Човек заједнице у Христу

“Participation in God” in the Theological Anthropology of St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. Maximus the Confessor. (In Serbian: „Učestvovanje u Bogu“ prema teološkoj antropologiji Sv. Grigorija Bogoslova i Sv. Maksima Ispovednika). Approaching the subject of participation mainly as a common fact of ecclesial community, the author attempts, with the help of witnesses from two Fathers of the Church, Gregory the Theologian and Maximos the Confessor, at seeing what the importance of this participation is for man and for community (κοινωνία). He acknowledges that the problem of participation in its biblical and patristic endowments is in general a problem of personal relationships and of communion of man, first and foremost, with God and with other people and the world which surrounds him.

The elucidation of the problem demands that we see this relationship not only as a noetic or conscientious relationship, but as a relationship of existential man’s existential dependence on God, on humanity and on the world, of an instrumental link of this three-fold reality of the fact of the personality-referentiality of man.

Bishop Maxim (Vasiljevic) was elected Bishop of Los Angeles and the Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church in 2006. He graduated from the Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Belgrade, in 1993. He completed his Master of Theology at the University of Athens in 1996, and then three years later, in 1999, at the same university, he defended his doctorate in the field of Dogmatics and Patristics. He worked for one year on his post-doctorate in Paris and the Sorbonne in 2003-04, in the field of Byzantine History and Hagiography. During this time, he also delved in the theory and practical application of painting at the French Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. Bishop Maxim is a professor of Patristics and was teaching Christian Anthropology, Byzantine Philosophy, Canon Law, and Dogmatics at various universities and schools. He speaks Greek, French, Russian, and English. He was the editor of “Theology” – Journal of the Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Belgrade. He also leads the Diocesan school of iconography and teaches at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Boston. Bishop Maxim’s scholarly books, studies, and articles include essays on Holy Fathers and Saints; he has also written on the hagiographical and iconographical themes.