CU Christian Orthodox Society

Talk by Fr Alexander Tefft

Time: Wednesday, 24 June, 7.30 pm
Venue: New Common Room, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ (TBC)
Entrance: free for everyone
Tea/coffee and refreshments following the talk and discussion.

Father Alexander Tefft is Assistant Priest of the Antiochian Orthodox community in London and Chaplain at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies. A Canadian resident in London, he is completing a Ph.D. in Orthodox ecclesiology. Fr. Alexander has served under the Orthodox Church in America and the Patriarchate of Moscow, as well as the Patriarchate of Antioch. He has been a Commonwealth Scholar at Oxford University and has taught Orthodox dogmatic theology and church history in Canada, the USA, and the UK since 1991.

Talk by Fr Raphael and Presbytera Carolyn Armour

Life in St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York: Meeting Fr Alexander Schmemann, Fr John Meyendorff and Sophie Koulomzin

Time: Tuesday, 19 May, 7.30 pm
Venue: New Common Room, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ
Entrance: free for everyone
Tea/coffee and refreshments following the talk and discussion.

Fr Raphael Armour is priest of the Cambridge Orthodox Parish of St Ephraim the Syrian and Associate Chaplain at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies. Fr Raphael and his wife Carolyn were received into the Orthodox Church in St Vladimir’s Theological Seminary in New York in 1981. They took active part in the life of the Seminary for 25 years, during which time they got to know most prominent Orthodox priests, scholars and writers, including Fr Alexander Schmemann, Fr John Meyendorff and Sophie Koulomzin.  Fr Raphael and Carolyn will talk about their life in the Seminary and the extraordinary people they met there.

Time: Saturday, 30 May, 7.30 pm
Venue: New Common Room, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ
Entrance: free for everyone

You are warmly invited to our Intercultural bring and share evening. You are welcome to bring food and drinks from your country, songs and poems which you would like to share with others.

Talk by Dr Marcus Plested

Time: Tuesday, 2 June, 7.30 pm
Venue: New Common Room, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ
Entrance: free for everyone
Tea/coffee and refreshments following the talk and discussion.

Dr Marcus Plested is Vice-Principal and Academic Director at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies. He took his doctorate from Oxford in 1999 with a thesis on the Macarian Homilies supervised by Bishop Kallistos (Ware). Dr
Plested has taught, lectured, and published widely in the field of Orthodox Christian studies. His most recent book is ‘The Macarian Legacy: The Place of Macarius-Symeon in the Eastern Christian Tradition’ (Oxford: OUP 2004). Other
research interests include the understanding of wisdom in the Christian tradition and the interaction between  western and eastern theological
traditions.

Talk by Sister Magdalen

Time: Thursday, 11 June, 6.30 pm
Venue: New Common Room, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ
Entrance: free for everyone
Tea/coffee and refreshments following the talk and discussion.

Sister Magdalen is a noted speaker, a nun from the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist (Maldon, Essex) where she is involved in children’s ministry. She is the author of two books: ‘Children in the Church Today: An Orthodox Perspective’ and ‘Conversations with Children: Communicating our Faith’.

Talk by Prof David Bradshaw, University of Kentucky (USA)

Time: Wednesday, 3 December, 7pm
Venue: Seminar room, Newnham Terrace 1, 1st Floor; Darwin College, Newnham Road, Cambridge (entrance from the garden of Darwin College)
Entrance: free for everyone
Refreshments following the talk and discussion

Abstract:
Orthodox spiritual teachers sometimes speak of “drawing the mind into the heart” through the Jesus Prayer. What does this mean? In particular, how can it be either possible or advisable to “draw the mind into the heart” if, as is generally assumed, the mind is the locus of reason and the heart is that of emotion? But in fact the significance of the mind and the heart within Orthodoxy is quite different from that in the contemporary West. The aim of this paper will be to understand what the mind and the heart signify in both the eastern and western Christian traditions; how their meanings diverged; and what these two divergent histories tell us about our own nature as rational, emotional, and (above all) spiritual beings.

A Colloquium on David Bradshaw’s book “Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom” (Cambridge: CUP 2004)

The Colloquium is organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge

Where: Runcie Room, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9BS
When: Friday, 5 December, 1pm-5.30pm
Entrance: free for everyone. No registration required

Speakers: Prof David Bradshaw (University of Kentucky), Prof John Milbank (University of Nottingham), Dr Christophe Erismann (CRASSH, University of Cambridge), Dr Constantinos Athanasopoulos (IOCS)

For further information please contact Christoph Schneider, cs300@cam.ac.uk

The aim of the colloquium is to explore the nature and significance of the Eastern Orthodox distinction between the divine essence and energies. According to many Orthodox theologians, this doctrine is central to the understanding of the Eastern tradition. Yet it raises a number of historical, theological and philosophical questions, some of which this colloquium would like to address. Prof David Bradshaw’s recent book “Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom”, in which the author’s (Eastern Orthodox) position is developed in dialogue with the Western tradition, is an excellent starting point for an ecumenical discussion of these issues.
 

Talk by Klaus Kenneth

Time: Friday, 13 June, 7pm
Venue: Dining Hall, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ
Entrance: free for everyone

Klaus Kenneth is the authour of “Zwei Millionen Kilometer auf der Suche” (”Two Million Kilometers of Searching”) and “Lebensbuch des Nil von Sora” (”The Life of Nil Sorsky”), translator of Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov’s books into German, musician and educator. For twelve years he travelled around the world in search of the truth. He went from India, Tibet, Thailand and the Arab countries to Mexico ; from Africa to Alaska and Brasil. He tried different religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, … - before he found Christianity. Klaus will talk about his way to the Truth and his experiences of different religions.

When: Sunday, 18 May

PROGRAMME

1pm - Meeting in front of the electronic display at the Cambridge train
station. We will take the 1.09pm train to Ely. Please buy your own ticket.

2pm - Veneration of the relics of St Etheldreda of Ely in St Etheldreda’s
Church. Fr Raphael Armour will celebrate a Moleben.

3pm - Tea/coffee

4pm - Visit to the Ely Cathedral. Evensong.

5pm -6.30pm - Walk through Ely

6.30pm - Dinner in Italian restaurant ‘Prezzo’, 12-14 High Street, Ely

8/9pm - Return to Cambridge

Please let us know until Wednesday, 14 May, if you would like join us for dinner. We need to reserve a table. Please email cs300@cam.ac.uk or avs29@cam.ac.uk

Talk by Prof David Frost

When: Thursday, 29 May, 7pm
Where: Old Common Room, Wesley House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, CB5 8BJ
Entrance: Free for everyone

We will also organise a screening of ‘King Lear’ in Wesley House prior to Prof Frost’s talk. Details to follow.

Professor David Frost will give an address entitled ‘King Lear: or the Chaplain’s Dilemma’ - a lecture evoked by an appeal from the then Chaplain of St John’s College that Dr Frost talk with one of his pupils, who had been concerned to understand Christianity but after a supervision on King Lear found it impossible to see how anyone who had responded to that play could be a Christian.

Professor Frost is currently Principal of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, having been for ten years a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, Director of Studies in English, and a University Teaching Officer. Subsequently, he was for twenty-two years Professor of English Literature in the University of Newcastle, New South Wales. He is author of ‘The School of Shakespeare’, a study of Shakespeare’s relation to his contemporaries in the drama and has edited one of them, Thomas Middleton. However, he is better known for his work on Liturgical Commissions in England and Australia and was responsible with a team of Hebraists for The Liturgical Psalter, a translation of the Psalms that has been included in six national prayerbooks.