In the second volume of her Essays in Ecumenical Theology, Ivana Noble engages in conversation with Orthodox theologians and spiritual writers on diverse questions, such as how to discover the human heart, what illumination by the divine light means, how spiritual life is connected to attitudes and acts of social solidarity, why sacrificial thinking may not be the best frame for expressing Christ's redemption, why theological anthropology needs to have a strong ecological dimension, why freedom needs to coexist with love for others, and why institutions find the ability to be helpful not only in their own traditions but also in the Spirit that blows where it wills.

In modern Russia, the question is raised about the revival of the spirituality of the population, which increases interest in studying the history of the church. In the pre-revolutionary period, the Orthodox Church in the Russian Empire had a significant impact on the formation of national culture and statehood. Actively cooperating with the state, the Orthodox Church has accumulated vast experience in the field of education, missionary work, and charity. This experience in today's Russia can be used to solve the most important tasks in the moral education of young people who will contribute to the future of Russia. Examining the Relationship Between the Russian Orthodox Church and Secular Authorities in the 19th and 20th Centuries focuses on the system of spiritual education, the social and psychological characteristics of the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the tradition of Orthodox pilgrimage. It explores the key areas of charitable and educational activities of the Orthodox Church during the period of religious transformation in the 19th and 20th centuries. Covering topics such as missionary activity, secular authority, and church land tenure, this premier reference source is a dynamic resource for historians, anthropologists, sociologists, researchers in politics and religion, librarians, students and faculty of higher education, and academicians.

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.

Bulus ibn Raja' (ca. 955-ca. 1020) was a celebrated writer of Coptic Christianity from Fatimid Egypt. Born to an influential Muslim family in Cairo, Ibn Raja' later converted to Christianity and composed The Truthful Exposer (Kitab al-Wadih bi-l-Haqq) outlining his skepticism regarding Islam. His ideas circulated across the Middle East and the Mediterranean in the medieval period, shaping the Christian understanding of the Qur'an's origins, Muhammad's life, the practice of Islamic law, and Muslim political history. This book includes a study of Ibn Raja''s life, along with an Arabic edition and English translation of The Truthful Exposer.

Recognized as a saint by both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians alike, Jacob of Sarug (d. 521) produced many narrative poems that have rarely been translated into English. Of his reported 760 metrical homilies, only about half survive. Part of a series of fascicles containing the bilingual Syriac-English editions of Saint Jacob of Sarug's homilies, this volume contains his homilies on the Six Days of Creation. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume is one of the fascicles of Gorgias Press's The Metrical Homilies of Mar Jacob of Sarug, which, when complete, will contain all of Jacob's surviving sermons. In this final installment of the long Homily 71, On the Six Days of Creation, Jacob treats the events of the seventh day, on which God rests from all his labors of creation carried out over the course of the previous six days.

Considered by many to be the final and crowning work of the patristic age, St John of Damascus' On the Orthodox Faith addresses all the major areas of Christian belief: Trinitarian theology, Christology, soteriology, the sacraments, the veneration of icons, saints, and relics, and much more. This new translation by Norman Russell includes a helpful introduction discussing the origin and reception of the text. This diglot edition, reproducing the critical Greek text on the facing page, is sure to become the standard and classic edition of this central and important patristic work. Saint John of Damascus was a Syrian monk and priest. Born in the seventh century and raised in Damascus, he died at his monastery, Mar Saba, near Jerusalem. He wrote works expounding the Christian faith and composed hymns which are still used. He is one of the most widely read Fathers and is best known for his strong defense of icons.

'The House of the Priest' presents and discusses the hitherto unpublished and untranslated memoirs of Niqula Khoury, a senior member of the Orthodox Church and Arab nationalist in late Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine. It discusses the complicated relationships between language, religion, diplomacy and identity in the Middle East in the interwar period. This original annotated translation and accompanying articles provide a thorough explication of Khoury's memoirs and their significance for the social, political and religious histories of twentieth-century Palestine and Arab relations with the Greek Orthodox church. Khoury played a major role in these dynamics as a leading member of the fight for Arab presence in the Greek-dominated clergy, and for an independent Palestine, travelling in 1937 to Eastern Europe and the League of Nations on behalf of the national movement. Contributors: Sarah Irving, Charbel Nassif, Konstantinos Papastathis, Karene Sanchez Summerer, Cyrus Schayegh