Rehabilitation and Recognition

After his release from prison in the early 1960s, Stăniloae returned in time to his teaching at the Theological Institute in Bucharest; in the relative thaw of the later communist decades he completed the Filocalia and published his Dogmatics, and in old age he received international recognition — invitations to lecture abroad, honorary doctorates, the Tübingen Leopold Lucas Prize, and election to the Romanian Academy. This file traces that late flowering.

Tradition: Romanian Orthodox

Return to Teaching

Following his release from prison — most sources say 1963 — Stăniloae endured a period of continued marginalization before he was permitted to resume his academic work (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present, SPCK, 2015, ch. 6, on the release and the return to teaching; see Imprisonment at Aiud). The general loosening of the regime after 1965, under the early years of Nicolae Ceaușescu, brought a measure of relaxation in which a controlled ecclesiastical and academic life became possible again (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6, on the post-1965 context). Stăniloae returned to his chair of dogmatic theology at the Orthodox Theological Institute of the University of Bucharest, and taught there through his rehabilitation into his formal retirement (Miller, The Gift of the World: An Introduction to the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae, T&T Clark, 2000, on the Bucharest professorship). [Disputed: the exact years of his continued restriction after release and of his formal return to the professorate are reported with variation; the sources agree that he resumed teaching in Bucharest during the 1960s and continued as a formative teacher of Romanian clergy and theologians (see Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, and Miller, The Gift of the World, 2000).]

Completing the Life’s Work

The most important fruit of his rehabilitation was the completion of the two great projects that imprisonment had interrupted. From the mid-1970s the remaining volumes of the Filocalia appeared at Bucharest, carrying the series to twelve volumes by around 1990–1991 (see The Filocalia Translation). And in 1978 he published his systematic masterwork, the three-volume Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă, the summation of a lifetime’s teaching and patristic labor (see The Experience of God). That a man who had been through Aiud produced, in his seventies, both the completion of the Filocalia and a complete Orthodox dogmatics is the measure of the resilience of his vocation (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6, on the late completion of his work; Miller, The Gift of the World, 2000).

International Recognition

As his writings became known beyond Romania — through translations and through the growing scholarly interest in the neo-patristic movement — Stăniloae received a series of international honors in his later years. He was invited to lecture abroad and came to be recognized, especially from the 1970s, as one of the foremost living Orthodox theologians (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6, on his international recognition; Ware, foreword to Stăniloae, The Experience of God, vol. 1, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, on his standing).

He received honorary doctorates from several universities in recognition of his theological achievement (Miller, The Gift of the World, 2000, on the honorary doctorates; Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6). [Disputed: the precise list and dates of Stăniloae’s honorary doctorates vary in the biographical literature (institutions named in various accounts include Thessaloniki, Athens, Belgrade, and Bucharest, among others); the guide reports that he received several such honors from Orthodox and other universities without asserting a definitive list, since the sources do not fully agree (see Miller, The Gift of the World, 2000, and Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015).] Among the honors most often noted is the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize, awarded him by the University of Tübingen in 1992, near the end of his life — a mark of recognition from Western academic theology (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6, noting the Tübingen prize). [Disputed: the year of the Leopold Lucas Prize is given as 1992 in the accounts consulted; readers should verify the exact date against the University of Tübingen’s own records.]

After the fall of the communist regime in December 1989, further recognition came to him at home: he was honored by the newly free Romanian Academy, being elected a member in his last years — a public acknowledgment, in the reborn Romanian state, of the theologian the old regime had imprisoned (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6, on the post-1989 honors and academy membership). [Disputed: the year of his election to the Romanian Academy is given variously (commonly 1990 or 1991); the guide reports that he was elected in the years immediately after the 1989 revolution (see Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015).]

The Meaning of the Recognition

The honors of Stăniloae’s last decades have a certain irony and a certain fittingness. The man whom the communist state had tried to silence in the prison at Aiud lived to be honored by universities across Europe and, after 1989, by his own country’s highest learned society. Yet the recognition, though welcome, did not change the character of the man his interpreters describe: gentle, humble, absorbed in his work and his prayer, pointing away from himself to the tradition he served (Ware, foreword to The Experience of God, vol. 1, on his humility; Miller, The Gift of the World, 2000, on his character). The late recognition confirmed from outside what the Romanian Church already knew: that in Stăniloae it possessed a theologian of the first rank and a confessor of the faith. His repose came soon after, in 1993 (see Repose 1993).

See Also

• Imprisonment at Aiud — the imprisonment from which he returned
• The Filocalia Translation — the project completed after his rehabilitation
• The Experience of God — the 1978 Dogmatics
• Repose 1993 — his death soon after the honors of his last years
• His Standing Among Theologians — the reception the honors reflected

References

• Louth, Andrew. Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present. London: SPCK, 2015. (Ch. 6: the return to teaching after 1963; the post-1965 thaw; the completion of the Filocalia and the 1978 Dogmatics; international recognition; honorary doctorates; the Tübingen Leopold Lucas Prize of 1992; post-1989 honors and election to the Romanian Academy.)
• Miller, Charles. The Gift of the World: An Introduction to the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000. (The Bucharest professorship; the honorary doctorates; his character.)
• Ware, Kallistos. Foreword to Stăniloae, The Experience of God, vol. 1. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994. (His standing among modern Orthodox theologians and his personal humility.)