Dumitru Bortun was born in 1951. As he entered college life, a deep interest in philosophy and questions related to that field gripped him and became a compelling part of his life and work. His college and graduate studies zeroed in on philosophy at the University of Bucharest, from where he received his PhD in 1999. Since 1996, he has taught semiotics and analysis of public discourse at the National School of Political and Administrative Studies in Bucharest. In addition, he teaches visual semiotics at the Bucharest National University of Arts. He is also an associate professor at Adventus University Cernica, the higher-education institution of the Romanian Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Bortun is a founding member of the Romanian Association for Public Relations and served as its president from 2005 to 2008. Currently, he is the president of its Council of Honors.

From 1993 to 1996, Bortun worked as an expert in political analysis, which led to his being asked to advise the president of Romania on relations with several organizations of civil society. In 2015, Legal Point Journal declared him Personality of the Year for “promoting moral values in methods of communication.” In 2021, the president of Romania awarded him the “National Order for Cultural Merit.”

Bortun is an appreciated public speaker and a sought-after commentator on current affairs from a public-relations and communication perspective. He has published more than 160 research papers, essays, articles, and interviews in various publications, and has authored and/or edited five books. He serves in the editorial team of several scientific journals and is a reviewer for peer-reviewed publications.

Bortun is married to Corina Matei (PhD, University of Bucharest, 2004) an associate professor at Titu Maiorescu University, Bucharest, teaching critical thinking and research methods in social sciences. The Bortuns are frequent guests at Speranta TV (Hope Channel Romania) and are regular contributors to the Romanian Signs of the Times. The couple are active in the life of their local church and are popular guest speakers for youth and young-adult conventions.

You grew up and went to school when atheism was national policy in Romania. Did you have any spiritual or religious influences?

Very little, and those were weak and occasional, and had no significant impact on my spiritual orientation. I have memories of an Orthodox icon in the room of my maternal grandmother, which I looked at it with a kind of mystical awe. There were Christmas and Easter traditions, laced with childish joys, festive family dinners, and occasional visits to the cathedral. My grandmother often took me and my siblings for the Communion, especially before Easter. I remember that mix of intelligible and non-intelligible messages, the half-light created by the flickering light of the candles, smoke, and incense. Religious education was non-existent—not so much because it was prohibited by the regime, but because my parents were atheists. The silver lining was that I grew up free of religious hypocrisy. I came to read the Pentateuch, the Gospels, and the Book of Revelation when I was in college, and even then, I was seeing them simply as cultural artefacts; I was aware of their historical value, but nothing more.

Surprisingly, I had good relations with several Adventist high school classmates. Most of them were from villages around my city; those villages were real Adventist strongholds in that southern section of Romania. Those Adventists were meek, hardworking, and very gifted in music. Almost every one of them played one or more instruments. Being tone deaf, I held them in high admiration. I asked them to create a school orchestra, to which they agreed after much insistence and after being assured that the music selection would match their moral standards. We gave several concerts, most of which were for the students in our city. I was responsible for all arrangements. Only later did I realize God’s humor in His workings: a tone-deaf person managing an orchestra, an atheist leading a band of Adventists! Probably God wanted me to get acquainted with these wonderful people, His special children.

What did God do to penetrate this wall of atheism and materialism?

I love this question because there was a wall indeed, and one very difficult to demolish or even penetrate. Worldviews become part of our identity to the point of making them resistant to arguments and facts. We become defensive when our ideas or beliefs are challenged. For this reason, a personal experience is usually the best way to move the wall you mentioned.

And I did have such an experience. I was about 10, home alone and walking aimlessly in our backyard, when I heard a voice—unknown, yet still familiar—calling me by my nickname. The voice came as it were from above the trees in the far end of the yard and called me twice—I needed to hear it again to be sure I heard well. Of course, nobody was up there in those trees.

Two years later I heard again that voice. Since then, I have lived with a premonition that “Someone up there loves me,” an echo from a movie I had seen, Somebody Up There Likes Me. Now, as I know a little more about the ways of divine pedagogy, I am convinced God was already guiding me. He protected me from bad choices and, when I did err, He helped me admit my errors and learn from them. I think I was privileged to be among those about whom Paul writes: those “who show the work of the law written in their hearts” (Romans 2:15. NKJV).* It is difficult to understand how it was possible to have in my conscience this intuition of a protective Being “up there” coexisting with an atheistic worldview, but this is how I lived for a long time.

How did God reveal Himself to you as your Savior?

You see, all secular culture in modern Romania was rooted in the Enlightenment. This paradigm was the foundation of the educational reform (early 20th century), an effort to emulate the education model of the advanced nations in Western Europe. My mother was trained at the very epicenter of that movement, and she totally embraced it, from her worldview to her personal mission, to contribute to the “intellectual emancipation of the people.” With or without Communism, I had no choice but to be shaped by the same mold—enlightenment at school, enlightenment at home.

My spiritual conversion was a long process, a yearslong deconstruction of my illuminist worldview, a gradual erosion of that hubris of modern science: to know the world per se, with no need or even place for divinity, to idolize the ability of the human mind to understand the whole world and to transform nature according to its ideas, to consider human beings as the highest expression of matter—first, as the supreme product of evolution in the material world, then as the creator of civilization.

As a student of philosophy, I realized that life cannot be the creation of chance, human reason is not all-powerful, rational knowledge has inherent limits, and no social or economic scheme can radically change human nature, which remains “‘desperately wicked’” (Jeremiah 17:9, NKJV). The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe showed me that, any political system is doomed to fail if it rejects the biblical teaching that all humankind is fallen.

So, my road to conversion was prepared through a long intellectual process of distancing from the ideas inculcated in me since my childhood and buttressed by education. However, it was my wife Corina—whom I did not meet until I was already 58—who was used by God to develop in me true faith. I was intrigued by her gift—to blend reasoning and believing, to engage the mind and the heart, and to both develop sound arguments and manifest a strong faith. Love responds to love, and faith begets faith, as God draws us “‘with gentle cords, with bands of love’” (Hosea 11:4, NIRV).

In the end, every conversion is a miracle. We can leave it as such, in the realm of mystery. I think we have to get acquainted with accepting the presence of miracles in our lives and to experience their joy.

In what way has your conversion and your understanding of God come out in your teaching?

In my classes I introduce biblical content—typically from the parables of Jesus, or from the Psalms and the Proverbs. I try to avoid being ostentatious, as I don’t want to transform the classroom into a place for religious propaganda. I don’t think it is appropriate or useful to take advantage of my captive audience and to press my personal convictions on them. I am very fond of the Truth, but I think it has to be presented in the right manner, at the right time, to the right audience, with the right means. To paraphrase St. Francis of Assisi, If really needed, we can also use words for that.

You are often invited by television channels to comment on public events. How does your faith emerge when you do that?

It’s an interesting question. Sometimes, being in a television studio, I return to my old paradigm, as if humankind is able to build that better world here. My alarm system is my wife, as she says: “Be careful, it sounds as if your old man speaks again!” In general, I affirm my belief in God’s justice, I include biblical references, and promote the power of faith to reform individuals and communities. Just because we know from prophecy that in the end, humankind will take the wrong side doesn’t free us from the responsibility to promote now what is good and to direct people to the Source.

Is your knowledge and experience in public communication appreciated and utilized by the church?

Yes, I see in the church a real interest to improve communication. The Adventist Church in Romania reaps the results of investing much in its human resources. We have several platforms that are very much appreciated in society at large, such as Speranta TV (Hope Channel Romania) and the Romanian Signs of the Times. I am consulted by leaders and pastors, and I am glad to help them to develop a proactive communication style and skills.

In prophecy, the church is described as a universal communicator (Revelation 14:6). How can we reach such an exceptional communication capacity?

I watch the way God prepares the conditions to accomplish the last proclamation of His Good News. Globalization, the shrinking of space and the expansion of time, and communication technologies pave the way. I also watch the way God prepares His church, and I want to be part of God’s final invitation of grace.

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* Scripture references in this profile credited to NKJV are quoted from the New King James Version of the Bible. Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture references credited to NIRV are quoted from the New International Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1995, 1996, 1998, 2014 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

(MA, Andrews University, Michigan, U.S.A.), now retired, served as a pastor and church administrator in Romania for more than 40 years. E-mail: [email protected]. Professor Bortun can be contacted at [email protected]

Recommended Citation

Interview by Adrian Bocaneanu, "DUMITRU BORTUN A dialogue with a Romanian professor of semiotics," Dialogue 35:1 (2023): 28-30