The International Conference of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies has continued its session on Saturday June 5, 2010. The conference is covered by the web television-channel www.intv.gr with simultaneous translation (English-Greek).

 Speakers of the first session were Dr. Assaad Kattan Director of the center of Religious Studies and Chair of Orthodox theology, University of Munster-Germany, and Rev. Dr. John Panteleimon Manoussakis Assistant Prof. of Philosophy, College of Holy Cross, Worcester-USA.

Pr. Assaad Kattan presented the theme "Essentialism Reconsidered. The Myth non Hermeneutical Approach to Orthodox Tradition". Although a great amount of the "influential" Orthodox theological discourse emphasized, and still emphasize, that Tradition is a dynamic and open product of the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church, it is by no means, seldom to see the Orthodox dealing with Tradition essentialistically as though it were a close, unchangeable entity.

 This paper tries to show that it is no more permissible for a genuine approach to the issue of Tradition in Orthodox theology to bypass postmodern hermeneutics both in terms of the implications of historical distance on the act of understanding as well as in terms of the dynamic involvement of our presuppositions and expectations in the act of interpretation.

Rev Dr. John Panteleimon Manoussakis spoke on "Of The Specter of the Greek Beginning over Theology". Focusing on the thought of the modern Greek theologian Pantelis Kalaitzidis, an attempt was made for a critical evaluation of the presuppositions and the work of Dr. Kalaitzidis and the Volos Academy for Theological Studies within the framework of the greek theological renewal. In this perspective the kind of the relation between logos and theo-logy, the language and the hermeneutics of the text, and finally the relation between philosophy and theology was discussed also.

In the second morning session Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon spoke on the "Actuality and Temporality of the Neo-patristic Synthesis". Firstly he presented some aspects of the modern orthodox theology (e.g. patristic fontamentalism, confessional theology, etc.). He described also the articulation and the understanding of the Neo-patristic by Fr. George Florovsky. Then he mentioned a few parameters of the neo-patristic synthesis relative to the dialogue of the orthodox theology with the modern culture (modern trends in philosophy, art etc.). He discussed also the question if the orthodox theology can express itself in terms of modernity, in other words to give answers to the challenges of the existential philosophy (freedom, otherness etc.), to the current social problems (women's rights etc.), to ethical questions (the relation between individual and community, human rights, democracy etc. with the help of the communion ecclesiology). Finally he presented some fundamental keys for the understanding of the modern orthodox theology as contextual theology (e.g. an existential interpretation of the Trinitarian theology, a pneumatological ecclesiology as a response to the relation between the individual and the community, the eucharistic character of the orthodox theology, the eschatological ontology and interpretation of the tradition). He offered also a positive answer to the conference's basic question concerning the possibility of the modern orthodox theology to be understood as contextual theology.

Rev. Dr. Andrew Louth spoke on "The authority of the Fathers in post-patristic Orthodox theology". According to his view there is no question that there could be an Orthodox theology that ignored the Fathers and that for a fundamental reason: The Orthodox do not confect their faith, they receive it, and it is from the Apostles, through the Fathers that they receive it.  Faith is not the sum of any perceptions about God, the world, Christ, etc.; it is a participation in something much bigger that it has been received.  And in fact this seems to be unquestioned.  Despite the tendency of a lot of recent reflection on Orthodox theology to draw a distinction between the so-called ‘liberal' theology of Bukharin-Solov'ev-Bulgakov and the Neo-Patristic synthesis, in fact, the ‘liberal' strand is itself deeply indebted to the Fathers.  Abandoning the wisdom and witness of the Fathers seems to me unthinkable. He proposed some principles in understanding this witness. First, some negative points:We need to abandon any idea that the Fathers all said the same thing; rather we need to accept that they constitute a chorus of different voices.  It will often seem a cacophony; to hear the harmony is part of our task as theologians. The thought of the Fathers should not limit our thought; we have to raise questions that they did not raise, because they did not occur to them. Next, some positive points: The patristic achievement involved a profound engagement with the worldview of their day, not uncritical, certainly, but it was deeply indebted to many aspects of the common wisdom of the day; Therefore, if we are to follow the Fathers, we need to cultivate a similar attitude; what we need is a critical engagement with the common wisdom of our day-the cosmological views of modern physics (relativity, etc.), the theory of evolution, many of the perceptions of modern social and human sciences-without our abandoning our conviction about the cosmos being created by a personal God and our inhabiting a moral universe which allows genuine self-determination and responsibility.

During the first evening session papers were given by Dr. Michail Neamtu, Senior Fellow of CADI/Eleytheria-Romania, Dr. Peter Bouteneff Associate Professor, St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, USA and Dr. Aristotle Papanikolaou, Associate Professor of Theology, co-founding director, Orthodox Christian Studies Program of Fordham University, USA.

In his paper on "Ethno-theology in the Social Discourse of Modern Orthodoxy. Remarks and Questions", Dr. Michail Neamtu addressed the question of ethno-theology in view of its predominance in the modern apologetic discourse of some Eastern European theologians. During the late 19^th and throughout the 20^th century, modern Orthodoxy has shaped its self-legitimizing discourse by playing with ideas stemming from a collectivistic, and not just communitarian, approach to history and society. An ethno-theological celebration of local identity has often led to the blind triumph of secular nationalism, at the expense of the more original Christian (and patristic) appreciation of the human person, seen as an irreducible and iconic reality. Various theologians from Eastern Europe have often provided semi-mythological reconstructions of historical truths, in order to promote an otherwise conventional anti-Western agenda. How has this ethno-theological trope of Orthodox apologetics contributed to the negative reaction against modernity, to the narcissistic and self-referential discourse of autocephalous Churches, to the absence of any coherent social doctrine in Eastern Europe and, ultimately, to the lack of a prophetic confrontation with the all-pervasive discourse of secular ideologies? Will the local Orthodox Churches be able to survive the demise of the nation-states, as we have known them in the past two hundred years? On the other hand, how shall the Christian communities resist a comfortable absorption into an undifferentiated and mass-culture, specific to an age of globalization?

Dr. Peter Bouteneff spoke on "Liberation and the Poor: Challenges for Contemporary Orthodoxy from Contextual Theologies". Every expression of theology is contextual by nature, but some are more consciously so. Numerous theologies arising since the 1960s have intentionally taken their respective socio-economic and cultural contexts as their starting point. Focusing upon elements of the Scriptures that typically have not attracted the attention of modern Orthodox theologians, especially the plight of the poor and the oppressed, they pose a salutary challenge to modern Orthodox thought. While there is much to criticize in the contextual theologies, they indicate an important lacuna in Orthodox theology. 20^th-century contextual theologies, beginning with Latin American liberation theology, arose within Roman Catholicism from a reaction to abject poverty and dehumanization, together with a sense that classical theology was detached and abstract. This double-concern yielded new ways of conceiving the theological endeavor and the content of salvation itself. The same impulses that arose under oppressive regimes in Latin America were experienced by several other sectors of society-women, gay people, African Americans, others-all of whom came to articulate their own respective theologies of liberation. Problematic though these theologies may be, their recurrent theme of "God's preferential option for the poor" finds clear Scriptural support.  The contextual consciousness of 20^th century Orthodox theologians lay primarily in their responsiveness to continental philosophy, together with a more general awareness of the wider Christian world. What was their response to the social and political contexts under which they and their fellow Orthodox suffered unbearable persecution and poverty in the past century? Does the political theology of Bulgakov and Berdyaev constitute Orthodoxy's final word on the poor and on systemic political injustice? Orthodox theologians have neither been receptive to liberation theologies, nor have they responded in any like manner to the plight of the poor and oppressed. One reason is that the periodic associations of Liberation Theology with Marxism were distasteful to Orthodox Christians who suffered decimation under atheist Marxist regimes. Another explanation for the paucity of Orthodox voices on such subjects has to do with the perception that "theology" consists in Trinitarian, Christological, and anthropological reflection; what remains is praxis, which is properly the subject of pastoral and homiletic reflection. In this, they follow the tradition of St Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, and others. A more problematic factor lies with the hermeneutics of Scripture. Orthodox theologians tend to read Scripture as a source of Trinitarian and Christological data. Yet, as the liberation theologians frequently remind us, the Scriptures speak about poverty and justice more than they speak of almost anything else. The voice of the prophets amplified and fulfilled in the preaching and action of Jesus Christ, speaks in a unique way to the poor of society. This, arguably, is of genuine theological significance, for it constitutes a major part of God's scriptural word about himself and about his creation.

Dr. Aristotle Papanikolaou spoke on "Orthodox Liberalism:  Political Theology after the Empires" Political theology within the history of Orthodox Christian thought is virtually non-existent.  This absence of a political theology demonstrates that theology within the Orthodox tradition is contextual insofar as it reveals that theological expression depends on the urgency within the tradition to address particular questions that it can no longer ignore-theology cannot go beyond the questions that it's being asked to answer. The situation within the Christian Roman Empire was such that questions related to what is called political theology were not of central concern as were questions related to Christology. It was not until nineteenth-century Russia that Orthodox were forced to develop answers to questions related to political theology, as the very existence of religion itself was under attack by non-Orthodox philosophies and ideologies. The development of this political theology was interrupted by the communist domination of most of the Orthodox world. In the current post-empire and post-communist period of its history, the Orthodox tradition is, once again, confronted with the necessity to develop a political theology, though it faces a political and cultural reality distinct from nineteenth-century Russia. Contemporary Orthodox theologians have not developed a political theology, though they have written on themes related to political theology. A consistent thread in Orthodox thought, in both the writing of certain theologians and in official documents of some autocephalous Orthodox churches, is an attack on modern political liberalism, especially the notion of human rights and church-state separation, as inherently atheistic, individualist, amoral and secularist. It was argued that these criticisms are misplaced and that an Orthodox political theology in the current global situation requires an affirmation of a modified form of political liberalism, and that such a political theology is most consistent with the core of Orthodox theology-the principle of divine-human communion.

In the last session of the day three speakers delivered a paper by Dr. Radu Preda Associate Professor of Babes-Bolai-University, Cjuj-Napoca, Director of INTER and Dr. Eleni Kasselouri-Hatzibasiliadi, teaching at the Hellenic Open University, member of the academic team of Volos Academy for Theological Studies.

Dr. Radu Preda spoke on "Orthodox Social Theology as Contextual Theology". The present theme of our conference is formulated in terms of a dilemma: is the Orthodox theology of the beginning of the XXI^st century in need of a new-patristic synthesis, or rather only in need of the courage of assuming a post-patristic discourse? According to him, the dilemma is only an apparent one. If we understand the new-patristic synthesis in terms of practicing a sterile fidelity towards Tradition, then it cannot be a real alternative. Further on, if by post-patristic theology one understands the updating of our Eastern thinking, its embodiment in the historic moment that is according to the pattern of the Church Fathers then there is, indeed, no viable alternative to it. In other terms, there is no choice for theology between museum and life, between ossification and dynamics. If it is only museum and ossification, then it cannot be life and dynamics. One paradigm excludes the other. The fertile antinomy of being inside Tradition and, at the same time, considering the present as anteroom of the eschaton, is not possible except by assuming the type of actualizing and contextualizing used by the Fathers of the Church. How difficult this process is and, symmetrically, how easy the remaining in the comfort "of the taking over of the ideas for nothing" is - quoting Flaubert - this is visible in the process of articulating an Orthodox social theology. The present intervention attempted to retrieve some of the challenges and chances the ethics of the contemporary Orthodoxy has at hand.

 In her paper on "Feminist theology and its contextuality: A challenge or an opportunity for orthodox theology?" Dr. Eleni Kasselouri-Hatzibasiliadi attempted to present and analyze the various challenges deriving from the dialogue between modern Orthodox theology and feminist theologies. The influence of the secular feminist movement, the rise of multidisciplinary women's studies together with the stimulus of the writings of American feminist theologians, the second Vatican and the work of the World Council of Churches were some of the catalysts for the development of the various feminist theologies all over the world. As a body of theological perspectives and ways of working on Christian tradition, feminist theologies are as distinctive and diverse (culturally, ethnically, racially, socioeconomically etc) as are the women writing them. They all challenge the Churches and different Christian Traditions by raising various questions about: the definition of ‘theology', the ‘human and women experience', the imagery of God, the theological language, the hermeneutical methods and tools, the hierarchical structures of the Church etc. Dealing with such questions leads contemporary feminist theology (-ies) to be one of the most dynamic and creative fields of scholarship within theology today.  How do Orthodox respond to their challenges and call for dialogue? Orthodox theologians, women and men, of all contexts and expressions, did in the past - and still sometimes express- a hesitance towards to a feminist reading of Tradition.  However, the problems of language and imagery of God-together with the calling to specific ordained ministry for women- have created an opportunity for Orthodox theologians, men (clergy and laity) and women, to articulate the theological, anthropological and sociological reasons for the exclusion of women from the sacramental ministry, debate the understanding of the Trinity in Orthodox Tradition that precluded any change on the liturgical language, challenging even the meaning, the content and the essence of the term Tradition, and re-examine the subservient roles allotted to women in the Church, embellished with the words of ‘holy service' and ‘glorious motherhood'. In the end of the paper one main question was addressed: Is it or not still a long way to travel before the feminist view and critic will encourage or influence Orthodox theologians, women and men, to focus their work and research towards an agenda that would closely examine discrimination, sexism and exclusion?