Introduction is paper explores the potential impact of Fr. omas Joseph White’s impressive new book on the Trinity for the ecumenical dialogue between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. 1 In doing so, the paper responds to the editors’ kind request for an explicitly ecumenical approach to the book. erefore, this paper concentrates on the issue of the Trinity from an ecumenical perspective. But this is not a simple task. Before reading the book, the reader might have thought that Eastern and Western theologians had somehow reached a gentlemen’s agreement that the insertion of the Filioque clause in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed had happened sometime somewhere in the Wild West (namely, at the local Council of Toledo in 589). Building on an honest misunderstanding, the Latin Church gradually added to the initial statement of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, according to which the …

This chapter critically presents and discusses the Ecumenical Patriarch's 2014 lecture on ‘Religion and Freedom’. The first part of the chapter argues that the Ecumenical Patriarch departs from previous dismissive views of Orthodox thinkers and church leaders about human rights and the location of religious freedom within it, by counter-proposing a personalist interpretation of libertarian freedom, compatible with the theological anthropology of the Orthodox Church. The Ecumenical Patriarch's view was given official expression at the Holy and Great Council of 2016. The second part of the chapter shows that religious freedom uncovers deep-rooted antinomies in the historical identity of the Orthodox Church as a religious community. The chapter concludes by arguing that the Orthodox Church has the intellectual resources to solve these antinomies through a process of critical self-reflection.

On the eastern part of the Greek island of Crete, in the semi-arid area of Lasithi, lies the old monastery of Toplou. The monastery hosts the unique icon Megas ei Kyrie (“Great are you, O Lord”), written on wood by Ioannis Kornaros in 1770.1 The name of the icon is not that of a person but of a doxological praise; this in itself is indicative of a very unusual theme. The central motif is the baptism of Christ, which is celebrated in the East on the feast of Theophany (January 6). Upon closer inspection, the central motif is placed between heaven (the Trinity and the angels) and earth (Mary with the Christ Child, Adam and Eve), whereas the descent of Christ into the underworld is depicted at the bottom of the icon. Fifty-seven episodes from the Old and the New Testaments surround the central motif on the right and on the left, all connected by running waters. The total of sixtyone motifs are enumerated by the artist and glossed by headings, which faithfully reproduce the verses of the Theophany Poem, attributed to the Patriarch Sophrony of Jerusalem. The poem contains the prayer Megas ei Kyrie (“Great are you, O Lord”), which is the central liturgical event of the

On 5 January 2019, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople signed the ‘Tome of Autocephaly’(constitutional charter) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In the preceding months, the Patriarchates of Moscow and Constantinople initiated a series of debates and diplomatic missions reaffirming their views on their respective jurisdictional claims over Ukraine, with the Moscow Patriarchate unilaterally breaking communion with Constantinople and the issue of autocephaly resulting in a regrettable schism. Scaffolds of the Church could not be a timelier publication since it introduces the reader to the historical and canonical background necessary to understand the tension, its reasons and its outcome. Though the book’s scope is much broader, discussing eastern Orthodox ecclesiology from a socio-cultural perspective, the ‘case of Ukraine’is a substantial part of the fourth chapter of the book and an …

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