Volume 12 (2020): Issue 3 (December 2020)

Most if not all of André Scrima’s texts are responses to di!erent requests: academic or spiritual, public or private. Many of them issued from his speeches that di!erent interlocutors or auditors recorded and transcribed. He even confessed that he never produced a text as an “author” who autonomously deals with a subject. His creativity turned into discourse only in relationship with the other, solicited by the other, in front of the other. What function or meaning did André Scrima attribute to his orality, which incidentally he never failed to mention in the published version of his texts? “Event of speech” arising from profound meditation on spiritual matters? Detachment of a spiritual traveller from the position of “author” and its production? Model of sharing the spiritual knowledge? Perhaps a model of tradition? My paper tries to analyse these possibilities.

This article investigates two fundamental dimensions of André Scrima’s anthropology: his emphasis on the incomprehensibility of the human being, and his interest for the mystical life in spiritual experience. The author intertwines these aspects in a range of topics with the aim of approaching the nature of the human being, such as the access to God as presence, the deification or transfiguration of the human being, and the iconic character of human existence. I analyze the use of such terms like “participation” and “mixture,” as well as the imagery that depicts the union of the human and the divine. Finally, I underline the spiritual importance of the nomad as figure and hospitality as virtue, and interpret them in terms of human itinerancy and God’s mystical dwelling in the human person.

Father André Scrima emphasized in his works the unanimous and universal duty of discovering the necessity of otherness or alterity as the exigency of our own path to God. He often spoke of the encounter and “askesis of the dialogue” that consists of the effort to open completely and without reserve to the other. From this point of view, we could consider André Scrima the visionary who intermediates the unveiling and the Revelation that, regardless of confession and religion, every human being has the chance to develop an authentic relationship with the divinity. Also, he advocates an indispensable condition or the most basic ethical argument required to get closer to God, namely recognizing the universal quality of all humankind as equally capable to be vessels of God’s grace, and hence they should be appreciated as such.

Little is known about the meeting which took place between Martin Heidegger and André Scrima. Aside from unfolding within the master-disciple framework, it is a witness above all of a fruitful dialogue between western philosophy and eastern theology about a common concern: the desert as the unfolding of our being in the world. It is this concern, the guiding light in fact for this article, which will develop here in several stages: First, by unravelling the hostile meanings of the word “desert.” Second, by using it as a reading key to explore the foundations of contemporary civilization and especially by analysing it as a concept for a new topography of Being. The final stage will tackle the foundational link which unites the desert and monastic life. It is this connection which will finally allow us to understand how the love of God, which pushes the monk into the desert, can be so decisive for a new understanding of Being.

The article examines Father Scrima’s concepts and ideas from published works after 1990 and manuscripts between 1960 and 1980. In these texts, he probes the relationship between mediated and immediate knowledge from a spiritual point of view. The theology of Spirit that Father Scrima develops points towards a liturgical understanding of the world in which mediation finds its meaning and value.

A unique Figure in the Orthodox Church, André Scrima was a bridge-personality among Christians and between Christianity and other religions. In his early works, bearing witness to a “spiritual inheritance” and a “blessing of grace” that he had personally received, he stressed the inner dimension of Eastern Christianity represented by Hesychastic spirituality – a perennial divine inspiration manifested across history. But both as a spiritual figure and a professor of comparative religion, he oriented his reflection toward considering the religious plurality of the world from a Christian perspective. Searching for the “lieu théologal” of hospitality for others’ spiritualities became one of the main purposes of Scrima’s reflections which occasionally dealt in a sympathetic as well as critical manner with Traditionalism. This paper aims to highlight the interest raised by an Orthodox reflection on the so-called “esoteric” side of his Tradition which leads to a hermeneutic of religious diversity.

The Romanian Archimandrite Andrei Scrima was an important worldwide theological personality. His activity as a kind of ambassador of the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras to the Second Vatican Council, together with his publications, conferences and activity as a professor, transformed him into a voice that was almost always trusted. His attitudes and speeches that criticized the Romanian Communist regime made him also to be seen as an enemy by Bucharest’s government. In this context, the Securitate was interested in his ecumenical activity and in his ideas regarding the ecumenism and the potential role of the Romanian Orthodox Church there, trying also to see if his theological ideas were related to the political world and contained criticisms of the dictatorial regime or its relationship with the Church. In this paper, we will describe how his ecumenical activity is described in the Securitate Archives. Due to the fact that file no. 00005468 contains the most important information regarding this topic, the main references cited in the paper are extracted from this source.

The complex and often puzzling personality of Father André Scrima was misapprehended for a long time. This article discusses the reasons for such a misapprehension and others some possible explanations for his paradoxical behaviour. An overview of the reception of Father Scrima’s life and works shows a dynamic at work that can only generate optimism. His participation in the Burning Bush group at the Antim monastery in Bucharest was one of the most important formative experiences, where a wide cultural and scientific perspective was fused with an in-depth religious experience. Father Scrima may be better understood if we consider him the #rst of a new kind of fools for Christ, a kind that is well-equipped to face the challenges of tomorrow.