Alain Moufarège

This article by Alain Moufarège, a Lebanese layman, offers a historical and theological study of the earliest christological formulations in Christian literature of the first two centuries. The author successively examines the Odes of Solomon, the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the work of Irenaeus of Lyon, analyzing the way in which each of these witnesses attempted to put into words the mystery of the incarnation. The central idea is that the first Christians, close to the founding event, approached the person of Christ with careful reserve, combining poetic intuition, confession of faith, and refutation of heresies. The contribution of the article is to show that this nascent christology, still hesitant and sometimes contradictory, bears witness to a fruitful tension between the necessity of speaking and the respect for mystery, a tension that foreshadows the great conciliar definitions of later centuries.

This article offers a theological meditation on the Apocalypse of Saint John, read as a narrative of the history of human salvation. The author, a Lebanese in exile, adopts a deliberately concrete and historically focused approach to the text's implications, setting aside both catastrophist readings and esoteric interpretations. The central idea is that the Apocalypse, far from being a text removed from the world, deeply anchors Christian existence in history, between the "already" of the Resurrection and the "not yet" of the Parousia. The author surveys the book in its entirety, identifying its major structural articulations: the vocation of the Christian, the role of the Church, the struggle against evil, and the eschatological transfiguration of the world. On the theological level, the article upholds an Orthodox vision of the people of God, in which the laity and religious life interpenetrate, and in which human history is traversed and transfigured by divine eternity.