Numbers 1-2 (click here to order)

The first double issue of 2021 opens with three incisive articles that deal with contemporary theological questions. Mario Baghos articulates an Orthodox theological perspective on the historical-critical “quest for the historical Jesus.” Eugenia Torrance takes on the presupposition that the Christian dogma of a bodily resurrection is untenable on scientific and theological grounds, and the ensuing weakening or even denial of the continuity between our earthly bodies and our eschatological constitution in some strands of Christian theology (e.g., Rahner and Bulgakov). Finally, Fr. Christopher Knight provides a critical discussion of whether and to what extent natural theology conducted within the frame of the analytic philosophy of religion may be appropriated by Orthodox theological tradition.

There follows Bogdan-Gabriel Drăghici’s very large and substantial study of the medieval polemics, on matters of both orthodoxy and, especially, orthopraxy, between Chalcedonian Byzantine and non-Chalcedonian Syriac writers. We then return to the present with a very timely article by Dn. Nicholas Denysenko, which, on Fr Alexander Schmemann’s centennial, provides a review and assessment of his legacy of liturgical renewal in North America, and suggests an agenda for continuing this enterprise. We conclude this double issue with the text of two, as yet unpublished, talks given by Fr. Georges Florovsky in 1968 (“Russian Philosophy at the Turn of the Century” and “The Renewal of Russian Theology – Florensky, Bulgakov, and the Others: On the Way to a Christian Philosophy”). For his work of editing and introducing these texts, we hereby express our special gratitude to Paul Ladouceur.

The Book Reviews section has been steadily increasing in size and provides substantial presentations of some significant new publications: Ciprian Costin Apintiliesei, La structure ontologique-communionnelle de la personne: Aux sources théologiques et philosophiques du Père Dumitru Stăniloae. Leuven: Peeters, 2020 (R. Bordeianu); Nikolaos Loudovikos, Analogical Identities: The Creation of the Christian Self. Beyond Spirituality and Mysticism in the Patristic Era. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019 (G. Kapriev); Orthodox Christian Perspectives on War. Edited by P.T. Hamalis and V.A. Karras. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017 (T. Cuneo); A. Edward Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox: Sources and History of a Debate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017 (G. Gilbert); Aleksandr Tsygankov and Tereza Obolevich/Teresa Obolevitch, Gollandskii epizod v filosofskoi biografii S. L. Franka (novye mate­rialy), Moscow: Institut filosofii RAN, 2020 (R.F. Slesinski).

Numbers 3-4 (click here to order)

The latest issue of the Quarterly (SVTQ 3-4/2021) opens with three texts that propose new approaches to their respective theological areas: “Theophany as the Origin and Foundation of the Church: Fundamental Theology from an Orthodox Perspective,” by Fr Dragoș A. Giulea, on the origin and ongoing spiritual life of the Church; “Apophatic Christology, Scripture, and Monotheism” by Ethan Smith, which suggests a method for a properly Orthodox biblical theology; and Rebecca H. Luft’s “The Visuality of Priestly Thought: Tabernacle as Thauma- Pneumatic Icon,” delving into the construction of the tabernacle in Exodus 25–40 as ekphrastic texts.

This double issue of the Quarterly also contains patristic studies “The Resurrection of Lazarus in John Chrysostom’s, Cyril of Alexandria’s, and Augustine’s Commentaries on the Gospel of John” (Bogdan Tătaru-Cazaban) and “You are gods: Theosis through a Christic Union in Theodoret of Cyrus” (Charles G. Kim, Jr.); an original investigation by Ciprian C. Apintiliesei bringing irrefutable proof of “The Contribution of Ebner’s Dialogical Philosophy to Stăniloae’s Theology of the Person”; and two theological essays—the first one on the intersection between the life-mode of the megalopolis and that of the Kingdom as embodied by St John the Almsgiver (Fr Gregory Nacsinák), and the second one on the luminous figure of Nicolae Steinhardt, a Jewish literary critic and public intellectual who converted to Orthodoxy while imprisoned in 1960s communist Romania. Several book reviews round out this latest Quarterly issue.