In his preface to this volume, Archimandrite Ephraim Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Vatopedi on Mt. Athos in Greece writes the following: "The Fathers of the Church, the bearers of the Tradition, did not come to know God intellectually, but through personal experience 'suffered the divine things,' and for this very reason were able to truly innovatein every one of their times. The Fathers were not conservatives nor fundamentalists, but people living in the Tradition, in the grace of the Holy Spirit, and thus they possessed continually the divine inspiration to proclaim the Gospelauthentically, in their own time, as always timely and new. Tradition, the new Tradition, not a traditionalism attached to the formalities and the letter of tha law, is always innovative.