Due to its personality and especially his work of extraordinary extension and profoundness, father Dumitru Stăniloae decisively and definitively marked the way of thinking theologically, as early as 1960-1970. Today, one can no longer ignore father Stăniloae`s theology. Moreover, in the field of systematic theology, his work is a real foundation, a starting point and a source of inspiration. Understanding theology as a science or as a way to point to redemption, which is the creation of a confessing theology, was the main reason of father Stăniloae`s effort to redirect and renew the academic Orthodox theology by intensifying the connections between contemporary theology and the theology of the Holy Fathers and by deepening the dogmatic theology in the liturgical and mystical-ascetic spirituality of the Church. Father Stăniloae himself suggests how his theology should be read: by intensifying the connections between contemporary theology and the theology of the Holy Fathers and by deepening the dogmatic theology in the liturgical and mystical-ascetic spirituality of the Church, we need to present the dogmas of the Christian faith as an answer to the most profound aspirations of the contemporary man for fulfillment, communion, love, and eternal life.

Keyword: reception, theology, spirituality, Holy Fathers, Pr. Ion Bria, H.B. Patriarch Daniel, Pr. Dumitru Popescu

VALER BEL