The Eastern Church as a multi-media performative theater prepared Eliade to apprehend religion as inducing perceptions of the “really real”-creative poesis exercising a practical influence on its audience’s cognitions. Theology in the form of categorical propositions is present in the Eastern Church but exists alongside other equally important expressions in the visual, dramatic, and narrative arts. It is suggested that Eliade gained insight from Orthodoxy, but that this was brought to consciousness by his sojourn in India. However, dissonances are also noted, and for every potential Orthodox source of Eliade’s theories there is another equally credible source, causing a controversy over the formative influences of his Romanian youth as opposed to his later Indian experience. Ten consonances between Eliade’s thought and Orthodox theology are considered.

Orthodox theologians Vladimir Lossky and Dumitru Stăniloae are inspected for similarities to Eliade. His early essays present Orthodoxy as a mystical religion in which, without some experience of the sacred, profane existence is seen as meaningless and he later identified this same basic schema in all religion.

His biography and his understanding of religion are outlined and the possibly formative influence of Eastern Orthodoxy is considered, as are recent publications on the issue. The concept of coincidentia oppositorum, the understanding of the sacrality of our time, in different religions, and the new language for discussing with people of different faiths are the main preoccupations of the ecumenical movement. In ecumenical discussions, the link between research in both these fields is so important. This new interpretation of both scholars was an opportunity to link the research in the theology with that in the history of religions, an important motive for our time. In our time, many critics contest his influence in this field and criticize him for the fact that he relativizes Christianity. On the other hand, Eliade was considered an important scholar in the field of history of religions. However, a new evaluation of this theological movement is necessary because we need to understand its possible impact on the renewal of Christianity.

On the one hand,“Death of God” theology was in vogue in the United States in the 1960s, but today has few adherents.

The problem lies in determining whether or not these points of contact are simply two different ways of understanding the same concepts. In these discussions between Mircea Eliade and Thomas Altizer we can recognise two important things: there are some points of contact between these two thinkers and some differences.

Fantastic Tales by Mircea Eliade