In this text, the author analyzes the premises of the ecclesial communion, as presented in the Gospel of Matthew. In the primitive community, there was the belief that Christ was intimately present in His Church. Not at all a matter of chance, the climax in the Gospel of Matthew focuses on this testimony of faith, based on which the apostolic community was found and perpetuated to nowadays in the communion of Church, considered a direct gift from God. The ecclesial communion has, at the same time, an eschatological purpose. The people (i.e. the believers in every historical time, assisted by the Holy Spirit) are the first to contribute to its fulfilment. This human responsibility to accomplish a spiritual desideratum is reflected in the structure of the Church. The apostles and, after them, the bishops and the priests receive the right to bind and unbind souls to sin, in a true divine-human dynamics, or, in terms specific to Orthodox ecclesiology, synergy. Called to preach the Gospel to the world, the successors of the apostles must keep the canon of faith and therefore maintain the conditions to perpetuate the unity of the Church.
Keywords: communio/koinonia, Gospel of Matthew, ecclesiology, Apostles, unity of Church

This text is the lecture held by the author during a working session of the theological dialogue committee between the Romanian Orthodox Church and the Evangelic Church in Germany. The author uses the ecclesiological synthesis of Dumitru Stăniloae and lists the items that define the connection between the unity of Church and its universal nature. The most important aspects are the balance between the one and the multiple, between the local Church and the Universal Church, between the faith of a part of the Church and the faith of the entire Christian communion. Based on the opinions of important Protestant theologians, the author’s conclusion indicates the possibility of a certain diversity of the local ecclesial expressions, that need not be rendered absolute and, thus, not drawn out of the unitary context of the universal Church.
Keywords: catholicity/universality, local Church, universal Church, diversity, the unity of Church

The lack of unity between the Churches prevents them from fully and effectively bear the Christian testimony in public. During the second Christian millennium, the three major Christian traditions – Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox – have come to take distance from the territorial principle of ecclesiology, according to which the Church must be one “in every place”. Since the Crusades (1095-1204), the Roman Catholic Church had started to establish Latin Patriarchates as an alternative to the already existing Oriental Local ones and, thus, created the ecclesiological problem of co-territoriality (1099). Gradually, and especially since the introduction of “Uniatism” (1596), Catholic ecclesiology came to allow churches of different ritual traditions to exist within a single territory. This antiecclesiological and anticanonical conviventia created a new epoch for the Church, an epoch which is obviously post-ecclesial. Therefore, Protestantism, emphasising the “confession of the faith” which created the ecclesiological problem of confessionalism (1517), as the foundation of the Church, came to admit the co-existence (co-territoriality-conviventia) in a single place of churches of different confessions. As for Orthodoxy, it did not consider the interruption of communion with the Western Church (1054) as a full schism, and did not, therefore, attempt to create anything resembling an alternate “Orthodox Patriarchate of Rome”. But from the 19th century, the emigration of Orthodox Christians to regions outside the traditional territory of their respective churches, together with the growth of ethno-phyletism (1872), led to the creation of multiple Orthodox dioceses (co-territoriality-conviventia), based exclusively on ethnic criteria (multi-jurisdiction), in full communion with each other. National Orthodox Churches sometimes go so far as to claim a kind of extra-territoriality to enable them to minister to their compatriots abroad. This text conducts a research on the ecclesial-canonical problem of co-territoriality-conviventia through the three major Christian Ecclesiologies of the second Christian millennium: 1. The Ecclesiology of the Crusades (13th century); 2. The Ecclesiology of the Reform (16th century) and 3. The Ecclesiology of Ethno-Phyletism (19th century).
Keywords: co-territoriality, post-ecclesiality, anticanonical conviventia, confessionalism, ethno-phyletism

This article attempts to show how both the interpretation of Balthasar to the Greek Fathers and his understanding of the Eastern Church have led to some important views in his ecclesiology before 1940. Another attempt aims to correct the general opinion that an Orthodox relevance of the Balthasarian theology can be reduced to his patristic studies. The study draws attention to Balthasar’s three essays written in 1939, where he approaches the issue of the relationship between Eastern and Western Church in theoretical terms. Reading the Fathers, Balthasar develops a very interesting Christological eccle­siology, focused on the mission into the world. This view is carried out by Balthasar as a typological synthesis of the Eastern and the Western Church: the Johannine Orthodox “Church of Seeing” – in the succession of the Greek Church Fathers – suffers in its liturgy and theology from a Neo-Platonic spiritualism which can be corrected only in the synthesis with the Paulinian West “Church of Hearing”. The hypostases of this typological view on the Church and also the different aspects of Balthasar`s analysis of the Fathers are examined from an Orthodox perspective.
Keywords: Hans Urs von Balthasar, Greek Fathers, Eastern Church, Western Church, Unity of the Church

Evangelic-Lutheran minister, the author approaches the works of the Orthodox theologian Dumitru Stăniloae from the point of view of a possible (and necessary) hermeneutics of the spiritual dimension, an essential premise of the ecumenical dialogue itself. The an­alysis emphasizes a series of misunderstandings or even reductions in the way Stăniloae sees certain major themes of the Western theology. The author briefly reconsiders the issue of the debate regarding the theory of satisfaction, simultaneously emphasizing the Orthodox view on the Protestant idea of redemption (Rechtfertigungslehre). The Ortho­dox critique brought up by Stăniloae on the Harismatic theology of the Reform is followed by the sacramental consequences of it. The author insists on the importance of the “dispensation of the grace” and on the ecumenical consequences of such an approach.
Keywords: Dumitru Stăniloae, theory of satisfaction, Rechtfertigungslehre, dispensation of the grace/stewardship of the grace, the work of the grace

This study is a presentation of the speech held at the Erlangen-Nürnberg University on the occasion of the symposium honouring Professor Fairy von Lilienfeld at his 90’s anniversary. The study analyzes the contributions of the representatives of the Eastern Christian Theological Institute in Erlangen, especially those of Professors Lilienfeld and Felmy. The analysis attempts to show the importance of their research in the field of Orthodox theology by emphasizing the Protestant background for many of the themes suggested by the Evangelic theologians from Erlangen, such as the issue of universal priesthood.
Keywords: Orthodoxy, Protestantism, priesthood, von Lilienfeld, Felmy

This study discusses the active and responsible role of Orthodoxy in the inter-confessional dialogue, both in the past and today. In the ecclesial history, the local Orthodox Churches have always had contacts and relations with other Churches and confessions. An adequate example is the mainly epistolary dialogue between the Protestant theologians from Tübingen and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The study lists the issues of today’s dialogue between Orthodoxy and the Old Oriental Churches, the Roman Catholic Church, the confessions originated in the Reform and those united with Rome. The difficulties occurring from the point of view of the canon are also listed and the dispensation of the grace is being debated.
Keywords: inter-confessional dialogue, Old Oriental Churches, Roman Catholic Church, Reform, dispensation of the grace

The debate regarding the unity of Church is, for the Western Europe, of Protestant origin, with an ecclesial communion model. This became an issue, once the Agreement of Leuenberg (near Basel) was signed by different Evangelic Churches, the bases for the Evangelic Church Communion in Europe or the Leuenberg Church Communion, today a structure of over 100 Churches and confessions. This study has the intention to present to the Romanian public this ecclesiological “experiment” of the last six decades. Its possible relevance for the present inter-confessional debate could consist in promoting the formula of reconciled diversity (versöhnte Verschiedenheit), among other effects.
Keywords: Leuenberg, Protestantism in Europe, models of unity, Orthodoxy, ecumenism

The text analyzes the basic ecclesiological principles in the dialogue between Orthodoxy and Catholicism: the papal primacy and the conciliarity. The two forms go back in history as far as the Church itself. The author considers them exclusively in the very context of the development following the Second Vatican Council. The study examines the present position of the Catholic Church on the relation between primacy and fellowship, as well as the development possibilities of the Catholic Church in the context of the ecumenical dialogue today. Avoiding to state any “solutions”, the study insists on the necessity of knowledge of the genesis and the significance of the main ecclesial principles and structures.
Keywords: communion, conciliarity, papal primacy, Roman Catholic Church, ecumenism

The author begins with the well-known words of Malraux – “The XXIst century will be religious or will not be at all”. He attempts to read the signs of religious rebirth today as the “religious issue” is now of increasing importance. The phenomena is to be noticed in post-Soviet countries such as Poland and Romania as well as in the Islam. The Return of the Sacred that the international politics should care for, polarizes the spirits between ecumenism and fundamentalism, between dialogue and exclusivism. Though animated with the will for unity, the ecumenism can’t be syncretic, levelling and relativist as proven by certain contemporary scientific methodologies. The solutions for unity are difficult due to cultural differences, but, the catholicity of the Church, even if traditionally accepted in the faith of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, can be appropriated by God’s people, being able to overcome the limits of the Catholic Church as an institution/confession.
Keywords: catholicity, religious rebirth, ecumenism, syncretism, Church

The article presents an already known theory regarding the three ages of Church: the Peterine one, referring to Saint Peter’s Church, in Rome; the Paulinian one, indicating Protestant confessions; and the Johannine age, referring to a hypothetical future Church, of the Holy Spirit. The point of view of this text speaks of the Pentecostalism (i.e. the movement of the Holy Spirit) as the true third age of the Church. This statement is about global dynamics, about a state of mind, and, under no circumstances about any other Christian denomination. This “age” has its own bases, and must be understood accordingly, being different from the Protestant theological views in the past and today. In the author’s opinion, the Johnian age is rather focused on spirituality than on ideological-doctrinaire belief.
Keywords: spirituality, three ages of Church, Pentecostalism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodoxy

This text represents the introductory lecture in a public debate held in Lugano, Switzerland, in January 2006. The author lists the biblical files regarding Peter’s primacy, that is the base for the subsequent papal primacy. The study updates the analysis of the main biblical statements regarding the place and the role of Peter. Therefore, it mentions the present debates provoked and maintained by the invitation in the Encyclic Ut unum sint (1995), issued by John Paul II, by the critiques of certain theologians and bishops such as Mons. Quinn or by the ecumenical exegesis of some, such as Cardinal Kasper.
Keywords: Peter in the New Testament, papal primacy, John Paul II, the ecumenical exegesis, the unity of the Church

This text is a lecture held in a public debate in Lugano, Switzerland in January 2006. The author presents the doctrinaire bases of the papal primacy. The article discusses the nature, the function and the authority of this kind of primacy, following the history trail of the primacy in the Catholic Church and the impediments risen by certain movements such as the Gallicanism. Updating the approach, the author emphasizes the statements regarding the papal primacy as in Vatican I and II, where the author identifies a true ecumenical potential. No matter what the solutions and the theological hypotheses would be, the author underlines the major importance of the synodal context where the primacy should be formulated.
Keywords: papal primacy, Gallicanism, conciliarism, Vatican I, Vatican II

This text is a lecture held in a public debate in Lugano, Switzerland, in January 2006. The author presents the point of view of the Waldensian theology on the papal primacy. The starting point is the critique of the doctrinaire and historic basis of the Roman bishop authority brought by the Waldensians (among the first in the West) and then by Luther. The author notices the difficulties in connection to the canonization of the papal primacy nowadays. As for the future, the author insists on the necessity of an “ecumenical conversion of Peter”, i.e. of his successor and implicitly of the institution of primacy, so this would  be re-established as an instrument of the Christian unity.
Keywords: papal primacy, Waldensians, Luther, Vatican II, Ut unum sint

This text is a lecture held in a public debate in Lugano, Switzerland in January 2006. The author presents some aspects of the papal primacy from the point of view of the Orthodox theology. The analysis is structured on four questions: Does the Orthodox Church accept the primacy? Is the first Christian millennium an ecclesiological model of unity today? Is the contemporary Uniatism a key for understanding the papal primacy? Is an ecumenical vision on the Peterine primacy possible?
Keywords: papal primacy, the first Christian millennium, the apostolic canon 34, Ortho­doxy, the Uniatism

Benedict XVI’s theological act of renouncing the title of “Patriarch of Occident” has a message of multiple consequences. The author of the present study analyzes a part of the predictable consequences of the pope’s gesture. The article also presents the historic-dogmatic context of the formulation of this title as well as the different manner it is understood in the East and the West of the Christian world. The act of the Roman bishop meets a delicate time between the Orthodoxy and the Catholicism, the very time the primacy is put to theological debate between the two Churches. The conclusion of the author is that renouncing the title of “Patriarch of Occident” represents a radical position of the pope to the way the ecclesial communion should be articulated. Far from encouraging an ecclesiology of communion, the gesture of Benedict XVI is obviously for a jurisdiction primacy, which is unacceptable from the point of view of the Orthodox theology.
Keywords: papal primacy, Patriarch of Occident, communion ecclesiology, theological dialogue, Orthodoxy

The author makes a vast analysis of the ecumenical document written after the dialogue between the German Conference of the Catholic Bishopric and the Federation of the Evangelic Churches in Germany. Published in 2000, the document “Communio Sanctorum. The Church as Community of Saints” is the result of a bilateral debate over three decades. The author of the study presents the steps that preceded the document discussed, explains the genesis and the ecclesiological meaning of the formula Communio Sanctorum, lists the implications of the resource to the biblical authority and analyzes the theological disagreements. From the Evangelic-Lutheran perspective of the author, the most problematic of disagreements refers to the connection between the reforming principle Sola Scriptura and the papal authority.
Keywords: Communio Sanctorum, papal primacy, Catholic-Lutheran dialogue, Sola Scriptura, theological disagreement.

The study analyzes the ecclesiology that was the basis of the process of codification and promulgation of Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium. CCEO is considered controversial even by those Greek Catholic theologians who would have liked the canonical position of the Churches united with Rome to respect their initial autonomy. For the Orthodox theology CCEO is an example on how the future unity rebuilt between the two sides of the Christian world would be not. The way John Paul II promulgated in October 18th 1990 the CCEO emphasizes the intention of a centralist vision, unknown to the spirit of the Christian East. Beyond metaphor, the promulgation of CCEO is an example of turning the synodal consciousness of the Holy Fathers to the authority of the Holy Father.
Keywords: Oriental Catholicism, Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium, Codex Iuris Canonici, John Paul II, ecclesiology

This study analyzes the events following Romania’s European Union adhesion, that have had an impact on the manifestations of religion in public space. The introduction presents certain considerations regarding the attitude of the religions (especially of the Romanian Orthodox Church) towards the European adhesion before 1st of January 2007. Several aspects are being analyzed, such as: to adopt and apply the Law regarding the religious freedom and the general conditions of religions, the debate over the place of religious symbols (icons) in public educational institutions, the foresights of the new draft educational bill regarding the teaching of religion in schools, the debate on the new Romanian Orthodox Church status, the course of the third European Ecumenical Meeting in Sibiu (September 2007), as well as the evolutions of the role played by the Representation of the ROC to the European Institutions. The conclusion is that a normative confusion regarding the State-Church relationship has been surpassed and a time for the religion’s role in public space to be more intensely debated has just begun.
Keywords: religion, Europe, law, public schools, State – Church

The study analyzes the discourse of both the Romanian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox laics concerning the consequences of political Europe adhesion for the Romanian Orthodoxy. The first part presents the position of the ROC hierarchy towards different aspects of the presence of the Romanian Orthodoxy in Europe. The theologian Ion Bria is included in the same category. The second part of the study analyzes a couple of themes dealing with the European identity of ROC: the Declaration from Snagov in 2000, a means for all religions to support the efforts of Romania for Europe adhesion and the problem of the permanent Representation of the ROC to the European Institutions. A different chapter of this study regards the process of ROC becoming European. The conclusion of the present study lays in the identification of certain redundant themes in the discourse of ROC hierarchy and the laics. Presenting the positions of certain Eastern authors who have also paid attention to the Orthodox presence in EU (His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Christos Yannaras) implies offering directions in analysis that could be carried by the debates in the Romanian public space.
Keywords: discourse, Europeanization, Orthodoxy, laics, EU adhesion

A model of co-operation in the State-Church relationship in Romania, based on the constitutional principle of religions’ autonomy, has permitted the development of a legislative plan that gives the possibility for certain specific features in the relationship between the employees of the religious institutions and the religions (with a series of exceptions in the general labour law). On the other side, the Romanian model of co-operation has maintained, as rules, certain specific rights and obligations of the employees of the religious institutions compared to other categories of citizens, with no form of persecution or privilege, simply as a form to secure the maintenance of particularities of the religions’ life. The study lists all the legal assets that, by the way of exception, refer to the employees of the religious institutions and, when necessary, it provides with brief historical excerpts to facilitate the understanding of evolution in certain aspects of the ecclesiastical law system.
Keywords: State-Church relationship, canonical law, labour law, clerics’ remuneration

This study is a reflection on the ways to reach the Truth, once a distinction is accepted between the objective and the existential truth. The first refers mainly to the scientific field, dominated by the levelling myth of public opinion and the public consensus, while the letter refers to the experience of saints, which is above any secular experience. The author wants to re-establish the traditional Byzantine spiritual aristocracy as epistemological criteria, which would not mean reloading the Middle Ages, but resetting of normality and reopening a path to complete humanity, for the use of everyday life.
Keywords: truth, holiness, Byzantine tradition, humanity, God

This text is an analysis on the semantics of the word “love” in ancient Greek (eros, agape, philia, storge), considering fundamental texts of the pre-Christian Greek philosophy, the Septuagint and the New Testament. A special stress has been made on a couple of these words, eros and agape, to emphasize through abundant classical sources the rich field of significations and chronologic metamorphosis, determined by two types of context in which they are used – philosophical and Christian. The author stresses on the importance of precise usage of such word as love, affected today by a series of misunderstandings and reductions.
Keywords: eros, agape, philia, love, communion

The person and event of Jesus is the mystery of Christianity. Since the emergence of modernity, the event of Jesus has been reassessed according to modern historical and scientific knowledge. Such criteria have been presupposed by many modern theological thinkers who have attempted to reinterpret the significance of Jesus in a relevant way for the modern world. One such contemporary thinker is the American Episcopalian bishop, John Shelby Spong. This paper will attempt to present and critique from an Orthodox perspective Bishop John Shelby Spong’s theological understanding of the person and event of Jesus. It will demonstrate that Spong’s understanding of Christ is problematic on theological and exegetical grounds as it attempts to reinterpret the event of Jesus in accordance with the idealistic principles of historical objectivity and scientific certainty.
Keywords: Christianity, modernity, Jesus Christ, John Shelby Spong, Orthodox perspective

Though considered a sceptic and a nihilist, Cioran is not to be exhausted by these labels. The theme of holiness is an example of the practice of ambivalence and paradox, when strong negations escort recessive statements. The research discusses this theme of holiness in the reflections of Cioran, trying to reveal an affirmative Cioran. Though this is a weak side of his thinking, compared to its opposite side, much better shaped, based on negations, this one could help completing the image of the thinker, and introduce light and shade into the current notion of “cioranism” as used by critics today. Cioran is more than the “nihilist” or the “sceptic on charge in a declining world”; for the paradox to be complete, he is the one to admit the truth of holiness, though, for Cioran, the ineffectual saint, this would not be a truth to stick to.
Keywords: Cioran, holiness, nihilism, scepticism, God

For Nietzsche the atheism is not the quiet atheism of reason, as a result of reflection, but an instinctive, incidental atheism. From the perspective of the German thinker, the first occurrence of atheism is the monotheist atheism, that of the God at Sinai, who claims to be the only God, denying all the other Gods. The second is Peter the apostle, who replaces the good news with the bad news of obligation regarding the experience of the cross and the pain, dismissing life and admitting mortification. The third death of God occurred in the joyful science, a self-destruction of faith in God as held in the words “God is dead”. Yet, Nietzsche’s idea on the death of God is not a finished issue, as the death of the monotheist God doesn’t mean the disappearance of divinity. The choice remains between a religion of transcendental God and a “religion” where the divine can only be predicated by self-negation, with an exhausting, unacceptable pathos given by distance.
Keywords: Nietzsche, atheism, religion, divine, “death of God”