The following interview with Protopresbyter Fr. Nikolaos Loudovikos, Professor of Dogmatics and Philosophy at the University Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki, took place in 2007.
Apostolos Diamantis: How did you, a graduate of psychology, turn to theology?
Nikolaos Loudovikos: I come from psychology, I studied psychology. Then, through monks from Mount Athos, I moved on to Orthodox theology. And I immediately read the Greek Fathers. In my work I stand critically against existentialism, which has been adopted by some Greek theologians, which has its roots in Augustine and Plotinus. Namely that the soul is celestial and the body earthly. And so they talk about nature as if it is something we must emerge from. This division does not exist in the Greek Fathers, for whom the soul is a "thinly bodied spirit".
A.D.: These are certainly difficult things to follow for an ordinary person.
N.L.: Not at all. Ordinary people experience them empirically, by their participation in ecclesiastical life. It becomes tradition. The problem is with the schematic thinking of the "educated", those of the right and the left and the centrists. The cliches of the left are three categories: Middle Ages = Disaster, Enlightenment = Resurrection, Church = Christodoulos, namely an open tomb. Those on the right identify the entire Orthodox tradition with whatever is prevailing in the Church. A good relationship had with all of these is the monastic tradition and ordinary people, who have "kept the steps of a lost dance", as Dionysios Savvopoulos once said.
