Chapter 1 from Patristic Theology
by Father John Romanides
The chief concern of the Orthodox Church is the healing of the human soul. The Church has always considered the soul as the part of the human being that needs healing because She has seen from Hebrew tradition, from Christ Himself, and from the Apostles that in the region of the physical heart there functions something that the Fathers called the nous. In other words, the Fathers took the traditional term nous, which means both intellect (dianoia) and speech or reason (logos), and gave it a different meaning. They used nous to refer to this noetic energy that functions in the heart of every spiritually healthy person. We do not know when this change in meaning took place, because we know that some Fathers used the same word nous to refer to reason as well as to this noetic energy that descends and functions in the region of the heart.
So from this perspective, noetic activity is an activity essential to the soul. It functions in the brain as the reason; it simultaneously functions in the heart as the nous. In other words, the same organ, the nous, prays ceaselessly in the heart and simultaneously thinks about mathematical problems, for example, or anything else in the brain.
We should point out that there is a difference in terminology between St. Paul and the Fathers. What St. Paul calls the nous is the same as what the Fathers call dianoia. When the Apostle Paul says, I will pray with the spirit,[1] he means what the Fathers mean when they say, I will pray with the nous. And when he says, I will pray with the nous, he means I will pray with the intellect (dianoia). When the Fathers use the word nous, the Apostle Paul uses the word spirit. When he says I will pray with the nous, I will pray with the spirit or when he says I will chant with the nous, I will chant with the spirit, and when he says the Spirit of God bears witness to our spirit,[2] he uses the word spirit to mean what the Fathers refer to as the nous. And by the word nous, he means the intellect or reason. Continue Reading Here!
