Having entered the Christmas season, we ask those who find the work of the Mystagogy Resource Center beneficial to them to help us continue our work with a generous financial gift as you are able. As an incentive, we are offering the following booklet.

In 1909 the German philosopher Arthur Drews wrote a book called "The Myth of Christ", which New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman has called "arguably the most influential mythicist book ever produced," arguing that Jesus Christ never existed and was simply a myth influenced by more ancient myths. The reason this book was so influential was because Vladimir Lenin read it and was convinced that Jesus never existed, thus justifying his actions in promoting atheism and suppressing the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the ideologues of the Third Reich would go on to implement the views of Drews to create a new "Aryan religion," viewing Jesus as an Aryan figure fighting against Jewish materialism. 

Due to the tremendous influence of this book in his time, George Florovsky viewed the arguments presented therein as very weak and easily refutable, which led him to write a refutation of this text which was published in Russian by the YMCA Press in Paris in 1929. This apologetic brochure titled "Did Christ Live? Historical Evidence of Christ" was one of the first texts of his published to promote his Neopatristic Synthesis, bringing the patristic heritage to modern historical and cultural conditions. With the revival of these views among some in our time, this text is as relevant today as it was when it was written. 

Never before published in English, it is now available for anyone who donates at least $20 to the Mystagogy Resource Center upon request (please specify in your donation that you want the book). Thank you.



June 9, 2012

Orthodox Theology and Psychotherapy


From an interview with Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos:

Question: Blessed Elder Paisios of Mount Athos frequently had stated that some of the most serious problems experienced by contemporary humanity is the ever increasing spread of mental illnesses. Would it be right to think that these ailments of the soul have a spiritual background, and consequently, the only true psychotherapy for them should be the one which the Orthodox Church could provide?

Answer: Mental and spiritual illnesses, even illnesses of the body, are related to man’s existential problems, that is, his distancing from God and the entry of death to our existence. Sin is viewed as a spiritual illness. The death of the body, which we inherit from our parents and lies in our cells with the genes of aging, is a consequence of man’s distancing from God.

The Orthodox Church preserves this therapeutical method, the neptic tradition, which we may call Orthodox psychotherapy. According to St. Gregory Palamas, the Church is the Body of Christ and a communion of deification. The phrase “communion of deification” shows the way one experiences deification by Grace in his personal life.

Mental illnesses have repercussions on the body, the same way illnesses of the body affect the soul. Beyond this, there are neurological illnesses due to physical exhaustion, there are demonic influences, or sometimes God allows an illness for man’s spiritual aid. This is why in some cases illnesses of the body assist man’s spiritual life more than health does.

I believe that spiritual fathers who work on man’s therapy must distinguish between bodily, spiritual, psychological and demonic illnesses. This distinction is the objective of Orthodox theology. A theologian is Orthodox if he is able to discern between the created and the uncreated, the demonic and the divine, the psychological and the spiritual, the physical and the spiritual.

Since you mentioned Father Paisios, I have a personal view that on various illnesses he referred the ill ones sometimes to spiritual fathers, sometimes to physicians and other times to saints. He used to say often: “This kid needs a saint” and would send him to Saint Nektarios, to Saint Gerasimos, et al., while other times he would send him to physicians he knew.

Sobornost, September 2006.
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