Christos Yannaras

Basilio Petrà is a Roman Catholic priest born in 1946 to Greek parents from Rhodes. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Florence and a doctorate in theology from the Lateran University of Rome. The author of more than twenty books (in Italian) on patristic and modern theology, he is Professor of Moral Theology and of the Ethics of Marriage at the Theological School of Central Italy (Florence) and Visiting Professor of Greek Patristic Moral Theology at the Lateran University. Norman Russell is an Orthodox translator and patristic scholar of partial Greek descent. He holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford and is an Honorary Research Fellow of St Stephen's House of the same university. His publications include Metaphysics as a Personal Adventure: Christos Yannaras in Conversation with Norman Russell (2017) and Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age (2019).

• IntroductionI. The discovery of Russian Orthodoxy: the West as a problem1. From orthodox pietism to the discovery of personalism and Russian Orthodoxy2. Dostoevsky's criticism of the West and the mission of OrthodoxyII. The encounter with Heidegger and the ontological hermeneutic of the West. 1. Heidegger and the nihilistic outcome of Western metaphysics. The way beyond nihilism; Eastern apophaticism2. Yannaras's 'Conversion to Ontology' and the discovery of the ontological difference with the West. The rediscovery of 'Greek metaphysics' and its connection with apophaticism. 3. Eastern apophaticism and Orthodox apologetics. The gnoseological topicality of apophaticism and its iconological character. III. From the personalist ontology of the Fathers to a critical ontology. Between theology and philosophy1. Person and Eros: A theological essay in post-Heideggarian ontology2. A hermeneutic interval3. The philosophical elaboration of a 'Critical Ontology.' The possibility of an 'apophatic rationalism.' The social fruitfulness of apophaticism4. Propositions for a Critical Ontology. A 'revisionist empiricism'IV. The Development of reflection on Critical Ontology. 1. From Person and Eros to What Can be Said and what Cannot be Said. The second 'Fundamental Stage' in Yannaras's thought. 2. Relational OntologyV. Ontology and Salvation1. Introductory considerations2. 'Religionisation'; religion and the ontological distortion of Christianity3. Against Religion. Natural religion, the religious transformation of Christianity, and the reshaping of the Church.EpilogueChristos YannarasThe Communal Verification of Knowledge1. The genesis of critical thought2. Truth as mode3. Correct thinking (orthos dianoeisthai) through correctly sharing in common (orthos koinonein)4. A divisive empiricism5. Symbol6. Apophaticism7. The historical eclipse of apophaticism8. The incarnation of apophaticism in a culture9. The counterfeiting of the ancient Greek enterprise10. Gnoseology differentiates culturesBibliographyIndex

By testifying to the superabundance of God incarnate and of the Trinity, apophaticism is the seal of a theological and philosophical reflection which, in fidelity to classical metaphysics, does not shrink from asserting the value of ontology: theology is in reality a theory of being as Trinitarian Mystery. The Greek theologian [Christos Yannaras] proposes a reflection which, precisely because it is apophatic, is also a critical reflection on the Church and on the historical forms that are always inadequate with regard to the free breath of the Spirit