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!”

Orthodox Christianity is made up of two main branches: Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy. The two branches split in the year 451, when at the Council of Chalcedon, there was a disagreement over the nature of Christ.

The Eastern Orthodox Church includes groups such as the Greek Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, and about a dozen other self-governing churches throughout the world.

Oriental Orthodoxy is comprised of six groups, the main one being Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. The other five churches are based in India, Armenia, Syria, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.

Father Andrew Louth

In recent years, leaders from Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy have sought to find commonality between their beliefs. Some of the churches, such as the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria, have even agreed to recognize baptisms and marriages that were performed by the other group.

Some Evangelicals believe that Orthodoxy keeps its focus on icons and rituals rather than on having faith in God. I grew up with a clear delineation between “our church” and “their church.” However as an adult, I wanted to see what Orthodox spirituality represented beyond the icons and rituals. I wanted to truly understand how the Orthodox people viewed God.

In order to learn more about the Eastern Orthodox perspective, I contacted Father Andrew Louth, a Russian Orthodox Priest in Durham, England. Until retiring recently, he was also the Professor of Patristic and Byzantine Studies at Durham University. And before that, he taught early Christian theology at Oxford University. Father Andrew graciously agreed to answer my questions for the following interview.

Rachel Mock: I read on the Durham University website that you teach a course on the understanding of what it is to be human in early Christian theology. Could you tell me about some of the key concepts that you teach in that course?

Father Andrew: I used to teach such a course (I am retired now).  It was an MA course, with texts, the texts being Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Making of Human kind and Nemesios of Emesa’s On the Nature of Human kind.  Central concepts were: the human in the image of God, as bond of creation, as microcosm of the cosmos; quite a lot about psychology, a good deal about providence.

Bruce L. McCormack, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008).

Bruce McCormack is the Frederick and Margaret L. Weyerhaeuser Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He instantly became one of the world’s leading interpreters of Karl Barth’s thought with the publication of Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development, 1909-1936 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995). The present book, a collection of essays from journals and books, is the long-awaited follow-up punch to that 1995 book. “Punch” is not too strong a word, as these essays should go a long way toward revising the dominant North American view of Barth’s theology. It will be interesting to see how it stirs things up.

I personally do not agree with Barth’s theology, so there is much about this book that I cannot accept on a prescriptive, theological level. But when judged in comparison with other books on Barth, especially those under the influence of “Yale theology” and its attempt to turn Barth into a narrative theologian, I find the theology here much more philosophically consistent than anything that English-speaking Barthians have produced in the past forty years. It is also much more palatable to a student of the New Testament. I am thus torn. I am not in favor of Barthianism, but if there must be Barthians, then I much prefer that they be of the McCormack sort (which appears to be more faithful to Barth himself) than of the Hans Frei sort.

The writing in this book is always clear, even when the subject is obscure. One drawback for the beginning reader, of course, is that much of the discussion will seem in-house, as inevitably is the case with anything that is Barth-related but which is not an introduction. Those coming to Barth studies from the side of biblical studies will especially have a difficult time making out the terrain. Nevertheless, the importance of Barth for understanding present-day theology makes this an important book for teachers of theology.

This book is unfortunately marred by an instance of verbatim repetition: some of the wording on p. 273 is identical with wording found on pp. 296-97. (If students are punished for recycling their own words, then why is it alright for scholars to recycle their own words? That spate of laziness comes back to bite when the essays in question are gathered into a single collection, as they are here.)

Reviewed by John Poirier

Preview Orthodox and Modern: books.google.com/books?id=60bomlwgOB0C

Excerpt from the publisher: assets.bakerpublishinggroup.com/processed/book-resources/files/Excerpt_McCormack_Orthodox.pdf?1362589720

A review essay of John P. Burgess, “In-Churching Russia: Journeying Through the Efforts of Orthodoxy to Return Russia to Faith” First Things (May 2014), by Rachel Mock.

The article “In-Churching Russia” by John P. Burgess not only helped me to reexamine my childhood as a Charismatic missionary kid in Moscow, but it also gave me a newfound understanding of the Russian Orthodox Church and its effects on post-communist Russia.

As I read this article, I kept asking myself the question, Should Evangelicals see the Russian Orthodox Church as competition or as a Christian ally? When I was a child growing up in Moscow, where my parents started the first American Charismatic church in 1991, I assumed that we were in competition with the Orthodox Church. I was told that we needed to evangelize to the Orthodox, because they were people who followed religious rituals instead of pursuing a personal relationship with Christ. Now, as a 32-year-old non-denominational Christian, I can see several benefits of Evangelical churches partnering with the Russian Orthodox churches.

In order to fully appreciate this article, I decided to research the author online. Burgess is an ordained Presbyterian minister and a professor of theology who has been working at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary since 1998. He spent time in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar in 2011 and a Luce Fellow in Theology 2012, and according to his faculty page on the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary website, the focus of his research was “the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in shaping a new national identity for post-communist Russia.”

Burgess went to Russia primarily as a researcher, not an evangelist. He is also a Presbyterian, not a Charismatic or a Pentecostal. Perhaps these factors helped him to take a more positive view of the Russian Orthodox Church. In the article, he describes the spiritual moments that he shared with Russian Orthodox people he met. He wasn’t on a mission to guide them toward the Sinner’s Prayer or the baptism of the Holy Spirit, so he was probably more able to notice the benefits, rather than the risks, of the Orthodox Church gaining influence over the Russian people.

The article “In-Churching Russia” describes how the Orthodox Church’s sphere of religious, social, and political influence has been expanding greatly in post-communist Russia. The Church’s motto over the past five years has been the word votserkovlenie, translated into English as “in-churching.” According to Burgess, Russian Orthodoxy “aspires to achieve nothing less than the re-Christianization of the Russian nation.”

The Orthodox methods of re-Christianizing are, of course, different from the Charismatic and Pentecostal methods of evangelizing. Instead of encouraging people to hand out tracts and share testimonies, Orthodox leaders, such as the patriarch Kirill, are urging the Russian people to find their spiritual and social identity within the Church. According to Burgess, “Orthodox moral and aesthetic values, [Kirill] argues, lie at the heart of the nation’s historic identity.”

S. T. Kimbrough, Jr., ed., Orthodox and Wesleyan Scriptural Understanding and Practice (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005), 330 pages.

“I sit down alone: only God is here; in His presence

 I open and read this book to find the way to heaven”

- John Wesley  

Our search for the theological and practical connection between Pentecostalism and Eastern Orthodoxy continues with yet another publication by St. Vladimir’s Press titled, Orthodox and Wesleyan Scriptural Understanding and Practice. The book represents an ongoing dialogue between the Orthodox and Wesleyan confessions and it emphasizes how theologians from both sides are attempting to discover commonalities in theology and praxis. To come together, not so much as theologians and thinkers, but as practical doers motivated by the proper interpretation of Scripture. As observed from the title, as well as through the text, these similarities are not necessarily in theological convictions, but in the proceeding Biblical approach toward interpretation of Scripture.

Orthodox and Wesleyan Scriptural Understanding and Practice is a compilation of essays from the Second Consultation on Orthodox and Wesleyan Spirituality under the editorship in 2000 of S.T. Kimbrough, Jr., who contributed the chapter on Charles Wesley’s’ Lyrical Commentary on the Holy Scriptures. I must issue the caution that the book is not an easy read. But it is by no means a book to be easily passed by Pentecostal scholars searching for the Biblical roots of Pentecostalism within the Eastern Orthodoxy.

The book begins with an interesting observation of the exegesis of the Cappadocian Fathers by John A. McGuckin, and continues with an article on the spiritual cognition of my personal favorite, Simeon the New Theologian by Theodore Stylianopoulos. Although the discussion on Gregory the Theologian, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa was thoughtful and presented in an interesting manner, the essay on St. Simeon struck me as well structured, but somewhat shallow.

An interesting approach was taken in Tamara Grdzelidze’s essay where she presented an orthodox perspective of the Wesleyan position on authority of scriptural interpretation. The essay had a very strong exposition in regard to the Wesleyan understanding of the importance of Scripture in Christian living. The latter part, which dealt with the influence of tradition, however was not investigated to its full capacity, which left the text (perhaps on purpose) open to multiple interpretations. Nevertheless, this issue was resolved later in the book by Ted Campbell that dealt with the subject from the Wesleyan perspective.

Editor Steven Kimbrough as Charles Wesley in the musical drama, Sweet Singer.

A central theme throughout the book was the comparison of prayers and song lyrics from both camps. Although I am no musical expert, I must agree with the authors when they say that theology in music has played an important role in both Orthodox and Wesleyan traditions. Music continues to be important in the everyday spiritual experience of the Pentecostal believer. This rather practical approach seemed to be the heart of the discussion where both sides could agree.