I’m back from an great trip to Boston.
Walking in the main hall for the opening of this conference I was a little surprised to find the vast majority of the attendees were male and almost all of the males wore long black robes, and had beards. I began to wonder what I had signed up for when his Eminence Archbishop Demetrios began his address in Greek. After about five minutes of Modern Greek he switched to English much to my relief. It would have been a very long week for me.
His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios augured for four Gospels and one Christ challenging us to see the “text AS interpretation.” Which, given my Orthodox penchant to interpret all text through a patristic lens came as quite a surprise.
While many have noted the Eastward rush of the Western church over the last few decades I was a little surprised at the Westward movement of the Eastern Church as evidenced by this conference. The conference which focused on perspectives in Orthodox biblical studies seemed, for the most part, designed to serve as an encouragement to Orthodox biblical scholars to engage in historical critical biblical studies.
As I am relatively unacquainted with contemporary Orthodox biblical scholarship I found myself a little bit surprised at their comparatively weak history of biblical engagement. Many of the papers presented were subtly building a case for the Orthodox pursuit of a more “scientific” study of the Scriptures. It felt like they were rushing to mid-20th century in their biblical studies; as though a whole world of criticisms were beginning to open up the text for them. It wasn’t until near the end of the conference that issues of new linguistic theories, post-critical theories, postmodernism and ideas of semiotics to be hinted at. No papers specifically addressed these developing directions in hermeneutical theory.
The unspoken sense was; ‘We as an Orthodox community have a unique perspective with strong patristic connections that cannot be taken seriously by contemporary biblical scholarship because we haven’t done our homework. We owe it to all Christian traditions to improve our biblical scholarship so we can credibly present a vital connection with Scripture through the church fathers.’ There was a clear sense that as a faith community they see themselves playing ‘catch up’ with modern, especially, protestant scholarship.
The concern was also raised to be wary of the possible loss of the Orthodoxy’s emphasis on patristic scholarship while pursuing biblical scholarship; to carefully avoid the trading patristic scholarship for modern biblical scholar. While pursuing historical critical methods of biblical scholarship, participants were encouraged to make the principled transfer to their study of the church fathers; thus utilizing historical critical methods when engaging the patristic writings.
I left the conference with a sense of hope that the Western Church and the Eastern Church may be approaching a period of history of growing openness to each other; dare I say that we may even be growing to see each other as necessary.
Most of the papers presented at this conference will be available here.
Peace, dwight
