Theologian · Contemporary
Dumitru Stăniloae
1903–1993 · Neo-patristic dogmatics; Philokalic theology
A married Romanian Orthodox priest and professor, imprisoned by the communist regime from 1958 to 1963 and widely held the greatest Orthodox dogmatician of the twentieth century; a firm critic of the Filioque, of papal primacy and of the Greek-Catholic union in Transylvania.
Stăniloae translated the Philokalia into Romanian in twelve volumes (1946–1991) with his own commentary, and wrote Jesus Christ or the Restoration of Man (1943) and the three-volume Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (1978), translated as The Experience of God. His theology reads the world as a gift and a word addressed by God to persons, so that creation itself is a dialogue meant to end in deification; he takes from Maximus the logoi of things, from Palamas the uncreated energies, and from the Philokalia the practice of unceasing prayer as the form of a theology that is lived. Orthodox Spirituality sets out the ascetic and mystical path as the Church's own dogmatics. In the 1930s he also wrote on Orthodoxy and the Romanian nation, holding the nation to be a God-given reality within the universal Church.
Why he matters: The Basilian priest Robert Barringer and the Benedictine Maciej Bielawski have translated and studied him; Catholic readers of de Lubac and Balthasar find in him a theology that joins dogma, cosmos and prayer in one movement, and his doctrine of the world as gift and dialogue is among the richest answers to the nature-grace question from any side.
Where to be careful
He rejected the Filioque defined at Florence and the primacy of Pastor Aeternus in sharp polemical terms, treated the Greek-Catholic Church of Romania as a wound rather than a sister, and his interwar writing on nation and Orthodoxy leans toward the identification of faith and people that Mit Brennender Sorge warns against; his essence-energies doctrine must be read against Lateran IV. His Christology, his sacramental doctrine, his Marian piety and his theology of creation are Catholic in all but name.
Reading
-
The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. 1, Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune GodDumitru Stăniloae · The opening volume: revelation, the knowledge of God, the Trinity.
-
Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical Guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the ScholarDumitru Stăniloae · The ascetic and mystical path, from purification to deification.
-
The Philokalical Vision of the World in the Theology of Dumitru StaniloaeMaciej Bielawski · A Benedictine's study of his theology of creation and prayer.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each question the test asks.