“Scandalizing and Befuddling Pharisees and Church Zealots”: Nicolae Steinhardt’s Subversive Orthodoxy

Steinhardt’s deepening engagement with Byzantine ascetical and mystical literature during the decade preceding his incarceration provided him with the conceptual framework for interpreting and articulating his mystical encounter with Christ. The result is an account that is theologically traditional despite the originality of its imagery and vocabulary. Theophany—the encounter with Christ—grounds Steinhardt’s conviction that genuine spirituality is authenticated by its ethical trace. As he later states as a monk, in a sui generis “Orthodox Creed” composed in the mid-1980s, the Holy Spirit, playfully serious in “scandalizing and befuddling pharisees, angelists, and church zealots,” engenders an ethos of joy, benevolence, courage, moral intelligence, and civility “in the circumstances of everyday life.” Steinhardt’s witness to theophany, together with his insistence that genuine spirituality is authenticated by its ethical trace, remains as challenging and subversive today as ever. This article was published open access under a CC BY-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/