ICOANA CREDINTEI.ICON OF FAITH

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Authors: Petros VASSILIADIS

Many scholars in modernity have accused Saint Paul either for an unrestricted obedience to civil authorities (Rom 13), or for surrendering the divine gift of freedom and human dignity and accepting the status of slavery (1 Cor 7:21; Phlm), or for implying the subordination of women (1 Cor 14:34ff.; Eph 5:22; Col 3:18; etc.). I am referring of course to the well known household codes (Haustafeln, Col 3:18ff. and parallels). It was mainly these cases that gave rise to the criticism that Paul (or the Pauline school) did not resist with all his power as he should to the socio-political status quo of his time, and that he and his school, and Christianity thereafter, tolerated unjust social institutions and structures.

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Authors: Marin BUGIULESCU

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the theological reflection on the relationship between man and cosmos. The origin of the world and man is connected to God; God is the Creator and consequently the Author of them both. Unlike dualistic materialistic thinking, according to the Christian conception the whole cosmos is created by God. In search for the cosmos an important chapter was granted for man, considered to be a synthesis of the world. Man, from the theological perspective, is the personal, rational, free, and speaking being that has – through the image of God according to which he has been created –, the tension after perfection. But it pertains exclusively to the relationship with Christ in the light of Whom he really knows himself, and by knowing himself he recognizes the infinite beauty of the Archetype. This is the existential-theological truth, which the content of this paper emphasizes, according to the Bible and patristic teaching.

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Authors: Mihai Sebastian STOIAN

Humans have studied and have been studying ceaselessly the universe, trying to find out our place in this mysterious cosmos, learning all the time something and as we believe that we have established something, there are other question marks to come. This is probably due to our inability to know everything. Science sometimes seeks and finds answers but not cease to be amazed, to bow before the mystery. However we must accept that there are countless ways to approach the differences between the possibilities of knowledge for understanding the universe

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Authors: Encarnación Ruiz CALLEJÓN

The purpose of this work is to analyse the contribution of the Jewish doctor Isaac Israeli to the medieval reflection on the relationship between man and the cosmos. To this end, starting from the methodological change proposed by al-Yabri for the study of classical Arabic philosophy, I question the usual characterization of the Jewish author as being merely an eclectic thinker, and indicate the most noteworthy aspects of his position. The philosophical texts that have come down to us reveal a philosopher who participates in the great debates of his time, among them: the relation between philosophy and revelation and the nature of the human intellect. Beyond the prophetic aspect, Israeli points to a special logic based on the ability to argue evoking images, a universal way that facilitates the compression of a complex idea or promotes the performance of an action.

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Authors: Ion Marian CROITORU

While, in the 19th century, many servants of the monastic settlements left Wallachia and Moldova, because of the measures taken there, the situation was nevertheless different in the 18th century, when monks from different areas inhabited by Orthodox Christians came to the Romanian Countries, where they encountered an uninterrupted reality of hesychastic renewal started by Saint Gregory of Sinai (1255-1346), due to the fact that the Romanians had known another cultural continuity, different from what had happened, until that century, in the Greek Byzantine or in the Slav world. This reality explains why the revitalization of the hesychastic and spiritual life in the areas north of the Danube is related, in the 18th century, to the Saints Basil of Poiana Mărului (1692-1767) and Paisius Velichkovsky or Wieliczkowski of Neamţ (1722-1794), both of them arrived from the Slav world in the Romanian extra-Carpathian territories. Saint Basil founded many hermitages and trained many disciples in the practice of the prayer of the mind or of the heart, becoming known as a great teacher of this prayer, in the modern times. Just as the Holy Fathers of Mount Sinai (Gregory, Philotheos, Hesychios), but also from other parts of the Byzantine world (Saint Symeon the New Theologian, Saint Gregory Palamas etc.), once again, he draws the attention not just of the monks but also of the lay people on the prayer of the heart, so that in the 19th century it was not the teaching of Saint Paisius on the practice of the prayer of the heart that prevailed, but the teaching of Saint Basil, followed especially in the Romanian and in the Russian tradition. Regarding the monastic life, the activity of Starets Basil can be characterized by the ecumenicity of the Orthodox faith, due to the fact that, on the one hand, he brought together monks from the Romanian and the Slav area, and, on the other hand, he contributed to the enrichment of the Romanian monasticism through the cultivation of the spirit of two Holy Mounts, Athos and Sinai.

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Authors: Traian-Alexandru MIU

Secularization is a phenomenon supposing major mutations on the social level. Thus, based on the principle of rationality, secularization has led to the removal of religion from the social sphere, the desacralization, aiming, ultimately, that the sacred disappear altogether from man's life. Within the globalizing-secularizing society, economics seeks to take possession of the entire social and spiritual life, helped by a policy-aggressive mercantile mentality. Secularization has led to manipulation of man so that he believes he has to build his future by abstaining from religion. The secularized man has come to the conclusion that only by his own forces helped by reason, economy and technology he can be the one who creates progress, namely perfection for himself and for the world he lives in. The hypermodern man is a man of ephemerality, a human being looking for his accomplishment in trifles, who no longer has deification as his final goal. The problems that man is facing today can be solved by taking the eternity as reference system for them.