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.