"... Theology is the fruit of man's therapy and the path which leads to therapy and the acquisition of the knowledge of God."

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[i]... Spiritual is the man who has the energy of the Holy Spirit within. Whereas the man of the soul is he who has body and soul but has not acquired the Holy Spirit, which gives life to the soul. "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man" (1 Cor. 2, 14-15).

. . .

The Holy Apostles were "healed" first, and then received the Revelation. And they transmitted this Revelation to their spiritual children not only by teaching them but primarily by mystically effecting their spiritual rebirth.

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. . . Theology is the fruit of man's therapy and the path which leads to therapy and the acquisition of the knowledge of God.

Western theology however has differentiated itself from Eastern Orthodox theology. Instead of being therapeutic, it is more intellectual and emotional in character. In the West, Scholastic theology evolved, which is antithetical to the Orthodox tradition. Western theology is based on rational thought whereas Orthodoxy is hesychastic. Scholastic theology tried to understand logically the Revelation of God and conform to philosophical methodology. Characteristic of such an approach is the saying of Anselm of Canterbury: "I believe so as to understand". The Scholastics acknowledged God at the outset and then endeavoured to prove His existence by logical arguments and rational categories. In the Orthodox Church, as expressed by the Holy Fathers, faith is God revealing Himself to man. We accept faith by hearing it not so that we can understand it rationally, but so that we can cleanse our hearts, attain to faith by "theoria" and experience the Revelation of God.

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. . .A fundamental teaching of the Holy Fathers is that the Church is a "Hospital" which cures the wounded man. In many passages of Holy Scripture such language is used. One such passage is that of the parable of the Good Samaritan. "But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee" (Luk. 10, 33-35).

In this parable, the Samaritan represents Christ who cured the wounded man and led him to the Inn, that is to the "Hospital" which is the Church. It is evident here that Christ is presented as the Healer, the physician who cures man's maladies; and the Church as the true Hospital.

It is very characteristic that Saint Chrysostom, analysing this parable presents these truths emphasized above.

In the interpretation of this parable by St. Chrysostom it is clearly shown that the Church is a Hospital which cures people wounded by sin; and the bishops-priests are the therapists of the people of God.

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Originally posted by MephEternal

Just interested. What does Orthodoxy generally have to say about other religions or spiritual belief systems?

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"...the Church exists for the sanctification of all life and the salvation of man."

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St. Justin the Martyr, in his second apology addressed the Roman Senate said:2

For whatever either lawgivers or philosophers uttered well, they elaborated by finding and contemplating some part of the Word (ëïãïò ). But since they did not know the whole of the Word, which is Christ, they often contradicted themselves. . . . And Socrates, who was more zealous in this direction than all of them, was accused of the very same crimes as ourselves. For they said he was introducing new divinities, [and did not consider those to be gods whom the state recognized. But he cast out from the state both Homer and the rest of the poets, and taught men to reject the wicked demons and those who did the things which the poets related; and he exhorted them to become acquainted with the God who was to them unknown, by means of the investigation of the reason, saying, “That it is neither easy to find the Father and Maker of all, nor, having found Him, is it safe (possible) to declare Him to all.”3 But these things our Christ did through His own power.]

For no one trusted in Socrates so as to die for this doctrine, but in Christ, who was partially known even by Socrates (for He was and is the Word who is in every man, [and who foretold the things that were to come to pass both through the prophets and in His own person when He was made of like passions, and taught these things), not only philosophers and scholars believed, but also artisans and people entirely uneducated, despising both glory, and fear, and death; since He is a power of the ineffable Father, and not the mere instrument of human reason (ANF1:191-2). ]

I confess that I both boast and with all my strength strive to be found a Christian; not because the teachings of Plato are different from those of Christ, but because they are not in all respects the similar, as neither are those of the others, Stoics, and poets, and historians. For each man spoke well in proportion to the share he had of the spermatic word, seeing what was related to it. . . . Whatever things were rightly said among all men, are the property of us Christians. . . . For all the writers were able to see realities darkly through the sowing of the implanted word that was in them (ANF1:192-3).4

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Therefore, when we enter a new culture, we do not enter as if the Holy Spirit has not gone before us to prepare the way. The Gospel will confront and challenge the sins of every culture, for every culture suffers from broken communion with God. But the seeds (logos spermatikos) for communicating the Gospel will already be there, if we take the time to look for them carefully. This is a job that cannot be rushed. We are wise to utilize some of the tools of linguistics, cultural anthropology, psychology, and historiography which can teach us how to observe and how to listen, in order to discover the footprints of God in every people group (Jones:186-187). If we do this, then the Gospel will really be good news to many of the people who are hearing it.

This was exactly what St. Paul did when he took the Gospel to the Greeks, and the record of his presentation at the meeting of the Areopagus or Mars Hill Society in Acts 17 is a classic case study in evangelism. You know the account. It was part of our Epistle reading just last week. But do you understand what happened long before St. Paul came to this hill? The altar to “agnosto theo” has a fascinating story behind it, and there is strong evidence that St. Paul knew that history, since in his letter to Titus (1:12-13) he quotes the Greek prophet who was involved with the raising of this altar 600 years earlier (Richardson 1986:21-25).

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I knew the Orthodox mission history of the Goths, Huns, Iberians, Cochis, Cucasus, Celts, Persians and Armenians, and of course the Slavs, and the resulting evangelization of Alaska, and all of this in spite of much persecution and turmoil. I was particularly impressed with the Orthodox record of planting authentic, indigenous, eucharistic communities (Veronis 1994:13). They did this by carefully observing and learning the language and the culture, and then providing dynamically equivalent translations of not only the Holy Scriptures, but also the liturgical texts and writing of the Fathers (Veronis 1994:13). I knew the Orthodox were hundreds of years ahead of the Western Church in this process. The East never believed in using only Greek, Hebrew and Latin, as was practiced in the West. According to Archbishop Anastasios, within the first centuries of Eastern Church history more than 70 languages were in use by the Church (Yannoulatos 1964:146). When the early evangelists encountered an unwritten language, they laid the foundation for the written script. St. Cyril’s Cyrillic alphabet, St. Stephen of Perm’s Zyrian transcript, and St. Innocent’s work in Alaska are such examples. I used the phrase dynamic equivalent translation because these missionaries showed tremendous sensitivity and respect for the culture of the people. Missiologist Jim Stamoolis, in Eastern Orthodox Mission Theology Today, called this trait “the hallmark of the best of Orthodox mission work” (1986:61). Just as the Word became flesh to dwell among us, so the missionary is an imitator of Christ, and we ourselves become broken bread and poured out wine as we translate the Gospel into another culture.

The best way to effectively incarnate the gospel is to raise up indigenous leadership for the Church. It was common for the Orthodox to take the most promising Newly Illumined and ordain them as quickly as possible (Veronis 1994:14). St. Innocent sent out a host of Readers and lay men and lay women to conduct weekly worship when a priest could not attend. St. Nicholas did the same in Japan, sending out lay leaders as evangelists to translate and proclaim the gospel.

Another characteristic of Orthodox mission and evangelism was the commitment to establishing self-governing churches (Veronis 1994:15). The desire to be overly paternalistic was recognized and often avoided. Many daughter churches were allowed—and even encouraged—to grow up, mature, and bear their own fruit as self-governing, autonomous, or even autocephalous Churches.


(www.oca.org/pages/departments/evangelization/keynote-rucker.pdf Evangelism and Mission One: The Basis and Nature of the Orthodox Evangelistic Mandate)

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One of the basic problems which has always troubled man’s spirit is the question of what man is. Philosophers, theologians, sociologists, pyychologists and educators have engaged themselves in this question, since man is the microcosm whithin the macrocosm, he is the summation of all creation. It is therefore natural that the study of man is closely connected with metaphysical, social, psychological and ecological issues. Everyone who has dealt with the question of what man is has spoken about "man", "the person", "personality", "hypostasis", "the onto-logy of man", etc. Each one of them has looked at the subject from a different perspective.

The West speculated on these issues. The identification of theology with metaphysics, as attempted mainly in the West during the middle ages, and the disconnection of metaphysics from Science undertaken in the Renaissance resulted in the rejection of metaphysics and, therefore, of theology, which was identified with it. At the same time this brought about an agonized effort on the part of the intellectuals to locate the central characteristic which typifies natural man. Thus various philosophical systems and theories about man were created as formulated in sensationism, rationalism, voluntarism etc. which resulted in Nietzsche’s theory about "Superman", followed by the appearance of Sartre’s existensialism and the development of postmodernism, which talks about the complexity of relation. Therefore the question of what man is is also contemporary and interesting today.

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THE PERSON IN THE ORTHODOX TRADITION

Contents:

Translator’s Note
Preface to the English edition
Prologue to the second edition
Introduction

The holy Fathers and philosophy
Philosophy and theology
The two educations and the two wisdoms
The Three Hierarchs and philosophy
The term ‘philosophy’ used by the Fathers
Conclusion

The human person according to the holy Fathers
The theology of the person
Person and man
Contemporary interpretations-analyses of the person
The asceticism of the person
The value of considering the asceticism of the person
Person and eros
Person and freedom
Person and social problems
Conclusion

The hypostasis-person in philosophy and theology
The person according to philosophy
The person in Western and Orthodox theology
The theology of the mode of being
The asceticism of the person
The Orthodox conception of the person

The experience and terminology of the person
Contemporary views of interpersonal relations
The Patristic experience and terminology of the person
God is experience
The vision of God and the theology of the Holy Trinity
The formation of the terms essence, hypostasis, person
The weakness of theological terms
Correlation of triadology with anthropology and sociology
Conclusion

The saints, bearers of Divine Revelation
The bearers of divine Revelation
The value of divine Revelation
The cosmological problem
Being and becoming
Theology and the pastoral care of the holy relics

The morality of freedom and the freedom of morality
The theology of freedom
The relativity of human freedom
The challenge of freedom
Freedom and fall
Natural will and will based on opinion
The freedom of the saints
Freedom from death
Independence and death, according to St. John of Damaskos
The entrance of death according to St. Gregory Palamas
Sin and death
Transcending death
The freedom of the nous
Freedom and nous
Freedom of the nous, according to Abba Isaiah the solitary
Foolishness for Christ as a life of freedom
What are the fools for Christ
The reason for their emergence
The preconditions of foolishness in Christ
The falling asleep of the fools for Christ
Christian life and foolishness
Conclusion

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Originally posted by MephEternal

How is what you descibe not some form of THEOLOGICAL IMPERIALISM, basically relegating other religions to mere shadows of what Christianity (presumably the TRUE, more fully actualized religion) is? Like all other worldviews are FOOTNOTES to the Christian worldview.

Isn’t this a PROBLEM?

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John 4

Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman

1The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, 2although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
4Now he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. )
10Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."
11"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"
13Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
15The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
16He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."
17"I have no husband," she replied.
18Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."
19"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
21Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
25The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."
26Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."

The Disciples Rejoin Jesus

27Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"
28Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ ?" 30They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
31Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something."
32But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."
33Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?"
34"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. 38I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."

Many Samaritans Believe

39Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41And because of his words many more became believers.
42They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."

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You are unable to say what a "Christian worldview” is

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Originally posted by MephEternal

POW:

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You are unable to say what a "Christian worldview” is

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This is not true, in that I can definitely talk about the SALIENT points ot the Christian worldview. The Christian worldview is BASED upon the existence of a Triune Personal God that reveals Godself to persons. It doesn’t matter how you contextualize it. Take this away…and we are definitely not talking about Christianity anymore.

So the Christian worldview is a THEISTIC worldview that assumes a PERSONAL, RELATIONAL, and SELF-REVELATIONAL being.

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Originally posted by MephEternal

All of your statements are being stated from WITHIN the Faith…and in RELATIVIZING all other faiths in light of the Christian worldview. Even with the whole “Eternity in their Hearts” mentality, it must still be recognized that an acknowledgement of universal existential angst in humanity does NOT necessarily translate to the verity of the existence of a TRIUNE PERSONAL GOD. It just doesn’t.

My question is this: What is Orthodoxy’s theology of religions? It is merely the relativization of all other worldviews to the Christian worldview? What is it?

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That may be the popular slang. But it is not "worldview." Worldview is something "prescientific" and therefore one cannot talk about it. It undergirds all talk, at a lower level.

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The British tore down the totem poles, and tried to replace the culture. The Russian traders tried to repress them. But, the Christian missionaries living among them and becoming one with them, recognized the true questions those structures posed and supplied the true answer, transformed the culture.

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"Open the EYES of my heart, Lord... I want to SEE You!

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1. What Christianity is


Many people interpreting the character of Christianity see it as one of the numerous philosophies and religions known from antiquity. Certainly Christianity is not a philosophy in the sense that prevails today. Philosophy sets up a system of thought which in most cases bears no relationship to life. The main difference between Christianity and philosophy is that the latter is human thinking, while Christianity is a revelation of God. It is not a discovery by man but a revelation by God Himself to man. It was impossible for human logic to find the truths of Christianity. Where the human word was powerless, there came the divine-human Word, or Christ the Godman, the Word of God. This divine revelation was formulated in the philosophical terms of the time, but again it must be emphasised that it is not a philosophy. The garments of the divine-human Word are taken from the philosophy of that time.

St. John Chrysostom, interpreting Isaiah 3,1: "Behold the Lord, the Lord of Hosts, takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah...the mighty man and the soldier, the judge and the prophet, the diviner...", observes: "He seems here to be calling a diviner a person who is capable of conjecturing the future through profound intelligence and experience of things. Divining and prophesying are indeed two different things: the prophet, setting self aside, speaks under divine inspiration; the diviner for his part starts from what has already happened, puts his own intelligence to work and foresees many future events, as an intelligent person normally does. But the difference between them is great: it is the distance that separates human intelligence from divine grace" (1).

So speculation (or philosophy) is one thing, and prophecy, or the word of the prophet who theologises, is another. The former is a human activity while the latter is a revelation of the Holy Spirit.

In the patristic writings, and especially in the teaching of St. Maximus, philosophy is referred to as the beginning of the spiritual life. However, he used the term `practical philosophy' to mean cleansing the heart from passions, which really is the first stage of the soul's journey towards God.

Yet Christianity cannot be regarded as a religion, at least not as religion presents itself today. God is usually visualised as dwelling in heaven and directing human history from there: He is extremely exacting, seeking satisfaction from man, who has fallen to earth in his sickness and weakness. There is a wall of separation between God and man. This has to be surmounted by man, and religion is a very effective help. Various religious rites are employed for this purpose.

According to another view, man feels powerless in the universe and needs a mighty God to help him in his weakness. In this view God does not create man, but man creates God. Again, religion is conceived as man's relationship to the Absolute God, that is to say, the "relationship of the `I' to the Absolute Thou". Yet again, many regard religion as a means whereby the people are deluded into transferring their hopes to the future life. In this way strong powers put pressure on the people by means of religion.

But Christianity is something higher than these interpretations and theories; it cannot be contained within the usual conception and definition of religion given in the "natural" religions. God is not the Absolute Thou, but a living Person Who is in organic communion with man. Moreover Christianity does not simply transfer the problem to the future or await the delight of the kingdom of heaven after history and after the end of time. In Christianity the future is lived in the present and the kingdom of God begins in this life. According to the patristic interpretation, the kingdom of God is the grace of the Triune God, it is vision of the uncreated Light.

We Orthodox are not waiting for the end of history and the end of time, but through living in Christ we are running to meet the end of history and thus already living the life expected after the Second Coming. St. Symeon the New Theologian says that he who has seen the uncreated light and united with God is not awaiting the Second Coming of the Lord but living it. So the eternal embraces us at every moment of time. Therefore past, present and future are essentially lived in one unbroken unity. This is so-called condensed time.

Thus Orthodoxy cannot be characterised as the `opium of the people', precisely because it does not postpone the problem. It offers life, transforms biological life, sanctifies and transforms societies. Where Orthodoxy is lived in the right way and in the Holy Spirit, it is a communion of God and men, of heavenly and earthly, of the living and the dead. In this communion all the problems which present themselves in our life are truly resolved.

Yet since the membership of the Church includes sick people and beginners in the spiritual life, it is to be expected that some of them understand Christianity as religion in the sense referred to above. Moreover, the spiritual life is a dynamic journey. It begins with baptism, which is purification of the `image', and continues through ascetic living aimed at attaining `likeness', which is to say communion with God. Anyway it must be made clear that even when we still speak of Christianity as a religion we must do it with certain necessary presuppositions.

The first is that Christianity is mainly a Church. `Church' means `Body of Christ'. There are many places in the New Testament where Christianity is called the Church. We shall only mention Christ's words: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church" (Matt.16:18) and the words of the Apostle Paul to the Colossians: "And he is the head of the body, the church" (1:18) and to his disciple Timothy: "...so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (1Tim,.3,15). This means that Christ does not simply dwell in heaven and direct history and the lives of men from there, but He is united with us. He assumed human nature and deified it; thus in Christ deified human nature is at the right hand of the Father. So Christ is our life and we are `members of Christ'.

The second presupposition is that the aim of the Christian is to attain the blessed state of deification. Deification is identical with `likeness', that is, to be like God. However, in order to reach the likeness, to attain the vision of God, and for this vision not to be a consuming fire but a life-giving light, purification must previously have taken place. This purification and healing is the Church's work. When the Christian participates in worship without undergoing life-giving purification - and moreover these acts of worship also aim towards man's purification - then he is not really living within the Church. Christianity without purification is utopia. So when we are being purified, especially when we are seeing to our healing, we can speak of religion. And this accords with the words of the Lord's brother James: "If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless. Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world" (Jas.1:26-27).

This abstinence gives us the right to claim that Christianity is neither philosophy nor `natural' religion, but mainly healing. It is the healing of a person's passions so that he may attain communion and union with God.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan the Lord showed us several truths. As soon as the Samaritan saw the man who had fallen among thieves who had wounded him and left him half dead, he "had compassion on him and went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn and took care of him" (Luk.10:33f). Christ treated the wounded man and brought him to the inn, to the Hospital which is the Church. Here Christ is presented as a physician who heals man's illnesses, and the Church as a Hospital.

It is very characteristic that in analysing this parable St. John Chrysostom presents the truths which we have just emphasised. Man went down "from the heavenly state to the state of the devil's deception, and he fell among thieves, that is, the devil and the hostile powers". The wounds which he sustained are the various sins. As David says, "My wounds are foul and festering because of my foolishness" (Ps.38:5). For "every sin brings bruises and wounds". The Samaritan is Christ Himself, who came down from heaven to earth to heal wounded man. He used wine and oil for the wounds. That is to say, "by mixing the Holy Spirit with his blood, he brought life to man". According to another interpretation, "oil brings the comforting word, wine provides the astringent lotion, the instruction which brings concentration to the scattered mind". He set him upon his own animal: "Taking flesh upon his own divine shoulders, he lifted it towards the Father in Heaven". Thereupon the good Samaritan, Christ, led the man "into the wonderful and spacious inn, this universal Church". He gave him to the innkeeper, who is the Apostle Paul and "through Paul to the high priests and teachers and ministers of each church", saying: "Take care of the people of the Gentiles whom I have given to you in the Church. Since men are sick, wounded by sin, heal them, putting on them a stone plaster, that is, the prophetic sayings and the gospel teachings, making them whole through the admonitions and exhortations of the Old and New Testaments." So according to St. John Chrysostom, Paul is the one who upholds the churches of God "and heals all men through spiritual admonitions, distributing the bread of offering to each one..." (2).

In St. John Chrysostom's interpretation of this parable it is clearly evident that the Church is a Hospital which heals those sick with sin, while the bishops and priests, like the Apostle Paul, are the healers of the people of God.

These truths also appear in many other places in the New Testament. The Lord said: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick" (Matt.9:12). Likewise Christ, as a physician of souls and bodies, was "...healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people...and they brought to him all sick people who were afflicted with various diseases and torments, and those who were demon-possessed, epileptics, and paralytics; and he healed them" (Matt.4:23f). The Apostle Paul is well aware that the conscience of men, especially of simple ones, is weak: "When you thus sin against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ" (ICor.8:12). The Book of Revelation says that John the Evangelist saw a river of the water of life proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. "On either side of the river was the tree of life...and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations" (Rev.22:1f).

So the work of the Church is therapeutic. It seeks to heal men's sicknesses, mainly those of the soul, which torment them. This is the basic teaching of the New Testament and of the Fathers of the Church. In what follows in this chapter as well as in other chapters many passages from the Fathers will bring out this truth.

Here again I want to emphasise the indispensability of the Church. I am very grateful to the priest and professor John Romanides for laying stress on this in his writings. I am convinced that he is very well read in the neptic Fathers -especially in the writings contained in the Philokalia - and has therefore grasped the real meaning of Christianity. I believe that this is his great contribution. For in this era when Christianity is being presented as a philosophy or intellectual theology or a culture and popular tradition - customs and manners - he presents this teaching about a therapeutic discipline and treatment.

Concretely, he says: "Having faith in Christ without undergoing healing in Christ is not faith at all. Here is the same contradiction that we find when a sick person who has great confidence in his doctor never carries out the treatment which he recommends. If Judaism and its successor, Christianity, had appeared in the twentieth century for the first time, they would most likely have been characterised not as religions but as medical sciences related to psychiatry. They would have a wide influence on society owing to their considerable successes in healing the ills of the partially functioning personality. In no way can prophetic Judaism and Christianity be construed as religions that use various magical methods and beliefs to promise escape from a supposed world of matter and evil or hypocrisy into a supposed spiritual world of security and success" (3).

In another work the same professor says: "The patristic tradition is neither a social philosophy nor an ethical system, nor is it religious dogmatism: it is a therapeutic treatment. In this respect it closely resembles medicine, especially psychiatry. The spiritual energy of the soul that prays unceasingly in the heart is a physiological instrument which everyone has and which requires healing. Neither philosophy nor any of the known positive or social sciences is capable of healing this instrument. That can only be done through the Fathers' neptic and ascetic teaching. Therefore those who are not healed usually do not even know of the existence of this instrument" (4).

So in the Church we are divided into the sick, those undergoing therapeutic treatment, and those - saints - who have already been healed. "The Fathers do not categorise people as moral and immoral or good and bad on the basis of moral laws. This division is superficial. At depth humanity is differentiated into the sick in soul, those being healed and those healed. All who are not in a state of illumination are sick in soul...It is not only good will, good resolve, moral practice and devotion to the Orthodox Tradition which make an Orthodox, but also purification, illumination and deification. These stages of healing are the purpose of the mystical life of the Church, as the liturgical texts bear witness" (5).

www.pelagia.org/htm/b02.en.orthodox_psychotherapy.01.htm

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