Metropolitan Hilarion: the future of Orthodoxy depends on faithfulness to the church Tradition

Your Eminence, you are a theologian rightly recognized by the scientific communities both inside and outside Russia. In your view, what are the most acute theological problems facing the Orthodox Church as a whole today? Are there problems the solution to which really determines the future of Orthodoxy?




A. Today’s Orthodox Church preserves continuity with the apostolic Christian community and in this sense she is above all a Church of the Tradition. The future of Orthodoxy depends on faithfulness to the church Tradition – the tradition that the Church has preserved in diverse historical situations through centuries.


As opposed to some liberally-minded Christian communities, the Orthodox Church does not need any rethinking or re-interpretation of her doctrinal or moral teaching. And when ecclesiastical scholars, patrologists, historians, liturgists and representatives of other disciplines, in their studies encounter some problems, these problems do not concern doctrine as such but they are specific problems arising in any serious scholarship.


However, there is one really acute and pressing problem which is quite theological, that of church mission today. In this case it is a not a matter of church message, not what the Church preaches but what needs to be done to make church preaching intelligible and effective in today’s situation. Indeed, theology is not only an in-depth study of the meaning of the Church’s dogmatic and moral teaching. It is also a proclamation, a special way of proclaiming to the world and people the truths of the faith through various means. It is not without reason that Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople, a well-known defender of the veneration of icons, used the expression ‘the melody of theology’.


Today we face the task to find such ways of expressing the church teaching as to enable us to give account of our hope to those around us who are still far from the Church or those who are on the way to it.


A particular part of this task is the work on the Catechesis carried out today under the Synodal Biblical and Theological Commission.