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February 13, 2013 – the presidium of the Synodal Biblical and Theological Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church met at the conference hall of the Department for External Church Relations.

 

Addressing the meeting in his capacity as chairman of the Commission, Metropolitan Hilarion said in particular,

 

‘Today we are to discuss and begin to implement the decision of the recent Bishops’ Council and the Holy Synod concerning the Synodal Biblical and Theological Commission. Thus, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, in his report to the Bishops’ Council, and the Council, in Par. 23 of its decisions, stated the need to systematize and further develop our Church’s dialogue with the secular science and to elaborate a new methodology for conducting this dialogue.

 

This point also concerns the development of the Russian Orthodox Church’s cooperation with departments of theology in secular higher education institutions. On the church-wide level, this cooperation should be supervised by the coordinating group set up by the Holy Synod Decision of December 26, 2012.

 

Paragraph 23 of the Council’s decisions stated that the Synodal Biblical and Theological Commission together with the Education Committee should submit to the Holy Synod their proposals for establishing a Coordinating Center for promoting the theological science.

 

Another important item on our agenda is a mode for implementing the recent Council’s resolution that the work on the Russian Orthodox Church’s Catechesis be completed by the next Bishops’ Council.

 

In addition, the Holy Synod at its meeting on January 30, 2013, agreed to hold a theological conference of the Russian Orthodox Church from November 26 to 28, 2013, under the theme ‘Modern Bible Study and the Tradition of the Church’, which is to be discussed as well’.

 

In the discussion that followed, the meeting considered the points raised by the chairman of the Commission and made a number of decisions on practical steps to be taken for fulfilling the tasks assigned to the Commission by the recent Bishops’ Council.

 

DECR Communication Service