Lucian Blaga-Dumitru Stăniloae. Revisiting interpretive disputes

Abstract

The present study deals with an interpretive debate, dating back to the 1940s, between the philosopher Lucian Blaga and the theologian Dumitru Stăniloae. The fundamental studies on which this controversy is reconstructed are Blaga's Religie și spirit / Religion and Spirit (1942) and Stăniloae's reaction in Poziția d-lui Lucian Blaga față de creștinism și ortodoxie / The Position of Mr. Lucian Blaga on Christianity and Orthodoxy (1942). I demonstrate some interpretative collisions, emerged from hermeneutical misreading, from the different ideological positions of the two in the context of the 4^thdecade of the last century and from conceptual differences, such as the relations between religion-style and religion-revelation. I also distinguish two different positions, that of Stăniloae, which refers to the ethical and ethnical relationship of Orthodoxy to "Romanianness", and the philosophical, poly-systemic, exo-centric and dialogical perspective of the Blagian gnoseological system, which places the mystery of creation and the metanoic force of faith at the center of existence.