The Experience of God

Stăniloae’s Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă (Orthodox Dogmatic Theology), published in three volumes at Bucharest in 1978, is his systematic masterpiece; its English translation, The Experience of God, has appeared in six volumes since 1994. The title of the English edition names its governing conviction: that dogma is not abstract doctrine but the description of a real, lived experience of the living God. This file describes the work.

Tradition: Romanian Orthodox

The Work and Its Title

Stăniloae’s Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă was published in three volumes at Bucharest in 1978, under the imprint of the Romanian Patriarchate’s Biblical and Missionary Institute (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present, SPCK, 2015, ch. 6, dating the three-volume Dogmatics to 1978; Miller, The Gift of the World: An Introduction to the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae, T&T Clark, 2000, on the Dogmatics). It was the fruit of decades of teaching dogmatic theology at Sibiu and Bucharest and of the patristic labor of the Filocalia, and it is generally regarded as the most complete and original Orthodox systematic theology produced in the twentieth century (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6, on the stature of the Dogmatics; Ware, foreword to Stăniloae, The Experience of God, vol. 1, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, on its significance).

The English translation, made by Ioan Ioniță and Robert Barringer and published by Holy Cross Orthodox Press in Brookline, Massachusetts, bears the title The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, and appeared over many years: the first volume, Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune God, in 1994, followed by further volumes carrying the subtitles The World: Creation and Deification, The Person of Jesus Christ as God and Saviour, The Church: Communion in the Holy Spirit, and volumes on the sacraments and on the fulfilment of creation, the series running to six volumes by around 2013 (Stăniloae, The Experience of God, trans. Ioniță and Barringer, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994–2013, volume subtitles; Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6, on the English translation). [Disputed: because the three Romanian volumes were divided differently in the English edition, and because the English volumes appeared over nearly two decades, sources give slightly different volume counts and dates for the translation; the guide follows the Holy Cross edition’s own subtitles and its span of c. 1994–2013 (see the Holy Cross Orthodox Press editions and Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015).]

The English title is an interpretation as much as a translation. Where the Romanian says simply “Orthodox Dogmatic Theology,” the English The Experience of God announces the book’s central claim — a claim already implicit in Stăniloae’s method: that the doctrines of the faith are the articulation of a genuine experience of God given to the Church, and that dogmatics is therefore inseparable from the life of prayer and the life of the sacraments (Ware, foreword to The Experience of God, vol. 1; Bartoş, Deification in Eastern Orthodox Theology: An Evaluation and Critique of the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae, Paternoster, 1999, on the experiential character of Stăniloae’s dogmatics).

Dogma as the Description of Experience

The organizing idea of the whole work is that there is no opposition between dogma and experience. For Stăniloae, the dogmas of the Church are not speculative constructions imposed on the believer from outside; they are the faithful description of what God has revealed of himself and of what the Church has come to know of him in the communion of grace (Miller, The Gift of the World, 2000, on dogma and experience in Stăniloae; Bartoş, Deification in Eastern Orthodox Theology, 1999, on the unity of doctrine and spiritual experience). Revelation, on his account, is not primarily the communication of propositions but the self-giving of a personal God who draws the human person into communion with himself; the dogmas guard and express that communion (Stăniloae, The Experience of God, vol. 1, Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune God, on revelation as personal self-communication; Ware, foreword to vol. 1).

This is why the systematic theology and the Filocalia belong together. The ascetic and hesychast tradition Stăniloae had spent his life translating is, on this view, simply dogma in its experiential mode — the account of how the human person is actually purified, illumined, and united to the God whom the dogmas describe (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6, on the unity of dogmatic and ascetic theology in Stăniloae; see The Added Commentary). Theology that does not issue in, and arise from, the life of prayer is for Stăniloae theology cut off from its object.

The Shape of the Dogmatics

The work follows the classical order of Orthodox dogmatics while renewing it from patristic sources. It opens with revelation and the knowledge of God — including a rich treatment of apophatic (negative) theology, in which Stăniloae distinguishes the apophaticism of intellectual negation from a deeper apophaticism of direct experience of the ineffable God (Stăniloae, The Experience of God, vol. 1, on apophatic and cataphatic theology; see The World as Gift and Apophatic Theology). It proceeds to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which Stăniloae presents in strongly personalist terms as the eternal communion of love among the three divine persons — the ground of his whole theology of the person (Stăniloae, The Experience of God, on the Trinity; Bartoş, Deification in Eastern Orthodox Theology, 1999, on Stăniloae’s Trinitarian personalism; see Person, Communion, and Deification).

The doctrine of creation is developed under the sign of gift: the world is God’s gift to humanity and the medium of a dialogue of love between God and the human person, who is called to be the priest of creation (Stăniloae, The Experience of God, vol. 2, The World: Creation and Deification; Miller, The Gift of the World, 2000, whose title takes up this theme). Christology, the doctrine of the Church, the sacraments, and the consummation of all things in the deification of the human person and the transfiguration of the cosmos complete the structure (Stăniloae, The Experience of God, vols. 3–6, subtitles; Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6, on the scope of the Dogmatics). Throughout, the goal toward which the whole is ordered is theosis — the deification of the human person by grace, the participation of the creature in the uncreated life of God (Bartoş, Deification in Eastern Orthodox Theology, 1999, whose entire study is devoted to deification as the center of Stăniloae’s system; see Theosis).

Its Standing

The Experience of God has been received as a landmark. Kallistos Ware, introducing the English edition, presented Stăniloae as one of the foremost Orthodox theologians of the age and the Dogmatics as a work of the first rank, distinguished by its fusion of patristic depth, spiritual seriousness, and engagement with modern thought (Ware, foreword to The Experience of God, vol. 1). Andrew Louth places Stăniloae’s Dogmatics among the very greatest achievements of modern Orthodox theology, and among the fullest realizations of the neo-patristic program of a return to the Fathers (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6; see Among the Neo-patristic Theologians). The critical literature, while raising questions at points — Emil Bartoş, for example, probes the coherence of Stăniloae’s account of deification and its relation to Western theology — treats the work as a major and constructive contribution rather than a mere compilation (Bartoş, Deification in Eastern Orthodox Theology, 1999, both appreciative and critical; see His Standing Among Theologians).

See Also

References

  • Stăniloae, Dumitru. The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. Trans. Ioan Ioniță and Robert Barringer. 6 vols. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994–2013. (The English translation of the Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă, Bucharest, 1978; vol. 1 Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune God, vol. 2 The World: Creation and Deification, and following volumes on Christ, the Church, the sacraments, and the fulfilment of creation; revelation as personal self-communication; apophatic and cataphatic theology; the Trinity; creation as gift.)
  • Ware, Kallistos. Foreword to Stăniloae, The Experience of God, vol. 1. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994. (Stăniloae’s stature; the significance and character of the Dogmatics.)
  • Louth, Andrew. Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present. London: SPCK, 2015. (Ch. 6: the 1978 Dogmatics; its stature and scope; the English translation; the unity of dogmatic and ascetic theology.)
  • Miller, Charles. The Gift of the World: An Introduction to the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000. (Dogma and experience; creation as gift, the theme from which the book takes its title.)
  • Bartoş, Emil. Deification in Eastern Orthodox Theology: An Evaluation and Critique of the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae. Carlisle: Paternoster, 1999. (The experiential character of Stăniloae’s dogmatics; Trinitarian personalism; deification as the center of the system; appreciative and critical assessment.)