POST-PATRISTIC THEOLOGY FROM A CHURCH PERSPECTIVE

His Eminence Metropolitan Ierotheos

of Nafpaktos and St. Vlasios.

            It has been well remarked that the ideological, cultural and spiritual movements which appeared in the West, such as the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Modernism, came to Greece some thirty to thirty-five years later. So what appeared new to us, had already come to dominate in the West many years before. The same is true of the phenomenon of post-Patristic theology, which has been much talked about here in Greece. I think that the initiative of His Eminence Metropolitan Serafeim of Piraeus and Faliron is worthy of attention and praise. This phenomenon must be faced, because such movements represent secularization in theology and the pastoral practices of the Orthodox Church.

            The previous speakers at this seminar touched on basic and important points of this matter. My own paper has as its theme: “Post-Patristic Theology from a Church Perspective”. In it, I shall emphasize five individual points, in the main.

            1. The theology of Aleksei Khomiakov as the nucleus of post-Patristic theology.

            Before stressing the basic points of post-Patristic theology, as these are formulated today by theologians and others, I think it might be useful to refer to  the views of the Slavophile theologians, particularly Khomiakov, who is one of the most important voices of this movement, because it is here that we encounter the nucleus of this post-Patristic theology. The term post-Patristic is not to be found in his works, but it is certain that the seeds for it do indeed exist there.

            Aleksei Khomiakov (1804-1860) belonged to the initial core of a group of six young landowners who met at the beginning of the 1820’s and formed an informal group of Russian intellectuals who developed what is often known as the “Slavophile movement” though they themselves called it “Orthodox-Russian orientation”.

            Khomiakov belonged to a rich family of the Russian landed aristocracy, took a degree in mathematics at the University of Moscow, studied art, learnt English and French, travelled to London, wrote poems, was an important person of culture in the centre of Europeanized Russian life, frequented salons and intellectual circles, stood out for his deep Christian faith and firm piety and became a well-known advocate of traditional Orthodoxy and old Russian culture. He died of cholera when he was trying to treat farm labourers on his lands, as an amateur traditional doctor[1].

            Khomiakov formulated his theological views on the basis of the Enlightenment nature of his national and religious patriotism. He felt that Russian culture had something to say to the West, from the point of view of civilization, and found in traditional Russian culture the sense of sobornost’ (community) which depended on love and not only on common benefit and security. After theology, he extended himself into philosophy[2].

            Bird observes that, in Khomiakov’s valuable work entitled Notes on World History, he divided the world into two types of civilization, the Kushite and the Iranian; true Christianity is presented as being contingent upon the virtues of Russian national identity as the highest example of the Iranian principle[3]. I shall refer to this issue in greater detail later. Here we must present the fundamental positions of Khomiakov’s ecclesiology.

            There is one basic work by Khomiakov which  refers to the Church. It was first published after his death, with the title “On the Church”. In his Collected Works, it is called “A Catechetical Exposition of the Teaching of the Church” and thereafter it was published with the title “The Church is One”[4].

            If one reads this text by Khomiakov concerning the Church, it is clear that he depends mainly on Scripture, rather than the texts of the Fathers; he talks about Tradition; he refers at length to the spirit of freedom and love, but seems not to accept the canon law of the Church. He has a tendency to move towards the positions of the Protestants, because he talks about the community of faith and in some ways is a herald of ecumenism, which functions within an atmosphere of  the detachment of Christians from canons and dogmas. I shall quote some  examples from this fundamental text of his.

            Referring to the Church as one, holy, collective and apostolic, Khomiakov speaks of a Church which “belongs to the whole world and not any specific locality”. It is not clear whether he is referring to local Orthodox Churches or to the Orthodox Church and the other confessions. Probably the second is the case, if we compare it to the whole spirit of the text. Be that as it may, in speaking of faith, he writes the following, somewhat confusedly and admitting of various interpretations:

            “… and does not entail the claim that one community of Christians could express Church doctrine or give dogmatic interpretation to Church doctrine without the agreement of the other communities. It is still less supposed that any community or its pastor might prescribe its interpretation for others. The grace of faith is inseparable from the holiness of life, and no one single community and no one single pastor may be recognized as the preserver of the entire faith, just as no one single pastor and no one single community may be considered representatives of the entire holiness of the Church”[5].

            On the Scriptures, he writes:

            “The Church does not ask: Which Scripture is true, which Tradition is true, which Synod is true and what work is pleasing to God. For Christ knows His own inheritance, and the Church in which He lives knows with inner knowledge and cannot help but know its own manifestations. Holy Scripture is the name for the collection of Old and New Testament books that the Church recognizes as its own. But there are no limits to Scripture, for any Scripture that the Church recognizes as its own is Holy Scripture”[6].

            On baptism, he writes:

            “…the Church does not judge those who have entered into communion with it through baptism, for it knows and judges only itself… Many have been saved and have received their inheritance without accepting the baptism of water for it was instituted only for the Church of the New Testament”[7].

            On the sacrament of the Divine Eucharist, he writes:

            “Concerning the sacrament of the Eucharist, the Holy Church teaches that in it is accomplished in truth the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Also, it does not reject the word ‘transubstantiation’, but does not ascribe to it the material sense attributed to it by the teachers of the churches that have fallen away. The transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ is completed in the Church and for the Church. If you receive the sanctified gifts, or venerate them, or think of them with faith, you truly receive, venerate and think about the body and blood of Christ”[8].

            On the sacrament of marriage, he writes:

            “Therefore the great teachers of the Church- the Apostles- recognize the sacrament of marriage even among pagans, for, in forbidding concubinage, they uphold marriage between Christians and pagans, saying that a husband is hallowed by a faithful wife, and a wife by a faithful husband” (I Cor. 7, 14)[9].

            He writes of the Church that it is divided by the evil passions of its children:

            “Its visible manifestation is contained within the sacraments; its inner life, by contrast is contained in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, in faith, hope and love. Oppressed and persecuted by external enemies, often unsettled and divided by the evil passions of its children, she has been preserved and is preserved as unshakeable and unchangeable wherever the sacraments and spiritual holiness are preserved unchangeably; it never suffers distortion and never has need of correction”[10].

            He also writes:

            “If you believe in Christ, you are saved in by your faith by Christ; if you believe in the Church, you are saved by the Church; if you believe in Christ's Sacraments, you are saved by them; for Christ our God is in the Church and the Sacraments. The Church of the Old Testament was saved by faith in a Redeemer to come. Abraham was saved by the same Christ as we are. He possessed Christ in hope, while we possess Him in joy. Therefore if you desire Baptism you are baptized in will; while if you have received Baptism, you  possess it in joy. An identical faith in Baptism saves in both situations. But you may say, ‘if faith in Baptism saves, what is the use of being actually baptized?’. If you do not receive Baptism then what is it that you wish for?”[11].

            Khomiakov considers that: “Love and unity are above all. Love is expressed in many forms: with words, prayer with spiritual songs” And he goes on to say:

            “The Church bestows her blessing upon all these expressions of love. If you cannot express your love for God by word, but expresses it by a visible representation, that is to say an image (icon), will the Church condemn you? No, but it will condemn anybody who condemns you, because they are condemning another’s love. We know that without the use of an image people may also be saved and have been saved, and if your love does not require an image you will be saved without one; but if the love of your brother or sister requires an image, you, in condemning this brother's love, condemn yourself; and if as a Christian you listen, without respect, to a prayer or spiritual song composed by your brother or sister, how dare you look without reverence upon the image which their love, not artifices, has produced? The Lord Himself, Who knows the secrets of the heart, has desired more than once to glorify a prayer or psalm; will you forbid Him to glorify an image or the graves of the Saints?”[12].

            It is obvious that Khomiakov does not set clear boundaries between the Orthodox Church and the other Confessions, as regards baptism, the faith, Holy Scripture and so on. He speaks in an ecumenist spirit, expresses a theology of freedom and love, relieved of canonical ordinances and has various Protestant principles more in mind.

            Of course, there are texts by Khomiakov in which it is clear that in his view Roman Catholics and Protestants have lost sobornost’ (catholicity) and that in one sense they have ceased to be Churches, because of the Schism of 1054 and that only the Eastern Orthodox Church preserves catholicity and is the true Church[13]. In general, however, the text is vague at a number of points and the influence of Protestantism shines through. Referring to Khomiakov’s ecclesiology, Robert Bird, who has translated a number of texts on Slavophilism into English, remarks that: “Khomiakov’s first essay in theology radically changed Orthodox ecclesiology and has even been credited with influencing the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church. The originality of Khomiakov’s conception has been widely disputed; some point to the German theologian Moehler as the source of the concept of the Church as the community of faith. Needless to say, Orthodox thinkers have also found it important to demonstrate lack of originality, that is, the extent to which he was faithful to the Fathers of the Church”[14].

Pavel Florensky, who “is becoming recognized as the greatest Russian thinker of the twentieth century, and one of the greatest of any age, land or culture”, criticized Khomiakov’s positions. Florensky’s essay on Khomiakov, again according to Bird, is perhaps the most crucial assessment in Russian philosophical literature: the, perhaps, greatest Orthodox theologian of the 20^th century criticizes in no uncertain terms the greatest of the 19^th. It is in this essay that Florensky accuses Khomiakov of “Protestantism”[15].

Referring to Khomiakov’s theology, Florensky says, among other things, that attacking the legalism of Catholicism is a departure from Orthodox Tradition and this is why the need arises for the ecclesialization of Khomiakov himself. He writes:

“…by getting rid of the chaff of Catholicism, does not this polemic also risk tearing the wheat of Orthodoxy out of the soil? For example, by getting rid of the apparent chaff of authority in the Church, which supposedly does not exist in Orthodoxy, does one not risk getting rid of the principle of fear, the principle of power and the obligatory nature of the canonical order? At the present time- which in general has such a great tendency to negate norms and even to struggle against all norms- does not this dissolution of canons in an abyss of altruism represent a very serious danger? As dangerous aspects of Khomiakovism one must also cite Khomiakov’s critique of the Catholic doctrine of the sacraments and the Protestant doctrine of the Divine inspiration of the Bible. Containing some sort of truth, this critique inevitable leads to a clearly non-churchly pragmatism r modernism, which destroys the very essence of the doctrine of the sacraments, leaving only an external, intrinsically not valuable shell of this doctrine”[16].

Nikolai Berdiaev (1874-1948), perhaps the greatest existential philosopher of Russia and one of the greatest philosophers of European personalism[17], commented on Khomiakov as a theologian and as a philosopher and presented the most important of his views. On his theological views in particular, he notes, among other things, that Khomiakov was a free Orthodox and that he felt free in the Church and freely defended the Church. He opened the way for free religious philosophy among the detritus of Scholastic theology. He was the first to transcend Scholastic theology. Berdiaev claims that it would be difficult to find a freer concept of the Church, because nothing is forced in Khomiakov. The Church really is an entity in love and freedom. The Church is not an institution and it is not one Church. There is nothing disputatious, no rationalization. He says that for Khomiakov the Church is wherever anyone finds genuine love in Christ, freedom in Christ, unity in Christ. The essence f the Church is not determined by formalized characteristics. Even the Ecumenical Synods are genuinely ecumenical only because they are confirmed in freedom and love by the people of the Church[18].

But Berdiaev considers that the Slavophiles, such as Khomiakov, themselves committed several errors, i.e. they supported the superiority of Eastern Orthodoxy and the Russian Church over the Western Christian world, and even claimed that Protestantism was superior to Catholicism. Out of fear of the magical tendency in Catholicism, Khomiakov sometimes fell into Protestant moralism. Berdiaev did write, however, that the theology of the Slavophiles came like a rush of fresh air, a lively, not Scholastic, way of thinking, within the mildew of the theological atmosphere[19].

In one of his first studies, Fr. John Romanides dealt with the ecclesiology of Aleksei Khomiakov[20]. In this study, he notes that Khomiakov wrote about the Church through his personal experience as a living member of it, rather than analysing it from the outside as a historical phenomenon. He saw the fall of humankind through necessity and utilitarianism, while he saw the Church through the organic and collective principles of freedom and selfless love.

He goes on to say that Khomiakov described the two dominant spiritual movements in history as Iranianism and Cushitism. Iranianism is characterized by his faith in the divine creation, by freedom, by moral goodness as the aim of existence and by his hope for the final victory of good over evil. By extension, he is repulsed by matter and logical analysis, is not interested in architectural monuments nor the organization of political life with its laws, institutions and monuments, but stands on freedom and organic unity in love, free from utilitarian ideas.

Cushitism, on the other hand, is dominated by ideals of material necessity, projects the laws of material analysis into eternity, worships the material in a pantheistic manner, projects the laws of necessity, and confuses the logic of rationalistic analysis with the truth. Through people and within society there are various degrees of interaction between Iranian and Cushite ideas, and there is a conflict between freedom and necessity.

 The issue is too broad to be analyzed sufficiently in this paper, but it must be stressed that Khomiakov links Christianity with culture. He also claims that Orthodoxy, and, particularly Russian Orthodoxy, preserves the most pure form of  the ideals of freedom and love, according to the Iranian model, whereas Western Christianity is characterized by elements of Cushitism, and he uses examples to support this analysis. The fact is that Khomiakov, according to Fr. Romanides, arrived at general conclusions quite similar to the sum total of Patristic tradition, and contributed to the liberation of Russian theology from Western theological methods and that he even made it feasible for the Orthodox Church to be present  in the West in a comprehensive way. But he did fall into theological errors. One of these was that he ignored the fact that the aim of the Church is the struggle against death, corruption and the devil and that he saw it rather through cultural values. It is this view that resulted in what we call today post-Patristic theology, which accepts that our own day has other codes of communication with the Church, since modern culture is different from that which obtained in the age of the Fathers and that therefore Patristic discourse, which was formulated in other times. ^^^ Today it is inadequate, so there is a need to find another language to communicate with the people of our own era.

Characteristically, Khomiakov’s friend, the philosopher Ivan Kireevsky had declared that it is impossible for the philosophy of the holy Fathers to be renewed in the ^^^ from that which it had in their time. It responded to questions of their time and the culture which gave rise to them. Khomiakov agreed with  this observation and with the need to develop a Russian Christian philosophy which will respond to the social and religious demands of today’s contemporary society. It was within this perspective that the Slavophile movement was born, one of whose founders was Khomiakov.

Fr. Romanides observes that a view such as that is held by somebody who is willing to ignore Orthodox soteriology [*** in the positive element of communion with the Source of Life only through the flesh of Christ in the collective Eucharist, in the same place, and in the negative element of ***????] the battle against the fragmentifying forces of Satan through the life of selfless love in this Eucharistic life itself . The battle between God and the devil cannot be understood from philosophy. And this battle against the devil, corruption and death, which is the basic purpose of the Church, is the same as it was in the time of the Fathers. This is why there is no need of another theology which would employ philosophy.

Christians are saved when they renounce the world of sins and passions, and live and partake in the flesh of Christ. The Church cannot save those who are outside; it can only invite them to salvation through baptism and its sacramental life.  And Fr. Romanides observes that to talk about a relationship between the Church and society or culture is totally useless and can lead only to an ecclesiology based on nationalism. Within the realm of faith, which is the flesh of Christ, there is no room for philosophy, whether social or dialectic. Khomiakov’s  and Kireevksy’s claim that the philosophy of the Fathers does not speak to contemporary people can only mean that the Slavophiles misunderstood both the Fathers and Orthodoxy, which the Fathers inspired. Instead of basing their theology concerning the Church on Patristic soteriology and Christology, they adapted to a contemporary German philosophy of social life as an organism and imagined that Russian peasants were the outstanding Orthodox par excellence, because of some inherited feature of the national character.

Post-Patristic theology, which began with the Slavophiles in the 19^th century, was cultivated intensely in Paris by the Russian émigré theologians and the environment of the Institut de Théologie Orthodoxe Saint-Serge. A theological movement was created which had positive features, but also negative ones, since it expressed the so-called Parisian Theology, with is special characteristics to which we referred earlier. The publisher of the book On Spiritual Unity, A Slavophile Reader, remarks appositely that “Slavophile thought in general, and Khomiakov’s thought in particular, had a vast influence on the Russian religious renaissance of the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries. In fact, madern Russian religious thought, in its ontological ‘face’, can be seen as originating in the thought of Khomiakov and Kireesky. Among the major figures influenced by the Slavophiles are Fyodor Dostoevsky, Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov, Nikoali Berdiaev and Lev Karsavin”[21].

In a letter to Georges Florovsky, Fr. Romanides also referred to this theology which he encountered at Saint Serge when he was a student there. He wrote that when he took his examination in Russian philosophy before the professorial body, he learned many things. His special subject was Aleksei Khomiakov and his position was that there is no modern Orthodox and Russian Orthodox philosophy, whether social or otherwise anything else. Orthodox theology is /an absolute/a single / one demand in the overall life of a person, so no-one can, at the same time, be half Orthodox and half philosopher. It was Professors Zankorski and Kartashoff who asked most questions and continued the discussion. They were the people who claimed a specialness for Russian Orthodox theology, which constituted progress in relation to Patristic theology and was superior to it[22].

The link between Christianity and culture led Khomiakov, the Slavophiles in general and their disciples to the theory that scholastic theology is superior to that of the Fathers and, thereafter, that Russian theology is superior to both.

Fr. Romanides had sufficient knowledge of these matters to analyze the fact that the Russians in the 18^th century adopted scholastic theology as well as and the view of the scholastic theologians that their theology had surpassed the Patrisitc tradition, which had been completed in the 8^th century. Thereafter, in the mid-19^th century, when Russian intellectuals were profoundly influenced by the hesychasm which, with Paissy Velichkovskij,  had been revived in Russia from the Holy Mountain, they believed that, just as they had surpassed the Greeks with Russian scholasticism, so would they surpass them with Russian hesychasm[23].

The Slavophiles maintained that the Greeks and Latins, as “Cushites”, did not understand Christianity sufficiently and in depth, as did the “Iranian” Slavs. And so, books made their appearance which presented Russian philosophy, Russian theology and Russian spirituality, and all of this contributed to the reinforcement of the idea of the superiority of a more modern theology, rather than that of the Fathers[24].

Georges Florovsky worked against the view that Scholastic theology completed Patristic theology and that Russian theology is superior  to Patristic and Scholastic. For more than half a century, Florovsky mercilessly chastised  the Russians who maintained that the Fathers did not understand Christianity sufficiently, as also the Protestants, who tended to the view that the Fathers adulterated Christianity. He also successfully stressed the permanent importance for Christianity of the Hellenism of the Fathers[25]. It follows, then, that Florovsky was against post-Patristic theology, as the Slavophile Russian theologians expressed it, while what he called the neo-Patristic synthesis was not the disregard or transcendence of the Fathers of the first centuries, but the rejection of post-Patristic theology, with the acceptance of later Fathers, as a continuum of the former, such as Saint Gregory Palamas and those of the Philokalia. In other words, the neo-Patristic synthesis is the acceptance of the hesychast/niptic tradition, as this was established synodically in the 14^th century by the 9^th Ecumenical Synod[26].

This post-Patristic theology gradually came into Greece via theologians who had studied at Saint-Serge in Paris, and was called Neo-Orthodoxy. The fundamental mistake of post-Patristic theology, as was mentioned above, is that it links theology with culture, it sees the questions posed by the particular culture of our age and ignores the reality of the struggle of Christians against the devil, sin and death, believing that salvation is connected with cultivation and not with the transcendence of those powers which are linked to the fall of humankind.

Of course, the Fathers did not deny the culture of the age, they used it to manifest the triumph of the Resurrection of Christ and of Pentecost, but they saw the salvation of people precisely in the struggle against the devil, sin and death, not in the sphere of culture. Besides, the Fathers used the terms of Greek philosophy to express the revelatory truth, not because it was necessary for people’s salvation, but to deal with the heresies which Greek philosophy deployed. Polemical theology is one thing, the theology of salvation another.

2.   Basic Points of Post-Patristic Theology

For a start I will give a definition which will show what post-Patristic theology consists of.

            The word post-Patristic means theology after the Fathers, which declares that the word of Christ must be formulated with a thought other than that of the holy Fathers of the Church because today we have a different culture. According to these views, the Fathers of the 4^th century, in speaking about the dogmas of the Church, used Stoic and Neo-Platonic thought[27]. This means that in today’s era we should read the Gospels with post-Patristic thought, i.e. “to find ourselves we have to clear time of inert piles of rubble which transform the memory into vampires of the life of our soul”. Of course, if I am going to be fair, I should mention that there are other defenders of post-Patristic theology who express themselves in a manner less provocative to the reader than that just quoted (that the Patristic thoughts of the past “transform the memory into vampires of our psychological life”[28]). There are still, however, many problems as regards Orthodox theology.

            After this definition, I shall identify the general views of the post-Patristic theologians.

According to the views of modern post-Patristic theology, over the life of the Church two types of ecclesiology were developed: the original, as expressed in the books of the New Testament, and the later, as expressed by the Fathers of the Church from the 3^rd century onwards. The first (original) is called the “ecclesiology of society and Eucharistic spirituality”, which is a horizontal, historical eschatology. The second is “a vertical and more personalistic concept of history”, which was defined on the basis of Gnostic Christianity and Neo-Platonist views[29]. I quote a typical example which expresses this view. It says: “So the ecclesiology of society and spirituality have as their aim the greatest possible equation of Christian communities in various places with the authentic expression of the eschatological glory of the Kingdom of God. This basic and original Christian ecclesiology, under the intense ideological pressures of Christian Gnosticism and particularly (Neo-) Platonism, began, from the 3^rd century, gradually to retreat, or, in the best case, to co-exist with another spirituality (and also ecclesiology) which has its roots in the Neo-Platonizing mystical theology of Evagrius and the Messalianizing mystical theology of Macarius, but are founded academically on the Catechetic School of Alexandria. The main representatives of this school, Clement the Alexandrian and Origen, give ecclesiology, and, by extension, spirituality, another turn, which Metropolitan Ioannis (Zizoulas) of Pergamon emphatically calls: ‘not merely a turn but an overturning’.

In consequence, the interest in history is nullified and we note an increasing distancing from the institutional ecclesiastical reality, the Eucharistic society. In the best case, the Church is characterized as a sanitarium for souls. Historically, and also temporally, this spirituality is linked to the desert and the withdrawal into monasticism, where the works of Origen were read with excess devotion, even after his condemnation by a Synod.

It would be good to note that the theological works attributed to Saint Dionysius the Areopagite acted as the catalyst for the marginalization of the dominant concept of society”[30].

              It is very obvious that in this excerpt two kinds of spirituality and ecclesiology are under discussion: the one is original and social, depending on the Divine Eucharist as the manifestation of the eschatological glory of the Kingdom of God, and the other is later, personalistic, Neo-Platonic, mystical and ascetic. It is “a desertion from Eucharistic Liturgical ecclesiology and spirituality towards therapeutic and cathartic ones”, which may be “described as parallel to the desertion from prophetic to apocalyptic theology and literature in the Old Testament”[31].

With this theory, what is presented is a “Eucharistic ecclesiology” without asceticism and a “therapeutic cathartic ecclesiology” without the Divine Eucharist, and so society is set in opposition to the desert and vice versa. It is clear that such views are, at the very least, unacceptable from an Orthodox angle, as will be stressed below.

            As regards “later ecclesiology”, which, according to post-Patristic theologians altered the original ecclesiology and which is expressed by the Fathers of the 3^rd and later centuries, it has a variety of directions, since it was influenced by analogous currents which were dominant in Ancient Greek philosophy. And so we observe two tendencies of the Fathers- according to the post-Patristic theologians, naturally.

The first has to do with “gazing mystically upon the divine”, which occurs through the guileless nous. This spirituality begins with Anaxagoras and Plato and continues through Philo on into the Neo-Platonists, Clement the Alexandrian and Origen, to be finally formed by Evagrius Ponticus, who gave it an organized character[32].

So the basis of the Evagrian position is “(Neo-) Platonic”, as is the background to the theology of Saints Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa[33]. Within this framework are interpreted the issues concerning the contemplative and practical life, purification, enlightenment and deification, the whole content of the Philokalia. The nous conceives the causes of created beings, and, within the nous, the divine Light shines. All the later fathers followed this perspective, as can be seen in the works of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, Mark the Ascetic, Diadochus of Photice, Maximos the Confessor, John of the Ladder, Philotheos the Sinaite, Hesychius of the Bush, Nicetas Stethatos, Gregory the Sinaite and the hesychasts of Athos, with chief among them, of course, Saint Gregory Palamas[34].

            The second trend- the spirituality which developed immediately after that of Evagrius, and which operated in parallel with the “mystical gazing on the divine”, of the first spirituality-  started from the “Messalianist” Saint Macarius the Egyptian, has its “origins in Stoic philosophy” and “folk piety”, and gives priority to feeling, information, and the heart. “With ‘Macarius’, people stopped being primarily nous and became innate feeling which conceives inner reality, including that of Grace”. The feeling of the heart “confirms or gives the lie to how much the Holy Spirit is at work within us and how much our existence has acquired the fullness from on high”. It was within this perspective that Saint Symeon the New Theologian “would operate in order to pursue a personal relationship with God, employing at the same time the Evagrian/Origenic feelings and the ideas of Diadochus of Photice”[35].

            These two Patristic traditions and spiritualities, according to the post-Patristic theologians, are characterized by two definitive phrases. That is, the theology of the Evagrian tradition is considered a “contemplative mysticism”, which has the guileless nous at its centre, while that of the Macarian tradition is called “spiritual materialism”, which is centered on the heart[36]. Through these two traditions all the positions of the holy Fathers of the Church are interpreted, from Dionysius the Areopagite, Macarius the Ascetic, Diadochus of Photice, Maximus the Confessor, Hesychius of the Bush, Macarius the Egyptian, through to Saint Symeon the New Theologian, and from Nicephorus the Solitary, Saint Gregory the Sinaite and Gregory Palamas, down to Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopouloi.

            The conclusion is that, according to the post-Patristic theologians, the Fathers are supposed to have overturned the ecclesiology of the ancient Church, and that the Fathers themselves are divided into two categories, as was mentioned above, which supposedly were influenced by philosophy, particularly Neo-Platonism, the Stoic philosophers and other mystical traditions.

            Naturally, with such an external and logical analysis of the teaching of the Fathers, especially those of the Philokalia, the whole theology of the Church concerning the conditions for knowledge of God is deconstructed, the comprehensive tradition of the Fathers is broken up, and the hesychastic tradition of the Church is undermined, as these have been formulated in the prayers and hymns of the Church, and were adopted by the Ecumenical Synods, particularly the 9^th Ecumenical Synod concerning Saint Gregory Palamas. Also, with these interpretations, the whole of the spirit of the Philokalia and the teaching of the Niptic Fathers of the 18^th century is neutralized, particularly Saint Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, who is slandered, attacked and abused.

            The truth is that such an interpretation of the Fathers began with the Protestants who found a way to cast doubt on the Fathers and monasticism, but unfortunately it was adopted by Orthodox theologians in the West, and passed thence into theological bibliography.

            The views of John Meyendorff are typical, formulated in a book as early as 1959 interpreting the teaching of Saint Gregory Palamas. Concerning Evagrius, he writes that he was the first intellectual to adopt, in the Egyptian desert, the life of the hermits. He was not content to imitate the asceticism and mode of prayer, but attempted to integrate them into a metaphysical and anthropological system inspired by Neo-Platonism. In this, the monks of the Christian East would learn to express themselves in Neo-Platonic language, which threatened to distort the spirituality of the desert, leading it in a direction foreign to the spirit of the Gospels, transforming the prophetic element of the monks into spiritual intellectualism[37].

            On Saint Macarius the Egyptian, he writes that while Evagrius is essentially Platonic, Macarius introduces unceasing prayer into the context of a monistic anthropology which is directly inspired by the Bible, echoing in part the teaching of the Stoics. In opposition to the “Platonic intellectualism of Evagrius, Saint Macarius expressed “mysticism” and was looking at a world entirely different to that of Evagrius.

            About Saint Diadochus of Photice and Saint John of the Ladder, he writes that they contributed to the realization of a synthesis between Evagrius and Macarius.

            On Saint Gregory of Nyssa and Saint Maximus the Confessor, he writes that they both belong to the great line of mystic Christians who were able to express the fundamentals of the Christian spiritual life within the framework of a Neo-Platonic philosophy.

            From Saint Symeon the New Theologian, he mentions that one of the chief features of his work is the intense realism of the Christocentric mystical life and that his opposition to any mechanical concept of the Mysteries did not in any way lead to a reversion to the mystical intellectualism of Evagrius or to a Neo-Platonic pneumatocracy.

            As for Saint Gregory the Sinaite, he writes that he belongs to the most individualistic trend, the most inclined to the spirit, and is, among Byzantine hesychasts, also the most faithful to Evagrius Ponticus. He adds that  his closest disciples would all stand at the side of Palamas. Indeed, he writes of Saint Gregory the Sinaite that, despite the Evagrian nature of his spirituality, the tradition of Macarius and of Symeon the New Theologian was so much alive  amongst the monks that he had no choice but to remain faithful to them.

            As regards the clash between Barlaam and Saint Gregory Palamas, he writes that Barlaam, who, in the West had despised the intellectual realism of Thomist scholasticism, now clashed with the mystical realism of the monks. In his writings, Barlaam  demonstrated that he was perfectly well aware of the whole thought of the East which could have supported his intellectualism and nominalism and, particularly, of the apophatic theology of Dionysius and the pneumatocratic mysticism of Evagrius.

            The culmination of Meyendorff’s thought is that the whole work of Palamas is the completion of the mystical tradition which goes back to Evagrius and Macarius. This work is objective Christian thought, Biblical and founded upon very broad Patristic wisdom. According to Meyerndorff, the position of Barlaam, on the other hand, was founded on two demands: 1. the Aristotelian demand that all knowledge- including that of God- has its source in acceptance or “experience” by the senses; and 2. the Neo-Platonic demand, which is also supported by Christian writers- especially Dionysius the Areopagite- that God is beyond experience by the senses and is therefore unknown. According to Barlaam, all knowledge of God is therefore indirect. It always passes through entities which are perceptible to the senses. Mystical knowledge, too, cannot be other than merely symbolically real. The whole battle would be fought around these two demands of Barlaam’s, which he borrowed from Greek philosophy.

In general terms, Meyendorff claims that Barlaam and Saint Gregory Palamas expressed two trends and traditions which existed within the Orthodox Church, with the difference that the one tradition is philosophical Greek Patristics (Barlaam) and the other Biblical Patristics (Saint Gregory Palamas).

These views on the part of Meyendorff, which were formulated in the 1950’s, are unacceptable from an ecclesiastical standpoint but, alas, have influenced many Orthodox theologians. These views were repudiated by Romanides, who showed that they did not stand up from an ecclesiastical point of view. This is because the discussion between Palamas and Barlaam showed that the former was the voice of Patristic Church tradition, while the latter was a defender of the Augustinian Western tradition. So in the Orthodox Church there is no such thing as a Hellenizing Patristic tradition and another, Biblical Patristic one; rather, the tradition is one and is based on hesychasm. Barlaam was an Augustinian monk who was entirely ignorant of the Orthodox Patristic tradition, which is why he was surprised when he encountered it in the East, among Athonite monks[38].

3. Applications of the post-Patristic theology in modern theological thought

            The basis of post-Patristic theology appeared many years ago and was unwittingly brought into Greece through translations into Greek of works by post-Patristic theologians, though lately there has been much discussion of post-Patristic theology, since it has challenged the common ecclesiastical conscience. Without wishing to be too dogmatic, I would like to identify a few typical teachings noted by Fr. John Romanides some of which were supported by Fr. Georges Florovsky.

            The first post-Patristic view, which cannot be found in the whole of the Biblical/Patristic tradition, is that ecclesiology and anthropology are to be interpreted on the basis of Trinitology, rather than Christology. There is a tendency today for discourse to centre on Trinitology rather than Christology, as Florovsky observed. Romanides writes in a letter to Florovsky that his description of the desire of some people to use a Trinitarian formula instead of the current Christological one is characteristic of the myopia of contemporary Greek polymaths[39].  But the Church is the Body of Christ and people are created in the image of the Word. We know that Christ is the head of the Church and the archetype of the creation of people, but it is also He through Whom people were reborn, which is why the Second Person of the Holy Trinity was made incarnate. Of course, Christ was never separated from the Father and the Hoy Spirit, since the essence and energy of the Triune God is one, but Christ is the head of the Church, and through Christ we know the Father in the Holy Spirit, as He Himself says: “ whoever has seen me has seen the Father; so how do you say ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” (John 14, 9-10). So it is not possible to make analogies between the Church, people and the Triune God. We interpret ecclesiology and anthropology on the basis of Christology.

            Saint Paul writes that Christ is the “image of God” (II Cor.4, 4). And elsewhere: “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him”.

            So Christ is the image of God the Father, and through Him all things were made. He is the head of the Body of the through Him is our redemption form our sins. People are an icon, of Christ, i.e. an image of the image and so our structure is Christological, and our maturation coincides with becoming Christ-like, since we must bear “the image of Christ in heaven” (cf. I Cor. 15, 49) and must come “to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph. 4, 13) and this “so that we are no longer children” (Eph. 4. 14). So it is Christ Who is the archetype for people, and our destined goal is Christological: to be united with Him and, through Him, with the Father in the Holy Spirit. In the end, people are interpreted in Christ, as is their spiritual maturation[40].

            Athanasius the Great, in confronting Arius, taught that only the Word, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, is the image of God by nature, while people are so by grace, not by nature. In his works against Arius, he often referred to the fact that the Word is the real image of God, in accordance with the teaching of Saint Paul I quoted above. At one point he writes that the Word is the “unchanging image of the immutable God”. Elsewhere he writes that the Word “is not a creation, nor of those born, but Himself the Word and image of the essence of the Father”.

            At another point Athanasius underlines the truth that only the Word is the image of the Father and that we have become so because of the true image of God, which is the Word. In particular, he declares: “only He is the only-begotten Son, and Word and Wisdom”. Thereafter, referring to various portions of Holy Scripture, according to which we must become merciful like the Father in Heaven, and become imitators of God and walk in love, as Christ loved us, he writes: “who will be likened to the Lord among the children of God? Concerning whom, only He is, by nature, the true image of the Father. Even if we have become the image and have been endowed with the likeness and glory of God, again this is not of ourselves, but through the image and true glory of God residing in us, Who is His Word, Who later became flesh for us and thus we have this grace of the calling”.

            It is abundantly clear from this passage that the only image of God the Father by nature is the Word, whereas we people are images of God by grace and, indeed, through the image and true glory of God residing in us, Who is the Word Who became human for us. Christology is therefore the basis of anthropology.

            The second post-Patristic theology is the theory concerning the “ontology of the person”. This view is post-Patristic for many and various reasons.

            In the first place, the Fathers of the Church reject ontology, which they equate with metaphysics and which was condemned by the Church, as is clear from the Synodal Tome of Orthodoxy. The theology of the Holy Trinity is founded on the experience of the revelation of the Prophets, Apostles and Fathers who saw God; it is not founded on the philosophy and thinking of heretics. It is typical that the Arians and Arianizers, in their efforts to speak about the Triune God, use the principles of Greek philosophy, whereas the Fathers (Athanasius and the Cappadocians) stand on their own personal experience and that of the Prophets and Apostles, which is why they use passages from Scripture to rebut the views of the heretics.

            Thus, the Holy Fathers talk about the Persons of the Holy Trinity because of the modalistic and dynamic forms of  Monarchianism which appeared in their days, but they see them through the theology of the “Triune effulgence of the One Godhead”, and not through philosophy. The Fathers never claimed that the person hypostasizes nature/essence nor that the person is a mode of existence of nature/essence – that is Sabellianism –but they stress (rather) that the hypostatic features (unborn, born, proceeding) are a mode of existence of persons[41]. Nor do they ever claim that the person/hypostasis of the essence comes first, since the person consists of essence and personal features.

            Then, the holy Fathers never associated nature with necessity, in order, thereafter, to associate will/volition with the person, as did the Arians, with their philosophical thinking. The Fathers of the Church taught that “by nature” does not also mean “by necessity” and that energy and volition are of nature - not the person – and that free choice is different from natural will. At this point, the teaching of Saint Maximus the Confessor on natural will/volition and free choice is important.

            This means that the views of modern theologians that, supposedly, the freedom of the person is of value because it transcends the inexorability of nature and that nature is linked to necessity and will to the person, cannot find any support in Patristic theology. So the view that “what the Fathers testify to is the freedom of God from His divinity, His potential to become human, to exist in the mode of divinity as well as in that of humanity, free of any pre-definition, either from the mode of divinity or that of humanity”[42], and the view that “the free will of the Father is what the Triune hypostasis of God derives from, where the essence is hypostasized in the Triune God. The notion of will (that is in Man) is precisely the notion of choice”[43], are unacceptable from the point of view of Orthodox theology. This is because the Fathers associate will/volition with nature, so that there is will and volition in God, while they also identify the difference between will/volition and free choice. Of course, “to will” is one thing and “how to will” is another.

            Besides, the Fathers of the Church interpret the human person through the image and likeness of God (the Word) and did not make philosophical analyses concerning the human person, by analogy with the Triune God, since they reject the analogia entis of metaphysics and claim that there is no correspondence between the created and the uncreated[44]. The so-called “ontology of the person”, with the simultaneous disrespect for the life of quietude, which is understood as being pietism, is a post-Patristic view because it ignores the distinction between the people of the flesh and those of the spirit, as this is presented by Saint Paul. (I Cor. 3, 1-3).

            Moreover, the view of a “community of persons” is rejected by Patristic/Church teaching because there is no communion of persons either in the Triune God or in Christ the God/Man or in people. In the Triune God there is a communion of nature/essence and coenergy, but not a communion of persons, because there are also the incommunicable features (unborn, born, proceeding). The inter-residence of the persons is not communion of the persons. In Christ the God/Man, the union of the two persons is by hypostasis and there is no union of persons, because there are not two persons in Christ, as Nestorianism claims. And people commune in the energy of God, in the person of Jesus Christ and, through Him, with the energy of the Holy Trinity[45].

            A concomitant of the previous post-Patristic view is also what is said about people’s personality, in a psychological mode, with the “psychological-ization” of anthropology, especially when the niptic tradition of the Church is looked upon askance. Finally, voluntaristic personalism is also a post-Patristic view.

            On the subject of the ontology of the person and voluntaristic personalism, I am preparing a special study which will demonstrate that the analyses concerning the person in God and the view of the person in the human being came to us from the West, and in particular from German idealism and existentialism.

            The third post-Patristic teaching is what is known as “Eucharistic ecclesiology”[46]. Of course, no-one would want to deny the great value of the Divine Eucharist, at which we partake of the Body and Blood of Christ and to which all the sacraments and the life of the Church are directed, but it is not possible for the Divine Eucharist to be made independent of the Church and the whole of ecclesiastical life.

            In the first place, there is a close connection between Church, Orthodoxy and Eucharist, as we see in Saint Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons[47].There is no Church without Orthodoxy and the Eucharist; nor is there Orthodoxy without the Church and the Eucharist; just as there is no Eucharist outside the Church and Orthodoxy. Then, the Divine Eucharist cannot be considered Orthodox outside the canonical structure of the Church and the necessary requirements for participation in it. The Fathers of the Church and the Canons of the Local and Ecumenical Synods record the requirements for people wishing to participate in the Divine Eucharist and Holy Communion, which are the ascetic life and the hesychast mode of life. The Divine Eucharist cannot replace purification, enlightenment and deification nor, of course, can the opposite obtain. Here, too, there is balanced reciprocity.

            Besides, apart from the Divine Eucharist, basic centres for the life of the Church are Scripture, dogma and prayer, which the Divine Eucharist presupposes. There is a very profound association between the lex credendi and the lex orandi. The bishop is the President of the Eucharistic Synaxis but at the same time [should be] a prophet who proclaims prophetic words to the congregation who desire to progress from the image to the likeness. Of course, within the Church and at the Divine Eucharist there are different spiritual ages, and the Holy Spirit ministers appropriately to each. And then, the grace of God in  the sacraments acts independently of the condition of the canonical clergy and laity, but not all those who partake of the holy sacraments benefit, unless they take part in the purifying, enlightening and glorifying energy of God.

            Moreover, any eschatological interpretation of the Divine Eucharist which rejects or undervalues the niptic/hesychast tradition is a post-Patristic teaching foreign to that of the Fathers of the Church. The eschatological experience of the Kingdom of God in the Divine Eucharist- as long as we are in this life- is a concomitant of our participation as Christians in the purifying, illuminating and glorifying energy of God. Saint Maximus the Confessor in his Mystagogy does not present only the eschatological side of the Divine Eucharistic, but also the hesychastic dimension, as the return of the nous from things perceived back to the heart, when those who love God are counted worthy to see, with the eyes of their ever-vigilant nous, the Word of God Himself. So the eschatological experience of the Kingdom of God in the Divine Eucharist cannot be conceived outside the activation of the grace of God, which is in the heart, through holy baptism and holy anointing, which the Fathers call the sacred altar of the heart.

            All of this made Fr. John Romanides say that it is not the Eucharist that makes the Church the real Church, but the Church which makes the Eucharist the real Eucharist. In other words, the horse (dogma/canons) comes before the cart, not vice versa[48]. In any case, as we know, outside the Orthodox Church, with its dogmas and sacred canons, there is no Eucharist in the Orthodox meaning of the word. So we can talk about ecclesiastical Eucharist, but not about Eucharistic ecclesiology.

The fourth post-Patristic view, which is a consequence of the preceding one, is over-emphasis on the resurrectional nature of the Orthodox Church, with an under-valuation of the life of the Cross, that is the separation of the mystery of the Cross from the vision of the glory of the Resurrection of Christ. Some post-Patristic theologians claim that the Orthodox Church is the Church of the Resurrection, whereas the other Churches live the Cross of Christ. This is a dichotomy of ecclesiastical life, since the Cross is separated from the Resurrection of Christ. So when the glory of the Kingdom of God is presented, and the intermingling of this glory of the Resurrection with an indifference towards purification and illumination, which are experiences of the life of the Cross, i.e. when the Resurrection is separated from the Cross, then that is post-Patristic theology and does not sit well with the teaching of the Prophets, the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church.

            The experience of the Cross is not linked only to the ascetic life, to what is called “practice”, but also to contemplation, which is why we talk about the intermingling of the mystery of the Cross and of the Resurrection of Christ.

            Abba Isaac the Syrian talks about the double working of the Cross, i.e. that of practice and contemplation. He writes: “The working of the Cross is twofold and in accord with the division of nature into two parts”. The one, practice, “purifies the passionate part of the soul in the power of zeal” and is associated with patience in the sorrows of the flesh, while the other, contemplation, “by the action of love of the soul, which is a natural desire, which distils the noetic part of the soul” and consists of “the subtle workings of the nous and in divine meditation and persistence in prayer and so forth”.

            In his homily on the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross, Saint Gregory Palamas develops in detail the point that experience of the Cross means experience of the practice and contemplation of the Word, as was the case with the Prophets and the Righteous of the Old Testament, and as is experienced in the life of the Church.

            On Moses’ vision of God in the  bush, he writes: “Thus it is that that vision by Moses of the burning but unconsumed bush was a mystery of the Cross, greater and more perfect than that mystery of Abraham”. Besides, the Cross of the Lord includes the whole of the mystery of the divine dispensation: “For the Cross of the Lord manifests the whole of the dispensation of the presence in the flesh and contains the whole of the mystery thereof and extends to all the ends of the earth and includes all things above, below, around and in between”. This is why, in concluding his homily, Saint Gregory urges the faithful to venerate the spot where the feet of Christ stood, i.e. the Cross, “as if also attendant at the future presence of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, seeing it beforehand in glory, we shall rejoice and skip lightly, having achieved a place at the right hand and hearing the promised, blessed voice and blessing, to the glory of the Son of God, Who was crucified for us in the flesh”.

            It follows that the co-mingling of the mystery of the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ occurs in practice and contemplation, in the whole of the life of the Church, in the sacraments and the Divine Liturgy, i.e. in the co-mingling of the love of God. So the Cross is never separated from the Resurrection, since it is an expression of the love of God and a co-mingling of this divine love which constitutes our salvation. Unfortunately, these post-Patristic views, which we do not encounter in the texts of Holy Scripture and the Fathers of the Church and which, at some points are expansions of teachings which we find in the Fathers, have made their way into modern Greek theology and they need to be expunged. Commenting on these views, Fr. John Romanides writes that the problem for contemporary and future theology is not scholasticism, which has been belaboured a great deal, but, in particular, the views on the “ontology of the person”, “eucharistic ecclesiology” and the dichotomy between “the theology of the mystery of the Cross and the vision of the glory of the God of the resurrection”[49].

            Be that as it may, the fundamental signature of the post-Patristic theologians is that they undervalue or reject the niptic/hesychast tradition of the Church and, in particular, they ridicule in a most unbecoming manner what this tradition has to say about purification, illumination and deification, which is the core of the theology and of the life of the Church. There is an explanation for this outlook and Romanides interprets it as follows:

            “There is a view that the teaching on perfection, as formulated by the Holy Fathers of the Church is of idolatrous provenance and that the Fathers  of the Church were supposedly influenced by the distinctions between purification, illumination and deification- because there are similar notions in Neo-Platonism, i.e. this distinction of the stages of perfection does, clearly, exist. And because of a similarity between the two, our own people have adopted this view, which, for the most part derives from studies made by Protestants. In other words, because Protestants have rejected monasticism and adopted either the absolute predetermination of Calvin or the teaching of Luther concerning our salvation purely through faith and so on, and are opposed to the monasticism of the tradition (the Franco-Latin one) which they encountered, which was based on “satisfaction” (transferred merit), and once they discovered that this is an erroneous teaching, they abandoned celibacy and monasticism, too. Together with this, Luther in particular but Calvin, too, very much struck a blow against the stages of perfection. Thereafter, Protestant historians dealt with the issue and rejoiced so very greatly when they found the astonishing similarity between Patristic teaching and that of the pagans that they claimed that the stages of perfection are of pagan origin.

            This is why our own people go, with such great appetite, to study- not that they should not do so, but at least it should be done with discernment- at foreign universities, and now you see the works of Orthodox theologians full of this idea that the Church has been influenced by the pagans, particularly concerning the stages of perfection”[50].

            4. A Characteristic Example

            In order to see how so-called post-Patristic theology works, we will cite a very expressive example. This is the post-Patristic interpretation of the event of Christ’s Transfiguration. The Gospels describe how, on Tabor, the face of Christ shone like the sun and that His garments became as white as light. The Fathers of the Church teach that, with the incarnation, the Body of Christ also became a source of the uncreated energies of God.

            In the 14^th century, a great discussion took place between Saint Gregory Palamas and Barlaam concerning the nature of this light, i.e. whether the Light of the Transfiguration was created or uncreated. Saint Gregory taught the Orthodox position that this light was not a third, hidden  power within Christ, but was the Light of His divinity. Barlaam, on the other hand, claimed that it was created light. In general terms, Barlaam took the position that the Light seen by the Prophets and Apostles was created and was lower than reason, which is why he also thought that philosophers, who thought logically, were superior to the Prophets and Apostles who saw this light. The result of this discussion was that the Church in Synod, established the teaching of Palamas, who was numbered among the saints, whereas Barlaam was condemned as a heretic.

            Modern post-Patristic theology interprets the event of the Transfiguration of Christ from Barlaam’s perspective and casts itself off from the teaching of  one of the greatest fathers of the Church, Saint Gregory Palamas. Concerning the theology of Palamas, it writes that “his thinking”- as if it were not the theology of the Church- and the whole of Eastern Patristic theology from the third century, particularly Origen, “refers strongly to categories of Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophy”. And then, “the homilies of Palamas on Christ’s Transfiguration are full of Platonic and Platonicizing expressions”, and also “follow corresponding syllogistic patterns”[51]. The “reconstitution or alternation  of the senses”, the vision of the uncreated light, the homology of the intellect and the divine light and “vision with psychological purity” are also enlisted into this philosophical perspective[52].

            Thus, according to post-Patristic theology, it is imperative that “we abandon Neo-Platonic and Patristic allegorism, without ceasing to study it and learn from it and, submit a reading of the Transfiguration within the perspective of the unity of the world and people”[53]. This means that we must reject the teaching of Saint Gregory Palamas on the Light of the Transfiguration and also that of the 9^th Ecumenical Synod (1351), as well as that of all the saints who have interpreted the event of the Transfiguration. Likewise, we must abolish or replace all the hymns of the Church on the subject.

            So, according to this post-Patristic interpretation, at that moment, on the mountain, the disciples did not take part in the uncreated Light of deification, but came to know “a world of fullness” and to experience it as joy. The Light of Christ, with which He shone on Tabor is His completeness, and so “Christ shines with fullness and opens up with His radiance in place”. “He addresses God, and, in response, God brings about the Transfiguration.” “Jesus shone entirely and the fullness of his elevation flooded His being with a light that overflowed into His clothing”. “When people are ‘in the truth’, the truth is written on their faces and their accoutrements- all of these shine spontaneously”. The light of Christ “is not the metaphysical light of Gregory Palamas”, but “in His face and person, God is manifested in the transparency of mankind”. This transparency “means the theophany of the flesh”. “It is the presence of God upon a person as existential completion, a transfer from density to the luminous attenuation of the person.”[54]. Obviously, the theology of deification is placed in the margin here, and the whole teaching of the Church is abolished.

            And then, the presence and Transfiguration of Christ between the Prophets, Moses and Elijah, indicates that with Christ we abandon a world which they express. “Between the freedom of the commandments which Moses expresses, and the faith in a God beyond any feature of the world, which Elijah expresses, Jesus stands as incarnate eternity, truth independent of phobias and conventions.” In this way, Jesus tells them that “we can justify existence on earth provided we die and we have lived”, “with an opening of the conscience to pain in honour of  life”. In the same way, Jesus makes His way to Jerusalem and death: “He will withstand Golgotha because he ascended Tabor and the theophany occurred”[55].

The request by Saint Peter: “It is good for us to be here and let us make three tabernacles” is interpreted through the perspective of “Hellenistic asceticism” as “a request to escape to timeless reality” or “to retain for ever this happy circumstance”, for “success to be capitalized, blessedness to be institutionalized and made part of  the continuum of time”[56]. This is why Christ did not agree to the request.

            The cloud of light which covered the disciples “was an aethereal reality between earth and sky”, its celestial energy “describes the luminous Transfiguration as an internal change, while its shadow functions as a protective veil for the senses, since they cannot bear absolute light”. The voice which is heard within the cloud “sheds the light of the Transfiguration onto the disciples and the surrounding area”. “The glory of Jesus means the encounter on earth between God and humankind, a time of rupture with the past in our renascent present.”[57].

            This whole interpretation proposes that we should see the fact of the Transfiguration “as a proposal of eschatological existence, of a renascent, new life”, and “not some salvation in the future which does away with the present, nor on a magical/miraculous level, indicative of Jesus’ divinity”. We are dealing with the “ethos of the Kingdom”, which “is understood as life within the world, free from the weight of the world, that is as a transformed life, for which tomorrow is an open possibility and never a de-spiritualized ritual form”. “The pure white emphasizes the impartation of the pure gaze and directs us towards the pure heart”, “it invades the density of being like abundant, eschatological light, while the brilliance of the scene interprets a persistent demand for authentic feeling in a world of illusions”[58]. The transparency of the Transfiguration is a “form of individual existence”, which “is equivalent to liberating purity which makes a person unite with its light”, “it is a choice of an open life for societies and individuals, which promotes their moral maturity”[59].

            This example clearly demonstrates how so-called post-Patristic theology works, since it attempts to free itself from the hermeneutic analysis of the Fathers concerning the revelation of the glory of God as uncreated Light and the deification of the person by co-mingling in the uncreated Light. It considers this to be Neo-Platonic and interprets the events of the New Testament through modern, Protestant, Biblical and humanistic hermeneutical principles. The view that we should not see the event of the Transfiguration “on a magical/ miraculous level, indicative of Jesus’ divinity”, as well as the view that the light of Christ “is not the metaphysical light of Gregory Palamas” are really unacceptable from all points of view. Such opinions take no proper account of the whole hermeneutic tradition of the Church, nor of its whole life of worship. A modern way of thinking is introduced and, in effect, the whole of the Orthodox tradition is Protestantized: that of the Prophets, the Apostles and the Fathers, which is the experience and theology of the Orthodox Church. From Christ Who is God and Man, we arrive at Man who is God.

                        The objection might be made that the example to which we have referred is isolated and potentially inordinate and that it is not accepted by all the so-called post-Patristic theologians. But the fact is that this example is contained in a book which expresses post-Patristic theology, as the author writes, and is connected to related books which have been accepted by a university theologian, himself the voice of this theology.

            To be precise, Professor Petros Vasileiadis in a text of his in which he speaks of double ecclesiology, refers to the trilogy of works by Stelios Ramfos, that is Ὁ Καημὸς τοῦ Ἐνός, Τὸ Μυστικό τοῦ Ἰησοῦ and Τὸ ἀδιανόητο τίποτα: Φιλοκαλικὰ ριζώματα τοῦ νεοελληνικοῦ  μηδενισμοῦ. Δοκίμιο φιλοσοφικῆς ανθροπολογίας (Yearning for the One, The Secret of Jesus, and The Inconceivable Nothing: Philokalic Rhizomes of Modern Greek Nihilism. An Essay of Philosophical Anthropology,) the last of which Vasileiadis calls “ very interesting for modern Orthodoxy”[60].

            Concerning  the second of these works, The Secret of Jesus, from which the above quote about the Transfiguration was taken, Vasileiadis says that Ramfos “attempted to support his observations by drawing on the conclusions of the scientific Biblical study of the last two centuries”[61]. This is the scientific research which was carried out by Protestants and some Orthodox who represent Russian theology. Of the third of Ramfos’ work, “The Inconceivable Nothing”, Vasileiadis writes: “Analysing in detail the nihilistic impasses of the Philokalic anti-modern programme of Nicodemus/Macarius, and also the contemporary notion of individuality and the responsible subject, [Ramfos] wonders whether a balanced synthesis between society and individuality/ withdrawal is feasible in Orthodox, Eastern Christianity”. And he concludes, “Only that after the end of the first millennium in the Eastern tradition were monks- and the average Orthodox Christian, in general- closed in their conventional ‘community and remained outside society, forgetting their revolutionary beginnings”, “They held on to the desert and abdicated their own entity’”[62].

                        The same professor, in an article referring to Ramfos’ book “The Inconceivable Nothing” writes: “….with its profound and scientifically well-supported philosophical and anthropological analyses- from the outset he makes it clear and ‘predisposes us’ to the fact that he does not write ‘as a theologian, even though he did try to unlock a prayer book”- in essence he goes on to deconstruct what is, for many, the most sacred parameter of modern Orthodoxy. That is, the prevailing tendency to see Orthodox Eastern Christianity exclusively from the point of view of hesychasm and Palamism generally. He garners “some of his assessments”: “The evolution of thought and the affirmation of the individual subject was cancelled in Byzantium, since the group, with its stereotypes (concerning the pro-Palamite party of anti-humanists) did away with individuality at the very moment that it was dawning”. “The imposition of Palamism, with the Great Synod of 1351, put the whole of the Christian East outside history”. “The discrimination between divine essence and uncreated energies involves an anthropology of closed feeling which excludes the formation of a self-aware subject, and an eschatology which excludes or amputates historicity”. Vasileiadis concludes: “Without contending that he has said the last word about the substance of the issues, in this work Ramfos opens wide the gates for a profound philosophical, anthropological and also theological self-examination. A work (and the whole trilogy, actually) that no serious scholar will be able to ignore in the future”[63].

                        It is abundantly clear from these views that post-Patristic ideas have infiltrated the academic world and that with these, those younger theologians, clergy and laity, are being formed who will staff the theological and clerical posts over the coming years. It is, indeed, saddening that the Fathers of the Church should be insulted so nastily, especially by those who wrote mostly about hesychast/niptic theology, and in particular the great Father of the Church, Saint Gregory Palamas and the other holy Niptic Fathers.

            In general, this movement which today is called post-Patristic theology, is a return, in a more intense form, to that which, a few years ago, was known as Neo-Orthodoxy and, much earlier, as Barlaamism. If we investigate these currents, we shall see that they have common starting- and other- points.

            It is obvious that, as scholastic theology was distinguished by a variety of trends, so post-Patristic theology is expressed by many trends, because each post-Patristic theologian differs from the other post-Patristic theologians. The basis, however, is the undervaluation and marginilization of the teaching of the Church, as this was expressed by the Prophets, Apostles and Fathers.

5.  Ecclesiastical Tradition

                        For an event to be investigated, there have to be the “research keys”, as Fr. John Romanides repeatedly said. No-one can understand a set of circumstances unless they have the tools to do so. This is true of any movement, including that known as the post-Patristic. Some points will be emphasized which indicate that so-called post-Patristic theology operates outside the tradition of the Church.

            a) The Unity of the Prophets, Apostles and Fathers.

            In the whole of ecclesiastical tradition it is a given that the theology of the Church is not a matter of thinking, but is the revelation of God to those who have been glorified- the Prophets, the Apostles and the Fathers- over the centuries. In the “Synodal Tome of Orthodoxy”, the phrase is often repeated that we proceed “according to the God-inspired theologies of the saints and the pious outlook of the Church”. This phrase is found in the Acts of the 9^th Ecumenical Synod, and is said to have been formulated by Saint Philotheos Kokkinos, Patriarch, and a fellow-monk of Saint Gregory Palamas. There is no other theology in the Church, whether post-Apostolic, pre-Patristic or post-Patristic.

            Saint Gregory Palamas declared that there is a unity in the teaching of the Prophets, the Apostles and the Fathers: “For what else is this other than saving perfection, one in knowledge and dogmas, which all prophets, apostles and fathers think alike; through whom the Holy Spirit testifies, speaking of God and His creations”. In the Old Testament, the prophets saw the bodiless Word, and in the New, the Apostles and Fathers were in communion with the incarnate Word.

            There is unity in the faith, since there is common experience and a common prerequisite for experience, which is Orthodox hesychasm, in combination with the sacraments of the Church. This experience is a co-mingling of the mysteries of the Cross and of the Resurrection of Christ, as well as experiencing the mystery of Pentecost. In the Church, we do not accept merely the Christ of history and the Christ of faith, i.e. the faith of the first Christians, but also the Christ of the resurrection, the Christ of glory Who manifests Himself to those who are worthy of the revelation. So the Christ of the revelation cannot be associated with the thinking of philosophy.

            b)  Ineffable Words and Created Words and Concepts.

Saint Paul ascended into the third heaven and from there he entered Paradise, where he heard “ineffable words which it is not proper for a person  to utter.”(II Cor. 12, 4). Thereafter he described the experience he had undergone in created words and concepts. So, ineffable words are one thing and created words and concepts another and there is no equivalence between these two things. Fr. John Romanides taught that spiritual concepts are the same in the Prophets, Apostles and Fathers, whereas created words have changed at different periods. The words changed, but not the concepts, which are the fruit of the revelation of the ineffable words. Naturally, the terms of the Ecumenical Synods are part of Tradition, which cannot be altered.

            The fact that the Fathers took some terms from ancient Greek philosophy which were being used by philosophizing Christians of the time does not mean that they also accepted the views of Greek philosophy or that they secularized the revelation. Besides, the Fathers removed the charge from the words they borrowed from Greek philosophy and re-charged them with a different content, in accordance with the experience they had undergone. This was the case with the words “person”, “consubstantial”, “apathy”,  “ecstasy” and so forth.

            Saint Gregory Palamas writes that the heretics used philosophy and based their views thereon. “And if you investigate, you will see that if not all, then most of the dire heresies take their principles therefrom”. The Fathers of the Church, on the other hand, even when they used words from Greek philosophy, gave them a different meaning. He writes: “And if one of the Fathers speaks thus to those outside, it is only as regards the words. For there is a great difference in meaning. For according to Paul they have the nous of Christ, while the others speak from the human brain, if not worse ” .

            We see this in the writings of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, which many theologians claim to be Neo-Platonic. In these works, the terminology is that of the time but the teaching opposes the views of Platonism, Neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism. A typical example is what is written of God as being both loving desire and beloved. Saint Dionysius the Areopagite writes that the theologians call God both “love longed for and beloved” and also “a force moving and drawing beings to Himself”. This is also taught by Saint Maximus the Confessor, who interprets the writings of Dionysius. He writes that God is truly love and beloved, “because loving desire is poured out from Him, He Himself, as its begetter, is said to be in movement, while, because He is what is truly longed for and loved, He stirs into motion the things that look to Him, and grants them the power appropriate to each”. In speaking of the movement of God, he says: “God stimulates in that He impels each being, in accordance with its own principle, to return to Him”.

            Here we are told that God is erotic love and moves towards people, so this is far from Plato’s theory that God has no love- which is a characteristic of humankind. It also overturns Aristotle’s theory that God is the first unmoved mover, since God does move.

            So, to attribute descriptions from Neo-Platonism to Orthodoxy, and to present the Fathers as being influenced by Platonism, is disparaging and, scientifically, even unsound. This is indeed said by the Protestants to undermine the status and worth of the holy Fathers.

c) The Riches of Worship and Liturgy.

            The Church has put all its revelatory theology into worship, both in the hymns which are sung on Sundays, feasts and weekdays as well as into the prayers of the sacraments. If you read the Paraclitic Canon or the Services for the Month you will see the whole of the dogmatic and hesychast tradition of our Church. And if you read carefully the prayers of the Sacraments of Baptism,  Chrismation, the Divine Eucharist, Repentance, Marriage, and the Anointing, you will see that the lex credenti is closely linked to the lex orandi.

            So how is it possible for us to speak of post-Patristic theology when the hymns of the Church, which are the basis of prayer, are linked with the enduring tradition of the Church, the dogmas and the ethos of ecclesiastical life? How can anyone speak of two kinds of ecclesiology, when there is a wonderful unity in the prayers of the Sacraments and of worship?

            There is, for example, a marvellous tropario, which is used as the dismissal hymn for many Episcopal saints, such as Saint Ignatius the God-bearer: “As a sharer of the ways and successor to the thrones of the Apostles, inspired by God, you found practice to be a transport to contemplation. Therefore, having rightly construed the word of truth you also contested for the faith even with your blood, Hieromartyr Ignatius. Intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved”. In this tropario, it is said that the Fathers are successors not only to the thrones but also to the ways of the Apostles. This ‘ways’ is the stages of spiritual perfection: practice and contemplation- i.e. purification, enlightenment and deification. With this way of piety: the Fathers become inspired by God, and hence rightly construe the word of truth and are martyred for this confession. Thereafter they have the boldness to pray to God for our salvation.

            Any alteration of the spirit of this tropario and, in general, of the worship of the Church, is a dichotomy between the lex credendi and the lex orandi; it is a fragmentation of the spiritual life; it is a Protestantization of Orthodox theology. This may be the reason why there is an attempt to undermine the life of worship and liturgy by post-Patristic theologians; why they speak of cleansing worship of its “Byzantinisms”; why they are against the Philokalia, Saint Gregory Palamas, Saint Nicodemus the Athonite and contemporary Philokalic Fathers; why they speak of “ neo-conservatism”. Post-Patristic theology is not expressed only by those who clearly are concerned with references to it, but also by others who speak conjecturally, moralistically and also contemptuously of the hesychast Patristic tradition, even though they present themselves as super-Orthodox.

d) The Case of Elder Sophrony.

            There is a very clear distinction between the Fathers of the 4th century and the heretics of their time. The former (the Fathers), at some points used the terminology of the heretics, such as: “person”, “essence”, “energy”, “apathy” and so forth, but they gave it another context. The main thing is that the heretics were philosophers/thinkers who attempted, through reason, to understand the relationship of the Persons of the Holy Trinity and the union and communion of mortals with the Triune God. The Fathers of the Church, on the other hand, began with the experience of the uncreated, deifying energy of God, and thereafter used some expressions of their own day to put this experience into words as well as possible.

            This task of the Fathers has been continued into our own days by the late Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov who was not a post-Patristic theologian. Although he writes of people as ‘persons’, he nevertheless places this in the perspective of deification rather than that of humanistic philosophy. He mentions that glorified people, when they see the uncreated Light, the hypostatic principle is energized through it and they realize that they are the image and likeness of God and then the hypostasis emerges and people feel themselves drawn actively into Divine eternity, and Time/Age comes to an end for them[64].

            In this way, Elder Sophrony spoke about people as persons, but saw them entirely differently from the philosophizing theologians of our own day, who refer to the ontology of the person and have been influenced by Western theology, especially that of German idealism and existentialism. In a reference to an excerpt from Palamas’ letter to the Nun Xeni, where he mentions the hesychastic way, Archimandrite Zacharias Zakharou, who expresses the authentic teaching of Elder Sophrony, writes that the latter saw people as persons through the theology of image and likeness and the hesychast life. He writes that this text recalls the chapter on the vision of the uncreated light in Elder Sophrony’s  book We shall see Him as He is. He there refers to the fact that the uncreated light causes a wonderful flower to bloom, the name of which is hypostasis or person. When people are enlightened, they bring the whole of creation to God. Herein lies the central meaning of the person, which the Elder was so concerned to help us see. He describes how the divine image and likeness is achieved in people, and also the  path of hesychasm which leads to it. The Elder’s great desire was to make us able  to plumb the depths of our heart, and keep our nous crucified there, so that we can understand the consolation of Christ[65].

            In the Elder’s texts, although he does, indeed, use Western terminology, he gives it a different meaning. For instance, by the phrase ‘actus purus’ he does not mean what Thomas Aquinas did, but rather that, during the experiences, when a glorified person sees the uncreated Light, they feel that this is the brilliance of God, and this brilliance they call ‘actus purus’, in accordance with the words of Saint John the Theologian: “This is the message which we heard from Him and proclaim to you: that God is light and there is no darkness in Him at all”. (I Jn. 1, 5). Indeed, at the particular point where he is referring to the ‘actus purus’, there is a footnote in which he writes that although the terms of Aquinas are used here, readers can see for themselves that our thought and concepts differ greatly (from those of Aquinas)[66].

But Archimandrite Sophrony’s teaching on the value of the divine Eucharist is closely connected with the hesychast and ascetic tradition, which is why he also mentions mourning, repentance, keeping Christ’s commandments, the Cross of Christ and so forth. Again, Archimandrite Zacharias observes that Elder Sophrony often said that we are strangers to the spirit of the divine liturgy unless we come into church with pain in our hearts. He goes on to say that a careful reading  of the Elder’s works makes us see that  that he considers hesychasm as the necessary prerequisite for the proper approach to the liturgy. He also considers hesychasm to be a necessary tool for any spiritual father, because, unless he works on his heart, he cannot understand the word of God and pass it on, filling the hearts of his children with grace. In the final analysis, hesychasm enables us to grasp the deep meaning of Scripture[67].

So it would not be true to say that the theology of Man as a person and participation in the liturgy without the hesychast way of life expresses the teaching of the Church, as taught by the Fathers of the Church and by Elder Sophrony.

            If the so-called Post-Patristic theologians wished to speak about modern people without disengaging from Patristic theology which is ecclesiastical experience, not ideology, then they should have taken into account the case of Elder Sophrony, in particular, his hesychast life, expressed in his eucharistic life, and his teaching. Elder Sophrony was a hesychast monk who lived for twenty-five years on the Holy Mountain and in its desert, in deep mourning and with the prayer of the heart. He saw the glory of God in the person of Christ and is a genuine theologian of our Church today. He can speak to the people of our times without disengaging from the teaching and spirit of the Fathers of the Church.

                                                  Epilogomena

            The experience of the vision of God, the hesychast/Philokalic tradition and the worship of the Church negate the views of post-Patristic theology which undermines these three dimensions of Church life and, in effect, Protestantizes Orthodox theology. In order to make clear what precisely Orthodox ecclesiastical tradition is and to demonstrate that it  is opposed to post-Patristic theology- which is based on culture and philosophy- I shall refer to an example from the first day of the Resurrection of Christ, i.e. the appearance of Christ to two of his disciples while on the road to Emmaus.

            On that day, the first of the sabbaths, [i.e. the first Sabbath after the Passover] the disciples were walking to Emmaus and discussing the events of the crucifixion of Christ. They were sad and were approached by a stranger (Who was Christ) and this man began to interpret passages of Scripture, according to which Christ would be crucified. While He was speaking, their hearts burned with the grace of God. They asked Him to remain with them and, as He broke bread, it was revealed to them that He was the resurrected Christ (Luke 24, 13-35).

            This event is most indicative. It is a journey of the disciples, with Christ, towards the Divine Liturgy. Christ is present at all the stages, but is revealed gradually. The burning in the hearts of the disciples occurred when He analyzed the word of God, since His action touched the internal locus of the spiritual heart. This means that analysis of the word of God illumines people’s hearts and there follows the vision/revelation of the Risen Christ in the Divine Eucharist. After this, the joy of the vision of the Risen Christ is made manifest to the Apostles, to the whole Church.

            Post-Patristic theology attempts to analyze the Scriptures using logic as a tool, or imagination or thinking, but not the heart. It wants the Divine  Eucharistic and Holy Communion without the burning of the heart, without prayer of the heart. It refers to the ontology of the person, but not to their progression from image to likeness/deification. It speaks of the person presiding at the Eucharistic gathering, but not of the Prophet who preaches. It speaks of the Resurrection of Christ with no experience of the mystery of the Cross, which is the ascetic/hesychast tradition. It seeks to answer the questions posed by modern culture, but does not mention the victory of the Christian, through the power of Christ, over the devil, corruption and death. It wants to receive answers to the questions of contemporary culture and is not interested in participating in the glory of the mystery of the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ.

            This is the problem of post-Patristic theology, and of any other theology that is not Ecclesiastical. In his address to the well-known conference at the Theological Academy in Volos, and having first remarked that the theology of the Church cannot ignore contemporary culture, the Ecumenical Patriarch wrote: “The future belongs to an authentic, ‘Patristic’ theology, beyond Neo-Patristics and Post-Patristics, to an ecclesiastical theology which is actuated by the tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ of the Kingdom of God”[68].

            It follows, then, that the basis of Orthodox theology is ecclesiastical, as described wonderfully in Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Ephesians as well as that to the Colossians, and is not post-Apostolic nor post-Patristic.

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[1] Robert Bird in On Spiritual Unity, a Slavophile Reader, Aleksei Khomiakov, Ivan Kireevsky. Translated and edited by Boris Jakim and Robert Bird, Lindisfarne Books, 1998. General Introduction by Robert Bird, pp. 7-25.

[2] Ibid, pp. 12, ff.

[3] Ibid, p. 16.

[4] Ibid, p. 29.

[5] Ibid, p. 24.

[6] Ibid, p. 36.

[7] Ibid, p. 41.

[8] Ibid, pp. 41-2.

[9] Ibid, p. 43.

[10] Ibid, p. 44.

[11] The Church is One. Faith and Life in Church Unity.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid, p. 55

[14] Ibid, pp. 29-30.

[15] Ibid, p. 317.

[16] Ibid, p. 322.

[17] Ibid, p. 318.

[18] Ibid, pp. 326 ff.

[19] Ibid, pp. 326, 330-1.

[20] John Romanides, Orthodox Ecclesiology according to Alexis Khomiakov, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 2 (1956), 578 ff.

[21] On Spiritual Unity…, p. 317.

[22] Metropolitan Ierotheos of Nafpaktos and Saint Vlasios, Π. Ιωάννης Ρωμανίδης, ένας κορυφαίος δογματικὸς θεολόγος της Ορθοδόξου Καθολικής Εκκλησίας, published by the Holy Monastery of the Birth of the Mother of God (Pelagia), 2012, pp. 123-4.

[23] Fr. John Romanides, Εἰσαγωγὴ εἰς Γρηγόριον Παλαμᾶν, Ρωμαίοι ἤ Ρωμηοὶ Πατέρες τῆς Ἐκκλησίας, vol. I, Pournaras, Thessaloniki1984, pp. 77-82.

[24] Ibid, pp. 85-6.

[25] Ibid, pp. 88-9.

[26] See Florovsky, On Church and Tradition, an Orthodox View, and, idem, Aspects of Church History.

[27] Stelios Ramfos, Τὸ μυστικὸ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ, Armos Publications, Athens 2006, p. 9.

[28] Ibid, p. 11.

[29] Petros Vasileiadis, Κοινωνία καὶ ἐρημία, Τὰ Βιβλικὰ δεδομένα (καὶ οἱ ἐκκλησιαστικές τους προεκτάσεις), Σύναξη, no. 117, January-March 2011, pp. 41-2.

[30] Ibid, pp. 42-3.

[31] Ibid, p. 43, note 34.

[32] Stelios Ramfos, Τὸ ἀδιανόητο τίποτα, Armos Publications, Athens, 2010, p. 266.

[33] Ibid, pp. 86-7.

[34] Ibid, pp. 266-7.

[35] Ibid, p. 267.

[36] Ibid, p. 248.

[37] Saint Grégoire Palamas et la mystique orthodoxe.

[38] See Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 6 (1961), 186-285, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Theological School Press, Brookline, Massachusetts; Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics II, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 9 (1963-4), 225-70, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Theological School Press, Brookline, Massachusetts; Εἰσαγωγὴ Ἰωάννου Ρωμανίδη εἰς Γρηγορίου Παλαμᾶν, Ρωμαῖοι ἢ Ρωμηοὶ Πατέρες τῆς Ἐκκλησίας, vol. I, Pournaras Publications, Thessaloniki 1984, p. 89 ff; Metropolitan Ierotheos of Nafpaktos and St. Vlasios, π. Ἰωάννης Ρωμανίδης, ἕνας κορυφαῖος δογματικὸς θεολόγος τῆς Ορθοδόξου Καθολικῆς Ἐκκλησίας, ἐκδ. Ἱ. Μονῆς Γενεθλίου τῆς Θεοτόκου (Πελαγίας) 212, pp. 259-88.

[39] Metropolitan Ierotheos, π. Ἰωάννης Ρωμανίδης, ἕνας κορυφαῖος δογματικὸς θεολόγος,…, p. 125.

[40] Panayiotis Nellas, Ζῶον θεούμενον, Epopteia Publications, Athens 1979, p. 19 ff.

[41] Metropolitan Ierotheos of Nafpaktos and St. Vlasios, Τὸ πρόσωπο στὴν Ὀρθόδοξη Παράδοση, ἐκδ. Ἱ. Μονῆς Γενεθλίου τῆς Θεοτόκου (Πελαγίας) 4^th ed., 2005, pp. 142-52.

[42] Christos Yannaras, Ἕξι φιλοσοφικὲς ζωγραφιές, Icarus Publications, Athens 2011, p. 78.

[43] The lessons of Metropolitan John of Pergamum have circulated in a variety of forms In the paper I delivered at the Holy Metropolis of Piraeus, I used the form, the title and the page numbers of the notes which were circulating in the Ecclesiastical Upper School in Patra. The references here will be to the notes from the University of Thessaloniki, that is Μητροπολίτου Περγάμου Ἰωάννου, Μαθήματα Χριστιανικῆς δογματικῆς, Σημειώσεις ἀπὸ τὶς παραδόσεις τοῦ Μητροπολίτου Περγάμου, Καθηγητῆ Ἰωάννη Ζηζιούλα, Μέρος Α΄, Thessaloniki 1998, p. 111.

[44] Andrew Sopko, Prophet of Roman Orthodoxy, the Theology of John Romanides, Synaxis Press, Canada 1998, pp.147-50.

[45] Metropolitan Ierotheos of Nafpaktos and St. Vlasios, Πρόσωπα καὶ «κοινωνία προσώπων», Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ Παρέμβαση, no. 171, Oct. 2010, pp. 8-9.

[46] Sopko, op. cit., pp. 150-3.

[47] See Bishop Afanasije Yeftić Ἑκκλησία, Ὀρθοδοξία καὶ Εὐχαριστία παρὰ τῷ Ἁγίῳ Εἰρηναίῳ in Χριστὸς ἀρχὴ καὶ τέλος, Goulandris-Horn Institute, Athens 1983, pp. 109-46.

[48] Sopko, op. cit., pp. 147 and 128.

[49] Ibid, pp. 146 ff.

[50] Fr. John Romanides in Metropolitan Ierotheos of Nafpaktos and Saint Vlasios, Ἐμπειρικὴ δογματική, vol. II, ἐκδ. Ἱ. Μονῆς Γενεθλίου τῆς Θεοτόκου (Πελαγίας), 2011, pp. 296-7.

[51]  Stelios Ramfos, Τὸ μυστικὸ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ, Armos Publications, Athens 2006, p. 353.

[52] Ibid, pp. 354-5.

[53] Ibid, p. 357.

[54] Ibid, pp. 358-60.

[55] Ibid, pp. 360-1.

[56] Ibid, p. 362.

[57] Ibid, p. 363.

[58] Ibid, pp. 363-5.

[59] Ibid, p. 366.

[60] Op. cit., pp. 48-9.

[61] Ibid, p. 48.

[62] Ibid, p. 49.

[63] In the newspaper Kathimerini, 12-9-2010.

[64] Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharof), Saint Siluan the Athonite, the Holy Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, Essex.

[65] Archimandrite Zacharias (Zacharou), The Hidden Man of the Heart, the Holy Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, Essex 2011.

[66] Op. cit.

[67] Op. cit.

[68] Address by His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, July 2010.