Final press release

This requirement to join listening to the Word of God to listening to contemporary humanity found ample convergence in the talk of metropolitan Ilarion of Volokolamsk, who declared “clearly erroneous” the opinion according to which “the Orthodox Christian should refuse Biblical criticism because it derives from the studies of the Protestant world”. “Historical-critical studies help to reconstruct the historical context of Scripture, so understand better how the words of Scripture were understood by its first readers and hearers.” “If at the base of the postulates themselves of modern biblical scholarship the spiritual interpretation of Scripture, fundamental for the holy fathers, remains outside the field of vision, “it is necessary to recall that the historical-critical method and spiritual Biblical hermeneutics “look at the Bible from two different points of view,” but “these points of view are not in contrast one with the other”. “Orthodox Tradition understands Scripture as a foundation,” continued metropolitan Ilarion. “The Orthodox Christian should know the Bible and live by it. To be an Orthodox Christian without knowing the Bible is absurd and misleading.” From this arises the need for the Russian Orthodox Church of a new translation that “takes into account the results of modern scholarship and uses “the entire range of means of Russian classical literary language to transmit the beauty and variety of Biblical texts… without departing from church tradition.”

The conference program was drawn up in collaboration with the Orthodox Churches by a scientific committee presided by the prior of Bose, Enzo Bianchi, and having among its members fr. Hervé Legrand (Paris), fr. Michel van Parys (Chevetogne), and Antonio Rigo (University of Venice), with the intent of favoring the encounter between different Churches and spiritual traditions of East and West. A fruit of this encounter was the possibility “to bring to light some tesserae,” as br Sabino Chialà put it in the name of the scientific committee, “of a mosaic that remains to a large extent hidden: the mosaic of Scripture”, in which, however, “is revealed to us the face of Him whose disciples we say we are and wish to be: the Son of God, whom the Father has sent to us to make us in our turn sons in the Holy Spirit.”

The 20th International Ecumenical Conference on Orthodox Spirituality, the topic of which will be announced after the meeting of the scientific committee in November 2011, will be held from 5 to 8 September 2012. It is foreseen that in June 2012 will be published the Acts of this 19th Conference, while those of the 18th, Comunione e solitudine, are already available.

XIX International Ecumenical Conference
on Orthodox spirituality