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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Orthodox Churches
In Ethiopian Christianity Philip Esler presents a rich and
comprehensive history of Christianity's flourishing. But Esler is
ever careful to situate this growth in the context of Ethiopia's
politics and culture. In so doing, he highlights the remarkable
uniqueness of Christianity in Ethiopia. Ethiopian Christianity
begins with ancient accounts of Christianity's introduction to
Ethiopia by St. Frumentius and King Ezana in the early 300s CE.
Esler traces how the church and the monarchy closely coexisted, a
reality that persisted until the death of Haile Selassie in 1974.
This relationship allowed the emperor to consider himself the
protector of Orthodox Christianity. The emperor's position,
combined with Ethiopia's geographical isolation, fostered a
distinct form of Christianity-one that features the inextricable
intertwining of the ordinary with the sacred and rejects the
two-nature Christology established at the Council of Chalcedon. In
addition to his historical narrative, Esler also explores the
cultural traditions of Ethiopian Orthodoxy by detailing its
intellectual and literary practices, theology, and creativity in
art, architecture, and music. He provides profiles of the
flourishing Protestant denominations and Roman Catholicism. He also
considers current challenges that Ethiopian Christianity
faces-especially Orthodoxy's relations with other religions within
the country, in particular Islam and the Protestant and Roman
Catholic churches. Esler concludes with thoughtful reflections on
the long-standing presence of Christianity in Ethiopia and hopeful
considerations for its future in the country's rapidly changing
politics, ultimately revealing a singular form of faith found
nowhere else.
This book offers a collection of the essays, letters, interviews,
and correspondence of Fr Matthew Baker, exploring the works of Fr
Georges Florovsky and the writings of the Church Fathers. 'The
Fathers are ahead of us, with Jesus-it is we who should be running
to catch up to them.' Thus Fr Matthew Baker, in one of the
interviews included in this volume, summarizes and defends the
understanding of Orthodox theological method espoused by his hero,
Fr Georges Florovsky, known as neopatristic synthesis. We tend to
be programmed in Western societies into thinking that simply by
virtue of living in the twenty-first century, we are somehow
'ahead, ' that we are intellectually, morally, and theologically
superior to our forebears just because we happen to live later than
they did, and in an age of technological marvels. But the measure
of what puts us 'ahead' as human beings is neither time nor
technology, but our proximity to Jesus Christ. This is what allows
the category of the Fathers to remain a steadfast one in Orthodox
theology: not simply because in the distant past they forged
lasting and faithful expressions of the Gospel, but because in
doing so they assimilated the very life of the One they sought to
defend and glorify, the Coming One, thereby becoming living
witnesses before us (not just behind us) to the only truth that can
save human beings.... REV. MATTHEW BAKER, PH.D. was an adjunct
professor in theology at Hellenic College/Holy Cross Greek Orthodox
School of Theology. He published numerous articles and edited
multiple books on Fr Georges Florovsky as well as patristics,
theology, Scripture, and philosophy more broadly.
Antony Mecherry S.J. brings to the fore a recently identified
16th-century treatise on 'Nestorianism', written by Francisco Ros
S.J. (1559-1624), a Catalonian from the Jesuit province of Aragon.
He successfully promoted the mission praxis of accommodatio
primarily among the Saint Thomas Christians of early modern Malabar
in South India. This newly discovered first treatise composed by
Ros, a Latin missionary, represents the initial phase of his
mission as a polemicist in the making, who read the Syriac sources
of the Church of the East found in Malabar through a Catholic
theological lens. In addition to exploring the underlying conflicts
which emerged out of an unprecedented encounter of apparently
unlike theological and liturgical identities in the same mission
field of early modern India, this book provides the readers with a
historiographical critique against the backdrop of which the author
presents his analysis of the Rosian treatise.
This book examines the function and development of the cult of
saints in Coptic Egypt, focusing primarily on the material provided
by the texts forming the Coptic hagiographical tradition of the
early Christian martyr Philotheus of Antioch, and more
specifically, the Martyrdom of St Philotheus of Antioch (Pierpont
Morgan M583). This Martyrdom is a reflection of a once flourishing
cult which is attested in Egypt by rich textual and material
evidence. This text enjoyed great popularity not only in Egypt, but
also in other countries of the Christian East, since his dossier
includes texts in Coptic, Georgian, Ethiopic, and Arabic.
Nature is as much an idea as a physical reality. By 'placing'
nature within Byzantine culture and within the discourse of
Orthodox Christian thought and practice, Landscape, Nature and the
Sacred in Byzantium explores attitudes towards creation that are
utterly and fascinatingly different from the modern. Drawing on
Patristic writing and on Byzantine literature and art, the book
develops a fresh conceptual framework for approaching Byzantine
perceptions of space and the environment. It takes readers on an
imaginary flight over the Earth and its varied topographies of
gardens and wilderness, mountains and caves, rivers and seas, and
invites them to shift from the linear time of history to the
cyclical time and spaces of the sacred - the time and spaces of
eternal returns and revelations.
Hong Kong has been a unique society from its establishment as a
political region separate from mainland China in the nineteenth
century under British colonial rule until the present day as a
special administrative region of the People's Republic of China. A
hub of interregional and international migration, it has been the
temporary and long-term home of people belonging to many racial,
ethnic, and cultural groups. This book examines the evolution of
the community established by clergy and congregants of the Russian
Orthodox Church. This community was first developed in the 1930s
and then revived after a hiatus of over two decades from the 1970s
to the 1990s with the founding of the Orthodox Parish of Apostles
Saints Peter and Paul (OPASPP) at the turn of the twenty-first
century. This study demonstrates how the OPASPP has become a vital
provider of knowledge about Russian language and culture as well as
a religious institution serving both heritage and convert
believers. The community formed by and around the OPASPP is
important to foster Sino-Russian relations based on
individual-to-individual contact and mutual exposure to Chinese and
Russian cultures in a region of China which allows spiritual and
social diversity with minimal political constraints.
Based on a constructive reading of Scripture, the apostolic and
patristic traditions and deeply rooted in the sacramental
experience and spiritual ethos of the Orthodox Church, John
Zizioulas offers a timely anthropological and cosmological
perspective of human beings as "priests of creation" in addressing
the current ecological crisis. Given the critical and urgent
character of the global crisis and by adopting a clear line of
argumentation, Zizioulas describes a vision based on a
compassionate and incarnational conception of the human beings as
liturgical beings, offering creation to God for the life of the
world. He encourages the need for deeper interaction with modern
science, from which theology stands to gain an appreciation of the
interconnection of every aspect of materiality and life with
humankind. The result is an articulate and promising vision that
inspires a new ethos, or way of life, to overcome our alienation
from the rest of creation.
The Journal of Language Relationship is an international periodical
publication devoted to the issues of comparative linguistics and
the history of the human language. The Journal contains articles
written in English and Russian, as well as scientific reviews,
discussions and reports from international linguistic conferences
and seminars.
The Byzantine emperor Leo VI (886-912), was not a general or even a
soldier, like his predecessors, but a scholar, and it was the
religious education he gained under the tutelage of the patriarch
Photios that was to distinguish him as an unusual ruler. This book
analyses Leo's literary output, focusing on his deployment of
ideological principles and religious obligations to distinguish the
characteristics of the Christian oikoumene from the Islamic
caliphate, primarily in his military manual known as the Taktika.
It also examines in depth his 113 legislative Novels, with
particular attention to their theological prolegomena, showing how
the emperor's religious sensibilities find expression in his
reshaping of the legal code to bring it into closer accord with
Byzantine canon law. Meredith L. D. Riedel argues that the impact
of his religious faith transformed Byzantine cultural identity and
influenced his successors, establishing the Macedonian dynasty as a
'golden age' in Byzantium.
The present volume focuses on the relationship with communism of
Romania's most important religious denominations and their attempt
to cope with that difficult past which continues to cast an
important shadow over their present. For the first time ever, this
volume considers both the majority Romanian Orthodox Church and
significant minority denominations such as the Roman and Greek
Catholic Churches, the Reformed Church, the Hungarian Unitarian
Church, and the Pentecostal Christian Denomination. It argues that
no religious group (except the Greek Catholic Church, which was
banned from 1948 until 1989) escaped collaboration with the
communists. After 1989, however, most denominations had little
desire to tackle their tainted past and make a clean start. In
part, this was facilitated by the country's deficient legislation
that did not encourage the pursuit of lustration, which in turn did
not lead to a serious movement of elite renewal in the religious
realm. Instead, a strong process of reproduction of the old elites
and their adaptation to democracy has been the dominant
characteristic of the post-communist period.
This is a hardback commemorative volume, compiled in celebration of
the 50th Anniversary of the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in
America (OCA). Edited by St Vladimir's Academic Dean,
Ionut-Alexandru Tudorie, the volume contains a collection of
debates over the OCA Autocephaly and the state of Orthodoxy in
America reflected in St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly. The
various articles were written in the years leading up to and
following the Russian Orthodox Church granting the Tomos of
Autocephaly to the OCA (then known as the Russian Orthodox Greek
Catholic Church of America) in 1970. "The storm provoked by the
autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in America is probably one of
the most meaningful crises in several centuries of Orthodox
ecclesiastical history," wrote Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann
in his article, "A Meaningful Storm: Some Reflections on
Autocephaly, Tradition, and Ecclesiology" (1971).
The Kievan Caves Monastery played a leading role in the development
of a Ukrainian historical consciousness in the seventeenth century.
Particularly important was the link between the monastery's
medieval past and its early modern present. Several works written
by inhabitants of the monastery testified not only to the site's
former saints and miracles but also to its current holy men and
wonders. This volume contains facsimile reproductions of two such
works: Syl'vestr Kosiv's Paterikon (Kiev, 1635), a Polish
translation and expansion of a medieval Rus' text; and Afanasij
Kal'nofojs'kyj's Teraturgema (Kiev, 1638), a continuation of
Kosiv's narrative. In addition, an appendix contains Joannes
Herbinius's Religiosae Ko'Vensis Cryptae (Jena, 1675), a work based
on firsthand data supplied by the Archimandrite Innokentij Giesel.
In the Introduction, Paulina Lewin examines the cultural context of
these works and discusses their literary significance.
Widely regarded as a premier journal dedicated to the study of
Syriac, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies was established in 1998
as a venue devoted exclusively to the discipline. An organ of Beth
Mardutho, the Syriac Institute, the journal appears semi-annually
and will be printed in annual editions. A peer-reviewed journal,
Hugoye is a respected academic source for up-to-date information
about the state of Syriac studies and for discovering what is going
on in the field. Contributors include some of the most respected
names in the world of Syriac today.
JCSSS is a refereed journal published annually by the Canadian
Society for Syriac Studies Inc. (CSSS), located at the Department
of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada. JCSSS contains the transcripts of public
lectures presented at the CSSS and possibly other articles and book
reviews. JCSSS focuses on the vast Syriac literature, which is
rooted in the same soil from which the ancient Mesopotamian and
biblical literatures sprung; on Syriac art that bears Near Eastern
characteristics as well as Byzantine and Islamic influences; and on
archaeology, unearthing in the Middle East and the rest of Asia and
China the history of the Syriac-speaking people: Assyrians,
Chaldeans, Maronites and Catholic and Orthodox Syriacs. Modern
Syriac Christianity and contemporary vernacular Aramaic dialects
are also the focus of JCSSS. The languages of the Journal are
English, French and German, and quotations from ancient sources are
given in the original languages and in translation. The articles
are interdisciplinary and scholarly; the Editorial Committee brings
together scholars from four American, Canadian, and European
universities. The CSSS that publishes JCSSS was founded in 1999 at
the University of Toronto, Department of Near and Middle Eastern
Civilizations, as part of the latter's academic programme in
Aramaic and Syriac languages and literatures. It was incorporated
under the Canada Corporations Act in January 23, 1999. This volume
includes articles by Alain Desreumaux, Alexander Treiger, Reagan
Patrick, Narmin Muhammad Amin 'Ali, Amir Harrak, and Sihaam Khan.
Widely regarded as a premier journal dedicated to the study of
Syriac, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies was established in 1998
as a venue devoted exclusively to the discipline. An organ of Beth
Mardutho, the Syriac Institute, the journal appears semi-annually
and will be printed in annual editions. A peer-reviewed journal,
Hugoye is a respected academic source for up-to-date information
about the state of Syriac studies and for discovering what is going
on in the field. Contributors include some of the most respected
names in the world of Syriac today.
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