ORTHODOX CANONICAL TRADITION AND CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES
It goes beyond any doubt that the Canons, along with the Bible and doctrinal and synodical definitions, constitute a central pillar in the life and tradition of the Church, but without predetermining it. One can say, without exaggeration that these three realities constitute the foundation upon which the Church marched through the centuries. The canons reflect and record the living experience of the ecclesial body, while in many cases they orientate it in overcoming or resolving issues which arise in its course through history toward the eschata.
Orthodox theology has often been described as traditional, due to its commitment to the patristic and canonical tradition. This tradition is not an external factor which simply separates it from the diverse traditions of this world, but it is primarily a form of identification, the vehicle by which it moves within the linear time of history and which attempts to address the challenges of each era, seeking to offer salvation in the troubled man. However in this same era of rapid change - i.e. late modernity, globalization and multiculturalism - Orthodoxy is today confronted with radically new anthropological and social challenges that were hitherto unknown and completely different from what it has experienced in its past, challenges that bring into doubt and undermine any confidence and self-sufficiency (as also happens with all traditional structures and forms of organization of life).
Faced with this new reality, the Orthodox theology, instead of coming into a fruitful dialogue with the world and increasingly secularized society, often chooses to fold upon itself, to adhere to forms and expressions of the past, which although do not express so much the apostolic kerygma and the patristic faith, but rather the spirit and habits of a certain, usually pre-modern era, however they are used as the ultimate criterion of its soteriological dialogue with the present and the future world.Like any patristic text, each rule is derived from a particular era and reflects, apart from the temporal salvific experience of the Church, the cross-sectional characteristics of the place and time of its issue, thus forming a plethora of canonical canons in need of interpretation. To the extent that this is true, there is a need for the texts of the tradition (Fathers and canons) to form part of an interpretive process that clarifies that which belongs to the core of doctrinal truth, in other words that which explains and faithfully expresses the apostolic kerygma, and that which simply perpetuates or transfers in the present, characteristics of the wider cultural reality, which constitutes the external form - not always the best or final – of the truth, and not the truth itself. The central question to be posed is whether it is inherently possible for Orthodox theology as far as it concerns its canonical tradition, to function not only as a traditional theology, staying steadfastly true to the letter of an alleged ‘tradition’, but surpassing also as a contextual one, the coordinates of a pre-modernist worldview, which is irrevocably past for the time of the Church. In this case, when the Orthodox Church reflects honestly and without preconceptions on the various aspects of its tradition, highlighting all the elements that witness primarily to the mystery of Christ and interpret the magnalia Dei, in the continuing until today history of salvation, thus overcoming all the cultural loans that no longer serve in the desired dialogue with the post-modern man, it is only then that Orthodoxy’s kerygma will be received again by the people, who often expect consolation, hope and salvation, and not an aphoristic and denouncing reason that distorts the deeper spirit of the canons. The question, therefore, is to what point, in the prestige that surrounds them, these canons keep their existential dynamics, to meet the demands of the increasingly changing world. Keeping in mind this problematic reality we ought to reflect on this and a series of other related issues, added to the core of this central question, which related to the theological and soteriological relevance of the canons for the Church life.
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