Teopoetica untdelemnului şi tipologia ungerii baptismale în madrāšê-le Sfântului Efrem Sirul

Abstract

St. Ephrem was not a theologian who wrote poems, he was a theopoet. His entire work illustrate his conception that the most adequate `vase` that can receive theological thinking is poetry. His theological conception is embodied in madrāšê, not to seduce, or convince a potential audience but to reveal the mysteries of faith. In a melting pot of liturgic, Christ-oriented poetic sensibility St. Ephrem mixes Biblical typologies with symbolism of nature, only to distill the most profound lines about the embodied Word. The result is a dramatic, and complete mystagogy, defused in his teachings that are still little known. In this paper I will analyze the theopoetics of sacred oil and of baptismal anointment, as it appears in Hymns 4-7 (De virginitate) and in Hymn 3 (De Epiphania). The complexity of this analysis requires a simultaneous examination of all types of baptismal anointment, as they appear in the liturgical traditions of the first centuries of Christianity. The paper will then present, and attempt to define St. Ephrem’s theological method, as it results from the dynamics of his theopoetics in the analyzed texts. By comparing and contrasting St. Ephrem’s method to what is loosely defined as tradition, the paper will highlight his originality and will demonstrate the use of the theopoetic approach to St. Ephrem’s mystagogy.