Introducing Eastern Orthodox theology

Preface

Introduction: who are the Eastern Orthodox?

1. Thinking and doing, being and praying: where do we start?

Standing before the mystery of God

Approaching theology

Encountering Christ

The Scriptures

Orthodox use of the Scriptures

The Fathers, Councils, liturgical prayer

2. Who is God? The doctrine of the Holy Trinity

Who is Christ?

God as the One to whom we pray

… using the words he himself has given us

God as Trinity

Prayer and the Trinity

The Holy Spirit

The dogma of the Trinity

The Trinity and the apophatic

Coinherence and love in the Trinity

The fundamental nature of the apophatic

3. The doctrine of creation

The early Christian doctrine of creation

Creation out of nothing

Essence and energies

Logoi of creation

Sophiology

Angels and demons

4. Who is Christ?

Christ and the Gospels

Christ and the resurrection

Christ and the apostolic witness

Death and Christ's voluntary passion

Christ and prayer

The dogma of Christ

The Christology of the Councils

5. Sin, death and repentance

Repentance and Christ

Beauty and disorder

Human kind and the Fall

Death and sin

Adam and ancestral sin

Sin and the cosmos

Ancestral sin and evolution

Adam and Eve … and repentance

6. Being human - being in the image of God

The doctrine of the image of God

The image of God in the Fathers

Image and logos

Image and Christ

Person and community

The Church - one and many

Sobornost' and the Church

7. Sacraments and icons: the place of matter in the divine economy

Christian materialism

Mystery or sacrament?

Images and symbols

Seven sacraments?

The sacramental structure of the Church

The sacramental shape of human life

Sacramental symbolism

Symbolism and sacramental transformation

Icons

Icons and the 'in-between'

The icon and the face

Icons and the Mother of God

Icons and prayer

8. Time and the liturgy

Theology and participation

Participation and the divine liturgy

Time and space - cycles of change

The Church Year - cycles of time

Cycles - of meaning or unmeaning

The symbolism of the liturgy

Liturgical dance

9. Where are we going? The last things and eternal life

Eucharist as eschatology

Universal eschatology

Individual eschatology

Problems in eschatology

The nature of the resurrection body

Universal salvation

A guide to further reading

Index