First Things RSS Feed - Paul L. Gavrilyuk https://www.firstthings.com/author/paul-l-gavrilyuk en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:52:43 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/paul-l-gavrilyuk 60 The Future Pan-Orthodox Council: To Be or Not to Be? https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/01/the-future-pan-orthodox-council-to-be-or-not-to-be https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/01/the-future-pan-orthodox-council-to-be-or-not-to-be Fri, 22 Jan 2016 00:00:00 -0500 Over the last two years, the Patriarchate of Constantinople has repeatedly announced that the much anticipated Great and Holy Council will take place around the Feast of Pentecost in June 2016. When it happens, this Council will be an event of considerable historical import, bringing together the leaders of all Orthodox Churches for the first time since 787. Unfortunately, not all Orthodox leaders are equally enthusiastic about the Council and some are even trying to prevent it. Why is the idea of the Council so controversial? Who are the main players in this controversy? If the Council takes place, what might it achieve?

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]]> The President and the Patriarch https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/04/the-president-and-the-patriarch https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/04/the-president-and-the-patriarch Tue, 01 Apr 2014 00:02:00 -0400 Vladimir Putin, who after a sham “referendum” completed his aggressive seizure of Crimea, denies he has plans to invade Eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, he is increasing the number of troops on the Russian-Ukrainian border and sending provocateurs and criminals to incite ethnic tensions in Ukraine. At a minimum, Putin wants to destabilize Ukraine politically and use the ensuing disarray to manipulate the presidential elections, which are scheduled for May 2014. The worst-case scenario is that he wants to provoke a war to continue his “Eurasian” expansion. Whatever the case, the Russian Orthodox Church—less a handmaiden of Putin than commonly believed—must bear witness.

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]]> The Orthodox Renaissance https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/12/the-orthodox-renaissance https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/12/the-orthodox-renaissance Sat, 01 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0500 At the beginning of the twentieth century, those Westerners who knew about the Orthodox Church tended to think it exotic and theologically and culturally irrelevant. Orthodox theology was very little known and even less understood, and perhaps even less valued than understood. The Bolshevik Revolution changed this. By the direct order of Lenin, at the beginning of the 1920s, the leading Russian religious thinkers were exiled to the West. With the arrival in Western Europe of the leaders of what became known as the Russian Religious Renaissance on the “philosophy steamer” (since most of them traveled by sea) and the establishment of the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris in 1925, Orthodox émigré theologians began to speak with distinctive and recognizable, if at times discordant, voices in the West.

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