Perspectief 2016-34

2016-34 Why Ecumenical Dialogue Matters for the Orthodox Church 29 Com ment But how can the human being reply to God’s call and embark on her deification journey? Stăniloae argues that the best way is by engaging in dialogue with our neighbours, through the materiality of world. As he puts it: “[C]reated things are not given to us only so that each of us can carry on a private dialogue with God; they have been given so that all of us can take part in a dialogue among ourselves and collectively take part in a dialogue with God . ” 11 To help us understand Stăniloae’s thoughts here, it will be useful to return to the metaphor of transparency. If God’s love reaches human beings through the materiality of the world like the rays of the sun, it means that in order to enjoy God’s love better the world must be a transparent medium. Yet, this is not the case in our present postlapsarian condition. After the Fall, not only that creation became opaque, but human eyes also lost their ability to perceive God’s presence in the world. Humans stopped seeing creation as a gift from God that is to be shared with other human beings and began to think about it selfishly, as something to be possessed. 12 So, what God asks humans to do is to denounce their possessiveness and transform the materiality of the world into a bond for communion with other people – or, in Stăniloae’s terms, ‘a gift’. 13 For Stăniloae, everything can become a gift – from words of comfort directed to another person, to someone’s own life – as long as they convey into material form that person’s self-sacrificial disposition . 14 The more someone is able to offer herself as a gift to others, the closer to deification she is. 15 Thus, for Stăniloae, in order to engage in dialogue with God, the human being is asked to change her optic – from individualistic to communitarian – so that she could reconfigure the entire creation into a space for communion that will allow God’s love for humanity to shine forth more powerfully than ever . 11 Idem, I, 359–360. Cf. English translation: Dumitru Stăniloae, The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology , trans. Ioan Ioniță and Robert Barringer, vol. II (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994), 26. 12 Stăniloae, TDO , I, 506–507. 13 Idem, I, 359–360. 14 Idem, I, 340–341. 15 Idem, I, 275.