Service and Pro-Existence in the Thought of the Romanian Theologian Dumitru Staniloae: A Path for the Orthodox Church Facing the Challenges of Globalization

Ionut Untea

doi:10.3390/rel8050095

Abstract

“Pro-existence” is a concept developed by 20th century western Christian theologians to describe the service of the Church facing contemporary challenges. The leading Romanian theologian Dumitru Staniloae (1903–1993) took this further by expressing his Orthodox understanding of the relationship between service and pro-existence. The article explores Staniloae’s call for Orthodox Christians to serve not only people from other denominations, but those from other religions, as well as atheists. He depicted human pro-existence as an “existential impetus” towards serving the one in need, an impetus that the Orthodox Church should more visibly exercise. In a gentle, non-critical approach, Staniloae argues that the Orthodox Churches concentrated on liturgical service to God, while leaving service to people underdeveloped. The path ahead for the Orthodox Church will be the development of a harmonious multi-level understanding of pro-existence to hear and respond, as a “Serving” Church, to the needs of any human being.

Highlights

The term “pro-existence” appeared in various theological sources at the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century
The Romanian theologian Dumitru Staniloae took the term from the Christian Peace Conference, founded in 1958, and in 1963 he dedicated an article to the relationship between service and pro-existence; an article which is practically unknown in international scholarship
Dumitru Staniloae’s development of the relationship between service and pro-existence in the life of the Church shares many of the insights proposed by western Christian theologians, to which Staniloae adds a number of genuine views, which can be considered the fruit of his Orthodox understanding of the Church’s mission to put into practice the relationship between service and pro-existence

Summary

Introduction

The term “pro-existence” appeared in various theological sources at the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century. Dumitru Staniloae’s development of the relationship between service and pro-existence in the life of the Church shares many of the insights proposed by western Christian theologians, to which Staniloae adds a number of genuine views, which can be considered the fruit of his Orthodox understanding of the Church’s mission to put into practice the relationship between service and pro-existence. Staniloae’s aim is not so much to enter into a debate with western theologians as to reinvigorate the Orthodox Church’s understanding and practice of the pro-existential “impetus” of human nature into concrete acts of service between the members of a local. In the first section of the article, I propose a brief analysis of the Catholic and Protestant understandings of service and pro-existence in the thought of a number of renowned theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Josef Hromádka, Elisabeth Adler, Jon. Sobrino, Aidan Nichols, Michel Deneken, Edward Schillebeeckx, François Xavier Durrwell, Walter. This perspective of Jesus “being for” each individual has mainly generated two approaches in twentieth-century western theological thinking

The First Approach

The Second Approach

Pro-Existing in Humbleness

Service as the “True” Dimension of the Church in the “New Social Era”

The Necessity of a Renewed Sense of Service in the Orthodox Church

Conclusions