Christ’s Love,Peace, Justice,and Freedom Seen against the Challenges of the Modern World

This is an edited version of an address given in Paralimni at the Open University of Cyprus in January 2019 during a meeting of the assembly planning committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC), hosted by the Archdiocese of Constantia and Ammochostos. It is a reflection on the theme set for the WCC’s 11th Assembly in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 2021, “Christ’s love moves the world to reconciliation and unity.”     

Associations between peer nominations, teacher ratings, self-reports, and observations of malicious and disruptive behavior

This study evaluates the validity of two aggression scales for predicting observations of malicious or disruptive behavior at school. Subgroups of a sample of 1,560 children (age 8.6+/-1.5 years) were assessed using (a) peer nominations of aggression, (b) teacher reports on the Teacher Report Form (TRF) of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) Aggression scale and the peer nomination items, or (c) self-reports on the peer nomination items. Criteria were observations of physical, verbal, initiated, retaliatory, malicious, and disruptive behaviors. Teacher report peer nominations predicted observed physical, verbal, initiated, and retaliatory aggression and disruptive behavior. Peer nominations predicted physical aggression, verbal aggression, initiation and disruptive behavior, and TRFs predicted verbal, initiated, and disruptive behavior. Self-reports did not significantly predict any behavior. Implications for assessment of aggression are discussed.     

The Mission of the Church in the Contemporary World in Light of the Decisions of the Holy and Great Council

This article discusses the place of mission in the Orthodox Church. The document “The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today's World,” which was approved by the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church held in Crete in 2016, is still in the process of reception, as are the other documents, but it constitutes, without doubt, a new era in Orthodox missiology – as indeed the Great and Holy Council in Crete represents a new era in Orthodoxy. The interrelatedness of unity and mission is not a question of methodology or strategy. It is an ontological one: it is related to the very essence of koinonia as fellowship in the triune God, and to the specific aspect of κοινονια as participation in God's economy in and for the world. Mission is commitment to the work of the triune God incarnated in Jesus Christ. Both are God’s gift and command. It is only in unity with the Holy Trinity that the church is able to fulfil its vocation.     

The Documents of the Council of Crete

This document is the translation of a report given on 29 November 2017 by Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk to the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church. It presents the results of the study by the Synodal Biblical-Theological Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church of the documents adopted by the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church at its meeting in Crete from 19 to 26 June 2016. This report is followed by the decisions of the Bishops’ Council concerning the Council of Crete.     

Christian Bioethics: Challenges in a Secularized Europe

This article summarizes in three specific sections the key challengesfaced by Christian and, particularly Orthodox, ethics in a secularizedsociety. The first section, focusing on the task and aim ofethics, defines Orthodox ethics, which is linked with asceticism(man's attempt to keep the commandments of Christ) and aimsat overcoming death and encountering the personal God. Put differently,the purpose of Orthodox ethics is the deification of human beings.The second section defines secularization and explores its consequencesfor the theology and pastoral work of the Church. Europe isdominated by scholasticism and moralism, whereas Orthodox theology,without rejecting it, transcends such a narrow preoccupationwith our own world. Orthodoxy does not regard human beings solelyfrom the perspective of their biological existence but assiststhem in going beyond mechanistic theories and the pursuit ofhappiness. The third section briefly describes how what canbe termed "bio-theology" surpasses anthropocentric ethics withregard to the relationship between creation and grace, birthand rebirth, cloning and incarnation, transplantation and deification,and death and resurrection. The article concludes that Orthodoxtheology (a) does not reject the achievements of biotechnologyor biomedicine; (b) assists humans in overcoming mortality byfinding meaning for their existence and fullness of life, and(c) does not simply postpone death, but overcomes the fear ofdeath and leads people to deification by grace.     

The Joy of the Gospel of Life

Together towards Life (TTL) and Evangelii Gaudium (EG) convey a renewed and fresh understanding of mission and evangelism that speaks meaningfully to the contemporary context, reminds churches of their primary task of mission and evangelism, and challenges them to reflect on and practice mission and evangelism with joy and life. This essay strives to discuss three important aspects of mission and evangelism that TTL and EG share, albeit with their own distinct perspective. The inseparability of ecclesiology and missiology is one affirmation that is commonly shared by TTL and EG.