By Fr. George Dorbarakis
1. Saint Hierotheos was one of the nine members of the Council of the Areopagus. He was instructed in the Christian faith by the Apostle Paul and was ordained Bishop of Athens, while he in turn instructed the Great Dionysios in the same faith. He also presided at the funeral of the Most Holy Theotokos, when the Holy Apostles had gathered, and from all that was heard and seen, he appeared as though he were in rapture and ecstasy. He seemed to have been seized by God, hymning Him. He lived in a good and God-pleasing manner, and after gladdening God by his life in Christ and his accomplishments, he departed to the Lord.
2. Yesterday and today present to us two of the great Saints of our faith, disciples of the Apostle Paul, Saint Dionysios the Areopagite and Saint Hierotheos. For although, according to the Synaxarion, Saint Hierotheos instructed Saint Dionysios in the faith of Christ, the first person who sowed the seed of this faith in Dionysios was the Apostle Paul. We remember from the Acts of the Apostles that, after the “unsuccessful” preaching of the Apostle to the Nations at the Areopagus, when most of them mockingly told him, “We will hear you again,” and got up and left, some approached the Apostle and were initiated by him into the things of the faith, “among whom were Dionysios the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.” With these Saints, then, Dionysios and Hierotheos, we find ourselves before the sources of our faith; we breathe the air of the presence of the sanctified Paul, and we feel his heart throbbing with the love of Christ.
Saint Hierotheos represents a distinctive case among the Saints which, based on the Synaxarion, at least causes us to reflect, because of his extraordinary love for God and his ardent and apparently open character. For how are we to explain the fact that, among all the Apostles and those present at the Dormition of the Theotokos, he occupies a foremost place, “appearing God-possessed and a divine hymnographer”? Indeed, the ecclesiastical Hymnographer cannot fail to note that the Saint spoke about God with most sacred theologies, which he explains as the result of a twofold circumstance: both the profound longing he had for God and his diligent study, with understanding and discernment, of the divine words. “Pierced with spiritual longing and conversing with the divine words with understanding, you have set forth most sacred theologies concerning the Master of all.” And the Hymnographer’s observation is important, because it explains to us that one truly speaks rightly about God, that one truly theologizes, when, on the one hand, one has great love and longing for Him, and, on the other, one applies oneself with great diligence to the words of Holy Scripture and to the earlier tradition of the Church. In other words, if theology is not the result of a connection with what the Church professes and lives, but also of faith and love for God on the part of the one who theologizes, it is not considered sound theology and instead tends to become what the Cappadocian Fathers, especially, characterized as “technologia.”*
The Hymnographer insists on the manner of Saint Hierotheos’ theology. His approach to the divine words, he notes, was not uncritical or irrational. The Saint studied the Scriptures, the Old Testament, and everything that had been written up to that time, especially in the Epistles of the Apostles, with an investigative disposition, that is, with an effort to understand the mystery of God’s plan for the salvation of the world. For Christ, and consequently the Church afterward, did not come to abolish the human mind and human reason. What has always been rejected is the absolutization of reason, the judging of God’s revelation by right reason alone. This, indeed, He rejected and continues to reject, because such an approach takes no account of human sin, through which man became divided, with the result that reason operates autonomously, now serving the distorted passions of man. When, however, a person has found God, when, consequently, the grace of God illumines his heart, then both the intellect and reason, unified with the other powers of the soul, move within acceptable bounds, which means that they understand God, insofar as this is possible for man, and that what a person expresses is indeed the truth. Saint Hierotheos, then, was a student of the divine words, investigating the economy of God, but doing so with a pious seeking. And for this reason, guided by the grace of God, he also revealed to us the mysteries of God, and indeed with eloquence of language, as the poet notes elsewhere: “Having investigated the ineffable mysteries of the economy of Christ with pious seeking, you clearly revealed them, employing elevated speech.” “The sound of your words and the beauty of your writings greatly gladden those who approach them with longing.” By his holy intercessions, Christ our God, have mercy and save us.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
* Technologia (τεχνολογία) is used here in its patristic sense of technical or overly argumentative theological reasoning, rather than in the modern sense of “technology.” Saint Gregory of Nyssa uses the term critically in his Against Eunomius (I.155, I.162, and I.282) for the technical methods of argument by which Eunomius attempted to establish his theological conclusions. Gregory does not reject reason or logical argument as such; indeed, he makes extensive use of them in refuting Eunomius. Rather, he insists that the truth of Christian doctrine rests upon the faith handed down by the Church and the testimony of Holy Scripture, while logical reasoning serves to clarify and defend that received truth and to expose error. In this sense, theology becomes technologia when technical argument is made the foundation or measure of divine revelation. The term is also used by Saint Gregory the Theologian (Gregory Nazianzen), who writes that the person who relies on “argumentative proof” (ἀποδείξει λόγου) turns theology into “technologia” and risks reducing the “great mystery” of the Christian faith to a technydrion (τεχνύδριον), a mere technical construction. See Gregory the Theologian, Oration 31 (The Fifth Theological Oration), 18; Oration 27, 2. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew cites these passages in his address at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on January 29, 2026, specifically in his discussion of the patristic method of theology.
