experiencing a time of spiritual dryness in which everything seemed stale, warmed over, lifeless. Orthodoxy brought freshness and, above all, a new spirit of adventure.' 'We direly need another Chesterton today, I think. In a time when culture and faith have drifted even further apart, we could use his brilliance, his entertaining style, and above all his generous and joyful spirit. He managed to propound the Christian faith with as much wit, good humour and sheer intellectual force as anyone in this century.' Since its first publication in 1908, this classic work has represented a pivotal step in the adoption of a credible faith by many other Christian thinkers, including C. S. Lewis. Written as a spiritual autobiography, it stands as a remarkable and inspirational apologetic for Christianity.

A moving and revealing exploration of Hasidic life, and one man's struggles with faith, family, and community

Shulem Deen was raised to believe that questions are dangerous. As a member of the Skverers, one of the most insular Hasidic sects in the US, he knows little about the outside world--only that it is to be shunned. His marriage at eighteen is arranged and several children soon follow. Deen's first transgression--turning on the radio--is small, but his curiosity leads him to the library, and later the Internet. Soon he begins a feverish inquiry into the tenets of his religious beliefs, until, several years later, his faith unravels entirely.

Now a heretic, he fears being discovered and ostracized from the only world he knows. His relationship with his family at stake, he is forced into a life of deception, and begins a long struggle to hold on to those he loves most: his five children. In All Who Go Do Not Return, Deen bravely traces his harrowing loss of faith, while offering an illuminating look at a highly secretive world.

The art of interpreting Holy Scriptures flourished throughout the culturally heterogeneous pre-modern Orient among Jews, Christians and Muslims. Different ways of interpretation developed within each religion not without considering the others. How were the interactions and how productive were they for the further development of these traditions? Have there been blurred spaces of scholarly activity that transcended sectarian borders? What was the role played by mutual influences in profiling the own tradition against the others? These and other related questions are critically treated in the present volume.

Many Christians are tempted to dismiss concerns over the environment and the catastrophic effects of climate change. After all, prominent voices who most vociferously warn us about this crisis tend to also advocate a wider worldview antithetical to Christian teachings. In this text, noted philosopher and scholar Jean-Claude Larchet finds the roots of the global ecological crisis in a rejection of a truly Christian cosmology. Explaining the relationship between man and nature ordained by God in the beginning, Larchet bases the degradation of the creation ultimately in the primordial fall and outlines how we have arrived at the present crisis point. Finally, the author proposes principles and actions deeply rooted in his Christian ethos that would allow mankind to restore and reinvigorate its relationship with nature.