Online lecture
Ekaterini Tsalampouni
“COSMIC LITURGY” AND THE CARE FOR THE CREATION
Thursday, April 10, 2025, 7 p.m. Paris time (CEST)
The next lecture in the series of events “Time for Action” of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies, will take place on Thursday, April 10, 2025, at 7 p.m. Paris time (CEST). The speaker will be Ekaterini Tsalampouni, Professor of New Testament in the Faculty of Theology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The lecture will have the title . The lecture is also part of the “Liturgy after the Liturgy” series, organized by the Holy Metropolis of France and the Vicariate of French-Speaking Parishes of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, in collaboration with the Volos Academy. The event will be accessible online, either via Zoom (at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84913433453) or via the YouTube channel of the Vicariate, at https://www.youtube.com/c/lalettreduvicariat. The event will be moderated by Dr. Nikolaos Asproulis, Deputy Director of the Volos Academy; it will be in Greek and there will be simultaneous translation into French.
The participation of creation in the cosmic worship and praise of the Creator God has deep roots in the Jewish and Christian tradition. With regard to the latter in particular, the origins of this idea are to be found in biblical texts. The subsequent patristic production and liturgical practice creatively embraced and elaborated it. In this continuum of tradition, the non-human creation is presented as an active participant in this cosmic worship of the Creator. Their prayer is, on the one hand, an irrefutable testimony to the wisdom of the Creator and the world’s beauty and, on the other, an example and exhortation to human beings to join their voices with the rest of creation in a common praise of God. The first part of the introduction presents the basic qualitative characteristics of this cosmic worship as it is reflected in the biblical texts. Special attention is given to the question of whether these images of the creation’s praise can lead to a reconsideration of the anthropocentric view of both the history of creation and salvation, as well as the eschatological vision. In the second part, the soteriological potential of this image will be highlighted and the connection with the Eucharistic event and the liturgical experience of the Church will be made. What is the place of creation in the cosmic liturgy, and how does its role within it lead to an enriched and less anthropocentric understanding of the role of man as priest of the creation? The third and final part of the paper considers whether this understanding of the role of creation in the secular liturgy can be relevant to contemporary reflection on the environment and contribute to the formation of an ecologically aware ethos among members of the Church community.
Ekaterini Tsalampouni is Professor of New Testament at the Department of Social Theology and Christian Culture, Faculty of Theology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her research focuses on New Testament exegesis and theology and the Graeco-Roman context of the New Testament. She studied at the Faculty of Theology in Thessaloniki and continued her postgraduate studies in Heidelberg. In 1999 she defended her doctoral thesis titled “Macedonia in New Testament times”. She worked as a religion teacher in Secondary Education and as an appointed lecturer at the Department of Orthodox Theology of the University of Munich. She is a member of several academic societies: Society of Biblical Literature, European Association of Biblical Theology, Colloquium Paulinum etc. She is a member of the board of the Hellenic Bible Society and the Volos Academy of Theological Studies. Her publications include “Macedonia in New Testament Times” (2002), “Ecology and the New Testament: Method and Examples” (2013), “The Spirit as a Hermeneutical Lens of Israel’s Past and the Church’s Present and Future: 2 Cor 3:16-17 and its Reception in Patristic Tradition” (2019), “Sola Scriptura: A Greek-Orthodox Perspective”(2019) etc.
