V.

EDUCAŢIE ŞI FORMARE TEOLOGICO-

MISIONARĂ ÎN CONTEXTUL CULTURAL
ACTUAL

MISSIONARY THEOLOGY IN THE THEOLOGICAL

UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN THE ROMANIAN
ORTHODOX CHURCH

Pr.conf.dr. Gheorghe Petraru

Missionary Theology in the Faculties of Orthodox Theology in

Romania has a long history, going back to the third decade of the 20
century. The university missiological courses of that time were in
connection with the courses in the european faculties but in conformity to
the missionary realities in the Romanian Orthodox Church. Therefore,
courses and books from the interwar time treated about mission as
evangelisation and the history of christian missions, about the ecumenism
and ecumenical conferences of Faith and Order and Life and Work,
Church social philanthropic work in the Orthodox Church and, also, in
Roman-Catholic and Protestant Churches. A main missionary activity of
the Orthodox Church was to defend itself from the neo-protestant
316 Pr.conf.dr. Gheorghe Petraru

christian proselytism. Also, the Church approuches to culture or to

politics were in debate1.
With the instauration of the atheist and totalitarian communist
regime and its bad and hostile attitude toward the Church and the other
Christian confessions and asociations, the missionary activities were
brutaly interrupted, the missiological course became in the theological
education a course, mainly, of sectology, that means to defend the Church
from the neo-protestant proselytism coming from the West2. The name of
the course remaind Missionary Advices-Guidance, (Indrumari misionare
in Romanian Language) but the content was a sectological one. A
paradigm shift came in the last years of the communist dictatorship with a
new missonary course and by the works of the well known romanian
missiologist Fr. Ion Bria3.
So, the main task of the missiological studies and courses after the
fall of communism, inspired by the own tradition and by the dynamics of
the Church mission, was to come out Missiology as a academic discipline
in our faculties of theology from Sectology by recovering its own topics,
also including the topics of sectology. Missiology is now an university
course in the Bologna program, provided with five points in the European
system of transferable credits. The scientific structure of the course unites
the fundamental topics of theology as knowledge and communion with
the Holy Trinity, God, human person and the community of the
confessing Church in fruitful and enriching dialogue with contemporary
culture, particularly philosofhy, psychology and sociology of religion.
The Missiology as a theological science is in this sense the Apologetics of
1
Dr. Vasile Ispir, Curs de Îndrumări misionare, Bucureşti, 1929; Bishop Grigorie
Leu, Confesiuni şi secte. Studiu istoric-misionar, Tipografia Cărţilor Bisericeşti,
Bucureşti, 1929.
2
Prot.Dr. Petre Deheleanu, Sectologie, Tipografia diecezană, Arad, 1948; P.I.
David, Manual de Sectologie, Bucureşti, 1994; Idem, Sectologie, Editura Sfintei
Arhiepiscopii a Tomisului, Constanţa, 1999.
3
Îndrumări misionare, Coordonator Pr.Prof.Dr. Dumitru Radu, Editura
Institutului Biblic şi de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, Bucureşti, 1986;
Pr.Prof.Dr. Ion Bria, Go Forth in Peace. Orthodox Perspective on Mission, compiled
and edited by Ion Bria, W.C.C. Geneva 1986; Idem, Liturghia după Liturghie. O
tipologie a mărturiei creştine astăzi, Editura Athena, Bucureşti, 1996; Idem, „Spre
plinirea Evangheliei”. Dincolo de apărarea Ortodoxiei: Exegeza şi transmiterea
Tradiţiei, Editura Reîntregirea, Alba Iulia, 2002.
 MISSIONARY THEOLOGY… 317

the Christian faith of the missionary Church4, a synthesis between faith as

relation, communion with the revealed God in Jesus Christ through the
Holy Spirit, theological and philosophical rationality, spiritual, mystical
experience and missionary action.
After 1989, the Church is present by the priesthood, course of
religion and social Christian assistance in the society. The Church is a
missionary agent in public schools, in hospitals, in asylums, in army, in
prisons. In this sense, mission studies regaind a much larger horizon of
theological reflection and spiritual experience in missionary action.

Structure of the Missiology or Missionary Theology as

academical science in the Theological University Education
Missiology, from the point of view of the mentors of this
theological course, should be, as it was in the past in our orthodox
faculties, a creative union, synthesis between fundamental and missionary
theology. Three great chapters composes the course; a missionary
theology, a missionary anthropology and the missionary community of
the Church.
1. Missionary Theology. By missionary theology I mean,
especialy, theology of Revelation5, the ground of all our Christian
theology, as it was developed in the last decades in the theological
reflection over the God’autocommunication to human on behalf of his
infinite love. The main chapter with the title „God speaks”, that is the
Holy Trinity reveals through words and visions to human person in this

4
Jurgen Werbick, Den Glauben verantworten. Eine Fundamenthal theologie,
Herder, Freiburg, Base, Wien, 2005, p. 845-847.
5
Dictionnaire de Theologie fondamentale, sous la direction de Rene Latourelle et
Rino Fisichella, Bellarmin/Cerf, Montreal/Paris, 1992; Hans Waldenfels, Manuel de
Theologie fondamentale, Cerf, Paris, 1990; Hans Küng, Dieu existe-t-il? Reponse à la
question de Dieu dans les temps modernes, traduit d’allemand par Jean-Louis Schlegel et
Justus Walther, Seuil, Paris, 1981; Walter Kasper, Le Dieu des chrétiens, traduit
d’allemand par Morand Kleiber, Cerf, Paris, 1985; Edvard Schillebeeckx, L’histoire des
hommes, recit de Dieu, traduit de neerlandais par Helene Cornelis-Gevaert, Cerf, Paris,
1992; Gerald O’Collins, Retrieving Fundamental Theology. Three Styles of
Contamporary Theology, Chapman / Paulist Press, London, 1993; Avery Dulles,
Models of Revelation, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New-York, 1992; Pr.Dr. Gheorghe
Petraru, Teologie fundamentală şi misionară. Ecumenism, Editura Performantica, Iaşi,
2006, p. 13-54.
318 Pr.conf.dr. Gheorghe Petraru

history of ours, a history of the saving and loving God with His faithful
people, is fundamental to understand the mission of the church sended to
the world as a expression of divine love for humankind.. Theology of
Revelation of the Trinity in the history of our salvation formulated as the
trinitarian dogma by the Church, represents the basis for the Christian
mission. God loves the humankind and sends his eternal Son incarnated in
Jesus Christ to found and extend the trinitarian communion to the world
redeeamed by the crucified and resurrected Lord, the founder of the
Church as his spiritual and communitarian body. Therefore, the
representative biblical text for Church mission in the orthodox thinking is;
„For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that
everyone who beleaves in him may not die but have eternal life” (John
3,16). Trinity is the structure of the eternal love between the three infinite
divine persons, love comunicated in the eternal uncreated energies to the
created world by the Holy Spirit in the Christ’s Church by the holy
sacraments and experienced in a saint life by the practice of the Christian
virtues and the fulfilment of the divine commandements for the
transfiguration of the man through the divine light. So, the mission of the
Church is a trinitarian programme6 – related to Missio Dei – of divine
love for the spiritual and sacramental integration of the human persons in
the eternal communion of the Trinity.
The mission of the Church is based on the central Person of Christ –
the centrality of Christ - and Son of God, the bearer of the divine love to
the world reconciled with the Father in his death and Resurrection,
unseparated by the Holy Spirit sent to the same world to fulfil the
communitarian body of Christ, his Church for ever. In the event of
mission, the Church extends itself to make the world Christ’s body, to
bring by the Holy Spirit, as a taste, the God’s Kingdom in our human
history. To know and love God by witness to Christ in this life, by
ascetism for the transfiguration, even in the society, is the purpose of the
man in the Church. Christian life is one in Christ, with Christ confessed as
Savior and Lord, illuminated by his Spirit, seeing all the world in the light
of Christ’s mind and love.

6
Go Forth in Peace, p. 3; The Orthodox Church in the cumenical Movement.
Documents and Statements 1902-1975, Edited by Constantin G. Patelos, World Council
of Churches, Geneva, 1978, p. 105.
 MISSIONARY THEOLOGY… 319

A pneumatological and sacramental dimension is, also, essential to

understand and to do missionary work carried along and illuminated by
the Holy Spirit in a life devoted to God and to his Church in the service of
the mankind.
The orthodox missionary theology, as noticed missiologist David
Bosch, keeps the intellectuel dimension of theology7 in the sense of
approaching the philosophy of religion, a theological rationality which
explores the mistery of divinity rooted deeply in the thinking and spiritual
experience of the Greek Fathers of the Church, for example, Cyril of
Alexandria8 or Maxim the Confessor9 or developped by medieval
scholasticism, available even nowadays10 for a mutual, dialogical
enrichment between theology and philosophy.The problems of atheism
and secularism11, also, are enclosed in the missiological analysis as the
missiological reflection and missionary practice in the context of the
technical, scientific and informatical society, too12.
7
David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission. Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission,
Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New-York, 1991, p. 206.
8
Comentariu la Evanghelia Sfântului Ioan, în col. «P.S.B.» 41, traducere,
introducere, note de Pr.Prof.Dr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Bucureşti, 2000, p. 65.
9
Ambigua, traducere, introducre şi note de Pr.Prof.Dr. Dumitru Stăniloae, în col.
«P.S.B.», 80, Bucureşti, 1983, p. 83-85.
10
John H. Hick, Philosophy of Religion, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
1973; Stephane-Marie Barbellion, „Les preuves” de l’existence de Dieu. Pour une
relecture des cinq voies de Saint Thomas d’Aquin, Cerf, Paris, 1999; Jean Greisch, Le
buisson ardentet les lumieres de la raison. L’invention de la philosophie de la religion,
tomes I-III, Cerf, Paris, 2002-2004; Thomas T. Torrance, God and the Rationality, T&T
Clark, Edinburgh, 1997; Andre Leonard, Foi et philosophie. Guide pour un
discernement chretien, Editions Lessius, Bruxelles, 1991; Richard Swinburne, The
Existence of God, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991; Charles Morerod, O.P., La
philosophie des religions de John Hick. La continuite des principes philosophiques de la
periosde „chretienne orthodoxe” a la periode „pluraliste”, Parole et Silence, Paris,
2006; Norman Geisler, Filosofia religiei, Editura Cartea creştină, Oradea, 1999.
11
Rosino Gibellini, Panorama de la theologie au XXe siecle, the chapter
Theologie de la secularisation, Cerf, Paris, 1994, p.139; Omul de cultură în faţa
descreştinării, referatele Simpozionului internaţional organizat de Facultatea de
Teologie Ortodoxă a Universităţii „1 Decembrie 1918”, Alba Iulia, 13-15 mai 1995,
Editura Reîntregirea, Alba Iulia, 1995.
12
Mikael Stenmark, Scientism, Science, Ethics and Religion, Ashgate, Aldershot,
Burlington, Singapore, Sydney, 2001, p. 1-18; Pr. Gheorghe Petraru, Christian Faith,
Hope and Charity in the Era of Technology and Informatics, Studies in Science and
320 Pr.conf.dr. Gheorghe Petraru

2. Missionary Anthropology. This large chapter of Christian and

cultural anthropology refers to the human person in the biblical13 and
theological14 perspective, that is the man as soul and body, mysteriously
related in the life in time and called to share the eternal communion with
God in the life to come. The man created in the image of God,
interpellated by the same God after the fall into sin and death, redeamed
by Christ in His sacrifce on Golghota and sanctified in the Church by the
eternal deifying grace through the Holy Spirit is considered just „the
subjective correlated of the Revelation”15. Therefore, the man exists in the
horizon given, offered by God himself, in an ontological relationship to
him, and a spiritual cognitive communion in the experience of love with
him in the sacramental life of the Church. In the act of faith as relation
and communion with God, narrated, depicted in the Bible and
experienced in the living and creative tradition of the Church is defined
fundamentally the human person, the being of the communion after the
Trinity paradigm of the perfect and eternal communion of life and love.
The man exists for God, he wants to be with God. The desire for God is
natural, human and there is an spiritual unconscius for God16.
The missionary as theologian is the man of the faith, who beleaves
firmly in God, who manifests entire fidelity and witnesses in his own life
by words and deeds, but also in silence and hope about the Christ’s love
with humble and wise courage. Orthodox theology and mission
emphasizes in the well known eastern spiritual tradition the holiness in
the sacramental and mystical life of the Church, the transfiguration by

Theology, 9, 2002-2004, Year Book of the European Society for the Study of Science
and Theology, edited by Ulf Gorman, Willem B. Dress and Hubert Meisinger, p. 115-
124; Idem, Lumea, creaţia lui Dumnezeu. Perspective, biblice, teologico-patristice şi
ştiinţifice, Editura Trinitas, Iaşi, 2002.
13
Lorraine Caza, Anthropologie biblique, in Initiation a la pratique de la
theologie, III, Dogmatique, II, Cerf, Paris, 1993, p. 529; Daniel Faivre, Precis
d’anthropologie biblique. Images de l’homme, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2000, p. 20.
14
Panayotis Nellas, Omul – animal îndumnezeit. Pentru o antropologie ortodoxă,
studiu introductiv şi traducere de Diac. Ioan I. Ică jr., Editura Deisis, Sibiu, 1994; Joseph
Comblin, Anthropologie chretienne, traduit de l’espagnol par Raymond Paratte, Cerf,
Paris, 1991.
15
Heinrich Fries, Fundamentaltheologie, Verlag Styria, Graz, Wien, Koln, 1985,
p. 17.
16
Jean-Claude Larchet, L’inconscient spirituel, Cerf, Paris, 2005, p. 111.
 MISSIONARY THEOLOGY… 321

ascetism, by Christian virtues, in long illuminating and in grace unifying

prayers till the vision of the uncreated divine life of the eschatological
Kingdom17.
This chapter refers, also, to the metaphysical issues of the soul as
simple, immaterial, immortal and spiritual substance opening to
psychology of religion18. But the psychology of religion, in spite of the
rich approuches of the religious facts, behaviours, languages and
experiences, can not grasp the specifity and the uniqueness of life in
Christ (Galatians 2,20).
3. Missionary community of the Church. The Church is by nature
missionary, apostolic, being itself the people of God led by sacramental
hierarchy who evangelises and is evangelised, the body and the bride of
Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, „the chosen race, the King’s priests,
the holy nation, God’s own people, chosen to proclaim the wunderful acts
of God” (I Peter 2,9)19.
The Liturgy with the Eucharist and the witness of the right apostolic
and dogmatic faith of the one church has a missionary dimension, is a
factor of Christian unity and sanctified life in the communion of the holy
Trinity. Therefore, the orthodox Liturgy has a evangelistic aspect by
hearing the words of God’s Revelation in the Bible and a sacramental
aspect by sharing the Christ’s eucharistic Body and Blood for a deified
life – theosis. In this sense „the characteristc Orthodox doctrine of theosis
aquires missionary significance”20.
In the same time, in the worship of the church „mission and unity
go together”21 and the people is sanctified by participating to Liturgy in

17
Pr.Dr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Ascetica şi mistica creştină sau Teologia vieţii
spirituale, Casa Cărţii de Ştiinţă, Cluj-Napoca, 1993.
18
Pr.Dr. Gheorghe Petraru, Teologie fundamentală şi misionară. Ecumenism,
Editura Performantica, Iaşi, 2006, p. 65-74.
19
The Nature and the Purpose of the Church. A Stage on the Way to a Commun
Statement, Faith and Order Paper, 181, Geneva, 1998; Pr.Prof. Ion Bria, Tratat de
Teologie Dogmatică şi Ecumenică, Editura România creştină, Bucureşti, 1999, p. 159-
160; Boris Bobrinskoy, Taina Bisericii, traducere de Vasile Manea, Editura Patmos,
Cluj-Napoca, 2002, p. 74-75; Miguel M.Garijo-Guembe, Gemeinschaft der Heiligen.
Grund, Wesen und Struktur de Kirche, Patmos Verlag, Dusseldorf, 1988, p. 17-23.
20
David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission, p. 209.
21
Ibidem, p. 208.
322 Pr.conf.dr. Gheorghe Petraru

the thankful and joyful act of salvation. In Liturgy the human culture and
society, but also the whole cosmos is transfigurated in the divine light of
God. In this sense, there is a strong relationship between Church and
evangelised local, national culture with universal worth. But today, in the
dynamics of globalisation, the Orthodox Church is present all around the
world and this is a good opportunity to know it better a chance for a
pastoral, sincere, concret, personal, physical, not only official, solemn,
academic, authoritative Christian ecumenism22.
The course contents a short history of the Christian Missions in
order to know and respect the missionary work of all the confessions and
denominations, to render homage to the witnessers and martyrs of the
Gospel23.
Orthodox Missiology has to protect his dogmatic, spiritual and
canonical law, the Christian inheritance. That is why our course contents
an important part dweling on the proselytism of the neoprotestant sects,
the new religious movements inspired by Asian living religions or the
„parallel tradition” of the Western world24. By this, the course opens to
the sociology of religion, a neutral humanistic science towards the
religions, without theological commitment to Christ and his Church25.
Present-day Missiology in the academical education in Romanian
Orthodox Church is a contextual and comparative theology, an apology of
the missionary Church of the Apostles and our holy Fathers from the first
Christian millenium till today, Church who leads and converts to the
mystery of God and to the trinitarian communion in grace and love26.

22
Pr.Prof. Ion Bria, Liturghia după Liturghie, p. 188.
23
Dr. Vasile Ispir, Curs…, p. 223-344; Stephen Neill, A History of Christian
Missions, Penguin Books, Harmandsworth, 1986; Keneth Scott Latourette, A History of
the expansion of the Christianity, vol. 1-7, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids,
1976.
24
Pr. Gheorghe Petraru, Ortodoxie şi prozelitism, Editura Trinitas, Iaşi, 2000, p.
187-310; Nicolae Achimescu, Noile mişcări religioase, Editura Limes, Cluj-Napoca,
2002.
25
Pr.Dr. Gheorghe Petraru, Teologie fundamentală…, p. 75-88.
26
Hans Jurgen Findeis, Missiology, in Dictionary of Mission. Theology, History,
Perspectives, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New-York, 1998, p. 302.