Modem Theology 13:2 April 1997

ISSN 0266-7177

REVIEW ESSAY:
THE ORTHODOX DOGMATIC
THEOLOGY OF DUMITRU
STNILOAE
ANDREW LOUTH
The name of Fr Dumitru Stniloae, the Romanian Orthodox theologian
who died in his ninetieth year in 1993, is not yet well-known outside ecumenical circles interested in Orthodoxy.1 This state of affairs may be sent to
change with the completion of the German translation of his Orthodox
Dogmatic Theology (Teologia dogmatica ortodoxa, 3 vols., Bucharest, 1978) in
1995 and the issue of the first volume of the English translation in 1994,
with the rest expected in the near future.2 The publication of these volumes
will do more than simply make Fr Dumitru's thought better known; it will
also serve to make Orthodox theology itself more accessible in the West.
Hitherto, the only comprehensive surveys of Orthodox theology that have
been available have been translations (into English or French) of older
Orthodox Dogmatics, belonging to the period of what George Florovsky
called a 'Babylonian captivity', something that was not confined to
Russian Orthodoxy. Vladimir Lossky's Orthodox Theology is extremely
brief; apart from that, there have been only writings of a predominantly
historical or occasional nature (the grand sweep of Bulgakov's majestic
trilogy is now available complete in French, but he is more a religious
philosopher than a theologian, though certainly no less interesting for
that).
The blurb on one of the German volumes describes Fr Dumitru as 'one of
the most prolific representatives of Orthodox theology.' The truth of this is
revealed in the bibliography compiled by Professor Anghelescu and Deacon

Dr Andrew Louth
Department of Theology, Abbey House, Palace Green, Durham, DH1 3RS, UK
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254 Andrew Louth

loan Ica in the Festschrift for Fr Dumitru's ninetieth birthday (which turned
out in the event to be a Denkschrift)'? it runs to fifty pages, and includes
hundreds of items. It also reveals why, despite such a prodigious output, Fr Dumitru's name is not well-known outside his native Romania.
For Fr Dumitru had a deeply practical understanding of the role of the
theologian, who is to interpret the times for the benefit of his fellowChristians. So, whereas the list of theological articles runs to 210 items,
the items of journalism, especially in Telegrafili Roman, which he edited for
many years, runs to twice that: precisely 420. Such ephemeral'epiousial'
might be a better wordwriting is not likely to find readers from another
country, or even in another period: but that should not disguise its
importance, especially when one considers the 'interesting times' (to use the
terms of the Chinese curse) through which Fr Dumitru lived. Another
massive part of his work, which is by its nature of little interest outside
Romania, is his work of translation: 29 volumes are listed, plus 4 'in the
press.' First comes his translation of Androutsos' Dogmatics of the Eastern
Orthodox Church (1907; Stniloae's translation, 1930). The importance of this
translation was not intrinsic, for as he translated it (as a doctoral student in
Athens in the later 1920s), he came to feel the inadequacies of this 'scholastic'
approach to Orthodox theology: a legacy of the resistance to the protestantising influence of the Ecumenical Patriarch Cyril Loukaris in the
seventeenth century by such as Peter Mogila and Dositheos of Jerusalem (on
whom Stniloae was writing his Athens doctoral thesis), both of whom
had links with what is now Romania. Like Fr Georges Florovskyand about
the same timethis led Stniloae to turn back to the springs of Orthodox
theology: the Greek Fathers. It is to the recovery of thisand making it
available to his fellow-Romanian Christians, not just to scholarsthat the
bulk of Fr Dumitru's labour of translation was devoted. Between 1946 and
1991, there appeared the twelve substantial volumes (typically of about
400 pp. each) of the Romanian translation of the Philokalia. It is based on
the Philokalia of the Holy Ascetics, compiled by St Nikodimos of the Holy
Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth, and published in Venice in 1782 (the
Slavonic translation of the Philokalia, the Dobrotolubiye, has links with
Fr Dumitru's homeland, for it was in that part of Moldavia that is now in
Romania that St Paissy Velichkovsky spent the latter years of his life). But
unlike the English translation, which is nearing completion,4 Fr Dumitru did
more than translate the texts compiled by the two Athonite saints and
update Nikodimos' introductions. From the very beginning, he supplemented substantially the texts of the original Philokalia, and in addition
to providing his own introductions, Fr Dumitru accompanied the texts
with commentaries. Each element of this conceptionthe choice of the
Philokalia itself, its supplementation, and his commentaryis significant
for Fr Dumitru's conception of the renewal of Orthodox theology in the
modern world.
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The Philokalia itself suggests a particular approach to theology. As the
editors of the English translation put it:
'Philokalia' itself means love of the beautiful, and exalted, the excellent,
understood as the transcendent source of life and the revelation of
Truth. It is through such love that, as the subtitle of the original edition
puts it, 'the intellect is purified, illumined and made perfect'. The texts
... show the way to awaken and develop attention and consciousness, to
attain the state of wakefulness which is the hall-mark of sanctity. They
describe the conditions most effective for learning what their authors
call the art of arts and the science of sciences, a learning which is not a
matter of information or agility of mind but of a radical change of will
and heart leading man towards the highest possibilities open to him,
shaping and nourishing the unseen part of his being, and helping him to
spiritual fulfilment and union with God. The Philokalia is an itinerary
through the labyrinth of time, a silent way of love and gnosis through
the deserts and emptinesses of life, especially of modern life, a vivifying
and fadeless presence. It is an active force revealing a spiritual path and
inducing man to follow it. It is a summons to him to overcome his
ignorance, to uncover the knowledge that lies within, to rid himself of
illusion, and to be receptive to the grace of the Holy Spirit who teaches
all things and brings all things to remembrance.5
To return to the Greek Fathers in such a spirit is more than an academic
'return to the sources'; it is the recovery of an understanding of theology
that seeks to set men and women on the road to an openness to God and
experience of his healing grace: it is a theology that is both spiritual and
pastoral.
The Philokalia is an anthology of texts chosen from a specific perspective:
that of the Athonite monk who treasures the tradition of prayer that developed on the Holy Mountain, a tradition that includes practice of the Jesus
prayer and embraces the hope of transfiguration by the divine energies in
prayer, as defended by St Gregory Palamas in the fourteenth century. The
Philokalia is arranged chronologically and culminates with selections from
St Gregory Palamas and his supporters and defenders: on the way there
are selections from the Fathers to whom the hesychasts (or Palamites)
appealed, notably the greatest of Byzantine theologians, the seventh-century
St Mximos the Confessor. In its original form the Philokalia is predominantly devotional: in the case of both St Mximos and St Gregory their more
speculative writings are excluded, or presented in a heavily anthologized
form. Fr Dumitru had greater confidence in his readers' ability to scale the
heights of Byzantine theology, and perhaps a greater sense of the significance of, in particular, the cosmic dimension of Byzantine theology, not
least for this century, than did the saints Nikodimos and Makarios. So, as
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well as the more devotional works of Mximos, Fr Dumitru included
the whole of one of his great theological works, Questions to Thalassius. The
section on Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022) is expanded from the few
pages devoted to him in the original to include virtually all his prose
works. Authors not present at all in the original are added: notably, St John
Klimakos, Dorotheos of Gaza, the 'Great Old Man' of Gaza and the 'Other
Old Man'Varsanouphios and John, and St Isaac the Syrian, the seventhcentury Nestorian Bishop of Nineveh. Apart from expanding Philokalia in
this way, Fr Dumitru published translations (with introduction and notes)
of other Fathers to whom he was devoted: St Athanasius, the Cappadocian
FathersSt Gregory of Nazianzus ('the Theologian') and St Gregory of
NyssaSt Cyril of Alexandria and St Denys the Areopagite. He also published translations of two other great works of St Mximos the Confessor: his
Mystagogia, a commentary on the Eucharistie Liturgy, and the two collections of Ambigua, or 'difficulties.'
If one looks at the Greek Fathers who are central to Fr Dumitru
Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Cyril, Denys, Mximos, Symeon and Gregory
Palamasa familiar pattern emerges: for these are the Fathers central to the
'Neo-Patristic' synthesis that was so dear to Fr Georges Florovsky, but was
only sketched out in his mainly occasional writings, the same Fathers to
whom Vladimir Lossky had constant recourse, notably in his Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church.6 This places Fr Dumitru, and his understanding of
Orthodox theology, among some of the Orthodox theologians whose names
are most familiar in the West. He is not marginal, he is not even simply a
bridge between East and West, or between Russian and Greek Orthodoxy:
he is at the centre of what many would regard as the liveliest and most
original movement in modern Orthodox thought.
But third: the commentary (or notes) that accompanies the texts in the
Romanian Philokalia. The lack of any commentary in the original Philokalia
was, almost certainly, no oversight. The volumes were not intended for
private reading, but to provide suitable texts for someone already under the
guidance of a spiritual father. In fact, the history of the Philokalia in the Slav
world is virtually identical with the history of the restoration of the place
of spiritual fatherhood, starchestvo, among the Slavs. But as the West learnt
at the end of the Middle Ages, the printed word cannot be bound to institutions in the way manuscripts can. St Nikodimos himself probably envisaged that the Philokalia would be read outside the monastic context,7
though perhaps without realizing what that would entail: as we can see from
the nineteenth-century Russian work, known in English as The Way of the
Pilgrim, on its own the Philokalia could occasion as much puzzlement as enlightenment. However, from the beginning, Fr Dumitru envisaged readers
who would need the help of a commentary, not simply because of the
straitened circumstances of the Church under the communists, but also
because with his inclusion of the great deal of intellectually demanding
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material, there was need to make explicit the coinherence of the mind and
the heart, of theology and prayer, that the Philokalia presupposes. But the
importance of commentary on the Fathers goes further even than that for
Fr Dumitru: it is his preferred way of interpreting the Fathers in the
twentieth century. This can be most clearly illustrated from the example of
St Mximos. For, on the one hand, of all the Fathers St Mximos is perhaps
the one from whom Fr Dumitru draws his deepest inspiration and, on the
other, his commentaries on Mximos are more available in the West: his
introductions and notes on the Mystagogia and the Ambigua have been
translated in Greek,8 and most recently his notes have been appended to a
French translation of the Ambigua (in this French edition the notes run to
165 pages, compared with 272 pages of the text, which is printed in much
larger type).9 It is only in this century that Mximos has been restored to
Christian consciousness: and that recovery is far from complete. The first
great work on Mximos was Hans Urs von Balthasare Kosmische Liturgie
(1941), a work of characteristic genius that makes Mximos a key figure in
Balthasar's interpretation of the nature of the divide between Eastern and
Western Christendom (and in the expanded 1961 edition the key to the gulf
between Asia and 'das Abendland'). That was followed by the careful work
of the Benedictine, Polycarp Sherwood, and the Swedish Lutheran scholar,
Lars Thunberg, and, in the 1970s and early 1980s, a group of French Catholics, mainly Dominicans, who found Thomist features in the great Byzantine theologian. Fr Dumitru is familiar with all this scholarship, and has
drawn from it, but his approach is different (of those mentioned, he is perhaps closest to Thunberg). For Mximos presents his thought in an essentially unsystematic way (in this he is simply typical of the Fathers, for whom
systematic presentations are almost invariably introductory, for example
St Gregory of Nyssa's Great Catechetical Oration or St John Damascene's Exposition of the Orthodox Faith). Virtually all of it is either occasionalresponses
to questions about passages in the Scriptures and the Fathers (the Ambigua
are notes on 'difficult' passages from St Gregory the Theologian, and on one
difficult passage from Denys the Areopagite)10or catechetical'centuries'
of brief thoughts as a help to prayer and living the Christian life (it is these
that found a place in the original Philokalia). There is a 'system' there, but it
is heuristic rather than exhaustive, open not closed. Fr Dumitru's engagement with Mximos' thought respects this, and he finds commentary the
best way of pursuing this: commentary of a paragraph or sosometimes
a pagethat elucidates significant themes by drawing attention to other
discussions elsewhere in Maximos's work, and to later reflection in Orthodox Fathers (in some ways not unlike Mximos' own commentary on the
Fathers, though Mximos' commentaries are sometimes brief treatises). Such
commentary consists of a re-thinking of Mximos' thoughts: a re-thinking
that is inevitably, if it is to be re-thinking, not repetition but an engagement with contemporary concerns. In these commentaries Mximos is not
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258 Andrew Louth

reduced to some system, whether imposed on him or deduced from him, nor
is he simply seen as the convergence of one or more currents of late antique
thought (Neoplatonism, Evagrianism, 'Macarianism', or whatever). Rather,
he is found to be the source of insights into our engagement with God in the
world, fostered by the Church and the life of prayer: the commentaries are
to help the reader benefit from these insights.
Fr Dumitru's Teologia dogmatica ortodoxa is the fruit of his lifelong
engagement with the Greek Fathers, as well as a life devoted to teaching
theology in Orthodox theological seminaries, first in Sibiu from 1929 to 1949,
and then until his retirement in 1973 in Bucharest (apart from the five years
from 1958-63, when he was imprisoned by the Communist authorities, or as
he preferred to put it, 'when he simply carried his cross, which is the normal
condition for any Christian: there is no need to talk about it'). It was published in 1978, when he was 75. From what has been said about the essentially unsystematic nature of patristic theology, it might appear something of
a paradox to publish a Neo-Patristic dogmatic theology: this is doubtless
partly why Fr Dumitru holds the field alone. It does not seem to me that
the completion of the work simply dispels the paradox (as Achilles overtakes the tortoise by simply walking). There is the danger that Fr Dumitru
will be drawn back into the constraints of the 'systematic' that he sought to
avoid by turning to the Fathers.12 The structure of his Orthodox Dogmatics
holds no surprises (though, as we shall see, there are more than a few
surprises when one explores some of the nooks and crannies within the
structure). The first part is on 'Revelation as the source of the Christian
faith, and the Church as the organ and the medium of realizing the truth of
revelation and letting it bear fruit' (translating the headings that appear
in the German, though not in the English, translation), which includes
Revelation, ways of knowing God, the doctrine of God and his attributes,
and the doctrine of the Trinity (this is volume 1 of the English translation);
the second part is on 'the world as the work of God's love, which has been
brought into being to be deified,' meaning creation (including the creation of
the angels), fall, and providence (parts one and two form volume 1 of the
German translation, and the Romanian original); the third part concerns
'Jesus Christ as person and the work of salvation he accomplished through
his assumption of human nature;' the fourth part discusses 'the fulfilment
of Christ's work of redemption,' devoted to work of the Holy Spirit, and includes discussion of the 'theandric constitution of the Church,' the priesthood and the notes of the Church, and the personal appropriation of the
salvation in the Church through the work of the Holy Spirit and human synergy (parts three and four form volume 2 of the German and the original);
the fifth part is 'On the Holy Sacraments,' and the sixth part on 'Eschatology
or the doctrine of the future life' (parts five and six form volume 3).
Fr Dumitru does not agonize about the structure of his dogmatics, as Barth
did, and that is perhaps because nothing much hangs on the structure: it
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does not clothe a system. But there are some structural points worth noting.
First, in his treatment of creation, Fr Dumitru starts with the human person:
this is untraditional, but I am sure it is deliberate (he has a good deal to
say about the angels later on: contrast Barth, who also deals with human
creation first, but for whom the section on the angels, and demons, is clearly
an appendix). It is bound up with an important insight he derives from
St Mximos, and states for the first time only a few pages into his dogmatics. Fr Dumitru recalls the traditional (patristic, and classical) idea of
the human person as a microcosm, but goes on to say that, according to
Mximos,
the more correct way would be to consider man as a macrocosm,
because he is called to comprehend the whole world within himself
as one capable of comprehending it without losing himself, for he is
distinct from the world. Therefore, man effects a unity greater than the
world exterior to himself, whereas, on the contrary, the world, as cosmos, as nature, cannot contain man fully within itself without losing
him, that is, without losing in this way the most important part of
reality, that part which, more than all others, gives reality its meaning.
The idea that man is called to become a world writ large has a more
precise expression, however, in the term 'macro-anthropos'. (E, 4)
This highly characteristic appropriation from St Mximos (which is echoed
in St Gregory Palamas' conviction that the human being is more perfectly in
the image of God than the angels because of his greater complexity)13 both
places the personal at the centre of Fr Dumitru's doctrine of creation and
gives the personal cosmic significance.14 Secondly, it is interesting to note
that Christ's work of redemption is presented in terms of Christ's threefold
office as Prophet, Priest and King. Fr Dumitru declares that it is patristic
(without any references), but it was only with Calvin's Institutes that the
notion of Christ's threefold office assumed the structural significance with
which he invests it.15 There is nothing wrong with an Orthodox borrowing
from Calvin, though it would be gracious to admit it: Fr Dumitru, however,
was probably borrowing from earlier Orthodox dogmatics. But it is this
dependence on the structure of earlier Orthodox dogmatics (which borrowed their structure from Catholic and Protestant models) that may conceal dangers. Such dangers emerge, it seems to me, in his treatment of the
seven sacraments. For the idea of seven sacraments, distinct and set apart
from other sacramental acts, is a Western idea that only emerges in the
twelfth century. It was only accepted by the Orthodox under pressure from
the West, explicitly by the Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos after the
Council of Lyons (1274), and in reaction against Protestant influence by such
as Dositheos and Peter Mogila. In the West, it was bound up with the notion
of Dominical institution and the mystique of the number seven. It is made
easier in the West by the clear separation of baptism and confirmation.
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Fr Dumitru has to keep to this separation, although it corresponds to no reality
in Orthodox practice, and finds himself defending Dominical institution in
a very forced way. It also leads him to misunderstand some of the ingenuity
devoted to this topic by Catholic theologians such as Karl Rahner. It also
means that he draws a veil over the variety of ways in which sacraments
are treated by the Fathers, very nearly sealing himself off from some of the
sources of his theology (e.g. Nicholas Kabasilas, whom he quotes a good
deal, both of whose major works, his Commentary on the Divine Liturgy and
his Life in Christ, presuppose a rather different, more Dionysian, approach to
the sacraments). Here, it seems to me, the structure has become a straitjacket, though what is pressed into the strait-jacket is often arresting and
profoundly moving (it also means that some of his sacramental teaching
appears elsewhere: in his teaching on creation as a gift bearing the mark of
the cross, for instance).
The doctrine that is expressed in these structures is worked out in engagement with a variety of sources. The blurb on the first volume of the German
translation suggests that Fr Dumitru's understanding of Orthodox theology
is 'developed not only, as is usual, simply in conversation with the Church
Fathers, but rather [vielmehr] in dialogue with Protestant and Catholic
brothers.' This seems to me to be misleading (the claim is dropped from the
later volumes). It is certainly true that, in his latter years, Fr Dumitru was
involved in the ecumenical movement, and made many friends. But that did
not mean that his understanding of the Orthodox Church as the true Church
of Christ was in any way weakened: the two chapters on 'The Church as
the Instrument for reserving Revelation' and 'Theology as ecclesial service'
(E, 53-94) are quite uncompromising, and later on he makes clear his view
that outside the Orthodox Church there is no proper apostolic succession
(O 111, 141-2). Nor does it appear from these volumes that he was very
receptive to Western theology. Certainly, he does refer to his Western contemporariesBarth occasionally, Rahner quite frequently, Balthasar, Schlier,
and, for eschatology, Althausbut his attitude to Western theology is quite
negative, even uncomprehending. In his references to Rahner on the sacraments, just mentioned, he does not seem to appreciate that Rahner was
concerned with the problem, implicit in a modern reception of the twelfthcentury doctrine of the seven sacraments, of what sense to make of the
notion of institution when a modern reading of the New Testament evidence
fails to provide the historical data required. Similarly, in his discussion of
the ideas of Rahner and Boros on death, he does not appreciate that for both
of them there is a real problem about the nature of time in relation to death:
for the moment of death cannot be regarded as a moment through which
one lives, like other moments of one's life, although much traditional
language seems to suppose it is (including some of what Fr Dumitru seems
to be saying). But these are particular points: more serious, and recurrent,
is his conviction that the notion of satisfaction is central to a Western
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understanding of the atonement, and that it undergirds (or rather undermines) the whole Western understanding of the Church and the sacraments.
In fact the passages he cites from Barth, Rahner and Balthasar, insistent that
the notion of satisfaction must be retained, seem to me not so much central
to their understanding of the atonement as protecting their flank against
liberal understandings of atonement which, in dispensing with the notion of
satisfaction, jettison any notipn of an objective atonement. This prejudice (it
can hardly be called anything else) against Western theology leads him to
say of Rahner's notion of the Church as the primordial sacrament (Ursakrament) that he 'does nothing else than draw the logical conclusion from the
Catholic doctrine of grace as the created 'effect of grace' [Gnadeneffekt] of the
death of Christ, of which the Church disposes, which is therefore detachable
from Christ' (O III, 24). That is an unjust caricature. There is, it seems to me,
little real engagement with Western theology in Fr Dumitru's dogmatics,
although there is a readiness to point out its deficiencies.
His real sources are Orthodox. This means, predominantly, the Fathers,
his engagement with whom we have already discussed. But it also includes
the lived liturgical experience of the Orthodox Church: this is strikingly true
of the final volume with its consideration of the sacraments and eschatology.
It is this emphasis on the livedthe 'existential,' Fr Dumitru often says
nature of theological reflection that constitutes the dynamism of his thought.
He is not concerned, as Tillich for instance was, with an engagement
between modern thought and theology, in which modern thought posed
questions to which the resources of theology endeavoured to find answers,
for that seems to place 'modern man' over against the theologian. Rather,
Fr Dumitru is concerned with an engagement that takes place within his
own mind and heartand if there, then in the minds and hearts of those
who engage with what he saysminds and hearts shaped by an experience in the modern world (where else?), but also endeavouring to live in the
Tradition of the Church that goes back to the apostles, and beyond, through
the experience of Israel, to creation itself. The clearest example of this engagement is his sense of the personal. Running through the whole of his
theologyfrom his understanding of the Trinitarian God, to the Church and
his understanding of the development of the human personthere is a keen
sense of the importance of the personal. The themes, individually at least,
will be familiar to any modern Christian: the distinction between a merely
atomistic conception of the individual and the notion of the personal as
developing through engagement with other persons in love, in community;
the idea of mutual addressI and Thou; a sense of the mystery of the
personal as disclosing the nature of love and the nature of God. One detects
the influence of Buber, but I do not think he is named anywhere in
Fr Dumitru's dogmatics: that is perhaps because the immediate influence on
him was the ideas of the Russian emigres, not least Nicolas Berdyaev. But
the question of influence is not important (you will not find in Stniloae
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much on the influences on St Mximos, so important to Western-trained
scholars, including myself); what is important is that in his engagement with
this cluster of ideas, Fr Dumitru is both clearly open to modern ideas and at
the same time finds here concepts that crystallize in a striking way intuitions
of the Fathers. He does not try to reduce the notion of the personal to something patristic (as some Orthodox writers sometimes seem to do); rather he
recognizes in this aspect of modern thought,the deepening of a patristic
insight. At the same time, he preserves a patristic dimension that is usually
entirely lacking from the modern notion of personality: that of the cosmic, as
enfolded with the personal. So he insists that the very beginning of his
treatment of creation that 'within "world" there is to be understood both
nature as well as humankind' (O I, 293): an emphasis that one misses in the
volumes of Barth's Schpfungslehre. This engagement with the modern world
also reaches beyond the intellectual: even in his dogmatics Fr Dumitru is
concerned to say something that will reach those not accustomed to think in
terms of concepts.
All of this can perhaps be made clearer by a couple of examples, drawn
from very different parts of his Orthodox Dogmatics: his discussion of our
knowledge of God, in the first part, a discussion which manifests the originality of a mind deeply attuned to tradition, and, from the final part, his
discussion of the state of souls between death and the Last Judgement.
As one would expect from an Orthodox theologian, Fr Dumitru's discussion of our knowledge of God emphasizes the apophatic, that is the place
of denial, the rejection of concepts and images in our knowledge of God. But
in contrast to a tendency to isolate the apophatic (a tendency he finds in
Vladimir Lossky and Christos Yannaras, and from which he distances himself: E, 123, n. 8), Fr Dumitru finds in the patristic traditiondrawing not
just on Denys the Areopagite, but on St John Chrysostom and the two
Cappadocian Gregories, especiallya complementarity of cataphatic and
apophatic theologies, theologies of affirmation and denial. Denial does not
undermine affirmation, rather it undergirds and preserves it:
to rise above the things of the world does not mean that these disappear;
it means, through them, to rise beyond them. And since they remain, the
apophatic knowledge of God does not exclude affirmative rational
knowledge ... In apophatic knowledge the world remains, but it has
become transparent of God. This knowledge is apophatic because the
God who now is perceived cannot be defined; he is experienced as a
reality which transcends all possibility of definition. (E, 99)
This complementarity of apophatic and cataphatic theology is true of our
natural knowledge of God, though there it is fleeting. But it is true, too, of
revealed theology, for revelation reveals a God who is unknown, by which
Fr Dumitru means that through faith in revelation there is disclosed to us
both conceptions of God but, much more important, a sense of God as
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transcending anything that we can grasp of him. The apophatic is the
experiential: it is a sense of God's overwhelming reality that grows within
faith. Fr Dumitru then puts forward a further step: this sense of God is
something that will grow as we become more open to it, and that openness
is a function of a growing purity and limpidity of our spiritual nature
(something that is expressed through our bodily nature, not in contrast to it).
As this happens, the sense of God develops from being a kind of 'pressure'
(as Fr Dumitru puts it) to becoming a sense of the personal presence of God.
This itself is expressed in terms of cataphatic and apophatic theology,
'although the content of what is known transcends the content of such terms
to a much greater extent than the knowledge of him through simple faith'
(E, 177). This sense of the personal presence of God is, for this reason,
expressed by the Fathers in terms of 'union' rather than 'knowledge': as it
grows in intensity or purity (something that is a result of our ascetic struggle
and growth in love), it escapes any kind of definition and becomes totally
apophatic. 'The apophatic experience is equivalent to a sense of mystery that
excludes neither reason nor sentiment, but it is more profound than these'
(Ibid.).
A Western reader will be tempted to murmur 'mysticism' at this point,
but this is not at all the drift of Fr Dumitru's considerations (at least not
'mysticism' in terms of a rare, intense, individualistic experience, as this
word has come to be understood in the modern West). For all of this is
followed immediately by a remark that 'the apophatic experience of God is
a characteristic that gives definition to Orthodoxy in its liturgy, sacraments,
and sacramentis' and by a section entitled 'Knowledge of God in the
Concrete Circumstance of Life.' This begins with the assertion:
If intellectual knowledge, both affirmative and negative, is more the
product of theoretical reflection while it is in apophatic knowledge that
people grow spiritually, then this latter knowledge is essential for all
Christians in their practical life (Ibid.)
This apophatic knowledge of God is found in the daily circumstances of our
life, as we experience God's care and guidance in joyful circumstances, in the
demands others make on us, in the qualms of conscience when we do
wrong, and in the way God leads us through all circumstances to himself, if
only we will let him. 'It is a thrilling, burdensome, painful and joyful knowledge; it awakens within us our ability to respond; it gives fervour to prayer,
and it causes our being to draw closer to God' (E, 118). This sense of the
mystery of God 'is experience especially in those states of responsibility,
consciousness of sinfulness, need of repentance, and in the insurmountable
difficulties of life... The difficult circumstances which pierce our being like
nails urge us towards more deeply felt prayer. And during this kind of
prayer the presence of God is more evident to us' (E, 118-19). Such experience of God is apophatic because, although we can reflect on it, we cannot
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264 Andrew Louth

figure it out; it is something to endure in silence, in the silence of prayer.
This chapter is immediately followed by Fr Dumitru's discussion of the
Palamite distinction between the unknowable essence of God and his energies through which he is known (a discussion which, as Bishop Kallistos
remarks in his introduction to The Experience of God, is something of a
novelty in Orthodox dogmatic handbooks: despite the councils of the fourteenth century which vindicated Palamism, it is only recently that Palamite
theology has had any serious impact in Orthodox intellectual circles, and
Fr Dumitru himself is notable among the trail-blazers). The distinction is important here in that it clarifies that God's providence, or his care, is a divine
energy, or activity. That is, it is God himself at work: to experience God's
care is to experience God himself. God does not deal with us at arm's length,
so to speak; we encounter his personal presence. And this entails both the
apophatic language of mystery and (the other side of the coin) the final goal
of such encounter with God in becoming God, deification.
One would not expect to find in a Western dogmatic theology much on the
state of souls between death and the Last Judgment (except perhaps as a
philosophical problem to do with their experience of time): Fr Dumitru,
however, devotes 40 pages to it. To the Orthodox mind, however, its
importance is obvious, for this is the state of the greater part of the Church:
there are more Christians who have passed into the 'silence and light of
Eternity' (to use the expression of Archimandrite Sophrony, Fr Dumitru's
near contemporary, who died a few months before him) than there are
among the living. In the whole of this section on eschatology, as well as the
section on the sacraments, one of the sources of Orthodox theology comes
into its own: that is the liturgical ceremonies of the Orthodox Church, not
just the texts, but also what takes place, what is expressed through what is
done. In this connection Fr Dumitru reflects on the way in which, during
the preparation of the Eucharistie liturgy, the piece of bread that is to
be consecrated (the 'Lamb') is surrounded by small particles of bread in
'honour and memory' of the Mother of God and nine orders of angels and
saints, and further particles in memory of the living and those who have
fallen asleep, which are all finally placed in the consecrated chalice with
a prayer for the 'washing away by your holy Blood of the sins of your
servants here remembered' (O III, 264). This expresses the communion that
exists between all those whose lives are enfolded in the Risen Christ, a
communion that therefore transcends death. He discusses the services
for the departed (for 'those who have fallen asleep'), seeing in them a
tangible way in which we can express our love for them; the care of
the Mother of God and the saints expressed for us through their prayer;
icons, as a visible realization of the closeness to us who are still living
of those who have passed into the light of eternity. There is a brief discussion of the significance of the veneration of the relics of the Saints in
the Orthodox Church. Here, and in the discussion of the sacramentsbut
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Review Essay 265

indeed throughout the whole of Fr Dumitru's Orthodox Dogmaticsthere is
an exposition of doctrine that is more than a discussion of propositions; it is
rather an elucidation of a way of life.
It has only been possible to touch on a few topics dealt with in
Fr Dumitru's dogmatic theology. We have said little about his treatment of
the Trinity, for instance, which is by no means confined to the pages devoted
explicitly to this doctrine (E, 245-80; 01,256-89): in the first chapter, dealing
with natural revelation, Fr Dumitru uses language of the personal nature of
God, which, as the English translators point out, carefully avoids the notion
of a God as 'a person,' so as to be open to the truth of a Trinity of Persons
(E, 14, n. 3); in the next chapter, on supernatural revelation, the trinitarian
nature of God is quite explicit, and from then right to the end it is God as
Trinity with whom we have to do. Nor have we discussed his treatment
of Christology, in which he draws to rare effect on the insights of St Cyril
of Alexandria, the 'seal of the Fathers.' It is a major dogmatic achievement
which reveals Fr Dumitru's position in present-day Orthodoxy as 'comparable to that of Karl Barth in Protestantism of Karl Rahner in Catholicism',
as Bishop Kallistos puts it (E, xxiv). As I hope I have shown, Fr Dumitru
takes a position within Orthodox theology that places him with Russians
like Georges Florovsky and Vladimir Lossky, and with Greeks like John
Romanides and Christos Yannaras, as a representative of what Florovsky
called the 'Neo-Patristic' synthesis. If that is so, then his Orthodox Dogmatic
Theology is the first attempt to work out in detail what this synthesis might
be. As a first attempt it is still, I have suggested, too reliant on the structures
of older Orthodox dogmatics, which Fr Dumitru himself characterized as
'comfortably repeating the by-now opaque formulae of certain nineteenthcentury manuals influenced by scholasticism, and making them infallible
criteria of judgement for Orthodoxy' (E, 88). But it was necessary to start
somewhere, and no one else has attempted what Fr Dumitru has achieved.
The completion of the German translation is a great event: it is now possible to find a balanced, profound and also uncompromising statement of
Orthodox theological principles. It is greatly to be hoped that the English
translation will soon be complete. Fr Dumitru has been well served by his
translators: Hermann Pitters' German is clear and readable, though the
English translators note some nuances in the Romanian that seem to have
escaped Pitters (the translation of the anarthrous Persoana [divina] as simply
die/eine [gttliche] Persone.g., O I, 24, cf. E, 14, n.3and the translation of
lucrare as WerkStniloae himself seems to say it represents the Greek
energeia [O II, 232], though cf. note on E, 139). There are also some oddities
in Pitters' rendering of technical Orthodox terminology: the penalties
connected with the penitential system are called epitimia, Pitters has
Epithymien (desiresepithymiai?) and translates Beichtrte (O III, 114); later
on we encounter a 'Figuralgesang' for a kathisma, a name for a verse of
liturgical poetry (O III, 172). But these are minor blemishes.
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266 Andrew Louth

Fr Dumitru has said: 'Orthodoxy, through the joy of living in, God, is
doxological and not theoretical. It does not indulge in speculations about
God, but it expresses the joy of living in God, and of participating in existence with the whole of creation.'16 For some of us that joy can take theoretical expression, in seeing how the threads of the tapestry of Orthodoxy are
woven together. For that, Fr Dumitru is a rare guide, and never lets us
forget that the mind must descend into the heart, as we stand before God.

NOTES
1

3
4

5
6
7
8

9
10

11
12

13

Even in Rowan Williams' survey of modern Eastern Orthodox theology in David Ford
(ed.), The Modern Theologians, vol. 2 (Oxford: Blackwells, 1989), pp. 152-70, he is barely
mentioned.
The German translation, by Hermann Pitters, is published as Orthodoxe Dogmatik, 3 vols.
(kumenische Theologie 12,15,16, Solothurn and Dsseldorf: Benziger Verlag/Gtersloh:
Gtersloh Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn 1984-95: ISBN 3-545-24209-9/24210-2/24307-9
[Benziger], 3-579-00175-2/00176-0/00182-5 [Gterioher Verlagshaus])[= O]. The first
volume (in fact the first half- volume of the Romanian original, to which the German
volumes correspond) of the English translation, by loan Ionita and Robert Barringer, is
published as The Experience of God (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994; ISBN
0-917651-70-7)[=E]. Vol. 1 of the German translation is now out-of-print, and I am indebted
to the librarian of the Monastery of St John the Baptist, Tolleshunt Knights, Essex, England,
for a long loan of their copy.
Persoana i comuniune, ed. M. Pcurariu and loan I. Ica, jnr. (Sibiu: Editura i tiparul
Arhiepiscopiei ortodoxe Sibiu, l993)[=Festschrift]. For the bibliography see pp. 20-67.
The Philokalia. The Complete Text, compiled by St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Marios
of Corinth, translated from the Greek and edited by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and
Kallistos Ware, 4 vols so far (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1979-95).
Philokalia I (1979), pp. 13-14.
Originally published in French (Paris: Aubier, ditions Montaigne, 1944); English translation: London: James Clarke, 1957.
See the English translators' introduction to the Philokalia: I (1979), p. 15.
Mystagogia tou hagiou Maximou tou Homologtou, and Philosophika kai theologika rotmata,
tou hagiou Maximou tou Homologetou, vol. 1, translated by I. Sakales with introduction and
notes by D. Stniloae (Epi tas pegas 1, 4; Athens: Ekdosis Apostolik Diaconia, 1973,
1978).
Saint Maxime le Confesseur, Ambigua, translated by E. Ponsoye, introduced by J.-C. Larchet,
commentaries by Fr Dumitru Stniloae (Collection l'Arbre de Jess, Paris-Suresnes:
Les ditions de l'Ancre, 1994).
For an introductory discussion of the nature of such commentary by Mximos, see my
'St Gregory the Theologian and St Maximus the Confessor: the Shaping of Tradition', in
The Making and Remaking of Christian Doctrine. Essays in honour of Maurice Wiles, eds. Sarah
Coakley and David Pailin (Oxford, 1993) pp. 117-30.
As Olivier Clment reports: Festschrift, pp. 82-3.
Since writing this I have learnt from A Romanian friend (I. I. Ica, jnr) that Fr Dumitru was
working under considerable constraints in producing his Orthodox Dogmatics. In 1976 the
Romanian Orthodox Church as had been granted grudging permission by the ideological
committee of the Communist Party to publish a handbook of Church Dogmatics. Stniloae
was obliged to produce a book that would look to the censors like a dogmatic handbook.
My remarks should therefore be read less as criticism, than as comment on the inevitable
consequences of trying to pour the new wine of the neo-Patristic synthesis into the old
bottles of the traditional dogmatic structure.
See Gregory Palamas, One Hundred and Fifty Chapters 62-4 (ed. R.E. Sinkewicz, Studies and
Texts 83, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, 1988, pp. 154-8).

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Review Essay 267

14 Rather uncharacteristically, Fr Dumitru gives no references here for his interpretation of Mximos. So far as I am aware, Mximos nowhere calls man a macrocosm, or
makros kosmos, though the reasoning Stniloae gives is a good summary of Ambigua 41;
similarly the idea of the cosmos as macro-anthropos is present in Mystagogia 7, but not the
word.
15 See J.F. Jansen, Calvin's Doctrine of the Work of Christ (London: James Clarke, 1956),
pp. 16-38.
16 'Some Characteristics of Orthodoxy' in Sobornost 5:9 (1969), p. 628, quoted by Bishop
Kallistos: E, xxii.

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^,
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