Patristic Hermeneutics: 4-14th Century, Volume 1 of the Patristic Monograph Series, by Christos Ath. Arabatzis, translated and edited by Protopresbyter George Dion. Dragas. Trim size 6x9, 200pp.

From the Translator's Forward:

The city of Thessalonica has been a very important crossroads of cultural and educational achievements in Eastern Europe, which constitute a rich and distinctive heritage bequeathed to Europe as a whole and to the wider world. Aristotle University is a brilliant example of this heritage in recent times. The present book is one of the latest manifestations of this example coming out of one of the first and the oldest Faculties of this University since its inception, the Faculty of Theology. Its author, a colleague in the area of Orthodox Patristic Theology, has shown repeatedly, the kind of scholarly research that is needed in the present post-modern era, where theology and all sciences, and even philosophy, are trying to reconstruct their perspectives after the collapse of the 19th century modernism, which, in spite of its important and revolutionary advancements, created many crises in Church and Society because of its captivity to pluralism and its pursuit of an unbridled and excessive criticism. Christos Arabatzis, utilizing the modern apparatus of textual, historical and theological research in the area of Patristics, has raised the crucial and fundamental question relating to the criteria of interpretation and misinterpretation of Patristic Theology in Eastern Orthodox perspective. His present book is programmatic inasmuch as it provides case studies, but its historical span and focused perspective provide a clear and convincing key for restating the continuity and integrity of the cultural heritage of Eastern European Church and Society. I consider it a significant contribution to theological epistemology and to a positive restatement of Eastern Orthodox Theology in inter-Orthodox and especially in inter-Christian theological dialogue between Eastern Orthodox on the one hand and Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions on the other.

Translated by George Dion. Dragas.