This session seeks to widen Jewish-Christian dialogue by considering how Orthodox exegetical traditions, liturgy, history, contemporary thought, and ongoing political experience, especially in the Middle East, can and should affect not only Orthodox Christianity’s own relationship to Jews and Judaism, but also its relationship to Jewish-Christian dialogue more broadly.
Using unpublished archives from the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva and the Orthodox Center of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Chambésy, this paper relates the history of Orthodox Christianity’s initial entrance into and ongoing place in Jewish-Christian dialogue. After briefly recounting the post-WWII origins of modern Jewish-Christian dialogue, from which Orthodox Christians were almost entirely absent, we examine the story of direct attempts by the WCC, primarily in the early 1970s, to fill the “Orthodox gap.” These attempts, however, generally failed, not because Orthodox representatives at the time were resistant to dialogue with Jews per se, but because they were resistant to pursuing such a dialogue with the same political and theological assumptions with which it had unfolded elsewhere. In fact, around the same time, Orthodox Christians, under the sponsorship of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, began their own bilateral relationship with Jews, outside of the auspices of the WCC. Surveying the history of these bilateral meetings, from their beginnings in 1976 to the most recent in 2022, this paper concludes with an analysis of what the “official” Orthodox Christian-Jewish bilateral relationship has thus far achieved and what it still lacks.
.
While Orthodox Christian-Jewish dialogue often and necessarily centres on elements of anti-Judaism within Christian preaching, teaching, and worship, this paper focuses on some of the enriching insights that can be gained through this engagement. This paper will address three broad themes: (1) the recovery of the full narrative of God and Israel — and a truer christotelic rather than a limited christocentric typology; (2) the illumination and deeper understanding of existing Orthodox Christian liturgical and faith practices through a Jewish perspective and interpretation; and (3) the retrieval of a more vital sense of living patristic tradition reflecting the dynamic “Talmudic” approach to seeking truth through dialogue, debate, and the application of heuristic methods. Through engagement and dialogue with the Jewish community, Orthodox Christians stand to gain fresh insights into the living tradition of the church, and rediscover neglected aspects of faith and practice.