In the spring of 1995 I was coordinating the academic research programme at what has now become the Emanuel University of Oradea. At the first scholarly colloquium which I organised in this role I had the providential opportunity to come to know the Revd Professor Stelian Tofana, of the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Cluj, and since then we have maintained an especially close bond. This accounts for our decision to share the writing of a Romanian preface to the second edition of this work: Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism. We are united both by a common interest in Eastern theology and spirituality, which each of us approaches from his own perspective, and by our firmly held personal conviction of the pressing need for theological and ecclesial dialogue between the different Christian traditions in our cultural context.
Over the years we have been involved together in many activities which have put flesh on the bones of these shared convictions. We have participated in academic conferences both within Romania (in Oradea, Cluj, Bucharest and elsewhere) and abroad (including Bossey, in Switzerland, and Durres in Albania) that have been organised both by Evangelicals and by the Orthodox; we have contributed to the resulting publications of their proceedings; we have joined in organising the promotion of books relevant to this dialogue; we have collaborated in spiritually-oriented training sessions for the staff of World Vision (an organisation I have been working for since December 1999); we have each sought to make more widely known within our own constituency the treasures of thought and spirituality to be found in the tradition of the other – and, last but not least, we have often enjoyed table fellowship in one another’s homes, which has provided occasions to celebrate what unites us in spite of the specific differences which define each of our ecclesial identities. Continue reading “An Evangelical Introduction to the 2nd Edition of the Romanian Translation of ‘Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism’”