Self, World, and God in Michel Henry and Dumitru Stăniloae

Abstract

Abstract Christianity proposes that God can be accessed both in the subjectivity of the human self and in the World. This admittedly strange idea can be understood by drawing certain insights from Michel Henry and Dumitru Stăniloae. For Henry, the connection between God and the human self in subjectivity is understood as the generation of the human as a living self in the absolute Life which is God. For Stăniloae, the connection between God and the World is understood through the interpretation of the cosmos as an intelligible medium by which the dialog between God and the human being takes place. These two thinkers have certain lacunae, but their proposals can be fruitfully combined through the supposition that the World is the “body” of God, i.e. His inner life as seen from the outside.