Our personhood is an ontological reality, not a philosophical construct subject to a manipulation that justifies all types of dehumanization. Personhood is deeper than what desire, rationality, or biology can explain. It is an essential mystery expressed in the longing and realization of communion with a loving Creator.
What do we mean when we speak of the Orthodox theological task in America today? It is proper to begin with this question because the title of my paper may seem to suggest a theological orientation of which Orthodoxy is suspicious, but which seems to predominate in the West today. It is the reduction of theology to a given “situation” or “age,” a stress on “relevance” understood almost exclusively as a dependence of theology, its task, method and language on the “modern man” and his specifically modern “needs.”
