Jones, Michael S.

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Liberty UniversityDigitalCommons@LibertyUniversityFaculty Publications and Presentations Department of Philosophy8-2005Review: Petre Ţuțea: Between Sacrifice and Suicide(by Alexandru Popescu)Michael S. JonesLiberty University, msjones2@liberty.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/phil_fac_pubsPart of the Philosophy Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy ofReligion CommonsThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Philosophy at DigitalCommons@Liberty University. It has beenaccepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications and Presentations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Liberty University. For moreinformation, please contact scholarlycommunication@liberty.edu.Recommended CitationJones, Michael S. Book Review of Alexandru Popescu’s Petre Ţuțea: Between Sacrifice and Suicide. Religion in Eastern Europe 25:3,August 2005, 77-79.Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern EuropeVolume 25 | Issue 3 Article 88-2005Popescu's "Petre ÚuÛea: Between Sacrifice andSuicide" - Book ReviewMichael S. JonesJournal for the Study of Religions and IdeologiesFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/reePart of the Religion CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ George Fox University. It has been accepted for inclusion in OccasionalPapers on Religion in Eastern Europe by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ George Fox University.Recommended CitationJones, Michael S. (2005) "Popescu's "Petre ÚuÛea: Between Sacrifice and Suicide" - Book Review," Occasional Papers on Religion inEastern Europe: Vol. 25: Iss. 3, Article 8.Available at: http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol25/iss3/8RELIGION IN EASTERN EUROPE XXV, 3 (August 2005) page 77.mentioned, is of paramount importance for the study of the religious situation in Russia. The book'stwo major merits, I suggest, are the author’s sincere desire to admit the existing diversity inChristianity today, and his acknowledgment of the need for Orthodoxy to engage in cooperation anddialogue with Protestant groups. Unfortunately, few Orthodox in Russia itself share Sergeev’s desire,since the Church in Russia appears to have already chosen the path of “revivalistic” Orthodoxy. It isalso unfortunate that few among the Evangelicals in Russia acknowledge the need for any cooperationand dialogue with the Orthodox. Persecution of Protestants by “revivalistic” Orthodoxy has soembittered  Evangelicals that they can muster no trust of the Orthodox or even desire to take themseriously. Sergeev is right that this situation needs to change, but it is unlikely to do so unlessrevivalistic Orthodoxy gives way to renewal Orthodoxy on Russian soil.Victor ShlenkinPopescu, Alexandru, Petre ÚuÛea: Between Sacrifice and Suicide. (Aldershot, England, and Burlington,VT, USA: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2004) 353 pp. paperback. Reviewed by Michael S.Jones. In many countries of the Soviet bloc, imprisonment of intellectuals who were not sympatheticto Socialist ideology was widespread and even systematic. There are many great intellectual andspiritual figures who are lost to the world because of the political prisons of Soviet-block countries.Great or promising intellectuals entered these “gulags” and disappeared, died, or were broken. Thestories of these lost heroes deserve to be heard. However, Petre ÚuÛea’s is not one of them. Petre ÚuÛea(1902-1991) rose to greatness because of his gulag experience.ÚuÛea was born in 1902 in a rural Romanian village. He studied law in Transylvania, earningmaster’s and doctoral degrees, and also studied in Germany. ÚuÛea read widely, both within andoutside of his areas of specialization. He worked as a government administrator, eventually rising tothe position of Director of the Office of Economic Publications and Propaganda. During WWII heserved as a Director in the Ministry of War Economy.ÚuÛea began publishing articles, many of which were on political subjects, in the mid-1920's.His political views seem to have passed through several stages, and at different points in his life heseems to have sympathized with democratic ideals, Marxist thought, and right-wing nationalism. Hisinterests prior to the installation of communism in Romania in 1948 were primarily in the fields ofeconomics and public policy. It is perhaps his outspokenness in these areas and his positions in thegovernments that proceeded communism that made ÚuÛea a target for "re-education."ÚuÛea was imprisoned in facilities specially designated for the “re-education” (brainwashing)of political prisoners, including the prisons at Ocnele Mari and Aiud. His time in prison encompassed1948 through 1953 and again from 1956 through 1964. Prison life entailed living with very little food,scarce access to other necessities, and sometimes forced labor. Re-education involved enduring severephysical and psychological abuse in addition to ideological indoctrination. The goal of re-educationwas conversion of the prisoners to the secular communist world-view. Converts were promoted fromtorture victim to torturer.A man of education and culture, ÚuÛea enjoyed a certain amount of prestige and prosperitythrough his administrative career. The loss of these, the potentially devastating change in his personalcircumstances, and the disappointment in the direction taken by his country could have crushed hisspirit. Add to this the systematic brutality of a prison system designed intentionally to break the humanspirit, and it would be easy to understand if ÚuÛea had lost his sanity or abandoned his beliefs. Hisresponse was just the opposite: loss and imprisonment drove ÚuÛea to profound, sustaining spirituality,and a philosophy based thereon.ÚuÛea’s philosophy is a synthesis of science, culture, theology, and philosophy. It isremarkably religious considering the fact that his background is in economics and government. Hisphilosophy could perhaps be described as a Romanian Orthodox philosophical anthropology. Hesucceeds in using basically secular terminology and a wide array of intellectual sources to expressRELIGION IN EASTERN EUROPE XXV, 3 (August 2005) page 78.Christian convictions. In reaction to, or in distinction from, the philosophy of his communist/socialistoppressors, which devalued humans and humanity and exalted the state, ÚuÛea believed that Christ’slove gives value to all people. Christ views each person as an end in his or her self, not merely asmeans to be exploited for the benefit of the collective.According to ÚuÛea, human enterprises such as art, science, technology, and philosophy aremerely means to greater humanitarian and doxological ends. However, this does not result in ÚuÛea’sphilosophy having a pessimistic tone: on the contrary, his philosophy is very optimistic. This is a resultof the theology implicit in ÚuÛea’s philosophy: ÚuÛea believes both that it is possible for a person tosuccessfully follow God, and that God is actively involved in human history. This optimism wasvirtually a necessity in ÚuÛea’s life: without it he would not have survived his imprisonmentexperiences. This fact testifies to the potency of his philosophy: it has been tried by fire and haswithstood the test.Christ’s life and message provide the paradigm for successful human life. Imitation of Christis the way to maximize one’s earthly life; love for God and love for others is the result of this imitation,which benefit both self and others. The anxiety that each human experiences can best be resolved by ahumble seeking after God, which directs human energies into paths that result in ultimate, lasting joy.However, ÚuÛea is clear that unaided human seeking and human creativity cannot reach God; onlythrough God’s grace can humans succeed in fulfilling their religious and non-religious potential.This raises the question of the proper place of reason according to ÚuÛea’s philosophy.According to ÚuÛea, true religion is revealed religion. More precisely, true revealed religion is Christ.All other religion, including much or all (I’m not sure which of these is more correct) of Christianity, ismere human activity. Truth cannot be reached via pure analytic reason. The mind must be brought intoparity with the heart and the body. This does not mean that reason must be abased, but rather that itsanalytic faculty must cease to be “judgmental” of the input of heart and body. Intellectual activity isvalued, but so are emotional, aesthetic, ethical, and religious intuitions. Pure rationalism is sterile;philosophically, an alternative such as Romanticism would be preferable, while theologically, analternative like mysticism is preferred.It has already been stated that ÚuÛea’s philosophy opposes communist/socialist philosophy.ÚuÛea believed that pride was the original sin, and that humanism is the prevalent contemporary versionof this sin. Humanism, however, wears other guises in addition to communism. In addition to opposingMarxist communism, ÚuÛea also opposed materialist capitalism and the philosophies of eliminativematerialism and Darwinian (non-theistic) evolution. He criticizes secular existentialism, which waspopular among some of his Romanian philosophical contemporaries (eg. Cioran), as lacking space forholiness and heroism. Similarly, he offers an alternative to the bifurcation of Neo-Kantian philosophy,another influential movement among some of ÚuÛea’s Romanian contemporaries (eg. Blaga), andargues for a “correspondence between sensory taste, spiritual discernment, intellectual joy, onticmystery, vocational activity, scientific curiosity, and social identity." (261). He provides critiques of awide range of philosophical movements, including both determinism and indeterminism, chaos theory,aporetic philosophy, and eleatic philosophy. The alternative he suggests to these is a philosophy of“nuance” that sees in the logic of nature a universal rational order that mirrors divine reason andharmony, yet without providing access thereto. The resulting philosophy heightens the unpredictabilityof existence for humans but also provides a basis for human emotional comfort and assurance.Despite ÚuÛea’s philosophical interests and vocabulary, at its heart his philosophy is a wide-ranging application of the Orthodox interpretation of Christianity. Popescu writes, “ÚuÛea presents adeeply traditional Orthodoxy in an often disconcertingly secular, interdisciplinary guise."(261). ThisOrthodoxy of ÚuÛea’s philosophy is clearly seen in the almost mystical aspects of his philosophy ofreligion, in his insistence on the necessity of revelation, in the sacramentalism of his soteriology, and inhis emphasis on the importance of community. ÚuÛea taught that since Christian truth is love, this truthcan only be experienced in community. This led him to stay engaged with his fellow prisoners and alsowith those who imprisoned them. His Orthodoxy is also reflected in the proclamatory rather thananalytic style of his philosophy, and in his ability to show forgiveness towards his torturers. ÚuÛea’sRELIGION IN EASTERN EUROPE XXV, 3 (August 2005) page 79.philosophy, bound up in his Christian faith, enabled him to minister both to his fellow inmates and tothose who were charged with keeping and re-educating them. In summation, perhaps it could be said that two basic features distinguish ÚuÛea’s philosophy.The first of these is his unique utilization of philosophy and broad cultural learning to compose a wide-ranging Orthodox Christian philosophy. The second is his consistent practice of this philosophy evenunder the most difficult circumstances.The author of this book, Alexandru Popescu, is a Bucharest psychologist and an Oxfordtheologian. He came to know ÚuÛea when he was a first-year medical student assigned to the floor ofthe Bucharest hospital on which ÚuÛea was being treated in 1980. Popescu was drawn to ÚuÛea’sphilosophical preaching, and although it was risky, he continued his relationship with ÚuÛea for twelveyears, eventually finding his own Christian faith under ÚuÛea’s tutelage.Systematically describing ÚuÛea’s philosophy is a difficult task. This is because ÚuÛea’sdisavowed systemization, partly as a reaction against the over-systemization of communist ideology,and partly because of ÚuÛea’s philosophical position that reality transcends the limits of humanrationality and therefore is not susceptible to human systemization. Popescu’s presentation of ÚuÛea’sphilosophy is stylistically analytical but at the same time strangely vague on this account. Popescu doesnot argue for, nor present ÚuÛea’s arguments for, ÚuÛea’s philosophy. ÚuÛea himself refrained fromarguing for his beliefs, presenting them exhortingly rather than argumentatively. Popescu’s descriptionof ÚuÛea’s prison experiences is also vague, purportedly because ÚuÛea preferred not to talk aboutthem.The book itself is nicely laid out, with a map of Romania in the front, a seven-pagechronological table comparing ÚuÛea’s life with other important events in Romanian history, the usualforwards and prefaces, et al., a series of plates located in the center of the book, brief appendices onRomanian history and the Hesychast movement in Romania, a detailed bibliography, and an index.Although the book is paperback, the binding seems very durable. The back cover of the book containsglowing endorsements from such notable figures as Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, andMichael Bourdeaux, founder of the Keston Institute at Oxford. The style is that of an intellectualbiography, although it proceeds somewhat slowly because of the esoteric nature of ÚuÛea’s philosophyand experience. That Popescu has thoroughly researched his subject is clearly reflected in thenumerous footnotes.Petre ÚuÛea: Between Sacrifice and Suicide is not a book for the casual reader. It is, however,a well-written book. At times it gets a little bogged down in detail and analysis; at other times it leavesone asking for more specifics. All in all, though, it is a good treatment of someone who appears to be adifficult but interesting philosopher. This book will be of particular interest to those who are interestedin Christian resistance to the communist oppression of religion in Eastern Europe, and also to thosewho are interested in religious perseverance in general. Although it is not a systematic philosophy, itwill certainly be of interest to those who are interested in the development of an Eastern Orthodoxphilosophy. It is also of great interest to those who, like myself, have an interest in Romania.Michael S. Jones, editor, Journal for the Study of Religions and IdeologiesKlaus Buchenau. Orthodoxie und Katholicismus in Jugoslawien 1945-1991: Ein serbisch-kroatischerVergleich.. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004. 484pp. Bibliography, Abbreviations,Index of persons. Euros 98.00, hardbound. Reviewed by Paul Mojzes.Usually comparisons between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church amongCroats tend to be rather biased affairs, very much at the expense of one of those churches.  More oftenthan not the Serbs and their church fare worse.  Klaus Buchenau’s book, fortunately does not belong inthis category.  Despite the fact that the author deliberately undertook a comparative study of the twochurches and their roots in their respective societies he succeeded in maintaining a praiseworthyscholarly objectivity, shedding light rather than additional heat on a generally conflictual relationship

Review: Petre Ţuțea: Between Sacrifice and Suicide (by Alexandru Popescu)

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