Preface

Metropolitan Paulos Mar Gregorios is known as one of the most creative interpreters of the Orthodox Christian theological and spiritual tradition in the 20th century. His rediscovery of St. Gregory of Nyssa and the patristic heritage in general in relation to the issues and concerns of the contemporary world had a remarkable influence on some of our secular thinkers and political leaders. His interpretations of God – world - humanity relationship in Eastern Christianity shaped and fostered some of the inter-faith debates as well as dialogues between religion and science and between religion and ideologies in the closing decades of the 20th century.

Within the Orthodox Christian world, his ecumenical and theological efforts made headway in reconciling the Byzantine Orthodox family of Churches with the five Oriental Orthodox Churches after a separation of 1500 years since the Council of Chalcedon in 450 A.D. During his long ecumenical pilgrimage associated with the World Council of Churches he made close contacts with the leaders and theologians of these churches. So Mar Gregorios is eminently qualified to write about the Orthodox Churches. Since he was a well respected spokesman of Orthodox (eastern) Christianity for more than three decades, his insights and observations carry great weight.

This book is a collection of Mar Gregorios’s occasional writings about the various Orthodox Churches and Orthodoxy in general. The names of certain incumbents of office and some of the statistical data regarding the Churches have changed. An effort has been made by us to update them, but such data keep changing in living communities. The value of the book then consists in the historical surveys and perceptive remarks of Mar Gregorios regarding the life and witness of the Eastern Churches. With the new awareness among Western Christians unbroken heritage of the Christian Orient, this book provides a dependable, clear way forward.

- Fr. Dr. K. M. George

Contents

1. Introducing the Eastern Churches

2. The Orthodox Churches

3. How different is the Eastern Orthodox Church

4. The Orthodox Church and its two families

5. Different Eastern Orthodox Churches

6. The Oriental Orthodox Churches

7. What do the Orthodox believe?

8. Central Concerns of the Eastern Orthodox Church

9. The Ethnic Character of Orthodoxy.

10. Eccleciological issues concerning the relation of Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches