OTSA News: Winter 2007

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OTSA Annual Meeting

June 12-14, 2008 at the
Cenacle Retreat and Conference Center
513 W. Fullerton Parkway
Chicago, Illinois.

The selection of Chicago for our Annual Meeting is an experiment, but one that the officers believe will expand the work and reach of the Society. The officers are especially grateful for the collaboration of the members of the St. Catherine’s Institute – a Chicago-based group of Orthodox scholars – in organizing a meeting in Chicago.

Call for Papers

Members wishing to present papers should submit an abstract of no more than 250 words to the Secretary of the Society, Valerie Karras, at vkarras (at) smu.edu (be sure to correct the '(at)') (see www.otsamerica.org/officers.php for additional contact information). In order to allow for more papers to be presented, we ask authors to include information about the time needed for presentation, either15-20 minutes or 40 minutes. Members are also encouraged to organize a panel of three or four papers dealing with a single theme or a panel devoted to a recent book, especially if the book’s author could attend the session.

Proposals for papers on any topic are encouraged, even those presented before in other academic forums, but the Society is interested in receiving proposals on the following topics: “Care of the person in the Orthodox tradition;” “The history and implications of the reestablishment of communion between the Patriarchate of Moscow and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia;” “The Orthodox communities of Chicago and the Midwest.”

In addition, the Annual Meeting will devote time in the program to the following: “Being Orthodox in the Academy: Does it Matter? Should it Matter?” Thus, papers on issues related to being an Orthodox Christian scholar in American higher education, the mentoring of students, and the efforts to develop Orthodox Christian institutions of higher education are encouraged. This consultation is being supported by the Office of Vocation and Ministry of Hellenic College-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology as part of the Lilly Endowment-funded Program on the Theological Exploration of Vocation. A full proposal about this consultation can be found on the website of the Office of Vocation and Ministry of Hellenic College (www.hellenic.hchc.edu/pages/vocations/index.php), but key sections are found here: “Being Orthodox in the Academy”. Authors whose papers are then prepared for publication will receive an honorarium of $500 from the OVM.

Abstracts should be received by February 2, 2008.

Authors whose papers are accepted for presentation are the guests of the Society to the Annual Meeting, i.e., they pay no registration or room and board for their attendance

AAR 2008 - Topics of Interest

AAR/SBL 2008 recently concluded. Listed below are presentations of possible interest to Orthodox scholars, some given by members of the society, some by other scholars. The abstract of each paper can be viewed by clicking on the 'view abstract' link at the end of each paper title.

History of Christianity Section

Theme: Saints and Social Worlds: Historical Perspectives on Christian Holy Folk

  • All-American Saints: Depictions and Meanings of Eastern Orthodox Sainthood in Contemporary North America
    Amy Slagle, University of Pittsburgh - view abstract
      • This paper explores the ways that images and vitae of Eastern Orthodox saints of North America are used to construct and convey meanings of ethnic and American identities in contemporary Orthodox Christian culture in the United States. Drawing upon hymnography, iconography, and popular Orthodox literature, I argue that these saints present a view of ethnicity and American-ness as co-existensive and mutually affirming. Also, a common feature of these depictions is a kind of "multiculturalism" in which sensitivity to other cultures, whether Native American or that of other Orthodox peoples, is celebrated in the words and actions of the saint. How these images of American Orthodox sanctity play into debates over Orthodox jurisdictional unity will also be treated.

Ecclesiological Investigations Group

Theme: Communion and Otherness: Contemporary Challenges of "Impaired Communion"

  • Other and Not-Other: On the Logic of Western Pneumatology and the Communion Ecclesiology of John Zizioulas
    Travis Ables, Vanderbilt University - view abstract
      This paper will offer a critical evaluation of the communion theology of John Zizioulas. Taking Zizioulas’ main claim to be that the distinctive contribution of Orthodoxy theology to ecclesiology is that of a communion ecclesiology grounded in an ontology of person-in-relation, as based upon Cappadocian trinitarian personalism, I will seek to respond to Zizioulas’ thought with pneumatology as the guiding thread to this complex of ideas. Countering his claim that Augustinianism is to blame for Western individualism and ecclesial fracturing, I will argue that the notion of person-in-relation perpetuates the modern problem of individualistic subjectivity and will suggest that Augustinian theology offers precisely the resources for a robust pneumatological anthropology that grounds a vision of church as communion. Contra Zizioulas’ claim that the Western self forecloses the possibility of a robust pneumatological ecclesiology, I will argue instead that it is in fact its condition of possibility.
    • Communion Ecclesiology as a Response to Eucharistic Ecclesiology: Zizioulas and Staniloae
      Radu Bordeianu, Duquesne University - view abstract
      • In his eucharistic ecclesiology, Afanassieff contends that the local eucharistic assembly is fully autonomous and represents the Church in its fullness. Both Catholic and Orthodox churches celebrate the same Eucharist—a sign of their already-existing unity despite canonical disunity—and therefore Afanassieff suggests the practice of intercommunion. In response, Zizioulas’ communion ecclesiology criticizes intercommunion and maintains the inseparability among Eucharist, communion among bishops, and unity of teaching, emphasizing especially the role of the bishop. In Communion and Otherness, Zizioulas attempts to further Afanassieff’s work. Also in response to eucharistic ecclesiology, Staniloae argues that the Orthodox and Catholic churches, although both having a valid Eucharist, cannot have eucharistic communion because they do not share in the same faith, especially concerning papal primacy. He concentrates on achieving doctrinal unity through open sobornicity, a task of the ordained and non-ordained alike. I conclude by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses in Afanassieff, Zizioulas, and Staniloae.

Religion, Media, and Culture Group

Theme: Using (and Not Using) Media Technologies to Shape Religious Purposes and Practices

  • Tele-visuality, Dreams, and Intercession among Coptic Orthodox of Contemporary Cairo
    Angie Heo, University of California, Berkeley - view abstract
      • This paper examines the impact of television, film and photography upon visually mediated practices involving saintly intercession and bodily intervention. The following questions are explored: How does communicative exchange with saints unfold through the interplay of dreams, icons, photos, films? What is the mediatory role of the body in receiving and transmitting marks of divine power enabled by seeing? How are spatial and temporal conditions of miraculous vision modified by the introduction of media technologies? Discursive analysis of divine images and eyewitness narratives is based on field research conducted among Coptic Orthodox subjects of contemporary Cairo.

Christian Spirituality Group and Religion and Ecology Group

Theme: Christian Spiritual Practices for a Sustainable Ecology

  • Orthodox Spirituality and Contemporary Ecology: John Cassian, Maximus the Confessor, and Jürgen Moltmann in Conversation
    Brock Bingaman, Loyola University, Chicago - view abstract
      In this paper I will argue that Cassian, Maximus, and Moltmann’s consonant notions on spirituality and ecology reinforce humanity’s mandate to global stewardship. Accordingly, I will support my claim by explicating the following parallel themes found in each of these authors. First, I will demonstrate that their eschatological perspectives, which value and anticipate God’s glory in the universe, provide a creation-esteeming worldview. Second, I will show how this eschatological perspective is expressed by the Orthodox in terms of theosis (deification of creation). Third, I will explain how this outlook on universal theosis formulates an ethic that encourages responsible stewardship of life, resources, and the environment. Fourth, I will illustrate how this ethical vision is embodied and implemented within communities of interrelated persons. Finally, I will exemplify how these authors work in an ecumenical fashion – bridging the worlds of East and West, and setting promising trajectories for interreligious and interdisciplinary dialogue regarding contemporary ecology.

Law, Religion, and Culture Group

Theme: Contemporary Intersections of Law and Religion around the World

  • Russian Orthodox Church and the Issues of Identity, Law, and Human Rights in Contemporary Russia
    Olga Kazmina, Moscow State University - view abstract
      • Investigation of religious sphere in Russia is impossible without the analysis of identity issues, which have influenced not only the Church’s documents, but also the debates over religious legislation and the state’s perception of religion. The paper considers the following key questions: What is religious identity in Russia? How is it connected with other types of cultural collective identity? How did identity issues impact religious legislation? How do they foster the perception of religion in the legal acts? How was the discourse over religious legislation influenced by the conception of human rights? What is the essence of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Declaration on human rights? Why was it adopted only in 2006? What is the Church’s perception of the idea of human rights?

Eastern Orthodox Studies Group

Theme: Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Islam: Contemporary and Historical Theological Encounters
Aristotle Papanikolaou, Fordham University, Presiding

  • Melkites, Muslims, and Mutakallimun: Depicting Religious Interlocutors in Medieval Christian Arabic
    David Bertaina, University of Illinois, Springfield - view abstract
      In the Abbasid period (750-1258), Christians composed apologetic texts in the dialogue form in light of their encounters with Muslims. This talk analyzes a Christian Arabic dialogue attributed to the Melkite bishop Theodore Abu Qurra (d. ca. 830). The talk will illustrate how Theodore's depictions of Muslims in the text functioned as a method of Christian identity formation. The work contains two types of religious interlocutors. On the one hand are the Muslim dialectical theologians (mutakallimun) who participate in the debate as antagonists. They act as literary devices for Theodore's theological insights. On the other hand, the Muslim caliph al-Ma'mun becomes the second hero of the text and he represents the best of Islamic generosity, since his judgments allow for the presentation of Orthodox Christian concepts of rational and religious knowledge. The evidence indicates that the Muslim caliph al-Ma'mun held an admired place in the Melkite community's memory.
    • A Theological Context for the Shared Veneration of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus in Christianity and Islam
      Christian Krokus, Boston College - view abstract
      • Sura 18 of the Qur’an (Ahl al-kahf), central to Islamic liturgy, echoes the Christian legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, the youth-martyrs walled up in a cave during the persecutions of Decius, miraculously resuscitated centuries later to testify to the reality of bodily resurrection. L. Massignon (1883-1962) promoted this shared spiritual source as means to further Christian-Muslim fraternity. He emphasized Sufi interpretations and assembled a constellation of spiritual themes surrounding the legend. Contemporary scholarship (M. Esbroeck, F. Jourdan, C. Molette) suggests that the connections apparent to Massignon are clarified for others when read according either to a Greek or a Syriac historical-theological context. This paper explores that possibility, and argues that if the Christological context is accurate, then Massignon’s discovery is of particular interest to contemporary scholars convinced of a special historical-theological relationship between Islam and the Eastern Churches.

Eastern Orthodox Studies Group

Theme: Icons and Images in Eastern Orthodox Theology
Thomas Cattoi, Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley, Presiding

  • Seeing Is Becoming: "Icon" and Ethics in Orthodox Theology
    Maria McDowell, Boston College - view abstract
      This paper explores the concepts of icon, image, and ethics in the context of gender. Orthodox theology makes a great deal of its use of icons, images which allow us to "see" the saints as models of who we are to become. However, very little has been said about how this occurs. John Zizioulas argues that human persons are unique, irreducible and free. Yet contemporary Orthodox writers argue that part of the "image" of Christ is maleness, a "natural" quality which, according to Zizioulas, is reductive. I will briefly summarize the use and intent of icons in Orthodox theology, focusing on what they model for believers. I will then bring together icons with a human anthropology of "becoming" (Zizioulas). In order to do this, I will utilize both Orthodox theologians and contemporary philosophers such as Levinas and Ricouer on otherness, image and ethics.
    • The Missing Icon of the Will: The Damascene's Icon Theology as a Subtext in His On the Heresies, Chapter 100.
      Elijah Mueller, Marquette University - view abstract

      • John Damascene in his polemic 100th chapter On Heresies, presents an understanding of the linkage between anthropology, theology and revelation that requires an unbreakable connection between image and the will. In comparing Muhammad and Moses, the Damascene claims that the will is not properly used in ascesis by Muhammad, nor is it properly accorded it place in the recognition of a revelation to Muhammad as the imaged will of God. The Damascene believes that the will and energy of God must be visible to allow the proper correlation between a willing and iconic Trinitarian God and an iconic human, possessing and acting upon the possession of a discerning will.

    • The Prothesis Rite and the Icon of the Deesis: The Eschatological Vision of Liturgy with Contemporary Implications
      Stelyios Muksuris, University of Durham - view abstract

      • The mystagogical character of Eastern liturgy is perhaps best summarized by St. John Chrysostom, who defines the concept of mysterion as “seeing one thing but believing about it something else” (aliud videtur, aliud intelligitur). The eschatological fulfillment of the divine economia in Jesus Christ, envisioned inchoately by the Church in the completed prothesis rite, is revisited in the Deesis icon, which is itself a snippet of the more comprehensive icon of All Saints: Christ encircled by His Church and standing at the epicenter of time and the universe. St. Symeon of Thessalonike’s eschatological vision in the proskomide is one of the Church at prayer, “God in the midst of gods”, a return to the pristine state of harmony between God and man. The scope of this paper is to establish the eschatological significance of the prothesis rite and to discuss the contemporary implications of such a theological orientation.

    • The Importance of Russian Traditions of Sophianic Icon Painting for the Thought of Pavel Florensky
      Andrey Shirin, Moscow Theological Seminary - view abstract
      • In this paper I will show that the Russian traditions of sophianic icon painting played a major role in, and perhaps had a formative influence upon, the sophiology of Pavel Florensky, one of the leading Russian religious thinkers of the early twentieth century. This is evidenced, first of all, by the fact that his sophiology seems to have included major themes of those traditions. In addition, I will contend Florensky’s metaphysics of icon and methodological antinomism seem to support the view that diverse Russian traditions of icon painting have left a substantial imprint on his sophiology, which was also of critical importance to other aspects of his thought.

Christian Systematic Theology Section

Theme: Nature and Grace

  • Between Bucharest and Basel: Incarnation, Analogy, and Pneumatics in Karl Barth and Dumitru Staniloae
    Michael Gibson, Vanderbilt University - view abstract
      • The following essay takes up the question of incarnation and analogy In Karl Barth and Dumitru Staniloae as the ground for a possible link between the Eastern Orthodox and Reformed traditions on grace, sin and redemption. Precisely, this essay will argue that Barth and Staniloae ground the possibility of human knowledge of God upon the economic movement of the Incarnation; the Incarnation of Christ creates the deep relational connection between God and humanity that functions to open the divine pattern of creation, thus imbricating special and general revelation in a way that elides the abbreviated human abilities. From this, Staniloae will be used as a platform to generate a constructive position that opens out into the pneumatological and ecclesial dimension of being

Christian Systematic Theology Section

Theme: Desire and Redemption

  • Honest to God: Confession and Desire
    Aristotle Papanikolaou, Fordham University - view abstract

      • This paper will illuminate the dynamics involved in acts of confession in a Christian community. It will show that such acts are not neutral events. Insofar as persons within the Christian community assume an iconic role distinct from the therapist, confession within a Christian community is more than therapy. Confession within the Christian community is an event of grace understood as the mediation of the presence of God such that the confessant participates more fully in the life of God. The listener within the Christian community by virtue of their place within the space of the community has the power to iconically represent God in such a way as to mediate God’s presence. The act of confession within a Christian community makes possible a mediation of the presence of God through the listener within the Christian community, the locus of which is the affective response of the confessant.

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Announcements as of December 3, 2007

Call for Papers

Please see the Call for Papers for next year’s annual meeting. The meeting will be held June 12-14, 2008, in Chicago, Illinois, at the Cenacle Retreat Center. The deadline for receipt of abstracts for all types of papers is January 31, 2008.

2007 Dues

Recent Annual Dues Statements are in error with respect to dues payments for 2007. Please ignore it. A revised statement will be sent shortly.

Orthodox Journals

The Greek Orthodox Theological Review and St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly are offering discounted subscriptions to OTSA members. Members are eligible for one year subscription to one journal at $20 (regular price $40) if membership is paid for current year by January 15.

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Conferences (Past and Future)

Society of Christian Ethics

Annual Meeting
January 3-8, 2008
Atlanta Hilton

American Society of Church History

122nd Annual Meeting
January 3-6, 2008
Hilton Washington
1919 Connecticut Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20009

Theme: Uneven Developments
Conference program (doc)

Byzantine Music Education:
Building a Byzantine Choir

January 14-16, 2008
Graduate Center of the City
University, New York, NY.
For more information and a complete program, please see the website: www.axionestin.org

Dorushe Annual Graduate Student Conference on Syriac Studies

University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN
April 4-5, 2008
Submission Date: January 31, 2008
Conference flyer

North American Patristics Society

2008 Annual Meeting
The Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza
May 22-24, 2008

Please send all proposals for papers (including 300-word abstract) and all inquiries concerning proposed special sessions to:

Dr. Paul M. Blowers
c/o Emmanuel School of Religion
One Walker Drive
Johnson City, TN 37601
blowersp@esr.edu
All proposals must be received by 15 January 2008.

Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy

Announcing a new research project, "Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy" under the overall leadership of Professor John Fitzgerald of the University of Miami and Fika J. van Rensburg of North-West University. This project will be pursued in sessions held at both NAPS and the SBL Annual Meeting.

Orthodoxy and the Natural Environment

St. Nicholas Ranch hosted a conference on Orthodoxy and the Environment, October 25—28, 2007, at their facilities in Dunlap, CA. Among the presenters were members Perry Hamalis, Aristotle Papanikolau and Gayle Woloschak. Conference Program

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Member News

Archbishop Demetrios received the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, from Fordham University on the occasion of his 40th anniversary of Episcopal Service, on June 14, 2007 at the University Church, Rose Hill Campus, Fordham University, as part of Fordham’s Orthodoxy in America Lecture Series inaugural conference. >>Fordham Page.top

Other News

Vatican Library Closing

The Vatican Library will be closed for renovations from September 2007 to January 2010. The Secret Archives are not affected.

The Istanbul Byzantine Circular

The Istanbul Byzantine Circular aims at sharing information about activities, institutions and people related to Istanbul and Byzantium. The Circular consists of an e-mail attachment and will be updated and distributed four times per year in January, April, July and October. You are invited to share your information by e-mailing it to the editor, who will include it in the next circular. Philipp Niewöhner will serve as editor of circular no. 1 to 8, April 2007 to January 2009. After that Nevra Necipoglu will organize the election of an editor from the scholars of Byzantium resident in Istanbul.

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