Publishing House Metropolitan of Oltenia, Craiova, 2022
The work presented by Fr. Dr. Romulus Lucian Dodenciu, in a well-structured synthesis, in which he offers us an overview of what represents the notion of “contextual theology” in the space of Christian, Roman Catholic and Protestant confessions and its approach from a missiological point of view in the horizon of orthodox faith, is a rich work as themes and ideas in the landscape of our current missiology.
The work is a good and welcome research and synthetic elaboration in the field of Romanian Orthodox missionary theology, due to the fact that it focuses on the analysis of a field of human manifestation in which the dialogue is central, represented as a painting made of historical elements ordered chronologically, but also as a composite mosaic by sorting and aligning the themes that govern the manifestations of the man aware of his relationship with the sacred. The work is synchronized with the themes of the contemporary space of Orthodox Christian thought and is focused on specifying the relationship between missiology and the interreligious and confessional space.
Also, it brings to the fore the confessing dimension of the faith by deepening the elements of manifestation of the world that, as missionary instruments of preservation, defense and transmission of the teaching of faith, the Orthodox missionary can use as means of confession, defense and sharing of Christ, structurally deepening the phenomenon and the religious event of contextualization as a missionary activity of preaching, the actualization and exaltation of the Son of God.
The main argument that motivates the composition of the present work, starts from the reaffirmation of the theological truth about the permanent work of God in the world expressed through the values of the created creature and defined by the absolute state to which it is called to ascend. This positioning towards empirical thinking gives orthodox missiology novel perspectives of missionary activities. The work is also distinguished by interdisciplinary openness, theology, history, spirituality and interfaith and interreligious missionaryism.