Fr. Dumitru
Staniloae is a Romanian theologian. His many works include commentaries on the
Church Fathers, a Romanian translation of the Philokalia, and his masterpiece, in 1978, "The Orthodox Dogmatic Theology". Fr. Dumitru endured several years
of imprisonment for his faith at the hands of Communists, after which he began
to work for the Romanian Holy Synod and often traveled to international
conferences to share his theological vision. He reposed in 1993 at the age of
ninety.
On the road of our approach to God stands the
world - we must pass through the understanding of it. Every man has a mission
connected with the world. Everyone must know it according to the power given to
him, in as much as knowledge can't come until the gaining of the virtues;
everyone must develop beforehand a moral activity in relationship to the world.
A mainly negative attitude toward the world frustrates salvation itself. The world
is imposed on everyone as a stone for sharpening his spiritual faculties.
By the world man grows to the height of the
knowledge of God and to the capacity of being His partner. The world is a
teacher to lead us to Christ. Of course it can also be the road to hell. It is
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of testing. If we look at
its beauty in order to praise its Creator, we are saved; if we think that its
fruit is pure and simply something to eat, we are lost. Salvation isn't obtained
in isolation, but in a cosmic frame. This value of the world as a road to God
is explained by the fact that man must have an object of giant proportions for
strengthening his spiritual forces, but also from the intrinsic structure of
the world as a symbol of transcendent divine realities. A symbol (from the
Greek symballein, to throw together, to unite two things without
confusing them), is a visible reality which doesn't only represent, but somehow
makes an unseen reality visible. A symbol presupposes and shows two things
simultaneously. It is "a bridge between the two worlds" as somebody
has said. A word, for example, is a symbol of the spirit, uniting and
simultaneously presenting the materiality of the sound with the meaning of
thought without confusing them; the human face likewise, makes the spirit in
man transparent by its materiality, and if he is living in Him, God Himself. A
symbolic consciousness of the world.
“…sees everywhere in this world the signs and
symbols of another world, and perceives the divine as the mysterious and
infinite, beyond that which is finite and transitory”.(Berdayev)
All flesh is a symbol of the spirit, the
reflection, the image and the sign of another far off, yet much more profound,
reality.
The alliance of these two worlds, the
possibility of their interpenetration, the transfusion of energy from one world
into the other are all communicated to us by means of this symbolic sign. This
symbol unveils for us the life of God and signifies for us the entrance of
divine energy into the life of this natural world. But on the other hand it
guards for all time the sense of infinite mystery and affirms the impossibility
of reducing to a common denominator the life of the world and the life of the
spirit. Symbolism does not admit the validity of that ossification and
isolation of the flesh and the natural world which results from transforming
them into entities incapable of permeation by the infinitude of God and the
Spirit.
As we turn aside from the life of this world
our whole attention is fixed upon the unfathomable and the ineffable;
everywhere we are in contact with the mysterious and we see the light of
another world, in which nothing ever comes to an end, and which knows no
subordination. The world is open to the light, it has no limits, it penetrates
into other worlds, and they in turn penetrate into it. Here there is nothing hard
or rigid which cannot be subdued.
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.
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The heavens declare the glory of
God,
and the firmament proclaimeth the work of His hands.(Ps18: 1)
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The holy
Fathers and more recent Orthodox theologians sustain 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 distinguishes 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. .
Divinity is an object of knowledge both
infinite and inexhaustible, eternally mysterious in the unfathomable depth of
its being. Thus it is that the knowledge of the divine is a dynamic process
which finds no completion.... A symbol by its very nature does not subject the
infinite to the finite. On the other hand it renders the finite transparent and
allows us to see the infinite through it. In the finite world our horizons are
by no means completely restricted.
But this
sparkle isn't something given to just anyone, but it is revealed only by living
spiritually, only to a look "in spirit" as St.Maximus the Confessor
would say. But for this look "in the spirit" at the logoi of
the world, distinct from their deductive, rational understanding, a previous
purification of our nature, by long-term toil, is necessary. He considers that this
contemplation is a knowledge "in the spirit," thus under the
influence of the grace of the Holy Spirit and a previous cleansing of man from
the passions is necessary.
On the other hand St. Maximus maintains that
from the logoi of things “we know that there is a Creator of visible things,
but how He is we can’t understand." From this, as well as from the role
which the saint attributes to "reason" in the knowledge of these
aspects of things.
Then St.
Maximus unceasingly requires the man who strives for perfection to purify and
reestablish all his psychic faculties, including reason. Thus we have said that
the soul’s approach to God isn't realized in a leap without reason, but after a
prolonged exercise of reason in the meanings of things. So the world has been
set up for us as a road to God.
Reference:Orthodox Spirituality. Dumitru
Staniloae.(2002).