2026 Pastoral Encyclical for the New Year (Metr. Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

 

 

Pastoral Encyclical

Sacred Metropolis of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

New Year's Day 2026

Beloved children in the Lord,

I am communicating with you on this great day of the feast of the Circumcision of our Lord Jesus Christ and the beginning of the new civil year along with the feast of Saint Basil the Great, and I extend to you my warm wishes for a blessed new year, with health, both physical and spiritual, and every good gift from God, pleasing and perfect. On this day the Church has appointed that, during the Divine Liturgy, a reading be proclaimed from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Colossians, which refers to the difference between the philosophy of this world and theology — a difference of great and central importance in our lives (Col. 2:8–12).

Philosophy is characterized as “empty deceit,” as “the tradition of men,” and as “the elements of the world,” and “not according to Christ.” Humanity has always looked upon the existing world and, on the one hand, sought to interpret it — what it is, that is, what its ontology is, why it exists, and ultimately how it came to be or who created it. Thus, from ancient Greece various philosophical schools developed, before and after Socrates, and also after Plato and Aristotle, down to our own days. The center of philosophy is human reason, with its deductions and imagination, by which the gaps of reasoning are filled.

Theology, Philosophy and Dogma (Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

Theology is not connected to philosophy, because the path of both is different. Theology is based on theoria – the vision of God, while philosophy is based on human reason, reflection. Thus, the Holy Fathers of the Church were theologians/theoptics and not philosophers. And when they dogmatized, they did not do so in a philosophical way and in order to understand or develop philosophy.

The Fathers of the Church did not reflect on God, but they had the knowledge of the dogmas. Reflections are a gymnastics of the intellect and are not connected to the experience of Orthodox theology. If Orthodox theology were based on reasoning and logic, then the best theologians from the side of Orthodox theology would be the professors of dogmatics and the history of dogmas. This is not the case.

June: Day 1: Teaching 2: Holy Martyr Justin the Philosopher

June: Day 1: Teaching 2:
Holy Martyr Justin the Philosopher

(True Enlightenment is Possible Only in Christianity)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. Saint Justin, whose memory we now celebrate, one of the most learned philosophers of the second century A.D., was born in the Samaritan city of Shechem; his parents were rich and noble people, and took care of his education. Justin from his earliest years was passionately fond of learning; he attended the best schools, studied with the most famous philosophers, and finally came to the conviction that only in the word of God is truth contained, that only by faith can the soul of man find peace, true enlightenment, and salvation.

Even at the time when the Apostles preached the gospel, the most intelligent and educated pagans had little faith in the gods. Convinced of the falsity of pagan worship, they sought the truth in the teachings of ancient philosophers or sages: Plato, Pythagoras, Zeno, Epicurus and others. Justin searched for the truth for a long time and conscientiously, and stuck to one teaching, then to another, but none satisfied him, because his soul dimly felt the need to recognize a higher and eternal being. More than other teachings, he was attracted by the teaching of Plato, which was distinguished by the loftiness of its aspirations and some concepts about the Deity and the immortality of the soul. Justin passionately devoted himself to the study of Plato's books: he often sought solitude in order to freely think about the subject that so strongly occupied his soul. At one of these moments he happened to hear about the teachings of Christ from an elder who pointed him to the books of Holy Scripture, in which alone the truth could be found.

The Three Hierarchs and the Identity of Hellenism (Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

The Three Hierarchs and the Identity of Hellenism

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

(A panygeric speech from January 30th 2015 delivered at the University of Patras)

The Course and Development of Greek Thought

Studying ancient Greek philosophy, we feel a sense of wonder at how it was able to study "being" and the world through different perspectives, yet having a unified infrastructure, how it developed and became a great movement of philosophy, religion and politics.

Two main points should be emphasized in this unity.

The first is that we have a continuous evolution of the way in which the ancient Greeks philosophized and practiced religion, but within the framework of the Greek consciousness. One observes with great astonishment how the ancient Greek spirit avoided stagnation and was distinguished by a dynamic course. One can delimit, despite the danger of the matter, some phases of the development of the Greek spirit.

At the beginning one observes the prevalence of magical religions, nature is worshiped, which constitutes an inferior religion. Then anthropomorphism develops, the worship of the gods of Olympus, as described in Homer and Hesiod. This anthropomorphism in reality embodies human desires for immortality, health, merriment, and power. Then appear the Ionian naturalists, who turn to nature, rejecting the religious view of the interpretation of the world. The original cause of the world is considered by Thales of Miletus to be water, by Anaximander to be the infinite, by Anaximenes to be air. Then appears the mystical way of life, the orgiastic phase of religion, as expressed by Dionysus, the Orphics and Pythagoras, who bring god within man and are mainly interested in dealing with pain. The ontological interpretation of nature, as expressed by the Eleatics (Parmenides) and Heraclitus, deals with the relationship and difference between "being" and "becoming". Also, the appearance of rationalism, as expressed by the Sophists, first of all Protagoras, who are considered precursors of the Enlightenment of the 18th century AD, who perceive truth not as an object, but as a subject connected to human thought. Subsequently, the idealistic, classical metaphysics of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle fought the anthropomorphism of God and made God an idea. Then the post-classical period of Hellenism expressed by the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, who identified the nature of man with reason, spoke of the necrosis of the passive part of the soul and of course gave priority to eudaimonia, as they understood it. Finally, Neoplatonism with Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus, which was the last glimmer of ancient Greek philosophy and especially of metaphysics, connected Platonism with Gnosticism.

Dogmatic Lessons of Father John Romanides (2 of 7)

...continued from part one.

2. Philosophical and Empirical Theology About God

Before reading the summary of the "Outline", an observation should be made, which is one of the most basic teachings of Father John Romanides: that there is a clear difference between the philosophical way of theology of the heretics, and the empirical way of theology of the Fathers.

The Prophets in the Old Testament saw the pre-incarnate Word in the Light, as well as the Triune God, but they had a different terminology, they spoke of God as the Lord of Glory; or they spoke of God as the Angel of the Great Council; or they spoke of God as Yahweh. The Apostles and the Saints saw the incarnate Word in the Light by the Holy Spirit and through Christ they saw the Father, who is identical in image, as happened at the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor. That is why in the Old and New Testaments they spoke of God as Light and of three Lights. We see this in Holy Scripture and the ancient tradition of the Church.

Homily on the Origins of Modern Godlessness (St. Luke of Simferopol)

On the Origins of Modern Godlessness

By St. Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and All Crimea

(Delivered on February 27, 1948 -
Friday of the Week of the Publican and the Pharisee)

You know what the Jews, the contemporaries of Christ, said: “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1:46).

It was about Him. And when the Lord came to Nazareth, where He grew up, where He was brought up, there people treated Him with contempt, did not consider Him a saint or a prophet, and said: “After all, we know that this is the son of the carpenter Joseph.” A significant part of the human race still treats the Savior with the same contempt - that portion that was once Christian, but now has become apostate. Why, why? Precisely because the teaching of Christ is extremely simple, so simple that it is accessible to the understanding of the simplest, most uneducated person.

And proud people scorn everything simple, lowly, while people bow before what they consider great and significant. And because of their pride, because of their arrogance, they do not want to know the Lord Jesus Christ, they have chosen other teachers, other leaders.