03 — Byzantine Theology

Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (Fordham University Press, 1974) is the book by which most English readers know Meyendorff. It was the first attempt in English at a synthesis of Byzantine Christian thought — half narrative history, half systematic exposition — and it has served for half a century as the standard survey. This section describes what it is and what it argues.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration) / Orthodox Church in America

What This Section Covers

• The Survey and Its Argument — the book’s origin, its two-part method, its reception, and the thesis running through it: that Byzantine theology is a Christologically-centered account of the human person made capable of God.
• Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes — a walk through the two halves: the historical narrative from Chalcedon to the fall of Constantinople, and the doctrinal exposition from creation to eschatology.

The Bibliographic Facts

Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes was published by Fordham University Press in New York, with a simultaneous British edition from Mowbrays in London, at 243 pages. A second edition followed in 1979 and a revised printing in 1983 (St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, “Protopresbyter John Meyendorff,” svots.edu, for the editions; Fordham University Press, catalogue entry; reviews in Church History and the American Historical Review give the 1974 imprint and the 243-page extent).

[Disputed: the year of first publication. The Fordham imprint and the contemporary reviews in *Church History*, the *American Historical Review* and *Het Christelijk Oosten* all give 1974. The St. Vladimir's Seminary bibliography lists the first Fordham/Mowbrays edition under 1973, and the OrthodoxWiki list gives "1974, 1975, 1979." The likeliest explanation is the ordinary gap between a copyright year and a distribution year. This collection cites 1974, the year on the imprint and in the reviews, and notes 1973 as the seminary's own date.]

Why It Mattered

Before 1974 an English reader who wanted Byzantine theology whole had no single book. There were histories of doctrine that treated the East in passing; there was Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (1974), which appeared the same year as the second volume of The Christian Tradition; there was nothing by an Orthodox theologian that covered the ground from Chalcedon to 1453 and then set out the doctrine systematically. Meyendorff supplied it, and his choice to run history and system together in one volume — a choice he defended in the book’s conclusion as a risk worth taking — is what gave the book its usefulness and its exposure to criticism from both sides.

See Also

• Christ in Eastern Christian Thought — the monograph whose argument the survey generalizes
• The Seven Ecumenical Councils — where Byzantine Theology is a named anchor source
• The Byzantine Church — the repository’s historical treatment of the same period
• The Scholarly Reassessment — the criticism of the interpretive frame

References

• Meyendorff, John. Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes. New York: Fordham University Press / London: Mowbrays, 1974; 2nd ed. 1979; rev. printing 1983.
• St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. “Protopresbyter John Meyendorff.” svots.edu.
• Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 2, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.