Robin Darling Young - Christ the Lover of Mankind

The Lumen Christi Institute

"Christ the Lover of Mankind: Philanthropia, Mystery, and Martyria in Eastern Christianity" A webinar lecture with Robin Darling Young (Catholic University of America), originally delivered September 17, 2020. Presented as part of a series on "Eastern Catholic Theology in Action," co-presented by the Lumen Christi Institute and the Godbearer Institute. Three features are common to all Eastern Christian traditions—philanthropia, mystery, and martyria. They appear repeatedly in Eastern Christian writing, ritual, and personal practice from the preaching of Jesus to the present. Philanthropia, God’s love for humanity, prompts the mission of the Logos to provide for humanity’s return to the divine. Mystery, which paradoxically reveals and conceals, both in ceremony and in “ordinary” time, the Logos’ saving events. Martyria is the sign and demonstration of God’s beckoning love and the replication of the “priesthood of all believers.” Dr. Young will explore these themes through examples, not only from the Greek and Slavic traditions, but also from those of the Christian traditions of the East, the Caucasus and Ethiopian Christianity.