by Fr. Dietmar Schon, O.P. | български | ქართული | ελληνικά | Română | Русский | Српски

On the publication of Berufen zur Verwandlung der Welt. Die Orthodoxe Kirche in sozialer und ethischer Verantwortung, Schriften des Ostkircheninstituts der Diözese Regensburg Bd. 6 (Regensburg: Pustet, 2021).

In his preface to the social ethics document “For the Life of the World,” Archbishop Elpidophoros of America invited the Orthodox faithful, as well as Christians of other denominations and all people of good will, to engage with the text and enter into a discourse about it. In response to this invitation, the author, a member of the Roman Catholic Church, has thoroughly analyzed the text, written in the spirit of the Orthodox tradition of Christianity, and appreciated its significance.

The social ethics document was intended to continue the engagement with the modern world begun by the Holy and Great Synod of Crete in 2016. In view of new questions and challenges, additional efforts were needed to provide forward-looking impulses for the church and its faithful. A comparison with the synod documents shows that the social-ethical document contributes a significant facet to this. Documents of social-ethical content published earlier by the Russian Orthodox Church were included in the study in order to be able to answer the question of continuities or new accents. Access to the world of thought and to the understanding of the social-ethical document is opened not least by the manifold contributions and publications of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and many Orthodox theologians. It was neither intended nor possible within the framework of this study to attempt to fully cover the diversity of positions and statements of Orthodox theology on the broad spectrum of topics covered by the document. The inclusion of a selection of contributions by hierarchs and theologians rather served the goal of approaching the text in the horizon to which it belongs, namely that of Orthodoxy. In doing so, it has become apparent that “For the Life of the World” has been consistently drawn from specific aspects of modern Orthodox theology developed over decades.