BIOETHICS IN THE VISION OF THE ORTHODOX THEOLOGY

[Păştin Antoniu-Cătălin]

 

 

BIOETHICS IN THE VISION OF THE ORTHODOX THEOLOGY

 

 

 

DOCTOR IN THEOLOGY: ANTONY – CATALIN  PASTIN

” SF. IOAN CASSIAN” CENTRE FOR THEOLOGICAL, INTERCULTURAL  AND ECUMENICAL RESEARCH – “OVIDIUS”  UNIVERSITY CONSTANTA

ROMANIA, BUCHAREST             

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT

 

 

The metamorphose of the european world from the medieval  to the modern era or, the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century entailed the considerable mutations on the European culture scene. From God it was  passed to the man, from the theology to the science, and from the spiritual values the society passed to the material values, like so many expressions of the globalization.

 

The mechanistic conception has favored the huge scientific and technological progress of the contemporary occidental society.

But, on the other hand, this conception represents  the real cause of the spiritual and the moral regress of the world in which we are living. The economic, financial and political factors have acquired a considerable importance to the detriment of the spiritual preoccupation. We live in a world where the material values have triumphed over the spiritual values. On the one side, we are witnessing at the victories of the science and technology that overcome  the most optimistic expectations of the eighteenth century, but, in his inner life, man feels himself caught up in the grips of the irrational forces which he can no longer control.

The today sensuality and violence outburst , which are spreading throughout the society and comprising the ever wider circles, is a conclusive evidence of the spiritual climate degradation  of man  and of the contemporary society¹.

The understanding and the acceptance of the relationship between Logos and creation have  a capital importance for the destiny of our world. Due to the misunderstanding of this relationship or its rejection, in the West has been developed the evolutionary theory, which, acts  on the premise that the God either does not exist, or at least is absent from the act of creation. Because if He would exist, it should be accepted that, either He couldn’t create the world in 6 days or  bring it into being only using His word²,  either He does not will to do it , and then we have to do with a God who is not love. Thus, God, Who does not create, has no reason to be involved neither in  the salvation act and has not nor the conditions which Himself  has been created them for the purpose of the Incarnation.

Evolutionism is what the atheist philosophers needed to justify the autonomy of man using his origin as an argument, or how Darwinist Richard Dawkins said: "Darwin made it possible to become a perfect atheist from the  intellectual point of view"³.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Based on the autonomy of the world and man towards God, the modernity has drawn the logical conclusion that: the world can be completely understood without assuming the existence of any God, whether it be the God of the philosophers or of the believers. For the actual  modernity it remains to declare a new god or new gods. Falling again into the trap handed him by the devil in the Garden of Eden and in the tendency to be "like God, knowing the good and the evil" (Gen. 3: 5), the man idolizes, deifies  and declares himself  as God.

The new god has developed a new cult stating within it also the images and idols that will complete the picture of this kind of human self-divinization. Thus, the first idol emerged and consecrated as such for the modern era seems to be "The cult of civilization".

The establishment of this cult has consisted and consists in subordination of culture, art and all moral values, tradition and faith in God towards the need for civilization. All these were oriented by the modern man according to a superior goal: the assurance of civilization.

The modern science is another idol of the modern era und we perceive it so, because it conferred itself an absolute power. In essence, the proclamation of science as idol in modernity consist in the fact that the center of gravity of knowledge is transferred from God to man. The modern age has imposed the conception that man is an autonomous being who can develop himself, especially with the help of his mind (nous) and using his inner powers. Strictly speaking, this means the deification of the human rationality and its presentation as a substitute of faith in God. But as it was natural, the denial of the Living God was followed by the denial of reason itself,. Soon was reached the absurd limit of the despotism. The human reason was self-limited to the knowledge of matter and deprived of the absolute criteria of evaluation for the already known things,  it has failed in the conflict with the thinking way of the human fellow beings.

The third idol of modernism is the belief in historical progress of humanity and the sacrifice on the altar of this idol  of the past values, tradition, truth. The modern idea of progress has proved its falsification through the failure of the rationalism and of the enlightment rationalism, which after all leads to  an  irrationalism.

 

Bioprinting: the 3 D printing for organ creation, or in other words: Bioethics

 

Bioprinting represents the term that defines the use of 3D printers to create  tissues or organs. The most often  used are the  stem cells or other types of cells in what is called bio-ink, namely the biology ink.

More recently, 3D printers are being used in the medical field, where they create tissues which may be used for surgeries. Still not we haven’t reached the creation of a functional organ because it is difficult to print the blood vessels but, the engineers at Cornell University (USA) managed to print an ear, so the first step was made. Technological and ethical implications are quite large and the questions are quite obviously, " will we become immortals if we will create the immortal bodies we can create organs on treadmill?" Or " could we do a transplant of the nervous system to a new host body?"

One of the legacies left from the last century (the sixth decade of the last century) is also the bioethics, a science with a huge field of research, but with a very limited content. This phenomenon should not be considered a paradox,  if it is considered that the science of Bioethics is called to reconcile the most disparate views regarding the burning and contradictory issues of human life. The field of the bioethics is considered to be, first of all, the research of human life. In fact, the bioethics deals with all moral and medical classical problems, and the newest ones, related to the human life. The cause that generated the interest for the bioethics is the rapidly developing of the biology and its application in medical science.

The bioethics is presented as an extension of the medical ethics and its interest is  centered in the problems that involve biology and application of new medical technologies in all processes related to the birth, the growth and the death of a human being.

 

 

 

Bioethics especially analyzes the moral issues, relating to:

 

A)                     the infertility, the assisted reproduction,  the artificial insemination, the  prenatal control,  the birth control,  the abortion and those relating thereto;

B)                     the interventions concerning the preservation or the improvement of  human life,  the cloning, the sampling  and  the transplant  of tissues or organs;

C)                     the approach to the terminal period of life, active or passive euthanasia and other problems related to this.

More precisely, the analysis of the problems to which we previously referred is actually the object of the biomedical ethics because, the bioethics spreads over the whole living world and researches the links of man  with it. But, because the medical ethics represents  the most important part of the bioethics, the bioethics is the name currently used  for the entire research field.

The bioethics, trying to prevent and control the general evolutions generated by the development by leaps and bounds of the biology and medical technology, functions almost exclusively at an impersonal level. It objectifies the procedures and the numbers the people, try to tackle general states, and not persons or interpersonal relationships. His interest is focused on the analysis of the latest issues and cares for their global approach at  world level through  ultra-generalized principles. That is why, when it does not express within a religious confession or a cosmotheory, ignores as far as possible the religious, metaphysical conceptions or any other kind of conceptions concerning  the world and tries to rely only on utilitarian principles and values,  that can be accepted on a larger scale.

 

Thus, in the bioethics are highlighted the following principles:
-the principle of autonomy;
- avoiding principle of the pain and the suffering causation;
-the principle of  charity;
-the principle of justice.

These principles, which are usually interpreted,  from different viewpoints, are proving to be very elastics in practice and even contradictorily. In addition, today it is well known the erosion of the principles and of the moral values in society. Even the cases of unnatural behaviors such as homosexuality are known and accepted as normal characteristics of the human race.. When the man is emptied of any specific spirituality and identifies himself only  with his biological functions, all these  come of their own accord  and finally are considered normal⁴.

According to the above mentioned things, the most important basis for bioethics remains the anthropology on which is founded the today  medical science. This anthropology, which is in essence alien towards the Christian spirituality, is mechanistic and one-dimensional. It is a normal fact that a mechanistic and one-dimensional anthropology can’t support a real moral. The moral is always understood as the movement from the „to be” state to the „to be good” particularity . But when to be is approached through  a mechanical and one-dimensional way, then „to be good” pure and simple is a mechanistic evolution and not a spiritual or qualitative one of the state”to be”.

The bioethics usually appears as a morality which is in a constant flow and transformation, imposed by the research laboratories, exploited by political and economic factors and promoted by computer and mass communication means. It doesn’t hesitate to accept the abortions as therapeutics or to do services to eugenics thus promoting  the racism.

The morality purpose  was always to help people to acquire the good habits  since they are still  little children. The morality, however, don`t refer to the habit as such, but its quality. And, unfortunately, this thing tends to be forgotten. The habit is nowadays considered an enough reason to justify any practice, when it presents some utility.

Especially, when moral reactions occur regarding the question of applying the contemporary medical technology, the technocrats despise and consider them as secondary impediments that will be removed as people will acquire the new habit. In parallel, the promotion of principles and religious commandments is characterized by the representatives of secular bioethics as a strong fundamentalism and therefore is downplayed or disregarded. All these however highlight the evidence of the weakening of moral conscience and of profound spiritual crisis in which we already find ourselves. So it has come to a situation where, today, the bioethics tends to replace the traditional morality that has as main object the personal life and  the interpersonal relationships between men.

Moreover, the real dislocation of morality began much earlier, in the theological circles, by detaching it from spirituality and promoting almost exclusively of a social moral. In this way the social morals distinguishes itself in the West since the middle of the last century, and later the interest of the Western theologians concerned with the morality issues focused almost exclusively on Bioethics.

This already appears in a more extensive space, as a moral of globalization, i.e. a morality which tries to bring closer together people with different mentalities and trends regarding the issues raised by the applications of contemporary medicine and biology and to promote the homogenization of the criteria for approaching of these problems. In parallel, it cultivates the idea that the moral life of man is determined by the biologists. The bioethics, as globalization deontology, it`s directly related to the tradition of secularized Western Christianity and, especially, to the Western morality⁵. It is a moral with a legalist character, as the western morality  also is,   which is subsisting like a base of it.

And its general  principles, which are proposed by the essential structure of this morality,  do not provide convergence points for people, but on the contrary  generate more contradictions. They are similar to the principles of so-called social morality  that can be interpreted and applied according to the wishes and the interests of the powerful people.

By the golden rule: " Therefore whatever you desire for men to do to you, you

shall also do to them" (Matthew 7:12), the man is called to put himself in the place of the other and to act toward him like would act to himself. In other words, the golden rule is addressed to the human person and it requires understanding and solidarity with the neighbor. It cultivates solidarity and excludes isolation, builds the unity and removes the disunity. It doesn’t happen the same with the principles of the bioethics. Even more, it comes to the opposite. The absolutization of first principle of bioethics, the principle of autonomy doesn’t bring people together, but isolates them, it doesn’t unite, but separates them. Certainly, this principle seems to respect the particularity of everybody. However, by the nature of things this respect is proved  to be a chimera, because it is impossible to propose the principle of individual autonomy as long as the society needs unity and have nothing on which this unity could be founded.

If the individual is absolutized the communion disappears and with it the society. That is why  the powerful people every time propose their arbitrary position as a unifying factor for the society. The laws come to limit this arbitrary act. But at the moral level, the absolutization of autonomy and its confrontation with any idea or collective value leads to confusion and incoherence.

It is normal that in the Orthodox Church the bioethics issues have to integrate themselves  within Christian morality preoccupation. Moreover, from the beginning the moral teaching of the Church was confronted with bioethical problems such as the abortions and euthanasia. Thus, the approach of bioethics problems, as well as moral ones, must be based on anthropology and Orthodox Christian cosmology. It must view this problems from the perspective of human deification and the human renewal in Christ. A fundamental premise of moral behavior of man is that man is not the cause of his existence, but his being  is the divine gift. When the man has not this conscience, it is normal to go beyond his limits and to self-divinize. Moreover, the important guideline in the Christian morality is the hypostatic principle or the person principle from which emerge the meaning and the functionality of the other special principles and the methodology of the  moral and social life.

The human person is not a static giving but a dynamic becoming. This begins from the moment of his conception and continues endlessly, and the infinite for Christianity is not impersonal or superpersonal, but is the Person. More specifically, is one  trinity of persons, i.e.  the Holy Trinity. Finally, the birth and the evolution of man supposes and expresses the communion. The person cannot be conceived as an isolated individual because he exists only within the communion. And the true communion is always done in the human-divine communion which is the Church. In the face of danger of the human burying under the pile of his genes, the Christian morality presents the unlimited perspective of perfection and its deification.

The Christian morality is cultivated and developed in the human person. Prosopocentric character of this is not certainly in agreement with the views that dominate the bioethics. In our time, marked by the absence of spirituality,  the idea of returning to the powers of the spirit is not very popular. And yet, the healing of this lack of morality, in which our society is today, as well  as the cause for this situation  must not be searched at the moral or social level, but at the  spiritual level. From here derive the forces that influence the moral and social level.

The spirit, which  reigns the hearts of men, determines the moral and social life, and not vice versa.

Certainly, this spirit can be crafty or perverse; can be the spirit of hedonism and materialism. But it will be always spirit and not flesh and blood. That is why, apostol Paul says : „for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms”. (Ephesians 6:12). And for a man to fight against these spirits he needs power given by Christian spirit. The Christian spirit is not some impersonal force or impersonal principle. It is not even some temporary or eternal law. It is God who has revealed Himself in the person of Christ and remains in the Church through the Holy Spirit. And the healing of the world may take support from its revelation degree with Christ and with the Church. In the person of Christ it shows the Word of God, as a person and as a commandment. It looks like the Son of God, Who sacrifices Himself for man and as a way of life Who absolutely corresponds to the divine commandement. The new commandement of love is not only given by the Christ, but it is also embodied in the person of Christ. And its practical content reveals itself in His life. " “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." (John 13, 34).

The Christian Spirit above all offers itself  through its lifestyle. The Christian life must express the content of the Christian faith. This will arouse the ambition for others to try the truth of the Christian life. From here we can conclude that the improvement of our society is a matter of our personal improvement. In fact, each of us is a member of society, therefore, to improve  himself, will improve at the same time  a part of our society and in this way will create a health centre in its organism.

We already find ourselves at the highest point, where we easily create failed interpretations, misunderstandings.Considering the society improvement like a personal improvement problem, we above all  understand we are not empowered to demand the improvement of the other fellow men.

If God does not force man to improve himself, how can we think we can do it?  The respect for the others freedom is the premise of any Christian act. Moreover, we must know that the correction of our own person doesn’t mean limiting  ourselves. The man, as a person, always evolves in relationship with others.

The self-limit is necessary for a certain period of time for collectedness and self-criticism. But the aim is not to limit the Christian at himself, but his opening to all humanity. The grand error, which we typically do is the forgetting of the double commandment of love and therefore we dissociate our individual responsibility from the social responsibility, which is universal. In this way, we come to understand the personal responsibility as a lack of social responsibility and the  social responsibility  as a lack of personal responsibility.

The personal responsibility involves the care for any justified intervention in social relations. And the indifference to them, which proves social irresponsibility, is not personal responsibility.

The Christian considers himself above all, accountable to anything happening around him. Not judging others, he does not reckon them in charge for the social evil. More than that, he doesn`t reckon the impersonal social system as being responsible, whose value or lack of value depends on the man. In the same time, however, he does not remain indifferent to what is happening in the world, to people and to the impersonal social system. And here we are bound to confess that Christian’s indifference from ignorance or form lack of courage has a very important part in promoting of evil in the world. The world is our wider body. Its problems are our problems. That is why, the interest from the world is the interest for ourselves. Separating in the Nestorian mode our person from the world, seeing the church in a monophysic manner, only as a spiritual society which has no relations with the issues of daily life, we become in reality heretics.

The Orthodox Church has always been interwoven with everyday life. In this regard The Orthodox Church feels the problems of injustice, poverty, health, social instability, like its own problems. The problems that people have  in our time are issues related to the body of the Church, that is our body. However, the lived reality of the Orthodox Churches does not always seem to confirm their theological teaching.

The temptation of nationalism, which has been condemned by conciliar decision in 1872, does not cease to create problems for Christian unity. Likewise, the money attraction is deadly threat to their spiritual life. In the moral and social life, the Orthodox people probably have no position of superiority towards the other heterodox people.

The secularization that was imported form the West to the East found the Orthodox peoples in a disadvantaged position. The rough imitation and assimilation of elements foreign to our culture can create social and personal disorders.  But, the superiority of the Orthodox can be found at the theological level, at the level of remaining in the truth of the Christian faith.

In the Orthodox Church there is the pure truth of Christianity kept alive by his eschatological perspective. This is the great value of Orthodoxy and it guarantees the quality of its offer to the whole mankind. The perspective outlined currently in the world by the expanding globalization phenomenon is bleak. All existing phenomena confirm the crisis and announces the upcoming of explosion. As long as man works aiming exclusively its individual interest, and not of the neighbor, the social life is undermined and is reached at deadlock. The ideal of economic development becomes trampoline of self-destruction. The asphyxiating gluttony, on the one hand, the starvation and death, on the other hand, threatens with the death our globalized society. The rich get richer because the economy built on gain leads the wealth always in the hands of the rich and the poor get poorer because the same economy, to the need to slow down the development to ensure its viability, limited the revenues of the poor. This evolution however, can only have an end, namely self-destruction. The man can not to subdue easily by his selfishness or to empty, to accept the others. Even though, the disposal to love is innate of human nature, the true love does not characterize, the fallen man and  needs to sacrifice his selfishness, to reveal itself.

The pattern of this love is God in the Trinity. The unity of the Holy Trinity, which is achieved through the loving and kenotic perichoresis of Persons, is the prototype of unity between humans, in order to constitute the deifying society. The Christ showed the world this love and the Orthodox Church proposes all its members this love for man's salvation, coinciding with his rise to the stature of universal person.

The believer is called within the church to live the universal tragedy, which goes through the entire history, to reach through penance the universal conciliation, the universal communion of love. In this way the whole mankind fraternizes and everybody opens to the universality⁶.

To correspond of such life perspective are needed the superhuman efforts. The created and perishable man is called to approach  the mode of life of the uncreated and eternal Being. Certainly this thing couldn’t be acomplished by one person. Therefore, the Orthodox theology speaks always of the divine-human cooperation, about the theandric synergy. The only limit of cooperation between man and God is only the death. Ultimately, this provides the confidence the man in God and the assurance that the death has been overcome. But thus breaks the wall of death and opens the new creation of the Gospel. That is why, the Gospel, as recorded by the apostle Paul, "is not from human" (Gal 1, 11).

Unlike the pantheism, that confuses being world and being of God, the Holy Scripture says that God's being is transcendent being radical to the world, but through energy, the light and the work of the Spirit, God is present in all creation. Those who isolate the God in transcendent and disregard His work in the world, denies the attribute of omnipotence divine and transforms God into a powerless being. God without His uncreated energy through which He is present and works in the world, appears as a  inconsistent God. The Orthodox Church managed to keep people religiosity consistently asserting the presence of God in creation and in human being.

The tragedy of modern and of postmodern man comes from the fact that he is forever longing the God, searching for Christ. This search for Christ as the meaning of life is the basis of the anxiety and disorder for which suffers the modern man, because in the depths of his soul is flashing the  longing after the life he choked itself the regret after losing meaning. But, the meaning of our lives is revealed only when we discover our roots deep in the Trinitarian reality, in Christ. In other words, without faith in God the life of man life is marked by the lack of sense. His successes and joys, his labor, his good deeds go nowhere. Do not provide any reward that lasts and thanks him forever. The good and the evil does not matter because it is suppressed the conscience and the freedom is also empty in the absence of God and does not have any role because there are no responsibility with eternal value. The sufferings and the death of man cause anguish and despair because beyond them is no horizon, everything seems futile. One such man completely covered in natural frames, can no longer have any value, because he completely belongs to earth. He values as much as he has to give, how can produce becoming source of earning. Its value consists only in what it is seen: his body. And then, man is no longer a mystery, there is someone, but only something. Not a person, but an individ, a puppet, one from the multitude  of animals.

The exaggerated preferences of  the modern and  the postmodern human,  expressed toward esotericism, gnosticism, magic, occultism, witchcraft, spiritism and Satanism and that these phenomena have become today such a scale that seem to replace faith in God, everything is explained through the emptiness that he feels inside due to the absence of God in his life. Undoubtedly, the civilization where we live is tributary of economic development: in the center of interests is not the search for spiritual truth or essential thrill to the mystery for once and uniqueness of every person. The public space of the agora loses its classic dimensions in such a large extent that it is replaced with the market place (market), in the most economic sense of the word. If in the classic sense, the agora is the place where different voices meet and listen to a mutual enrichment, a strong emergence of the economic factors, in the contemporary culture operate sometimes the painful reductions. The disappearance from  fifties and til the present time  of half of the languages spoken in the world must be a serious signal reflection due the respect to national and local cultures. Man looking for a sense, does not find in today's society and is not satisfied with his life. Then he finds refuge in some imaginary "artificial paradises". The violence, the drugs, the alcohol have the same role as the occult practices listed above: to fill the gaps left inside the man after the God was banished. Under the influence of the postmodern world, even some pious Christians are victims of these serious deviations, being encouraged by some priests fallen in love of money. Increasingly, it is noted that Holy Cross and the icons are venerated not for their connection with the holy people which they represent, but they are idolized separately to them and in their place. The everyday concerns of postmodern man, and these concerns inclined more toward the bottom, toward the matter and body, the culture itself fell to the temporal and minors ideals.  Because it is the work of individuals who live only to eat, to produce material goods,  to dress, to multiply and to master, of individuals who are no longer striving to emerge from the rules of nature but, to resign himself, seeking to honor pleasures to live their lives and fulfill their dreams in this life that they love.

The postmodern man greedily wants more and more goods and therefore arrive soon to be possessed by his own possessions. And the postmodern society stimulates the greed, manufacturing always new needs, but those needs are induced, produced and caused. Never, in his entire history the man had so much power to create artificial needs. This artificial goods live him unsatisfied and there overwhelming number prevents his personality to mature.

Deep in his soul he suffers, but suppress their suffering with intense experience of the moment. The sufferings it causes man who consumes more and more, at the urging by publicity most of the time immoral persist in humans, despite the common message of all advertising is the motto of whom bore fruit rich field: "you have many goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry "(Luke 12:19); target of such advertising is to make us worship the belly: "god is their belly" (Phil. 3:19).

Due to subhuman level were reached the postmodern man, he no longer taste the true culture and is no longer able to create an authentic culture, which explains the preference of most young people today, expressed in surveys, for subculture. It does not require an effort in the act of creation or in reception, but neither feeds. The suffering caused by the inability to fit  to Absolut, planted in man through by the act of creation, and so yearning for mission and his destiny after heights beyond the natural world, modern man is too often and more and more the victim of surrogates: alcohol, drugs, sex, prostitution, adventure, luxury, violence, pornography, etc. But they do not take the place by God and do not solve the fundamental problem of man: salvation.

Lacking him the Model - Christ, the modern man is looking for patterns among the people but because of the confusion promoted by himself removing and disregard the divine revelation - the only true universal criterion - and the supremacy of by divine values: truth, good and beautiful, man modern, declaring himself the measure of all things, decides what is good and what is bad, who is good and who is bad. That is why he seeks and finds the patterns of immoral conduct, the people without end and without God, only because they were declared "megastars" and "superstars". The confusion between good and evil, between truth and lying, between beauty and ugly, between music and noise, of works of art or culture and kitsch, between morality and immorality,  has generated by the indifference to the Person of Christ, led to the overthrow of  values scale. Is why, the Holy is disregarded, and the star, even if it is immoral, is idolized. But by this man demeans himself, because if life lived in holiness no longer an attractive target and higher, man betrayed his destiny; if one prefers what is small and fleeting , instead of greatness and of eternity, he chose the state and condition of the animal and was disqualified! "For My people did two evils: Me, the fountain of living waters, have forsaken Me, and have dug fountains broken, that can hold no water" (Ier.2,13).

We have to do with a new anthropological type, which resemble, less and less,  with the Christian anthropological type. In the postmodernism, the new anthropological type emerges according to the requirements of the day, transmitted through the media and not by the Truth revealed. The new anthropological refuse the obligations: the faithfulness, the responsibility, and precisely through their refusal to disturb the harmony in society and causes distress in the lives of fellows. The postmodern man has no conscience of sinfulness, of guilt, because he does not feel accountable to God and to fellows, so that the sin in the postmodern society is perceived as a fact indifferent, if not as a virtue. We note with dismay on the streets, in factories, in the family, to multiply "the masks" and to disappear "the persons". The people have roles usually lifeless. It looks, increasingly like the accessories of a mechanism, are no longer the persons. Very often we have the feeling that we are in a dance sui generis of some persons disguised, where the participants hide their original identity with an original note which consists precisely in the fact that every time when a mask is removed, another appears. In such a crisis of human authenticity it is impossible that we walk together to become a real communion. When the people do not love, they cannot be honest, open, but being selfish, pretending, hiding their true face and true intentions. "

The masks" that the postmodern people wear have generated the phenomenon of mistrust in the human relationships; a general suspicion that makes any man should not have total confidence in each other. The lack of trust carries with it the fear of man to his fellow and all contribute to the enhancement of stress and uncertainty. The principal cause of this dramatic situation in which postmodern man lives is in opposition to God and to his revealed Truth. In the place of God he prefers to spend more energy, to constitute new  and new human institutions, to live in fear and uncertainty, and all without ever to be sure if the truth and the justice were restored. But all these sufferings caused of man by the modern and postmodern thinking, together constitute a real tragedy that a man lives today and is increasing by the day. That is why; today is speaking more to the crisis than the joys,   more the fear than the hope, more than what separates them from people than what's approaching.  The spiritual crisis, the moral crisis, the political crisis, the economic crisis, the crisis of management, the family crisis, the crisis of educational and cultural, the crisis that talks so much today are nothing more than the expressions of tragedy to the postmodern society he lives as a result of her separation from God. For man there is no other solution than turning to Christ because of the Incarnation of the Logos, the destiny of man is bound by his Christ. The coming of Jesus in the world or the Incarnation of the Son of God brings in the world a Law and a Reason, but the reason itself and the law, not a certain conception of life but the supreme conception of life. In Jesus Christ is revealed the measure of all things and of all values in this world. Like He is a center of time, from which to start counting the years from the beginning of the world towards the end of her world, so it's the measure from that report the levels of life attained before or after Him.

Today, the man is in a state of crisis and must to return to his natural state. And the natural state of the man is that which defines him as a true man; the real man is the man of virtue ,the virtuous man, settled in well, proving that strength in opposition to sin and life which sees the presence of Christ through by behavior and attitude. Man's natural state is in the concern for the higher, the spirit,  in the he responsibility to himself and to others, in personal cultivation and affirmation of  the man dignity. Man's natural state is the same with the state of grace and it cannot have it only if are in communion with Jesus Christ, our God and with others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliographical notes

 

 ¹.Pr. Prof. Univ. Dr. Dumitru Radu, Repere morale pentru omul contemporan(Highlights moral for modern man), Editura Mitropolia Olteniei, Craiova, 2007, p.17.

². Ierom. Serafim Rose, Cartea Facerii. Crearea lumii şi omul îceputurilor(Genesis. Creating the world and man îceputurilor), Ed. Sophia, Bucureşti, 2001, p.345.  

³. Pr.Conf.Dr. Vasile Citirigă, Taina omului şi tragedia lui în epoca postmodernă(The mystery man and his tragedy in the postmodern era), în “Ortodoxia”, nr. 3-4, anul LVII (2006), p. 30. 

⁴. Pr. Prof. Univ. Dr. Dumitru Radu, Repere morale pentru omul contemporan(Highlights moral for modern man), Editura Mitropolia Olteniei, Craiova, 2007., p.85.

[1] Pr. Prof. Univ. Dr. Dumitru Radu, Repere morale pentru omul contemporan(Highlights moral for modern man), Editura Mitropolia Olteniei, Craiova, 2007, p.17.

5 Prof. Georgios Mantzaridis, Op. cit., p.154.

6 Ibidem, p. 183.

7 Pr. Prof. Univ. Dr. Dumitru Popescu, Omul fără rădăcini(The man without roots), Editura Nemira, Bucureşti, 2001, p.21.

8 Pr. Nicolae Dascălu, Comunicare pentru comuniune(Communication for communion), Editura Trinitas, Iaşi, 2000, p. 101.

9 Nichifor Crainic, Ortodoxie şi etnocraţie(Orthodoxy and ethnocracy), Ed. Albatros, Bucureşti, 1997, p. 36.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Bădulescu, Pr. Drd. Dan, New Age: o psedo-religie mondială(New Age: a psedo-world religion), în “Studii Teologice”, nr. 1-2, anul LII (2000);

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Crainic, Nichifor, Ortodoxie şi etnocraţie(Orthodoxy and ethnocracy), Editura Albatros, Bucureşti, 1997;

Dascălu, Pr. Nicolae, Comunicare pentru comuniune(Communication for communion), Editura Trinitas, Iaşi, 2000;

Hazard, Prof. Paul, Gândirea europeană a secolului al XVIII-lea(European thought of the eighteenth century), Editura Univers, Bucureşti, 1981;

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Popescu, Pr. Prof. Univ. Dr. Dumitru, Omul fără rădăcini(The man without roots), Editura Nemira, Bucureşti, 2001;

Popescu, Pr. Prof. Univ. Dr. Dumitru, Transfigurare şi secularizare. Misiunea Bisericii într-o lume secularizată(Transfiguration and secularization. The Church's mission in a secularized world), în “Studii Teologice”, nr. 1-3, anul XLVI (1994);

Puric, Dan,  Cine suntem(Who we are), Editura Platytera, Bucureşti, 2008;

Radu, Pr. Prof. Univ. Dr. Dumitru, Repere morale pentru omul contemporan(Highlights moral for modern man), Editura Mitropolia Olteniei, Craiova, 2007;

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Sterea, Pr. Conf. Tache, Secularizarea şi crizele contemporane(Secularization and contemporary crises), în “Studii Teologice”, nr. 1-2, anul LX (2003);

Yannoulatos, Anastasios, Ortodoxia şi problemele lumii contemporane(Orthodoxy and contemporary world problems), Editura Bizantină, Bucureşti, 2003.

 

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