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The document titled For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Ortho dox Church, authored by a special commission of Orthodox scholars appointed by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is a document that can be definitely understood as a political manifesto of Eastern Orthodoxy for the 21st century, namely for this period of history and not for a by-gone historical setting or a Christian utopia (either the Byzantine Empire or Holy Russia), a period of time with urgent problems and challenges that call for our attention. Therefore, bringing to the fore the personalist anthropological view inherent in the document itself, an attempt has been made in the text to critically reflect and highlight certain relevant aspects of the document (a positive reception of liberal democracy, human rights language, solidarity to the poor, etc.). The goal is to show how theologically important this document is for the Church witness to our pluralistic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper an attempt is made to discuss the importance of the Holy Spirit in the development ofan Orthodox political theology, by bringing into critical dialogue the recent contributions of two of the most known Orthodox theologians of the young generation, namely A. Papanikolaou and P. Kalaitzidis. It is commonly recognized that the Holy Spirit is closely related both to the very "constitution of the whole Church" in virtue of the Eucharistic event, as well as to the everyday charismatic lives of individual Christians due to the various forms or stages of ascetism. In this respect a careful comparative examination of these two important works, would highlight some invaluable elements (Eucharistic perspective, eschatological orientation, historical commitment, ethical action, open and critical dialogue with modernity etc.) toward a formulation of a comprehensive and urgently necessary political theology. This sort of political theology should have inevitable implications for the Christian perception of the communal and the individual ecclesial life. This "theo-political" program proposed by the two thinkers and founded on a robust Pneumatology, could be perfectly included, following the apostolic kerygma and the patristic ethos, into a new way of doing (Orthodox) Christian theology, that takes as its starting point the grammar of the self Revelation of God in the ongoing history of salvation ("Church and World Dogmatics"). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it seems that modern Orthodox theology has finally overcome (or not?) the so-called "Babylonian or scholastic captivity", it seems to havefallen prey to a newform of captivity. This means that the glorious patristic and Byzantine past continues to be its basic point of reference, determining the method but also the content of modern theology. If this is the case, the distinction between Church dogmatics and Church and World dogmatics (P. Valliere) could be used here to describe the current situation in modern Orthodox theology, at least in the Greek milieu. Although more or less a schematic one, this distinction provides us with a good hermeneutical toolfor exploring the methodology, content, and perspective of contemporary theological education and curricula, and possibly the means of articulating a new perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]