theology east and west- difference and harmony lawrence cross

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DOI: 10.1177/0021140006072569 2006; 71; 67 Irish Theological Quarterly

Lawrence Cross Theology East and West: Difference and Harmony

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Irish Theological Quarterly71 (2006) 67–76© 2006 Irish Theological QuarterlySage Publications [www.sagepublications.com]
DOI: 10.1177/0021140006072569
Theology East and West: Differenceand Harmony
Lawrence Cross
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The difference in style and temperament in the way Eastern and Western theologiansapproach their common subject, already evident in Patristic times, became very markedafter the 12th century with the rise of scholasticism in the West. Today both are challengedby the newly emerging theological paradigm. Theologians of both traditions are called toengage in a new ‘patristic’ enterprise, namely to search together for ways of expressing themystery of redemption which can once again engage our contemporaries in the age of post-modernity.

. Differences

n the earliest centuries of the Christian era, the term ‘theology’ stillcarried the rather pejorative sense employed by Plato to describe mythicligion, or the cultic proclamation through which the myths describing

ivine reality are passed on. Christians began to appropriate the term frome third century in the writings of Origen and Eusebius of Caesarea in theurth.1 In this first age, ‘theology’ is used primarily to refer to proclama-on, confession or doxology with regard to God. It is God-talk in e literal sense, while ‘oikonomia’ is knowledge and teaching about the

vents of salvation.2Although the Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches arise

om the same early Christian world, the Eastern Orthodox approach to the-logy has remained closer to this Patristic tradition. Theology is experien-al rather than intellectual, flowing into the realm of the mystical. Wary ofeculation and rationalism, Orthodox theology is strongly ‘apophatic’. Asonrad Raiser has observed, its appropriate setting is the monastic commu-ity.3 Though patristic in its roots, Latin theology, by way of contrast, haseen shaped in the medieval period largely by the university and by theception of Aristotelian philosophy in the West, particularly in the work

1. For Origen, see Contra Celsum, Patrologia Graeca, 11, 908B, and for Eusebius, De laudibusConstantini, ibid., 20, 1393D.2. Konrad Raiser, ‘Theology in the Ecumenical Movement’, in Nicholas Lossky et al. (eds),Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1991), 992.

67Ibid., 993.



of St Thomas Aquinas.4 For the Latins, theology tends to be the method-ical exposition of revealed truth in which philosophical categories are uti-lized to unfold the sacred doctrine. Theology and the magisterium of theChurch are closely linked. In the West the approach has been rather more‘cataphatic’.

Western theology, in its most formative phase, was influenced by thespeculations of St Augustine on God’s salvific plan for the rehabilitationof mankind. Likewise, the West’s approach to Trinity contains a tensionbetween St Augustine’s philosophical essentialism, his personalism, andthe Church’s religious experience.5 The first element in Augustine’sthought, the preoccupation with the Fall and the condition of the firstparents, approached the question of grace by treating it as an intermedi-ate quality which ensures or restores a right relationship between man andGod. The second element, the tension between philosophical essentialismand the personalism of religious experience, produced the conclusion thatthe ultimate and perfect blessedness consists in the vision of the divineessence itself. This position cannot be reconciled with Greek thought andfails to account for the apparent ability of the creature to conceive of theInconceivable.

The Eastern style of theology is grounded upon the Greek Fathers forwhom the beginning, the �� ́ of St John and of Genesis, is theeternal God existing in three hypostases, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.Consequently, Eastern-style theology begins, not with questions concern-ing the unity of God, the ‘Treatise on God’ of scholasticism, but with therevelation of the Trinity of persons, and specifically with the incarnationof the Divine Son of God.6 God himself, however, remains invisible, inef-fable, inconceivable, in unutterable glory, even as God is known in His‘energies’ by which man is made a participant in God’s Trinitarian life. InEastern thought, grace restores the original beauty of the divine image inman. It brings about deification or ��́��, which is a vital assimilationinto Trinitarian life, not a mere formal likeness. At this point, we shouldunderline the fact that Eastern and Western approaches are styles oftheology, and as such are optional, just as long as they do not contradictthe revealed data of faith upon which both rest.

For all the fascinating similarities and differences between East and West,we only have time to isolate one factor which illustrates the differencebetween the Greek and Latin approaches to theology which gave rise to spe-cific difficulties in mutual understanding: the different way each traditionemployed philosophical resources in the formulation of theology. While

68 IRISH THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

4. St Thomas’ debt to Pseudo-Dionysius and John Damascene also demonstrates thecontinuing influence of the Eastern Fathers on Western theology.5. Michael A. Fahey and John Meyendorff, Trinitarian Theology East and West (Brookline:Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1977), 36.6. George Barrois, ‘Two Styles of Theology and Spirituality’, St Vladimir’s TheologicalQuarterly, 26/2 (1982): 90.



both Eastern and Western theology rest upon scriptural and philosophicalauthorities, Eastern theology had the advantage of connaturality of lan-guage and culture with the Septuagint and with the Greek Fathers, throughwhom it also laid claim to the doctrines of Plato and the concrete analysesof Aristotle, both encountered as a living philosophy.7 Though it energeti-cally put them to good use, the West, by contrast, encountered Plato andAristotle not as living philosophy, but in a more academic mode and thetheologian in the West was for too long a dialectician, endeavouring topersuade through argument and reason. The Eastern model of theology,discursive (particularly in liturgy) and Patristic, seeks to attract ratherthan persuade. As Bulgakov put it, ‘Orthodoxy does not persuade or try tocompel; it charms and attracts.’8 By early modern times, there was adistinct temperamental difference discernible between Western andEastern theology, as events in the mid-fifteenth century will illustrate.

In his magisterial study of the Council of Florence (1439–45), JosephGill SJ noted the aversive reactions of the Greeks and the other Orthodoxto the frequent use of syllogistic reasoning in the Latins’ arguments andpresentations.9 For example, Archbishop Isidore of Kiev and all Russia,noting the frequent Latin use of syllogisms, went on to say, regretfully, thatsuch reasoning ‘deepened the schism and has made the disagreementgreater and stronger’.10 George Scholarius, appointed by the emperor as amember of the Greek delegation and later the first Ecumenical Patriarchof Constantinople under Ottoman rule, voiced the Greek fear when hedeclared,

I know that you, O Greeks, in matters of this sort have no confidencein proofs from reason but consider them suspect and misleading; muchmore then will you both keep clear of syllogising per impossibile and beon your guard against others who do that.11

Bessarion of Nicaea concurred: ‘It was not syllogisms or probabilities orarguments that convinced me, but the bare words of the Fathers.’12 Butthe most spirited and vivid reaction to the Latins’ syllogizing and theirappeals to philosophical authorities came from one of the Georgianenvoys to the council. The Great Ecclesiarches, Silvester Syropoulus,recorded his response when the Latin, Montenero, appealed to theauthority of Aristotle. The Georgian exclaimed,

THEOLOGY EAST AND WEST 69

7. Ibid., 97.8. Sergius Bulgakov, ‘The Orthodox Church’, in N. Zernov and J. Pain (eds), A BulgakovAnthology (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1976), 131.9. Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959),227–8.10. Cod. Vat. Gr. 706, 12r–22r.11. Means to obtain religious peace, Schol. 1, 355.12. De Spiritus Sancti Processione: Ad Alexium Lascarin Philantropinum, PG 161, 360B.



What about Aristotle, Aristotle? A fig for your fine Aristotle. Andwhen I (Syropoulus) by word and gesture asked: ‘What is fine?’ TheGeorgian replied – ‘St Peter, St Paul, St Basil, Gregory theTheologian; a fig for your Aristotle, Aristotle’.13

The voice of that unnamed Georgian is still echoing loudly in the halls ofcontemporary Orthodox theology.

As the remarks at Florence illustrate, Latins and Greeks do not under-take the theological task in the same way. The difference was notablemore than 650 years ago. While the difference is real, one also suspectsthat many of the historically acrimonious exchanges between the theolo-gians and controversialists of East and West are not at all due to differentmethodologies, but are really symptoms of rabies theologorum, a phenome-non whereby ideological religious controversy, however caused, hasdisturbed popular emotion and has entered into the ecclesial bloodstream,to an extent greater than even political or aesthetic differences.14

2. Theological Paradigms

We can begin our discussion of the possibilities of convergence betweenthe way in which Latins and Greeks undertake the theological task withan intuition expressed by George Tavard in 1980.15 Noting that theChristian past has given rise to four principal and successive kinds oftheology, fides quaerens anagogiam, fides quaerens analogiam, fides quaerenshistoriam and fides quaerens rationem humanam,16 and to periods that wecan roughly describe as Patristic, Medieval, Byzantine, Reformation andEarly Modern, Tavard declares that ‘there is a general feeling today thattheology is on the verge of a new age’. He is not sure of its exact trajec-tory into the future, but he believes that theology is moving to newground and there is a diffuse feeling that something has ended.17

For a figure such as Paul Tillich, it is the Protestant era that has passed.For those influenced by Vatican II, it is the thought and temper of theCounter-Reformation that have passed away. The question arises, to what


13. Syr. x, 12, 270.14. Hans Küng, ‘Paradigm Change in Theology: A Proposal for Discussion’, in Hans Küngand David Tracey (eds), Paradigm Change in Theology: A Symposium for the Future (NewYork: Crossroad, 1989), 4.15. George Tavard, ‘The Bi-lateral Dialogues: Searching for Language’, One in Christ 16(1980): 22–3.16. For the four principal and successive kinds of theology from the Christian past, or moreaccurately, the four ways of interpreting the Scriptures, see Henri de Lubac, MedievalExegesis, Vol 1: The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. Mark Sebanc (Grand Rapids, IL:Eerdmans, 1998). De Lubac believes that St Augustine’s categories, ‘literal, allegorical,moral and analogical’, in contrast to those of Origen, derive from incarnational semioticsand a Pauline teleology, grounded in the Apostolic preaching itself. He concluded that‘What we have here is a theory that, even in its very form, owes everything to this Christianfaith, and that, in its content, seeks to give it expression’, 225.17. Tavard, ‘The Bi-lateral Dialogues’, 22.



extent will the Churches of the East share in the new theological future?Have their theologians relinquished anything to the past so that they alsomight participate in the coming theological future? Paradoxically, for theChurches of the Orthodox East, the opportunity has arisen to free them-selves from what they dubbed their ‘Babylonish captivity’18 to the waysof Western theology and to return to the sources and ways of their owntradition. Consequently, we should ask whether the Churches of theGreek East and Catholic West are on the verge of the same new theolog-ical age, or whether they are passing each other as they go in differentdirections, between a speculative post-modern future and traditionalPatristic past. We do not believe that this is the case, but much more workis ahead of us before we can establish the fact that both East and West areon the brink of a new theological future in which each will exercise itsgifts and insights in a complementary way so as to contribute to the for-mation of a new theological paradigm at the service of the modern world.

3. Dialogue and Contemporary Theological Categories

From its inception in the late 1950s, the Dialogue of Love, a continuinginformal and occasional dialogical encounter between the Roman CatholicChurch and the œcumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, has developeda pattern of encounters over the years, such as the exchanges on the feastsof the Apostles, St Andrew and Sts Peter and Paul, in which certain keytheological themes and ideas have emerged. These are a study in themselveswhich we cannot pursue here, but it is clear that the partners in the Dialoguereally have not stopped to ask if there is any specific methodological patternto its less formal theologizing. Though it is certainly not the most importantaspect in its development, an attention to methodological issues is largelymissing from the Dialogue of Love.19 And since there is the traditional


18. Originally given as a talk to the First Conference of Orthodox Theologians in Americain 1966, Fr Alexander Schmemann’s essay, ‘The Task of Orthodox Theology Today’, is one ofthe most vigorous expositions of the pastoral–theological situation confronting the OrthodoxChurches. In many places in his writings he mentions the idea of ‘Babylonish captivity’,meaning the subjection of Orthodox theology to the theological methods and systems of theWest. This began in the years following the fall of the City and the subjection of theOrthodox nations to Turkish domination. The same idea looms large in the writing ofFr Dimitru Staniloae. See A. Schmemann, Church, World, Mission (Crestwood, NY: StVladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979), 117–28. For a discussion of this period, see Bishop KallistosWare’s Eustratios Argenti: A Study of the Greek Church under Turkish Rule (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1964). The Orthodox knew that their own theology was now strongly influ-enced by the thought-forms and terminology of Latin scholasticism, but expressed their senseof captivity by a fiercely polemical stance towards Catholicism throughout the seventeenthcentury. See Bishop Kallistos Ware, ‘Orthodox and Catholics in the Seventeenth Century:Schism or Intercommunion?’ in D. Baker (ed.), Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972, Studies in Church History X), 259.19. What is surprising is that this is also true of the formal theological dialogue, whosedocuments tend to be composed in a kind of ‘Patristic speak’ rather than in the tones of arecognizably more modern and ecumenical mode.



suspicion of excessive system in theology on the part of the Orthodox,which surfaces quite often in the course of the Dialogue of Love,20 we shouldgive some attention to the important distinction between the positive andnormative phases of theology, because the positive phase provokes theOrthodox dislike of syllogizing and is identified with Western theology. TheEast seems most comfortable with the normative phase.

Here we turn to Bernard Lonergan for some assistance in describing thegeneral modern theological method in which many theologians in theWest would recognize their theatre of activity.21 He has isolated ‘eightfunctional specialities’. The first four specialities constitute what is calledthe positive phase of theology, which is characterized by empirical studiesdesigned to recover and appraise the past. The elements in the positivephase are Research, Interpretation, History and Dialectics. Lonergan’s secondfour specialities constitute what is called the normative phase of theology,which focuses upon an appropriation of the past in the present for the sakeof the future. The elements in the normative phase are Foundations,Doctrines, Systematics and Communications. For Lonergan, the hinge uponwhich the two phases swing is conversion.

The relationship of these phases is important for theology generally,and for ecumenical dialogue in particular. There has already been muchdiscussion as to whether the empirical phase should be governed by thenormative. We in our turn must ask whether it would be wrong to engagein a theological process, such as ecumenical dialogue, where the norma-tive phase controlled the empirical or positive phase. We must ask if thisis what is being proposed in the frequent appeals, by both partners in theDialogue of Love, to ‘the time of the undivided Church’, to the Fathers, toTradition, or to normative Scripture? Are such appeals suggesting thatdoctrine should act as a guiding norm to the empirical investigations ofresearch, interpretation, history and dialectic? We must ask if this repre-sents an unwarranted interference by theology’s normative phase in thework conducted within theology’s positive phase. However, it would seemfrom certain hints in the course of the Dialogue that the empirical inves-tigations of theology’s positive phase do not rest on doctrine. For example,while the participants in the Dialogue look forward to the beginning of theformal ‘Theological Dialogue’, they expect that, as part of its method, thetools of the empirical positive phase would be brought to bear to clarifyand establish the elements of the common faith of the Churches.Lonergan’s method, in this case the functional specialities, is useful forsorting out the question of doctrinal development and the dynamics of a


20. Patriarch Dimitrios’ much quoted declamation is one of the best-known examples of the admonition to step beyond system into the communion at the heart of theology. �� Q�ó�, �� , �� ’�� ’��. ��’

�� ’��

�� , �’��’ ��

� ��.

Patriarch Dimitrios (30.11.74), to Fr Pierre Duprey.21. Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972), 125–44.

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process of dialogue. One can be sympathetic to the claim that doctrinaldevelopment consists of ‘making explicit what is implicit in revelation’.However, to maintain this, also in the context of a dialogue, one mustindicate the way in which this occurs, which is to say, the making explicitof that which is implicit.

We should note here that the problem of the relationship between thepositive and the normative phases is far from resolved in the wider theo-logical community of the Western (Latin) Church. One illustration willhave to suffice. This identical problem, for example, emerged in anaddress by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on modern critical historical schol-arship.22 He identifies as a central problem the need to find ‘a bettersynthesis between historical and theological methods, between highercriticism and Church doctrine’. Furthermore, ‘a truly pervasive under-standing of this whole problem has yet to be found which takes intoaccount both the undeniable insights uncovered by historical method,while at the same time overcoming its limitations’. Ratzinger does notoffer the required ‘better synthesis’, though he offers some elements ofsuch a synthesis. Indeed, he claims that ‘the work of a whole generation isnecessary to achieve such a thing’. In the end he appears to be caughtbetween his dissatisfaction with the diversity of exegetical results, many ofwhich seem to challenge accepted doctrines, and his realization that theera of dogmatic control of such empirical research is now at an end, for theLatin Church at least.

We suspect that many, the Eastern Orthodox included, strongly object tothe separation of the two phases of theology, the empirical phase and the nor-mative phase, in the same way and for the same reasons they object to theseparation of theology from the Church by means of a pseudo-scientification.As Staniloae has argued, tradition in the Orthodox Church is

a lived experience of one and the same relationship with Christ inthe time of the Apostles … Church and tradition, considered as therevelation of Christ lived in an uninterrupted way by the Church,constitute a whole.23

Or as Nicholas Lossky insists, the theologian cannot be a private thinkerwho works out a system in the solitude of his study. Theology and the the-ologian must be grounded in the community of the Church and share inits ‘experience of life in Christ’. Likewise, ‘the task of formulas is simply toredirect people towards the mystery’.24 In short, contemporary Orthodoxtheologians, employing certain creative Western theological insights,

22. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, ‘Foundations and Approaches to Biblical Exegesis’, Origins,Feb. 11 (1988) 17, no. 35.23. Dimitru Staniloae, ‘The Orthodox Conception of Tradition and the Development ofDoctrine’, Sobornost, Series 5, No. 9 (1969): 653–4.24. Nicholas Lossky, ‘Orthodoxy and Ecumenism’, One in Christ 17 (1981): 145, 144.




propose to take our understanding of the theological process to anotherlevel. This will certainly be grounded upon the sole criterion of God him-self, which is faithful to Revelation and to the Fathers as read in theChurch, but which is also strangely modern, even post-modern.

The problem of the relationship of positive and normative phases intheology is an offshoot of those historical developments in Western the-ology already alluded to. Under the sheer weight of excessive systeminherited from the Middle Ages, something essential was being asphyxi-ated. As Gabriel Daly has observed,

there is also circumstantial irony in the fact that the RomanCatholic Church has come to belated and reluctant terms with secu-lar culture just at the moment when that culture is undergoing amajor crisis of its own.25

The enmity of modernist and integralist continues to scandalize ecclesiallife in the West and to cripple theology in its pursuit of its own whole-ness. Behind the problem of the relationship of positive and normativephases in theology is the modernists’ legitimate suspicion of ‘system’ andthe integralists’ fear that ‘science’ will undermine dogma. It would indeedbe tragic if the hostile Orthodox critic was right in claiming that RomanCatholicism, tormented by a deep internal split, is held together only byan excessive exercise of authority and by a tight administrative cast.26

4. Theological Crisis and the Patristic Note of the Church

In diagnosing the deep-seated reasons for the crisis in theology,Orthodox commentators would attribute it to the denial of the Patristicnote in the life of the Church, and to a departure from the Patristic natureof theology. In Eastern terms, the loss of the Patristic note of theology is thesame thing as a denial of human experience and affectivity; as neglect ofthe real life of the Church and her practical needs. Nor is the Patristic noteof the Church and its theology a merely imitative attachment to theFathers. They are not advocating turning theology into a system ofthought, or a dogmatism embedded in the past. From this position, saysNicholas Lossky, ‘fidelity to the Fathers tends to degenerate into bondageto formulas’.27

Finding the Patristic note in the Church means to reappropriate thespirit of the Fathers; to aim our theological effort at the real Church

25. Gabriel Daly, O.S.A., Transcendence and Immanence: A Study in Catholic Modernism andIntegralism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 230.26. Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church(Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984), 99.27. Lossky, ‘Orthodoxy and Ecumenism’, 144.




and at real man in the Church.28 Doing theology in the spirit of theFathers begins with a deep evaluation and critique of that contemporaryculture in which the believer is immersed. Like the Fathers, a renewedtheology must dare to use fearlessly all the intellectual and culturalmaterials that will assist in this task. It is deeply ironical to realize thatthe French philosopher Lucien Laberthonnière, and with him theFathers, would have been treated with deep suspicion by Romantheology for asking the one question that matters; ‘And if there issomething divine in humanity, under what conditions and in whatmanner is it to be found there?’29 This is precisely the question that hasbeen lost to sight.

The Greek term ��́� is being used in two senses in the followingparagraphs. In the first sense in which it will be used, ��́� meansfavoured time, the special opportunity for a longed-for development tooccur. In the second sense it means that opportune moment in time whenpersons truly meet, an encounter.

As Dimitru Staniloae has observed (following Emil Brunner), there is astrong tendency in philosophy to transform the world of God, of whichthe Bible speaks, into Plato’s world of ideas, into the ontology of timelessbeing. The symbolism of personalism and of happenings in time isreplaced by that of the impersonal, of the ‘It’ and of timelessness. Thesymbolism of time (within which the ��́� appears) and personality isreplaced by the symbolism of space and things.30

Unrebuked, these philosophies and theories produce a change in themeaning of even the basic Christian terms and concepts. Schmemanninsists that this can be challenged only by an exorcism of culture, such asthe Fathers undertook, a liberating reconstruction of the words, conceptsand symbols of the theological language itself. Once more a thinker likeMikhail Bakhtin, supported by theologians like Staniloae on theOrthodox side, shows the way through the problem of the relationship ofthe positive and normative phases in theology and identifies the kind oftheology that the Dialogue of Love expresses.

In an article written as long ago as 1969, Staniloae welcomed the newlyemerging theological paradigm and offered a way to harmonize the rela-tionship of the positive and normative phases. First, he saw the role of thenew expressions in thought and culture to be a means for the human mindto see the amazing meaning and importance of the words and formulas ofScripture and Tradition with new eyes. Their novelty was not to be feared,but valued precisely because of its ability to stimulate and to awaken.

28. Schmemann, Church, World, Mission, 121.29. Daly, Transcendence and Immanence, 231, citing Laberthonnière’s Le Réalisme chrétien etl’idéalisme grec (Paris, 1904), 244.30. Dimitru Staniloae, Theology and the Church, trans. Robert Barringer (Crestwood, NY: StVladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 152, citing Emil Brunner’s Dogmatics. Vol. III. The ChristianDoctrine of the Church: Faith and the Consummation (London: Macmillan, 1962), 404–6.




5. Liberty in Tradition

In Staniloae’s view, things have got to such a pass that the Churchescannot be content with merely an exterior renewal, or with an ‘aggiorna-mento’ of language. Noting that it is impossible to separate language andcontent in as clear a way as that, he asserted that if you use new expres-sions, you throw new light on to the content expressed. This is a trueintellectual ��́� in the first sense, ‘a special opportunity for a longed-for development to occur’, because,

by these new expressions, the human mind also wishes to make clearcertain vital sides or aspects implied in the divine revelation, ele-ments insufficiently brought to light by the ancient formulas, andapt to reply to new questions raised by the human spirit.31

But even if these new expressions can represent more than simple alterna-tives in relation to earlier verbal formulae, for Staniloae they cannot contra-dict the words and formulas of the first Tradition, ‘which in essence andgeneral content expresses fully the mystery of redemption’. It is here that hetouches on the relationship of the positive and normative phases in theology.The fact ‘that the new expressions do not contradict the initial formulas mustbe the criterion of their acceptability’. If the results of the use of new expres-sions are not accepted officially by the Church, they have the non-obligatorycharacter of ‘theologoumena’, and the Christian is free to hold them.

Staniloae also loosens the rigid relationship between positive and nor-mative when he observes that the course of human life, and Christianhumanity in particular, advances in a most uneven fashion over halts andsetbacks, taking ‘many temporary deviations on to wrong roads, dark sidesin this journey towards the light’. The spiritual path of mankind, with theaid of God, records an advance only in its major outlines. If one were todevelop a myopic view of the Christian theological enterprise, obsessedwith the claims and relationships of the theological specialities, one wouldmiss the freeing realization that many of the historic ways of expressingthe mystery of redemption, such as the work of certain theologians of thescholastic or more recent periods, belong to these deviations and setbacks.This is why it is not right to hold on to all the ways of expressing themystery of redemption which have developed in the course of history. Infact, liberty and choice are vital elements in the theological process.

31. Staniloae, ‘The Orthodox Conception of Tradition and the Development of Doctrine’,660.

LAWRENCE CROSS, Senior Lecturer, School of Theology (Victoria),Australian Catholic University, ABN 15 050 192 660, 115. Victoria Parade,Fitzroy, Victoria 3065, Australia. [email protected]



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