Peter Bouteneff

This article examines the notion of consensus as a decision-making method within the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, convened in Crete in 2016. Written from an analytical and prospective perspective, the text was composed several months before the event took place. Peter Bouteneff, an American Orthodox theologian, seeks to clarify what the principle of consensus precisely entails in a conciliar context, distinguishing its various possible meanings and assessing the practical consequences of its application during deliberations. The main contribution of the article lies in the theological and ecclesiological insight it provides into the mechanisms of Orthodox conciliar governance, thereby contributing to a better understanding of the procedural and doctrinal issues specific to this type of assembly in the tradition of the contemporary Orthodox Church.

This article examines the conception of theological reason in the work of Dionysius the Areopagite, a major figure in the Christian mystical tradition. Through rigorous patristic scholarship, Pierre C. Bouteneff analyzes the way in which Pseudo-Dionysius articulates the use of reason in theology with the demands of the apophatic way. The central idea is that reason, far from being rejected in this tradition, is called to transcend itself: it must undergo a genuine transfiguration in order to attain knowledge of God, which exceeds all conceptual categories. The contribution of this article lies in its illumination of the internal coherence of Dionysian thought, which does not stand in opposition to theological rationality but rather proposes a radical reformulation of it, embedded in a mystical and contemplative dynamic characteristic of Greek patristics.