Perspectief 2015-29

2015-29 An Eastern Orthodox Reaction 33 Reag eer fails to make a clear distinction between legitimate diversity (constituted by different local customs and traditions, and cultural and historical factors) and divisions, schisms, and heresies, as it also fails to consider to which extent the current multiple fragmentation and blakanization of Christianity is connected to cultural and historical factors, in other words to draw a line between legitimate diversity and illegitimate fragmentations, divisions, schisms, and heresies. These last remarks are of great significance for ecumenical discussion, and especially for the mutual recognition of the churches, and for the recption and the further discussion of the convergence text itself, since some churches involved in ecumenical dialogue—among themmy own church—are often confusing diversity with heresy, and unity with uniformity, refusing thus not only to recognize or to accept the ecclesiality of other Christian churches, but even to discuss the agreed ecumenical documents openly in synodal instances, in theological schools and seminaries or among the faithful. This is especially strange since officially mandated Orthodox theologians took part in the drafting of these documents. Thus, it is not by chance that the 2005 document on The Nature and the mission of the Church was not discussed among the Orthodox, and it needed an Inter-Orthodox consulation hosted in March 2011 in the diocese of Agia Napa, Cyprus, and sponsored by WCC, in order for the Orthodox to respond to this “Faith and Order” document. Similarly, up to this day, as far as I know, there is not any Orthodox response to the 2012 convergence text. How to explain this paradoxical and confusing situation? How to reconcile the important and decisive role played by the Orthodox in the emergence of the ecumenical movement, with the current difficulties with, and even, in some cases, inertia from the Ecumenical movement, when we realize that despite the institutional participation of almost all canonical autocephalous Orthodox churches in the ecumenical movement and their fruitful and constructive contribution in many crucial issues; despite the leading role of distinguished Eastern Orthodox theologians as Fr. Georges Florovsky, Nikos Nissiotis, or Metropolitan John D. Zizioulas of Pergamon in promoting ecumenical understanding and World,” Orthodoxy in Conversation. Orthodox Ecumenical Engagements , Geneva/Brookline, MA: WCC Publications /Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000, pp. 127-150.