Metropolitan Theodoritos of Laodicea (Polyzogopoulos), Director of the Office of Representation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Athens, spoke to To Vima recently about the role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the contemporary world. In this interview he also spoke about his recent book Theological Portraits of the Twentieth Century: Studies and Essays on the Renewal of Orthodox Theology (Armos, 2026), where he gave a brief summary of the development of Greek Orthodox theology in the 20th century and its role in the 21st century.
How does the objective of these academic lectures relate to the undertaking of your recent book, "Theological Portraits of the Twentieth Century: Studies and Essays on the Renewal of Orthodox Theology" (Armos, 2026)?
I studied Theology in Thessaloniki in the early 1980s, a period of flourishing in Theology, when students engaged in intense discussions and journals such as Synaxis, which was being published for the first time, appeared and were eagerly read by us from cover to cover.
The lecture halls were full, and the most interesting discussions took place during the intervals between lectures. In other words, there was no empty time; it was always filled with discussions, people, and groups of friends.
Behind all these things, then, lay an effort that had begun primarily in the 1960s, when important theological monographs and dissertations suddenly began to appear, charting new paths.
Patristic texts began to be published in scholarly editions, but popular editions also appeared, and we rediscovered the art of iconography.
All these developments shaped an era in which we were discovering unprecedented things within this Orthodox theological heritage.
Now, as one grows older, one can broaden the picture somewhat and say that it was not only the 1960s; all these developments also had other underlying conditions.
Thus, we find that, in our own Greek context, an important generation emerged during the interwar period, with distinguished professors such as Amilkas Alivizatos, Panagiotis Trembelas, and Ioannis Karmiris, who began to change the climate of theological studies in Greece, at the Athens School, where the only School of Theology was then located.
From a peripheral, confessional-type school, which followed the models of European universities, particularly German ones—and did so with a considerable time lag—the foundations began to be laid for an Orthodox Theology that was open and engaged in dialogue, incorporating research from universities abroad.
This was a theology that sought to liberate us from a colonial-type understanding of theological scholarship in a peripheral country such as Greece.
All this fostered an outward-looking orientation, which Professor Amilkas Alivizatos, in particular, gave concrete expression to by organizing the first major Pan-Orthodox Congress in Athens in 1936. He had been preparing it for approximately ten years, since the late 1920s.
For the first time, Orthodox theologians from various countries gathered in Athens, and at this congress the question of the identity of Orthodox Theology was raised for the first time. By then, Orthodoxy had already received, consciously or unconsciously, numerous influences from Western theology, beginning in the period of Ottoman rule, or, in the case of Russia, from the time of Peter the Great.
We had reached the point—and one can see this in the famous Confessions of Faith of the seventeenth century—where Orthodox Christians were adopting their way of doing theology, their arguments, and their method entirely from the Western Christian tradition.
And there emerged the paradoxical phenomenon of our having a confessional spirit as Orthodox Christians that was exhausted simply in confronting Roman Catholics with Protestant arguments and criteria, and Protestants with arguments of a Roman Catholic type. In other words, somewhere along the way we had lost our own identity and self-awareness of our own tradition. Even Orthodoxy itself was being defined in a Western manner.
And here one can see that our difficulty lay in fruitfully receiving the modern spirit that was coming from the West.
So we “threw ourselves headlong into it”; we took it in without assimilating it. For this reason, the patristic tradition and thought, the great heritage that Byzantium had given us through the synthesis of Hellenism and Christianity, came to be regarded as secondary.
Thus, in Athens in 1936, this demand and the need to rediscover Orthodox self-awareness were brought to the fore. Father George Florovsky, who was present in Athens at the time as a young man, spoke of the “Babylonian Captivity of Orthodoxy in the West.”
The expression, of course, had a Western origin, since it had been used, on the one hand, for the period during which the Pope had been transferred to Avignon under the influence of the power of the French king (1309–1377), while Luther had spoken of the “Babylonian Captivity in Rome” when he began the Reformation.
Father Florovsky, however, was someone who followed developments in the inter-Christian sphere. He was not a traditional theologian who wanted us to shut ourselves away in our shell.
He wanted us to open ourselves up and become acquainted with our tradition, but in a way that remained open and engaged in dialogue with all other Christians in the contemporary world.
This movement came to be called the “neo-patristic synthesis.” More than anything else, it was a vision and an effort to bring the great heritage of the theology of the Greek Fathers of the Church up to date.
It gradually began to take shape, first in the diaspora abroad. In Greece, this development was delayed because of the circumstances following 1936: the Metaxas dictatorship, the Occupation, the Second World War, Liberation, and the Civil War.
Only in the 1960s did a golden age begin for Greek society as a whole. Everything flourished: theater, literature, in which we had two Nobel Prizes, letters, the arts, modern Greek cinema, and so on.
And during this decade, the first cracks also appeared in a theology that had until then been on autopilot and was purely academic.
Things began to change then, and this development entered the university, both in Thessaloniki, which had begun to have a serious School of Theology as early as the 1950s, and in Athens.
We witnessed a kind of return to tradition, but also a kind of opening toward the world. My conclusion, therefore, is that the twentieth century was a rich century theologically.
Consequently, it was important for me to show which individuals played leading roles through their work, what they wrote, why they wrote it, how they engaged in dialogue, what problems they encountered, and what gaps, ruptures, and discontinuities can be observed along this course. For things were not all rosy from the beginning.
It is a course that contains remarkable moments of theological discourse, but also ruptures and problems. I wanted to show these things so that the study of the great moments of theology in Greece would be complete.
For this reason, I did not limit myself to Greek theologians. Since this entire movement also took place in the inter-Orthodox sphere, with the Russian theologians of the diaspora as its principal contributors, such as Father George Florovsky, I have included certain figures from the Russian diaspora, as well as representatives from both Athens and Thessaloniki.
I conclude the twentieth century, above all, with four theologians of the generation of the 1960s: Nikos Nissiotis, Christos Yannaras, Ioannis Zizioulas, and Panagiotis Nellas. This opens the curtain on the twenty-first century.
New Theological Movements and Trends in the Twenty-First Century
Are there new theological movements and trends in the twenty-first century?
Many theologians, especially among those I have just mentioned, have influenced the younger generations of theologians who are active at the transition between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
In the twenty-first century, we have new movements in our theology, which is more open and has new tools, means of communication, and publications that have changed the landscape.
New problems are also emerging, however. Whereas in the twentieth century we had broader syntheses that led to renewal, we now also have movements returning to more closed and self-sufficient frameworks, associated with an intolerance of dialogue and of what is new.
The movement of returning to tradition and the popularization of patristic theology also gave rise to problematic situations, such as a rigid attachment to the letter of the patristic texts and a difficulty in interpreting the patristic tradition in a way that is relevant to the present day.
That is, we must embody it anew and carry out the process of inculturation of the patristic tradition. In other words, we must transfer it from a cultural climate that prevailed almost until the Fall of Constantinople into another sphere, such as that of modernity.
Another related problem is that we often embellish tradition and idealize it. Instead of functioning in the present, we enter a time capsule and travel back into the past. Another problem is the ethnocentric character that has developed in many theological movements.
It is true that Orthodoxy was often shaped together with the people through liberation movements. Today, however, an excessively ethnophyletist approach often prevails, combined with a bureaucratic ecclesiology.
Moreover, although we claim to the West that the Orthodox Church is the Church of the councils, conciliarity does not permeate every level, down to the bishopric and the parish. There is a problem with the position of the laity, and women in particular.
A new generation of theologians has therefore been emerging over the past thirty years, seeking to develop a critical and interventionist theological discourse in an effort to bring together postwar theological discourse and the social and cultural conditions of our own era. One theological movement concerns the prophetic manner in which Christian eschatology is called to be interpreted.
We move from liturgical and ascetic life into contemporary historical, social, political, and cultural conditions in order to see what the prophetic witness of the Church in the world means.
The Need for a Synthesis between the Bible and the Fathers, Therapeutic and Eucharistic Ecclesiology, Institution and Charisma, Ontology and Ethics
Which Syntheses Are Most Necessary in the Present Age?
Today, there are theological tendencies that are more biblical and others that are more patristic, and these stand in tension with one another. A synthesis is being sought, since the Fathers of the Church were interpreters of the Bible.
A synthesis is also being sought between the therapeutic and Eucharistic approaches within the Church, as well as between institution and charisma. Of particular interest is missionary theology through intercultural dialogue, as well as what is called the “return of ethics,” understood as a connection with a theology of responsibility.
The dialogue between Orthodoxy and the sciences is also important, as is its dialogue with cinema, literature, and contemporary forms of thought.
We are moving beyond a culturalism of closed identities and understand identity as something that engages in dialogue and is continually enriched and brought up to date.
A similar open identity of Orthodoxy, engaged in dialogue in the twenty-first century, can encounter the person living in adversity, who is a citizen of the world and not of a local and limited tradition.
The book, therefore, is addressed primarily to the young theologians of the twenty-first century and to the younger generations, seeking to remedy a deficiency in historical memory.
The book does not say, “Look how great the twentieth century was; that is where we must return.” Rather, its purpose is for us to take up a thread and continue it in our own era.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
