In the past two decades, official entities of the Eastern Orthodox Church have released two documents with implications for the inclusion of people with disabilities in the life and educational pursuits of the church. In 2008, the Russian Orthodox Church released a statement whose ambiguous treatment of the doctrine of the imago Dei runs the risk of having an alienating effect upon people with disabilities. In 2009, the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America released a document that honors those with disabilities. This article examines how each document views the image of God and its ramifications for people with disabilities within the church. I argue that the theology of imago Dei in these documents differs, resulting in conflicting views of people with disabilities. To resolve these discrepancies, the Orthodox Church should continue to develop and express its theological arguments regarding the imago Dei and its significance for all people.

Panentheism is the position that the world is in some sense ‘in’ God, and God ‘in’ the world, without the world being identical to God. Thus, it tries, like what I call mainstream theism and against pantheism, to protect the transcendence of God, while giving greater emphasis to his immanence in creation than the former. I aim to explicate an approach that I call Orthodox Panentheism. The word ‘orthodox’ is to be read in two ways. First, the picture is derived from the writings of some of the most important figures in Eastern Christian thought, so that it is Orthodox in the ‘big “O” sense’. Second, I hope to show that it is a legitimate Christian picture of the God–world relation which is both distinctive and worthy of being called ‘panentheism’ – an orthodox panentheism in the ‘little “o” sense’.