Chrysostomos Stamoulis is Professor of Dogmatic and Symbolic Theology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and has lectured across Europe, Asia and the United States. He is interested in the relation of Orthodox theology to a range of contemporary issues, and his previous publications include 'What Business has the Fox at the Bazaar? Essays on the Dialogue of Orthodoxy with Politics, Culture and the City (2016), and Love and Death: An Essay on the Incarnation (2019).

Reconciling contrasting philosophical strands to unify aesthetics and philokalia in Orthodox theology.

Translator's Introduction
Author's Preface

Part I. Philokalia or Aesthetics? The 'Dilemma' of Contemporary Orthodoxy
1. Kostas Zouraris: 'What We Call "Philokalia" Is Not the Same as Western Good Taste'
2. Father Alexander Schmemann: 'One Cannot Banish the Senses'
3. Nikos Matsoukas: 'Aesthetics Is a Lasting Victory over Distraction and Fragmentation'

Part II. Orthodoxy's Philokalic Aesthetics: The 'Both Together' of Patristic Teaching
4. 'Supra-Substantial Good': Dionysius the Areopagite and the Church Fathers on the Holy Trinity
5. 'Where Has Your Beauty Gone?': Anthropological Notes on the Beauty Lost by the Fall
6. 'The Heavens Tell of the Glory of God': The Orthodox Doctrine of Creation and the Problem of the Environment

Part III. 'Unutterable Beauty': Examples of a Philokalic Reading of Ecclesial Life
7. Nikos Gabriel Pentzikis: A Walk 'by the Seashore' and the Boundaries of the Church
8. The Elder Sophrony of Essex: The Remembrance of Death and the 'Conflict' with a Passion for Painting
9. The Elder Porphyrios, the Nightingale and the Current Debate on Aesthetics: Parallel Readings of the Elder's Discourses and Theodor W. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory

Afterword: Saints and Poets Perhaps ...

Who's Who
Select Bibliography
Index