Effigia veritatis – apofatism și catafatism în hermeneutica ortodoxă cantemiriană
Effigia veritatis – Apophaticism and Cataphaticism in Dimitrie Cantemir’s Orthodox Hermeneutics

Summary/Abstract: This study analyses Dimitrie Cantemir’s biblical hermeneutics, highlighting how he achieved an original synthesis between Orthodox apophatic theology and the Western philosophical influences of his era. Through analysis of the works The Divan or the Argument of the Wise Man with the World, Sacro-sanctae scientiae indepingibilis imago, and Loca obscura in Catechisi, this research demonstrates that Holy Scripture constitutes the epistemological foundation of Cantemir’s entire thought, representing the „mirror” through which divine truth can be glimpsed. Cantemir rejects the Protestant hermeneutical principle Scriptura Scripturae interpres, according equal value to both Scripture and Holy Tradition in theological knowledge. His Constantinopolitan formation, marked by Corydalean Neo-Aristotelianism, provided him with the intellectual tools necessary for developing a biblical hermeneutics that transcends the limits of formal rationalism and orients itself toward an apophatic approach to the sacred text. The study emphasizes that Cantemir adopts a personalist vision of truth, seeing it not as an abstract concept but as a living reality in the person of Christ the Savior. Thus, the Moldavian scholar becomes a pioneering figure in the Orthodox space, capable of offering a hermeneutical model that transcends the tensions between reason and revelation, between cataphatic and apophatic knowledge, contributing significantly to the formation of Romanian cultural and religious identity, as well as to the development of European theological thought in the eighteenth century.

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