There can be no ghetto mentality within Orthodox theology. Theology which contents itself with speaking to a closed group, or which happily ignores intellectual trends outside its own ambit, or, still worse, which adopts an abusive attitude to those ‘outside’ its group (especially if they are ‘western’) to that extent adopts an anti-Trinitarian mode of being. In so doing, it turns away from Christ, and so loses touch with the principle of its own theological life, thus forfeits its identity as theology, and certainly fails to be Orthodox theology. Just as truly personal, communal and kenotic prayer is for the whole world, and disregards all badges or labels, so Orthodox theology must explicitly concern itself with that which lies beyond the walls of the Orthodox academy. All Orthodox theology must have a concern for that which lies outside the Church in the world.
Nonetheless, whilst all theology must be concerned with what lies outside the Church, there can be no theology which is outside the Church. The theologian can only draw his or her life from the eschatological Christ, and theological speech is an eschatological ek-stasis and witness which attempts to stand outside all the pettiness and smallness of the world we live in at the moment and speak to that world from the vantage point of the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom which is tasted and shared in in the Church.
Alan Brown
