Author: Rev. prof. Dumitru Stăniloae (Member of the Romanian Academy)
Keywords: Orthodox Christianity, Romania, ethnicity, culture, science, popular traditions, liturgy
Abstract:
The study of Father Stăniloae about Orthodoxy, understood here somehow as the essence of the Romanian Spirituality, which includes sociocultural, scientific or even political visions, represent an approach rarely found in other authors, be them theologians or not. No matter how unrealistic or utopian may seem to some the Father Stăniloae’s vision of, put in writing 80 years ago, this is no other than the authentic Orthodox one, the only one sustainable. It is the only catalyser for a feasible future of the national ideals, of any type. Any attempt to minimize or eliminate the Orthodox world-vision cannot but throw the society on the way of extinction, of whose first stage nowadays is already done by means of policies that promote dehumanization and/or depersonalization, as a way to destroy the conscience of values or of the notions of evil and good. Thus, in the first part, father presents the contribution of the Orthodox Spirituality to the progress of science, explaining how, in the Romano-catholic and Protestant West, by separating the created nature from the divine influence or immanency, or of the sanctifying work made through man, this (i.e.) the created nature was approached separately, on quantitative or materialistic principles. In this way, man started to think that the spiritual life is to be lived only privately, without any social relevancy. In the Eastern Orthodoxy things happened differently: as far as the Romanian Christianity is concerned, it promoted a liturgical worldview and valued all the national, cultural or rural traditions. By translating the Church services into the spoken language, through the spiritual relation to all the life rhythms, nature cycles and others, the Romanian society promoted only in a small measure the scientific and technological progress, avoiding thus the Western catastrophic excesses.
(Republished from Gândirea, XIX (1940), issue 6, pp. 416-425)
Pages: 12-25