St Vladimir’s Seminary Press Orthodox Theology Collection (13 vols.)

by Alexander Schmemann; John Anthony McGuckin; Kallistos Ware; Patrick Henry Reardon

and

2 more

Publishers:

St Vladimir’s Seminary Press; St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary

, 1969–2018

Overview

Founded in 1968, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press is the largest and most active publisher of Orthodox Christian books in the English language, with more than 400 titles in print. SVS Press has achieved a reputation for permitting a free expression of ideas within the breadth of the Orthodox faith, tradition, and history, while insisting on works of theological excellence. Combing commentaries, sermons, and ancient texts, this collection consists of classic works and new publications to enrich your study of Orthodox theology.

Product Details

• Title: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press Orthodox Theology Collection (13 vols.)
• Publisher: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
• Volumes: 13
• Pages: 2,997
• Christian Group: Orthodox

Celebration of Faith, vol. I: I Believe

• Author: Alexander Schmemann
• Series: Celebration of Faith
• Publisher: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
• Publication Date: 1991
• Pages: 124

The first of these sermons, under the title The Celebration of Faith uses the themes of faith, revelation, and the Nicene Creed as the symbol of faith. Though generally directed towards those in the church, these talks are unique in that they speak also to the person not in the church, to the person who has had no experience whatsoever of things “religious,” or whose experience of “religion has convinced him of it emptiness. There are no “prerequisites” for appreciating these talks, no special knowledge required of the vocabulary of the Orthodox Church. Fr Alexander’s only assumption is that he is speaking to “seekers,” to those who have a spiritual thirst, a yearning for something indefinable that calls them out of themselves. And in speaking to the non-religious “seeker,” he reaches also the religious “seeker” as well, the one who is seeking to grow in his faith, life and understanding of God’s revelation in Christ and the Church.

Alexander Schmemann was an influential Orthodox Christian priest, teacher, and writer. From 1946 to 1951 he taught in Paris, and afterwards in New York. In his teachings and writings he sought to establish the close links between Christian theology and Christian liturgy.

Celebration of Faith, vol. II: The Church Year

• Author: Alexander Schmemann
• Series: Celebration of Faith
• Publisher: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
• Publication Date: 1993
• Pages: 162

There is no human society without celebrations, holidays and feasts, “The feast is part of man’s inescapable rhythm of work and rest,” observes Fr Schmemann. But beyond the need to rest from work, the development of celebrations in human culture has much deeper root in man's absolutely irrepressible need, not just for rest, but for joy, for meaning that we find the true source of celebration and its tenacity in human society. Feasts, in every culture, have become the repository and expression of a society’s goals, ambitions, and worldview. As Fr Schmemann writes, “tell me what you celebrate, and I will tell you who you are.”

Christianity is also best understood through its celebrations rather than through abstract dogmatic and theological formulas. Orthodox Christianity in particular has from its earliest days expressed its faith, its understanding of the world and its approach to life through a network of feasts that embrace the entire year. "Without exaggeration we can say that the believer lives from feast to feast, and that for him these feasts sanctify all time through the coming and going of each season."

In this volume, Fr Schmemann examines first the phenomenon of celebration and then its expression in the Orthodox Christian church year, focusing especially on the Christmas and Easter cycles.

Alexander Schmemann was an influential Orthodox Christian priest, teacher, and writer. From 1946 to 1951 he taught in Paris, and afterwards in New York. In his teachings and writings he sought to establish the close links between Christian theology and Christian liturgy.

Celebration of Faith, vol. III: The Virgin Mary

• Author: Alexander Schmemann
• Series: Celebration of Faith
• Publisher: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
• Publication Date: 2001
• Pages: 93

This volume, the third in a collection of sermons by Fr Alexander Schmemann, is on a topic that was particularly close to his heart: the Virgin Mary. The “Theotokos,” as Mary is usually referred to among the Orthodox, figures prominently in Byzantine liturgical worship. While no single service is without one or more references to her, Eastern Orthodox theological manuals have little to say about Mary beyond repeating the primarily Christological titles affirmed by the Third Ecumenical Council—“Theotokos,” “Birthgiver of God.”

It is to the Eastern liturgical tradition, then, that one must turn for a more developed Mariology. Eastern hymnographers, drawing on Scripture, the early Christian Apocrypha and on a rich theological tradition, went far beyond the laconic definition of the Third Ecumenical Council. Fr Schmemann draws on all these to explain Mariology to a modern audience.

The first part of this volume consists of a series of sermons originally delivered in Russian over Radio Liberty. The message is direct and simple, addressed to a largely unchurched audience.

In the second part, comprised of chapters two through five, Fr Schmemann addresses an academic audience in a series of lectures entitled: “Mary: the Archetype of Mankind,” “On Mariology in Orthodoxy,” “Mary in Eastern Liturgy,” and an especially insightful chapter entitled “Mary and the Holy Spirit.”

Alexander Schmemann was an influential Orthodox Christian priest, teacher, and writer. From 1946 to 1951 he taught in Paris, and afterwards in New York. In his teachings and writings he sought to establish the close links between Christian theology and Christian liturgy.

For the Life of the World

• Author: Alexander Schmemann
• Publisher: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
• Publication Date: 2018
• Pages: 186

Of what life do we speak, what life do we preach, proclaim, and announce when, as Christians, we confess that Christ died for the life of the world?

In For the Life of the World Alexander Schmemann suggests an approach to the world and life within it, which stems from the liturgical experience of the Orthodox Church. He understands issues such as secularism and Christian culture from the perspective of the unbroken experience of the Church, as revealed and communicated in her worship, in her liturgy—the sacrament of the world, the sacrament of the Kingdom.

For over half a century For the Life of the World has challenged, illumined, and inspired readers from many backgrounds. For some it is an introduction to the Orthodox Church, while for others it is a call to plunge more deeply into the life of the Kingdom, both manifested and anticipated here and now in the liturgy of the Church. This updated edition of Schmemann’s classic text includes a new foreword by Dr Edith M. Humphrey, along with new explanatory notes and an index.

Alexander Schmemann was an influential Orthodox Christian priest, teacher, and writer. From 1946 to 1951 he taught in Paris, and afterwards in New York. In his teachings and writings he sought to establish the close links between Christian theology and Christian liturgy.

Great Lent

• Author: Alexander Schmemann
• Publisher: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
• Publication Date: 1974
• Pages: 140

This revised edition of Father Alexander Schmemann’s Lenten classic examines the meaning of Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, the Prayer of St Ephraim the Syrian, the Canon of St Andrew of Crete and other neglected or misunderstood treasures of Lenten worship. Schmemann draws on the Church's sacramental and liturgical tradition to suggest the meaning of “Lent in our life.”

The Lenten season is meant to kindle a “bright sadness” within our hearts. Its aim is precisely the remembrance of Christ, a longing for a relationship with God that has been lost. Lent offers the time and place for recovery of this relationship. The darkness of Lent allows the flame of the Holy Spirit to burn within our hearts until we are led to the brilliance of the Resurrection.

Alexander Schmemann was an influential Orthodox Christian priest, teacher, and writer. From 1946 to 1951 he taught in Paris, and afterwards in New York. In his teachings and writings he sought to establish the close links between Christian theology and Christian liturgy.

Introduction to Liturgical Theology

• Author: Alexander Schmemann
• Publisher: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
• Publication Date: 1966
• Pages: 220

Alexander Schmemann’s Introduction to Liturgical Theology is a masterful historical and critical introduction to the study of modern Orthodox liturgics and theology. There is scarcely a student of Christian worship who has not been stirred by the brilliant mind of the late Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann.

Alexander Schmemann was deeply stimulated by modern movements and figures in Western Christian thought. He brings into the Western discussion of Christian unity, the relation of the Church to the world in revolution, the question of papal supremacy, and the effort to commend the gospel to a post-Christian world'a worldview at once Orthodox, patristic, and realistic. His sacramental realism and wholeness is exciting and refreshing for those, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, who have been reared on scholastic categories.

The present work was basic to much of Schmemann’s academic research and creativity. In it, he defines liturgical theology, noting that the dynamic realism of the Eucharistic liturgy often has been obscured in popular liturgical piety. This theme is developed in reference to the shape of worship as it evolved in the Orthodox Church, from the earliest years to its crystallization in Byzantium from the ninth through the twelfth centuries.

Alexander Schmemann was an influential Orthodox Christian priest, teacher, and writer. From 1946 to 1951 he taught in Paris, and afterwards in New York. In his teachings and writings he sought to establish the close links between Christian theology and Christian liturgy.

The Eucharist

• Author: Alexander Schmemann
• Publisher: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
• Publication Date: 2003
• Pages: 245

The Eucharist is the crowning achievement of the well-known liturgical scholar, Alexander Schmemann. It reflects his entire life experience and thoughts on the Divine Liturgy, the Church’s central act of self-realization.

Alexander Schmemann was an influential Orthodox Christian priest, teacher, and writer. From 1946 to 1951 he taught in Paris, and afterwards in New York. In his teachings and writings he sought to establish the close links between Christian theology and Christian liturgy.

Revelation: A Liturgical Prophecy

• Author: Patrick Henry Reardon
• Publisher: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
• Publication Date: 2018
• Pages: 114

This is no book for biblical beginners, and one suspects it is a work more often misinterpreted than correctly understood. Unless a person is extraordinarily familiar with all the rest of Holy Scripture, understanding very much of the Book of Revelation will be an extremely arduous task. Since the book’s arcane symbolism is so rich and subtle, Christian humility will especially prompt the devout reader to be more than usually careful and tentative in his study of it, bearing in mind that the book’s purpose is not to satisfy our curiosity about the final times (inasmuch as not even the angels in heaven—and therefore certainly no one on earth—truly know the day and hour, as our Lord insisted in the Gospels) but to summon our ongoing repentance.

Fr Patrick Henry Reardon argues that the Book of Revelation is “liturgical prophecy.” Like the prophets of old, it is not a work of theological abstraction, but grounded in particular historical realities: it is only timeless by being timely. Revelation conveys the call to repentance in all times with equal immediacy. Likewise, the Apocalypse is liturgical. The vision begins during the Sunday liturgy, and it conveys the profound meaning of Christian worship. When Christians gather together in the liturgy, they do not escape from the painful history of the world. On the contrary, they go to the very source of that history, the eternal throne of God. Surrounded by the seeming chaos of the world and the events of men, threatened by social and political forces dominated by the direction of hell, Christians are strengthened by John’s vision of their worship being assumed into the very worship that takes place before God’s throne.

Patrick Henry Reardon is a senior editor at Touchstone magazine, the author of nine books—including Christ in the Psalms and The Jesus We Missed—and of hundreds of articles and essays, a popular podcaster, and the pastor of All Saints Orthodox Church in Chicago.

Romans: An Orthodox Commentary

• Author: Patrick Henry Reardon
• Publisher: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
• Publication Date: 2018
• Pages: 172

God seems to have chosen the Apostle Paul to demonstrate—arguably more than in any other person in Christian history—how the life “in Christ” arrives at insight through experience. If this is the case of Paul more than any other person in Christian history, the reason may be simply that Paul’s words are the Word of God. His epistles stand forever as the divinely chosen model of how the Christian arrives at truth through experience. Unlike so many theologians of later times, Paul did not inherit a Christian worldview. His vocation, rather, was to create such a thing from his own experience. For this reason, Paul’s thought ever remains the Church’s cutting blade, the biting edge of her apologetics and evangelism.

To affirm, as everyone does, that Romans is unique in the Pauline corpus should serve to indicate the necessity of caution in using it as a guide to the other epistles. But in recent centuries the Christological and ecclesiological core of Paul’s thought has been displaced by a preoccupation with religious and moral psychology; all the epistles were interpreted through a Romans lens. This is a false turn, which runs the risk of reducing salvation itself to a sub-division of religious anthropology. To misinterpret Paul is to misunderstand the Gospel itself. Fr Patrick Henry Reardon guards against this error and offers a fuller and more balanced picture of the Letter to the Romans, reading it in the context of the entire Pauline corpus and relying upon the best ancient sources, the Apostle’s earliest disciples and defenders, those Christians in the churches that Paul had a hand in founding. These churches, closely associated with the composition and copying of the epistles rightly enjoyed a recognized authority in the determination of early Christian doctrine.

Patrick Henry Reardon is a senior editor at Touchstone magazine, the author of nine books—including Christ in the Psalms and The Jesus We Missed—and of hundreds of articles and essays, a popular podcaster, and the pastor of All Saints Orthodox Church in Chicago.

Song of Songs: Textual Commentary and Theological Reflections

• Author: Lawrence R. Farley
• Publisher: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
• Publication Date: 2018
• Pages: 144

Fr Lawrence Farley brings his exegetical skills to bear on the Song of Songs, one of the shortest but richest—and most difficult—books of the Bible. This balanced, verse-by-verse commentary examines the text on two main levels: both as a beautiful image of the love and the bond shared between man and woman in marriage, and as an icon of the “great mystery” toward which human marriage points: “Christ and the Church” (Eph 5.32).

We live in swiftly changing times, when the value, the meaning, and the very definition of marriage are the subject of heated debate. Fr Lawrence offers us a vision of the biblical foundation for marriage, which can withstand the floods of life, “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” (Eph 2.20).

Lawrence R. Farley is the priest at St Herman of Alaska Church in Langley, British Columbia. He is the author of the Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series (Conciliar/Ancient Faith Publishing), Feminism and Tradition: Quiet Reflections on Ordination and Communion (SVS Press), and he writes a regular column for the website of the Orthodox Church in America: No Other Foundation. His podcast, Coffee Cup Commentaries, is available on Ancient Faith Radio.

The Orthodox Way

• Author: Kallistos Ware
• Publisher: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
• Publication Date: 2002
• Pages: 164

This book is a general account of the doctrine, worship and life of Orthodox Christians by the author of the now classic The Orthodox Church. It raises the basic issues of theology: God is hidden yet revealed; the problem with evil; the nature of salvation; the meaning of faith; prayer; death and what lies beyond. In so doing, it helps to fill the need for modern Orthodox catechism. Yet this book is not a mere manual, a dry-as-dust repository of information. Throughout the book, Bishop Kallistos Ware shows the meaning of Orthodox doctrine for the life of the individual Christian. Doctrinal issues are seen not as abstract propositions for theological debate but as affecting the whole of life.

A wealth of texts drawn from theologians and spiritual writers of all ages accompanies Bishop Kallistos' presentation. They, too, reveal Orthodoxy not just as a system of beliefs, practices and customs but indeed as the Way.

Kallistos Ware is an English bishop and theologian of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He has held since 1982 the titular Bishopric of Diokleia in Phrygia, later made a titular metropolitan bishopric in 2007, under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

The Testament of the Lord: Worship & Discipline in the Early Church (Popular Patristics)

• Author: Alistair Stewart
• Publisher: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
• Publication Date: 2018
• Pages: 170

The Testament of the Lord is one of several ancient “Church Order” texts. Written in the first four centuries of the Church, they direct Christian conduct and morality, ecclesiastical organization and discipline, and the Church’s worship and liturgical life. Beginning with an apocalyptic section in which the risen Lord himself addresses the reader, The Testament then describes the building of a church, the mode of appointment for clergy and monastics, and the conduct of daily prayers and of other liturgical services.

The text is newly translated from the extant Syriac (with an eye to Ethiopic manuscripts), and the introduction makes the case for a fourth century Cappadocian redactor who gave the work its present shape, though much of its material goes back at least to the third century. Those who are interested in early Church Orders will also find the Didache and St Hippolytus’ On the Apostolic Tradition in the Popular Patristics Series (PPS 41 and 54).

Alistair Stewart is a leading scholar of Christian liturgical origins. The author of numerous books on early Christianity and its liturgy, he is a vicar in the Church of England. Many of his translations appear in the Popular Patristics Series (PPS 29, 41, 49, 54, 55, and 58).

The Collected Studies of John A. McGuckin (3 vols.)

• Author: John A. McGuckin
• Publisher: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
• Publication Date: 2017
• Pages: 1,063

The Collected Studies of John A. McGuckin offers the fruits of decades of research and scholarly achievement. The three volumes represent three pillars, upon which the life and outlook of Orthodox Christians must rest: Volume One, Witnessing the Kingdom, presents studies in the history and theology of the New Testament; Volume Two, Seeing the Glory, includes numerous studies on different Fathers of the Church and their theology; Volume Three, Illumined in the Spirit, delves into Orthodox spirituality in the past and present. Without these three—Scripture, the Fathers, and spirituality—our life and vision are incomplete.

The first volume, Witnessing the Kingdom: Studies in New Testament History and Theology, readers join an Orthodox theologian and historian who engages Scripture in a thorough and sustained manner. McGuckin considers the questions and concerns of modern and postmodern scholars, such as the many “quests” for the historical Jesus, while keeping an eye on the tradition of the Church. He explores modern hermeneutics in light of patristic patterns of scriptural study, and proposes a way forward for Orthodox readers who wish to confront contemporary questions in light of our perennial tradition.

Volume two, Seeing the Glory: Studies in Patristic Theology, readers encounter the theology and vision of the fathers from their first foundations through their full flowering. Beginning with the apostolic fathers and the School of Alexandria, through the great Cappadocian fathers, the Christological controversies of the following centuries, and the profound thought of St Maximus and the later fathers, these studies illumine the fathers’ understanding of the person of Christ, the mystery of the Trinity, and the profound dynamic of our salvation and deification.

The third volume, Illumined in the Spirit: Studies in Orthodox Spirituality, readers encounter the deep spirituality of the Orthodox Church from several different perspectives. From prayer and asceticism to modern questions of violence, pacifism, marriage, and human rights, these studies show the life of the Church from its ancient roots to its modern surroundings.

John A. McGuckin is a world-renowned scholar, the author of more than twenty-five books and over one hundred articles. He was Nielson Professor of Early Church History at Union Theological Seminary, and taught for over thirty years in numerous universities in Europe and America. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of Great Britain, and is the recipient of honorary doctorates from St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and Sibiu University. He is an archpriest of the Orthodox Church of Romania, and the recipient of the Romanian Order of St Stephen, the Gold Cross of Moldavia and Bukovina.