Stefan Stanchev Tsankov ( bg, Стефан Станчев Цанков, 4 July 1881,

Gorna Oryahovitsa Gorna Oryahovitsa ( bg, Горна Оряховица ) is a List of cities and towns in Bulgaria, town in northern Bulgaria, situated in Veliko Tarnovo Province, from Veliko Tarnovo. It is the administrative centre of the homonymous Gorna Orya ...

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedon ...

— 20 March 1965) was a Bulgarian Orthodox

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

and

Archpriest The ecclesiastical title of archpriest or archpresbyter belongs to certain priests with supervisory duties over a number of parishes. The term is most often used in Eastern Orthodoxy and the Eastern Catholic Churches and may be somewhat analogous ...

of the

Bulgarian Orthodox Church The Bulgarian Orthodox Church ( bg, Българска православна църква, translit=Balgarska pravoslavna tsarkva), legally the Patriarchate of Bulgaria ( bg, Българска патриаршия, links=no, translit=Balgarsk ...

Life and work

Tsankov studied the

liturgy Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. ''Liturgy'' can also be used to refer specifically to public worship by Christians. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and partic ...

and

spirituality The meaning of ''spirituality'' has developed and expanded over time, and various meanings can be found alongside each other. Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape o ...

of the

Eastern Orthodox Church The Eastern Orthodox Church, also called the Orthodox Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptized members. It operates as a communion of autocephalous churches, each governed by its bishops via ...

in an Orthodox

seminary A seminary, school of theology, theological seminary, or divinity school is an educational institution for educating students (sometimes called ''seminarians'') in scripture, theology, generally to prepare them for ordination to serve as clergy, ...

and was ordained a

presbyter Presbyter () is an honorific title for Christian clergy. The word derives from the Greek ''presbyteros,'' which means elder or senior, although many in the Christian antiquity would understand ''presbyteros'' to refer to the bishop functioning as ...

. Later he also received the rank of

protopresbyter A ''protoiereus'' (from grc, πρωτοϊερεύς, "first priest", Modern Greek: πρωθιερέας) or protopriest in the Eastern Orthodox Church is a priest usually coordinating the activity of other subordinate priests in a bigger church. T ...

archpriest The ecclesiastical title of archpriest or archpresbyter belongs to certain priests with supervisory duties over a number of parishes. The term is most often used in Eastern Orthodoxy and the Eastern Catholic Churches and may be somewhat analogous ...

. Tsankov published theological books and took part in lectures at home and abroad. He describes Orthodox Christian worship the following way:

In the liturgy of the Orthodox Church ... are doctrine and experience, symbol and reality, history and present, God and man united ''.

Through the results of his theological research, he was given a professorship at

Sofia University Sofia University, "St. Kliment Ohridski" at the University of Sofia, ( bg, Софийски университет „Св. Климент Охридски“, ''Sofijski universitet „Sv. Kliment Ohridski“'') is the oldest higher education i ...

in Bulgaria. He was a member of the

Christian Peace Conference The Christian Peace Conference ( cs, Křesťanská mírová konference) was an international organization based in Prague and founded in 1958 by Josef Hromádka, a pastor who had spent the war years in the United States, moving back to Czechoslova ...

and worked in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

at his First and Second Meetings in 1958 and 1959. On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the University of Sofia and the 85th anniversary of its Theological Faculty, an international conference in memory of Stefan Tsankov was held.

German language works

* The Constitution of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, (1918) * The Orthodox Christianity of the East (1928) * The administration of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (1920) * The fundamental difficulties of holding an Ecumenical Council, (Communication) - in: H. S. Alivisatos (ed.) Conces-verbaux du premier Congres de Theologie Orthodoxe an Athenes, 29 Novembre - 6 Decembre 1936, p. 269-282;

Literature

* The Encyclopedia of Christianity, Volume 1 (A-D) by Erwin Fahlbusch. See all pages with references to "ecclesiological problems". Excerpt - on Stefan Zankow (1881-1965) made important contributions to basic ecclesiological problems, to the Orthodox conception of the -4 unity of the church. Page 309: "... and regional ecumenical conference from the early part of the 20th century , To the role of nontheological factors, and to the ... "https://www.amazon.com/phrase/ecclesiological-problems

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tsankov, Stefan 20th-century Eastern Orthodox priests Bulgarian Orthodox priests Academic staff of Sofia University 1881 births 1965 deaths