Continuing the Discussion
by Nicholas K. Apostola
Mutual accountability and the quest for unity – Common Understanding and Vision: Continuing the Discussion
The notion of mutual accountability lies at the heart of Christian revelation. Mutual accountability is one way of expressing the interdependence of all human persons with one another. From a deeper theological perspective one could draw on the concept of the perichoresis (mutual indwelling) of the persons of the Holy Trinity as a way of understanding the true nature of the church and ultimately human society itself. From the Orthodox perspective, the difficulty with the phrase “mutual accountability” comes when it is viewed not as an aspect of the relations between persons that bind them to one another in a community of love, but as a philosophy of coexistence involving negotiations among autonomous individuals, a kind of social contract. While secular theories of how human society came into being and are sustained vary along a continuum ranging from radical individualism bordering on anarchy to radical collectivism suppressing all individuality, for Christians community and communitarian theories must be rooted in the self-revelation of God as a tri-personal (tri-hypostatic) reality. Read more…..
Ecumenical Dialog
Our Judeo-Cristian faith is one indivisible
By casting doubt on the Orthodox dogma which states that only the Orthodox Church is the “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church”, ecumenists maintain that “the Church has lost its unity and now exists only in schisms: Eastern schism, Papal schism, Anglican schism” [49].
Theologizing liberals [*] regard every heresy as a new “branch” of the Church of Christ, and they think that every separate part has the right to be called a “church”. Even orthographically they have “equal rights”. The Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate (JMP) and other ecumenical journals spell them with a capital letter. Read more…..
Anglican – Orthodox Dialog
Our Judeo-Cristian faith is one indivisible
This weekend, Nashotah House Theological Seminary and St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary signed a Concordat as a reflection of the progression of Christian charity between Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox in North America at an event entitled “In the Footsteps of Tikhon and Grafton.” Bishop Tikhon, an Orthodox saint of North America, and our own Anglican Bishop Grafton shared a genuine Christian love for one another which served as the historical soil for this Anglican-Orthodox gathering held in St. Mary’s Chapel at Nashotah House. Read more…..
Religion 