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Stamoulis Chrysostomos, Theology and Art, Palimpsiston publications, Thessaloniki, 2000, pp. 121.

 The homonym volume, small, but aesthetically pleasing, edited by professor Chrysostomos Stamoulis, contains presentations of a symposium dedicated to the relations of theology with art.

            This symposium and this volume attempt to reconnect theology and art, to formulate a more complete image of theology in order for it to escape barren intellectuality and embrace man as a whole, highlighting the beauty of him and of the creation.

The Eastern Orthodox Tradition, without ever resorting to an “aesthetic theology”, understood and embraced the multifaceted and multifarious aspect of man, embracing all the dimensions of his life. Thus, with art and the theology of the icon, it painted incarnation, with music, it sang the Divine Economy and with poetry, it mystified souls to the mystery of salvation, with architecture, it united earth and sky and with worship, it connected many aspects of every day life to the Table of the Kingdom.

All the adventures of the ecclesiastical life, but mostly the dogmatic ones, are evident in every kind of ecclesiastical art. The wealth of life in Christ, the historical malign of heresies and their confrontation, can all be traced in the feast of ecclesiastical arts, which prove in this way that the Church is a living and creative Christian community, at least during the first millennium. And this is because a fear exists since then, a conservatism, a mimicking of the past and a stagnation of Christian life in the figures of the first millennium. No form of ecclesiastical art has known substantial development after the passing of the first millennium.

 The above observations give rise to the timeliness and contribution both of the symposium and this volume. A plethora of experts, musicians, singers and painters, theoretical professors of the arts and also of theology, deal with almost the whole spectrum of the problematic, defined by the thematic of the symposium. The relationship between musical pioneering and theological speculations, the innate relationship of culture with theology, the dialectics of art and the ecclesiastical community, the theology of art, the relationship of the young with the religious and demotic music, is just a small part of a great cultural feast.

Chrysostomos Stamoulis,  The Sacred Beaty, Akritas Publications, 2004, pp. 358.

The search for beauty, a diachronic adventure of human civilisation, represents one of the deeper, if not the deepest human existential need. The struggle to see beyond material things, to experience real significance in the flow of existence. More so today, in our era, when the beautification of images (perceptible and intelligible) and the deification of senses replace all significance, to serve an insatiable enervation with ravenousness. Therefore, articulating a fertile theological word on beauty carries particular importance.

In this volume, the author literally makes an intervention. An intervention that transforms into a creative challenge to compose and mutually define all forms, changes and experiences in the perspective of a transfiguring experience that truly beautifies people and life. Therefore, “Sacred Beauty” transforms into the beauty of Sainthood in a capacious vessel of Grace that embraces but also beautifies all beauty. For this reason, the author’s thought widens to embrace everything beautiful over time.

From the Areopagus sense of beauty to the love of beauty and from the aesthetics of modern poetry to the beauty of the creation and the charming presence of sainthood, mainly in the faces of modern Saints.

In the book’s first chapter the author reconstructs the dilemma between Philocally and aesthetics. Through the reasoning of a political scientist, of a priest and a service practitioner and at the same time an academic of theology, he attempts to transcend the subjectivity of aesthetics, its disconnection from morality, its easy usage and its utilitarian version. The emergence of the Philocallic perspective bears the diachronic element of Tradition and at the same time fertilizing the world as it engages it, far from the fragmentation of reality in the service of personal gratification.

The above credentials constitute a central issue of next two chapters. The Philocallic aesthetics of Orthodoxy tends to embrace everything. The world and history, humans and their desires, the needs and their perspective, even their passions are embraced in a transfiguring emergence of the Philocallic perspective. In this perspective history is comprehended as well as smaller traditions. East and West, technocratic civilization, sacred and profane, exercise and life are dissected in the world with the scarpel of wholistic theological understanding, so that the function of the apokatharsis does not allow the marginalization of something that could contribute to the understanding of the mutual dependence of human existence.

Saints and poets, sages and thinkers, in a wholistic understanding of life, which is illuminated by the Grace of the non-anticipated and the anticipated.

Stamoulis Chrysostomos, The Theotokos and the Orthodox dogma, Palimpsiston,Thessaloniki, 2003.

The Christological teaching of Cyrill of Alexandria shaped not only the Third and Fourth Ecumenical Synods, but also the teaching of the Church on these issues. His teaching on Virgin Mary is presented in an artistic and useful volume.

This presentation by the Ass. Professor Chrysostomos Stamoulis under the title: “Virgin Mary and the Orthodox Dogma” constitutes an extension and elaboration of his doctoral thesis by the same content.

The aim of the book, as pointed out by the title, is the presentation and deep understanding, in the context of the Orthodox teaching, of the dogma on Virgin Mary. The author begins with the fundamental observation that Virgin Mary is not a goddess, but a “sister to humanity, partaking in human nature”. The privilege of  the “most holy” is something that she freely acquired, contributing the most to the realization of the saving Economy, equipped with the Holy Grace and Her saintly and pious life. A noteworthy observation is Her unclear connection with the person of the Word. Any understanding of Virgin Mary is inextricably linked to Christ and the Christological fact and any adulation and conceptualization of her person cannot constitute, according to the model of the western (mainly Roman-Catholic) tradition, a separate chapter of discussion.

The author devotes a large part of the book to the analysis of the terms “Θεοτόκος” (God bearer) and “Χριστοτόκος” (Christ bearer), in the context of dogmatic problems, brought about by the Nestorian teaching and the Cyrillic treatment of it. The union of the Word with man, conceived by Virgin Mary “in hypostasis”, which means in reality, constitutes the cornerstone of the  understanding of the saving Holy Economy, as well as of the human contribution in the Face of Mary. Consequently, every heretic forgery of the person of the Virgin, has a direct impact on the face of the incarnated Word and His saving significance.

This is a major issue for the author, that is the understanding and the theological formulation of every word about Virgin Mary, filtered through the experience and perception of the content of our salvation in the Church. Every synodical expression, as well as every patristic teaching, according to Saint Cyrill’s remarks, derives from this experience and is theologically exploited for the body of Christ to be built and its heretic corruptions to be treated.

The eloquence and readability of the presentation, combined masterfully with the depth and scientific style of the analysis, expose the diverse virtues of the author and his book.

Stamoulis Chrysostomos, An exercise in self-conscience, Palimpsiston, Thessaloniki, 2004.  

This volume, citing a good number of theological-doctrinal studies, full of meanings and challenges, is titled: “An Exercise in Self-Conscience”. An exercise in the discovery of the other side of things, an exercise for meaning beyond the theological self-evident, an ascetic verification of the distance between everyday living and the need for existential fullness and directness.

If the most basic need of theology over time is to seek ways to experience the saving ecclesiastical word in every era, then the exercise in self-conscience expresses the agony for the verification of this need in the life of the faithful. In this field, every objective attitude constitutes, according to the author, a sin and every sin seeks penitence. The initial study by Professor Stamoulis on the “revelational word of the Apostle of the Nations, Paul” in the texts by N. G. Pentzikis, is part of this perspective. The “trained senses” (Hebr. 5,14) are presuppositions for the exercise of self-conscience, which the novelist from Thessaloniki understood as a search for the criteria and ways through which man can actually see God. A God-seer (θεόπτης), who with the movements of his body (mental prayer) will include the whole world, animate and inanimate, in the transformation, highlighting that beauty, which will eventually save the world. In this expression of prince Mishkin from the “Idiot” by Dostoyevsky, Stamoulis seeks juxtapositions from the diachrony of the patristic tradition. If the fall of man constitutes in its essence a denial of the saving beauty, then the last one, as transformation and benediction of the senses, guarantees the emergence of the beauty of the Kingdom.

The issue of modern “spirituality”, its idolatry, is another issue for the exercise in self-conscience, which the author discusses. Referring to the ideas of the renowned Russian theologian Fr. Alexander Schmemann, he develops his thoughts, which range from the unconditional and folklore renaissance of spirituality to the apotheosis of the depth psychology and the need to re-examine the modern spiritual life, keeping the necessary distances from the Russian theologian.

Finally, the author’s views expressed in the essay “Saint Gregory Palamas in modern Greek theology” are worth mentioning. The renaissance of the theological studies in Greece has virtually coincided with the renaissance of the palamic studies and the author highlights the theological tendency towards the exercise of self-conscience. This is a course of revising terms and methods, a course of awareness of its initial dimension, which is no other than the ecclesiastical reality of divination. This course, according to the author, is not far from being named “neo-palamism” and highlights a prolific problematic, which in effect embraces the theological thematic in its entirety, bringing forth important critical observations, many of which are made by the author himself, and, thus, fertilizing the modern theological thought.