Orthodox Constructions of the West ed. by George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou (review)

Resulting from a 2010 conference dedicated to historical and theological aspects of the schism between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, this volume aims to trace Orthodox constructions of the West through time. It comprises a series of theological, philosophical, social-scientific, and, less so, historical studies, which lend it a certain degree of welcome interdisciplinarity. Nevertheless, the focus is primarily on the modern period from the nineteenth century to today. Some studies are more specialized and focused on one or two thinkers (such as those on Dumitru Staniloae, Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, Chrestos Giannaras, and John S. Romanides); others trace the fluid constructions of the West as they appear in official pronouncements of churches (for example, the Romanian and Russian Orthodox Churches) or the thinking of several theologians (such as Patriarch Dositheos of Jerusalem in the seventeenth century and Russian ecclesiastics who were influenced by Slavophile thinking). Ultimately, the West of the volume’s title and of the studies is overwhelmingly the Roman Catholic West and only occasionally the Protestant one. Geographically speaking, the volume covers primarily Eastern Orthodox thinking as it appeared in the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires; in modern Greece, Romania, and Russia; and in the Orthodox diaspora in France and the United States.

There are three themes running through this volume. First is what could be called Eastern Orthodoxy’s reactiveness with regard to the West. In study after study it becomes evident that the agenda of any explicit or implicit exchange (whether polemical or not) has been set by the (mostly Roman Catholic) West, beginning at least in the fourteenth century and continuing until today. Thus, whether the topic is papal primacy, the use of Scholasticism in theological analysis, or, more recently, the imposition of what are seen in some Orthodox countries as secularizing and dechristianizing measures by the European Union, the Eastern Orthodox, whether individual thinkers or official churches, have been forced into formulating a position. They do not appear to have posed the question or to have initiated the dialogue. The second theme permeating almost all the studies is the extent to which Western thinking, thinkers, and trends actually influenced the anti-Western formulations of the Orthodox, be they theologians, philosophers, or historiosophists. This is clearly seen, for example, in the thought of fourteenth-century Byzantine admirers of St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as in the output of Aleksei Khomiakov, Staniloae, Florovsky, Lossky, Giannaras, and Romanides, all of whom experienced the West personally (directly) or vicariously (indirectly). The third theme, and one that the editors especially highlight in their very helpful introduction, is that of the hidden and/or implicit common elements in the theological trajectories of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic positions on a variety of topics that are considered fundamental to the split (for example, on papal primacy or the filioque). Along these lines, as several essays show, it was historical experiences (the Crusades, Western missions, and the advent of forms of modernity and secularization associated with the West) that largely affected and magnified into seemingly irreconcilable polemics what under different circumstances would or could be seen as theological nuances. As Robert Taft shows in a deftly written essay, the two sides, if they wish to progress on the road to reconciliation, should distinguish between dogma and theology, and exercise self-criticism and self-restraint when it comes to understanding the past and present relations of the two churches. Especially in its coverage of theological issues, the volume assumes substantial prior knowledge of theological debates and thus is mostly addressed to specialists in that field. That said, anyone with an interest in the East-West schism and new approaches to it from a variety of disciplines will certainly profit from reading it.