Witness of Orthodoxy

Witness of Orthodoxy, 1971, Hestia Publ., 187 pages.

In the foreword of this collective volume Elias D. Mastrogiannopoulos synoptically presents his philosophy, while in the essay titled “The Catholicity of Orthodoxy – Sobornost or the Depths of Irrationality” the Hiero-monk Amphilochios Radovic, presents the vicious circle of human endeavour to recover the lost catholicity and proposes the catholicity of the Church’s truth as a response to the depths of irrationality and absurdity.

Iakovos Mainas, in his article titled “The Orthodox Ecclesiastical Phronema” (esprit, creed) juxtaposes the Church’s truth to various ideologies, in the backdrop of today’s cultural crisis. He examines certain misunderstandings of the ecclesiastical sermon, the world theory, the fear of the secular and secularisation, while defining the theological presuppositions of Orthodox ecclesiastical phronema.

The Hiero-monk Athanasios Yevyic approaches the Christian Orthodox ethos theologically, as emanating from the truth of the Cod-man hypostasis of Christ, as an ethos of primarily christological reference and from this triadic, pneumatological, ecclesiastiacal, liturgical and conclusively salvational nature.

“Orthodox Witness for Education” is the issue examined in the essay by Konstantinos Grigoriadis. Once he examines the crisis in modern education, he analyses the catholic truth of the Orthodox witness as a contribution to transcend the pedagogical crisis.

In the last essay of this collective volume titled “Three Biblical Pressupositions to the Problem: Orthodoxy and Politics”, Panagiotis Nellas lays the groundwork for Christian theorising of politics on a ecclesiastical, Christological and pneumatological basis using Gospel themes and once he clarifies the relationship of the Church with society upon the tension between history and eschatology, he defines the Holy Trinity doctrine as the political ideal of Orthodoxy. That is, the balanced relationship between a common life and the preservation of the personal freedom. Christians are called upon to realise this ideal, acting prophetically within the world, en route to the Kingdom of God.