Petre Tutea (1902-91) was one of the outstanding Christian dissident intellectuals of the Communist era in Eastern Europe. Revered as a saint by some, he spent thirteen years as a prisoner of conscience and twenty-eight years under house arrest at the hands of the Securitate. This book explores his unique response to the horrors of torture and 're-education' and reveals the experience of a whole generation detained in the political prisons. Tutea’s understanding of human needs and how they can be fulfilled even amidst extreme adversity not only reflects huge learning and great brilliance of mind, but also offers a spiritual vision grounded in personal experience of the Romanian Gulag. Following the fall of the Ceausescus, he has begun to emerge as a significant contributor to ecumenical Christian discourse and to understanding of wider issues of truth and reconciliation in the contemporary world.
As Tutea's pupil and scribe for twelve years, as a psychiatrist, and as a theologian, Alexandru Popescu is uniquely placed to present the work of this twentieth-century Confessor of the faith. Drawing on bibliographical sources which include unpublished or censored manuscripts and personal conversations with Tutea and with other prisoners of conscience in Romania, Popescu presents extensive translations of Tutea, which make his thought accessible to the English-speaking reader for the first time.
Through his stature as a human being and his authority as a thinker, Petre Tutea challenges us to question many of our assumptions. The choice he presents between ‘sacrifice’ and ‘moral suicide’ focuses us on the very essence of religion and human personhood. Resisting any ultimate separation of theology and spirituality, his work affirms hope and love as the sole ground upon which truth can be based. At the same time, hope and love are not mere ideal emotions, but are known and lived in engagement with the real world - in politics, economics, science, ecology, and the arts, and in participation in the Divine Liturgy that is at once the traditional offering of the Church and the cosmic drama of the incarnate Word.
Reviews: 'It is splendid that this work is being published. It presents an enormous contribution to East-West understanding: the Romanian perspective has a specially important part to play. A very admirable work.' Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
'This remarkable study of the philosopher Petre Tutea describes matters fundamental to Eastern Orthodox theology through the medium of an enthralling (often appalling) story of a man’s resistance to totalitarian brutality and oppression. Tutea found that the renewal of his Christian faith saved his identity, even as dark forces were attempting to rob it from him. Never has there been a more pressing need to find a capacious and religiously grounded philosophy of freedom for an emerging ‘new europe’ squeezed between the Scylla of redundant totalitarianisms in the East, and the equally oppressive Charybdis of the global consumerisms of the West. Alex Popescu leads the reader through harrowing pages, to an underlying sense that Orthodoxy, a message re-pristinated in Tutea, speaks to the human soul in its existential needs, by constantly offering the challenge to rise into freedom; to become the divinely graced self'.' Revd Dr John A. McGuckin, Professor of Early Church History, Union Theological Seminary, and Professor of Byzantine Christianity, Columbia University, USA
'Tutea ranks alongside Bonhoeffer in articulating the philosophy of Christian endurance. I have cherished the hope that an English publisher may publish this work.' Oliver O'Donovan, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, Christ Church, Oxford
'A truly epoch-making book. I don't recollect ever having recommended a book more strongly for publication. Popescu puts the Romanian Orthodox Church centre stage and brings an element into focus which is hardly known to anyone outside his own country. Tutea is a figure of seminal importance, and one of the great figures of the universal Church of the twentieth century. This book provides a perspective on the history of the traumatic Ceausescu years. Popescu and Tutea between them give a philosophical and Christian basis for placing the disaster of Communism in its proper perspective and offer pointers to the future.'
Michael Bourdeaux, Founder of Keston Institute, Oxford
'This pioneering work in a new interdisciplinary field - the psychology of religion - is of profound importance, not only to those concerned with Eastern European Orthodoxy during the late twentieth century, but to a much wider public who are interested in the relationship between theology, psychology of religion, and the political sciences.'
Kallistos Ware, Spalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies, Oxford
'This work on Tutea has opened my eyes to important aspects of recent church history, particularly the revival of an ascetic theology in the Orthodox tradition which informs an understanding of society. This book presents a real contribution to the history of theology and reflects Popescu’s intellectual ability both as a theologian and as a psychiatrist.' Christopher Rowland, Dean Ireland's Professor of Holy Scripture, Queen's College, Oxford
'Popescu offers a comprehensive understanding and a thorough mastery of Tutea's writings, as well as of the context - political, philosophical, and personal - of their production. This excellent account of many of Tutea's most important preoccupations (his theological anthropology and his understanding of spirituality, his critiques of Soviet-style political life, his experiences as a political prisoner, and his metaphysics of differentiation and understanding of creation) will serve as a bench-mark for future interpretation. The author's unique knowledge of Tutea has been put to very good use.' John Webster, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Christ Church, Oxford
'Even the cover tells you that there is something exceptional about this book... In this book we have the first major presentation of the work of Petre Tutea, one of the outstanding representatives of the Romanian Orthodox tradition during the twentieth century. For the first time his work is made available to the world outside his native country. From the start Dr Alexandru Popescu is to be congratulated for the way he has undertaken this pioneering task, bringing his readers into new and largely unexplored territory. Only as we read the book do we understand how much there is to discover.' Fairacres Chronicle
'This is a praiseworthy book about one of the most significant characters of the Romanian intelligentsia in the 20th century. Popescu's prose is clear and his references to the Romanian sources are entirely reliable... For all the students of modern theology and Easters European studies, this book will prove to be an important stimulus.' The Heythrop Journal
'... profound and moving...' Times Literary Supplement
'... an important and timely book...' Appraisal
'Tutea emerges from Popescu's account as a figure of significance and an attractive personality. One hopes that Popescu will soon find an opportunity to return to Tutea, for it is clear that we have much to learn from them both.' Reviews in Religion and Theology
'It is an outstanding account of the life, thought, and witness of one whom Fr Staniloae called 'the most authentic Orthodox thinker in Romania'... deserves to be widely read.' Church Times
‘A short review cannot do justice to this seminal work on Eastern European Orthodox thought in general and Romanian Orthodox thought in particular. Popescu concludes his most competent, comprehensive work (which draws upon much original research available for the first time to English-language readers) with a coda remarking that theologians in Western nations, who did not have to 'endure the experience of totalitarianism' and are mired in an 'ideology of consumerism' can only benefit from the 'crucial lessons' spiritual writers such as Petre Tutea have to offer. This reviewer wholeheartedly agrees.’ Anglican Theological Review