~ Orthodox Theological Digital Library I.M.D. ~

Georgios I. Mantzaridis, Orthodox Theology and Social Life, P. Pournaras Publications, Thessaloniki 1996, 216 pages.

          The book begins with a foreword and introductory comments. The first chapter synoptically approaches the concept of theology in the ancient Greek world and more extensively in Christianity, from the Gospel to Elder Paisios. The second chapter examines the relationship between theology and social sciences and ascertains that, in spite of being subject to particular preconditions, they can cross-germinate.

The dialectic relationship between social determination and personal freedom constitutes the topic of the third chapter, which reaches the conclusion that, in the face of the dipole individual-society, the anthropology of the Church as body of Christ highlights the human person as a synthesis of social unity and individual freedom. In the fourth chapter, a criticism of religion is developed by contemporary thinkers (Feuerbach, Marx, Bloch), its significance is recognized, but also its limitations under the light of theological presuppositions of the religion of Revelation.

The fifth chapter defines the authentic meaning of communion as identical to that of the Church and not to conventional sociability, while the sixth chapter presents the nature of the social teaching of the Church. In the seventh chapter, the author, responding to accusations about the indifference of Orthodoxy to the social life and its problems, highlights the social character of the Orthodox Church.

The topic of the eighth chapter, with references to biblical and patristic approaches, is the purpose of work, while the ninth chapter examines the necessary preconditions so that the content of preaching does justice to the always topical meaning of Resurrection. In the tenth chapter, follows a theological hermeneutic comment on the issue Christ-Antichrist, where it is stressed that what makes the difference is the sacrifice on the Cross, which constitutes a victory of Christ over the enemy forces.

The two last chapters of the book, the eleventh and twelfth, address the problematic on the evolution in modern Europe, the spiritual dimension Orthodoxy attributes to these transformations and, in general, the testimony of Orthodoxy in the modern world as testimony of love, freedom and hesychia. 

Anestis Keselopoulos, Passions and virtues in the teaching of St Gregory Palamas, Domos, Athens 1982, pp. 247.

This study is the doctoral thesis of Anestis Keselopoulos and deals with the subject of passions and virtues in the teaching of St Gregory Palamas. According to Keselopoulos, Gregory Palamas bases his teaching about the passions and virtues on the basic theological distinction between human life according to nature, and that contrary to nature. Passions do not belong to the nature of human beings. Ontologically, the passions are connected with non-existence, since evil is not a nature –even an evil nature- but a tendency. The passions as “perverse and crooked ways”, are conditions which ravage human life, while the various sins are merely symptoms of these conditions.

            The return from the unnatural state of slavery to the passions, to the natural realm of the love of God, is achieved through repentance. According to Gregory Palamas, repentance means “to hate sin and love virtue, and to turn from wickedness and do good”. When people do not repent, they remain slaves to sin and are far from God. For Palamas, the fact of the Fall is central to sorrow for God, which springs from the deprivation of God and is experienced as searching for Him. Anyone who lives “in awareness of such a deprivation” feels intensely the need to mourn his sins, and cleanse away with this sorrow “all the defilements of sin”. Cleansing from the passions finds its true dimensions in the mysteries of the Church and is not put in the framework of an emotional experience or an ethical fact, but is the most real mode of personal existence and communion of people with God and other human beings.

            In accordance with this view, cleansing can never be understood as a negative state confined to the avoidance of sin, but is integrally connected with the exercise of virtues. The fountain of virtues isn’t the human agent, but God. Therefore, people’s virtue is the fruit, the evidence of their participation in the life of God.

Khalil G. Jack, Justification-Reconciliation-Final Judgment in the Epistle to the Ro­­mans.A Contribution to Pauline Soteriology, P. Pournaras Press: Thessaloniki 2004.

One of the most debated issues in Pauline theological research is the sote­rio­­­­logical importance of the teaching about justification and reconciliation through faith. Most of the rai­sed questions have to do with the relation between justification through faith and the escha­­­tological salvation of man. Salva­tion is the work and gift of God’s grace, but, at the same time, it presupposes the free participation of man. The relation among justification, reconciliation and faith continues to preoccupy the current Pauline research because Paul, espe­cially in the Epistle to the Romans, brings out these two parameters of salvation more than in the rest of his Epistles. This is the topic of the study, which was a dissertation of the Theology Department of Aristotle University.The book, after the introduction, is divided in five chapters.

            In the first chapter, the author examines the meaning of the terms sin and justification in the Epistle to the Romans (ch. 3).

            In the second chapter, Khalil investigates the issue of faith as a requirement for   salvation. In this frame, the author highlights faith as obedience and re­spon­se to Jesus’ call, emphasizing the relation between love and faith and showing the dy­na­mics and con­stant character of this relation, but only when Jesus is the single criterion for the justification in faith. The chapter closes with the theological analysis of the mea­­­­ning of passive justification.

            In the third chapter, the author refers to basic views of the fifth chapter of the Epi­stle to the Romans and especially of 5, 1-11.

            In the next chapter, Khalil thoroughly analyzes the Christian’s responsibility before the final judgment, an issue analyzed by Paul in the second chapter of the Epi­stle to the Romans (2:1-8).

            The last chapter discusses the context of salvation in the Old Testament, always in connection with the Epistle to the Romans. The law, which guides the life of the Christian, is no longer the Sinaitic Law, which, according to the writer, consists of command­ments related with the flesh rather than the spirit. These commandments failed to function as an antidote to desire; they failed to function so as to liberate man from the law of sin and death. Paul revises the terms and the relation between law and sin, commandment and desire, and interprets them under the light of Jesus’ death and Resurrection.

            In conclusion, the author points out that for those who live according to the spirit, bearing the fruits of love, there is no blame («ουδένκατάκριμα»). Faith, which is linked τοdeeds of love, remains, therefore, the presupposition of “wal­king” spiritually. In this way, Christ’s saving act -the removal of condemnation and the restoration of man in righteous­ness through faith - is fulfilled.

            The book closes with an extensive bibliography and a summary in English.

Keselopoulos Anestis, Man and Natural Environment, Domos Publications, Athens 1992, 245 pages.

With his study An. Kaselopoulos aims to present an unknown dimension of the ecological problem. This is no other than its theological dimension and, moreover, in the way it is offered in the texts and teaching of Symeon the New Theologian, which he attempts to present and include in the context not only of the Holy Scripture and the rest of the patristic tradition, but also in the liturgical and, generally, the devotional terrain of the life of the Church. The aim of this study is, thus, to present, on the one hand, the theological dimension of the problem in the relationship between man and creation and, on the other, to project the Eucharistic utility of the world, as the Orthodox Church experienced it.

The theme is negotiated in five chapters. The first refers to the relationship of God with the world, which is the relationship of the creator to his creation. He underlines the creation of the world “ex nihilo” and the common participation of the three Faces of the Triadic God in it. The second chapter examines man as a factor, which intervenes between God and the soulless creation, since he is the recipient of the commandment to “work” and “guard” the world. Through humans’ physiology and their creation in God’s image, the author moves on to the examination of man’s position in the world. In the third chapter, there is talk about the abuse and unnatural use of the creation. He highlights and defines fall as autonomy of the matter and the world, as worship of the creation “instead of the creator” and refers to types of abuses in the world.

The fourth chapter presents the Eucharistic use of the world, the way it is projected in the texts of Symeon the New Theologian and experienced by the Church as a countering to abuse and consumption ethos and an ascetic – Eucharistic way of being and living. Finally, the fifth and final chapter refers to the metamorphosis and in Christ rehabilitation and renewal of the world. The author analyses how the divine incarnation and presence of Christ in the world offers the possibility of benediction to the created nature and the world through the church-going of the world and the emergence of matter as part of life in the sacrament of the Divine Eucharist.