„OVIDIUS” UNIVERSITY - CONSTANŢA - FACULTY OF ORTHODOX THEOLOGY, - SCHOOL OF DOCTORAL STUDIES
EASTERN ORTHODOX SPIRITUALITATY AND WESTERN SPIRITUALITATY SCIENTIFIC LEADER OF MY DOCTORAL THEME AND STUDIES: Rev. University. Prof. DUMITRU RADU DOCTORAL CANDIDATE : ANTONIU – CĂTĂLIN PĂŞTIN
motto: „Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.”(Matthew 13,11). „Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God”.(Icorinthians, IV,1).
RESEARCH THEME The emphasis of the of the special feature of the orthodox spirituality compared with the western, catholic and protestant spirituality, based on the religion notion and more exactly on the faith teaching of the two great Churches: the Orthodox and the Roman – Catholic Church, but without ignoring the self- styled protestant spirituality, which deeply differs both from the western roman-catholic spirituality, from which since the Reform it separated and from the orthodox spirituality.
3. RESEARCH PURPOSE The reasearch theme originated in the fact, that today appeared the other self – styled christian spiritualities, which in reality they merely are not christian, but with a self-styled philosophical spirituality, generally speaking even superior towards the christian spirituality, but which don’t confess about God or more exactly generally combat the religion and specially the christian religion; Additionally these christian denominations unfortunately speak about spirituality and claim to have a deep spirituality, and this fact can be observed both for the religious sects considering this notion in its general meaning and specially regarding the christian sects.
UP-TO-DATENESS OF THIS THEME The up- to -dateness of this research theme derives not only from the constant interest of the „christian denominations” to emphasize their wrong rationalism but also from the need of a christian answer within a single voice for the great problems of the contemporary world, which is in a serious existential impact and is waiting from the religious spirituality side for a
INNOVATIVE FEATURE OF THE WORK I consider that the present work has a deep innovative feature due to the fact that on the basis of the already existing bibliographical possibilities I tried to carry out work of a real scientific interest I tackled my work in a interconfessional manner, emphasizing the wrong rationalism of the roman – catholic and protestant theologies and spiritualities.
THE USED PRINCIPLES AND RESEARCH METHODS
The used principles and research methods have their fundament in : the Holy Scripture; the works of the Holy Fathers; the works of the church writers
Chapter I : GENERAL KNOWLEDGES ABOUT RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY
Between religion and spirituality there is a very tight relation; the today spirituality must be revived based on the right understanding of the concepts of religion, religiosity and spirituality, noticing that: The christian religion practically involves the whole content of the faith revealed by God to man since his creation till the entire redemption in Jesus Christ, but also the free and conscious community of dependence between the personal, creative, redeeming God and man, which is manifested within the experience through the religious feeling, which involves a dostrine, a worship and a morality; „„Religion is a positive spiritual and universal phenomenon. Its fundamental elemnts are God and man” (Metropolitan Bishop Irineu Mihãlcescu). And the target of the entire christian life consists in the union with the Triune God, a target which is always an endless progress in love”. And this last mentioned feature deeply depends on spirituality. In the Christianity: the Holy Spirit recreates the human being and in this way makes it Christ – bearer resembling to Jesus Christ, Who as man holds in Himself the whole Holy Spirit”. The spirituality and specially the christian spirituality involves our ascetical efforts to unite with God. The Christianity brought us a new teaching about God, about man and his mission and gave the christians norms and rules after which they could direct, a life guide and also spiritual powers to carry out this mission. All the values which man carries out during his existence are involved in the specific dialogic relation with the Triune God, as a personal absolute existence, like the endless Truth, Supreme Good, preeminent Beauty and the inexhaustible Holiness.
Reliogion means the relation of man with God, which is inside experienced and manifested though the faith acts(Dogmatics), moral deeds(Morality) and worship acts(Liturgics). According to the above mentioned meaning the religion is represented under two forms: -Internal, manifested through a psychological state of man, i.e. through a religious feeling, better to say through a religiosity which confesses the faith; - External. Which consists in special worshipful ceremonies and practices. .Religiosity is spirituality: the knowledge of the Triune God is not a problem of pure speculation, but one of purification and opening, of meeting and dialogue with God through the consciousness of His presence within us and world through His Grace and faith”(Rev. Univ. Prof. Doctor. IOAN ICA). The orthodox christian spirituality represents the communion life of the christian with and in Jesus Christ, the experience of this life in Jesus Christ and the consciousness of His presence and work. „If the Christian Morality explains and argues the conditions of the moral christian life(the moral law, the consciousness and liberty) as the doctrine under its analytical form, i.e. presenting the meaning and nature of sins and virtues, considered like independent status, without a relation or other link between them, the Orthodox Spirituality presents the advance process of the christian on the perfection way in Jesus Christ through the purification of the passions and virtues obtaining, a process which is realized in a certain order”. The christian Church delivered an intelligible form of the divine truths. The christian truth is actually the redeeming truth. What represents the essential difference between orthodoxism and roman – catholicism is the spirit in which the Theology was developed and its organization which makes it very difficult its return to the ecumenical truth. The catholic spirituality is only a reflex of the faith teaching itself.
The roman – catholic spirituality is under the influence of the concept of Thomas Aquinas which considers that the main source of the moral norms and principles is actually the human mind and on the second place the Divine Revelation”. Because: „ the moral law, according to the the roman – catholicism, becomes something external and superior for the human person, transforming the man into an obedient chap”. Thomas Aquinas and in his succession the Roman – Catholics were helped in the understanding of the problems and of spirituality itself by the philosophy of Aristotle, which even next to the Gospel of Jesus Christ finds its place. The Orthodoxy emphasizes the „apophatism” in the knowledge of God, while the catholic theology and spirituality underlines the „cataphatism”, i.e. the knowledge of God through the analogy with the created things. The catholic dogma of Filioque is rationally argued by the catholics. But Saint John the Evangelist says that the Holy Spirit comes from Father and is sent into the world through the Son : „But when the Comforter is come , whom I will send unto you from the Father , even the Spirit of truth , which proceedeth from the Father , he shall testify of me ”(The Gospel according to Saint John 15,26) and (The Gospel according to Saint John 16, 7); The papal primacy as dogma, unrecognized by the Universal Church is an other testimony of the exagerated rationalism in the theology and structure of the Roman – Catholic Church. Transubstantiation of the venerable and holy Gifts represents an other testimony of the philosophical rationalism in the roman – catholic theology and dogmatics . The protestant individualism finds itself in roman – catholic homonym; the roman- catholic individualism is „terminus a quo”, that protestant is „terminus ad qum”. The spirituality and even the doctrine and the morality of protestantism developed after the Reform of Luther, Calvin and Zwingli and others less as theological authority and even the general neoprotestantism, despite the claims of renewal and update of some teachings and self – styled new and revolutionary orientations are affected by the rationalism searched and promoted in the ecumenical movement itself.
Chapter II : ORTHODOX SPIRITUALITY LIKE LIFE EXPERIENCE IN JESUS CHRIST. FEATURES The orthodox spirituality as life experience in Jesus Christ has the following features: trinitarian, christological, pneumatological and ecclesial communitarian. The Holy Trinity is the fundament of the orthodox teaching and faith about God. The Dogma of the Holy Trinity is the basic truth of the christian teaching, which actually represents a distinctive and proper feature of the christianity.
The orthodox christian spirituality essentially distiguishes from the other spiritualities through the fact that it has a strong fundament in the Person of the incarnated Son of God, namely Jesus Christ, God-Man for everybody from all times and places, in other words from Adam until the end of time.
The Spirit brings into creation the trinitarian life and love, rising the creation to the plan of the deification and intra- trinitarian love. In the light of the orthodox spirituality, the christian morality don’t represent a simple fulfillment of some duties imposed by the God Commandments, duties which in this earthly life lead nowhere, but only assures to man his redemption as an external recompense in the afterlife(hereafter).The christian believes in God even during his earthly life, because the fulfillment of these commandments carries out a gradual transformation within his being, or an even more filling by the working presence of God.
CHAPTER III: THE ORTHODOX SPIRITUALITY LIKE A GROWTH OF CHRISTIAN IN JESUS CHIST AND DEIFICATION OF MAN
In the person of Our Redeemer it is concretelly revealed us the perfect morality. He is not only the supreme legislator but also the accomplished model of morality. He is: „the way , the truth , and the life ”(The Gospel according to Saint John 14,6), that is why we the christians must follow Him. The orthodox christian spirituality means the life experience in Jesus Christ and the conscience of His presence and work. The spiritual christian feels himself belonging to Jesus Christ with his whole being and life. And this belonging filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, which comes from the communion with Jesus Christ, makes the christian even more available to serve his fellow man with whom Jesus Christ Himself identifies.(The Gospel according to Saint Matthew 25, 40 – 45). Also, the orthodox spirituality purposes the accomplishment of man, who belives in Jesus Christ and lives in the communion with Him through the participation to His divine – human Life through the spiritual union with Him and the even more accomplished engraving of the humanity image of Jesus Christ, full of the Holy Spirit, in a continuous movement to the final goal.
CHAPTER IV: REDEMPTION AND DEIFICATION OF MAN, MAIN PURPOSE OF THE ORTHODOX SPIRITUALITY WITH: THE IMPROVEMENT THROUGH GRACE, FAITH AND GOOD DEEDS, THE ACCOMPLISHMENT AND DEIFICATION OF THE CHRISTIAN
The divine Grace is not a good in principle, detachable from God, „the Spirit is a divine uncreated energy, distinct from the Divine Being, but not separated from This and which is shared to people within the Church by the Holy Spirit through the Saint Sacraments to redemption(improvement and holiness) to grow up in Jesus Christ(deification), until the accomplishment figure of Jesus Christ”(Saint Gregory Palamas, Ephesians 4, 13, quoted by the Rrev. Univ. Prof. Dr. DUMITRU STANILOAE). In the orthodox spirituality, that who believes in Jesus Christ must concretize his faith into good deeds, namely to use his liberty to achieve th good, helped by the Grace of God, manifested in the world through the uncreated divine energies.The Divine Grace is the small bridge stretched to the infinitivy of God as a person or like a trinitarian communion of persons” since the moment, when God through His Divine Grace put us into relation with Himself.
Chapter V: THE SPIRITUAL PROGRESS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS RELATING TO THE REDEMPTION OF MAN WITH HIS ASCETICISM. AND PURIFICATION OF PASSIONS, THE GROWTH UP IN JESUS CHRIST THROUGH VIRUES, CONTEMPLATION OF GOD IN HIS BEINGS, MYSTICAL UNION OF MAN WITH GOD IN LOVE AND GRACE In the orthodox spirituality the great stages of the spiritual life are three : 1 - the continuous purification of passions and the growth up through virtues 2 - Illumination in the contemplation of God within His creation; the spiritual understranding of the Scripture; the increasing growth up in Jesus Christ; 3 - The even more strength union with Him on the path of prayer and love and deification. In this process of the spiritual life, which is characteristic of the orthodox spirituality it can be observed two great stages : I – the advance to the accomplishment through the purification efforts of passions and of obtaining of virtues; the main goal of the virtues or of the efforts from this stage is the liberation of passions or with other words our dispassion. II - the second stage is the step to a even more advanced spiritual life to the union with God, in which the work of man is replaced with the work of the divine uncreated energies, the human person opening to his even more accentuated existence of the spiritual life; this stage is also called the contemplation stage.
The christian devotion existed since the beginnings of the Church, but it is considered like one of the practical forms of the spirituality, or more exactly as a component of the authentical spirituality. In this meaning, the contemplation has as a main purpose the „reasons” from beings. (Saint Maximus the Confessor, Quest ad Thalas. G.40, P.G. 90, 397 B ).
The christian union with God realizes the true meaning of this union. The protestant theologians, understanding through the mysterious union with God exclusively this identification and not accepting the possibility of a direct and straight contact with God, which is not a substantial identification, in principle reject any mysterious and mystical union and reach the opposite extreme, i.e. of the irreductible separation between man and God. Between these two factors, according to their opinion, any transmission, any direct contact is not possible and just it is why God exclusively uses the word, in order however to establish a connection between Him and us. Unlike this wrong conception, the orthodox christianity , finds that nobody can reach the direct sight of God without the Grace given us by Him, and for the receiving of this Grace it is necessary a moral perfection of the entire human being through the uninterrupted divine help. In the recent years, it is established a return to the source, namely to the primary tradition of the Church, in other words a reconsiderationof the ancient sources of the christian teaching, of its spiritual vales, which being not according to the current stadium of the contemporary christianity, were reiterated in the spiritual universe of all the christian, within their path to the advance and perfection in Jesus Christ. The western theology pays attention to this fact and sometimes tries an ”import” of eastern spirituality, which denotes that the orthodox spirituality, always the same, permanently has a live-spirit maintained in the christian life through the uncreated divine energies, from Our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ Himself, through the apostolical succession until the present time.
Chapter VI. –SPIRITUALITY AND MINISTRATION OF FELLOW MEN IN THE SPIRIT OF JESUS CHRIST AND OF CHURCH LIKE A COMMUNION OF MAN WITH GOD AND HIS FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS
We live in a world in which the material values triumphed over the spiritual values, but within his innlife the man is feeling to be caught in the jaws of some irrational forces, which he can not control anymore. Ontologically the human person has a deep community and synodal feature in love. This unity of the human nature was crumbled due to the proud, selfishness. Through the Communion Spirit our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ restored this originary unity. Therefore the human person needs community with other fellow men, because the human nature from everybody needs to be completed through the experience and work of others.
The people are psychologically completed and enriched through a reciprocal and intense bestowal and receiving of experience The spiritual man can not retire from the world life based on the reason that his entire life from the moment of making his own decision, will be devoted only to God, to the prayer adressed to Him, the obedience towards Him or to His contemplation In this case he realize nothing within his relation with the other fellow men. . Before God we can not alone redeem, in a selfish way, but only together with other our fellow men. The purpose of spirituality, according to the Holy Fathers, is to reveal the deified spirit.
Chapter VII. THE WESTERN SPIRITUALITY
Beginning with the IXth. century the teaching differences between the Eastern and Western Church started to be defined. The rationalism of the catholic theology can be perceived from the way of the definition of the moral law, like an obligatory prescription with a permanent feature. The rational elements and the preoccupation for the intellectualism of the faith teaching became very clear from the whole system of the Dogmatics and Morality. . In the protestantism we can not speak about an unique morality, because there are several denominations.The protentantism represents all the christian denominations, which are neither catholic, nor orthodox. If we check the greek philosophy before Jesus Christ, will find some certain philosophical conceptions(which belong to Socrate, Platon, Aristotel), or generic speculative systems like epicureism, stoicism, etc., each of them with its own morality. In the modern age appeared, beginning with the XVIIth century a great many of moral systems : utilitarian(Hobbes, Bentham, John Stuart Mill), evoluţionist(H.Spencer, W.Wundt), formaliste şi idealiste (Kant , I.G.Fichte), naturalist(J.J.Rousseau, Feuerbach, J.M.Guyau),aesthetical (Goethe, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, O.Wilde), positivist(A.Comte, Durkhheim), pragmatist (W.James, J.Dewey) etc.. The people changed not only their conception abput God, but they changed even the”deification” itself, by which they wanted to be led and in this meaning they invented a „new God” Who deeply differed from the God of the Old and New Testament, specially from the crucified God by the Jews and confessed by the Apostles. This „Neo-God” don’t reproach the man the violation of the Scripture, don’t blame the sin, don’t punish the bad intention and hypocrisy, don’t reprove the blasfemies and sacrileges.
Chapter VIII. THE FIRST CHALLENGES TO THE CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY
The first cultural movement from the Renaissance age was the Humanism, which represented a revolt against God and His teaching about the divine nature of man. The term of „Humanism” has two meanings: one broad, related to the love for people and one narrow which supposes a real interest for the values of the greek-roman antiquity. The Enlightment is the literary movement which characterizes within the ideological and cultural field of activity the entire XVIIth. century. The proponents of the Enlightment specially emphasize the scientific knwoledge, distinguishing themselves like a powerful movement with a laical, anticlerical character. The autonomy of the human reason, proclaimed by the Enlightment is the result of the autonomy of the creation towards God. The modern times are dominated by Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche, who through their ideological and practical works destroy the human person. - evolutionism like a mania of the interpretation of the all phenomena from Universe. - marxism born from the jealousy towards thye christian values totally eliminated God from the man preoccupations; Marx, Engels and Lenin and other „ illustrious” representatives of the modernism created the ideological platform for the further mass murders , of which are guilty the communism and the nazism, known in the history like the most inhuman ideologies, - nihilism opposes : the haughtiness tothe humbleness and piety; the hate and violence to the love; the revolt to the obedience; the cult of body and the debauchery to the spiritual life and abstinence; the action to the reflection; the revenge to the forgiveness; the war to the peace; the blasfemy to the prayer and the damnation to the blessing;
Chapter IX – COMMUNION AND GLOBALIZATION The church community is called to reproduce along its existence the divine reality; the Man received the commandment to become a God by grace , not in loneliness but in common and the church community is an imitation of the divine life. „Only a personal God, Who is the supreme and inexhaustible spring of love and Who considers the man as person, estimates and appreciates the human being as such and wants to rise him within this dialogue of love, but without annulation his free will, so only if the man will to do this”(Rev. Professor Doctor Dumitru Staniloae). The central idea of the teaching of Our Lord and Redeemer according to the synoptic Evangelists is that of the Kingdom of God, which offers us the first attributes of this extensive divine communion, which reunites into an intimate communion of life and action all the creatures, which collaborate with the grace of the saints. The Spirit brings into creation the trinitarian life and love, rises the creation to the plan of the trinitarian love and deification. Through the Holy Spirit we are risen to the divine world or the divine world penetrates into us. This changes us. An other reason of the authentic spirituality is represented by the Ascension to Heaven and finally His stay at the right hand of God the Father within praise. The Church is the mystery of the communion with and through the Holy Trinity. It is the organism in which is carried out the divine economy of the Holy Trinity. The sacred mystery of the baptism is that which opens us the door to enter the church, namely in the communion experience by virtue of the pneumatic character of the sacred mysteries of “initiation” – Baptism,Crismation, Eucharist- each member of the Church is a bearer of the Spirit, as the whole community to which he belongs.
Globalization or better to say the globalism is a postmodern dangerous utopia(more exactly of the late modernism, according to Karnoouh, 1993) aiming at the creation of a „new man” and a „new world order” within a unique and homogeneous civilization perfectly integrated from the economical point of view. „The new God” developed a new cult, declaring within it the “idols”which will complete the image of the self- deification of man. - The first idol appeared and consecrated as such in the modern times seems to be the “civilization cult” which consisted and is consisting in the subordination of culture, arts and of all the moral values, tradition and belief in God towards the civilization need; - The modern science is an other idol of the modern age si we perceive in this way because it conferred itself an absolute power, the proclamation of science as idol in the modern age essentially consists in the fact that the centre of gravity of the knowledge is transferred from God to man The third idol of modernism is the belief in the historical progress of humanity and the sacrifice on the altar of this idol of the values of the past, tradition and truth; the modern idea of progress proved its falsity through the failure of the rationalism and specially of the enlightment rationalism in irrationalism. Only the communion grows warm the spiritual life of everybody. A spirituality aimed in loneliness loses its interest, is fagged out becoming more a theoretical thinking which only engages the mind and this only from time to time. The spirituality strictly needs the community. The everybody life increases in connection with the others, with other words it is nourished by our fellow men.
CONCLUSIONS The religions are more true so as they satisfy the aspirations of the believers to the accomplishment of the values of good, truth and beauty on the social plan. The western christianity from the scholasticism till the present times lost the theological and spiritual balance from different and many aspects. One of them is the relation between Word and Spirit, between theology and spirituality. The main points which distinguish us from the catholics are the following: Filioque: the double origin of the Holy Spirit; The Papal Primacy – the Pope = the locum tenens of Jesus Christ; The Papal Infallibility: the Pope can’t fail as man in the matters of faith; Crismation: the anointment of children at the age of 7-8 years only by bishops; The roman and ambrosian liturghy in contrast to the orthodox church which has the constantinopolitan liturgies of the Saint Basil the Great(Basil of Caesarea), Saint Gregory Dialogus and Saint John Chrysostom. In the roman – catholic theology it is remarked a lack of balance between christology and pneumatology.
The Protestant Chruch completely reformed the dogmas established by the Holy Fathers and from the 7 sacraments they kept only two: the Baptism and the Eucharist
In the protestant theology it was reached the point in which it is made a difference and separation between the historical Jesus and the Jesus of the religious faith. The Holy Spirit was completely forgotten.
From the protestant denomination derived all the neoprotestant sects, which currently attack the orthodox countries.
The lutheran theology insists upon the distinction between the earthly and spiritual things, naming it the doctrine of the two kingdoms. The powers, which are put into man by the Holy Spirit, are no more of the human nature, but supernatural forces.
The reformed teaching distinguishes from the lutheran theology through the assertion that „the Grace is not universal, as the lutherans consider, but it is given only for the predestined believers”.
Calvin categorically endorses the predestination, after which somebody was created to an end or other, with other words predestinated to life or death- the double predestination. The recent calvin theologians (Karl Barth) debate only about a predestination, or a choice to the redemption, but not about a predestination to death.
Within the Anglican Church, here dominates the catholic feature, but on the other hand many protestant ideas penetrated into this confessional theology. It
doesn’t accept the catholic transubstantiation, the cult of sainte and of icons.
The fundamental principles of the Baptist Church are the the sovereign authority of Bible, the complete separation of the Church from the State, the notion of the Church of the confessors, in which the believer is baptized through the total immersion only after he confessed his belief in Jesus Christ. Each local autonomous church is sovereign.
The members of the Pentecostal Church considers that the man, in whom the Holy Spirit dwells can prophesy, can speak in other languages and preach before his community. All the pentecostal assemblies are autonomous among themselves.
The orthodoxy didn’t interfere the unessential arabesques of the human mind into the simple, mysterious essence and permanently experienced of the fundamental data of the mystery of redemption.
In the Orthodox Church the believer is called to experience the universal tragedy to reach through repentance the universal reconciliation and communion of love.
In the orthodox christian spirituality the human person remains with his deified nature, namely a „God by grace”, not by nature, also there is no other spring of the divine energies, but only an environment, which has the capability to reflect these energies.
The orthodox church is a permeability and transparency of man towards the Jesus Christ and a transparency of Jesus Himself towards man.
Religion is a function of the psychological life, which can not be replaced, but which must be cultivated like other psychological power.
The prayer, the personal meditation and the reading of the Holy Scripture and the church worship increase and rise the faith and moral life of man.
The meaning of the christian perfection is represented by the experience of man within the community and the sacrifice for his fellow man, as the fulfilment of the will of God in the world. .
The religions are more true so as they satisfy the aspirations of the believers to the accomplishment of the values of good, truth and beauty on the social plan.
In the Orthodoxy the trinitarian truth is an originated truth, from which it is assumed. This truth is guide and adviser for our soul in the direction of a creative effort in the world, aided by love and projected to a continuous progress.
The force of the christianity comes from two directions: the divine and human direction.
The christian religion is the strongest schield against the sin, because it is the religion of redemption. We sin alone but we redeem only together with Jesus Christ.
The christian religion is superior in comparison with others religions, because it establishes its work on the fundament of dogmas.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION FOR THIS MATTER