ABSTRACT
The following chapter seeks to revisit and address the discussion surrounding the prosopo-centric ontology of Christos Yannaras. Specifically, it examines the competing claims regarding Yannaras’s hermeneutical connection to the Greek Patristic tradition and strives to elucidate the methodology at the core of the Greek philosopher’s creative appropriation of Patristic paradigms. This topic is examined in light of the methodological mechanisms of the so-called ‘Neopatristic synthesis’, which is purportedly the inspiration of many twentieth and twenty-first century thinkers and exegetes – including Yannaras himself – but which is most commonly associated with the Russian émigré scholar and theologian Fr Georges Florovsky. Consequently, a key secondary objective of the chapter is a clarification of the Neopatristic concept itself and an effort to dispel the terminological vagueness associated with it. As the chapter argues, only through a precise characterisation of the Neopatristic model is it possible to evaluate Yannaras’s own connection to Greek Patristic thought and open the way for the ongoing critical evaluation to bear fruit.
