A Theological and Psychological Inquiry
(A presentation at the Pan-Orthodox MontaNika Conference, Butte, MT, June 12-15, 2025)
Bishop Maxim Vasiljevic of Los Angeles and Western America
Τὸ γὰρ ἀπρόσληπτον, ἀθεράπευτον (Letter 101.32)
Introduction
When we hear therapy today, we think of couches and deep conversations—not of incense-laden sanctuaries, liturgical vestments, or the recitation of the Nicene Creed. But in ancient usage, θεραπεία meant service, not self-care. The original therapist was more likely to exclaim “Lord, visit your servant” than ask, “And how does that make you feel?”
The term therapy, derived from the Greek word θεραπεία (therapeía), is often narrowly associated today with healing in a medical or psychological sense. Yet its original meaning was far broader and more relational. Rooted in the verb θεραπεύω (therapeúō), meaning “to serve” or “to attend,” θεραπεία first signified devoted service or attentive care, particularly in relation to a deity or master. In this light, therapy is less about fixing what is broken and more about being present, offering care, and engaging in loving service. Healing, then, is the fruit of service—of standing with another in their suffering, of reverently attending to what is wounded in the soul or in creation.
This understanding of therapy as attentive service finds a striking embodiment in the historical legacy of Byzantine society, where care for the body and soul was deeply intertwined. Byzantine society stood among the most advanced in the Western world and its system of healthcare was remarkably developed for its time. To study medicine meant to enter into the sacred treasury of human wisdom—to explore what humanity has learned about health, illness, life, and death, and to engage in the noble struggle against disease.[1]
The language of healing pervades both biblical and patristic sources, yet its full theological depth often escapes modern understanding. Frequently reduced to therapeutic or moralistic categories, healing is in fact central to the Christian vision of salvation.
This presentation argues that healing, in its truest sense, is the restoration of communion—within the self, between humanity and creation, and between creation and its Creator. This reflection explores key themes: healing in Maximus’s ontology, Christ’s restoration of freedom, the Church as a therapeutic body, eschatological horizons, spiritual vision, modes of human existence, conciliarity and canons as remedy, and therapy oriented toward the eschaton.
1. The Ontological Foundations of Healing in the Theology of St. Maximus
I would like to begin with a laconic remark from St. Gregory the Theologian: “τὸ γὰρ ἀπρόσληπτον, ἀθεράπευτον”—“what is not assumed is not healed.” (the “unassumed is unhealed.”) In the Incarnation, Christ did not selectively assume parts of our nature, but took on the whole of humanity—body, soul, mind, and will—so that every dimension of human existence might be healed. “He took on the task of healing us of all our sicknesses, freeing us from all our delusions,” says Elder Vasileios of Iveron.[2] This truth affirms that healing is not partial or abstract, but total: it touches every layer of our being, from physical suffering to psychological fragmentation, from relational estrangement to cosmic alienation.
Healing isn’t just tissues and therapy. According to St. Maximus, the human person was created to overcome five fundamental divisions in creation: between male and female, paradise and the world, heaven and earth, intelligible and sensible, and between created and uncreated being (Ambigua 41). These were not a result of the fall; rather, they preexisted humanity and defined its cosmic mission.
The fall, however, introduced sin and death, not as the source of division, but as the corruption of human freedom in its mediating role. The failure of the first Adam necessitated the coming of the Second Adam, Christ. However, “the last Adam is the ontological cause of the first Adam”[3] and not vice versa. Healing is thus not a postlapsarian concession, but the telos of humanity from the beginning. It is Christ who fulfills what Adam refused—to unite creation by offering it to the Father in the Spirit.
In modern thought, the confusion between ontology and psychology[4] has led to a reduction of death—once understood as a cosmic and ontological rupture—to a merely psychological event centered on subjective suffering. This shift, deeply influenced by the rise of introspective paradigms such as psychoanalysis, reflects a broader tendency to neglect the communal and existential dimensions of death, focusing instead on the individual Self as the sole locus of meaning. Once, we wept at funerals because death was a cosmic rupture. Now we just ask, “Did they have a good therapist?” In doing so, we risk replacing the mystery of death with the management of feelings, and the hope of resurrection with the pursuit of therapeutic comfort.
2. Healing Human Nature and the Will in Christ: From Fragmentation to Freedom
It is very difficult to be human; it is very difficult to remain steadfast in the whirlwind called earthly life. But that is why it is worthy of man and that is why it is so crucial because a great advantage has been given to man. Neither angels nor demons hold such a unique position in God’s universe as man. That is why being human is a privilege, but every man has battles to fight, spiritual battles, for this war is fought within him.[5]
It is important to note that the psychological dimensions of healing are closely tied to the ontology of freedom. (St. Athanasius wrote “God became man so that man might become God.” Today, it’s more like: God became man so that man might become … emotionally stable.) The will, when turned away from God, becomes fragmented and self-referential. Georges Florovsky notes that “the human will cannot be healed by force… the entire meaning of the healing of the will lies in the fact that it constitutes a ‘turning,’ an active turning toward God.”[6] According to Fr. George,
One has to distinguish most carefully between the healing of nature and the healing of the will. Nature is healed and restored with a certain compulsion, by the mighty power of God’s omnipotent and invincible grace. One may even say, by some “violence of grace.” … But the will of man cannot be cured in the same invincible manner; for the whole meaning of the healing of the will is in its free conversion. The will of man must turn itself to God; there must be a free and spontaneous response of love and adoration. The will of man can be healed only in freedom, in the “mystery of freedom.”[7]
This notion resonates with the Orthodox understanding of repentance (metanoia) as both conversion and healing. Sin, as a misuse of freedom, is not merely a transgression but a pathology of the will. Healing thus requires not coercion but love—divine grace that invites the person into restored communion. As Christ says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock” (Rev. 3:20). Healing begins when the door is opened from within.
From a psychological perspective, this reorientation of the will toward the purpose parallels modern therapeutic insight: healing occurs not when symptoms are suppressed but when the self is integrated. Shame, fear, and trauma divide the person internally. Healing, then, is the restoration of integrity—being made whole (integer) in relationship with God and others. As Fr. Vasileios Thermos points out, “a true relationship is synonymous with freedom. When fear shows up to usurp freedom (a perennial temptation of human nature), the main preoccupation of the psyche is to avoid any trauma (or its recurrence when there had been an unpleasant experience linked to it).”[8]
So, when the Person of Christ embraced and “assumed” nature, He took over the wounds of this nature and made them His own in order to heal them by love.
The mystery of Christ as defined by the Council of Chalcedon and as presented by St Maximus declares the faith: one Person, one of the Trinity, took freely the initiative, following the good pleasure of another Person (the Father) and with the co-operation of another Person (the Spirit) to assume and hypostasize in His own Person the human nature in its state wounded by sin and death, respecting fully its integrity and dynamism, transmitting to it the qualities of His own nature, healing it by His own death, and elevating it to the level of participation in the divine life. In this faith, there is not the slightest conflict between nature and person.[9]
The consequences of this appear clearly when one considers the problem of the Church as a therapeutic community.
3. The Church as a Therapeutic Community
In a Eucharistic and therapeutic approach, healing involves a Christ-like act of assuming creation—not to dominate it, but to restore it. By recognizing our organic unity with creation, we receive it as a gift and offer it back to God in love, saying, “Thine own of Thine own.” This offering becomes the healing act itself—transforming both the self and the world through gratitude and communion.
This illuminates our understanding of Baptism. From the earliest days of the Church, Baptism was seen not only as spiritual rebirth but also as an act of healing—a cleansing of creation, a deliverance from demonic powers, and a restoration of the whole person. The Gospel miracle stories, especially in the Synoptics, were closely linked to this rite, preparing catechumens through narratives of healing and exorcism. Baptism thus reveals a cosmic dimension: the healing of both the human being and creation itself. However, in the East, the Fourth Gospel is set apart to be read beginning with the Paschal Liturgy on Easter.
In the Holy Eucharist, Christ accepts the world (creation) and nature, but He sacrifices them (by His death) and leads them to the “ὑπὲρ φύσιν”, raising them to the Father. When the Apostle Paul says that “even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Cor 5: 7), he automatically places this sacrifice in the perspective of the Resurrection and the Second Coming. “The power of a sacrificial offering is in its cleansing and hallowing effect” said Fr Georges Florovsky.[10] Nature is brought into the Eucharist in the present state, but only in order to be transformed through sacrifice.[11] Only in this Eucharistic light can we understand that Christ’s sacrifice healed the relationship between nature and God. Thus, the dichotomy between nature (profane) and God (holy), which has deeply shaken the life of the Church throughout history, proves, in the light of the Eucharist, to be false. If, while living in the world (John 17:11), the Church continues to take the world, sacrifice and purify it (as a bloodless offering), and then offer it to God the Father, it will continue the work of Christ.
The Fathers often described the Eucharist as “medicine of immortality” (pharmakon athanasias, cf. Ignatius of Antioch, Ephesians 20). Healing in the Church is neither sentimental nor abstract; it is ontological, touching the depths of the person, the soul, the will, and the body. This process involves ascesis—not as repression, but as liberation from passions that enslave the soul. As one contemporary homily notes: “Even a small passion can become gigantic and make us captives… the root of all passions is self-love.”
This echoes the patristic insight that love—agape as a communion-event —is the true medicine of the person. As Christ affirms, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Mk 2:17). The Church is not primarily an ethical institution or a guardian of dogma, but a place of sanctification and ascesis (=healing). The sacraments—especially confession and communion—are not magical rites but therapeutic encounters, restoring the human person through grace.
4. Cosmic and Eschatological Dimensions of Healing of Time and Space
We already noted that healing, as envisioned in Christian theology, is not limited to the individual. It is cosmic and eschatological. The Apostle Paul writes that creation itself “will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). The final judgment, in this light, is not merely juridical but restorative. It is the purification of all creation from evil—not vindictive punishment but divine healing.
But this cosmic vision of healing culminates in the Resurrection, the decisive defeat of death, which is the ultimate sickness. In Christ, the healer, death is not only reversed but transfigured.
In the book “Remembering the Future”, Metropolitan John of Pergamon says that we naturally remember the past—the Cross, the Resurrection—but to remember what is yet to come, like the Second Coming, points to something deeper: the healing of time itself. Only when the fragmentation of past, present, and future is overcome—when time is gathered into wholeness—can such remembrance become real. This is what takes place in the Kingdom of God. As Metropolitan John states, “with its eschatological perspective the Eucharist heals us of self-love, the source of all the passions, shatters the very backbone of individualism and teaches us to exist in a gathering with others and with all the beings of God’s creation.”[12]
5. Healing the Eyes of the Soul: The Gospel of Light and Blindness
The Gospel of John offers a profound theological and anthropological insight into healing through the narrative of the man born blind (John 9). This account, while literal in its historical and miraculous reality, also serves as a metaphor for humanity’s spiritual condition. We were created by God to behold Him—to participate in divine vision and communion. Yet we are, in truth, born blind, not because we lack desire for the light, but because we instinctively flee it.
This condition is paradoxical: while we yearn for illumination, we prefer the shadows. As St John writes, “People loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). This inclination toward concealment—hiding “the dark sides of our souls, our dark actions, our dark thoughts”—is a fundamental affliction. It is not merely moral failure, but an existential disability. Like moles, we instinctively burrow into secrecy rather than emerge into truth. We are quick to scrutinize the faults of others, yet slow to perceive our own. “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own?” (Matt. 7:3). This spiritual misalignment becomes a defense mechanism by which we avoid self-knowledge and thus evade healing. True healing, then, requires rebirth, as Christ says to Nicodemus: “Unless one is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). This rebirth involves allowing the light of Christ to shine into the very places we are most ashamed of—our hidden fears, secret sins, and unresolved griefs. Only in this exposure do we see the truth of ourselves, which becomes the precondition for seeing the truth of God.
In the Orthodox tradition, healing is not merely psychological relief but the restoration of the human person in the image of God. The passions—such as anger, despondency, or vainglory—are not just emotional disturbances, but signs of a deeper rupture in our being. Their root, say the Fathers, is φιλαυτία (self-love), the mother of all passions—a turning inward that breaks communion with God and others. Unlike modern psychology, which often treats symptoms in isolation, Orthodox therapy seeks the transfiguration of the person through ascetic struggle, repentance, and Eucharistic life. The goal is not self-fulfillment, but healing through communion.
6. “Your faith has saved you… be healed of your illness.” (Mk 5:34)
Speaking about healing let’s turn our attention to the Gospel narrative about the sick woman and her faith. The reading offers us the occasion to stop and reflect on the following points:
- a) The sick woman did not neglect or despise the assistance of human science. She did not say, “I shall go directly to God for help.” She did use first human help. Faith does not imply the bypassing of man. It begins when human incapacity or failure show themselves. b) The sick woman did not spiritualize her relationship with God. She believed that God’s power can also use matter to manifest itself. Our Lord’s garments can be bearers of His grace, for everything that belongs to Him is elevated to the level of His person. This is not superstition or magic, for these are regarded as having divine power in themselves. Whereas in this case, it is Christ’s Person, His free will that bears the power. c) Our Lord speaks of power having come out through the woman’s contact with Him. We are reminded here of the theology of the fathers (especially the Cappadocians and the hesychasts), who speak of divine energy. God reveals us through His energy, not His essence. The whole creation is sustained by God’s energies. We are united with Him and saved through His uncreated energies. d) The woman fell on her knees and with fear and trembling told Christ the whole truth. Christ of course knew what had happened. He did not have to learn from the woman’s confession. Yet, this confession was welcomed by Him and was registered in the Gospel as a memorable and significant event. Our Lord knows the depths of our hearts and yet He values our confession and indeed expects it from us. “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace, and be healed of your illness.” (Mk 5:34)
This understanding opens the way to a deeper anthropological vision. Let’s take a look at it.
7. Three Ways of Being Human
St. Maximus the Confessor speaks of three ways of being human—carnal, natural, and spiritual—each revealing a distinct orientation of the heart and will, each shaping the person’s relationship with the world, with nature, and with God.
The carnal person is one who knows only how to do evil—not necessarily out of malice, but because he is guided solely by the instinct to preserve biological life. For him, existence is reduced to survival, and when threatened, he will strike, for self-preservation reigns supreme. This is life against nature—παρὰ φύσιν. The natural (soulish) person, by contrast, does not wish to do evil nor to suffer it. He is restrained, reflective, moral. He does not harm others and sets boundaries against passion. But he remains earthbound. Though more noble than the carnal man, the natural man still cannot grasp the things of the Spirit. His vision ends with decay. This is life according to nature—κατὰ φύσιν. The spiritual person goes far beyond both. He desires to do only good—and even more, he willingly accepts suffering if it serves other’s salvation. His is the life of grace, not merely restraint; love, not mere survival. This is the life beyond nature—ὑπὲρ φύσιν—the life of the Spirit.
These three ways are not merely states of character but profound existential modes. As one inwardly leans toward a certain way, they are transformed by its energy and are rightly called: carnal, psychic, or spiritual. St. Maximus offers no simple moralism. He does not even speak of sin in the usual sense, but rather of a distortion of love. The carnal life, he says, is governed by self-love—philautía—which is the mother of all passions, the true unnatural state. The spiritual path, animated by the Spirit of God, draws the future Kingdom into the present. It is a life of cruciform love—where one forgives, suffers, and blesses. It is not just better—it is new.
To live in the Spirit is to be free in a light that unsettles and consoles, where wonder becomes the new normal. With the words of Elder Vasileios of Iveron: “And you are free, given over as you are to “the Spirit who has neither beginning nor end.” He disturbs you and calms you like no other. He illumines what is dark. His light goes beyond your questions. Your joy and amazement never cease when you stay close to him. And the tension ends in non-tension. The amazement ceases to be amazement, to have any element of the unexpected. The unforeseen becomes the established order, the norm.”[13]
8. Healing Through Conciliarity and the Canons
But can healing be applied not only to individuals, but also to ecclesial communities divided by schism? The Church has realized this possibility through the practice of conciliarity.
Conciliarity, in its deepest sense, is not merely a juridical mechanism but a therapeutic ministry of the Church, aimed at healing divisions and restoring communion. While it may result in schism or excommunication when truth and unity are violated, its true purpose is to prevent rupture and mend what has been torn, offering a space where misunderstanding is clarified and estrangement can be overcome. The Church’s councils are thus not ends in themselves but preparatory acts toward Eucharistic communion, moments in a larger liturgical drama where peace is sought through love and truth. This conciliar healing unfolds not only through repentance but also through dialogue and discernment, as seen in historical efforts like the Council of Alexandria and the resolution of the Melitian schism. In this light, conciliarity becomes a sacramental process—a healing gathering of the Body, anticipating the fullness of restored communio sanctorum at the table of the Lord.
Similar insights may be drawn from the pastoral dimension of healing reflected in the holy canons. Here, I will limit my comments to Canon 102.
Sin, in the spirit of the canons, is seen not as a legal violation but as a deep spiritual illness, needing careful and personalized treatment. The clergy—those who bind and loose—must discern both the wound and the heart’s readiness for healing. Like physicians, they balance firmness and mercy, offering what each soul requires. The aim is not judgment, but the healing of the soul’s ulcer. This healing unfolds over time, through repentance, spiritual growth, and a journey toward communion and light.
As Bishop Atanasije of Herzegovina noted:
From the entire text of this Holy Canon, one perceives the Orthodox approach—holistic, economical, compassionate, and salvific—rather than juridical or casuistic. It views the one fallen into sin not as a criminal, but as an ill person afflicted by spiritual disease, who, precisely as such, requires healing, which is salvation. This mirrors what the noted Byzantinist Cyril Mango recently concluded in his studies of medieval monastic hospitals in the East: that the approach to the sick in Byzantine monasteries was holistic—a methodology that remains highly valued in medicine to this day.[14]
10. Healing and the Forgotten Goal: A Theological and Psychological Reflection
In the fourth century, spiritual confusion led to the writings of the Desert Fathers. Today, it leads to a podcast, a diagnosis, and a weighted blanket.
In contemporary discourse on mental health—particularly among the youth—the notion of healing has become almost entirely medicalized. Terms like anxiety, ADHD, and depression dominate the landscape, shaped by diagnostic frameworks and accelerated by social media narratives. Young people, immersed in curated campaigns and networks, are quick to interpret emotional discomfort through clinical categories. This isn’t without reason: many do suffer and, unlike past generations, they now seek help more readily. But despite good intentions, large-scale epidemiological studies suggest a paradox—more diagnosis, more treatment, yet deeper disorientation.
Why? One possible answer lies in the absence of a unifying goal. Traditional models of healing—both medical and spiritual—were goal-oriented: to restore the person to wholeness, to reorient life toward virtue, to unite the self with its purpose in God and the world. Let us not forget: in the patristic tradition, this turning aside—this falling short of the purpose for which all things were made—is what we call evil, or more precisely, sin.[15]
But today’s therapeutic systems—despite their impressive results[16]—especially for youth, often omit this ultimate horizon. They focus on symptom relief, not transformation; adaptation, not vocation. Yet the soul is not content with mere equilibrium—it longs for meaning, for direction. Therapeia originally meant service, not cure—a reminder that true healing arises when one is restored to the purpose of serving and being served in love.
Compounding this lack of goal is a cultural climate marked by relentless stimulation and catastrophic anticipation. The information economy thrives on tension, bombarding users with images of crisis, conflict, and urgency. This constant state of alertness affects the psyche profoundly. But unlike previous generations who lived within smaller, rooted realities, today’s young are global citizens of an unstable digital village. The world feels borderless, yet threatening. This creates a new kind of fatigue: the soul is exposed to everything, yet anchored in nothing.
Another layer to this crisis is the modern cult of happiness. Consumer capitalism markets happiness as a lifestyle product. Young people grow up with the belief that the purpose of life is to “be happy,”—but happiness has never functioned well as a life goal. It is a byproduct of striving toward something greater. The paradox of happiness is that those who pursue it directly are often the most unhappy. Real joy, as both theology and psychology attest, comes from achievement, service, love, and sacrifice. One sets a goal—to paint, to help others, to build, to discover—and happiness arises as a consequence, not a prize. As Fr. Vasileios Thermos holds, “if deep interactive joy and growth are the pursued goals, reality proves far much stronger than fantasy.”[17]
Stress, often treated as a pathology, is in fact essential to growth. Like the immune system, the soul needs resistance to mature. The true danger is not stress itself, but stress without purpose. When stress is tied to a clear goal, it can be endured. But purposeless stress, or worse, the stress of having no direction at all, is profoundly destructive. It leads to a quiet, persistent despair. In this sense, the greatest wound of our time is not failure, but drift.
To live without a true goal—not self-centered aims or unlawful desires[18]—is to starve the soul. People who once lived within limited yet clearly defined roles had fewer choices but more inner peace. Today’s endless options create paralysis. A person choosing toothpaste from twenty-eight brands may feel minor anxiety—but choosing a life path from a thousand undefined options can induce spiritual crisis. Freedom without telos becomes torment.
Theologically, the Christian tradition offers a way forward. Christ never promises ease, but He always promises purpose. “Whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Mt 16:25). Healing in this context is not merely therapeutic but teleological. It restores us to our vocation: to love, to serve, to strive. Victory is fleeting; struggle is holy. The joy of parenting, of artistry, of friendship, lies not in arriving but in ascending.
Healing, then, is the rediscovery of the goal—not merely to survive, but to become. To strive for something greater than happiness, and in that striving, to find a peace that is deeper than ease, and a joy that is stronger than comfort. As Fr. Vasileios Thermos points out,
[B]oth theory and research will have to resist post-modern relativism, which denies any normativity and thus paves the way to self-centered criteria for religion and mental health. Meaningless tautology is escaped only by adopting principles that are above scientific reductionism and value relativism, namely, principles which include an agreed proposal for human nature and for ideals to be pursued. Otherwise, religion and therapy will be reduced to analgesic medications for the rich while the West will continue to fall deeper into being self-referential, with all the dangerous impact this behavior may have on global turmoil. Mental health professions, as well as religious ministries in the West, have to be critical if their validity and effectiveness are to survive.[19]
Instead of a Conclusion
Now, how to live this new mode? Let me conclude by challenging a widely cherished assumption.
We often say, “I’m struggling to become a better person.” To be healed. This notion is so deeply ingrained, so widely echoed, that we rarely pause to question it. Yet I believe it misses the heart of the Christian life. It reflects a way of thinking embraced by moralists and many Protestants—and somehow, we’ve adopted it too. But the Christian life is not, strictly speaking, about self-improvement in the usual sense. I will never truly become “better” by my own design. Instead, the End—the Eschaton, the fullness of the Kingdom—enters into the now. It pierces the present moment. It stains my actions with meaning and illumines my interior life.
And here, I believe, we stand on unplowed ground. We have not yet done the spiritual or intellectual work to understand this mystery. Not even psychology has found language adequate to express it. What we need is a way to live the Eschaton—to experience it now. And in truth, we do. It happens in the Divine Liturgy—in the Eucharist. That is where I, at least, draw my breath and vision. In the Liturgy, we do not merely speak of the future—we taste it.
The End does not await our arrival. It comes to us. We do not transform history into perfection; rather, Perfection visits our imperfection. That is what we mean when we call the Eucharist a foretaste of the Kingdom.
And this foretaste must not remain abstract. It must shape our ethics, our psychology, our entire way of being. Because once you have tasted the Kingdom—even a little—repentance changes. Repentance is no longer a matter of correcting behavior or performing virtue out of duty. That kind of moral effort, isolated from the Kingdom, has little weight. No—repentance becomes the aching awareness of how far I fall from the Kingdom that has already drawn near.
The more I taste of the Eschaton, the more I feel my distance from it. It is like holiness: holiness belongs to God alone. Not even the saints possess it in themselves. The closer they draw to God, the more they see that they are not holy. They see holiness as absence—as longing. And that longing, in this life, is enough. When the End truly comes, it will reign on its own terms. As Saint Paul writes, “then the perfect will come.” But for now, I do not possess it. I cannot seize it. I cannot make it the goal of my striving, as though it were an accomplishment to be achieved.
No—I receive it when it comes.
I taste it.
I fall short of it.
I repent.
And in repenting—I live.
End Notes
[1] See more in George Papageorgiou, Medicine and Hospitals in Byzantium through the Life of a 12th-Century Physician, trans. Maxim Vasiljević (Los Angeles: Sebastian Press, 2025).
[2] Archimandrite Vasileios, Selected Writings, vol. III (Montreal: Alexander Press and Los Angeles: Sebastian Press, 2022), p. 231.
[3] J.D. Zizioulas, Remembering the Future (Los Angeles: Sebastian Press, 2023) p. 177.
[4] Fr. Vasileios Thermos has completed a book that seeks to consolidate the vocabularies of psychology and theology—a synthesis that, until now, has remained largely unexplored.
[5] Quoted in Bishop Maxim Vasiljević, Atanasije: A Life Story (Los Angeles: Sebastian Press, 2025), p. 769.
[6] Georges Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, Collected Works, Vol. 3 (Nordland, 1976), p. 96.
[7] Georges Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, Collected Works, Vol. 3 (Nordland, 1976), p. 148.
[8] Fr. Vasileios Thermos, Psychology in the Service of the Church: Theology and Psychology in Cooperation (Los Angeles: Sebastian Press, 2017), p. 53.
[9] J.D. Zizioulas, Knowing and Willing, p. 87.
[10] George Florovsky, “On the Tree of the Cross”, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly 1/3-4 (1953) 11-34: 15.
[11] See the words of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus haereses IV, 18, 5; PG 7, 1028-1029: “For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity” (the English translation in: A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (eds.), The Writings of Irenaeus, (ANF 1), 1887, repr. Eerdmans, 1987.
[12] The Eucharist and the Kingdom of God (Sebastian Press, 2022) p. 106.
[13] Selected Writings, vol. 3, pp. 84-85.
[14] Svešteni Kanoni Crkve (Foundation of Bishop Atanasije: Trebinje, 2025), p. 192.
[15] Evil is regarded as non-being (St. Maximus, QThal. I) because it constitutes a deviation—a deprivation—from the movement toward the telos, the End, for which the world was created.
[16] I have in mind Fr. Vasileios Thermos’ insight, according to which “when the psychiatrist administers drugs, he intervenes in the disturbances of the biochemical energies of our nature, whereas through psychotherapy he intervenes in the disturbances of the emotional energies of our nature” (Psychology in the Service of the Church: Theology and Psychology in Cooperation [Los Angeles: Sebastian Press, 2017], p. 147).
[17] Psychology in the Service of the Church, p. 52.
[18] A fine distinction made by Fr. Vasileios Thermos in Psychology in the Service of the Church, p. 143.
[19] Fr. Vasileios Thermos, Psychology in the Service of the Church, p. 126.
