Talvikki Ahonen For centuries if not millennia, Orthodox Christianity has maintained a complex cultural/political relationship with the “West.” The Great Schism of 1054 divided Christendom and formed the religious and cultural self-understanding of the Orthodox faithful as inherently opposed to the West. The vagueness of the term West has enabled a wide range of (often […]
Matti Kotiranta & Antti Raunio A commonly held view is that the Western world perceives human beings as being individualistic. ‘Individualism’ may be understood in many ways, but the main question is whether the Western view of human beings is as strongly individualistic as it is often thought (or claimed) to be. This is an […]
Teuvo Laitila & Heta Hurskainen If the position of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) towards the West and East could be characterised by one word, it would be ‘mission’. Since the start of its missionary work, the East – Siberia, Alaska, Korea and Japan in the early 20th century – has been the ROC’s direction, […]
Heta Hurskainen I welcome you to read our blog, “East Meets West”! The blog’s hub is the School of Theology at the University of Eastern Finland (UEF). Despite the word “Eastern” in the name of the university, our School of Theology offers both Orthodox and Western theology to study and research. East meets West at […]