Eastern Christian Ecclesiology

This course explores not only Orthodox (both Byzantine and non-Chalcedonian) understandings of the Church but also the singular perspectives and experience of the Eastern Catholic Churches whose very nature as “Uniate” bodies poses questions of ecumenical and ecclesiological import. Special attention will be paid to controverted issues of conciliar and papal authority and primacy, the rise of synodality in the Catholic world, and the problematic relationship between nationalism and ecclesial structures. Sources for the course will run on parallel tracks: official (in a Catholic context: “magisterial”) documents on ecclesiology and ecumenism from both Orthodox and Catholic sources; official documents of bilateral and multilateral regional and international ecumenical dialogues; and published scholarship from academics of these traditions.