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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, received an honorary doctorate from St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary. We find it noteworthy in the context of the Anglican-Orthodox relations and encourage you to read the full report from the Archbishop’s visit to the United States and the Seminary. A detailed description of the event is to be found on the Seminary’s website here . The summary that follows was taken from the Orthodox Christian Network’s website. Below you may listen to the live recording of the lecture taken also from the OCN .
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On Saturday, January 30, 2010, Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, delivered the 27th annual Father Alexander Schmemann Memorial Lecture— this year titled “Theology and the Contemplative Calling: The Image of Humanity in the Philokalia”— and received an honorary doctoral degree from St. Vladimir’s Seminary.
During his visit, Dr. Williams also attended Divine Liturgy for the Feast of the Three Hierarchs in the seminary chapel, and had a lively and frank discussion with St. Vladimir’s theological faculty at a private brunch. After the Divine Liturgy, Metropolitan Jonah, primate of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), and the Anglican archbishop both publically expressed their desire for a deeper personal friendship and their hope for deeper understanding and cooperation between their respective communions. Four hundred people attended the lecture and ceremony, distinguished by an episcopal presence from both the Orthodox and Anglican faiths.
The Anglican archbishop received the invitation to be this year’s Schmemann Lecturer for his pioneering work in Russian Orthodox studies and his long-standing interest in Eastern Christian studies. His doctoral work at Oxford University focused on Vladimir N. Lossky, the famous mid-twentieth-century Orthodox theologian; and his first book, Wound of Knowledge, was a study of spirituality from apostolic times to the sixteenth century.
Dr. Williams’s lecture on the “Philokalia,” a collection of monastic writings ranging from the fourth through the fifteenth centuries, reflected his massive knowledge on the subject. Beginning and ending with quotes from Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s classic work, For the Life of the World, he delivered a discourse on the spiritual battle that human beings must wage in journeying from a self-centered life to a life in Christ, according to the writings of the Christian ascetics. Additionally, the Anglican archbishop thanked the seminary for its “overwhelming warm and generous welcome,” which, he stated, crowned his first visit to St. Vladimir’s in 1974, and was all that he “had hoped and prayed for.”
