Of the late Greek theologian Chrysostomos Stamoulis

Orthodox theologian, university professor, and musician Chrysostomos Stamoulis passed into the Lord's keeping in mid-August 2025. I'd not heard of him until I read a tribute by the World Council of Churches, which led to further research. I really like Dr. Stamoulis's ideas. So, here's a place to put what I know about him and his work.

“The aesthetic theology of Professor Chrysostomos Stamoulis is a holistic one. For him, the distinction between the holy and the unholy, the sacred and the profane, is false. Music, poetry, theatre, film, the novel, philosophy, and science are not ‘secular’ endeavors, but attempts to give significance to the world and especially to its most critical questions about love, life, and death. The rejection of the distinction between holy and unholy applies equally to the distinction between the familiar and the strange. The stranger should be a part of my own life. He invites me to dialogue, he challenges me and he is the chance for an authentic self-knowledge. Christ is the supreme criterion for judging the ecclesiastical life. The members of the Church, in order to be authentic, must follow Christ’s paradigm. They must be open to the unfamiliar, to the wholly different one. But He is also the assumption of concrete man and reality. As a consequence, the Christian must embrace real life, as it is, without nostalgic flight towards an idealized historical past. Professing a living theology, Stamoulis urges us not to lose the beauty of the present by overloading it with the chimerical beauties of the past, or indeed of the future. His thinking is, in its way, a theological version of Carpe diem.”

Bibliography

• Texts on the diologue of Orthodoxy with the city, politics and culture publishes by Armos, Athens 2016.
• Love and sexuality. Interdisciplinary narrative, from antiquity to the present day, from microorganisms to humans (ed.), Armos Publishing House, Athens 2014.
• Test for a culture of incarnation published by Akritas, Athens 2009.
• Lot's wife and modern theology published by Indictos, Athens 2008 and Armos 2014.
• The saint is beautiful. Probers in the hospitable aesthetics of Orthodoxy. Akristas, Athens 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010.
• About light. Personal or physical energies? Contributions to the modern problematic Holy Trinity in the Orthodox space, published by "To Palimpsiston", Thessaloniki 1999, 2007.
• Theotokos and orthodox dogma. Study in the teaching of Saint Cyril of Alexandris, published by "To Palimpsiston", Thessaloniki 1999, 2003.
• Holy Beauty: Prolegomena to an Orthodox Philocalic Aesthetics. James Clarc. London, 2022.
• Broken Bridges: An Introduction to Orthodox Fundamentalism. Sebastian Press. Alhambra, California. 2021.
• We got run over: Essays on Orthodoxy's self-entrapment. Athens 2021.
• What the Fox seeking in the Fair? Essays on the Dilogues of Orthodoxy with Politics, Culture, and the City Athens 2016.
• As if I were a Stranger and a Wanderer, or Incarnation: the Migration of Love. Athens 2011.
• Love and Death: An Essay on the Incarnation. Athens 2009.
• Lot's Wife and 20th Century Theology. Athens 2008.
• Sacred Beauty: An Introduction to the Philocalic Aesthetics of Orthodoxy. Athens 2004, 2005, 2008.

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