Dogma and experience in the life of the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Synod, reflected in the cult of the Church Cover Image

Dogmă și experiență în viața Părinților de la Sinodul I Ecumenic, reflectate în cultul Bisericii
Dogma and experience in the life of the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Synod, reflected in the cult of the Church

Author(s): Cristinel Ioja
Subject(s): Christian Theology and Religion, Theology and Religion
Published by: EDITURA ARHIEPISCOPIEI DUNĂRII DE JOS
Keywords: dogma and cult; dogma and Liturgy; Church’s experience; Christian life;

Summary/Abstract: The dogma risks becoming distant for people’s life, cold and incomprehensible, if it is not based on cult and is not transformed in doxology. In Orthodoxy the cult becomes doxology, and the dogmatic tradition becomes worshipful tradition, doxological, accessible and strongly present within Christians’ collective and personal life. This relation, between dogma and cult, dogma and Liturgy avoids the separation between the rational aspect and the liturgical content of dogmas, as within our dogma coexists in harmony both the rational aspect and the mystic one. Although lex orandi does not replace theology, however, the essential aspects of Orthodoxy have been experimented in the ecclesiastical environment by lex orandi, before being structured on concepts. Thus, the Liturgy becomes, above all, the existential crucible of theology, being in fact an embodied theology. The theological reflection was always nourished in East by Church’s living tradition, by its Liturgy, which created the environment of a Christian life, where all new teachings which appeared were clarified and all heresies destroyed, precisely by this ecclesiastical life and not by simple words, or by a Christian system separated from Church’s experience and finally void of life.

  • Issue Year: XII/2013
  • Issue No: 12
  • Page Range: 117-132
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Romanian
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