The Journal Synaxi

In 1982 Nellas founded Σύναξη (Synaxi, “Assembly”), a quarterly review subtitled “a study in Orthodoxy,” and edited it until his death four years later. It has appeared without interruption ever since and is one of the principal venues of contemporary Greek Orthodox theology — the journal in which, among much else, the Greek critical debate over the personalism of Metropolitan John Zizioulas was conducted in the years after Nellas’s death.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox

The Foundation of 1982

Nellas founded Synaxi in 1982 and served as its founder and editor (Armos Publications, author page for Παναγιώτης Νέλλας; Pemptousia, author page; Synaxi, “The Identity of Synaxi,” synaxi.gr, which states that the journal “has been published continuously since 1982, when it was founded by the late Panayiotis Nellas”). Bishop Kallistos, writing in 1987, described its physical form: it “appeared quarterly, with some 112 pages in each number” (Kallistos of Diokleia, Foreword to Nellas, Deification in Christ, SVS Press, 1987, 9–14).

The Greek title is a liturgical word. Σύναξη is the synaxis, the gathering of the Church — the assembly that constitutes the eucharistic body. To call a theological review “Assembly” is to make a claim about what theology is: not the private production of scholars but the thinking of a gathered people. The subtitle carries the same weight: σπουδὴ στὴν Ὀρθοδοξία, “a study in Orthodoxy” — spoudē meaning both study and earnest application, and the preposition placing the enterprise inside its object rather than in front of it.

What the Journal Was For

The journal’s own statement of identity, which reflects the founding intention and has been maintained by successive editors, sets out four commitments (Synaxi, “The Identity of Synaxi,” synaxi.gr):

A readership beyond the specialists. The journal addresses the thoughtful reader who is not a professional theologian. Bishop Kallistos noted the same aim from outside: Synaxi was directed at “the intelligent non-specialist” (Kallistos of Diokleia, Foreword to Nellas 1987). This is a genuinely difficult editorial position to hold — most theological journals drift either into the seminar or into edification — and holding it for four decades is the journal’s chief practical achievement.
Theology as a living proposal, not a historical commentary. The journal presents Orthodox theological reflection as a “living, creative proposal” rather than as the curation of a past (Synaxi, “Identity”). This is the same conviction that governs Zōon theoumenon: the Fathers are addressed as living witnesses, not as a deposit of quotations.
Critical examination of ecclesiastical reality. The editors state that they practise a critical examination of the Church’s actual life, on the ground that “truth is difficult to grasp” and must be approached from several angles (Synaxi, “Identity”). Synaxi is not, and has never been, a house organ.
A double refusal. The statement rejects both an idealising spiritualism disconnected from history and a modernised Christianity that has stopped speaking about sin and injustice (Synaxi, “Identity”). The formulation is worth noticing because it locates the journal precisely between the two temptations of modern Orthodox writing in Greece.

The characteristic form is the thematic number: most issues are built around a single subject, framed by standing columns on books and a dialogue with readers (Synaxi, “Identity”).

Its Place in Greek Theology

Greek assessments place Synaxi very high. Stavros Yangazoglou, surveying the currents of modern Greek Orthodox theology, describes the journal as the mature fruit and at the same time the fertile and critical expression of modern Greek theology, and as an instrument of theological renewal in Greece (Yangazoglou, “Ἡ ἀνανέωση τῆς νεοελληνικῆς ὀρθόδοξης θεολογίας,” Frear). It is the periodical in which the generation of the 1960s and their successors have argued out the questions the generation raised.

That role is best illustrated by the episode the English-language literature knows best. The Greek critique of Zizioulas’s trinitarian personalism — the charge that he had read into the Cappadocian Fathers a doctrine of the person imported from modern philosophy — was made, and answered, in the pages of Synaxi:

J. Panagopoulos, “Ὀντολογία ἢ θεολογία τοῦ προσώπου;” [“Ontology or theology of the person? The contribution of patristic triadology to the understanding of the human person”], Synaxi 13 (1985): 63–79 and 14 (1985): 34–47.
S. Agouridis, “Μποροῦν τὰ πρόσωπα τῆς Τριάδας νὰ δώσουν τὴ βάση γιὰ περσοναλιστικὲς ἀπόψεις περὶ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου;” [“Can the persons of the Trinity provide the basis for personalist views of man?”], Synaxi 33 (1990): 67–78.
John Zizioulas, “Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου: Ἀπόπειρα θεολογικοῦ διαλόγου” [“The Being of God and the Being of Man: An Attempt at Theological Dialogue”], Synaxi 37 (1991): 11–36.

The whole exchange is discussed in Yannis Spiteris’s survey of neo-Greek theology (Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, Bologna, 1992, 409–411) and summarised for English readers by Norman Russell (Russell, “Modern Greek Theologians and the Greek Fathers,” Philosophy & Theology 18:1 [2006], 86–87 and n. 25). The repository’s treatment of the dispute, with both sides set out and adjudicated by neither, is at The Patristic Question.

Two points of accuracy about that episode bear stating, because they are easily blurred:

The first Panagopoulos article appeared in 1985, while Nellas was alive and editing. Synaxi 13 and 14 are 1985 numbers; Nellas died in April 1986. Whether he solicited, commissioned or merely accepted the piece is not recorded in any source consulted, and this collection does not speculate. What can be said is that the journal was open to a frontal criticism of the most prominent theologian of its founder’s own generation within three years of its founding — which is consistent with the “critical examination” the journal’s own statement of identity claims.

Nellas was not a party to the dispute. The later stages — Agouridis in 1990, Zizioulas’s reply in 1991 — belong to a journal he had been dead for four and five years respectively. Nothing in the record suggests that Nellas himself entered the argument against Zizioulas, and it would be a misrepresentation to enlist him in it (see Nellas Among the Greek Generation, where the substantive relation between Nellas’s anthropology and the personalism of Yannaras and Zizioulas is set out with care).

After Nellas

The journal passed to other hands on his death and has continued quarterly to the present (Synaxi, “The Identity of Synaxi,” synaxi.gr; the journal maintains an editorial committee whose members are listed publicly at synaxi.gr). Greek notices record that texts published in Synaxi, the journal of which Nellas was founder and inspirer, were afterwards gathered in his memory (Pemptousia, author page for Παναγιώτης Νέλλας) [Disputed: the memorial volumes. Greek publishers' notices refer to material from *Synaxi* being collected in Nellas's memory after his death, but the sources consulted for this collection did not yield the titles, editors or dates of such volumes. The fact of a memorial gathering is reported; the bibliography of it is not, because it could not be verified.]

That a journal founded by a schoolteacher in 1982 should still be the place where Greek Orthodoxy conducts its arguments in the 2020s is, on any accounting, a larger achievement than most books. It is also the part of Nellas’s legacy that is most nearly invisible to English readers, who meet him only through one translated volume.

References

Synaxi (Σύναξη). “Ἡ ταυτότητα τῆς Σύναξης” [“The Identity of Synaxi”] and “Μέλη συντακτικῆς ἐπιτροπῆς” [“Editorial Committee”], synaxi.gr (accessed 2026).
Kallistos of Diokleia (Ware), Bishop. Foreword to Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ: Orthodox Perspectives on the Nature of the Human Person, 9–14. Trans. Norman Russell. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987.
Panagopoulos, J. “Ὀντολογία ἢ θεολογία τοῦ προσώπου; Ἡ συμβολὴ τῆς πατερικῆς Τριαδολογίας στὴν κατανόηση τοῦ ἀνθρωπίνου προσώπου.” Synaxi 13 (1985): 63–79; 14 (1985): 34–47.
Agouridis, S. “Μποροῦν τὰ πρόσωπα τῆς Τριάδας νὰ δώσουν τὴ βάση γιὰ περσοναλιστικὲς ἀπόψεις περὶ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου;” Synaxi 33 (1990): 67–78.
Zizioulas, John D. “Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου: Ἀπόπειρα θεολογικοῦ διαλόγου.” Synaxi 37 (1991): 11–36.
Spiteris, Yannis. La teologia ortodossa neo-greca. Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1992. (The personalism dispute at 409–411; Nellas at 255–277.)
Russell, Norman. “Modern Greek Theologians and the Greek Fathers.” Philosophy & Theology 18, no. 1 (2006): 77–92.
Yangazoglou, Stavros. “Ἡ ἀνανέωση τῆς νεοελληνικῆς ὀρθόδοξης θεολογίας: Θεολογικὰ ρεύματα καὶ τάσεις κατὰ τὸν 20ὸ καὶ τὸν 21ο αἰώνα.” Frear (mag.frear.gr, accessed 2026).
Armos Publications and Pemptousia, author pages for Παναγιώτης Νέλλας (accessed 2026).