REACHING OF JESUS VIS-À-VIS LASSWELIAN THEORYG

Mediation is generally a terrestrial element. In heaven, we will see God face to face through the beatific vision. There will be no mediation because we will be there face to face with God. However, in our present life, it has pleased God to reveal himself to us in a mediated way. He has done this through different means which we call medium of God’s communication to the human person. This mediation happens in the context of the world – in the existential categories of life. Mediation takes place in this world – in our daily experiences. This agrees very much with the existentialism of Heidegger but without neglecting the transcendental categories of Kant.

MAN AND HIS QUALITY AS AN IMAGE OF GOD IN PATRISTIC THINKING

The notion of divine image is generously described by the patristic literature, each of the authors trying to identify the content of this special characteristic of human being, considered (in different positions) the defining element of the created rational being, indicating the possibility of opening to God not through something external, but from the inside of the human being. Since when they speak of God, the Church Fathers do not consider the reality of the one being, but that of the three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, as well as when the question of the image of God is raised, they emphasize that this the image by which human nature is conformed is the image of the Son, or the image of the Word. In this article I set out to draw some points on this patristic feature of the Eastern Fathers.

HE FALL FROM THE EDENIC STATE OR THE EPOS OF AN UNFILLED LONGING

We learn from the texts of the Holy Scriptures and contemplations of the Holy Fathers that man was created in the image and likeness of God adorned with virtues. Resting in the Garden of Eden, the man's mind was set on contemplation of God, abounding in divine images. Dominated by the spirit, man was living in a particular state of joy and happiness. God shared him from His state of goodness, endowing him with all the spiritual and material sweetness. Man's fall into sin was a consequence of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, tempted by the cunning devil disguised in primordial snake. The expel of Adam from heaven identifies with the process of humanity restoration the heavenly Father started at the gates of the biblical garden, promising to the first inhabitants of the earth to help them find the way back to their lost home, by sending in this world the Redeemer.

DEACON CORESI (C. 1510 - C. 1583) AND HIS ACTIVITY AS A PRINTER IN THE CONTEXT OF THE 16TH CENTURY PROTESTANT PROPAGANDA

The biographical data about the life of deacon Coresi (Coressius) are extremely few and it has been admitted, after many debates, studies and analyses, that he was from Târgoviște, it is supposed that he joined a school in Slavonic at Dealu Monastery, and that he was the owner of a printing press, yet standing out as a skillful printing master. It is also known that he had a son, called Șerban, whom he taught the art of the printing press. The name of deacon Coresi is mentioned in the books he had printed in Brașov (during two periods: 1556-1557; 1560-1583, at irregular intervals), Târgoviște (1557-1558), Alba Iulia (1567-1568) and SasSebeș (1580), during five great periods (1556-1558, 1559-1565, 1566-1570, 1571-1577, 1578-1583), in Romanian and Slavonic. Thus, by his activity, deacon Coresi contributed to the introduction of the Romanian language in the cult of the Orthodox Church of the Romanian Countries, but also in the use of the princely administrative offices of the extra-Carpathian Romanian Countries.

KENOTIC THEOLOGY IN THE EASTERN CHURCH HYMNS

The hypostatic or personal union (enosis ipostatiki) is the wreath and the bond between man and God. The consequences of the hypostatic union form the object of most of the hymns from the cultic treasure of the Eastern Church. The theandric person of our Saviour Jesus Christ is intrinsically present under one form or the other in all the hymns of our Church. Kenosis represents one of the consequences of the hypostatic union and a profound expression of God’s supreme love for mankind. The Orthodox teaching - both in dogma and in divine service - is against a radical kenosis that would nullify the sense of Jesus’ Embodiment as overflowing of the divine energies in the world and in mankind.

A FASCINATING SYNTHESIS OF SCIENCE, THEOLOGY, AND SPIRITUALITY: ST. GREGORY PALAMAS

As a prominent Church father, mystical theologian and incisive polemicist, St. Gregory Palamas has realized a «Summa Theologica» of his epoch, but one that has surpassed not only the thinking of contemporaries, but remained, to this day, a synthesis of philosophical and theological knowledge, at least for the Eastern Christianity. He pointed out with clarity the independence of theology from philosophy or from any other field of research. One of the most important instruments with a view to knowing God is prayer and Palamas began to write under the pressure of defending the hesychastic method of prayer. He proves that true communion with God was possible through sanctification and that God's vision through prayer was a sign of this spiritual communion. In Palamas' very coherent theological thinking, Christology corresponds to his anthropology, and both to his mysticism. St. Gregory strongly depreciated the value of intellectual effort, maintaining the primacy of direct illumination over scientific reasoning. Thus, prayer and asceticism engender love, which leads to illumination by God and participation in the divine life. He tries to make sense of mystical experience in the scientific and philosophical language of his day. Paradoxically, almost every attempt arrives at establishing that the spiritual cannot be grasped by man's natural intellectual capacity, nor expressed in philosophical language. But the spiritual man can be the partaker of this experience through the experience of grace, as divine uncreated energy, the true "face" of God accessible to human contemplation. The Archbishop of Thessaloniki, who realized a synthesis of Science, Theology, and Spirituality outlines the relation between them as follows: Science explores the world and leads to technological inventions; Theology interprets reality within the Christian framework, evidencing the glory of God as reflected throughout his creation; and Spirituality is the privileged path toward personal transformation. The debate about Palamism is likely to continue for some time. His version of theosis (deification) was enshrined in Orthodox teaching as a result of his canonization, but among the intellectuals for whom it was intended it remained controversial, despite its grandeur.

DESCRIPTION AND EVALUATION REGARDING THE HOLY MYSTERY OF PRIESTHOOD IN ROMAN CATHOLICISM

The central difference between the Orthodox teaching and the Catholic one regarding the Church comes from the conception regarding its foundation. In the Catholic conception, the visible Church was founded before the Pentecost, on the testimony of Saint Peter the Apostle, and at Pentecost only the invisible Church would have been added. The entire conception about the hierarchy, in the Roman Catholic Church, is strictly juridical. In reality, as the Orthodox theology testifies, the essence of the ecclesial hierarchy is charismatic, not juridical. This is what the great difference to the Catholic teaching consists in. The Eastern theology makes no abstraction of jurisdiction and canon law, yet, jurisdiction depends on grace, not grace on jurisdiction, contrary to what some Western Church theologians would suggest in certain works such as those belonging to the Western Theology.

THE PURPOSE OF THE WILDERNESS AND CELL IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SHAPING OF THE MONK

Anachoreism is a fascinating feature of Eastern monasticism. Many of the ascetic treatises, and especially the philocal collection, come from the heroic world of the anchorite monks who lived in uninhabited territories, wild but, above all, desert places. From the first centuries of the Christian Church, there are emblematic figures of the anchorite monk in the Egyptian space, who retreated to the desert, such as St. Paul of Thebes, the first Egyptian hermit known by name. The premise from which our study starts is that the geographical places chosen by the Christian anchorites, in this case the desert, the mountain, the forests, the isolated places, the caves, etc., predispose them to some psychospiritual transformations that they do not it could acquire (easily, or ever) in a very populated and stirred space. We have chosen for analysis and interpretation two habitats very common in the writings of the Desert Fathers: the desert (desert) and the cell. These two "special" spaces denote some characteristics that imprint special features in the psychology and personality of the needy. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is to present the psychological and practical significance of the retreat of anchorites in the desert and in the cell, respectively, proving, at the same time, that loneliness is for the Fathers of the desert, the element without which it would not have achieved so much spiritual performance in the inner space.

GOD’S SELF-COMMUNICATION IN HISTORY

God’s communication in history finds fulfilment in Jesus Christ. The refusal of God’s self-communication diminishes the right use of freedom and in the final analysis, the person becomes what he should not become. This is what actually happened to Adam and Eve after eating the forbidden fruit – and we have all inherited that defect – that potency to sin. This situation can be compared to that of hereditary defect in which a defect is passed on from one person to the other. In this case, we can analogously say that all the descendants of Adam have inherited the possibility that we could abuse freedom – by choosing wrong things and this abuse of freedom was redeemed by Jesus Christ.

DEATH IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

Nowadays, death, illness, and suffering are experienced as danger: a threat to one’s own physical, psychological and social identity. And what accompanies all these, particularly paralizing from a spiritual perspective, is fear; the dread that all is lost, that things cannot be controlled by means of medicine, only to reach the greatest angst: the fear of death. And, in this respect, we can say that pain, suffering and the fear of death make up the anthropological foundation of the most profound religious concept of life, in the sense that these realities show man his limitations, his finite build, that of a creature, and, consequently, determine him look beyond his limitations. The fear of death brought about angst, anxiety, passion, hatred, and despair in man’s life. His need to escape death made him look for even more material elements to render him oblivious to it. The solution against despair is God: faith vanquishes despair because, by faith, man acknowledges his dependence on God, but turning within himself, at the same time.