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The Ecumenical Review Volume72, Issue3, July 2020, Pages 470-475
Paul Meyendorff was the Father Alexander Schmemann Professor of Liturgical Theology at St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary from 1987 to 2016, and is a member of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches.
Abstract
This article offers a critical response to the documents on
marriage and on fasting of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox
Church, which took place in Crete in 2016. It suggests greater attention
be given to the concept of oikonomia in contemporary Orthodoxy,
both in the context of the issues raised in these two documents and with
respect to other contentious issues. In contemporary Orthodoxy, the
exercise of oikonomia is understood in different ways. One
approach is the legalistic understanding of the term that is employed in
the council documents; the second and more traditional approach is to
understand oikonomia as discernment of what is true and
authentic, even outside the canonical limits of Orthodoxy. The article
asks whether such a perspective could characterize the church’s approach
to other complex pastoral issues, such as those related to marriage and
fasting.
Clik
