Sophrosyne – „maica, păzitoarea şi numele comun al tuturor virtuţilor”, şi implicaţiile ei în viaţa eclesială, culturală şi socială a primelor secole creştine
Sophrosyne – “mother, guardian and common name of all virtues” and her implications in the social, cultural and ecclesiastical life in the first christian centuries.

Summary/Abstract: Sophrosyne defines the soundness of mind as order, harmony and balance of human nature, while disease is caused by excess and insufficience… As practical wisdom, sophrosyne has an intellectual determination as self-knowledge, as well as a moral qualification, promoting self-control as self-mastery, aimed to achieve apatheia as liberation from passions, so the mind attains the vision of God to fullfill the purposes of philosophy, which is the likeness and the union with God. Borrowed by christian spirituality in order to convey its own spiritual philosophy which leads to the salvation of the soul, Sophrosyne recieves its own christian valences, with the purpose of repainting the image of God in man and “partake of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Sophrosyne is involved in the ecclesial, cultural and social life through reasoning enlightened by “faith working through love” and strengthened by the power and work of divine grace, able to cultivate and affirm the mentality and behaviour as life in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Expressed by discernment and temperance, Sophrosyne is not, in the philocalic way of life, a virtue amongst others, but “the mother, guardian and the common (universal) name of all virtues”. By cultivating holiness oriented towards philanthropy and temperance, man accomplishes, through Sophrosyne, the work of God and fulfils His Kingdom in the world of sin, towards its salvation.

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