A Preamble
Recently finished Father Elia's book and I agree with some of the concepts such as his awareness of the dangers of creating cultural ghettos in the Orthodox world, the dangers of nationalism, and his argument for the benefits of cooperation and intercultural pluralism as a framework for Orthodox in the lands of immigration. His other suggestion of adapting to "Western modes" is a convincing one I think if one is considering the cultural milieu as one of technology and and dialogue and not necessarily 'religious'. However I think that this understanding of integration and pluralism will also require further thought, further studies and deeper awareness of what Orthodoxy is.
One of Fr. Elia's more convincing points is with the Protreptikos of St Basil, where the bees draw on the most beneficial components while rejecting the bad nectar. This understanding of recapitulation and of transformation is definately reflective of the historical ethos of the Church, but such an awareness is also dependent on the community's liturgical ethos and understanding of self as well as what is sweet and holy.
This suggests that for such model of pluralism to exist that Orthodox Church need to:
Again, I think Fr. Elias' book is quite well done and quite eloquently attempts to utilize modern social and post-modern and post-colonial theories to provide a framework of pluralism as a method of Orthodox encounter and mission in the Lands of Immigration. I would not necessarily agree with everything in his book and think that there's definitely more study and research to be done to build on and clarify what Fr. Elias has written about.
For example when Father Elias says "Orthodox intercultural process is essentially pluralist and integrationist" (Fr. Elias Bouboutsis, "Singing in a Strange Land: The Ancient Future of Orthodox Pluralism" [Massachusetts: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2010] 175) his argument is not a wholesale assimilation of Western modes (a danger he does point out when he mentions the loss of identity of the New Smyrna historical icon) but rather that Orthodoxy has always been able to encounter what is foreign and make those foreign elements holy, make what is "meet and right" communicate what is central to Orthodoxy's liturgical and eschatological ethos.
I would not think that Fr. Elias' thesis suggests a watering down of Orthodox Theology and Ethos, or an assimilation of the presuppositions of non-Orthodox or non-Christian methods, worldviews or beliefs.
For example in the case of hymnology, I would argue that Fr Elias' thesis suggests not a consumerist appropriation of the current western milieu, but rather that IF Orthodox sees benefit to appropriate such hymns it does so because the hymns deepen, enhance and resonate with the essence of the Liturgical Ethos and the Orthodox vision of Theosis.
Even more profound in terms of missiology, Orthodoxy doesn't just blindly appropriate what is foreign to its lex orandi est lex credendi , instead Orthodoxy takes the simple, the reduced, the packaged, the incomplete which may contain the seed of Truth and then beautifies that, illumines it, restores, expands it to its rightful glory. In the case of hymnology this suggests not the appropriation of heterodox hymns with lip service to an Orthodox hermeneutic, instead it suggests a wholescale transformation and infusing of Orthodox theology and liturgical life into those hymns which then draws the 'indigenous' culture into the pluralist and integrationist ascent and revelation of the Kingdom. Orthodoxy hymnology doesn't become conformist, Orthodox hymnology is transformational and does to music, what God does to man. Kenosis and Theosis are the movements of mission and of Christian life. The "peaceful spirit" that St Seraphim of Sarov speaks about and what St Cyril describes as the "Divine Life of the Holy Trinity" is the lens, vision, gift and reality of the Orthodox Church. We can only pray and live this out, this liturgy after the liturgy.
If Orthodoxy is to embrace what Fr. Elias is mentioning in his book it is with the Orthodox lens. Not a triumphalism, rigorist moralism, or a liberal assimilation, but an authentic metanoia, a humble and love filled revelation of the Theathropic kenotic movement of the Body of Christ that brings both Cross and Resurrection and the Divine Life to all nations.
I think Fr Elias' book may shock some traditionalists and I think the same implications may surprise and shock the liberal pro-Western, pro-Protestant, pro-Secularist believer. If the book can be understood as a continuation of modern Orthodox thought about the rejection of the "separation of the sacred and profane" and within the movements of the Divine Liturgy and the encounter with the weakest and poorest of our society, then I think Fr Elias has contributed greatly to the dialogue and work of the Orthodox Church in North America and the West. For Orthodoxy's ability to bring to focus beauty and bring man to God is embedded fully in our liturgical ethos which is as Fr Elias suggests, adaptive, intergrative, pluralist and able to restore all that it encounters.
As Fr Elias writes:
As you read the Excerpts from the Protreptikos please keep this in mind and please pray for the life of the World and for the Orthodox Church.
Glory to the Holy Trinity.
Some Background on the Protreptikos
"Basil the Great is generally thought to have authored the fourth century Protreptikos in an effort to provide a guiding method for his adolescent nieces and nephews as they worked their way through a classical Hellenic education...
...what Basil did with that education was far more important than the mere attainment thereof. Basil’s ‘fluency’ in classical Hellenism equipped him equally for the work of transformation, transculturation, and indeed, of subversion. Using an ‘immanent critique,’ the Cappadocian systematically deconstructed, Christianized, and then reconstructed the entire edifice of Greek thought...
...visible both throughout the Basilian corpus and in the Protreptikos itself, is the Cappadocian’s treatment of ‘Neoplatonism.’ Particularly in the East, this was the ruling cultural, philosophical, and religious doctrine of the period, and was certainly the focus of much attention in Basil’s own education. Importantly, he did not reject outright this blend of Greco-Platonic and Asiatic philosophies, but neither did he adopt its doctrines of the ‘One’s’ unitive emanations without a keen critical selectivity. What he and his colleagues did was to transform that doctrine. In the words of the great Russian emigrant theologian Georges Florovsky, he ‘did not so much adapt neoplatonism as overcome it’"
...the Cappadocian’s model teaches us not to feel threatened by the extra ecclesiam but to learn from it and to transfigure it."
Excerpts from the Protreptikos of St Basil the Great
A Contemporary Translation by Fr. Elias Bouboutsis
There are many things that move me, my sons and daughters, to offer these words of counsel. I set forth those things which I have discerned to be most excellent, and which, if you seek them out diligently, I am convinced shall most benefit you. Indeed, my life experience, specialized training, and moments of ‘conversion’ have taught me much about human nature itself. So it is that I can point the way to the ‘safest path’ to those who are just now embarking on their life’s work.
If you are able to embrace what I offer you here, you shall certainly be ranked among those commended—if secondarily—by the poet and historian Hesiod. Even if you are not able to embrace my words, there is nothing that I shall say here that is unprofitable. Remember Hesiod again: The finest are those who can ‘discern for themselves’ what is most profitable; the good are those who can follow the discernment of others; those, however, who can do neither remain altogether unprofited and unprofitable.
Do not, therefore, be surprised when I tell you that I have discerned something for myself, while as a student you daily must be formed by professors and converse with the writings of the ancients. In such studies I offer this strong counsel: Do not for a moment give over control of your mind to any instructor, following such wherever they may lead you. Rather, whatever you discern to be beneficial or profitable in their words, that is what you should embrace. The rest you may move through and beyond, or simply overlook. Now just how to discern between the profitable and the unprofitable is what I shall next endeavor to describe.
We must begin, my sons and daughters, by affirming that isolated and of itself alone, this world has no ultimate value. Indeed, we cannot speak of it as being an end in itself. We thus discern no great or valuable thing in either aristocratic breeding, bodily strength, physical attractiveness, fame and glory, or in any otherworldly value that can be proposed.
Nor do we stand in awe of those who possess such things. Rather, in hope we look far beyond such criteria, even to the life that is to come, and we make every preparation in anticipation of that life. So it is that we both love and pursue those things which help us to attain to that greater life. Similarly, those things which do not endure in the life that is to come, we move beyond as matters unworthy of brooding and preoccupied reflection.
Now, we are led to this greater life by the Holy Scriptures, which form us with truths that far transcend mere words. Yet since the span of our earthly lives may not give us time to fully comprehend their deeper meanings, we train the eyes of our souls in a way not unlike the training exercised by soldiers and athletes. Let us, however, be assured that before us lies the greatest contest of all—surely we must do all in our power to make every preparation for it.
We thus do well to converse with poets and scholars, with orators, and with all thinkers and writers through whom we might derive some cultivation of the soul. Just as artisans first prepare the surface that they are about to paint and then add color . . . so it is with us if we seek the enduring enjoyment of good things. Having been similarly prepared by the teachers of outward things to this point, we shall later become hearers of a sacred learning that transcends words. Having grown accustomed to beholding the sun reflected in the water, we shall ultimately be able to look upon the sun’s radiance itself.
Indeed, if there is any communion at all between diverse disciplines, then the knowledge of each can be beneficial to us. Alternatively, even if there is no communion between such, the very process of comparison shall be of value, as it teaches us how to go about the work of discernment.
Now once a sense of each discipline is obtained, how are we to arrive at a ‘picture’ of the differences between such? Well, even though the primary worth of any tree is dependent upon the quality of the fruit that it bears, the leaves that flutter on its branches also have worth, contributing both beauty and shelter to that tree. So it is with the soul of learning—its primary worth is dependent upon the truth that it contains, while its (hardly incompatible) ‘non-Christian wisdom’ contribute both beauty and shelter to that inner truth.
Consider, therefore, what is spoken of Moses, the one known to be the wisest of human teachers. Having first trained his mind in the arts and sciences of the Egyptians, he was thus able to approach ‘the contemplation of the One Who Is.’ So, too, it is said of Daniel the wise that only after he had mastered the Chaldean wisdom taught in Babylon, only then was he able to ‘touch’ the very teachings o f God and to be set aflame by them.
Certainly we have thus shown that non-Christian wisdom can indeed benefit the soul, so the way in which such wisdom should be acquired is the matter to which we shall now turn our attention. Let us first reflect upon the poets, realizing that such differ in their teachings and thus require differing levels of reflection. When the poets tell the stories of the good, let us respond with love and zeal, each striving in our own way to resemble them in life. When, however, they tell the stories of those consumed with evildoing, let us respond with an opposite movement, avoiding such and guarding our ears, even as Odysseus guarded his against the hypnotic sounds of the sirens. For indeed, listening to the words of the malevolent can most certainly become the road to malevolence itself. Let us therefore guard our soul above all else, lest without realizing what is happening, we consume evil amid the sweetness of rhetoric, just as many have consumed poison amid the sweetness of honey.
...Thus, from each source [of non-Christian wisdom] let us both affirm virtue and critique evil. Just as honeybees enjoy certain flowers for their color or fragrance yet draw no nectar from such, so too let us strive to derive only what is profitable from all sources, and treasure such within our souls.
Let our use of books and learning in every case mirror the ‘icon’ of the honeybee. For such does not visit every flower in the same manner, neither does the honeybee attempt to fly off bearing the burden of the entire flower. Rather, once it derives that which is needful from the flower, it leaves the rest behind and takes flight.
So, too, if we are wise, once we derive from learning what resonates with truth, we too shall leave the rest behind and take flight.
For is it not so that when we take a rose we avoid its thorns? So too let us approach diverse writings, harvesting the fruits that they offer for our objectives, while protecting ourselves from the damaging elements that may lie within them. In all our studies, let us take with us and take within us only what builds us up and what leads us in the fulfillment of our mission. . ..
[Translated by Fr Elias Bouboutsis, prepared from the parallel and comparative original and demotic Greek texts published from the collective and critical manuscript published by Christou, Sakkos, Psevtongas, and Zisis, Pateres tes Ekklesias 7th ed. (Thessaloniki: ‘Gregorios o Palamas’ Editions, 1973).]
Also available online: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/basil_litterature01.htm
Recently finished Father Elia's book and I agree with some of the concepts such as his awareness of the dangers of creating cultural ghettos in the Orthodox world, the dangers of nationalism, and his argument for the benefits of cooperation and intercultural pluralism as a framework for Orthodox in the lands of immigration. His other suggestion of adapting to "Western modes" is a convincing one I think if one is considering the cultural milieu as one of technology and and dialogue and not necessarily 'religious'. However I think that this understanding of integration and pluralism will also require further thought, further studies and deeper awareness of what Orthodoxy is.
One of Fr. Elia's more convincing points is with the Protreptikos of St Basil, where the bees draw on the most beneficial components while rejecting the bad nectar. This understanding of recapitulation and of transformation is definately reflective of the historical ethos of the Church, but such an awareness is also dependent on the community's liturgical ethos and understanding of self as well as what is sweet and holy.
This suggests that for such model of pluralism to exist that Orthodox Church need to:
- Be able to see themselves in each other, not as foreigners or other, but as sharing the same ethos and liturgical grammar.
- Be able to support each other and restore each other in the event that one of us loses our sense of honey, loses our sense of Orthodoxy (Be able to say ah yes this is what we remember now, we forgot this and we thank our Orthodox brothers and sisters for reminding us)
- Be able to discern what is heterodox and also offer to the greater Orthodox community an opportunity for these heterodox concepts and presuppositions to be examined before adoption
- Be alert to the meaning and life of the Liturgy, the very lifeblood of the Church that is offered on behalf of the world, not as a means to hate or escape it
- Be open to the depth of our liturgical life and to move beyond the catalogue of symbols and manuals of meaning that we may have adopted from 'scholastic' methods of the 19th century, and to be open to a living and iconic mystagogy the like of the works of Kern, Schmemann, St Germanus, St Maximos, St Nicholas Cabasilas, and St Cyril of Jerusalem.
- Be able to identify and correct the trends of textual literalism and dependance on the presuppositions of an archeological focused 19th century historicism and its reductionist certainties. (Orthodoxy may need to embrace its pre-modern emphasis on paradox to witness and articulate beauty in the post-modern world)
- Be able to have a distinctly unique flavour and ethos that builds on the recension of the past but does not become bound by it or by traditionalism
- Be able to look at what is 'cultural' in the West and bring that culture Orthodoxy, not necessarily just rush to make Orthodoxy "Western" in terms of presupposition, ethos and function, or in terms of the sacred and profane.
Again, I think Fr. Elias' book is quite well done and quite eloquently attempts to utilize modern social and post-modern and post-colonial theories to provide a framework of pluralism as a method of Orthodox encounter and mission in the Lands of Immigration. I would not necessarily agree with everything in his book and think that there's definitely more study and research to be done to build on and clarify what Fr. Elias has written about.
For example when Father Elias says "Orthodox intercultural process is essentially pluralist and integrationist" (Fr. Elias Bouboutsis, "Singing in a Strange Land: The Ancient Future of Orthodox Pluralism" [Massachusetts: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2010] 175) his argument is not a wholesale assimilation of Western modes (a danger he does point out when he mentions the loss of identity of the New Smyrna historical icon) but rather that Orthodoxy has always been able to encounter what is foreign and make those foreign elements holy, make what is "meet and right" communicate what is central to Orthodoxy's liturgical and eschatological ethos.
I would not think that Fr. Elias' thesis suggests a watering down of Orthodox Theology and Ethos, or an assimilation of the presuppositions of non-Orthodox or non-Christian methods, worldviews or beliefs.
For example in the case of hymnology, I would argue that Fr Elias' thesis suggests not a consumerist appropriation of the current western milieu, but rather that IF Orthodox sees benefit to appropriate such hymns it does so because the hymns deepen, enhance and resonate with the essence of the Liturgical Ethos and the Orthodox vision of Theosis.
Even more profound in terms of missiology, Orthodoxy doesn't just blindly appropriate what is foreign to its lex orandi est lex credendi , instead Orthodoxy takes the simple, the reduced, the packaged, the incomplete which may contain the seed of Truth and then beautifies that, illumines it, restores, expands it to its rightful glory. In the case of hymnology this suggests not the appropriation of heterodox hymns with lip service to an Orthodox hermeneutic, instead it suggests a wholescale transformation and infusing of Orthodox theology and liturgical life into those hymns which then draws the 'indigenous' culture into the pluralist and integrationist ascent and revelation of the Kingdom. Orthodoxy hymnology doesn't become conformist, Orthodox hymnology is transformational and does to music, what God does to man. Kenosis and Theosis are the movements of mission and of Christian life. The "peaceful spirit" that St Seraphim of Sarov speaks about and what St Cyril describes as the "Divine Life of the Holy Trinity" is the lens, vision, gift and reality of the Orthodox Church. We can only pray and live this out, this liturgy after the liturgy.
If Orthodoxy is to embrace what Fr. Elias is mentioning in his book it is with the Orthodox lens. Not a triumphalism, rigorist moralism, or a liberal assimilation, but an authentic metanoia, a humble and love filled revelation of the Theathropic kenotic movement of the Body of Christ that brings both Cross and Resurrection and the Divine Life to all nations.
I think Fr Elias' book may shock some traditionalists and I think the same implications may surprise and shock the liberal pro-Western, pro-Protestant, pro-Secularist believer. If the book can be understood as a continuation of modern Orthodox thought about the rejection of the "separation of the sacred and profane" and within the movements of the Divine Liturgy and the encounter with the weakest and poorest of our society, then I think Fr Elias has contributed greatly to the dialogue and work of the Orthodox Church in North America and the West. For Orthodoxy's ability to bring to focus beauty and bring man to God is embedded fully in our liturgical ethos which is as Fr Elias suggests, adaptive, intergrative, pluralist and able to restore all that it encounters.
As Fr Elias writes:
I believe that this adaptive liturgical ethos calls us to a number of critical applications. Initially, it calls us to restore the rich plurality of pre-Chalcedonian Orthodoxy. Concretely, this must mean the fast track restoration of full communion between the ‘Eastern’ and ‘Oriental’ Orthodox ecclesial families. Thankfully, this process has already gained considerable momentum in the work of the World Council of Churches’ inclusive ‘Orthodox Caucus,’ in the wake of full Christological agreements, and in the courageous praxis of both Orthodox Antiochian Patriarchates. (p178)If we are to offer the liturgy for the life of the world, the need for understanding and living our Orthodoxy is even more pressing. Orthodoxy is truly Orthodoxy in this sense. What we do at the altar is what must be done in the world, it is the world as it is meant to be done, what is offered, blessed, broken and given is so that we become the Body of Christ. Likewise with culture, with music, with all of creation, what Orthodoxy offers, encounters, blesses, breaks and returns also is called to become holy as God is Holy, to become the Body and Blood of Christ, offered for the life of the World.
As you read the Excerpts from the Protreptikos please keep this in mind and please pray for the life of the World and for the Orthodox Church.
Glory to the Holy Trinity.
Some Background on the Protreptikos
"Basil the Great is generally thought to have authored the fourth century Protreptikos in an effort to provide a guiding method for his adolescent nieces and nephews as they worked their way through a classical Hellenic education...
...what Basil did with that education was far more important than the mere attainment thereof. Basil’s ‘fluency’ in classical Hellenism equipped him equally for the work of transformation, transculturation, and indeed, of subversion. Using an ‘immanent critique,’ the Cappadocian systematically deconstructed, Christianized, and then reconstructed the entire edifice of Greek thought...
...visible both throughout the Basilian corpus and in the Protreptikos itself, is the Cappadocian’s treatment of ‘Neoplatonism.’ Particularly in the East, this was the ruling cultural, philosophical, and religious doctrine of the period, and was certainly the focus of much attention in Basil’s own education. Importantly, he did not reject outright this blend of Greco-Platonic and Asiatic philosophies, but neither did he adopt its doctrines of the ‘One’s’ unitive emanations without a keen critical selectivity. What he and his colleagues did was to transform that doctrine. In the words of the great Russian emigrant theologian Georges Florovsky, he ‘did not so much adapt neoplatonism as overcome it’"
...the Cappadocian’s model teaches us not to feel threatened by the extra ecclesiam but to learn from it and to transfigure it."
+ Fr. Elias Bouboutsis, "Singing in a Strange Land: The Ancient Future of Orthodox Pluralism" (Massachusetts: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2010) 117-118, 177.
Excerpts from the Protreptikos of St Basil the Great
A Contemporary Translation by Fr. Elias Bouboutsis
There are many things that move me, my sons and daughters, to offer these words of counsel. I set forth those things which I have discerned to be most excellent, and which, if you seek them out diligently, I am convinced shall most benefit you. Indeed, my life experience, specialized training, and moments of ‘conversion’ have taught me much about human nature itself. So it is that I can point the way to the ‘safest path’ to those who are just now embarking on their life’s work.
If you are able to embrace what I offer you here, you shall certainly be ranked among those commended—if secondarily—by the poet and historian Hesiod. Even if you are not able to embrace my words, there is nothing that I shall say here that is unprofitable. Remember Hesiod again: The finest are those who can ‘discern for themselves’ what is most profitable; the good are those who can follow the discernment of others; those, however, who can do neither remain altogether unprofited and unprofitable.
Do not, therefore, be surprised when I tell you that I have discerned something for myself, while as a student you daily must be formed by professors and converse with the writings of the ancients. In such studies I offer this strong counsel: Do not for a moment give over control of your mind to any instructor, following such wherever they may lead you. Rather, whatever you discern to be beneficial or profitable in their words, that is what you should embrace. The rest you may move through and beyond, or simply overlook. Now just how to discern between the profitable and the unprofitable is what I shall next endeavor to describe.
We must begin, my sons and daughters, by affirming that isolated and of itself alone, this world has no ultimate value. Indeed, we cannot speak of it as being an end in itself. We thus discern no great or valuable thing in either aristocratic breeding, bodily strength, physical attractiveness, fame and glory, or in any otherworldly value that can be proposed.
Nor do we stand in awe of those who possess such things. Rather, in hope we look far beyond such criteria, even to the life that is to come, and we make every preparation in anticipation of that life. So it is that we both love and pursue those things which help us to attain to that greater life. Similarly, those things which do not endure in the life that is to come, we move beyond as matters unworthy of brooding and preoccupied reflection.
Now, we are led to this greater life by the Holy Scriptures, which form us with truths that far transcend mere words. Yet since the span of our earthly lives may not give us time to fully comprehend their deeper meanings, we train the eyes of our souls in a way not unlike the training exercised by soldiers and athletes. Let us, however, be assured that before us lies the greatest contest of all—surely we must do all in our power to make every preparation for it.
We thus do well to converse with poets and scholars, with orators, and with all thinkers and writers through whom we might derive some cultivation of the soul. Just as artisans first prepare the surface that they are about to paint and then add color . . . so it is with us if we seek the enduring enjoyment of good things. Having been similarly prepared by the teachers of outward things to this point, we shall later become hearers of a sacred learning that transcends words. Having grown accustomed to beholding the sun reflected in the water, we shall ultimately be able to look upon the sun’s radiance itself.
Indeed, if there is any communion at all between diverse disciplines, then the knowledge of each can be beneficial to us. Alternatively, even if there is no communion between such, the very process of comparison shall be of value, as it teaches us how to go about the work of discernment.
Now once a sense of each discipline is obtained, how are we to arrive at a ‘picture’ of the differences between such? Well, even though the primary worth of any tree is dependent upon the quality of the fruit that it bears, the leaves that flutter on its branches also have worth, contributing both beauty and shelter to that tree. So it is with the soul of learning—its primary worth is dependent upon the truth that it contains, while its (hardly incompatible) ‘non-Christian wisdom’ contribute both beauty and shelter to that inner truth.
Consider, therefore, what is spoken of Moses, the one known to be the wisest of human teachers. Having first trained his mind in the arts and sciences of the Egyptians, he was thus able to approach ‘the contemplation of the One Who Is.’ So, too, it is said of Daniel the wise that only after he had mastered the Chaldean wisdom taught in Babylon, only then was he able to ‘touch’ the very teachings o f God and to be set aflame by them.
Certainly we have thus shown that non-Christian wisdom can indeed benefit the soul, so the way in which such wisdom should be acquired is the matter to which we shall now turn our attention. Let us first reflect upon the poets, realizing that such differ in their teachings and thus require differing levels of reflection. When the poets tell the stories of the good, let us respond with love and zeal, each striving in our own way to resemble them in life. When, however, they tell the stories of those consumed with evildoing, let us respond with an opposite movement, avoiding such and guarding our ears, even as Odysseus guarded his against the hypnotic sounds of the sirens. For indeed, listening to the words of the malevolent can most certainly become the road to malevolence itself. Let us therefore guard our soul above all else, lest without realizing what is happening, we consume evil amid the sweetness of rhetoric, just as many have consumed poison amid the sweetness of honey.
...Thus, from each source [of non-Christian wisdom] let us both affirm virtue and critique evil. Just as honeybees enjoy certain flowers for their color or fragrance yet draw no nectar from such, so too let us strive to derive only what is profitable from all sources, and treasure such within our souls.
Let our use of books and learning in every case mirror the ‘icon’ of the honeybee. For such does not visit every flower in the same manner, neither does the honeybee attempt to fly off bearing the burden of the entire flower. Rather, once it derives that which is needful from the flower, it leaves the rest behind and takes flight.
So, too, if we are wise, once we derive from learning what resonates with truth, we too shall leave the rest behind and take flight.
For is it not so that when we take a rose we avoid its thorns? So too let us approach diverse writings, harvesting the fruits that they offer for our objectives, while protecting ourselves from the damaging elements that may lie within them. In all our studies, let us take with us and take within us only what builds us up and what leads us in the fulfillment of our mission. . ..
[Translated by Fr Elias Bouboutsis, prepared from the parallel and comparative original and demotic Greek texts published from the collective and critical manuscript published by Christou, Sakkos, Psevtongas, and Zisis, Pateres tes Ekklesias 7th ed. (Thessaloniki: ‘Gregorios o Palamas’ Editions, 1973).]
+ Fr. Elias Bouboutsis, "Singing in a Strange Land: The Ancient Future of Orthodox Pluralism" (Massachusetts: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2010) 185-188.
Also available online: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/basil_litterature01.htm
