I first visited Moscow in December of 1989 as a tourist on winter break from a program in Russian & Eastern Studies at the University of Kentucky. During one of many bus tours, we stopped at the Kropotkinskaya metro station and piled out into the snow to take pictures of a gigantic, steaming, outdoor swimming pool.
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In the final chapter of The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism, Denys Turner asserts that our contemporary ideas of what constitutes "mysticism" have tended to focus on a kind of experientialism that would seem very foreign to the historical authors we classify as mystical theologians. Rather, beginning with observations offered by Andrew Louth on the mystical theology of Denys the Areopagite, Turner suggests that what the modern reader has collapsed to an experience of the presence of God is actually a phenomenon deeply rooted in worship, liturgical practice, sacrament, and private prayer.[1] Rather than ends unto themselves, these
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While the contemporary Eastern Orthodox fixation on the bishop runs just as deeply as the Roman Catholic tradition, there are differences in the iterative understanding of the episcopal role in the Lord's Supper. The modern Eastern tradition shares the understanding of the bishop's privilege in the Eucharist found in St. Ignatius' writings. But a fundamental difference remains within Orthodox theology that could open the possibility of women celebrants: the rejection of the doctrine of Eucharistic celebrant acting in persona Christi.
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My hat is off to Victor de Villa Lapidis for his letter, sharing some of the trials of being gay and Orthodox while also fanning the embers of hope through the remembering of Russia's queer* Orthodox sons: Soloviev, Gogol, Brianchaninov, Leontiev, Tchaikovsky, Florensky...
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A short essay on Gregory of Nyssa's The Life of Moses.
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An excerpt from the candidate statement I submitted to get into grad school. How can queer theology be informed by Eastern Orthodoxy?
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