Aristotle Papanikolaou

Over the past five or so decades, theology in the West has experienced a shift. In this shift, experience has become one of the main criteria for assessing what counts as true knowledge of God. It is not, however, just any kind of experience but the experience of the marginalized, which has taken on many forms…

When I was a senior in college, working on my undergraduate honors thesis on the theme of primacy in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, my mentor, the late Father John Meyendorff, told me that I must read Metropolitan John Zizioulas’s Being as Communion. The book had an immediate impact on me, as I could[…..]

To understand both Metropolitans John Zizioulas and Kallistos Ware, one must be reminded of the contours of contemporary Orthodox theology. After the fifteenth century and because of the Ottoman occupation, theological output in the Orthodox world almost came to a full stop; what was produced between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries has not enjoyed any[…..]

When I was studying for my PhD, I remember a priest asking me, in the back of the sanctuary of my father’s parish in the Chicagoland area, “What are you studying?” I told him, “contemporary Orthodox theology.” He repeated my answer in a sardonic tone, somewhat incredulous that such a thing as contemporary Orthodox theology[…..]

For the Orthodox tradition, theosis is not a far-off expectation, but a possibility realized in the everydayness of life. When thinking about theosis, the Fathers were attentive to the various parts of the soul, its rational and affective parts. For the rational, theosis has to do with seeing God’s truth and wisdom embedded in creation[…..]

There is no “Just War” theory in the Orthodox tradition: on this much, there is widespread agreement. To be more precise, Orthodox thinkers agree that there is no Just War theory in the Orthodox tradition, in the form of distinctions between the criteria for jus in bello, or right conduct in war, and jus ad[…..]