Because of its strong program in teaching and presenting Orthodox sacred arts, St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary faculty were strongly represented in the panel of speakers at the 8th Sophia Annual Conference on the theme of "The Sacred Arts of Eastern Orthodoxy: Icon, Music, Rhetoric, Architecture and Artifacts" on December 4, 2015 at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The Sophia Annual Conferences are aimed at producing scholarly volumes on major themes of Orthodox life and culture that require deeper elaboration in our modern world. One of the keynote addresses was delivered by the Seminary's Professor of Systematic Theology, Dr. Peter C. Bouteneff. Professor Bouteneff is director of the Seminary's Arvo Pärt Project (APP) as well as of its Sacred Arts Initiative, the result of a $250,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.
In his lecture, Dr. Bouteneff explained how the APP has led the Seminary towards a more focused and interdisciplinary study of the Sacred Arts. He also laid some "cairns" — trail-markers — for the theological study of the arts, highlighting especially the problems of spirit-matter dualism. "The sacred arts," he said, "are about embodiment and incarnation, but it isn't a matter of 'good' spirit cleansing 'bad' matter.
"Our theology of the human person and the world has to be consciously holistic, as the Fathers have taught," he noted. "Only in this way will our understanding of the arts be true to our teaching on the Incarnation and on the sacraments."
Among the other notable speakers was Dr. Helen Evans, Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator of Byzantine Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Professor Richard Schneider, who has taught iconology and hermeneutics at St. Vladimir's since the 1990s, and Dn. Evan Freeman, a doctoral candidate at the Department of the History of Art at Yale University currently teaching at the Seminary, both delivered important papers on innovation and tradition in icon painting, accompanied by stunning visual examples. Additionally, SVS Press's full display of books, CDs, and icons was a hub of the conference's intellectual and social activity.
