Ecclesial Being

In his Ecclesial Being Professor Constantine Scouteris focuses most ably on the mystery of the human person in the context of the conciliarity of the Church. His vision of the unity of the Orthodox churches, based on the Pauline theme of the New Israel, embraces all Orthodox Christian peoples - wonderfully diverse in language and culture - as one nation in Christ, which the entire world is invited to join.

Constantine Scouteris was a spiritual child of St. Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia, the Hut-dweller (1906-1991), and one of Greece's foremost theologians, specializing in ecclesiology, the mystery of the Church as a theanthropic institution, and in Christian anthropology, the nature and purpose of human existence. Scouteris was attuned to the more serious concerns of the day, and always focused on the perennial, ultimate questions of life. He was deeply convinced that communion - personal communion - was the key to world unity and peace. The burning question for him, therefore, was how to enter into real communion with others and attain to true unity.

Professor Scouteris worked tirelessly, for nigh on 40 years, as a responsible and faithful representative of the Orthodox Church in ecumenical dialogue at the highest level, and constantly strove to build bridges by which reconciliation could take place. As he once told me personally, "Communion is the greatest gift that God has bestowed on the human race" - communion with one another, the ability to enter into a personal relationship with one's neighbour.

Born in Athens in 1939, Dr. Scouteris studied at Athens, Strasbourg, and Oxford. He was Professor of the History of Doctrine and Symbolic Theology in the University of Athens, and also taught at the School of Theology at Balamand in Lebanon, and at the Theological Schools of Geneva and Freiburg. He was elected member of the prestigious Académie Internationale des Sciences Religieuses in 2001; and In March and April of 2006, he was sponsored by the Onassis Foundation (USA) to conduct a lecture tour of the United States in the context of its University Seminar Program. A man for all seasons, Dr. Scouteris represented the Orthodox Church in a variety of capacities all over the world: in the Orthodox-Anglican dialogue, in the European Council of Churches (CEC), and in the World Council of Churches (WCC), and was always regarded with respect as a positive force in the quest for unity.

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