An ascetical perspective on spiritual death in Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov
Archimandrite Sophrony is the contemporary Orthodox ascetic author well-known for his thesis on the unity of ecclesiology, dogma and asceticism. His theology has strong thanatological patterns, as he talks about the signs of spiritual death and how death can be also an ascetical process of receiving the divine Life. This study focuses on his two-folded vision of spiritual death as both a consequence of the Fall (including here the straying away from the Personal God through different forms of Eastern asceticism or through ignorance) and a struggle and ascetic act of growing the real inner self. In his thanatological vision, the Christian life means to know how to die to self, to walk on the narrow way, which leads to Life.
EMIL M. MĂRGINEAN
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