Salvation from the World or Salvation of the World

Authors:

Pages: 108-119
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/LLOI4306

Abstract:

The goal of the text is to test the capability of the phenomenological method to conceptualize the Christian experience of the salvation of the world. The aim is not merely to propose a new interpretative model of a theological concept from the Orthodox Tradition, but to address the fundamental temptations for the Christian conscience connected to the mystery of the Cross. The theoretical base of the essay is a thesis of Fr. John Manoussakis according to whom the phenomenological reduction is an instructive basis for an aesthetical concept of human knowledge, contrary to the rationalistic concepts. In the first part of the article the phe nomenological aspects of the Orthodox theology of the cross are tested. Τhe axiomatic account of St. Paul of the staurological experience from the Letter to the Galatians „May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (6, 14) is taken as a starting-point. The paradox of the salvific crucifixion of the world, described by St. Paul, is interpreted as paradigmatic for the patristic speculation concerning the motif „place of God”. Gregory the Theologian, Nemesius of Emesa, Epiphanius of Cyprus, Maximus the Confessor and John Damascene, stepping on the Aristotelian concept of the category „place”, describe the transforming of the world into a dwelling place of God through anthropological, cognitive, ethical and sacramental characteristics. These elements function as phenomenological dimensions of a situation, marked by the personal and localized presence of God who comes in communion with the human-beings. That interpreting the „place of God” through the phenomenology of place is relevant to the patristic understanding, is further demonstrated by studying examples of pseudomorphosis of the ‘staurological equilibrium’ – situations, in which either the ability of the world to be a divine place or the transcendence of God are annulled. Examples for such deviations are examined in the treatise Against the Manicheans by patriarch Photius and in the essay Christianity and Culture by T.S. Eliot. Both texts describe the distortion of the experience of divine presence in the world, whereby either the created reality is void of divine presence (Manichaeism) or the transcendence of God is sacrificed for the sake of a historical immanentism. The analysis of Photius and Eliot makes it clear that both these extremes are rooted in the shadowing of some of the elements of the phenomenology of divine place. In the last part of the article the positive model of Eliot for preserving the paradoxical experience of the salvific crucifixion of the world is studied.

Keywords:

Photius, Eliot, eschatology, staurology, dualism, energy

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