The two lectures and special seminar, sponsored by the Virginia H. Farah Foundation (www.farahfoundation.org ), and organized by the Volos Academy for Theological Studies, were warmly received February 19-22 in Volos and Athens.
    Fr. John Behr, is the Dean of St. Vladimir's Seminary (Crestwood, NY), where he teaches Patristics, Dogmatics and Scriptural exegesis. He is also the Distinguished Lecturer in Patristics at Fordham University (NY).
    Fr. John hails from England, though his family background is Russian and German - and clerical on both sides. After completing his first degree in Philosophy in London in 1987, Fr. John spent a year studying in Greece. He finished an M.Phil. in Eastern Christian Studies at Oxford University, under Bishop Kallistos (Ware), who subsequently supervised his doctoral work, which was examined by Fr. Andrew Louth and Rowan Williams, now Archbishop of Canterbury. While working on his doctorate, he was invited to be a Visiting Lecturer at St Vladimir's Seminary in 1993, where he has been a permanent faculty member since 1995, tenured in 2000, and ordained in 2001. Before becoming Dean in 2007, he served as the editor of St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly, and he still edits the Popular Patristics Series for SVS Press. His publications include among others: Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity, Christian Theology in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), Becoming Human: Meditations on Christian Anthropology in Word and Image (Crestwood, NY, SVS Press, 2013), St Athanasius: On the Incarnation, translation and introduction, Popular Patristics Series (Crestwood, NY, SVS Press, 2011), The Case Against Diodore and Theodore: Texts and Their Contexts, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2006), The Nicene Faith,vol. 2 of The Formation of Christian Theology (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2004). 2 τ

highlight the theological and soteriological relevance of the death of Christ and its anthropological implications. According to the speaker, today, in a very real sense, we no longer see death: we don't live with it, as an ever-present reality, as has every generation of human beings before us. If it is true that Christ shows us what it is to be God in the way that he dies as a human being, then, quite simply, if we no longer "see" death, we no longer see the face of God.

    The theme of the seminar (in English) that was held in Athens (February, 22, in the Arcadia Studies Center) was "The Apocalypse of the Cross: The Gospel of John and the Beginning of Christian Theology". In the seminar apart from the main speaker, short position papers were read by Dr Christos Karakolis, Associate Professor of New Testament in the Faculty of Theology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece), and Member of the Board of Directors of the Volos Academy, and Dr. Alexis Torrance, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Pastoral and Social Theology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Visiting Scholar at the Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame.
    In the key-note seminar lecture an attempt was made by Fr Behr to outline the structure and the framework of Apocalyptic as the starting point of the Christian theology (cf. the notion of mystery etc.), as well as (based mainly on the Prologue of the Gospel of John) to discuss some basic issues of theology through this apocalyptic perspective (i.e. the relationship between 'history of salvation' and Economy etc.).
    This seminar was attended, among others, by professors of the Theological Faculty of the University of Athens, researchers, postgraduate and doctoral students, and many more. The Volos Academy for Theological Studies will arrange for the publication of the texts in both Greek and English.

    For more photos, click here .

    In order to read the abstracts of Fr Behr's papers please click below:

    Dying to Live. The Role of Death in Life and Becoming Human - Abstract in english
 
    " The Apocalypse of the Cross: The Gospel of John and the Beginning of Christian Theology" - Abstract in english 

To see the video from the digital channel intv.gr, click here .