Prolegomena to a history of Orthodoxy The article proposes a new perspective on Orthodoxy, which starts from the
need of removing the confusion between a spiritual content and the loyalty to
it through time, on one hand, and the forms of civilization that have been
formed because of this spiritual content, on the other hand. Thus, the
„orthodoxy” of a civilization does not mean the exact same thing as the
„orthodoxy” of the faith. Nevertheless, in the current historiographical
debate, the cultural and political aspect of the Orthodoxy prevails over the
spiritual and theological aspect. The proposed analysis approaches the subject
with the conceptual tools of historical and religious anthropology, trying to
separate, from the multitude of events and data, its identity core, stable over
two millennia of Christianity, but also to explain the social mechanism that
turns faith into a way of organizing society. The study contains a chronology,
a thematic inventory and a bibliographic and methodological excursus to
identify the intellectual resources of this new discussion on an eternal
subject. PETRE GURAN |
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