Marriage as the Arena of Salvation : An Ecclesiological Study of the Marital Regulation in the Canons of the Council in Trullo

Despite the importance of canon law in the life of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, there has not been a study of the ecclesiology of the canons regulating marriage. Marriage is an object of right regulated both by civil law and the canon law of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Marriage as an object of right is at the intersection of two legal orders - the ecclesial and the civil. The canonical regulation of marriage as an object of right confronts us with a twofold ecclesiological problem: (a) how does the Church perceive the civil legal order in relation to its own legal order; and, (b) how is the self-understanding of the Church, i.e. its ecclesiology, reflected in its canon law? Thus, the ecclesiological problem examined in this study is the question of how the ecclesial polity (politeuma), as the Eucharistic ekklēsia of the people (laos) of the new covenant, actualizes itself as taxis within a concrete society. The hypothesis is that the aim of the ecclesial polity is covenant holiness, and, furthermore, that the aim of the canonical taxis is to establish and maintain covenant holiness within the concrete socio-historical setting of the ecclesial polity. By actualization, this means the diachronic institutional process whereby the ecclesial polity subsists in a society as an institution determined by its finality and institutional potentiality

Receiving the non-Orthodox: A historical study of Greek Orthodox canon law

This article analyzes the development of the practice for receiving non-Orthodox in Greek Orthodox canon law. The main argument is that the development of this canonical institution was influenced by a pneumatological realist ecclesiology. This historical study of the development of a canonical institution will shed light on how Greek Orthodox canon law has functioned in practice

Free will and the human act in seventeenth century Eastern Orthodox theology

This article analyses the doctrine of free will (autexousion) in the confessions of St. Peter Mogila and Dositheos II Notaras of Jerusalem. Free will is a central concept in Eastern Christian anthropology and these two monuments of theology represent how the understanding of the concept of free will developed in Eastern Orthodox theology in the context of the confrontation with Western theologies in the seventeenth century

The Rudder of the Church : A Study of the Theory of Canon Law in the Pedalion

This thesis is a study of the theology of canon law in the Pedalion. The Pedalion (Πηδάλιον: ”rudder”) is a famous Greek Orthodox collection of canon law. It was printed in Leipzig 1800 by permission of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. St. Nikodemos Hagioreites and Agapios Leonardos were the authors. What is the theoretical foundation of canon law according to the Pedalion? How is the law in force found according to the Pedalion? How is canon law used according to the Pedalion

Isidore of Seville

Isidore bishop of Seville was one of the most representative and influential intellectuals of the early Middle Ages. He devoted his life to the idea of transforming the Visigothic Realm (converted to the Catholicism in 589) in a Christian respublica. In realising this ideal, Spanish church needed to persuade the secular (Gothic) elites to join the project. The construction of a common cultural background was therefore a fundamental step and Isidore’s impressive literary production can be understood under this awareness. His most famous work – the Etymologies: a sort of encyclopaedia in 20 books – is the attempt to present all human knowledge in an exposition that was at once coherent and accessible. It became an indispensable reading also for those people who were interested in studying law. Isidore moves well within the tradition of Roman law but he has no compunction from deviating from (and renewing) that. He was not a jurist, nonetheless he gave some original and important contributions to the theory of law (relaunching the ideal of ‘the two laws’ and underlining the necessary ethical foundation of any power) and to the construction of a functional and coherent model of judicial procedure which could be used by both ecclesiastical and secular courts