Evoluția actuală prin care trece România și Republica Moldova este rezultatul înstrăinării noastre de Dumnezeu
Interviu cu profesorul de Teologie George Alexe, Detroit, SUA
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Interviu cu profesorul de Teologie George Alexe, Detroit, SUA
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La jumătatea lunii noiembrie a anului 2009 s-a susŃinut la Mănăstireamaramureseană Bârsana un amplu Simpozion NaŃional dedicat Anului omagial al„Sfântului Vasile cel Mare si al SfinŃilor Capadocieni”, organizat de Catedra deTeologie Ortodoxă si AsistenŃă Socială din cadrul UniversităŃii de Nord din BaiaMare, cu sprijinul Episcopiei Ortodoxe a Maramuresului si Sătmarului, undeinvitat de marcă a fost si părintele profesor universitar Theodor Damian din NewYork, SUA, teolog de mare profunzime si elevată expresie lingvistică, poet deexcepŃie si un hermeneut al sacrului în mai multe ipostaze.
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The period between the II nd and the V th centuries AD, was a favorable period for the development of philosophy in Greek Diaspora, which was in a permanent contact with a lot of Greek currents. The one who has the merit of having made a syncretism between the Jewish thought and the Greek philosophy is the Jew Philo of Alexandria. He is the representative of the religious philosophy of the Greeks of Jewish origin in Alexandria, the exponent of a „widespread and appreciated philosophy among the Hellenistic Christians and the Jews of the first centuries.” His work is very extensive and of the 35 treaties that kept from Philo, 32 are biblical commentaries written for the Greek-speaking Jews in Egypt. In a very traditional manner, this work was divided into three sections: philosophical works, exegetical works and also apologetic and historical works. Up to now, very few of his works have been translated into the Romanian language and his dedicated and scaterred studies do not manage to systematize his whole work. On the other hand, information about the Biblical patriarchs is to be found not only in the Holy Scripture, but also in Philo’s works which give us/offer the vision of the Greeks’religious philosophy who came from the Jewish. That is why, the present essay/report proposes/has proposed to focus on the importance of Philo’s works regarding the Biblical patriarchs, giving us at the same time their complementary image along with that provided by the Holy Scripture.
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The first part of this study presents St. Gregory's place in the history of the fourth century and the role he played during and after the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381 After a brief overview of some biographical data, it is pointed out the education acquired which gave him recognition as a "sophist" of its age. The last part of this study presents the philosophical-theological thinking of the great Cappadocian exemplified by texts of his works.
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The Church has established the Orthodox teachings reguarding the Person of Christ beginning with the First Ecumenical Council from Niceea (325) and continuing with the Third and the Fourth Ecumenical Councils from Efes (431) and Calcedon (451). The patristical teachings represented at these councils was continued by Saint John of Damascus’ christological wrintings, therefore his liturgical hymns preserve the purity of the Orthodox faith. The following study highlights a few aspects of the niceean Orthodox christology reguarding the Son, who is true God, of the same substance with the Father. He became Man, let Himself be crucified and saved us through His Resurrection.
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Our contemporary society tends to be a worldlier rather than a spiritual one and pays less and less respect to the righteous human values that are supported and promoted by the anthropological Word of wisdom given by the Church of Jesus Christ. It promotes an autonomous human being and rejects God from His own creation by placing Him almost completely out of its life. The abortion – the murder of unborn children or termination of pregnancy – is the sin that has spread so much and has become so frequent that it may be called a real massacre of innocent children, a violent attack on the meaning of life. Preventing the birth of a child is a true calendar of death according to which the maternity of the “modern” and “emancipate” woman has turned out into a cynical child murder. People of our times who represent the contemporary lay world without God are totally disordered from a spiritual perspective and therefore cannot understand that, since the very moment of conception, life in the uterus equals to the individual human life, and what we call “fetal existence” is recognized by God as a fully personal life. The newly created human being reflects the “image” of God and it becomes the “sacred reflection” that defines the personal identity of any human being. According to the Word of Church abortion is a first degree murder as the right to live is taken from a human being that is completely innocent. It can be named genocide because by killing a conceived life one also destroys the lives of possible successors and it may as well be called deicide as the child is taken away the right to share the Holy Spirit during the Sacrament of Baptism, and the blood of Jesus Christ is wasted together with the child’s blood, which is the reflection of the Holy Image. We are created by the Almighty because of His conceiving love, and therefore, we have no right to intervene on any conceived human being, no matter its stage of development. Be it just an embryo, it has life, it is alive, and we have no right to refuse the gift God sends us. It carries the divine image and it is called to the eternal life in the name of God. Therefore, the abortion means murder, and it is a sin against God, who is the source of life and entire existence, it is a sin against the human nature and its never-ending destiny, it is a sin against the institution of family and society which are less vigorous because of fewer and fewer newborns. There is the Lord’s Commandment “You shall not kill!” (Exodus 20: 13) and we should blame this modern sin and fight against this “plague” of our contemporary society. We should take urgent measures against the practice of abortion, and even more against its legalization and we should be highly aware that the willing termination of a pregnancy and murder of an unborn child is the sin that destroys the very essence of humankind.
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In this study we have intended to present the role, values and mostly the topicality of Lord Jesus Christ’s Sacrifice, began with His birth in the manger of Bethlehem and finished with His suffering and death on the cross. But in a very special manner, our desire was to show the existing relationship between the Savior's sacrifice on the Cross and the Eucharistic one – which is a culmination and extension, a culmination over time and space since Jesus Christ, the High Priest, Sacrifices Himself, within every Holy Mass, with exactly the same reason and purpose to that of His sacrifice on the Cross – namely: our redemption from the state of sin and restoration of the communion between us and God. That is why we pointed out the fact that the Sacrifice on the Golgotha moved by the end of time, on the "Golgotha" which is found in our Holy Churches, namely Holy Table of the Altar where Christ returns and brings Himself, being Sacrificed in the guise of bread and wine, which after the Great Prayer over the Gifts Transformation, they become the Holy Gifts, namely the honorable body and blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
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Poezia lui Theodor Damian ne surprinde, ne provoacă, ne pune faŃă în faŃăcu realităŃi nu totdeauna comode, într-un cuvânt, poemele sale ne conduc la osinceritate faŃă de sine si faŃă de marele Univers. Nu întâmplător, volumul„Nemitarnice”, de fapt o antologie de o sută unu poeme, se constituie ca unmanifest adresat fiecărui potenŃial cititor de a cântări în cumpăna dreaptă araŃiunii valorile fundamentale ale existenŃei si mai ales, ale rostului de a aparŃinebogatului spaŃiu spiritual românesc.
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Un municipiu ca Baia Mare, o resedinŃă de judeŃ cu centru episcopal, secuvine să aibă si o instituŃie de învăŃământ teologic superior pentru pregătireacadrelor de specialitate si a viitorilor clerici. Realizându
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În calitate de director al proiectului de cercetare stiințifică în domeniulteologie din cadrul Universității de Nord, Baia Mare, si de coordonator editorial,responsabil cu editarea si apariția semestrială a Buletinului stiințific al Catedreide Teologie Ortodoxă si Asistență Socială din cadrul Facultății de Litere,intitulat: „Studia Universitatis Septentrionis Theologia Orthodoxa”, la un nouînceput de drum în domeniul publicisticii de aprofundare teologică țin să aducrespectuoase mulțumiri tuturor celor care m-au sprijinit cu privire la inițiereaacestui proiect,
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Crestinismul este Religia religiilor prin Revelarea deplină a lui DumnezeuTreimea în iubire dumnezeiască faŃă de fiinŃa umană creată, menită să devinăcolaborator al lui Dumnezeu în ordinea existentă a lumii, a creaŃiei si a destinuluipersonal si universa, dar si participant la însăsi viaŃa intratrinitară a lui Dumnezeuprin autoîndumnezeirea sa personală.
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The base unit of the speech is the word, as being specific to human being and the seal of divine image into the human being and therewith the icon of incarnate Word, insofar as the speech reflects the godlike greatness. Man participating to godlike mysteries, collaborating with Christ – incarnate Word, with His Church, integrates in the divine-human dialogue. The effects of desacralisation or secularisation lead to the loss of man’s sanctity and to his decay from the pedestal of human dignity. The epoch of incertitude, confusion and despair where the contemporary man struggles, is due to the fact that he left Christ, the one who stamped balance, sense and creator elan to the humanity through embodiment. Strange to his godlike greatness, the word is no longer creator and redeemer, but tensioning, poisoning and killing. Degradation, aggression and mutilation of words show the abandoning of sacredness or of the incarnate Word. In this secularised and decentred world, the Church must assume a missionary and healing role through the replacement and reconnection of Mankind to the source of Word. In a world that entered into a galloping phase of desacralisation, the Church and Theology must assume its responsibility and vocation to represent Christ – the Word and to prepare all means and competent strategies to announce and transpose into the life of mankind the authentic message of the Word.
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Origen was the first Christian writer and we know for a fact that he was born Christian. He was the most important Greek Christian interpreter and the first who proved the need of Hebrew knowledge in the study of theology. Origen was a leading personality during his life time even for his enemies. He was the founder of the Christian theology, master of the nations promoted by the Apostle of the nations, who used philosophy to discover Elina on Christ. He was an apologist (proving that Christianity is not inferior to philosophy). Origen was the first person who studied the Scripture in a systematic way, and the first Christian who managed to fascinate the intellectual elite of his time, and yet he was a heretic after death. Origen was the first biblist. In all his researches Origen used the texts of the Scripture in an authentic and ingenious way that bears no comparison. The Bible was the field for his fight against Christianity (as it is nowadays as well), and Origen fought with the sword of faith and the shield of tradition leading the church from the first line. There were times of war and the army of the church was in its beginnings and was not very well organized. Yet, having Origen to lead it, the Church won. Origen realized that the strength of the Church can be achieved by defending, explaining and enhancing the Bible, the most important source of Christian faith. The Bible is a Divine-human work, and the interpreter must use both his spiritual and intellectual qualities. The interpretation of the Scripture was for Origen the highest and most difficult mission of mankind because this way the human being is in direct communication with divinity. The accomplishment of the Bible message is the fruit. The result of reading, understanding and interpreting the Scripture is the last stage, the highest achievable level. Origen’s philosophy was ”ortopraxia”. Those who defy Christianity often dispraise the Bible and don’t acknowledge its revelation, unity and authority. If Bible collapsed, many Christians would loose their minds and choose the wrong way, as the Bible is the core of Orthodoxy, the main authority and the indispensable reference point that grounds the doctrine.
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Denmark was more closely in contact with Germany, and therefore with the Christian world, than any other part of Scandinavia. It was there, naturally, that Christianity made its first hopeful entries. Anskar had been able to found a certain number of Churches in Denmark. But the presure of evangelization could not be maintained, and the life of Church was uncertain. At the beginning of the tenth century a powerful king named Gorm decided to exclude Christianity completely from his kingdom, and set himself to the familiar pastime of destroying churches and assassinating priests. His son and succesor Harald Bluetooth swung in the other direction. He claimed to have made the Danes Christians, and it is in his days that we first hear of bishops among them (948). After the work of Harald, Christianity became an effective part of the life of the Danish kings and people.
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The year of 1918 is the Great Unification’s year for Romanian nation’s history. It is the time when the Romanian borderlines round, the Romanians from all the provinces got together and thus, constituting a united and unitary country – politically, economically, socially, culturally and spiritually speaking. This action of the Romanian people enframed itself within a historical process which was common for all the European countries, concretized during modern age based on peoples’ right for self-determination, an international-law principle recognized and applied up to the end of World War I, too. The 1918 Unification went through three successive stages: Bessarabia’s Unification, North Bukovina’s Unification and Transylvania’s, Banat’s, Crisana’s and Maramures’s Unification, at different dates (the 9th of April, the 28th of November and the 1st of December), realized through representative institutions like: the People’s Synedrium of Bessarabia, the General Congress of Bukovina and the Great National Convention of Transylvania in Alba Iulia. All of them had parliamentarian responsibilities and theirs Unification Resolutions had been forgone encouraged by popular actions with crowd aspect. All of the patriotic actions discovered a “good Mother” response from the Church and this Mother’s servants risen from peasants and living among people, used theirs conscience and fought alongside of the people, in order to timber a better living.
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The Christian mission taken into account as being Christic formed contains the following integrant elements: preaching, mandating, evangelization, Church, world, man, Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit’s Pentecost. The Christian mission issues right out of the divine essence, and so we are qualified to speak about “missio Dei”. The Christian mission dynamics presumes a Son’s and Holy Spirit’s mandating by the Father; this Trinitarian mission was extended to the mandating the Holy Apostles to the world by the Son of God, through the Father’s will and the Holy Spirit’s action within Church’s mission. The Christian mission is based on the communion within the Holy Trinity, within the Father’s love motion towards the Son within the Holy Spirit and, in this manner, God’s love motion towards creation. The “mandating” character of the mission is “participation” to the Son’s mission (cf. John 20, 21-23) and to the Holy Spirit’s mission (cf. John 14, 26). We have also highlighted the special bound between the Son’s and the Holy Spirit’s mission, by pointing out that the Pentecost accomplishes the redemptive act of the Son, man’s salvation being embodied in his actual and personal participation to the life of Christ and in Christ. The Holy Spirit prepares the Son’s incarnation as He is the Spirit of God, while the Son answers by preparing the Spirit’s descending and activity in the world, in and through the Church. The simultaneity of the two events (the Church’s birth and the beginning of the Christian mission) highlights a fact of decisive importance: the Church and the Christian mission are indissolubly bounded one to each other. Once the Apostles have been mandated we are able to speak about the east of the Christian mission itself, as Christ assigned the Apostles with the mission’s main coordinates: the evangelization, the sacramental incorporation in the Christ’s ecclesiastic body, the teaching to observe all things whatsoever He has commanded the Apostles. We have also highlighted the manner of the Church’s participation to the Son’s mission, participation outlined in Church’s missionary actions of evangelization, confession and pastoral care.
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A church represents the beginning of God’s empire on the earth, as a communion between God and people. This communion outruns the past and the future and it lays the paradise’s state, as a continuing present, the communion state which pass through from desire and search to reality; life it isn’t an anxious sea any more, because it sails into Church’s ship without danger as well as Noe’s ark. Church is the shelter and the tent where love for God and fight against everything is counter God, are on the first place bcause it realize the raise to God. Church enters theological in world, in Hristos divine-human person, as a reality, but which is incomplete yet because it isn’t exteriorize and it includes only God (where we all where included). Church passes through into objective reality’s domain, at tenth-fifth when it yield a unique fact in human history: the languages unite into a faith symphony, at Saint Spirit’s voice. Since than, the Spirit remains in it and comes always through Saint Mystery’s paper into a dynamic movement, because it doesn’t come to lay in a static form, but to live in dynamic state to be lived the faith. In this way the Church mission it’s unfold in history; if the history changes, pass from an epoch to another, then the churches does not change. It remains in its permanent dialog with the world and it always keeps the divine message and the morality in front of the world, because Hristos remains always the same. The sky and the new earth are the Churches target in the world. Therefore, the Church promotes in world the moral and spiritual values as: good, harmonious, peace, freedom, faith, love and it straightens the humanity to consummation, to a continuous spiritual and social progress, because the man becomes which Hristos becomes. The touching of this target means the salvation. The Churches mission in the world and for the world is to contemporize Hristos as a brother in a human society as a very complex and dynamic organism. The existence, but more than that, the inexistence of the completions conditions goes to tensions and divergensions between diverse social categories, human groups and behind the person. Because of this, nowadays, people have the idea of substitute the God.
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The present study, “The liturgical hymns of the Orthodox Church – means of preaching the right faith”, has as its purpose the presentation of the very significant role of the hymns in the liturgical life of the Church, in the preaching of the right faith and the protection of the Orthodoxy against any misinterpretation. We initiated this theological project because the Christian hymnology is endowed, apart from its poetical value, with a dogmatic content and a profound theological meaning that are reinforced by a powerful capacity to project believes and emotions with great impact upon the human soul. The etymology of the word “hymn” needed to be illustrated before speaking about the confession of the right faith through the liturgical hymns, as well as the fact that the Orthodox cult is as a rich depository of doctrine and a living catechesis, accessible to everyone. The study also includes a section presenting the historical evolution of the liturgical hymns and their usage in the cult in the first Christian centuries.
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The Byzantine saint and poet Symeon the New Theologian is one of the Christian world’s greatest mystics, if such a term can properly be used of ancientwriters. It is here applied for the sake of convenience, and in order to unveil theauthor, as it were, who is not only a visionary of the highest order within the EasternO rthodox tradition, but equally one of the Christian world’s most lyrical andrhapsodic writers. It is a startling fact that it is only in recent years that his workshave become available in English translation, and a sadder one that his name is stilllargely unknown to a wider public who would otherwise undoubtedly be interested ina spirituality suffused with light and hope and one of the most profound senses of themercy and compassion of God.
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La poèsie de Vasile Voiculescu est une nourriture de l’esprit. Le contenu intrinseque qui fait la substance lirique de son univers poétique surprend quatre principaux thèmes: la nature, l’amour, la religion et la condition du poète dans le monde. Il a assumé la noble vocation de enrichir le trésor de valeurs qui appartient à tous. La lumière de la poésie fend l’obscurité de notre pensée et à la fois ouvre la raison au infini divin. La puissance du mot provient en dernière instance du Mot souverain. Voilà donc la fonction de la poèsie: soulever l’homme par un mot dit dans une forme humaine jusques à Verbe, c’est-à-dire le Fils de Dieu.
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