#dumitru staniloae

[orthodoxadventure]

[crosstheveil]

— Dumitru Staniloae, from Orthodox Spirituality

[gandulzilei]

Binele nu este bine dacă nu e făcut bine.

Părintele Dumitru Staniloae

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These observations throw light on and enlarge the meaning of the holy Fathers’ concept of creation, as a symbol from which divine logoi, which have their origin in the divine Logos, can be extracted. But the question arises: Is the extraction of these logoi from nature and their relationship with the divine Logos realized by the discursive method of forming notions and deductions from the things which are seen, and then discovering their first cause, or is it realized by a faster intuition? Thomistic scholasticism doesn’t admit another way of knowing the logoi of things and of God in the world except the discursive-deductive, which according to it, is the only way of knowledge. The holy Fathers and more recent Orthodox theologians sustain that the penetration into the spiritual depths beyond the natural world can’t take place by the rational way. A symbolical knowledge of the world, distinct from the rational, corresponds with the symbolic structure of the world. The categories of reason define, that is set limits, and distinguish one thing from another. Thus they are applicable only to the limited realities which differ from one another. As the divinity is infinite, inexhaustible, it can’t be the object of rational determinations. Reason fits only the natural world, not the spiritual.

Dumitru Staniloae

[wearetimeblog]

Heidegger distinguishes between 1) the fear “of something in the world” (Furcht) and 2) the fear of the emptiness of the world (Angst), that is of existence in the world; the latter is felt as threatening at every moment, with its dullness and nothingness, the personalness of living, which makes its intimacy transparent to everyone. But the man fallen into the ash-like form of existence no longer knows the fear of the commonplace (Angst). Once in a while it suddenly appears in his consciousness, as a brief revelation of the intimacy which is drowned and wants to be saved. Man has so weaned himself from the awareness of the presence of his intimacy and of his own existence and throws himself even harder into the commonplace. This is the fear (Furcht) of something in the world, or it is the fear of losing something from the world. It is the fear of losing the opportunities for pleasure, which might bring him back to his intimacy, to independent living, without the comfortable support of the world. In this theory we find, in a more reserved form, three truths which basically agree with the Christian teaching of fear: 1) that the earthly life of man is inevitably accompanied by fear; 2) that by this fear the human being has been given a shield against being drowned in the world; and 3) that man has perverted this fear which must keep him from the world and bind him to God, the source of authentic existence, concentrated in the intimacy of the spirit. He has changed it into a fear of not being somehow deprived of the world, of existence in the ashy horizon of the world, into the fear of being detached from the world, to live as a spiritual being.

Dumitru Staniloae - Orthodox Spirituality

[wearetimeblog]

Without a divine transcendent nature of knowledge, eternally inexhaustible in its manifestation of light and power, we would soon finish the work of knowing the truth. That would mean, however, that it is limited and that the thirst of our nature to know is finite. But we see that it can’t be so. Our nature in this case would reach an insupportable boredom and our immortality itself would be without purpose. Reincarnations were invented as some kind of palliative for this boredom.

Dumitru Staniloae - Orthodox Spirituality 

[wearetimeblog]

According to Christian teaching the eternity of an unchangeable substance is as much a false eternity as that of a continuous becoming. Above these two false eternities of a Parmenidean or Hegelian type stands the true eternity of the Holy Trinty. The Trinity of the perfect persons is the fullness; in fact it explains everything, and re­mains eternally unchanged in its love; but love is life.

Dumitru Staniloae - Experience of God Vol 1

[wearetimeblog]

God cannot be captured in notions because he is life or, more precisely, the source of life. Moreover, no person can be defined either, because each person is alive and, to a certain extent, a source of life. How much less, then, the supreme Personal reality. Anyone who thinks that he knows God, which is to say that he limits God by his own notions, is — from the Christian point of view — spiritually dead. That is how Saint Gregory of Nyssa interprets the words in Exodus 33.20, “For man shall not see me and live.” “Scripture does not in­dicate that this causes the death of those who look, for how would the face of life ever be the cause of death to those who approach it? On the contrary, the Divine is by its nature life-giving. Yet the characteristic of the divine nature is to transcend all characteristics. Therefore, he who thinks God is something to be known does not have life, because he has turned form true Being to what he con­siders by sense perception to have being. True Being is true life. This Being is inaccessible to knowledge. If then the life-giving nature trans­cends knowledge, that which is perceived certainly is not life. ... He learns from what was said that the Divine is by its very nature infinite, enclosed by no boundary. If the Divine is perceived as though bounded by something, one must by all means consider along with that boundary what is beyond it”

Dumitru Stăniloae - Experience of God Vol 1