Summary of online lecture
Aristotle Papanikolaou
“FOR THE LIFE OF THE WORLD”:
THE SOCIAL ETHOS OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH
The fifth lecture of the ongoing series of events “The Liturgy after the Liturgy” took place on Thursday, February 27, 2025, co-organized by the Academy of Theological Studies of Volos, the Holy Metropolis of France and the Vicariate of French-Speaking Parishes (Vicariate of Sainte Marie of Paris and Alexis d’Ugine, Ecumenical Patriarchate). The speaker was Aristotle Papanikolaou (Professor of Theology, Archbishop Demetrios Chair in Orthodox Theology and Culture, Co-founding Director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University), who presented the topic “ ‘For the Life of the World’: The Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church”. The event was moderated by Magdalene Thoma, Writer, PhD in Philology, Research Associate of Volos Academy.
Dr. Papanikolaou compared the spiritual life to the exercise of athletes, while he used also the model of the practice and the continuous work of artists, who always strive inspired by the earlier traditions in order to improve their work. Ethics, in this way, appears as a fine, noble art, and not as a set of restrictions and rules. “To learn to love as God loves, practice is needed. This love does not manifest itself without effort, and the great saints of our Tradition know it very well.” The Orthodox Tradition, as a continuation of the Apostolic Tradition, offers a way of practice that initiates us into love. The recent text published by the Patriarchate highlights exactly this capability of transformation, offered by Christ through his Incarnation, his Death and his Resurrection, and emphasizes the possibility of realizing this transformation inside the world in which we live, with all the challenges it includes. The text offers an alternative way of understanding the human being, and proposes a new perspective, which seeks the good in the “other”, even when this “other” does not embrace our faith. It is a vision proclaiming that while the Kingdom of God “is not of this world,” we can live in such a way as to depict the Kingdom right now, in the world that surrounds us.
In the discussion that followed, the question of human freedom of choice was raised as a moral stance in accordance with the Orthodox spirit, while there was further discussion on the timely character of the text of the Patriarchate, which responds to the needs of our time, without deviating from the principles of Orthodox tradition.
The video recording of the event is available in the YouTube channel of the Academy, https://youtu.be/seZKA_kGdGw .
