Contextuality and Catholicity: The Task of Orthodox Theology in Ecumenical Theological Education

The essay unfolds theological foundations for theological education in ecumenical perspective from Orthodox perspectives seeing it as a worldwide enterprise fundamental to the mission of the church, not in its institutional character, but in its eschatological awareness of being a foretaste of the Kingdom of God. The relation between early ecumenical optimism and enthusiasm towards the goal of the visible unity of the church and the wide application of contextuality, i.e. the recognition of the contextual character of theology as a method from the 1970s onwards is discussed. According to the Orthodox perspectives, the ecumenical movement has lost its momentum and coherence and its determination for the quest of visible unity with the predominant acceptance of contextuality as the guiding principle in ecumenical discussions and theological education. The author argues that Orthodox theology has to deepen the understanding of its own contextuality and soften the existing antithesis between contextuality and catholicity of theology and theological education. Orthodox perspectives should underline the relevance of a fundamental unity of divine revelation, as represented in the broad understanding of Christian tradition, which is for the entire created world, not only for believers and which is challenging both a potential distortion, wherein unity is identified with the maintenance of denominational loyalty, as well as all contextual expressions of Christian theology with regard to their relation to the overall goal of church unity. The paper concludes with a plea for all Orthodox theological education to be of some real service to the church in deciding to deal both with current issues (to be contextual) and not to lose sight of the past (to be oriented to catholicity and church unity), to both open up to ecumenical theological education while at the same time maintaining a strong commitment to the common church tradition.