Moralism Always Without Heart

By Fr. John Romanides

"The biblical tradition as preserved by the Fathers cannot be identified with or reduced to a system of moral precepts or Christian ethics. It is rather a therapeutical asceticism which is not daunted by any degree of malady of the heart or noetic faculty short of its complete hardening. To take the shape of this asceticism without its heart and core and to apply it to a system of moral precepts for personal and social ethics is to produce a society of puritanical hypocrites who believe they have a special claim on God's love because of their morality, or predestination, or both. The commandments of Christ cannot be fulfilled by any simple decision to do so or by any confidence in having been elected. A person with broken legs cannot run in the race no matter how much he wants to. One can do so only when one's legs have healed and have been restored to a competitive degree of power. In the same way, one cannot fulfill the commandments unless he undergoes the cleansing and illumination of his noetic faculty and reaches the threshold of glorification...."

The Three Powers of the Heart

"In the soul we find three powers: the intellect, the will, the
heart, or, as the Holy Fathers say, the intellectual, desiring and
incensive powers. Each of them is assigned particular curative
exercises by the holy ascetics. These related excercises are
both receptive and conducive to grace. They need not be contrived
according to some theory, but rather chosen from tested ascetic
labors particularly suited to a given power:"
-St. Theophan the Recluse in "The Path To Salvation"


"The chief character of believing thought consists of the striving
to concentrate all the separate powers of the soul into a single
power, to seek out that inner focus of being where reason, will,
feeling and conscience, the beautiful and the true, the wonderful
and the desirable, the just and the merciful, and the whole sweep
of the mind are fused together in one living unity, thus restoring
the essential personality in its original indivisibility"
-Ivan Kiriyevksy (Optina disciple and key Orthodox Integral
Philosopher