The author's main conviction which permeats this present book is that Orthodoxy does not provide a "system" of moral conduct but a therapeutic treatment which cures the innermost aspect of man's personality. Archimandrite (now Metropolitan) Hierotheos Vlachos maintains that he does not innovate by stating this, but that he just highlights a central teaching of the Fathers of the Church: man's soul suffers malady which distorts his relationship with God, his fellow-men and even nature. Church is a Hospital which receives all people and cures their spiritual illness. The cure of the soul is the "end" of the Orthodox way and it can only be attained through the Orthodox therapeutic method-which is asceticism, as it is expressed in the neptic tradition of the Church.
