Life in This World and For the Life of the World: Natural Science and the Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church

2021 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-395
Author(s):  
Frederick V. Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Habitat Degradation ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Environmental Implications ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Anthropogenic Habitat ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Ethos

For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church (FLOW) is an admirable and important document, not least because it affirms natural scientific insights as valuable resources for Christian theology and social teaching. Given the current Ecumenical Patriarch's extensive engagement with environmental concerns, this affirmation is especially apposite. However, I do not believe FLOW fully recognizes the implications of such insights for its conception of God's creation or its social ethos. In particular, FLOW maintains that scarcity, competition, violence, and death are distortions of God's creation due to human sin and that human beings are commissioned and capacitated by God to strive to overcome them. By contrast, I contend that contemporary scientific understandings of planetary forces and ecological processes—and indeed Christian scripture—give Christians cause to consider scarcity, competition, violence, and death aspects of God's creation. I further claim that striving to overcome scarcity, competition, violence, and death would be environmentally disastrous and spiritually deleterious since it would domesticate the rapidly disappearing wilderness that biblical wisdom literature depicts as delighting and glorifying God. Happily, allowing natural scientific insights to inform Orthodox conceptions of God's creation in this way would render FLOW's injunction that human beings redress the environmental implications of their sin an imperative to reduce and remedy pollution and to minimize and restore anthropogenic habitat degradation and destruction, thereby fostering the ecological sustainability Orthodoxy champions and the respect for wilderness Christians have multiple reasons to commend. Although this abandons FLOW's aspiration that human beings wholly civilize God's creation, such respect for wilderness does not imply acquiescence to human deprivation and distress, for just as it is inappropriate to impose cultural values on all of nature, it is wrong to regard all natural dynamics culturally normative. Similarly, attributing scarcity, competition, violence, and death to God's creation rather than its sin need not undermine Christian hopes for freedom from these and all other maladies, for Christians await not only God's salvation from sin and its effects but God's new creation too. Thus, in addition to honing Orthodoxy's social ethos, heeding FLOW's embrace of natural scientific insights as constructive theological resources foregrounds a commonly neglected dimension of Christians' traditional depiction of the divine economy.

The Orthodox Preference for Democracy: An American Response to “The Church in the Public Square” (Section II), in For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church

2021 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 418-430
Author(s):  
Jonathan Tobias
Keyword(s):  
Orthodox Church ◽  
The Public ◽  
Clear Preference ◽  
Public Square ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church ◽  
Social Ethos

In For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church, there is a clear preference for the “democratic genius of the modern age.” This preference for democracy is due, in part, to the long experience of the Orthodox Church with other governmental forms, especially autocratic and authoritarian states.

Neuere sozialethische Entwicklungen in der Orthodoxie

2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-67
Author(s):  
Dagmar Heller
Keyword(s):  
Orthodox Church ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Ethos

Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel möchte das neue, im März 2020 veröffentlichte Papier „For the Life of the World. Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church“ (FLW) vorstellen und durch den Vergleich mit früheren orthodoxen Äußerungen zum Thema in seiner Bedeutung für den inner-orthodoxen Dialog wie auch für das ökumenische Gespräch erfassen. Dabei kommt die Autorin zu dem Ergebnis, dass FLW im Vergleich zu den früheren Texten einen grundlegend positiveren Zugang zu modernen Fragestellungen wie Menschenrechte, menschliche Lebensformen, Wissenschaft und Technik hat und eine größere Offenheit aufweist. Aus diesem Grund hat das neu veröffentlichte Dokument ein wegweisendes Potential nicht nur für die Orthodoxie selbst, sondern auch für die ökumenischen Dialoge der Orthodoxen Kirchen mit anderen Kirchen.

Violence, War, and Capital Punishment in For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church

2021 ◽  
pp. 095394682110453
Author(s):  
Philip LeMasters
Keyword(s):  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Moral Reflection ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
The World ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
Causes Of Violence ◽  
Spiritual Resources ◽  
The Church ◽  
Social Ethos

In response to the challenges presented by violence, war, and capital punishment, For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church argues that foundational liturgical, canonical, and spiritual resources invite the Church to manifest a foretaste of the fullness of God’s peace amidst the brokenness of a world that remains tragically inclined toward taking the lives of those who bear the divine image and likeness. It also summons the Church to engage people and power structures toward the end of enacting practical reforms that ameliorate the underlying causes of violence, a task especially urgent in light of the powerful weapons and technologies employed by governments today. While reflecting distinctive Orthodox sensibilities on the topics it addresses, the document also presents points of commonality with other Christian traditions of theological and moral reflection, especially concerning the obligation to take realistic initiatives in peacemaking.

scholarly journals Doing Orthodox Political Theology Today Insights from the Document For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church (2020)

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-30
Author(s):  
Nikolaos Asproulis
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Eastern Orthodoxy ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church ◽  
Made In ◽  
Social Ethos

Abstract The document titled For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Ortho dox Church, authored by a special commission of Orthodox scholars appointed by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is a document that can be definitely understood as a political manifesto of Eastern Orthodoxy for the 21st century, namely for this period of history and not for a by-gone historical setting or a Christian utopia (either the Byzantine Empire or Holy Russia), a period of time with urgent problems and challenges that call for our attention. Therefore, bringing to the fore the personalist anthropological view inherent in the document itself, an attempt has been made in the text to critically reflect and highlight certain relevant aspects of the document (a positive reception of liberal democracy, human rights language, solidarity to the poor, etc.). The goal is to show how theologically important this document is for the Church witness to our pluralistic world.

Creation

2019 ◽  
pp. 178-195
Author(s):  
Matthew Puffer
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
New Creation ◽  
Limited Role ◽  
The World ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Access To Knowledge ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Church

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology of creation is rooted in the confession that Jesus Christ is the mediator. Apart from Christ’s mediation human beings cannot perceive God’s creation, because our postlapsarian world manifests only a fallen creation in which good and evil are confused and intermixed. Whereas Bonhoeffer in his student years affirmed a limited role for the orders of creation, his subsequent writings on the theology of creation can be read as a response to and reaction against the orders of creation. Although human beings have no unmediated access to knowledge of God’s creation, and know the world as fallen creation only through Christ’s redemption, in Christ they are empowered by the Spirit, incorporated into Christ’s body the church, and made a new creation. Only in light of the hoped-for eschatological fulfilment of the new creation may Christian theology speak of the beginning of God’s ways as Creator.

For the Life of the World: Toward an Appraisal of Its Use of Scripture

2021 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-384
Author(s):  
C. Clifton Black
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Ethos

Adopting David Kelsey's study of modern theologians’ uses of Scripture (1975), this article investigates the theoretical basis and practical outcomes for the procedure exemplified in For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church (2020). A consonance of its interpretive postulates and manner of scriptural appeals is demonstrable, coupled with diminished attention to biblical breadth and cogent scriptural warrants.

scholarly journals Трансформация культурных ценностей в России. Зарисовка проблематики

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 35-49
Author(s):  
Mikołaj Mazuś
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Literature And Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of

The transformation of cultural values in Russia. An outline of the issue of culture in the broadest sense of the world is the entirety of various manifestations of human life. Therefore it is one of the most commonly used concepts in humanistic works. One can refer to culture by raising a number of topics – arts, literature and human mind. When there is a need for a precise definition of culture, certain problems occur. Polish scholar Bronisław Malinowski points out that culture can be understood as human activity in general, including ideas, religious and spiritual issues, art, literature, and politics. Such an approach to culture can lead to the neglection of the historical process. The subject of the present study are selected religious pieces from the period of tsar Peter I.Key words: Russia; Peter I; history vs. literature; Eastern Orthodox Church;

scholarly journals Suffering in the perspective of God’s governance, eschatology and God’s council

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abraham Van de Beek
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Model ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Temporal Model

From the beginning of Christian theology, theologians have struggled with the question of how suffering in the world is related to God’s providence. A classic response to this question is that, ultimately, God’s governance is beyond human understanding. More recently an eschatological solution has been preferred: God is involved in a historical process and he will finally overcome evil. This article argued that both responses have their own problems. In the first God is a hidden mystery, and in the latter either the outcome of history is uncertain or God is waiting unnecessarily long. On the other hand, both provide consolation to human beings in times of suffering. Which one of the two answers is more helpful, depends on culture and context. Therefore, they are both acceptable responses to the question. At a deeper level, one can argue that both refer to eternity − one in a spatial model (above) and the other in a temporal model (hereafter). Both space and time are metaphors in this context. That is also the case when we speak of ‘before’ with regard to God’s eternal council. Ultimately, from a perspective of eternity, God’s council, God’s governance and God’s final judgment coincide. In Christian theology these concepts can only be understood in the paradigm of God’s revelation in Christ, who is the expression of the mystery of creation − as is especially indicated in the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians. Vanaf het begin van het Christendom hebben theologen geworsteld met de vraag hoe het lijden in de wereld zich verhoudt tot Gods voorzienigheid. Een klassiek antwoord daarop is dat ten laatste Gods bestuur het menselijk begrip te boven gaat. Tegenwoordig wordt eerder de voorkeur gegeven aan een eschatologische oplossing: God is betrokken in een proces door de geschiedenis waarin Hij uiteindelijk het kwaad zal overwinnen. De auteur betoogt dat beide benaderingen hun eigen problemen hebben. In het eerste geval is God een onkenbaar mysterie en in het tweede geval is de afloop onzeker of wacht God onnodig lang met zijn overwinning. Aan de andere kant bieden beide antwoorden mensen troost in lijdenssituaties. Welke van de twee antwoorden het beste is, hangt af van cultuur en context. Daarom zijn beide aanvaardbaar als antwoord op het probleem van Gods voorzienigheid. Op een dieper niveau kan men betogen dat beide verwijzen naar de eeuwigheid, het eerste antwoord in een ruimtelijk model (‘te boven’) en het tweede in een tijdsmodel (‘hierna’). Zowel ruimte als tijd zijn hier metaforisch gebruikt. Dat is ook het geval als we spreken over ‘vóór’ met betrekking tot Gods eeuwige raad. Uiteindelijk zijn, vanuit het perspectief van de eeuwigheid, Gods raad, Gods beleid en Gods laatste oordeel identiek. In de christelijke theologie kunnen deze concepten alleen worden verstaan in het paradigma van Gods openbaring in Christus, die de expressie van het geheimenis van de schepping is, zoals met name de brieven aan de Efeziërs en aan de Kolossenzen aangeven.

scholarly journals Ecumenical Bridges between Orthodox and Catholic Sides: Comparison between Fratelli Tutti of Pope Francis and For the Life of the World. Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church Signed by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-50
Author(s):  
Samuele Bignotti
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Pastoral Work ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Holy See ◽  
The World ◽  
Common Reading ◽  
Social Ethos

Abstract A large part of Christians in the world have been involved in social topics by these two pastoral documents released by the Holy See and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Both documents bear the mark of the two Church Primates, Pope Francis and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew who inspired them and who had already shown interest in themes such as human life, social theology, climate and ecumenism. This essay aims to offer an ecumenical common reading of the two recent documents, Fratelli Tutti and For the Life of the World. Toward a Social Ethos of the Ortho dox Church, considering the pastoral work of the two signatory Primates as authentic ecumenical bridges within the Christian world.

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