Posts Tagged Hierotheos Vlachos
Met. Hierotheos: “A night in the desert of the Holy Mountain”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, New Nuggets on November 5, 2017
Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) – (1945- ) is the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Nafpaktos, an author, and a theologian. He graduated from the Theological School of the University of Thessaloniki and is one of the finest Patristic scholars living. His books include: “Orthodox Psychotherapy: (the Science of the Fathers)“, “The Illness and Cure of the Soul in the Orthodox Tradition“, “The Person in the Orthodox Tradition“, and “A night in the desert of the Holy Mountain“.
Below is an excerpt of a discussion with an Athonite hermit on the Jesus Prayer. From “A night in the desert of the Holy Mountain”, by Met. of Nafpaktos Hierotheos, pp. 57-59
“- Gerondas, allow me a few questions which arose while you were talking about the stages of the Jesus Prayer. What do you mean by the word heart?
– According to the teaching of the Holy Fathers, the heart is the center of the spiritual world. Among the many opinions of the Fathers on this subject I will mention a distinctive one of St. Epiphanios, Bishop of Konstantia in Cyprus: “For this reason, we need not in any way define or ascertain in what part of man the image of God rather is accomplished, but we need to confess that the image of God does exist in man, so that we will not despise the grace of God and disbelieve in Him. For whatever God says is true, although His word has to a certain extent, escaped our capacity to receive it”. Just as a beam when it falls upon a prism is refracted and shown from all sides, in the same way does the soul also express herself through the whole human being.
When we say the Jesus Prayer, however, we fix our attention on the physical organ, on the heart, so that we are distracted away from the outside world and bring it back into ourselves, into the “deep heart”. In this way the nous – the eye of the soul – returns to its home and is united there with the other powers.
– Allow me a second question. Do all who are enchanted by the enjoyment of God follow the course you have just described to me?
– Yes, most of them do. There are some however who, from the very beginning, seek to unite the nous with the heart by doing breathing exercise. They breath in the word “Lord Jesus Christ” and exhale the words “have mercy on me”. They follow the air as it comes into the nose all the way to the heart, and there they rest a little.
This, of course, is done to allow the nous to be fixed on the prayer, The Holy Fathers have also handed over to us another method, We breath in saying all the words of the Jesus Prayer and we breath out saying them again. This method, however, requires maturity in spiritual development. But using this way of breathing can cause many difficulties, many problems; that is why it should be avoided, if there is no guidance from a spiritual father. It can be used, however, simply to fix the nous on the words of the prayer so that the nous is not distracted. I repeat, this needs a special blessing (permission) of a discerning father.
– You said before, Gerondas, that the aim of the Jesus Prayer is to bring the nous back into the heart, that is the energy into the essence. We can experience this specifically at the third stage [prayer of the heart] of this holy pathway. When, however, you recounted the fifth stage [Christ living in the heart], you referred to a quotation from St. Basil the Great: “he who loves God having avoided all these, departs toward God”. How does the nous come into the heart and depart towards God? Is this perhaps a contradiction?
– No it is not, the holy hermit answered. As the Holy and God-fearing Fathers teach, those who pray are at various stages. There are the beginners as well as the advance; as they are better called to the teaching of the Fathers, the practical and the theoretical ones. For the practical ones, prayer is born of fear of God and a firm hope in Him, whereas to the theoretical ones, prayer is begotten by a divinely intense longing for God and by total purification. The characteristics of the first state – that of the practical ones – is the concentration of the nous within the heart; when the nous prays to God without distraction. The characteristic of the second state of prayer – that of the theoretical ones – is the rapture of the nous by the divine Light, so that it is aware neither of the world nor of itself. This is the ravishment (ecstasy) of the nous, and we say that, at this stage the nous “departs” to God. The god-bearing Fathers who experienced these blessed states describe the divine ravishment; “it is the ravishment of the nous by the divine and infinite light, so that is aware neither of itself nor of any created thing, but only of Him Who through love, has activated such radiance in the nous”. (St. Maximos)”
Met. Hierotheos (Vlachos): “Man has two cognitive centers.”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, New Nuggets on August 22, 2016
Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) – (1945- ) is a Greek Orthodox metropolitan and theologian. He graduated from the Theological School of the University of Thessaloniki and is one of the finest Patristic scholars living.
“Man has two cognitive centers. One is the nous, the organ suited for receiving God’s revelation which is then formulated by our reason, while the other is reason, which knows the tangible world around us. With our nous we acquire knowledge of God, while with our reason we acquire knowledge of the world and the learning offered by the science of sensory things.” From The Person in the Orthodox Tradition, trans by Esther Williams, Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 1998. p. 28
Met. Hierotheos (Vlachos): The distinction between the “Person” and the “Individual”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in New Nuggets on December 30, 2015
Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) – (1945- ) is a Greek Orthodox metropolitan and theologian. He graduated from the Theological School of the University of Thessaloniki and is one of the finest Patristic scholars living.
“…today a distinction is made between the person and the individual. The term ‘person’ is used to mean the man who has freedom and love and is clearly distinguished from the mass, and the term ‘individual’ characterizes the man who remains a biological being and spends his whole life and activities on his material and biological needs, without having any other pursuit in his life.” ~ from “The person in the Orthodox Tradition”, p. 79
Hierotheos: Orthodox Psychotherapy
Posted by Dallas Wolf in New Nuggets on August 21, 2015
Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) – (1945- ) is a Greek Orthodox metropolitan and theologian. He graduated from the Theological School of the University of Thessaloniki and is one of the finest Patristic scholars living.
“The term “Orthodox Psychotherapy” does not refer to specific cases of people suffering from psychological problems of neurosis. Rather it refers to all people. According to Orthodox Tradition, after Adam’s fall man became ill; his “nous” was darkened and lost communion with God. Death entered into the person’s being and caused many anthropological, social, even ecological problems. In the tragedy of his fall man maintained the image of God within him but lost completely the likeness of Him, since his communion with God was disrupted. However the incarnation of Christ and the work of the Church aim at enabling the person to attain to the likeness of God, that is to reestablish communion with God. This passage way from a fallen state to divinization is called the healing of the person, because it is connected with his return from a state of being contrary to nature, to that of a state according to nature and above nature. By adhering to Orthodox therapeutic treatment as conceived by the Holy Fathers of the Church man can cope successfully with the thoughts (logismoi) and thus solve his problems completely and comprehensively.” ~ Met. Hierotheos Vlachos, from “Orthodox Psychotherapy – The Science of the Fathers”
The Concept of “Person” 7
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Concept of "Person" (series) on July 2, 2014
“… a person is one who has passed from the image to the likeness [of God].”
Theologian Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos (1945- ) in his aptly titled, “The Person in the Orthodox Tradition”, brings us back full circle with his exposition and analysis of the thinking of the church Fathers on the concept of “person”. He summarizes his thoughts by concluding:
“All of this shows that the holy Fathers used the term ‘Person’ to point to the particular Hypostases of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But they more often use the term ‘anthropos’, man, for people. Yet there are some indications that the term ‘person’ is sometimes also applied to a man. But this must be done with special care, for it is possible to give a philosophical and abstract character to the term ‘person’. Properly a man and a person is one who has passed from the image to the likeness. In the teaching of the holy Fathers, to be in the image is potentially to be in the likeness, and being in the likeness is actually the image. In the same way the man created by God and recreated by the Church through Holy Baptism, is potentially a person. But when, through his personal struggle, and especially by the grace of God, he attains the likeness, then he is actually a person.”
This means that the idea of the emergence and perfection of our “person” is integrally connected to the spiritual process of purification (katharsis), illumination (theoria), leading to union with God (theosis); or deification.
In summary, clearly there is a massive difference between an “individual” and a “person”.
The great Cappadocians first distinguished between “essence or nature” (ousia) and “person” (hypostasis) for us.
Vladimir Lossky then explained the idea of a “person” in terms of the “irreducibility of man to his nature” and its ability to transcend its nature while still including it.
Christos Yannaras introduced us to the idea that a “person” is necessarily relational; in “direct personal relationship and communion”, participating “in the principle of personal immediacy, or of the loving and creative force which distinguishes the person from the common nature”.
John Zizioulas then explained that it is only within the context of baptism, or new birth, that fallen humanity can achieve the “absolute freedom” to love and unite itself and creation with God. It is this “ecclesial being which ‘hypostasizes’ the person according to God’s way of being”, becoming “a movement of free love with a universal character”, “able to carry with [it] the whole of creation to its transcendence.”
The Concept of “Person” 8
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Concept of "Person" (series) on July 1, 2014
“It is the “person” that recognizes that it is created in the image of God with the single purpose to attain to His likeness…”
Hierotheos Vlachos then summed up for us all of the church Fathers’ thinking on the concept of “person”: “In the teaching of the holy Fathers, to be in the image is potentially to be in the likeness, and being in the likeness is actually the image. In the same way the man created by God and recreated by the Church through Holy Baptism, is potentially a person. But when, through his personal struggle, and especially by the grace of God, he attains the likeness, then he is actually a person.”
Hierotheos brings the concept of “person” into the context of 21st century society. He tells us that becoming a “person” takes some real work and effort, “The theology of man as a person can play an important part in contemporary society. To be sure, the person par excellence is God, but man too, as created in the image and likeness of God, can become a person… But, in order to reach this point it is necessary to live the asceticism of the person. The Fathers of the Church give great weight to this matter… If we do not look at the ascetic dimension of the human person, then we fail to see the patristic teaching concerning the person, no matter how many patristic references we may use.”
Vlachos concludes his thoughts by speaking about the value the teaching about the “person” can be to society: “The teaching about the human person will solve many problems which are arising every day. Love, freedom, the solution to social problems, anguish and insecurity, the eastern religions, dialogue, [and] psychological phenomena cannot be cured and confronted apart from the patristic teaching about man and about the person.”
Given what we have learned here, it is no surprise that the concept of “person” has been lost to “individual”-obsessed Western culture, including the church. The concept of “person” has been reduced to being equated with “individual”. I think all of us have had the uneasy feeling that the fundamental self-centeredness and worldliness inherent with modern society’s idolatry with “individuality” might somehow fall short of God’s plan for us. Now we can see that indeed it does and, better yet, why.
The “individual” is an instance of human nature; the self-centered, ego driven subsistence of human nature that pits itself and defends its interests against all other individuals. The “person” is not the same; it includes the “individual” and yet transcends it. It is the “person” that recognizes that it is created in the image of God with the single purpose to attain to His likeness in an intimate relationship of agape love for humankind and for all creation, bringing the created world along to union with God; “partaking of the divine nature”.
Hierotheos: “Christ as physician; Church as hospital”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, New Nuggets on June 28, 2014
Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos, born in Greece in 1945, is one of the greatest living Christian theologians. The influence of fellow theologian, Fr. John Romanides, the study of the patristic texts (particularly those of the neptic hesychast Fathers of the Philokalia), many years of studying St. Gregory Pálamas, association with the monks of the Holy Mountain (Mount Athos in northern Greece), and many years of pastoral experience, all brought him to the realization that Christian theology is a science of the healing of humankind’s fallen nature and damaged nous and that the early Church Fathers can be of immense help to modern society, so disturbed and afflicted as it is by its many internal and existential problems.
Met. Hierotheos (Vlachos) 1945 –
“In the parable of the Good Samaritan the Lord showed us several truths. As soon as the Samaritan saw the man who had fallen among thieves who had wounded him and left him half-dead, he “had compassion on him and went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn and took care of him” (Luk. 10:33f). Christ treated the wounded man and brought him to the inn, to the Hospital which is the Church. Here Christ is presented as a physician who heals man’s illnesses, and the Church as a Hospital.” ~ Orthodox Psychotherapy, p.27.
First Thoughts 