In one of his insightful articles, David Bentley Hart notes that, in contrast to Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky is revered as a “prophet” and remains the hero of many new Western converts to Orthodoxy. Many Christians of other confessions and many “rigorist” believers in Eastern Orthodox countries believe similarly.Likewise, the Russian philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev (1874–1948) describes Dostoyevsky’s art as “prophetic,” as “it unveils the secret of man.”…
Section: Applied Theology
Beyond the Hopeful Universalism of Kallistos Ware
I do not recall when I first read Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s article “Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All?”1 Whenever it was, it powerfully confirmed the hopeful universalism that had formed in my soul in the mid-90s after reading Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved? To my surprise, I found Ware more persuasive than Balthasar—more persuasive, perhaps, than he intended. His eschatological optimism permeates his article. One might even be excused for concluding that he truly believes that all will be saved, though he qualifies his confidence with this maxim: We may hope and pray for the reconciliation of all, but we must not teach it as doctrine….
The Mystery of Sacrifice and Bloodin Theology of Annick de Souzenelle
Annick de Souzenelle was a French Orthodox thinker, born in Rennes on November 4, 1922. Raised in the Catholic faith and educated at the Institut Notre-Dame des Champs in Paris, she eventually broadened her spiritual search to include other religious traditions. In 1958, she was received into the Orthodox Church by Father Eugraph Kovalevsky (1905–1970), founder of the Église Catholique Orthodoxe de France (ECOF), which was then under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, with pastoral oversight by Saint John Maximovitch, Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco…