3 February, 2025
We are deeply honoured to welcome The Very Reverend Professor John McGuckin, the Nielsen Emeritus Professor of Early Christian and Byzantine Church History at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University, to lead a session of the Eastern Christianity in Interfaith Contexts Reading Group.
Here are the details of this fascinating event.
Title: Byzantine Aristocrat, Monk, Mystic and Dissident: Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022)
Abstract: The lecture, on one of the most intriguing and political mystics of the Christian church, comes in tandem with the speaker’s soon-to-be-released translation text and commentary on Symeon’s renowned ‘Hymns of Divine Eros” (SVS Press. New York 2025). It was designed, albeit somewhat late, to mark the saint’s millennial anniversary (2022). The talk aims to give an introduction to the life and turbulent times of this aristocrat-turned-monk and his longstanding clash with emperor Basil II (Bulgaroktonos), with a short notice of the several poetic accounts of luminous visions of Christ recorded in the Hymns of Divine Eros. Symeon’s writings had little effect on his contemporaries, but received a great stimulus of interest from the 18th century Philokalic movement, and have become an important factor in contemporary Orthodox spirituality.
Speaker: The Very Reverend Professor John McGuckin is the Nielsen Emeritus Professor of Early Christian and Byzantine Church History at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University, USA.
Speaker’s Biography: The Very Reverend Professor John McGuckin is a Senior Fellow of Radboud University Nijmegen and Emory University School of Law, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the Theological Faculty at Oxford University. Fr. John is an Archpriest of the Romanian Patriarchate’s Archdiocese of Western Europe. He is the author of many volumes of studies on Patristics, Early Church History and Byzantine Orthodox spirituality.
Chair: Professor Sebastian Brock, FBA, University of Oxford, UK.
Date: 3 February, 2025
Time: 17:00-18:00 GMT | 9:00-10:00 PT | 12:00-13:00 ET
Venue: online
If you would like to join the Eastern Christianity in Interfaith Contexts Reading Group, please sign up here.
Some of The Very Reverend Professor John McGuckin’s Publications:
Related Sessions:
- Heavenly Hours: Creation and Time in the Syriac Testament of Adam
- Byzantine Aristocrat, Monk, Mystic and Dissident: Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022)
- The Monastic Homilies of Isaac of Antioch
- Christian Trees
- Dialogue and Fire in a Fragmentary Syriac Martyrdom Narrative
- The Origins of the First Anti-Jewish Good Friday Hymns
- Finding a Home: The West Syriac Context of the Clementine Epistles on Chastity
- Who was Mary, the Blessed Virgin and Mother of God? A Byzantine hagiographical narrative by the ninth-century Monk Epiphanios
- Nikos Kazantzakis and Orthodox Christianity
- The Miracle of Pilgrimage: A Coptic Journey to the Holy Land During the Ottoman Period
- Setting the Stage: The Rose of Performance in Studying Late Ancient Hymnody
- Ephrem the Syrian and a New Beginning in Syriac Poetry
- A Jew Reads the Gospels in Syriac: Azariah de Rossi’s Critique of the Vulgate (1577)
- The Manuscript Project at the Coptic Monastery of St Paul the Hermit at the Red Sea, Egypt
- Mary’s Ordeal: A Syriac Narrative Poem on Many and Joseph
- Resurrection of the Human Body according to John of Dara’s Mimro I:4
- Gregory of Nyssa: On the Human Image of God
- ‘Conception by ear’ and Redemption of the Human Sensorium in Ephrem’s Thirty-fifth Madrasha on the Church
- From Edessa to South Arabia and Back: The Syriac Story of Bishop Paul and Priest John and Models of Sanctity in the Medieval Middle East
- Wrestling with Calculating-Thoughts: Mental Training according to Evagrius of Pontus
- Returning the Ticket: God and Evil in the Brothers Karamazov
- Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras: an Orthodox Dialogue with Islam
- Matta el-Meskin/Matthew the Poor: a ‘Contemporary Desert Father’ on Christian Unity
- Signs of Miraculousness: The Inimitability of Jacob of Serugh’s Teaching
- Epistolary Style in Coptic Letters from the Late Third Century to the Early Fifth Century
- Sarah and the Akedah: a Syriac Narrative Poem on Genesis 22
- The Paterik of the Kyivan Caves Monastery: Monk Polikarp in Discourse 14
- Jacob of Sarug on the Canaanite Woman (Mt 15:21-28, Mk 7:24-30): Biblical Storytelling and Models of Faith
- Commemorating the saints at Turfan: Mart Shir and Mar Barshabba
- The Opening Prayers of Saint Gregory of Narek’s Book of Lamentations
- Alexander Schmemann on Theotokos vis-à-vis Kali a Hindu Mother Goddess
- Enoch and the Fallen Angels in the Ethiopian Tradition
- Narsai on the Virgin Mary
- An Anonymous Syriac Dialogue between Mary and the Angel
- Dadisho of Qatar: Questioning the Desert Fathers
- George the Athonite on Matters of Faith and Rite, According to the Life of St George the Hagiorite
- Temple, Shekhinah and Prayer in Isaac of Nineveh’s III.VIII
- St. Ephrem’s Commentary on Genesis Ch.3
