A TURBULENT LEGACY

The Greek state was founded in 1830, after approximately 400 years during which the Greeks were subjugated to the Ottoman Turks. In modern times, therefore, theology in Greece had developed under political conditions of occupation and under the influence, broadly speaking, of two intellectual factors. On one hand it had inherited the multi-faceted and creative theology of the Greek Fathers which had dominated the Christian East for twelve centuries before the fall of the empire. On the other, there was what Fr Georges Florovsky called the 'pseudomorphosis' of Orthodox theology: the gradual obscuring of its own criteria, and the influence, as early as the fifteenth century, of characteristics of Western theology such as legalism and an institutional understanding of the Church. These characteristics overshadowed the more existential character of Eastern theology.

These two factors in the shaping of Greek theology operated in parallel: sometimes one was in the ascendant, sometimes the other. The circumstances of Ottoman domination and the antagonisms between Christian confessions often made Orthodox theology defensive; this hampered its creativity, whether in engaging with new ideas or in developing themes already present in Eastern thought (e.g. the tension between mysticism and history, or the relationship between the authority of scripture and that of the Church Fathers).