Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical Guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar [Paperback]

Dumitru Staniloae (Author), Fr. Jerome Leslie Newville (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2003

Orthodox spirituality has as its goal the deification of man and his union with God, without being merged with Him. It has as a basic conviction the existence of a personal God, who is the supreme source of radiating love. He prizes man and doesn't want to confuse him with Himself, but maintains and raises him to an eternal dialogue of love. Such a spirituality has no place where an evolutionary progress of man, connected to a divinity conceived as an impersonal essence, is affirmed. This progress can have no result other than man's disappearance in the impersonal divinity. But the personal God, and thus the supreme source of love, can't be conceived of as a single person, but as a community of persons in a perfect unity. You see then why the Christian teaching of a Trinity of Persons in a unity of essence is the only one which can constitute the basis of a perfect spirituality for man, understood as a full communion with God in love, without his being lost in it. Dumitru Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality It should be remembered, especially in the Western context, that the roots of Christian theology are not only Western, but reach deeply into the theological mind and the living Christian experience of the Orthodox East. Before the medieval political and cultural schism between the Latin and Greek worlds and the subsequent Protestant Reformation, the Christian West was itself, in fact, Orthodox, part and parcel of one united, albeit admittedly bi-polar, Byzantine Commonwealth. In our own time, as Western culture once again gradually comes to recognition of the "Eastern" Orthodox Church as being existentially part of its own root tradition, the imperative of discovering common ground and defining a common frame of reference relative to essentials of Christian spiritual life arises as a matter of some urgency. -Alexander Golubov, Foreword,Orthodox Spirituality

Product Details

• Paperback: 397 pages
• Publisher: St Tikhons Press; 1st Edition edition (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1878997661
• ISBN-13: 978-1878997661
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #276,311 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A full and detailed explanation of spiritual growth, March 28, 2010

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ecclesial hypostasis - See all my reviews

This review is from: Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical Guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar (Paperback)

I hesitate to review this book because my understanding and application of the topic that it discusses is so poor. But others can remedy my weakness as they are able.

Dumitru Staniloae's goal in this book is to set out a complete exposition of the Orthodox spiritual path from beginning to end, and describing each step along the way with great detail. As he writes in the Introduction: 'the goal of Christian Orthodox spirituality is the perfection of the believer by his union with Christ. He is being imprinted to an ever-greater degree by the human image of Christ, full of God. So the goal of Christian Orthodox spirituality is the union of the believer with God, in Christ. But as God is unending, the goal of our union with Him, or of our perfection, has no point from which we can no longer progress.'

The content follows the typical division of spiritual growth into the categories of Purification, Illumination and Perfection (or Deification). Staniloae brings together teaching from a wide range of patristic and contemporary sources on these issues. He relies very strongly on the thought of Maximos the Confessor, Gregory Palamas, Symeon the New Theologian, and the French philosopher Maurice Blondel. This book is meant to be a counterpoint to modern existentialism, so he delves in depth into the way in which Orthodox spirituality engages with personhood and Being. Key issues that are dealt with (staples of Orthodox monastic writings) are the subjugation of the 'passions', the transformation of the mind and heart through contemplative prayer, the apophatic ascent to mystical knowledge of God, and the experience of the 'Divine Light' as the union with God.

Staniloae was a man of profound learning and spirituality, and also a humble man purified by suffering under communist oppression. This is a monumental work, written with simplicity and insight. It proves that Christianity has a store of spiritual knowledge and practice that is available to all believers for the transformation of their lives. I have reservations about how it might possibly be used as an esoteric guidebook to be followed apart from the life of the Church, and like many of these works the teaching comes from monastic settings that are separated from the 'secular' life. I struggle to see how these things could be taught to and practiced by ordinary Christian believers (though that is my difficulty, not Staniloe's). Another concern, which I also found with his systematic theology, is that there tends to be very little scriptural exposition compared with the vast amount of patristic theology that is quoted and explained. This book lacks the 'humanity' and concrete imagery of the Biblical spiritual writings. This is not necessarily a problem given Staniloe's goal with this work, but something to note and consider. These are minor quibbles, though, about a great book.