Here again I want to emphasise the indispensability of the Church. I am very grateful to the priest and professor John Romanides for laying stress on this in his writings. I am convinced that he is very well read in the neptic Fathers–especially in the writings contained in the Philokalia–and has therefore grasped the real meaning of Christianity. I believe that this is his great contribution. For in this era when Christianity is being presented as a philosophy or intellectual theology or a culture and popular tradition–customs and manners–he presents this teaching about a therapeutic science and treatment.
Concretely, he says: “Faith in Christ without undergoing healing in Christ is not faith at all. Faith in one’s doctor without undergoing the cure prescribed by him would be exactly the same kind of contradiction in terms. If prophetic Judaism and its successor Christianity had made their appearance in the twentieth century they would perhaps have been classified not as religions but as medical sciences akin to psychiatry with a wider impact on society due to their success in curing in varying degrees, the malady of partially functioning human personalities. In no way could they have been confused with religions which by various magical practices and beliefs promise escape from an alleged material world of evil or of false appearances to an alleged world of security and happiness.”3
In another work the same professor says: “The patristic tradition is neither a social philosophy nor an ethical system, nor is it religious dogmatism: it is a therapeutic treatment. In this respect it closely resembles medicine, especially psychiatry. The noetic faculty of the soul that prays unceasingly in the heart is a physiological instrument which everyone has and which requires healing. Neither philosophy nor any of the known positive or social sciences is capable of curing this instrument. That can only be done through the Fathers’ neptic and ascetic teaching. Therefore, those who are not cured usually do not even know of the existence of this instrument.”4
So in the Church we are divided into the sick, those undergoing therapeutic treatment, and those–saints–who have already been healed. “The Fathers do not categorise people as moral and immoral or good and bad on the basis of moral laws. This division is superficial. At depth humanity is differentiated into the sick in soul, those being treated and those cured. All who are not in a state of illumination are sick in soul… It is not only good will, good resolve, moral practice and devotion to the Orthodox Tradition which make an Orthodox, but also purification, illumination and glorification. These stages of treatment are the purpose of the mystical life of the Church, as the liturgical texts bear witness.”5
~Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlahos, Orthodox Psychotherapy. Submitted by John Bonadeo
3. J. Romanides, Jesus Christ the Life of the World, published in ‘Xenia Oecumenica’, Helsinki 1983, 39, p. 250-251
4, 5. Romanides, Romaioi i Romioi Pateres Ekklisias, vol. 1, pp. 22, 27
