Essays on Orthodox Christianity and Church History

These essays were written at intervals during Dr. Ashanin's teaching career of thirty-five years. They were published in various publications as a response to the theological challenges which his generation had to face. He wrote them to elucidate the historical issues of my time from the Christian perspective. Although these essays were written in particular periods of time, they have present day relevance, because he tried to interpret the issues discussed in them under the aegis of the recurring, underlying themes. A Christian historian, while he observes all rules of the historical method and deals with his subject sub specie temporis, cannot escape awareness that there is another dimension which he cannot ignore, a dimension in all human aff airs to which he must pay attention in his writings, that of sub specie Aeternitatis. He must combine epis temology, the knowledge of things, with eschatology, the divine goal to which everything is guided by divine wisdom. In philoso phy, this aspect is known as teleology, the aim to which every thing leads. While these may not be found explicit in his writings, they are implicit in them, because his intellectual consciousness is imbued with this orientation, and it is inevitable that it is embodied in his work.