My journey with Orthodox brothers and sisters started with Brighton ’91. With assistance from Monsignor Peter Hocken, I put together this first global conference for Pentecostal scholars. The keynote speaker was Professor Jürgen Moltmann and our presenters were Roman Catholic, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and Pentecostal. Since that time, I have never put together a conference without Orthodox participation the most recent being Oxford 2012 that featured Metropolitan Kallistos Ware.

In June 2009, I was granted a Private Audience with His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. One immediate result was the launching of informal talks between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Pentecostals for the next three years. The co-chairs for these talks mentioned in the biography were Metropolitan Gennadios of Sassima and myself. I wrote the following in an initial letter to His All-Holiness proposing the talks: “I am emboldened in this quest by reading in your book Encountering the Mystery that Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah II broke new ground in the 16^th century ‘Augsburg-Constantinople’ encounter. Dr. Paraskevè Tibbs projects that perhaps Melanchthon himself recast the Augsburg Confession in Greek for the benefit of this significant exchange.”

Bartholomew: Apostle and Visionary, by John Chryssavgis
“Surrounded on all sides by Islam, the beloved Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew continues to impact the world for Christ from his seat in Constantinople, a city central to Christian history.”
Written in cooperation with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Foreword by Pope Francis. Interspersed reflections by: Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Benedict XVI, Rabbi David Rosen, Rowan Williams, Al Gore, Jr., Jane Goodall, George Stephanopoulos.

This journey with the Orthodox exposed the Western slant of all my theological training. Although I am indebted to what I learned from Augustine, I came to thirst being enriched also by Chrysostom. As a result, I have become increasingly aware how mainstream media in the West is quick to point to the exploits of Pope Francis while paying less attention to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew even when the two were involved in joint ventures like the 2016 refugee outreach in Lesbos. This media inequality, however, has never drawn criticism from His All-Holiness.

This brilliant biography by Archdeacon John Chryssavgis is a clarion call for Christians from around the world to benefit from the apostolic and visionary leadership of 25 years of guiding the Christian East by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. The introductory chapter is titled “Just Call Me Bartholomew” taken from the 2009 “60 Minutes” interview of His All-Holiness and so it will be in this article. I was so intrigued by the text that I flew to Boston, MA, for a personal conversation with Archdeacon Chryssavgis. I left that exchange impressed by the scholarly and ecclesiastical acumen of one of the most astute Orthodox theologians that I have come to know personally.

When first picking up the biography, one immediately takes notice of the foreword by Pope Francis. What might not be as obvious is the rarity for a Pope to authorize a foreword. It was also heartwarming to hear Archdeacon Chryssavgis’s firsthand account that not only did Pope Francis agree to write the foreword, but he accepted the two-week publisher’s deadline during the Easter celebration! Pope Francis brings passion to the brotherly love of apostles Peter and Andrew, the respective founders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches according to tradition.

One note of caution about the book cover which announces 300 million Orthodox adherents around the world. As Chryssavgis explained to me, this count includes not only Eastern Orthodox but Oriental Orthodox. It is also the case that their record keeping is not precise. However, Pentecostals are hardly in a position to say much about this having in just 100 years built a platform that their theological significance is linked to their numbers which they reckon to be second only to Roman Catholics. Chryssavgis smiles: “An extra zero for the glory of God!”

Cornelius G. Hunter, Darwin’s Proof: The Triumph of Religion over Science (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2003), 168 pages, ISBN 9781587430565.

The volume under review is a sequel to Hunter’s Darwin’s God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil (Brazos Press, 2001). The central thesis of the former book is that the theory—rather than fact—of evolution originally emerged in the mid-nineteenth century out of the deistic the concept of God with the added benefit of distancing God from the waste, pain, suffering, and evil so evident in the natural and human worlds. In Darwin’s Proof, Hunter further develops this main idea, but provides a creationist alternative to the naturalistic theory of evolutionary origins.

Hunter’s Ph.D. in biophysics (University of Illinois) means not that his interpretation of the alleged evidence for evolution is correct in all respects, but that it cannot be easily dismissed. This is especially the case in the first five chapters of the book where he lays out what he discerns to be the fundamental arguments against Darwinian evolution—its inability to account for the complexity of DNA structures, protein functions, enzyme pathways and cycles, nerve cells, and other life forms—and the inconclusiveness of the scientific evidence for evolution, especially the fossil evidence, data from comparative anatomy, and molecular, genomic, and phylogenetic (related to the evolutionary tree) similarities. Chapters six and seven then make more explicit the internal philosophical and theological contradictions (as Hunter sees them) of evolutionism.

The last four chapters constitute Hunter’s own proposal regarding the origins of life: adherence to a fairly traditional rendition of the biblical account of creation, fall and redemption as providing a narrative and philosophical framework for scientific inquiry in general and biological origins in particular (chapters eight and nine), and advocacy of the recently emergent and increasingly popular intelligent design theory as being compatible with Christian theistic approaches to rigorous scientific investigation (chapters ten and eleven).

Both Darwin’s God and Darwin’s Proof will be welcomed by creationists and anti-evolutionists. It appears that these are the audiences that Hunter is addressing, at least in part, by publishing this very accessible book with a press targeting evangelical laypersons. Be warned, however, that while many of the arguments in these two volumes may be simplistically called into serving traditionalist apologetic purposes prevalent in evangelical, fundamentalist, creationist, and even Pentecostal and charismatic circles, Hunter’s approach signals a subtle but very important shift in the contemporary science and religion conversation. That is to say, while Hunter’s own theological commitments seem fairly traditionalistic, his engagement with the sciences is rigorous (rather than merely instrumentalistic or apologetic), his rhetorical approach is fair (rather than merely polemical), and his interaction with evolution and its supposed evidences is sophisticated (rather than merely dismissive). I would urge even those who agree with Hunter’s theological position to read him in order to learn something about science in general and evolutionary science in particular. On the other side, defenders of Darwinian evolution will be challenged not only at the presuppositional level (that is, with regard to the ideological, religious and metaphysical commitments undergirding evolution) but also at the evidential level (that is, with regard to the specific interpretation of the scientific and, especially, biological data).