The Flesh Became the Word

I cannot think of a better summary of the theological foundation of the veneration of the icon than this paragraph from St John Damascene's first treatise on the holy images:

I know what the One who cannot lie said: "the Lord your God is one Lord" [Deut 6:4], and "you shall venerate the Lord your God and Him alone shall you worship" [Deut 6:13], and "there shall be for you no other gods" [Deut 5:7], and "you shall not make any carved likeness, of anything in heaven above or on the earth below" [Deut 5:8], and "all who venerated carved [images] shall be put to shame" [Ps 96:7] and "gods, who did not make heaven and earth, shall be destroyed" [Jer 10:11], and these words in a similar manner: "God, who of old spoke to the fathers through the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us in His Only-begotten Son, through whom He made the ages" [Heb 1:1-2]. I know the One Who said: "This is eternal life, that they might know You, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom You sent" [Jn 17:3]. I believe in one God, the one beginning of all things, Himself without beginning, uncreated, imperishable and immortal, eternal and everlasting, incomprehensible, bodiless, invisible, uncircumscribed, without form, one being beyond divinity, in three persons, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and I worship this one alone, and this one alone I offer the veneration of my worship. I venerate one God, one divinity, but also I worship a trinity of persons, God the Father and God the Son incarnate and God the Holy Spirit, one God. I do not venerate the creation instead of the creator, but I venerate the Creator, created for my sake, Who came down to His creation without being lowered or weakened, that He might glorify my nature and bring about communion with the divine nature. I venerate together with the King and God the purple robe of His body, not as a garment, nor as a fourth person (God forbid!), but as called to be and to have become unchangeably equal to God, and the source of anointing. For the nature of the flesh did not become divinity, but as the Word became flesh immutably, remaining what it was, so also the flesh became the Word without losing what it was, being rather made equal to the Word hypostatically. Therefore I am emboldened to depict the invisible God, not as invisible, but as He became visible for our sake, by participation in flesh and blood. I do not depict the invisible divinity, but I depict God made visible in the flesh. For if it is impossible to depict the soul, how much more God, who gives the soul its immateriality? (I, 4)

St John begins by establishing Scripturally that there is one God, Who cannot be depicted in His divinity, as the Damacene makes clear by describing Him in apophatic (negative) language. But we worship "a trinity of persons, God the Father and God the the Son incarnate and God the Holy Spirit, one God." The Son of God entered creation, taking on flesh, and therefore we can depict and venerate the Son of God as He became visible in the flesh. Just as the Word became flesh, so too did the flesh become the Word. The Word was "en-fleshed," rendering the flesh hypostatically equal to the Word. Man, too, through participation in Christ's Body, the Church, is deified by grace not only in soul, but in body as well. The body itself becomes a true image of God, making it a word in the Word.

A few additional points of interest:

1. Notice how St John speaks of the divinity: "a trinity of persons, God the Father and God the Son incarnate and God the Holy Spirit, one God." With very rare exceptions, the Fathers do not speak of the "Triune God," language not found in Scripture or the Creeds. Recall the language of the Nicene Creed:

• "I believe in one God, the Father almighty"
• "And in one Lord, Jesus Christ... true God of [or, from] true God"
• "And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life; Who proceeds from the Father; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified."

If one were to premise one's theology on the "Triune God," how would one then be able to speak of the God Who is both invisible and visible? Unfortunately much fashionable contemporary Orthodox theology, with its emphasis on "being and communion" and the Trinity as social and ecclesiastical model does in fact premise itself on the idea of the "Triune God," thereby often projection a human-societal model of community onto the Godhead. (None of this, needless to say, is to deny the dogma of the Trinity; see my fuller explanation here. My point is simply that we should take care to follow the language of the Scriptures and Fathers in speaking of the Holy Trinity.)

2. Although it's not quite evident in this passage, a reading of the complete treatise will show that St John's usage of the word eikon (icon/image) is both deeper and broader than our usual conception of icons, as images painted on wood.

3. St John's defense of the veneration of icons rests on purely theological ("incarnational") grounds. Unlike many apologists for the veneration of icons, he says nothing at all about the aesthetics of the icon. The icon is not first and foremost a work of art.

How radically foreign all this is to the insistence of the new old atheists that the human person is a "mere mammal"!

For others posts on the theology of the icon see here and here. The best translation of St John's treatises on the icons is that of Fr Andrew Louth, Three Treatises on the Divine Images.

The Kingdom of Gentleness and Freedom

I was pleased to find the following news item on the official website of the Chersonese Diocese (Moscow Patriarchate), which I translate from the French for your benefit:

The Diocese of Nizhny-Novgorod Restores the Tradition of Baptismal Liturgies

The Diocese of Nizhny-Novgorod has decided to return to the tradition of Baptismal Liturgies, which have disappeared from Orthodox parish practice for several centuries. A first Baptismal Liturgy will be held in the Nizhni-Novgorod Cathdral during Paschal week: twenty adults will receive the Mystery of Baptism.

In most cases, Baptism, accompanied by Chrismation and tonsure, is celebrated separately from the Eucharistic Liturgy, and often in the absence of the parish community. The Baptismal Liturgy, however, includes the rites of Christian initiation within the Eucharist. Such Liturgies including Baptism have been celebrated for several years in the church of the St Tikhon Institute of Theology with the blessing of Patriarch Aleksei.

The celebration of Baptism during the Liturgy, “although quite rare today, corresponds to the tradition of the Orthodox Church. It is particularly solemn and the baptized are made to feel called to the community of the Church,” says Fr Maxim Antonenko, a professor at the Nizhny-Novgorod Seminary.

The process by which the Church in Russia has returned to a more traditional Baptismal practice has been a slow one. With the fall of the Soviet Union, it became very fashionable for people (especially the young) to seek out Baptism, if only as a symbolic rejection of Soviet ideology. At the time, the Church was entirely unprepared for such a mass reception, and many people were Baptized by sprinkling (asperges) rather than by full immersion, which is the standard Orthodox practice both for children and adults. (The Greek infinitive "baptizein," from which we get our English word, means to immerse.) In time Patriarch Aleksei decreed that all newly-constructed churches were to have baptisteries sufficient to baptize adults by full immersion. Pre-Baptismal preparation has become better systematized; in some places a formal catechumenate has even been established. Baptism by sprinkling is now the exception rather than the rule. It is therefore even more heartening to see the return of Baptism to its proper place as part of the Divine Liturgy. Baptism is, after all, an initiation into the Body of Christ, and thus should be performed within the fullness of the Eucharistic assembly. There are no such things as private sacraments: even Confession is essentially a matter of reconciliation to the body of the Church (read the prayers of absolution to see this very clearly).

Speaking of Baptism, I have long been particularly touched by St Basil the Great's treatment in On the Holy Spirit. He writes that Baptism can be looked at as both a drowning and a washing: the "Lord, Who is the Dispenser of our life, gave us the covenant of Baptism, containing a type of life and death, for the water fulfills the image of death, and the Spirit gives us the earnest of life." I remember a priest telling me of his impressions after serving both a Baptism and a funeral in the same day: in both cases he was looking down into a grave. Here are the words of St Basil which I find most powerful and poetic:

So in training us for the life that follows on the resurrection the Lord sets out all the manner of life required by the Gospel, laying down for us the law of gentleness, of endurance of wrong, of freedom from the defilement that comes of the love of pleasure, and from covetousness, to the end that we may of set purpose win beforehand and achieve all that the life to come of its inherent nature possesses. If therefore any one in attempting a definition were to describe the Gospel as a forecast of the life that follows on the resurrection, he would not seem to me to go beyond what is met and right. (15:35)

The Gospel is the recipe for the life that follows the resurrection. Baptism itself is a death and resurrection, after which we can indeed live the Gospel, actually achieving beforehand all that the life to come promises. Those who have died and been resurrected through being downed in the Baptismal waters three times, and then raised up again, are already able to live in a foretaste of the world to come, that world of which the Gospel is the forecast, that Kingdom where gentleness and freedom reign.

On the Utility of the Passions

Today the Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of St Maximus the Confessor, that profound theologian, confessor of truth, and exemplary monk. Many of his properly theological works – as opposed to his ascetic writings – are notoriously dense and difficult to comprehend, especially in the original Greek. No one, however, should deprive themselves of the Confessor's "symphony of experience," as Fr Georges Florovsky described his works. The very best volume with which to start is On the Cosmic Mystery of Christ, containing an exemplary introduction by the translators, Paul L. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken, followed by a selection from St Maximus' two main collections of theological reflections: his Ambigua (or Difficulties) and his Questions to Thallasius, along with one of his Christological opuscula.

I will reproduce here (without the notes and annotations) one of the shortest texts contained in this volume, Ad Thallasium 1: "On the Utility of the Passions" (pp. 97-98):

Question: Are the passions evil in themselves or do they become so when used in an evil way? I am speaking of pleasure, grief, desire, fear, and the rest.

Response: These passions, and the rest as well, were not originally created together with human nature, for if they had been they would contribute to the definition of human nature. But following what the eminent Gregory of Nyssa taught, I say that, on account of humanity's fall from perfection, the passions were introduced and attached themselves to the more irrational part of human nature. Then, immediately after humanity had sinned, the divine and blessed image was displaced by the clear and obvious likeness to unreasoning animals.

The passions, moreover, become good in those who are spiritually earnest once they have wisely separated them from corporeal objects and used them to gain possession of heavenly things. For instance, they can turn desire (epithumia) into the appetitive movement of the mind's longing for divine things, or pleasure (hedone) into the unadulterated joy of the mind when enticed toward divine gifts, or fear (fobos) into cautious concern for immediate punishment for sins committed, or grief (lupe) into corrective repentance of a present evil. In short, we can compare this with the wise physicians who remove the existing or festering infection of the body using the poisonous beast, the viper. The spiritually earnest use of the passions to destroy a present or anticipated evil, and to embrace and hold to virtue and knowledge. Thus, as I have already suggested, the passions become good when they are used by those who "take every thought captive in order to obey Christ" [2 Cor 10:5].

What this means is that if Scripture mentions anything about the passions in connection with God and the saints, the following applies: in connection with God, the passions are mentioned for our benefit, revealing the saving and beneficial movements of divine providence accommodated in a way that befits our own experience; with reference to the saints, on the other hand, when the passions are mentioned it is because the saints cannot convey in corporeal speech their spiritual inclination and dispositions toward God apart from human passions.

We see that, according to St Maximus, the passions came into existence following the Fall; they are not an intrinsic part of man as created by God. They are bound up with our lower, carnal, animal nature, but can separated from this corporeal objects and put to good use as a means towards virtue: love and desire can be turned towards God. One might say, adapting the saint's analogy, that passions such as fear and grief can serve like leeches that suck evil inclinations out of us. However, when we speak of God as having passions (e.g., anger or jealousy), this is solely in order to express the inexpressible in terms that we can comprehend. When the saints speak of their great yearning and passion for God, this too, is using human language in a weak attempt to express the divine.

The ascetic effort, then, is not so much matter of repressing the passions, so much as expressing the passions properly, of turning our natural energies away from pleasing our own flesh and towards the love of God. While all of this takes place within the body as the locus of our salvation, it is not expressed sensually or physically. It might be profitable to compare this approach with that of the medieval Spanish mystics, with their "devotion of ecstasy or rapture," which often appears crudely carnal in comparison.

The above image of St Maximus (with his miracles) is an early 17th-century Stroganov school icon from Solvychegodsk.

The Pillar of Fire

Karl Stern writes in The Pillar of Fire (criminally out of print) that, confronted with the "horrifying picture of innocent suffering" he had witnessed as a Jew in Germany during the Third Reich, he found four ways by which he could react. The first possibility was "despair, moral nihilism and suicide." The second was to react "with an increased Jewish national fervor." The third was to look "through the eyes of dialectic materialism on the disaster which had overwhelmed us." The fourth is what interests me the most, as it is the reaction that appears to have been accepted by society at large: "rationalist pragmatism." Such a response would, in Dr Stern's own words, have looked like this:

If we want to see in the future that no more innocent grandmothers, parents and children are tortured to death, there is only one way. Let us investigate objectively the roots of racial and of of class hatred, with all the tools of present-day science, with methods of economic investigation, of sociology, of behaviorism, of psychoanalysis, in short with all the branches of science which occupy themselves with things human. Let us be as scientific and systematic in the establishment of interhuman relationships as we have been in technology. Let us have some sort of international board of social psychologists to study and to control the relationship of groups of people. In order to be able to do this successfully we may find that we have to abolish metaphysical concepts of human existence because it is possible that those are concepts contributing to tension. If we find this necessary let us be courageous and do it, let us sterilize the air and remove all germs of faith so that we may live more rationally and more peacefully in an aseptic scientific atmosphere. Human affairs have long enough been governed by Belief, let them be governed by Science and Usefulness. In the world of matter the road away from belief to has led to the greatest technological progress in history; why should we not make the same step in the world of human society? Once we freed ourselves from an ancient cosmology the way was clear which led to Television and the Airplane. If we only freed ourselves from equally ancient concepts of the nature of Man we shall have a world in which human affairs, for the first time in history, will be governed by reason. In order to find out why man tortures man, and in order to avoid it once and for all, let us consult those who are objective about it – psychologists and social scientists.

Bear in mind that these were written in 1951. Yet one will find precisely these arguments repeated in the works of the current pack of old new atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett – the only exception being that the reigning priestly scientists are now biologists. Dr Stern answers his own theoretical proposition with these words:

To my mind there is only one form of society which is worse than the Marxist or the Fascist one – that is, precisely such a "scientific" society. Compared with it Germany and Russia would look like children's playgrounds. Man's life on this earth would come about as close to the idea of hell as anything on this earth may. Needless to say there is nothing wrong with Economics or Political Science or Psychoanalysis or Social Science or any other similar subject. The great Russian thinkers of the nineteenth century, who were so distrustful of and hostile towards Science, mixed Science (which is precious) with Scientism (which is destructive). It is this scientism as a norm of human life, without God as the center, which leads to a form of nihilism unequaled in history. Saint Augustine, himself an expert at decaying civilizations, once drew our attention to the meaning of the word "nothing" in Our Lord's terrible sentence: "Without me you can do nothing." The word is to be taken quite literally. Christ does not say: "Without me you cannot do very much," or "Without me you can do only a certain amount," or "Without me you can do only little." He says: "Without me you can do nothing." A Christless world, scientific or not, leads to utter negation, to nothingless. Germany and Russia have given pretty good examples of this. However, there are indications that secularism and pragmatism, which have by comparison led a rather amateurish existence outside Russia, may be shaped into some scientific-technocratic norm for human beings. This, not material destruction, would mean the end of Mankind.

An absolutely chilling thought occurred to me as I read Professor Dawkins' apologia for atheism a few months ago: a man like this in power would be a dictator. Dr Dawkins, for instance, argues quite explicitly and at length that the religious education of children is a form of child abuse; he likewise asserts that traditional religious groups such as the Amish should be forcibly assimilated into the contemporary secular world. One can only guess what sort of educational program he would mandate.

What does Dr Stern propose as the solution?

Thus we see four possible answers to the riddle of the abysmal suffering, which we have witnessed in our times. Not one of these answers is adequate. Each of them misses the point. Despair is no solution; even if we wished to despair we cannot because we believe. Resentment is no solution; our dead ones themselves seem to warn us against such a spirit and it would so easily lead us to commit the same cruelties on others which were committed on us. Statism is no solution. Scientism is no solution.

There is only one way: Jesus Christ. If we are concerned with the suffering of those innocent ones, we have first to look at Him. If we are concerned with the Evil which has brought it about, we have first to look to ourselves. Everything else is deception. If I want to renew the world I have to begin right in the depth of my own soul. This is the only true and permanent revolution which I am able to achieve. Class warfare leads to another set of oppressors and oppressed; national revenge leads to another set of persecutors and persecuted; and the Board of Social Scientists for the Prevention of Intergroup Hostilities is the most dangerous mirage to them all because it makes us believe even more that the decisive battle is fought far away from us, outside ourselves; it turns God and Evil into two pale abstracts; it seeks to de-humanize the issue.

What can possibly be added to this that would do anything but dilute its truth and force? Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus (Rev 22:20).

NB: The Amazon link above mistakenly lists the book as "volume 2." It is in fact the entire book, which has always been in a single volume.

Two Prayers by Solzhenitsyn

I offer two prayers written by Solzhenitsyn and included in the book I've been urging you to acquire. The editors offer this introduction:

The two prayers that Solzhenitsyn places among the miniatures deserve special notes. In "A Prayer," composed shortly after One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich made him famous, he serenely acknowledges that God's gracious providence governs his ongoing career; thus, it shows better than anything else his personal relationship with God. The behind-the-scenes story is fascinating. One of his helpers, Elizaveta Voronyanskaya, released this text without permission. Although he scolded her at the time, the widely reproduced prayer elicited many grateful reactions. Moreover, it was a key factor in his being awarded the Templeton Prize, and he recounts that composing the "Templeton Lecture" deepened his understanding of himself. Voronyanskaya played a similar role in the appearance of The Gulag Archipelago by disregarding Solzhenitsyn's instruction to destroy her copy, which the KGB then located. With his hand forced, Solzhenitsyn ordered the work published, and it went on to extert its world-historical influence. About Voronyanskaya, he concludes, "For both willfull acts I can only be grateful to her – she served as an instrument of God's will." After Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994, he wrote "A Prayer for Russia"; he felt a need for such a prayer, and he prays it every day.

A Prayer

How easy for me to live with You, Lord!
How easy to believe in You!
When my mind casts about
or flags in bewilderment,
when the cleverest among us
cannot see past the present evening,
not knowing what to do tomorrow –
You send me the clarity to know
that You exist
and will take care
that not all paths of goodness should be barred.
At the crest of earthly fame
I look back in wonderment
at the journeys beyond hope – to this place,
from which I was able to send mankind
a reflection of Your rays.
And however long the time
that I must yet reflect them
You will give it me.
And whatever I fail to accomplish
You surely have alloted unto others.


A Prayer for Russia

Our Father All-Merciful!
Don't abandon Your own long-suffering Russia
In her present daze,
In her woundedness,
Impoverishment,
And confusion of spirit.
Lord Omnipotent!
Don't let, don't let her be cut short,
To no longer be.
So many forthright hearts
And so many talents
You have lodged among Russians.
Do not let them perish or sink into darkness
Without having served in Your name.
Out of the depths of Calamity
Save Your disordered people.

The Icon and the Image

The following is a brief article by Fr Andrew Louth on iconography written for the general public. It appeared in New Statesman on June 7, 2007, as part of "The Faith Column" series, to which he contributed four columns:

If you go into an Orthodox church, what is perhaps most striking is the multitude of pictures to be seen.

Everywhere you look there are pictures—icons—mostly painted, though in some churches there may be mosaics, too. The walls, the dome, the apse, the ceilings are all painted with depictions of Christ and the saints; in the church there may be stands bearing individual icons; and stretching across the church, there is an icon-screen sealing off the sanctuary from the main body of the church.

The icon-screen, or iconostasis, has rows of icons: icons of Christ and the Blessed Virgin, or as we call her the Mother of God, either side of the central doors. They are flanked by other saints, John the Baptist and the patron saint of the church and beyond that, figures of angels. Above, there are further rows sometime reaching up to the ceiling.

What is the point of this plethora of icons? Not that long ago, they were regarded as a primitive, stunted form of art in comparison with the art of the West. Fashions change, and now they are highly valued; over the last few decades there have been a number of important exhibitions of icons at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum and elsewhere. Though they are certainly works of art, often displaying great skill (the fifteenth-century Andrey Rublev was a painter of unparalleled genius), they are not primarily works of art, but objects of devotion. They belong to the context of prayer: both the public prayer of the church, during which they are solemnly censed, and also in private devotion. It is customary for Orthodox households to have a place set apart for prayer which is an ‘icon corner’ (the ‘beautiful corner’, as the Russians call it) where there are icons with lamps burning before them. In praying before icons, we bow to them and kiss them. What is the point?

First of all, they are tangible, material objects. Orthodox Christianity believes in the goodness of God’s creation; we are beings of flesh and blood, as well as soul and spirit; the material creation, though marred by the Fall.

Secondly, icons express aspects of the faith in pictorial form: in teaching, one picture is often worth a thousand words.

Thirdly, the most striking aspect of the icon is the depiction of the face; as we look at the icon, we encounter the loving gaze of the face of Christ, or the Mother of God, or one of the saints. The icon is often called a door: a door into the world of Christ and the saints, who live transfigured by the light of the Resurrection. Unlike Western paintings from the Renaissance (before the rise of modernism) the icon is not a window on to the familiar world of buildings and fields, rather its perspective is reversed, so that the figure in the icon seems to move towards us and draw us into the world he or she inhabits. Again, in icons of Christ, it is the human face of God we encounter: the face of one who took flesh for our sake, who became recognizable as a human being, who became ‘one of us’.

The icon then reminds us of the truth of the Incarnation.

Furthermore, the word ‘icon’ means ‘image’. We, and all human beings are created ‘in the image of God’. So, we are to regard all humans as ‘icons’ of God, through whom we encounter the divine—as precious beings we should reverence, just as we bow down before an icon.

The above photograph depicts the iconostas of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Washington, DC.

For my brief summary of the theology of the icon, go here.

Purification, Ilumination, Theosis

The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming book Patristic Theology: The University Lectures of Father John Romanides (Uncut Mountain Press):

Many are of the opinion that Orthodoxy is just one religion among many and that its chief concern is to prepare the members of the Church for life after death, securing a place in paradise for every Orthodox Christian. Orthodox doctrine is presumed to offer some additional guarantee, because it is Orthodox, and not believing in Orthodox dogma is seen as yet another reason for someone to go to Hell, besides his personal sins that would otherwise send him there. Those Orthodox Christians who believe that this describes Orthodoxy have associated Orthodoxy exclusively with the afterlife. But in this life such people do not accomplish very much. They just wait to die, believing that they will go to paradise for the simple reason that while they were alive they were Orthodox Christians.

Another section of the Orthodox is involved with and active in the Church, interested not in the next life, but chiefly in this life, here and now. What interests them is how Orthodoxy can help them to have a good life in the present. These Orthodox Christians pray to God, have priests say prayers for them, have their homes blessed with holy water, have services of supplication sung, are anointed with oil, and so forth, all so that God will help them to enjoy life in the present: so that they do not get sick, so that their children find their place in society, so that their daughters are ensured a good dowry and a good groom, so that their boys find good girls to marry with good dowries, so that their work goes well, so that their businesses go well, even so that the stock market goes well, or the industry they work in, and so on. So we see that these Christians are not so very different from other people who follow other religions, for those people do the very same things.

From what we have said, we can clearly see that Orthodoxy has two points in common with all other religions. First, it prepares believers for life after death, so that they will go to paradise, whatever they imagine that to be. Second, Orthodoxy protects them in this life so that they will not have to experience sorrow, difficulties, disaster, sickness, war, and the like – in other words, so that God will take care of all their needs and desires. Thus, for this second type of Orthodox Christian, religion plays a major role in the present life and on a daily basis at that.

But among all these Christians we have just discussed, who cares deep down whether God exists or not? Who really yearns for Him and seeks Him out? The question of God’s existence does not even come up, since it is clearly better for God to exist, so that we can appeal to Him and ask Him to satisfy our needs, in order for our work to go well and for us to have some happiness in this life. As we can see, human beings have an extremely strong predisposition to want God to exist and to believe that God exists, because we have a need for God to exist in order to ensure everything we have mentioned. Since we need God to exist, therefore, God exists. If people were not in need of a God and could take measures to ensure sufficiency for the necessities of life by some other means, then who knows how many would still believe in God. This is what happens in Greece as a rule.

So we see that many people who were previously indifferent to religion become religious towards the end of their lives, perhaps after some event that has frightened them. This happens because they feel that they cannot live any longer without appealing to some god for help – that is, it is the result of superstitious beliefs. For these reasons, human nature encourages man to be religious. This holds true not only for Orthodox Christians, but also for adherents to all religions. Human nature is the same everywhere. Since as a result of the Fall the human soul is now darkened, people are by nature inclined toward superstition.

Now the next question is this: Where does superstition stop and real belief begin?

The Fathers’ views and teachings on these matters are clear. Consider first someone who follows, or rather thinks that he follows the teachings of Christ, simply by going to Church every Sunday, communing at regular intervals, and having the priest bless him with water, anoint him with oil and so on, without examining these things very closely. Does this person who remains at the letter of the law, but does not enter into the spirit of the law, stand to gain anything of any account from Orthodoxy? Now consider someone who prays exclusively for the future life, for himself and for others, but is completely indifferent towards this life. Again, what particular benefit does such a person stand to gain from Orthodoxy? The former tendency can be seen in parish priests and those who flock around them with the attitude described above. The latter tendency can be seen in some elders in monasteries, usually retired archimandrites waiting to die, and the few monks who follow them.

Since purification and illumination are not their main focus or concern, both these tendencies, from the viewpoint of the Fathers, have set the wrong goals for themselves. But insofar as purification and illumination become their focus and the Orthodox asceticism of the Fathers is practiced with a view towards attaining noetic prayer, then and only then can everything else be placed on a firm foundation. These two tendencies are exaggerations that reflect two extremes and share no common core. But there is a common core, a structure that runs throughout Orthodoxy and holds it together. When we take into account this one core, this unique structure, then every subject that concerns Orthodoxy finds its proper place on a firm foundation. And this core is purification, illumination, and theosis.

What will happen to man after death was not an overriding concern for the Fathers. Their primary concern was what will man become in this life. After death, his nous cannot be treated. The treatment must begin in this life, because “in hades there is no repentance.” This is why Orthodox theology is not outside of this world, futuristic, or eschatological, but is clearly grounded in this world, because Orthodoxy’s focus is man in this world and in this life, not after death.

Now why do we need purification and illumination? Is it so that we can go to Heaven and escape Hell? Is that why they are necessary? What are purification and illumination and why do Orthodox Christians want to attain them? In order to find the reason for this and to answer these questions, you need to have what Orthodox theology considers the basic key to these issues.

The basic key is the fact that, according to Orthodox theology, everyone throughout the world will finish their earthly course in the same way, regardless of whether they are Orthodox, Buddhist, Hindu, agnostic, atheist, or anything else. Everyone on earth is destined to see the glory of God. At the Second Coming of Christ, with which all human history ends, everyone will see the glory of God. And since all people will see God’s glory, they will all meet the same end. Truly, all will see the glory of God, but not in the same way – for some, the glory of God will be an exceedingly sweet Light that never sets; for others, the same glory of God will be like “a devouring fire” that will consume them. We expect this vision of God’s glory to occur as a real event. This vision of God – of His Glory and His Light – is something that will take place whether we want it to happen or not. But the experience of that Light will be different for both groups.

Therefore, it is not the Church’s task to help us see this glory, since that is going to happen anyway. The work of the Church and of her priests focuses on how we will experience the vision of God, and not whether we will experience the vision of God. The Church’s task is to proclaim to mankind that the true God exists, that He reveals Himself as Light or as a devouring fire, and that all of humanity will see God at the Second Coming of Christ. Having proclaimed these truths, the Church then tries to prepare Her members so that on that day they will see God as Light, and not as fire.

When the Church prepares her members and everyone who desires to see God as Light, She is essentially offering them a curative course of treatment that must begin and end in this life. The treatment must take place during this life and be brought to completion, because there is no repentance after death. This curative course of treatment is the very fiber of Orthodox tradition and the primary concern of the Orthodox Church. It consists of three stages of spiritual ascent: purification from the passions, illumination by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and theosis, again by the grace of the Holy Spirit. We should also take note. If a believer does not reach a state of at least partial illumination in this life, he will not be able to see God as Light either in this life or in the next.

It is obvious that the Church Fathers were interested in people as they are today at this moment. Every human being needs to be healed. Every human being is also responsible before God to begin this process today in this life, because now is when it is possible, not after death. Everyone must decide for himself whether or not he will pursue this path of healing.

Christ said, “I am the Way.” But where does this Way lead? Christ is not referring to the next life. Christ is primarily the Way in this life. Christ is the Way to His Father and our Father. First, Christ reveals Himself to man in this life and shows him the path to the Father. This path is Christ Himself. If a man does not see Christ in this life, at least by sensing Him in his heart, he also will not see the Father or the Light of God in the life to come.

Once published, this book may be purchased from Uncut Mountain Supply; many articles and essays by Fr John Romanides can be read online here.