John Romanides

Biography

Born in Piraeus, Greece, on 2 March 1928, his parents emigrated to the United States when he was only two months old. He grew up in Manhattan, graduating from the Hellenic College, Brookline, Massachusetts. After attending Yale Divinity School, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Athens.

From 1956 to 1965 he was Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the Holy Cross Theological School in Brookline, Massachusetts. In 1968 he was appointed as tenured Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the University of Thessaloniki, Greece, a position he held until his retirement in 1982. His latest position was Professor of Theology at Balamand Theological School, in Lebanon. Romanides died in Athens, Greece on 1 November 2001.

He was a "candidate for the Far Right in the 1977 parliamentary elections in Greece."

Theology

Romanides belonged to the "theological generation of the 1960s," which pleaded for a "return to the Fathers," and led to "the acute polarization of the East-West divide and the cultivation of an anti-Western, anti-eucumenical sentiment." According to Kalaitzidis, his early theological interests are "wide and braod-minded," but narrowed with the publication of Romyosine in 1975, which postulates an absolute divide between the Orthodox Churches and the western Church. According to Kalaitzidis, "[h]ereafter, the West is wholly demonized and proclaimed responsible for all the misfortunes of the Orthodox, both theological and historical/national."

Romanides contributed many speculations, some controversial, into the cultural and religious differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. According to Romanides, these divergences have impacted the ways in which Christianity has developed and been lived out in the Christian cultures of East and West. According to Ramonides, these divergences were due to the influences of the Franks, who were culturally very different from the Romans.

His theological works emphasize the empirical (experiential) basis of theology called theoria or vision of God, (as opposed to a rational or reasoned understanding of theory) as the essence of Orthodox theology, setting it "apart from all other religions and traditions," especially the Frankish-dominated western Church which distorted this true spiritual path. He identified hesychasm as the core of Christian practice and studied extensively the works of 14th-century Byzantine theologian St. Gregory Palamas.

His research on Dogmatic Theology led him to the conclusion of a close link between doctrinal differences and historical developments. Thus, in his later years, he concentrated on historical research, mostly of the Middle Ages but also of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Augustine of Hippo

Ramonides sees St Augustine as the great antagonist of Orthodox thought. Romanides claims that, although he was a saint, Augustine did not have theoria. Many of his theological conclusions, Romanides says, appear not to come from experiencing God and writing about his experiences of God; rather, they appear to be the result of philosophical or logical speculation and conjecture. Hence, Augustine is still revered as a saint, but, according to Romanides, does not qualify as a theologian in the Eastern Orthodox church.

Original sin versus ancestral sin

Romanides rejects the Catholic teachings on Original Sin. Orthodox theologians trace this position to having its roots in the works of Saint Augustine. Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Assyrian Church of the East, and Eastern Catholicism, which together make up Eastern Christianity, acknowledge that the introduction of ancestral sin into the human race affected the subsequent environment for humanity, but never accepted Augustine of Hippo's notions of original sin and hereditary guilt. The Catholic Church did not accept all of Augustine's ideas, at least as these are commonly interpreted outside the Church, such as the idea that original sin deprives man of free will or that God predestines some people to hell, and also his teaching that infants who die without baptism are confined to hell. It holds that original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants.

Rejection of St. Augustine

Eastern Orthodox theologians John Romanides and George Papademetriou say that some of Augustine's teachings were actually condemned as those of Barlaam the Calabrian at the Hesychast or Fifth Council of Constantinople 1351. It is the vision or revelation of God (theoria) that gives one knowledge of God. Theoria, contemplatio in Latin, as indicated by John Cassian, meaning vision of God, is closely connected with theosis (divinization).

John Romanides reports that Augustinian theology is generally ignored in the Eastern Orthodox church. Romanides states that the Roman Catholic Church, starting with Augustine, has removed the mystical experience (revelation) of God (theoria) from Christianity and replaced it with the conceptualization of revelation through the philosophical speculation of metaphysics. Romanides does not consider the metaphysics of Augustine to be Orthodox but Pagan mysticism. Romanides states that Augustine's Platonic mysticism was condemned by the Eastern Orthodox within the church condemnation of Barlaam of Calabria at the Hesychast councils in Constantinople.

Criticism

Romanides criticism of Augustine has been criticized. In his review of Hieromonk Seraphim Rose's book The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church Archimandite (later, Archbishop) Chrysostomos wrote:

In certain ultra-conservative Orthodox circles in the United States, there has developed an unfortunate bitter and harsh attitude toward one of the great Fathers of the Church, the blessed (Saint) Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.). These circles, while clearly outside the mainstream of Orthodox thought and careful scholarship, have often been so vociferous and forceful in their statements that their views have touched and even affected more moderate and stable Orthodox believers and thinkers. Not a few writers and spiritual aspirants have been disturbed by this trend.

Heaven and Hell

According to Romanides, the theological concept of hell, or eternal damnation is expressed differently within Eastern and Western Christianity. According to John S. Romanides, "the Frankish [i.e. Western] understanding of heaven and hell" is "foreign to the Orthodox tradition".

According to Romanides, the Orthodox Church teaches that both Heaven and Hell are being in God's presence, which is being with God and seeing God, and that there is no such place as where God is not, nor is Hell taught in the East as separation from God. One expression of the Eastern teaching is that hell and heaven are being in God's presence, as this presence is punishment and paradise depending on the person's spiritual state in that presences. For one who hates God, to be in the presence of God eternally would be the gravest suffering. Aristotle Papanikolaou and Elizabeth H. Prodromou wrote in their book Thinking Through Faith: New Perspectives from Orthodox Christian Scholars that for the Orthodox: Those theological symbols, heaven and hell, are not crudely understood as spatial destinations but rather refer to the experience of God's presence according to two different modes.

The saved and the damned will both experience God's light. However, the saved will experience this light as Heaven, while the damned will experience it as Hell. Theories explicitly identifying Hell with an experience of the divine light may go back as far as Theophanes of Nicea. According to Iōannēs Polemēs, Theophanes believed that, for sinners, "the divine light will be perceived as the punishing fire of hell".

Other Eastern Orthodox theologians describe hell as separation from God. Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) speaks of "the hell of separation from God". "The circumstances that rise before us, the problems we encounter, the relationships we form, the choices we make, all ultimately concern our eternal union with or separation from God." "Hell is nothing else but separation of man from God, his autonomy excluding him from the place where God is present." "Hell is a spiritual state of separation from God and inability to experience the love of God, while being conscious of the ultimate deprivation of it as punishment." "Hell is none other than the state of separation from God, a condition into which humanity was plunged for having preferred the creature to the Creator. It is the human creature, therefore, and not God, who engenders hell. Created free for the sake of love, man possesses the incredible power to reject this love, to say 'no' to God. By refusing communion with God, he becomes a predator, condemning himself to a spiritual death (hell) more dreadful than the physical death that derives from it."

According to Iōannēs Polemēs, the important Orthodox theologian Gregory Palamas did not believe that sinners would experience the divine light: "Unlike Theophanes, Palamas did not believe that sinners could have an experience of the divine light [...] Nowhere in his works does Palamas seem to adopt Theophanes' view that the light of Tabor is identical with the fire of hell."

Theosis

The practice of ascetic prayer called Hesychasm in the Eastern Orthodox Church is centered on the enlightenment, deification (theosis) of man. Theosis has also been referred to as "glorification", "union with God", "becoming god by Grace", "self-realization", "the acquisition of the Holy Spirit", "experience of the uncreated light"

Theosis (Greek for "making divine", "deification", "to become gods by Grace", and for "divinization", "reconciliation, union with God" and "glorification") is expressed as "Being, union with God" and having a relationship or synergy between God and man. God is Heaven, God is the Kingdom of Heaven the uncreated is that which is infinite and unending, glory to glory. Since this synergy or union is without fusion it is based on free will and not the irresistibly of the divine (i.e. the monophysite). Since God is transcendent (incomprehensible in ousia, essence or being), the West has over-emphasized its point by qualifying logical arguments that God cannot be experienced in this life.

According to John Romanides, following Vladimir Lossky in his interpretation of St. Gregory Palamas, the teaching that God is transcendent (incomprehensible in ousia, essence or being), has led in the West to the (mis)understanding that God cannot be experienced in this life. Romanides states that Western theology is more dependent upon logic and reason, culminating in scholasticism used to validate truth and the existence of God, than upon establishing a relationship with God (theosis and theoria).

Influence

According to Kalaitzidis, Romanides had a strong influence on contemporary Greek Orthodoxy, to such an extent that some speak about "pre- and post-Romanidian theology." Kalaitzidis further notes that Romanides' post-1975 theology has "furnished a convenient and comforting conspiratorial explanation for the historical woes of Orthodoxy and Romiosyne," but is "devoid of the slightest traces of self-criticism, since blame is always placed upon others." However, James L. Kelley's recent article has shown that Kalaitzidis's concern that Orthodox theologians engage in "self-criticism" is a ploy to engineer a "development of Orthodox doctrine" so that, once the Orthodox place some of the blame on themselves for "divisions of Christian groups," they will adjust the teachings of Orthodoxy to suit the ecumenist agenda (see James L. Kelley, "Romeosyne" According to John Romanides and Christos Yannaras: A Response to Pantelis Kalaitzidis [Norman, OK: Romanity Pres, 2016]).

Works

Several of his articles can be found at the website dedicated to him. Among his books are: