A Realism of Glory

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dox Icons, Saints, Feasts and Prayer

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tine Tradition
A REALISM OF GLORY
Lectures on Christology in the Works
of Protopresbyter John Romanides

James L. Kelley

orthodox
research
institute
Rollinsford, New Hampshire
Published by Orthodox Research Institute
20 Silver Lane
Rollinsford, NH 03869
www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org

© 2009 James L. Kelley

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be repro-

duced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any in-
formation storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the author or publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-933275-37-6
 Table of Contents

Introduction.....................................................iii
Part One: The Survey ........................................ 1
Chapter 1
“Original Sin according to Saint Paul” ............ 3
Chapter 2
“Man and His True Life according to
the Greek Orthodox Service Books” ................. 9
Chapter 3
“Orthodox Ecclesiology according to
Alexis Khomiakov” ........................................ 17
Chapter 4
“The Ecclesiology of St. Ignatius
of Antioch” ..................................................... 23
Chapter 5
The Ancestral Sin I ......................................... 29
Chapter 6
The Ancestral Sin II ........................................ 43
ii Realism of Glory

Chapter 7
The Ancestral Sin III ...................................... 45
Chapter 8
The Ancestral Sin IV ...................................... 57
Chapter 9
The Ancestral Sin V ........................................ 63
Chapter 10
“Justin Martyr and the Fourth Gospel” ......... 67
Chapter 11
“H. A. Wolfson’s Philosophy of
the Church Fathers” ....................................... 71
Part Two: The Nestorian Metaheresy ....... 79
Chapter 12
The Nestorian Metaheresy: Fr. John’s
Teaching on Christology and Its
Ecumenical Implications................................ 81
Bibliography .................................................... 95
 Introduction

In the name of the Father, and

of the Son, and of the Holy Spir-
it, Amen.

I.

I n May 1981 at Sofia, Bulgaria, the World Coun-

cil of Churches organized a conference which
brought together many of the world’s most respected
Orthodox theologians. Papers were presented and
official documents were drafted, all in an attempt
to interpret and restate the Orthodox dogma about
Christ and to explore its relevance to the modern
world. In Dr. Theodore Stylianopoulos’ contribution
to the symposium, “A Christological Reflection,” a
common misconception about Orthodox Christol-
ogy was mentioned:
There is no substance … to the contention not
infrequently heard that an alleged emphasis
iv Realism of Glory

on the incarnation and the resurrection, rather

than on the cross, involves the Church Fathers
in a “theology of glory” over against a “theol-
ogy of the cross.” The overwhelming emphasis
on the cross by Protestants, reinforced by the
centrality of justification by faith alone, should
not be read back into the patristic tradition as
neglect of the cross!1
That the question of an Orthodox “theology of glory”2
was in the foreground of the discussion at Sofia is fur-
ther suggested by the conference’s agreed statement,
which included an Orthodox attempt at refuting the
stereotyped version of Orthodox “glory” theology:

1 T. Stylianopoulos, “A Christological Reflection,” in I. Bria

(ed.), Jesus Christ — The Life of the World: An Orthodox Contri-
bution to the Vancouver Theme (Geneva 1982) 29–55, at 40.
2 “Glory” (Gr. doxa), in the context of Orthodox spirituality, re-
fers to the uncreated energies of God. These energies, being the
glory of the Lord, are identical with the Old Testament sheki-
nah, which illumined the countenance of Moses and which
God brought down into the Holy of Holies in the presence of
King Solomon. In the New Testament, the Holy Transfigura-
tion of Christ, the martyrdom of St. Stephen, and Holy Pente-
cost are all founded upon man’s uniting with God’s doxa. For a
historico-dogmatic survey of doxa in the Orthodox tradition,
see Fr. Alexander Golitzin, “Liturgy and Mysticism: The Expe-
rience of God in Eastern Orthodox Christianity,” Pro Ecclesia
8.1 (1999) 159–186. For an extended treatment of shekinah/
doxa in the Old Testament, see T. N. D. Mettinger, The De-
thronement of Sabaoth: Studies in the Shem and Kabod Theolo-
gies (Lund 1982). For a listing of New Testament references,
see G. Kittel, The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,
trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI 1968) 3.233–253.
Introduction v

It is important not only to keep the cross and

resurrection together, but to keep the whole
incarnate life of Christ as a single unit. There
can be no Christian “theology of the cross” di-
vorced from the annunciation to the Blessed
Virgin, the birth, the baptism, and the public
ministry ending in the resurrection, Ascen-
sion, Pentecost and second coming. It would be
equally misleading to contrast a “theology of
glory” and a “theology of the cross.” The cross
is where Christ was glorified.3
Despite the elegance of its language, this passage fails
to address the underlying question of what this glory
actually is which carries so much theological weight
in Orthodox Christology. It is essential to avoid sepa-
rating Christ’s glory from the cross, but what is the
meaning and significance of those elements — cross
and glory — that we are refusing to isolate? Indeed,
what is the significance of divine glory for man?
These issues were taken up by another Orthodox
theologian present at the Sofia conference, Fr. John
Romanides, who in his piece “A Therapeutic Theme”
addressed the issue of theanthropic4 glory quite di-
rectly. For Fr. John
The primary purpose of faith in and theology
and dogma about Christ and his relation to the
Father and the Holy Spirit is to lead humanity

3 “A Statement On the Theme,” in I. Bria (ed.), Jesus Christ — the

Life of the World (Geneva 1982) 1–14, at 5.
4 From the Greek theanthropos, “Godman.”
vi Realism of Glory

(1) to the purification and illumination of the

heart … and (2) to glorification (theosis), which
is the perfection of personhood in the vision of
the uncreated glory and rule of Christ in and
among his saints, the members of his body, the
church. Faith, prayer, theology, and dogma are
the therapeutical methods and signposts on the
road of illumination to perfection which, when
reached, abolishes faith, prayer, theology, and
dogma, since the final goal of these is their abo-
lition in glorification and selfless love.5
Notice that Fr. John goes beyond both Stylianopou-
los’ piece as well as the conference’s official statement
in his linking of Christ’s glorification to a method of
spiritual healing which, in turn, constitutes the ba-
sis of ecclesial communion. The idea that Fr. John’s
Christology seems to “go farther” than that of most
Orthodox theologians is one of many propositions
which will be explored and tested in this study. But
first, a note on the organization of these lectures:
Orthodox Christology, glorification, and ontol-
ogy will be touched upon in the remaining pages
of this introduction. Then follows the first section
wherein many of Fr. John’s works published between
1955 and 1960 will be discussed, a single chapter6 be-

5 J. S. Romanides, “A Therapeutic Theme,” in I. Bria (ed.)

98–101, at 98.
6 In this text, the chapters correspond to lecture sessions, so
the original presentation referred to chapters as “lectures.”
For ease of reading, some references to “chapters” have been
Introduction vii

ing dedicated to each of the articles, several lectures

being allocated to the book-length Ancestral Sin.
Each of these “survey” lectures will focus upon its
specific article or monograph’s unique contribution
to Fr. John’s Christocentric theology of glory. Section
two presents a more synthetic discussion of Fr. John’s
Christology which focuses upon a theme — the “Ne-
storian metaheresy” — which runs through many of
the works viewed in the preceding survey section.

left in, though the reader should consider chapters and lec-
tures as synonymous terms in this study.
viii Realism of Glory

II.

“It is essential to any under-

standing of our relationship
to God to realize that spiritual
communication should not be
thought of as a grant of data
about the divine nature …, but
rather as a matter of spiritual
unity and life granted to man.”
Alexander Turner7

O rthodox Christology as a “Theology

of Glory.” Before pursuing our more start-to-
finish, chronological section, we will round out our
introduction with some insights from Romanides’
1956 article “Christological Teaching of John of Da-
mascus,” after which the notion of an Orthodox real-
ism of glory will be more fully introduced:
It is important to emphasize that when deal-
ing with the human nature of Christ and man
generally within the context of original sin, sal-
vation, and perfection St. John of Damascus,
together with the whole of Patristic tradition,
does not begin with any philosophical analysis
of natural or extrachurch or extrachrist man
and from such an analysis construct a theol-
ogy concerning the humanity and perfection of
Christ and of man in general.
7 A. Turner, “Spiritual Iconography,” Orthodoxy 10.5 (Winter
1965) 142.
Introduction ix

Rather at the center of St. John’s anthropol-

ogy and spirituality is the perfection of and in
Christ as revealed in the Bible and in the lives
of those who have reached and are reaching
the threshold of theosis, or theoria, or vision of
God. Natural man especially in his fallen state
or state of imperfection cannot comprise the
basis of theological anthropology and especial-
ly of Christology. Since the key is rather glorifi-
cation and deification one must begin from the
vantage point of the Logos Incarnate Himself.8
As Fr. John here suggests, outside of Christ — the
only true Word or Image of God the Father — there
is no place for theology to begin. He is the Second
Adam9 who through His incarnation remade and re-

8 J. S. Romanides, “Christological Teaching of John of Damas-

cus,” Ekklesiastikos Pharos 58 (1976) 244. G. D. Metallinos, in
the thorough Greek-language bibliography to his Protopres-
byteros Ioannes S. Romanides: ‘O “profetes tes Romeosynes”
prosopografoumenos mesa apo agnosta e ligo gnosta keina
(Athens 2003), lists ‘H christologike didaskalia tou agiou Io-
annou tou Damaskenou, the Greek original for the “John of
Damascus” article, as having been published in 1956.
9 The biblical/patristic theme of Christ as the Second Adam
began with St. Paul: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ
shall all be made alive” (I Cor. 15:22 King James Version).
Met. Hierotheos (Vlachos) in his study of Orthodox Chris-
tology, The Feasts of the Lord (Levadia, Greece 2003), ex-
plains the significance of Christ as the Second or New Adam:
“It says repeatedly in Holy Scripture that Christ is the new
Adam, who became man in order to correct the error of the
ancestral Adam. The first Adam in Paradise, although he was
still inexperienced, was in a state of illumination of his nous
x Realism of Glory

constituted fallen humanity, thereby ending the first

Adam’s bondage to death and the devil and clearing
the way for His uncreated glory to abide in the puri-
fied heart of man. Of course, man must accept ac-
tively the glory of God, “stand[ing] before God with
the nous in the heart” and continuing “unceasingly
day and night, until the end of life.”10 Each Father of
the Orthodox Church speaks in one way or anoth-
er about this illuminative path, according to which
the heart of man is purified from fantasia (passion-
tinged thoughts) through a lifelong ascesis11 aimed
because that in him which was in the image was pure and
received the rays of the divine light. But after his sin, he was
darkened, he lost the likeness, but did not lose the image en-
tirely. In the patristic tradition, it says that the image in Adam
was obscured, darkened, without being entirely lost. Through
the incarnation of Christ and the deification of human na-
ture, Adam came back to his former glory, and indeed rose
still higher” (154).
10 St. Theophan the Recluse (1815–94): “The principal thing
is to stand before God with the mind in the heart, and to
go on standing before him unceasingly day and night, until
the end of life.” In Igumen Chariton, The Art of Prayer, trans.
E. Kadloubovsky and E. M. Palmer (London 1966) 63.
11 “Ascesis” comes from the Greek word askein, “to exer-
cise,” and in the context of Orthodox spiritual life, it refers
to the prayers, Sacraments, services, and spiritual guidance
designed to purify man’s inner life. In his short but moving
piece Spiritual Life (Etna, CA 1997), Constantine Cavarnos of-
fers a lucid description of Orthodox ascesis/athlesis: “Askesis,
the practice of the virtues, is a term taken over by the Greek
Church Fathers from classical Greek philosophy. We find it
in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. It means ‘training.’ The
Introduction xi

at a greater and greater participation in the Taboric12

glory of the Lord.
Fr. John follows the Orthodox teaching that the
first Adam, having been made “in the image of the
Image,” was created for nothing less than union with
the Godman. Worldly philosophy with its secular an-
thropology, being unable to deliver man from fanta-
sies, fails to make good on its promise to put man
in touch with reality. The glory of secular learning
is worldly, and though it can yield a relative good,
when asked to bear the weight of salvation, it falls
derivative word asketes, ‘ascetic,’ means one who trains him-
self, preparing for victory in a contest. The Apostle Paul uses
as a synonym for askesis the term athlesis (Hebrews 10:32).
Athlesis means for him struggle, such as that in which an ath-
lete engages in preparing himself for a contest” (5). Of course,
Orthodox ascesis is by no means mechanical or magical since
it is man’s cooperation with God’s prevenient grace or glory,
which calls man to participate more and more in Him, but
which does not coerce man or in any way curtail his freedom.
Fr. Michael Azkoul has shown through his discussion of Pope
St. Gregory the Great’s (540–604) writings that there was an
Orthodox prevenient grace and an Orthodox predestination
in the Latin West which seems to have been formulated as a
self-conscious corrective to St. Augustine’s heterodox opin-
ions (see M. Azkoul, The Influence of Augustine of Hippo On
the Orthodox Church [Lewiston 1990] 94–95).
12 “Taboric” here refers to Mount Tabor, traditionally held to
be the site of the Holy Transfiguration. For an overview of
the Orthodox Fathers’ interpretation of the Transfiguration,
see P. A. Chamberas, “Transfiguration of Christ: A Study in
the Patristic Exegesis of Scripture,” St. Vladimir’s Theological
Quarterly 14.1 (1970) 48–65.
xii Realism of Glory

short. Ever-leery of the Augustinian West’s13 religio-

philosophical preoccupations, Fr. John grounds his
Christology in the reality (or “realism”) of theosis, or
glorification.
This realism of glory, as we have termed it, should
not be confused with the many varieties of philosoph-
ical realism presented in Western philosophy.14 Aside
from deification-based Orthodox realism, there are
countless varieties of religio-philosophical “realism”
which present man as an abstract, static being whose
existence is bound by unchanging laws of nature, and
who may or may not be a poor copy of a Platonic
universal. For those in the pseudo-realist camp who

13 “Augustinian West” refers to the non-Orthodox theology

of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, as is outlined in
detail below, ch. 5–9. Also included under the broad desig-
nation “Augustinian West” is the secular philosophy that has
developed in Europe and North America associated with He-
gel, Marx, Kant, and countless others.
14 For a brief summary of the different types of “realism”
found in Western philosophy, see C. Rohmann, A World of
Ideas: A Dictionary of Important Theories, Concepts, Beliefs,
and Thinkers (New York 1999) 336–337. On the nominalist/
realist debate see M. M. Adams, “Is To Will It as Bad as To Do
It? The Fourteenth Century Debate,” Franciscan Studies 41
(1981) 5–60; R. Cross, “Nominalism and the Christology of
William of Ockham,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et mé-
diévale 58 (1991) 126–156; A. E. McGrath, The Intellectual Or-
igins of the European Reformation (Oxford 1993); P. V. Spade,
“Ockham’s Nominalist Metaphysics: Some Main Themes,” in
Spade 100–117; and E. Stump, “The Mechanisms of Cogni-
tion: Ockham on Mediating Species,” in Spade 168–203.
Introduction xiii

choose to believe in them, these Platonic forms actu-

ally dwell in the mind of God and are somehow more
“real” than anything in the material world by virtue
of their immutability and their rationality. The Or-
thodox realism of glory, by contrast, is based on the
biblical and patristic truth that man, having his origin
in change (creatio ex nihilo), is not subject to natural
laws but instead exists, along with the entire cosmos,
as a being-in-motion. Moreover, for the Orthodox,
reality does not inhere in concepts or in any Augusti-
no-Platonic beatitude. Rather, for those who believe in
the Orthodox realism of glory, reality is not a thing that
exists as a given essence or concept, but instead reality
is the uncreated glory of God, which is not an inter-
mediary, but is divinity itself. Man attains to greater
and greater measures of reality as he ascends more and
more into divine glory. Contrariwise, non-existence
or unreality is gauged according to man’s movement
away from divine glory. This ontological movement
of man is either toward the Image/Word by means of
His glory, or away from glorification by means of the
world’s glory (“the power of the enemy”15) into an il-
lusory ontological autonomy.
Here we should emphasize that the Orthodox re-
alism of glory is identical to “the Way of light” spoken
of in the Holy Scriptures and Church Fathers as the

15 Orthodox Christian Prayerbook: A Manual of Daily Prayers

of the Ancient Christian Faith (Hollywood, CA 1998) 62.
xiv Realism of Glory

first of the “two ways.”16 As such, the Way of glory con-

16 On the “two ways” and the “Way of light”: In the Torah, Mo-
ses elaborates on the shema by pronouncing the immanence
of the Unnamable God through His Law, which pertains to
the heart of man and which
is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall
go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us … (—)
But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth,
and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it. See, I have
set before thee this day life and good, and death and
evil; In that I command thee this day to love the
Lord thy God, to walk in his ways … (Deut. 30:12,
14–16 King James Version).
This Mosaic formulation is echoed throughout the Old
and New Testaments and in the writings of the Church Fa-
thers, especially those of the first and second centuries. In
the Shepherd of Hermas, in Barnabas, and in the Didache,
we find variations on the Judaic teaching that “there are two
ways, … the one of light, and the other of darkness” (Roberts,
A., and J. Donaldson [eds.], The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 10 vols.
[New York 1926 (1885–1887)] 1.148). In each of these sourc-
es, the stark division of the ways is followed by a good list-
ing of the works which constitute each. Notice how practical
works of asceticism are linked to the heart or to inner “glory.”
The works include “thou shalt not take glory to thyself,” and
“Thou shalt not exalt, but shalt be of a lowly mind” (Ibid.).
Indeed, Barnabas identifies the weightier part of the law with
man’s need to know the “judgments of the lord” and to “walk
in them” (Ibid. 149). In this sense, a “way” is a psychosomatic
(“psycho-” including the nous) mode of life, the manner in
which the whole man exists. The Way of light and good must
be conceived of in its ascetic, therapeutic, and cardial aspects,
as in the Shepherd of Hermas, wherein the “two ways” are said
to correspond to “two angels … one of righteousness, and the
other of iniquity” (Ibid. 2.24). According to man’s choice, one
Introduction xv

sists in following the Lord’s commandments within

the context of the Holy Sacraments. The Way of glory
is the unique ascetic therapy offered by the Church
and which is constituted in the lives of the Saints and
in the noetic transformation of all Orthodox Chris-
tians in the Sacraments of the Church. In the West,
the great number of pseudo-realisms, which Fr. John
believes are the basis of all non-Orthodox theology
in the West, are bound together by their ignorance
of the realism of glory’s core: The purification and il-
lumination of the heart.
The specific therapeutic Way that leads to the
realism of God’s uncreated glory is presented in Or-
thodox hagiography. The lives of the saints and their
experience of the divine Light is open to anyone who
would take up his cross and follow Christ, though this
illumination is not individualistic, but rather ecclesial,
since each member is deified through incorporation
into a very real body of Christ. As Fr. John avers, “the
key is … glorification” because correct Christology
cannot be conceived apart from 1) knowledge and

or the other angel “ascends into your heart” (Ibid.). Also see
Fr. Michael Azkoul’s summary of St. Hilary of Poitiers’ teach-
ing on grace, which touches upon the “two ways,” in Augus-
tine, 80: “For David prayed, ‘Take me from the way of iniq-
uity,’ that is, he prayed for the vitium to be removed and his
person to be sanctified by the Holy Spirit (Ps. CXVIII, Daleth
8; He, 16). Grace is freely given, but the soul increases grace
by overcoming sin. God grants perseverant grace to him who,
with grace, conquers sin (Ps. CXVIII, He. 12; Nun, 20).”
xvi Realism of Glory

application of the correct ascetical method of reach-

ing perfection in Christ through spiritual fatherhood
and the Sacraments, and 2) the presupposition that
the inhominization of Christ as the eternal Image of
the Father is the only possible solution to the prob-
lem of fallen man’s bondage to corruption and death,
since man was made to become the glorified image of
the Image.17

17 On man as the “image of the Image,” see J. S. Romanides,

“Religion’s Response to Space Life V: All Planets the Same,”
Boston Globe, April 8, 18; and St. Athanasius of Alexandria,
Contra Gentes 2.2 (P. Schaff and H. Wace [eds. and trans.], A
Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian
Church, 2nd Series, 14 vols. [Grand Rapids, MI 1953] 4.5).
 part one

THE SURVEY
d
 chapter 

“Original Sin according to Saint Paul”

F r. John’s article on St. Paul outlines many themes

that are developed further in his seminal Ances-
tral Sin (1957, see below, ch. 5–7).1 However, “Origi-
nal Sin According to Saint Paul” is important in its
own right. Certainly, in 1955, there were few theo-
logians, Orthodox or otherwise, who could present
the Orthodox views on asceticism, anthropology,
and hamartology as eloquently and convincingly as
Fr. John. Indeed, the St. Paul article set the tone for all
of Fr. John’s subsequent work. The article combines
Fr. John’s amazing ability to synthesize materials from
the full gamut of history and theology with his rare
talent for preaching.
For Fr. John, St. Paul’s view of man and his destiny
is contrary to the Protestant/Roman Catholic anthro-

1 J. S. Romanides, The Ancestral Sin (Ridgewood, NJ 2002). In

the preface, Fr. John declares his first book-length study to
be “a continuation and expansion of my article ‘Original Sin
According to St. Paul’” (13).
4 Realism of Glory

pological approach. According to the latter view, which

many Orthodox theologians unhesitatingly name
“Western,”2 the created world is governed by natural
laws that correspond to the moral rules man must fol-
low in order to gain merit before God. In the Western
scheme, law serves as the soteriological tangent be-
tween man and God. God’s justice operates according
to this natural law, so that God and man are both bound
to follow it. In Fr. John’s view, the Western natural man,
far from being normal, is rather enslaved to Satan,
who uses man’s fear of death to keep him bound to sin.
Contrary to this Western natural law anthropology is
the Apostle’s teaching on man: “For St. Paul, there is
no such thing as normality for those who have not put
on Christ.”3 Instead, fallen man begins in a sub-normal
ontological state, alienated from Life. “Underlying ev-
ery movement of what the world has come to regard as
normal man, is the quest for security and happiness.
But such desires are not normal.”4

2 For three representative Orthodox theologians on the

subject of the Orthodoxy vis-à-vis the “West,” see Ch. Yan-
naras, “Orthodoxy and the West,” Eastern Churches Review
3.3 (Spring 1971) 286–300; Fr. Georges Florovsky, Ways of
Russian Theology, parts 1–2, tr. R. I. Nichols, vols. 5–6 of The
Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, ed. R. Haugh (Belmont,
MA 1979); and P. Sherrard, The Greek East and Latin West: A
Study in the Christian Tradition (Oxford 1959).
3 J. S. Romanides, “Original Sin According to Saint Paul,”
St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly 4 (1955–1956) 12.
4 Ibid., 21.
Original Sin according to Saint Paul 5

Fallen man believes that eternal security is found

in the fulfillment of his “natural” desires. This self-
centered quest for happiness is called eudaemonia by
Fr. John, who is quick to add that man is destined
to transform, through ascesis, this ailing, security-
seeking self-love into the love of Christ, which “seeks
not its own.”5 We should note here that Fr. John be-
lieves man can only be properly conceived in terms
of his dynamic relation to his Archetype, Christ, who
is both the sustainer of man’s existence as well as the
very goal of man’s striving. Fr. John’s friend Fr. George
Dion. Dragas affirms the dynamism of man’s con-
nection to Christ in one of his studies of St. Athana-
sius. As Fr. George points out, the Alexandrian saint
“[saw] man[’s existence] as a becoming and the Lo-
gos becoming man as a becoming and not as a ‘state’
of being.”6
In “Original Sin According to St. Paul,” the Chris-
tological teaching of the Orthodox is contrasted with
the West’s juridical approach to salvation in Christ. To

5 Ibid., 12. Fr. John is here paraphrasing I Corinthians 13:5:

“[Love] Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her
own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil” (King James
Version).
6 G. D. Dragas, Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, Original Re-
search and New Perspectives (Rollinsford, NH 2005) 20. In
Athanasiana: Studies in the Theology of Saint Athanasius
(London 1980), Dragas further comments that “For Athana-
sius created being, and in particular human being, is in actu
and not in statu” (148).
6 Realism of Glory

this end, Romanides points out that the West’s view of

Satan and his power follows that of Augustine, who
“relegat[ed] the power of Satan, death, and corruption
to the background and push[ed] to the foreground of
controversy the problem of personal guilt in the trans-
mission of original sin, … introduc[ing] a false mor-
alistic philosophical approach which is foreign to the
thinking of St. Paul.”7 By contrast, the Orthodox take
biblical demonology very seriously, particularly Paul’s
insistence that man is unable to save himself from “the
body of this death” (Romans 7:24) because of the un-
shakable hold the devil has over him. Moreover, the
notion often found in the West of a weak and inef-
fectual Satan who must abide by the rules and regula-
tions dictated by the “natural law”8 is the opposite of
the biblical and patristic teaching of the Orthodox that
Satan holds man in bondage through fear of death. No
wonder asceticism, which remains for the Orthodox a
continual, strenuous, and unrelenting war that every
Christian must wage against the powers of Satan, has
suffered so many painful setbacks in the West.9

7 Ibid., 3.
8 Ibid., 17, “Oscar Cullman is seriously mistaken in trying to
make the New Testament writers say that Satan and the evil
demons have been deprived of their power, and that now leur
puissance n’est qu’apparente.”
9 J. S. Romanides, Ancestral Sin, 173–74. For Fr. John’s reflec-
tions on the weakness of Orthodox asceticism in the West
(specifically in 1950’s Paris), see The Life in Christ, trans. J.
Kelley (Norman, OK 2008).
Original Sin according to Saint Paul 7

To summarize, “Original Sin According to Saint

Paul,” Romanides’ first major article, contributes the
following insights into Christology:
1) Man comes to know Christ by participating
in His own ascetic love and not by following
mechanical laws.
2) Christology is not scholastic doctrine, but is
rather the path of the martyrs and saints who
come to know Christ. These, “of whom the
world was not worthy,” were “already dead,
and yet [were] living in Christ.”10
3) Christology cannot be separated from ec-
clesiology, as the centrality of the “body of
Christ” to St. Paul’s thinking attests. “The
world outside of the corporate life of love, in
the sacraments, is still under the power of the
consequences of death and therefore a slave
to the devil.”11
4) Christology is the only sure foundation for
anthropology, for Christ is the Second Adam,
who is perfect man and perfect God, and
whose theandric energy is man’s only means
of achieving his destiny of deification. Man
is not a static, given thing; man is a person
whose purpose is eternal movement toward
God’s glory. This theosis is a growth into a
completely self-emptying love that is free
10 J. S. Romanides, “Original Sin,” 17.
11 Ibid., 18.
8 Realism of Glory

from all necessity. As such, true Christology,

far from being based upon legalism or moral-
ism, is concerned with the transcendence of
both law and utility.
5) Orthodox Christology is based on the kenot-
ic love of the cross, and those who co-labor
with God to achieve it are progressively lib-
erated from the need for law. Indeed, laws
and the moralism they undergird are needful
only for those who have not been completely
delivered from fear and self-concern. One
who empties himself for the sake of others,
and whose “actions [are] always directed out-
ward, toward God and neighbor, and never
toward himself …,”12 has indeed become a
law unto himself. If Christ’s saints have no
need of law, how much more is the Creator
Himself free from it?
This line of thinking leads Fr. John to oppose
stridently the juridical atonement Christology of the
West, of which more will be said below.

12 Ibid., 14.
 chapter 

“Man and His True Life according to

the Greek Orthodox Service Books”

“M an and His True Life” proposes to answer

the query, “If man can be thought of only
in relation to his destiny to become perfect as Christ
is perfect, how can we characterize this perfection,
especially in the context of the liturgical life of the
Orthodox Church?”
First, Fr. John lays the groundwork by empha-
sizing the Hebraic anthropology of the Orthodox,
which allows no Hellenistic dualism of soul and
body, but rather sees the center of man as his kardia
or heart, which is located in each part of man, and
thus indicates man in his totality: soul, spirit, and
body.1 This holistic anthropology is then shown by

1 On the Orthodox conception of kardia, see The Hidden Man

of the Heart (I Peter 3:41): The Cultivation of the Heart in Or-
thodox Christian Anthropology by Archimandrite Zacharias
(Mt. Thabor Publishing 2008): “When we speak of the heart,
we speak of our spiritual heart which coincides with the
fleshly one; but when man receives illumination and sanc-
tification, then his whole being becomes a heart. The heart
10 Realism of Glory

Fr. John to be the only Christologically sound view of

man since Christ’s life was not a mere manifestation
of intellectual or rationalistic truth, but the Incarna-
tion of Life himself.2 The rest of the article illustrates
the sacramental theology of the Orthodox Church
by commenting upon the Christological basis of
Holy Baptism, Holy Confession, and Holy Orders.
Throughout, Fr. John’s main point is that all of the
services in the Orthodox Mega Euchologion presup-
pose the same thing: Man is saved from Satan and
his power of disunity by sharing in the “Love, Life,

is synonymous with the soul, with the spirit; it is a spiritual

place where man finds his unity, where his mind is enthroned
when it has been healed of the passions. (—) St. Gregory Pal-
amas says that the heart is the very body of our body, a place
where man’s whole being becomes like a knot. When mind
and heart unite, man possesses his nature and there is no dis-
persion and division in him any more. (—) However, when
mind and heart are united by the grace of God, then man
has only one thought — the thought of God; he has only one
desire — the desire for God; and only one sensation — the no-
etic sensation of God. That is why repentance and tears are so
much appreciated: they help us to find that healing, that state
of integrity because no human being can weep having two
thoughts; we weep because of one thought that hurts us. If we
are hurt by the thought that we are separated from God, that
‘salvation is far from the sinner’ (cf. Ps. 119:155) and all those
things that inspire this pain in our heart, then, of course, we
can cry …” (12).
2 J. S. Romanides, “Man and His True Life According to the
Greek Orthodox Service Book,” Greek Orthodox Theological
Review 1 (1955) 63–83, at 64–9.
Man and His True Life 11

and Truth”3 of God which is the destruction of the

death and corruption inaugurated by the fall and the
simultaneous incorporation of each into the unique,
unconquerable unity that is the Body of Christ.
Along the way, Fr. John develops the following
points:
1) “Baptism … is not a negative forgiveness of
guilt inherited as a consequence of the sin of
Adam. On the contrary, it is a release from the
powers of the devil. (—) This abolition of the
power of the devil, however, does not happen
with only a passive participation of the one
being baptized. He must have not only faith,
but also the desire to die with Christ in the
waters of baptism.”4
2) The actual, concrete spiritual labor required
of the catechumen corresponds to an actual,
concrete local community into which the
Baptized enters. There is no catholic Church
in general, only local centers where the Holy
Eucharist is offered and where real people
struggle together in a physical body against
Satanic powers which operate both spiritu-
ally and materially.
3) “… [I]n the entire service of baptism there is
not one statement made about the forgiveness
of any kind of guilt that may have been inher-
3 Ibid., 70.
4 Ibid., 71.
12 Realism of Glory

ited from Adam.”5 The implication here is that

the Sacrament of Holy Baptism has an organic
relation to the new Christian’s lifelong internal
and ecclesial struggle against the devil.
4) There cannot be any ex opere operato6 version
of sacraments and ecclesiology whereby the
recitation of a magical formula relieves some-
one from corruption and enslavement to Sa-
tan. Instead, Holy Baptism, as the culmination
of a long ascetic struggle fortified with spiri-
tual instruction and corporate prayers, is “the
reaching of that stage at which one can freely
choose to die with Christ to the vanity of the
ways of this world and live within the love of
the corporate life in the body of Christ.”7
5) Life in Christ is life in His Body, in the eu-
charistic cup. Holy Eucharist is an end in-
and-of-itself, since it is participation in the
kenotic (self-emptying) love of Christ. Be-
cause this love is unity in self-offering that
aims at transcending any utility or necessity,
no “individualistic piety” can exist within

5 Ibid., 73.
6 For a discussion of the Orthodox position on ex opere opera-
to (with specific reference to St. Symeon the New Theologian
[949–1022]), see A. Golitzin, St. Symeon the New Theologian,
On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses. Vol. 3: Life, Times
and Theology (Crestwood, NY 1997) 48–50.
7 Ibid., 73.
Man and His True Life 13

it.8 Instead, one achieves eucharistic love ac-

cording to “the measure by which he fights
the devil and struggles to empty himself of
self-concern within the life of Christ whose
body is made up of real people.”9
6) Because there can be no reality higher or even
on the same level as the unity of the Eucha-
rist, there can be no “extra sacramental insti-
tutionalism,” such as a papacy. A corollary of
this eucharistic conception of the Church is
the notion that the Sacrament of Holy Con-
fession, as it has developed throughout the
centuries, in no way makes it possible for
“a halfway spiritualistic membership in the
body of Christ.” This would be a denial of
the “reality of the Incarnation.”10 A further
sub-point is the “royal priesthood” tradi-
tion, which Fr. John mentions to support the
Christological basis of Orthodox ecclesiol-
ogy. According to biblical and patristic “roy-

8 The Greek philosopher and theologian Christos Yannaras in

his study The Freedom of Morality (Crestwood, NY 1996) fol-
lows this Orthodox notion that the individual, integrated into
the Body of Christ, “represents, not the relationship of a part
to the whole, but the possibility of summing up the whole in a
distinctiveness of relationship, in an art of self-transcendence.
(—) … [T]he relationship which sums up the totality of nature
in self-transcendence defies comparison …” (21).
9 Ibid., 75.
10 Ibid., 77.
14 Realism of Glory

al priesthood” teaching, each communing

member of the Church who is engaged in the
corporate, sacramental defeat of Satan “has
his definite liturgy to perform whereby the
body is being continuously formed together
as a whole and not in parts.”11
The thematic axis around which these keen in-
sights into the Orthodox conception of sacraments
and clergy orbit is the kenotic love of Christ. In
Fr. John’s presentation of Orthodox theology, Christ
is the unifying center. The key to this Christological
axis is deification. Accordingly, “Man and His True
Life” establishes the theoric12 basis of Orthodox sac-
ramentology and ecclesiology by showing that both
are constituted by a concrete unity in Christ’s self-
denying love. Kenotic love is a dynamic movement of
the whole man into a deeper and deeper unity with
God and neighbor.13 This freedom in Christ is indeed

11 Ibid., 79. On the Orthodox “royal priesthood” tradition, see

P. Nellas, “The Ministry of the Laity,” in I. Bria (ed.), Mar-
tyria/Mission: The Witness of the Orthodox Churches Today
(Geneva 1980) 60–65.
12 “Theoric” comes from the Greek theoria meaning “vision.”
It is the origin of the English word “theory.” In the context of
Orthodox spirituality, theoric indicates anything pertaining
to glorification or union with the divine light.
13 G. D. Dragas, in his Athanasiana, elaborates on this theme
of an Orthodox kenosis centered on the Cross of Christ: “The
deeper the sharing of the God-man in the consequences of
our sin and fall, the greater the intensity and intimacy of the
Atonement of the imperfection of our creaturehood with
Man and His True Life 15

man’s “true life” because it transcends the relative,

utilitarian freedom of philosophical abstractions,
magical religious rites, and ideological institutions.

the perfection of God” (154). Note Dragas’ intentional fol-

lowing of St. Athanasius’ use of the word “Atonement” in a
non-Augustinian, non-Western (or, more accurately, a pre-
Augustinian, pre-Western) sense.
d
 chapter 

“Orthodox Ecclesiology
according to Alexis Khomiakov”

F r. John’s article on Khomiakov was so beloved by

his mentor Fr. Georges Florovsky that the latter
disseminated it to a great number of his American
students over the course of many years. “Ortho-
dox Ecclesiology acccording to Alexis Khomiakov”
builds upon the Christological insights of the earlier
articles by showing the interrelations of the dogmas
about unity and freedom in a Christo-eucharistic
context. Though Christ was Fr. John’s focus all along,
the Khomiakov article is particularly Christocentric
in its emphasis on Khomiakov’s notion of sobornost.
Sobornost is Khomiakov’s conception of freedom,
and it is the cornerstone of his idiosyncratic “Ortho-
dox philosophy.” Khomiakov’s sobornost/freedom
does not entail capitulation to any ideological or in-
stitutional mediator, but rather indicates an absolute
deliverance from necessity and self-concern brought
about through a true unity in the Orthodox Church,
a unity that is not a means to anything beyond itself.
18 Realism of Glory

As Fr. John astutely observes, the great strengths

as well as the great weaknesses of Khomiakov’s con-
ception of freedom are best illustrated by relating
Khomiakov’s sobornost to the doctrinally pure notion
of sobornost held by the Orthodox Church.1 On the
positive side, Fr. John approves of Khomiakov’s cri-
tique of the West’s legalistic and individualistic world-
view, which the Russian thinker calls “Kouschitism.”
As Fr. John summarizes Khomiakov, “Within the
usual institutions governed by Kouschit principles,
the moral and spiritual factors are separated from the
organic, and because the internal principle of non-
utilitarian love is missing, the organic necessarily
degenerates to the level of organization, law, and ex-
ternal authority.”2 What is amazing, remarks Fr. John,
is that Khomiakov has maintained the core Ortho-
dox tradition of freedom as a communal pursuit of
selfless love free of all ulterior motivation, but with-
out the corresponding Orthodox beliefs concerning
1) man’s fall, 2) the Holy Sacraments, and, most dis-
concerting of all, 3) Christ Himself. The root of the
problem, according to Fr. John, is that “Khomiakov

1 For a balanced view of Orthodox sobornost, see G. Florovsky,

“Sobornost: the Catholicity of the Church,” in E. L. Mascall
(ed.), The Church of God (London 1934) 51–74. On the life
and theology of G. Florovsky, see A. Blane (ed.), George Flo-
rovsky: Russian Intellectual and Orthodox Churchman (Crest-
wood, NY 1993), esp. the exhaustive bibliography, p. 356ff.
2 “Orthodox Ecclesiology According to Alexis Khomiakov,”
Greek Orthodox Theological Review 2 (1956) 61.
Orthodox Ecclesiology 19

leaves unintelligible … the relation of material ne-

cessity to spiritual phenomena. (—) Yet, at the same
time, he claims that necessity is proper only to phe-
nomena and not to their root.”3 Thus, at its source,
creation is free from necessity, though somehow the
forces of necessity are now at work everywhere ex-
cept the Church. Khomiakov’s failure to explain the
origin and meaning of these crippling forces has dire
consequences for his ecclesiology and his Christol-
ogy. As Fr. John surmises, Khomiakov
is driven to a type of dualistic spiritualism by
making out material creation to be something
by nature inferior, bad, and the cause of the evil
of organization. His spiritualization of the res-
urrection of Christ is unbiblical and directly in
the line of docetism and logically leads to a de-
nial of the visible Church.4
It becomes clear that, even though Khomiakov vehe-
mently opposes the rationalistic, individualistic, and
juridical interpretation of ecclesial freedom found in
the West, he has missed the Orthodox meaning of
unity as a particular type of “materialism” found in
the actual resurrected flesh of Christ:
The patristic concept of salvation, sacraments,
and Church is quite materialistic, but not in
the ordinary sense. While matter itself is con-
sidered as created by God and therefore good,

3 Ibid., 69–70.
4 Ibid., 70.
20 Realism of Glory

still the parasitic elements of death and corrup-

tion, both in creation and man, are understood
as the work of Satan. Therefore the materialism
of the Church is of a purely sacramental nature
centered in the flesh of Christ, which is trans-
forming both the faithful of all ages and mate-
rial creation, and at the same time rejecting the
materialism of the devil, that is, slavery to the
powers of death and corruption.5
Indeed, Khomiakov’s grand project was to create a
Russo-Christian philosophy of unity in selfless love
that could affect a worldwide sobornost. Romanides,
while pointing out the significance of Khomiakov’s
sobornost as a potent refutation of the West’s notion
of necessitarian unity, nonetheless insists that total
freedom is not found in speculative philosophy but in
the Body of Christ: “The Church as such cannot save
society at large. Only the flesh of Christ saves.”6 For
Fr. John, sobornost is merely one part of the positive
aspect of Orthodox soteriology, which is “commu-
nion with the Source of Life only through the flesh of
Christ in the corporate Eucharist epi to auto.”7 Thus,
5 Ibid., 71.
6 Ibid., 72.
7 Ibid., 71. On N. Afanasiev’s use of the phrase “epi to auto,”
see R. Gaillardetz, “The Eucharistic Ecclesiology of Nicholas
Afanasief: Prospects and Challenges for the Contemporary
Ecumenical Dialogue,” Diakonia 27 (1994) 25–46. Also of
note is Gaillardetz’s comment on the Protestant inspiration
for Khomiakov’s sobornost: “Somewhat ironically, … Khomi-
akov’s theology is at several key points similar to that of an
Orthodox Ecclesiology 21

Khomiakov’s sobornost fails to sum up the positive,

Christo-eucharistic side of Orthodox soteriology.
What Fr. John presents as the negative element of
Orthodox soteriology — the “struggle against the di-
viding powers of satan [sic] through the life of selfless
love” in the experience of the Eucharist8 — is wholly
absent in Khomiakov’s thought. Fr. John stressed that
true unity derives from the gift of Christ’s flesh that
man receives only through ascetic and sacramental
life. Any unity divorced from Fr. John’s theandric
conception can only be based upon the fallen world’s
false conception of normality.

important figure of the West, Johann Adam Mohler, the Ger-

man Catholic theologian of the Tubingen school. Both were
influenced by the German idealist Friedrich Schelling. Like
Mohler, Khomiakov emphasized the organic character of
the church animated by the Holy Spirit. The oneness of the
Church belongs to its very essence. To be one and to be catho-
lic are two aspects of the same reality; Khomiakov conceived
of catholicity as a kind of ‘full integrity.’ The Church possesses
all that is necessary for its ‘wholeness.’ Catholicity is primarily
then a qualitative term, with the quantitative or spatial aspect
being only a manifestation of the more fundamental qualita-
tive reality” (20). For a complete bibliography of N. Afanasev’s
published and unpublished work, consult A. Nichols, Theology
in the Russian Diaspora: Church, Fathers, Eucharist in Nikolai
Afanasev (1893-–966) [Cambridge 1989] 227–237.
8 Ibid.
d
 chapter 

“The Ecclesiology of
St. Ignatius of Antioch”

F r. John finds in St. Ignatius an ecclesial Christolo-

gy1 that maintains the nexus of, on the one hand,

1 The Christological awareness displayed in Fr. John’s Ignatius

article is not present in a number of deficient treatments of the
great Antiochene saint’s theology. Among those who believe
they have found in St. Ignatius a weak Christology is N. Rus-
sell who, in his massive Doctrine of Deification in the Greek
Patristic Tradition (Oxford 2004), “do[es] not consider [St.
Ignatius] a proponent of deification” (92). “He lacks … Paul’s
sense of participatory union with Christ …” (ibid.). Rus-
sell’s conclusions only get farther from the mark, especially
when he detects “Gnostic overtones” in St. Ignatius’ “lan-
guage … about his impending maryrdom” (ibid.). Many oth-
ers also misinterpret St. Ignatius as a Gnostic, mainly because
they do not understand the terminology and presuppositions
of the Orthodox Church’s asceticism and Her sacramental
life, and are thus in no position to judge what St. Ignatius is
writing about. An example of Russell’s mishandling of biblical
and patristic material is his acknowledgment that obedience
to Christ leads to deification, but that St. Ignatius’ injunc-
tions to obey the bishop who represents Christ introduces a
different teaching (90–91). The Gnosticism-finding majority
in Ignatian scholarship includes V. Corwin, St. Ignatius and
24 Realism of Glory

1) Eucharist, 2) clergy, and 3) life in Christ; and on

the other hand, 1) asceticism and 2) demonology:
Christology is the positive aspect of the Church,
but is conditioned by biblical demonology,
which is the key negative factor which deter-
mines both Christology and Ecclesiology, both
of which are incomprehensible without an ad-
equate understanding of the work and methods
of Satan.2
This notion that the Church has a twofold nature in
no way limits the cross’s victory over Satan, but recog-
nizes as necessary man’s concrete, ascetic acceptance
of the divine gift of power over death and the Devil:
“… [T]hus the Church, although already the body of
Christ, is continuously becoming what she is.”3 It is
interesting to note that, even though Fr. John incor-
porates many of N. Afanasiev’s emphases into his the-
ology, he never espouses a “eucharistic ecclesiology”
which would emphasize sacraments to the exclusion
of asceticism.4 Instead, Fr. John sees the Eucharist as a
Christianity in Antioch (New Haven, CT 1960), W. R. Schoe-
del, Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Igna-
tius of Antioch (Philadelphia 1985), and W. M. Swartley, “The
Imitatio Christi in the Ignatian Letters,” Vigiliae Christianae 27
(1973) 81–103.
2 J. S. Romanides, “The Ecclesiology of St. Ignatius of Antioch,”
The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 7 (1961–1962) 64.
3 Ibid., 64–65.
4 Afanasiev speaks often and eloquently about “eucharistic
ecclesiology,” especially in his important work The Church of
the Holy Spirit (Notre Dame, IN 2006), where he states that
The Ecclesiology of St. Ignatius of Antioch 25

“manifestation” of the Church members’ “unity of love

with each other in the life-giving nature of Christ.”5
For Fr. John, sacramentology becomes magical when
separated from an asceticism predicated upon the de-
feat of the power of Satan: “Participation of the love
of God in union with each other … can be weakened
and even destroyed by man’s inattention to the ways
of Satan.”6 Here Fr. John gives due attention to the
individual Christian whose heart, through “intense
warfare against Satan,” becomes a temple of God and
shares in the selfless love of Christ, though this par-
ticipation in Christ remains “Sarkocentric,”7 and thus
cannot be achieved outside of “looking steadfastly
to the Blood of Christ” (St. Clement of Rome, First
Clement 7) in the Eucharistic assembly.
St. Ignatius’s ethical teachings are Christocentric
in that they uphold the ontological basis of morality:
Moral evil is Satanic opposition to union with God in
Christ. Moral good is actual union with God in His
uncreated energies which are given to man through
Christ’s actual flesh and blood. Christ’s deified ma-
terial body bestows the gift of divine power for the
defeat of the power of Satan. Far from being magi-
“[w]hatever aspect of the ecclesial life of the primitive Chris-
tianity we study, we must proceed from eucharistic ecclesiol-
ogy without introducing into ancient ecclesial life an histori-
cally later understanding of the Church” (5).
5 Ibid., 63.
6 Ibid., 62.
7 Ibid.
26 Realism of Glory

cal, this power is a weapon that can only be wielded

by Christians in a concrete local community that is
continuously perfecting its love through asceticism
and the sacraments. Though each person must take
up his own cross and wage war against Satan, this
struggle within man’s heart and members can suc-
ceed only as a communal achievement, since the
many become one in the unity of love in Christ. Real
non-utilitarian, non-individualistic love in the body
of Christ “seeks not its own”: “This love is such that
Christ ‘pleased not himself ’ (Romans 15:3) but ‘died
for all, that they who live should no longer live for
themselves’ (II Corinthians 5:15).”8
The significance of martyrdom in the Christol-
ogy of the early Church writers cannot be overstated,
according to Fr. John. In an early sermon entitled “La
vie dans le Christ,” we find Fr. John commenting at
great length on the overcoming of the fear of death
and Satan as a prerequisite for membership in the
Church:
The biblical and patristic tradition is unanimous
on one point: The one who is a living member
of the Body of Christ is one who is dead to the
power of death and who lives in the renewal
of the Spirit of life. For this very reason, those
who denied Christ during persecution, even
after hours of torture, were considered excom-
municated. Once a Christian died with Christ

8 Ibid., 57.
The Ecclesiology of St. Ignatius of Antioch 27

in baptism, he was expected to be ready to die

anytime in the name of Christ. “Whoever de-
nies me before men I will deny also before my
Father in heaven” (Mat. 10:33).9
Martyrdom is here closely associated with the over-
coming of death through union with the body of
Christ, and Fr. John finds this view in St. Ignatius of
Antioch, who says of those who died for the Faith,
“… they touched Him and believed, being supported
by both His flesh and spirit. For this cause also they
despised death, for they were found above death”
(Smyr. 3).10 On the basis of the presuppositions of
Orthodox martyrdom, Fr. John dismisses Western
scholars who diagnose St. Ignatius with “eschatologi-
cal enthusiasm” or “psychopathic disturbances.”11
St. Ignatius’ purpose is quite obvious to an Orthodox:
He wished that other Christians not hinder him from
martyrdom because his (or their) anxiety concerning
his impending death would interrupt their struggle
to attain to unceasing memory of God. Like all of
the Church Fathers except St. Augustine, St. Ignatius
understood the goal of Christian life to be a focus-
ing of man’s inner attention upon “nothing but God
only”:12 “The prince of this world would fain carry

9 J. S. Romanides, The Life in Christ, 16–17.

10 J. S. Romanides, “St. Ignatius,” 58.
11 Ibid.
12 St. Ignatius of Antioch, Eph. 9, 11; Mag. 1. Qu. in J. S. Ro-
manides, “St. Ignatius,” 59.
28 Realism of Glory

me away (or capture me), and corrupt my disposition

(or opinion) toward God. Let none of you, therefore,
who are in Rome help him” (Ign. Rom. 7).13 Thus,
Fr. John’s article shows that St. Ignatius’ view of the
Body of Christ keeps in focus all three parts of Christ’s
threefold temple. As I have written elsewhere:
Fr. John’s coenobitic Church corresponds to
Fr. Alexander Golitzin’s vision of the Church as
a single Temple which is also threefold: 1) the
cardial temple, where man purifies his heart to
receive the Holy Spirit; 2) the physical temple,
where the faithful gather to communally fight
the devil; 3) and the heavenly temple, where
those faithful on the other side of death cease-
lessly offer “Holy things to the Holy.”14

13 J. S. Romanides, “St. Ignatius,” 58–59.

14 J. Kelley, “Introduction,” in J. Romanides, The Life in Christ,
trans. J. Kelley (Norman, OK 2008) 2–6, at 5.
 chapter 

The Ancestral Sin I

“Here we can grasp one of the most

characteristic features of anthropo-
logical philosophy. (—) If we wish to
grasp its real meaning and import,
we must choose not the epic man-
ner of description but the dramatic.
For we are confronted, not with a
peaceful development of concept or
theories, but with a clash between
conflicting spiritual powers. (—) It
is not concerned with a single theo-
retical problem, however general
its scope; here the whole destiny of
man is at stake and clamoring for
an ultimate decision.”
Ernst Cassirer, An Essay On Man1

C hristos Yannaras, in Orthodoxy and the West,

writes that Fr. John’s Ancestral Sin “estab-

1 An Essay On Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Hu-

man Culture (New Haven & London 1944) 9.
30 Realism of Glory

lished — for the first time in Greek — that the legal-

ism of Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, officially
adopted by the Western Christian denominations,
was not an isolated heresy but the root of successive
misinterpretations of every Christian doctrine, radi-
cally distorting the Church’s Gospel.”2 Yannaras, after
pointing out that the book’s “pivotal theme” is “hu-
manity’s sin and salvation,” goes on to list a number
of themes covered in the text. He names uncreated
energies, Trinitarian dogma, human freedom, as well
as the “ecclesial body,” but fails to mention Christolo-
gy.3 Our analysis of Fr. John’s most celebrated work
seeks to fill in this gap by focusing on Ancestral Sin’s
teachings concerning Christ, and will further seek to
relate them to the themes and concerns in Fr. John’s
earlier writings. The reader should bear in mind the
enormous importance of Ancestral Sin, which was
a required textbook at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox
Theological School in the 1950s and the 1960’s,4 and
which remains one of the most influential volumes
of Orthodox theology to appear in modern times.5

2 Ch. Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West: Hellenic Self-Iden-

tity in the Modern Age, trans. P. Chamberas and N. Russell
(Brookline, MA 2006) 275–276.
3 Ibid., 276.
4 J. S. Romanides, Ancestral Sin, 11.
5 The centrality of Ancestral Sin to the “Orthodox revival”
centered around 1950’s Greece is noted by V. N. Makrides,
“Byzantium in Contemporary Greece: The Neo-Orthodox
Current of Ideas,” in Byzantium and the Modern Greek Iden-
The Ancestral Sin 31

Accordingly, we will spend an ample amount of time

detailing its unique features.
Ancestral Sin calls into question the Western
notion of original sin through a full presentation
of the Orthodox teachings about the fall of man.
As E. Stephanou remarks, Fr. John’s book seems to
give hamartology a backseat to other related themes,
despite its title: “Although the book is entitled To
Propatorikon Hamartema (Original Sin), Father Ro-
manides devotes most of his study to such related
doctrines as creation, demonology, divine energies,
grace, and the imago Dei.”6 Though like Yannaras,
Stephanou does not list Christology as a prominent
theme in Ancestral Sin, passages such as the follow-
ing show that Fr. John’s presupposition in Ancestral
Sin that the significance of the first Adam’s sin can
be understood only in light of the Second Adam’s in-
carnation, death, and resurrection: “Any attempt to
understand the fall would be futile without a correct
understanding of the world’s original destiny which

tity ed. D. Ricks and P. Magdalino (Aldershot 1998) 144.

Surely it is Ancestral Sin’s pervasive influence that prompted
Fr. George Dion. Dragas, in an interview with D. P. Payne,
to ask: “Who has not been influenced by [Fr. John]?” (D. P.
Payne, Revival of Political Hesychasm 397). Fr. John’s deep
influence upon two of present-day Greece’s most celebrated
theologians — Met. of Nafpatkos Hierotheos [Vlacchos] and
Fr. George Metallinos — is also examined in Payne, 61–65.
6 E. A. Stephanou, “To popatorikon hamartema (Review),” Greek
Orthodox Theological Review 4.2 (Winter 1958–1959) 173.
32 Realism of Glory

at first was lost but later was achieved in Christ.”7 In

support of this Christocentric hamartology, Fr. John
quotes St. Athanasius, who spoke of the incarnation
as God’s long-suffering response to the fall of man.8
However, one cannot simply skip over the particulars
of Adam’s experience before and after the fall, nor can
one avoid a deep examination of how man is saved
from the ancestral sin, because “for those to whom
the cause of death is unknown, to them the Creator
of the nature of man is also unknown.”9
In the introduction, Fr. John indicates in general
terms the position of Western Christianity on sal-
vation in Christ and also briefly traces the develop-
ment of soteriology in the West. Fr. John holds that in
both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism there is
no belief that “Christ’s continuous and real presence
in the Church is … essential.”10 1) Calvin’s predesti-
nation, 2) Luther’s “faith alone,” and the 3) Roman
Catholic system of created, merited graces, which are
present at the priest’s command and only during par-
ticular parts of the Mass, are all indicators that the
West has followed a particular deviation in salvation-
theology,11 and Fr. John spends the rest of his intro-

7 J. S. Romanides, Ancestral Sin, 112.

8 Ibid., 17.
9 Ibid., 175. Here Fr. John is quoting St. Justin Martyr, Greek
Questions, 28, BEPES, Vol. 4, p. 186.
10 Ibid., 18.
11 Ibid., 18–19.
The Ancestral Sin 33

duction tracing soteriological branches of this West-

ern innovation to their warped Christological root.
Augustine of Hippo, according to Fr. John, is the
source of the deviant soteriology — and thus of the
wayward Christology — of the West. The African
bishop’s misunderstanding of the purpose and affects
of the Incarnation and his belief that death is the re-
sult of a decision by God to punish man led him to
formulate a new theory about Satan.12 This “abuse of

12 For a balanced account of Orthodox attitudes toward

St. Augustine, including reflections on Fr. John’s views, see
G. C. Papademetriou, “Saint Augustine in the Greek Or-
thodox Tradition,” in P. A. Chamberas, Agape and Diakonia
143–154.
The Roman Catholic A. Nichols, in his piece “St. Au-
gustine in the Byzantine-Slav Tradition,” (Scribe of the King-
dom: Essays on Theology and Culture, Vol. I [London 1994]
113–126.), dismisses Fr. John’s critique of St. Augustine’s
theology as a rehashing of the anti-Augustinianism of some
eighteenth-century “Yale converts” to Anglicanism, who had
an inexplicable aversion to the African bishop (124–125).
Nowhere does Nichols give theological support for his disap-
proval of Fr. John’s views, and one wonders how long it took
for Nichols to locate an American anti-Augustinianism which
he could then, without adequate support, pin on Fr. John and
all of American Orthodoxy along with him. Does it occur to
Nichols that Fr. John differs radically from the Yale Angli-
cans in his theology, or that an Anglican critique of St. Au-
gustine may have little in common with an Orthodox one?
At any rate, Nichols’ strategy of theological deflection when
speaking of Fr. John, which skirts the real theological issues
in favor of obscure and unfounded “influences,” blemishes
his otherwise valuable scholarship. See his earlier Light From
34 Realism of Glory

power” theory13 held that Satan was commissioned

by God to administer justice to the dead souls of
men, but that Satan overstepped his bounds by “at-
tempting to take custody of the Son of God and bring
Him under his own domain of death. Thus, Satan
was guilty of an unjust venture against justice, and
God punished him by removing the captive souls of
the dead from his custody.”14 Such a story, Fr. John
avers, could only appear where the original Ortho-
dox teaching — that Satan is the source of evil, death,
and sin — has been forgotten. Satan was never the
right-hand man of God, but was always the enemy
of God and man. God is not the author of evil, but is
long-suffering. Indeed, God loves the sinner as much

the East: Authors and Themes in Orthodox Theology (London

1999) 74–90, where he dubs Fr. John’s theology “Photinian”
without bothering to define his flashy coinage. Ultimately,
Nichols disappoints all who are looking for a sober account
of the important theological issues Fr. John fastens upon in
his writings on St. Augustine, for Nichols finds it sufficient
to cite Fr. John for “the virulence of his polemics” (78) before
moving on toward Orthodox thinkers who are more open to
the West. Unfortunately, Nichols seems to think his pointing
to both 1) Fr. John’s belief that the Orthodox Church holds
the only true faith and salvation, as well as to 2) Fr. John’s sup-
posedly unrestrained condemnation of St. Augustine (83), is
sufficient to refute Fr. John’s theology. Hopefully, Nichols will
at some point write a developed piece on Fr. John’s theology
which will focus less on Fr. John’s attitude and will actually
deal with his theological contentions.
13 Ibid., 25.
14 Ibid., 24.
The Ancestral Sin 35

as the saint, though some Protestants and Roman

Catholics believe otherwise.15 Augustine’s ignorance
of the Orthodox Christian teaching about Satan and
about Christ’s total war and victory over him led the
African bishop to see the fall of man as a punitive
act of anger which changed God’s loving disposition
toward man.
Fr. John contends that Augustine’s dual error was
1) his displacement of Satan from his true role as in-
augurator of evil, sin and death; and 2) his invention
of a spiteful God who must be placated by man’s mer-
itorious works. These deviations from the tradition of
the early Fathers led to a crisis in Christology which
has set the terms for Western theology throughout
the Middle Ages and even up to the present day. For
the West, which accepted Augustine’s presupposi-
tions about God and the fall, the teaching of the early
Fathers about the incarnation as a trampling down
of the devil did not seem justified. The Augustinian
emphasis on God’s wrathful disposition toward a
fallen creation drew attention away from the incar-
nation, and for many in the West its meaning was ob-
scured: “Since God is considered the cause of death
and Satan is his servant, it is a dilemma to explain
why the Logos ‘shared in the same [flesh and blood]
that through death he might destroy him that had the

15 It should be obvious to all that Christ would not command

man to love his neighbor if He was incapable or unwilling to
do the same Himself.
36 Realism of Glory

power of death, that is, the devil.’”16 In the Middle

Ages, the problem was posed bluntly by St. Anselm,
who wrote a book entitled Cur Deus Homo (Why the
God-man?). For Anselm, the question of why Christ
was needed at all had become quite desperate, since
theologians such as Abelard were contending that
Christ was merely a good moral example for man to
follow. Anselm’s answer was simple: Man’s Augus-
tinian fall from utter perfection to total degradation
could only have been undone by an ultimate, infinite
sacrifice. This was the meaning of the cross, which
atoned for man’s infinite fall.17
For Fr. John, modern Roman Catholic and Prot-
estant theologians remain frozen within the narrow
presuppositions and false solutions of Augustinian
Christology. Thus, for the Roman Catholic J. Pohle,
the resurrection of Christ is at best a secondary cause
of our salvation, and for the Protestant E. Brunner, it
is simply not important whether or not Christ’s body
“decomposed in the grave.”18 Most alarming is the
tendency of modern liberal biblical critics to explain
away the demonological content of the Scriptures as
either the residue of non-Christian eschatology or the
personal opinions of the biblical writers. It is obvious
to Fr. John that Augustine’s discarding of the origi-
nal teachings about the centrality of spiritual warfare

16 Ibid., 23.
17 Ibid., 26.
18 Ibid., 27.
The Ancestral Sin 37

with Satan even influences those modern Bible schol-

ars whose techniques of scriptural interpretation al-
low them to stratify the Bible into acceptable and un-
acceptable teachings:
In this manner, then, every critic of the Bible is
free to search in his favorite philosophical lexi-
con to explain everything according to his own
tastes and prejudices, and he can call anything
in the Bible that is dissonant with his theories
either superfluous or an error on the part of the
Apostles themselves. The Gnostics were first to
apply this method of explanation.19
Ancestral Sin’s opening chapter outlines the gen-
eral worldview of “Greek philosophy,” which Fr. John
wishes to compare with that of the Augustinian and
post-Augustinian West.20 Both Greek philosophy

19 Ibid.
20 It should be borne in mind that Fr. John is not here con-
demning philosophy per se, Greek or otherwise. Rather,
Fr. John is rejecting the view that secular learning is a self-
sufficient end. A. Casiday, in his review of A. Sopko’s Prophet
of Roman Orthodoxy, casts doubt on Dr. Sopko’s assertion that
Fr. John, in contradistinction to the West, did his theology
with “no philosophical presuppositions”: “Worth puzzling
over is Sopko’s rather bizarre claim for Romanides’ Dogmat-
ics, that it is ‘the first contemporary Orthodox dogmatic the-
ology with absolutely no philosophical presuppositions con-
tained within it and completely dependent upon the Tradition
of the Church’” (Casiday 202). In fact, Fr. John agrees with
his teacher Fr. Georges Florovsky that human culture, which
includes secular philosophy, has been and continues to be
Christified by the Church, which transforms rather than oblit-
38 Realism of Glory

and Western Christian philosophy find it impossible

to distinguish between “the wholly positive creation
of the world and the fall of the world.”21 Examples
abound in Protestantism of a belief in death as a
natural occurrence, and also of belief in a ghostly
afterlife in heaven with an immaterial Christ. Such
misunderstandings of salvation in Christ have much
in common with the Hellenistic notion of death as
deliverance from the world of matter. An equally
striking feature common to Greek philosophy and
Augustino-Platonic Christianity is the ethics of eu-
daemonia, or happiness, which is common to West-
ern Christianity and Greek philosophy. According
to this model, man’s selfish desires find greater and
greater fulfillment as man ascends through his intel-
lect closer and closer to God’s essence, which man
can “search out” and envision. Since matter is muta-
ble and thus ephemeral, man must ascend the chain
of being to the only immutable Being, the Unmoved
Mover who is moved only toward Himself.22

erates the cosmos’ meaning-bearing structure. Thus, Sopko is

saying that Fr. John has no merely philosophical presupposi-
tions which would inevitably distort the truth of his message.
21 J. S. Romanides, Ancestral Sin, 42.
22 Ibid., 43–44. Having had the great Fr. Georges Florovsky as
his mentor, Fr. John most assuredly was not ignorant of the
relative truth, however ambiguous and incomplete, found in
Greek philosophical notions such as the Aristotelian eudae-
monia. Indeed, the Eastern Fathers used “happiness” termi-
nology occasionally, but this should not surprise us, since no
The Ancestral Sin 39

one who has written in Greek since Aristotle has escaped “the
philosopher’s” influence entirely. To use the example clos-
est to hand, St. Basil the Great, in his “On the Holy Spirit,”
even used the Aristotle-flavored “to akrotaton ton orekton,”
the “ultimate desirable,” to describe deification itself! (PG
32.109C, qu. in M. Aghiorgoussis, “Applications of the theme
‘EIKON THEOU’ (Image of God) According to Saint Basil
the Great,” 273. For cross-references on “orekton,” see H. G.
Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, Vol. II [Oxford
1925] 1247.).
E. Stephanou, in his review of Ancestral Sin, takes serious
issue with what he terms Fr. John’s “eudaemonistic psychol-
ogy”: “Can we not say … that theosis leads man into happi-
ness in the sense of blessedness? To seek self-fulfillment in
this regard cannot fairly be described as ‘selfish’ in a moral
connotation. (—) The concepts of athanasia-zoe and thantos-
fthora can have meaning only when interpreted as states of
joy and sorrow respectively” (176). Obviously, Stephanou is
missing the point, since he associates theosis here with the
replacement of one emotional state with another, supposedly
pleasurable one. Stephanou’s eudaemonism contradicts Or-
thodox spiritual teaching, which insists upon the cultivation
of a “joyful sorrow” (Saint John Climacus, Ladder of Divine
Ascent [Boston 2001] 70–80) which transcends totally any
human conception of desire or fulfillment. Indeed, the tran-
scendence, via Orthodox ascetical therapy, of the pleasure-
pain dichotomy, is the key notion in the Philokalia.
As the foregoing indicates, terminology is not the deci-
sive factor in issues such as these, but rather what we mean
by the terms we use. In Ancestral Sin and elsewhere, Fr. John’s
priority is to clear up the muddy waters of twentieth-century
theological discourse by separating the Christology of the Au-
gustinian West (with its basis in secular philosophy) from the
true philosophy of the Christian East, which is based on life
in Christ and nothing else. Having said this, Fr. John’s seem-
40 Realism of Glory

The next chapter — “God’s Relations With the

World” — shows the connection between the eu-
daemonistic God of the West, whose energies are
focused on the archetypes within his essence, and
the purely Western notion of God’s “created graces.”
Fr. John holds that, in contrast to the Western God
who saves through created means, the Orthodox
God creates, sustains, loves, and saves all of creation
through His own uncreated energies.23 This means,
among other things, that 1) only God is immortal by
nature; 2) there are no universals in the essence of
God; 3) God does not love Himself, but rather loves

ingly facile and/or generalizing accusation of “Augustinian

eudaemonism” needs to be followed up by more research into
the relationship between secular philosophy and Orthodox
theology. The recent scholarship of David Bradshaw (2004)
stands out as an example to be followed.
For corroboration of Fr. John’s negative view of eudaemo-
nia, see Ch. Yannaras, Postmodern Metaphysics, trans. N. Rus-
sell (Brookline, MA 2004) 12–15. D. P. Payne aptly sums up
the anti-eudaemonistic connection between Fr. John and
Yannaras: “Yannaras, like Romanides, argues that the prob-
lem essentially began with Augustine’s credo ut intelligam
and was developed by Descartes. (—) Yannaras argues … that
such an understanding of human society is not authentic to
human flourishing, for it essentially denies the hypostatic
freedom of humanity within community, replacing it with
an understanding of humanity in its sinful state. The West in
its eudaemonistic pursuit of truth, adopted a cataphatic un-
derstanding of reality, which limited human freedom” (The
Revival of Political Hesychasm 56).
23 Ibid., 66.
The Ancestral Sin 41

creation; 4) human selfish desires are not natural; and

5) no natural law exists in creation. What has Greek
philosophy and uncreated energies to do with Chris-
tology? For Father John,
the entire basis of Orthodoxy’s dogmas regard-
ing the Holy Trinity and Christology is the re-
vealed fact that God alone, without any created
means, creates, foreknows, gives life, and saves.
(—) The fact that God does not … save by cre-
ated means bears witness to the divinity of the
Son and the Holy Spirit, that is, to the one na-
ture of the Holy Trinity, and proclaims the hy-
postatic union in Christ.24
The preoccupation with the uncreated, hypostat-
ic energies in Ancestral Sin’s second chapter is con-
tinued in the third. This lengthy chapter is arguably
the heart of the book, because it outlines in detail
the nature of the war between Christ and the devil
that is obscured and even ignored in the Augustin-
ian version. Along the way, this substantive third
chapter shows the biblical notion of “justification/
vivification” to be identical with theosis. The immea-
surable gulf between Orthodox theosis-justification
and Anselm’s atonement model is thereby illustrated.
Most importantly, the Orthodox notion of justifica-
tion is presented not as an arid set of creedal propo-
sitions, but rather as a way of ascent which is at all
points centered completely on the person of Christ,

24 Ibid.
42 Realism of Glory

though never Christomonistically, for to be united to

Christ is to be united to the hypostatic energies of the
Holy Trinity. The Church is Christ’s body, and Christ
is both the life and the way to life. However, the de-
monological aspect of theosis-justification — the fact
that the kingdom of God is announced by the cast-
ing out of demons — is given an equal place in Fr.
John’s presentation, as is indicated by the chapter’s
title: “Satan.”
 chapter 

The Ancestral Sin II: The Justice of

Christ as Destruction of
Demonic Injustice

I n “Satan,” Ancestral Sin’s chapter on demonology,

Fr. John first looks to the Gospel books for the truth
about the devil. The synoptic Gospels are identical
in their emphasis on the defeat of satanic powers
through the power of Christ as the establishing of the
kingdom of God (basileia ton Theou). In the synoptic
Gospels, “the practice of casting out demons before
baptism is deeply rooted in Christ Himself.”1 Fr.
John sees the Christo-demonological theme in all
three synoptics, most saliently in the Gospel of Mark.
Here the prophecy that Satan would be destroyed is
fulfilled in Christ’s battle in the wilderness with the
devil. The defeat of Satan by Christ in the Spirit is
then expanded as His disciples disperse unclean
spirits, heal the sick, and even raise the dead. This
demonological focus is absent in the Gospel of John,
but the situation is explained by the latter’s post-
baptismal, non-catechetical context.2

1 Ibid., 74.
2 Ibid., 72–73.
44 Realism of Glory

As for Satan himself, he is the source of all evil,

God having allowed angels and men the choice to
follow His divine will or their own. But this “freedom
of evil,” far from diminishing the omnipotence of
God, actually safeguards the eternal goodness and
freedom of God, for “God does not war against evil
by force or by depriving creatures of freedom but by
being long suffering through love and justice.”3 In his
discussion of Satan, Fr. John emphasizes the same
close association of sin, death, and the devil that
he stressed in “Original Sin According to St. Paul.”
Because he is readying the reader for an explication
of the Orthodox notion of theosis-justification
as unmitigated spiritual war with Satan, Fr. John
counterbalances the “rule” of Satan in this age with
the greater power of God’s providential love for the
world, which is constantly expanding Christ’s defeat
of the demons.4

3 Ibid., 75.
4 Ibid., 77.
 chapter 

The Ancestral Sin III: The Justice of

Christ as the Vivification of
the Righteous on Both Sides of Death

T he justice of Christ is not a coercive interven-

tion that saves man from his total depravity by
means of an ultimate sacrifice, as Anselm and the en-
tire atonement tradition of the West would have it.1

1 In G. Barrois’ article “Palamism Revisited,” we find a pithy

thumbnail sketch of the Western scholastic development
of Augustine’s teachings on the fall, “created grace” and
the beatific vision of God’s essence. Though Anselm is not
named, note that the doctrine of “added grace” is seen as a
necessary prerequisite for Anselm’s notion of Atonement.
Essentially, Anselmian Atonement was an attempt to res-
cue the Western Church from its contradictory anthropol-
ogy and soteriology, both of which automatically imply a
false Christ who saves through created means: “During the
Middle Ages, the teachings of St. Augustine in matters of
anthropology gained a considerable momentum by reason
of the Aristotelian categories in which the western school-
men, especially Aquinas, framed them. Man was defined as
a rational creature, his rationality being the necessary and
in principle sufficient feature to distinguish him from other
creatures. The fall of man, whether due to natural fallibil-
ity, errors of judgment, yielding to temptation, preferring
46 Realism of Glory

Rather, the justice of Christ is vivification, or the im-

parting of life through His personal, uncreated ener-
gies, which are Trinitarian and not monohypostatic.2
an immediate good to the ultimate telos, or human self-will
pitched against the will of God, remained unexplained.
God’s revealed determination to save mankind seemed to
demand an entirely new departure, rather than carrying on
the original, indeed unbroken, plan.
The key to the process of redemption according to Catholic
tradition was the ‘infusion’ of a free gift of grace (gratia) which
would help and in some measure restore man’s native ability
to correspond to God’s design for him. Grace was believed to
have been present prior to the fall as an additional endowment
beyond the ‘purely natural,’ and it would again be offered to the
sinner as a healing remedy to wounded nature. This grace is
deemed to be a quality not essential to human nature as such,
a conditioning or reconditioning modality, an interposed real-
ity, a metazxi. It may seem too blunt to speak of grace as cre-
ated, but such a locution is inescapable as long as one does not
recognize in grace God’s essential energy unto man’s theosis.
The same should be said of the (controverted!) notion of the
lumen gloriae, to account for the alleged vision of the divine
essence by the saints in glory” (225–226). For St. Augustine’s
role in separating human society and asceticism (“spiritual dis-
ciplines”) from the cosmic order, and the resulting narrowness
of Western soteriology, see S. Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hid-
den Agenda of Modernity (Chicago 1990) 67–69.
2 On Christomonism, see D. Staniloae, Theology and the
Church, trans. R. Barringer (Crestwood, NY 1980) and B. Bo-
brinskoy, “The Indwelling of the Spirit in Christ: ‘Pneumatic
Christology’ in the Cappadocian Fathers,” St. Vladimir’s Theo-
logical Quarerly 28.1 (1984) 49–65, at 50. On “anhypostatic
energies,” see J. S. Romanides, An Outline of Orthodox Pa-
tristic Dogmatics, trans. G. D. Dragas (Rollinsford NH, 2004)
71–73; and T. L. Anastos, “Gregory Palamas’ Radicalization of
The Ancestral Sin 47

It may surprise some that Fr. John’s Protestant friend,

the great biblical scholar C. H. Dodd, evinced a deep
understanding of St. Paul’s Orthodox interpretation
of Christ’s justice. In fact, Dodd’s insights are exten-
sively drawn upon by Fr. John to sum up Ancestral
Sin’s central thesis about salvation in Christ as the-
osis-justification. Fr. John’s willingness to hinge his
most important chapter in Ancestral Sin on Dodd’s
writings shows his unhesitating acceptance of Or-
thodoxy (right opinion) wherever it is found. Dodd’s
knowledge of and fidelity to the spiritual background
of St. Paul’s writings led him to
commen[t] that, for Paul, the word justice has
the same meaning that it has in the Old Testa-
ment. Dodd says that, unlike the Greek philos-
ophers and Western theologians, the Jews did
not understand divine justice in any way to be
some divine or cosmological attribute. Rather,
it is an energy of God which presupposes the
prevalence of injustice and evil in the world.
Consequently, when Paul writes, “The justice
of God hath appeared,” he means that God
appears in Christ and destroys evil, dissolves
injustice, and restores the righteous who were
unjustly held captive by what is evil.3

the Essence, Energies, and Hypostasis Model of God,” Greek

Orthodox Theological Review 38.1–4 (1993) 335–349.
3 Ibid., 93–94. “The justice of God Hath appeared” is Romans
3:12. Fr. John is summarizing Dodd’s The Epistle of Paul to the
Romans (London 1932) 9–10, 51.
48 Realism of Glory

Here Dodd has preserved the biblical/patristic truth,

denied by Augustine and his followers,4 that righ-
teous men lived before Christ’s incarnation. Fr. John
goes much farther than Dodd, however, holding that
St. Paul’s references to the Law — “the letter kills,”
etc. — do not allow for any opposition of the Torah to
the justifying grace of Christ, but rather indicate the
real meaning of the Old Testament as the Way (To-
rah) of vivification completed by Christ’s Incarnation
and its Christological extension: the harrowing of hell
(sheol). The Old Testament righteous were unjustly
held by Satan, and Christ’s incarnation brings justice
to them, a justice which is both the imparting of the
life of Christ to man and the destruction of the devil’s
power of death. This Orthodox notion of justification
as 1) theoric vision and immortalization of the saints
of all ages in Christ, and 2) destruction of the power
of Satan through human co-working with divine en-
ergy, is completely alien to the atonement Christology
of Anselm, according to which God requires a sacri-
fice on the cross from Christ and meritorious works
afterward from man which together constitute a lit-
eral deus ex machina for the vexing Western problem
of how God, his absolute justice offended by the fall,
could change his hatred of man back to love.



4 Ibid., 124.
The Ancestral Sin 49

Fr. John’s restating of the Church Fathers’ teachings

about justification as a Christocentric and theoric
bestowal of life on the saints of all eras leads natu-
rally to the question “What is the nature of this life
in Christ?” Christ himself demands of his saints that
they become perfect as the Father himself is perfect.5
Here we are approaching a theological theme that has
received more attention than any other in twentieth
century Orthodox theology — perfection as deifica-
tion, or theosis.6
In Ancestral Sin, Fr. John gives a full treatment
of deification in his chapter entitled “The Destiny of
Man.” For Fr. John, the key to deification is found in
the patristic interpretation of the “image and likeness
of God” in man.7 Tatian, the early Christian ecclesi-
astical writer, assumes that the image of God refers
to perfection in Christ. As Fr. John summarizes him,
“Man is not by nature a likeness of God because,

5 Ibid., 112. Fr. John gives the following Scriptural references

as pertaining to man’s perfection in the Father: Matthew 5:48,
Ephesians 5:1, Colossians 34:10, I Peter 1:14, I John 3:2.
6 For a recent and detailed bibliography on theosis, see “Re-
sources on Theosis with Select Primary Sources in Transla-
tion,” compiled by J. A. Wittung, in Chistensen and Wittung
295–309.
7 See V. Lossky Vision of God (Crestwood, NY 1997) and In the
Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood, NY 2001) for the nexus
of the two themes 1) deification and 2) “image and likeness.”
Typical is the comment of G. Barrois in “Palamism Revisited”:
“The way of the Greek Fathers and of St. Gregory Palamas
starts from a theology of the image and leads to theosis” (228).
50 Realism of Glory

among other things, the image of God presupposes

the moral perfection of man.”8 Many Western com-
mentators see “semi-Pelagianism” in this notion that
man can achieve the perfection that Christ demands
of him.9 However, Tatian, along with the Fathers of
all ages, never viewed man’s ability to follow the com-
mandments of God, indeed to “choose immortality,”10
in isolation from Christ, the source and telos of man’s
ascesis. This is why an early patristic term for deifi-
cation was “Christification.” To combat the false op-
position of works versus grace that lay underneath
the West’s “semi-Pelagian” accusation, Fr. John em-
phasizes the inseparability of the moral and the on-
tological aspects of man’s perfection in Christ: to be
perfected is “to be formed in the image of Christ, not
only morally but bodily also.”11

8 J. S. Romanides, Ancestral Sin, 109. Interestingly enough,

both Fr. John (Outline 35) and M. Aghiorgoussis (269–270)
agree that it is Augustine who first deviated from the Ortho-
dox teaching of man “in the Image.” Augustine says that man
is “the image of God,” and that man is “in the image of the
Trinity.” Both Fr. John and Aghiorgoussis hold that Augus-
tine’s confusion and/or equation of divine energies and hypo-
static properties were a total deviation from Holy Tradition.
9 Peter D. Carras, in his insightful piece “St. Augustine and
St. John Cassian on Human Destiny, Human Will and Divine
Grace,” points out that the term “semipelagianism” is a latter-
day invention of Roman Catholic polemicists in the sixteenth
century, and is thus alien to the patristic mind (248).
10 J. S. Romanides, Ancestral Sin, 109.
11 Ibid., 112.
The Ancestral Sin 51

But what is the meaning of man’s moral/ontologi-

cal deification in Christ, and how can we recognize or
describe it? Once again, Fr. John returns to the image of
Christ in the Bible as interpreted by the Fathers. For Fr.
John, the entire purpose and meaning of both Testaments
is the proclamation that there is a Way (Torah) to perfec-
tion, and this Way is not a mere book, but a Person, the
“door of Jesus,”12 who broke down all barriers between
fallen man and Himself through His Incarnation.
The primary context for Fr. John’s discussion of
the Way to perfection is the biblical/patristic theme
of the “two loves.” The Western God of scholasticism,
according to Fr. John, is based upon the first love, eu-
daemonia, or love of self. While some may be alarmed
at Fr. John’s harsh and absolute condemnation of the
philosophical notion of eudaemonia, which has un-
deniable spiritual overtones and which — it may be
argued — has had a palpable propaedeutic influence
on Orthodox spirituality, it should be understood
that Fr. John speaks of eudaemonia not in terms of its
affinities with Christianity, but rather bases his rejec-
tion of “happiness” on an Orthodox teleology which
spurns any goal short of deification in the image of
Christ as a suitable telos for man.13

12 For the phrase “thyra tou Iesou” and its context in Eusebi-
us’s account of St. James the Just’s martyrdom, see The Eccle-
siastical History, Greek text w. English trans. K. Lake, vol. I
(London 1926) 171.
13 On eudaemonism in Fr. John’s writings, see Chapter 4, n.
52 Realism of Glory

In fact, we can only recognize the deficiency of

the eudaemonistic first love through an understand-
ing of the second love, which is the love of God, the
love that “never fails” and which God radiates toward
creation: “God is love.” Fr. John illustrates the differ-
ence between the two loves by contrasting the indi-
vidualism of the first love with the kenoticism of the
second love. If attaining to the likeness of God is
to incline toward the highest good and to find
self-contentment in it, what kind of relation-
ship can the soul have with secondary being if it
should ever achieve its goal? If the soul becomes
totally satisfied by its union with the One, how
can it also be inclined toward other beings like
itself, or even lower being, and maintain a rela-
tionship of love with them also?14

10, above. Helpful toward understanding Fr. John’s seeming

contrariness in rejecting eudaemonia is the definition of hap-
piness given by R. B. Brandt in P. Edwards (ed.), The Ency-
clopedia of Philosophy, vol. 3 (New York and London 1972
[1967]) 413–414. Here Brandt points out the two main ideas
which constitute the Western notion of eudaemonia: 1) One’s
disposition of satisfaction toward the main aspects or pat-
tern of one’s own situation in life, and 2) “the occurrence (or
nonoccurrence) of certain feelings or emotions” (413). Note
the absence here of a total deliverance from self-concern,
and the absence of a perpetual, dynamic transcendence of
human capacity which is incompatible with anything like
self-satisfaction. Bearing these features in mind, the reason
for Fr. John’s stark opposition of “happiness” to glorification
becomes clear.
14 J.S. Romanides, Ancestral Sin, 113.
The Ancestral Sin 53

The Augustinian West’s view of God as an unmoved

mover, whose only possible movement of love could
be toward Himself finds its correlation in an individ-
ualistic, self-serving humanity.
The second love, which is that of Christ, the Bi-
ble, and the Fathers, is predicated upon the dogma
“Each man’s relationship with his brother in Christ
ought to be an image of his relationship with God
and Christ.”15 However, Christ’s teaching was truly
revolutionary in its promise that men were created
to become deified, and to thus be progressively deliv-
ered from all necessity, law, and constraint. The con-
tent of deification, indeed, is the second love, which
“seeks not its own,” and by which man acquires “the
nous of Christ.” The love of Christ and unity in Christ
are a single reality, and one cannot love Christ and at
the same time hate his brother.16

15 Ibid.
16 It should also be pointed out that Augustinian eudaemonia
is based upon the dual epistemology of analogia entis/ana-
logia fidae. According to analogia entis, there is an analogy
of being between man’s finite mind and the infinite mind of
God. This mind of man/mind of God tangent allows man to
ascend the rungs of created beings, to reach the “forms” of
created beings, and finally to arrive at a beatific vision of the
essence of God. Analogia fidae is the notion that God gave
us the Bible as a great book of revealed propositions. In the
hands of one whose intellect is guided by the Spirit, philo-
sophical methods of reasoning can be used to tease out and
develop new teachings which are latently present in the Bible.
In this ultra-rationalistic conception of revelation, the Bible
54 Realism of Glory

Though we will have to wait until his middle and

late period writings for a full-bodied presentation of
the ascetic path that carries one from the first love
to the second, Fr. John does give us a picture in An-
cestral Sin of the meaning of the second love. A par-
ticularly Romanidesian quotation from St. Clement
of Rome, who is himself explicating a passage from
the Torah concerning Moses, gives us a clear notion
of this second love: “Moses said, ‘Lord, pardon the
sin of this people, else blot me also out of the book of
the living.’ O marvelous love! O insuperable perfec-
tion! The servant speaks freely to his Lord and asks
for either forgiveness for the people or that he him-
self might perish along with them.”17 Fr. John follows
with a quotation from St. Justin Martyr that shows
the early Church to have been a “cenobium” of non-
possessors, further indicating the ascetic basis of
the second love.18 Finally, Fr. John links his discus-
sion of the two loves with freedom from fear, keep-
ing in mind the book’s prominent theme of the fall

becomes God’s great tome of axioms. This epistemology is

idolatrous to the Orthodox, who proclaim that there is no
analogy of being between the essence of God and creation
which could allow man to attain to the uncreated essence of
God. The Orthodox also oppose analogia fidae, for the Bible
is not a magical, uncreated tome, like the Koran is supposed
by some to be, but rather the Bible is a sacred book because
of its use in liturgical and ascetical contexts.
17 J. S. Romanides, Ancestral Sin, 115.
18 Ibid., 116.
The Ancestral Sin 55

as bondage to Satan through fear of death: “perfect

love casteth out fear.”19 The second love was lost in
the West during the Middle Ages, and Fr. John views
the perennial Western dilemma “faith versus works”
as a by-product of this loss:
The West’s two formulations about salvation are
products of a eudaemonistic, self-seeking men-
tality that ignores the New Testament’s teach-
ing about unselfish love, the love that gives no
thought to itself. Man can offer neither solam
fidem nor meritorious works to the throne of
God in order to buy salvation. (—) Neither
faith nor works save. Only God saves, but not
arbitrarily without the will of man or by ne-
cessity because of man’s works, but only when
these are accompanied by love.20

19 Ibid., 118. I John 4:18.

20 Ibid., 121, 122.
d
 chapter 

The Ancestral Sin IV:

Spiritual Man in the Image

F or Augustine, hamartology turns out to be an

inscrutable mystery, though perhaps not in the
intended sense. It should have been easy, Augustine
believes, for Adam to “keep the commandment,”
since he began with an “utterly perfect” mind.1 Man
fell because he violated the “penal code” in the es-
sence of God, and both the breaking and the follow-
ing of this iron law are both viewed as purely legal
“transactions.”2 Perfection in the image of Christ
is absent from the Augustinian picture of the fall.
Adam, indeed, already begins in a perfect state, with-
out Christ’s incarnation and without ascetic temper-
ing. Who, indeed, is this Godman?

1 Ibid., 124.
2 “… [T]he law laid down by God in paradise was on His
[Christ’s] account …” St. Gregory Palamas, Homily 7, in
Grigoriou tou Palama Omiliai 22, ed. S. Oikonomos (Athens
1861) 259. Quoted in P. Nellas, Deification in Christ, 36, who
notes that the law in Eden on “Christ’s behalf,” the second
Adam’s behalf, is ultimately for the First Adam’s salvation.
58 Realism of Glory

In the Christological context of Orthodox hama-

rtology, a different answer to the cur Deus homo is
found: “Adam is understood through Christ. The first
Adam is not the key to the New Testament. The sec-
ond Adam, however, is the key to the Old Testament.
The veil of the Old Testament ‘is abolished in Christ’
only.”3 As St. Theophilus of Antioch and St. Irenaeus
of Lyons taught, Adam in the garden was born in an
intermediate state, neither perfect nor imperfect, but
rather a mutable creation destined without coercion
to become immutable through ascetic perfection in
love. The soul of man is not immortal by nature, but
rather by participation in the Holy Spirit, which con-
forms man to the “nous of Christ.”
Fr. John holds that the West’s misconceptions
about Adam and the fall have had severe consequenc-
es in all areas of Western theology, but most saliently
in the Western notion of the “image of God.” Because
of their eudaemonistic presuppositions about man,
most Western theologians make no distinction be-
tween “people who live according to death and people
who live according to Christ.”4 These non-Orthodox
scholars are prone to the dualistic readings of St. Paul
that Fr. John first decried in “Original Sin According
to Saint Paul” (see ch. 1).
Fr. John critiques the Hellenistic mind-body du-
alism of Western theology through the subtle lens of
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., 133.
The Ancestral Sin 59

Orthodox eschatology. However, Fr. John’s broadly

conceived notion of the “last things” is a far cry from
that of the Western theology manuals, and rather
anticipates the Christocentric eschatology typical in
Orthodox writing since the fifties.5 The souls of the
Old Testament righteous were in sheol, that is, asleep
in their bodies, when “Through the resurrection of
righteous souls in Christ there came a kind of sepa-
ration of soul and body that, in a manner of speak-
ing, is unnatural; it is, however, altogether tempo-
rary. This separation is not metaphysical or dualistic
in nature but eschatological.”6 Thus the fundamental
anthropological distinction is between man’s created
being with its natural energy and the uncreated, sav-
ing energy of Christ. No opposition exists between
man’s soul and his body, as if the latter were a prison
and the former the “real man” made in the image of
God. Rather, there is an “eschatological distinction
between those who … are presently participating in
the Lord’s victory over death unto eternal life and

5 See in particular the writings of Met. John (Zizioulas) of

Pergamon: Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and
the Church (Crestwood NY 1997) and Remembering the Fu-
ture: An Eschatological Ontology (London 2008).
6 J. S. Romanides, Ancestral Sin, 138. Emphasis mine. See also
p. 156, “… [T]he writers of the first two centuries understood
that justice is eschatological. God does not will the present
unjust activity of Satan and man but only tolerates it so that
those who would be saved can be tried and perfected through
temptations.”
60 Realism of Glory

those who do not participate in it and are therefore

on a path to eternal damnation.”7
The eschatological distinction between those in
Christ and those under Satan is at the heart of the
Orthodox teachings about the resurrection. The first
resurrection is the Pentecost in the heart of man that
is man’s life in the body of Christ. This resurrection
is the “thousand year reign” of Christ in the hearts
of His saints which is also the imparting of life to
His body through the sacraments. On this side of
the grave, those who have been baptized have the
“betrothal of the Spirit,” and are struggling against
Satan to fulfill their vows. Unlike the saints on the
other side of the grave, who have conquered Satan
and are merely awaiting the final victory, those still in
this life must wage total war against demonic forces
to become more and more conformed to the image
of the Son. The second resurrection will precede the
last judgment. It is truly the “last” judgment because
it is the joining of all men’s souls with their bodies,
both the blessed and the damned. Man is not a dis-
embodied soul; therefore, the defeat of Satan which
the saints have wrought through Christ is only con-
summated once all men become like the resurrected
Christ, their passionless souls reunited with their im-
mortalized bodies. Thus, Satan’s trial does not take
place in some court of jurisprudence in the sky, but

7 Ibid., 139.
The Ancestral Sin 61

is rather cosmic in scope, being the inevitable re-

sult of the already accomplished defeat of death in
the body of Christ. This eschatological perspective
makes sense of St. Paul’s seemingly contradictory ref-
erences to the resurrection as both something in the
past (first resurrection) and as a future event (second
resurrection).8

8 Ibid., 142.
d
 chapter 

The Ancestral Sin V:

Christological Implications
of Image Theology

F r. John’s “image of God” theology is the key to his

Christology, his soteriology, and thus his hama-
rtology. In “Spiritual Man in the Image of God,” An-
cestral Sin’s penultimate chapter, Fr. John uses St. Ire-
naeus’ “second Adam” theme to illustrate the deeper
implications of the incarnation: Christ “‘became Him-
self what was His image, and He reestablished the like-
ness in a sure manner by conforming man like unto
the invisible Father.’ It is Christ ‘Who is the image of
God.’ ‘Those whom [God] did foreknow, He also pre-
destined to be conformed to the image of His Son.’”1 If
Christ is the image of God the Father, then man is the
image of Christ, or the “image of the image.”2

1 Ibid., 152. The Scriptural quotations are 2 Corinthians 4:4,

Colossians 1:15, Romans 8:29.
2 On man as the “image of the image,” see P. Nellas, Deification
in Christ, 23ff. The Roman Catholic T. G. Weinandy in Atha-
nasius: A Theological Introduction (Aldershot, Hampshire
2007) does a superlative job in summarizing the “image of the
Image” theme as propounded by St. Athanasius the Great:
64 Realism of Glory

A longer quotation from Ancestral Sin lays out

the anthropological implications of the second Ad-
am’s recapitulation of the cosmos:
Therefore, just as Christ was born an in-
fant and subsequently grew bodily, matured,
advanced, and was perfected …, the first-made

“For Athanasius, the Word is the perfect divine

image of the Father and for human beings, then, are
ontologically in the image of God because they are
ontologically in the image of the Word. Athanasius
equally implies that it is precisely because God cre-
ated human beings through his Word that human
beings have taken on the likeness of his Word, and
so his own likeness as well.
[Also], human beings are able, after the likeness
of the Word, to know and so be in communion with
the Father. Having been ontologically created by the
Word and in the Word’s own image, human beings
are thus naturally empowered by that same Word
to share equally in their epistemological ability to
know the Father. Because of ‘this likeness (homios)
to himself ’ humankind is able to know God ‘even
of his own eternity.’ Having been given god’s own
power ‘from the Word of the Father,’ humankind is
able to ‘rejoice and have fellowship with the Deity,’
and even ‘beholds, by his purity, the Image of the
Father, God the Word, after whose image he was
made.’ In contemplating the word humankind ‘sees
in him also the Father of the Word.’ Thus, for Atha-
nasius, humankind, in being created in the image
of the Word, possesses the ‘purity of soul’ that is in
itself ‘sufficient to reflect God’ and so come to know
him” (14, author qu. from St. Athanasius Contra
Gentes 2.3).
The Ancestral Sin 65

men were also made children in order to grow,

mature, and become perfect in body and soul.
Christ was born without sin or deficiency. Yet He
advanced and was perfected. Likewise, the first
men were made sinless and without deficiency
in order to advance and become perfect.3

3 J. S. Romanides, Ancestral Sin, 152.

d
 chapter 

“Justin Martyr and the Fourth Gospel”

I n the next two articles published by Fr. John — “Jus-

tin Martyr and the Fourth Gospel” and “H. A.
Wolfson’s Philosophy of the Church Fathers” — we
find a growing emphasis on an Orthodox realism of
glory. The Justin article is an expansion of the discus-
sion, first found in Ancestral Sin, of the twofold Gos-
pel tradition of pre- and post-baptismal instruction.
The distinction between the Orthodox catechetical
and post-catechetical teachings is shown in the syn-
optic gospels on one hand, and in the Gospel of John
on the other.
The synoptic gospels emphasize moral precepts
that are always linked to the destruction of demonic
power in a concrete situation. The catechesis of the
synoptic gospels is also grounded in parables that
both indicate and hide the mystery of life in Christ.
Moreover, the synoptic gospels preach a transfigu-
rational vision of God, which is experienced only
by those who have progressed from being a slave
68 Realism of Glory

of God and hearer of His word to being a friend of

God and doer of His word. On the other hand, the
Johannine Gospel is a post-baptismal instruction
book that is designed to deepen the understanding
of the Mysteries for those who are already members
of Christ’s body: “The fourth gospel is a continuous
play on the divinity of Christ as witnessed to by the
divine activities which He shares in common with
the Father and the Spirit and which are eventually
understood by those who are defeating the devil but
continuously misunderstood by those blinded by the
prince of darkness.”1
The Christological key to the twofold Gospel tra-
dition of “hearers” and “partakers”2 is the Transfigu-
ration, where Peter and the Sons of thunder ascended
Mt. Tabor with Christ and were afforded a vision of
the uncreated glory of God. Fr. John explains the
significance of the Transfiguration as the fulfillment
of Christ’s kingdom promise: “Amen I say unto you,
there are some of them that stand here who shall
not taste of death till they see the kingdom [or rule]
of God come in power.” Fr. John finds it significant
that all three synoptic gospels jump ahead in time to
Mt. Tabor directly after Christ’s kingdom promise is
recorded: “The promise of Christ that some shall see
the kingdom of God come in power … was fulfilled

1 J. S. Romanides, “Justin Martyr and the Fourth Gospel,”

Greek Orthodox Theological Review 4: 121–22.
2 Ibid., 121.
Justin Martyr and the Fourth Gospel 69

in the vision of the glory in the transfiguration of

Christ which took place after the pattern of God’s self
revelation to Moses in Exodus.”3
Also noteworthy is Fr. John’s recognition that the
terms such as basileia ton Theou, energeian, and doxa
are synonymous in the Bible, all indicating the uncre-
ated glory of God, made accessible to man through
Christ. Life in Christ is sharing in His basileia, or
“ruling power” which is simultaneously 1) uncreated
energy of God, 2) deification of man, and 3) the fi-
nal defeat of Satan and the fullness of the kingdom.4
There is a clear discrimination, for Fr. John, between
baptism by water and baptism in the Spirit in the gos-
pels, the former corresponding to the sharing of the
“mystery of the reigning power of God” enjoyed by
all of the Apostles, and the latter being experienced
by the three pillars — Peter, James, and John — on
Mt. Tabor. That the vision of Christ’s glory is the des-
tiny of all Christians is indicated by Christ’s prayer in
John 17:24 that “all may see His glory.”5

3 Ibid., 122.
4 Ibid., 122-23.
5 Ibid., 124.
d
 chapter 

“H. A. Wolfson’s Philosophy of

the Church Fathers”

F r. John next delivers a masterful critique of Dr.

H. A. Wolfson’s The Philosophy of the Church Fa-
thers (1956), a book that treats the writings of the
Church Fathers as philosophical tracts full of specu-
lation about the being of God. Wolfson’s rationalistic
approach is contrasted with Fr. John’s “soteriological
approach,” which is based upon the Church Fathers’
sharing of the “prophetic experience” of the saints
of the Old and New Testaments.1 Here, Fr. John es-
tablishes the radical distinction between the rational
knowledge of philosophers and the apophatic knowl-
edge of the Bible and the Fathers:
The correct interpretation of Scripture belongs
to those who have been incorporated into the
same soteriological experience as those who
wrote the Scriptures. Both Old and New Testa-

1 J. S. Romanides, “H. A. Wolfson’s Philosophy of the Church

Fathers,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 5 (1959) 55–82,
at 56.
72 Realism of Glory

ments deal with the revelation of the glory of

God. For a Biblical critic not to have seen the
glory of God simply means he does not know
the very object of his study.2
This article on Wolfson stridently singles out the ex-
perience of the glory of God as the epistemological
key to Orthodox soteriology.3 In Fr. John’s analysis,
it is Wolfson’s false epistemology that precludes him
from understanding the Scriptures and the specific
“reality” which they speak about.
The subject matter of the [Old and] New
Testament[s] is … the mighty acts of God. The
divine essence is beyond the reach not only of
human experience generally but of the proph-
ets and apostles also. It is the glory and not the
essence of God which is revealed in Christ. The
Logos did not become flesh to reveal the divine
nature but to destroy the works of the devil by
bringing man back into permanent commu-
nion with the glory of God.4
This view of Scripture as the chronicle of the glory/
energy/work of God which reveals to the prophets
of both the Old and New Testaments that creation
cannot know rationally the essence of God is sharply
opposed to Wolfson’s philosophical approach. Wolf-

2 Ibid., 56.
3 For a wider context in which to place this notion of an Or-
thodox realism of glory, see part two of the “Introduction,”
p. 12–23.
4 J. S. Romanides, “H. A. Wolfson’s Philosophy,” 56.
H. A. Wolfson’s Philosophy 73

son searches in vain for a philosophical exposition of

the Trinity in the New Testament. Indeed, Fr. John is
appalled at Wolfson’s utter disregard for the mean-
ing and purpose of the New Testament. The twofold
Gospel tradition so emphasized in the Justin article is
again drawn upon by Fr. John to illustrate Wolfson’s
approach: “To try to find depth theology in works
intended for catechumens, for example, is like find-
ing fault with a book on simple arithmetic because it
does not contain trigonometrical formulas.”5
Contrary to Wolfson’s point of view is that of
Fr. John and the biblical writers themselves, for whom
the true purpose of the Bible is the disclosure of “a
method of instruction intended to lead those being
taught into a definite soteriological experience.”6 In
Fr. John’s later works, commented upon below, the

5 Ibid., 60.
6 Ibid. For Orthodox Christianity as a method for salvation
rather than a system of abstract truths, see B. N. Tatakis,
Christian Philosophy in the Patristic and Byzantine Tradition,
trans. G.D. Dragas (Rollinsford, NH 2008): “… Christianity
is not simply an abstract knowledge of the truth, … but an
effective method for the salvation of mankind. It may, per-
haps be argued that this is also the way in which the ancient
philosophers saw their philosophy, especially Plato and Aris-
totle, but also the Stoics. (—) It was like that, of course, until
the second century, when Christian philosophers discovered
that the various philosophical systems, even though some-
times they might have right views, could not in fact provide
an effective method for guidance in life, on the contrary, only
Christianity could do so” (31–32).
74 Realism of Glory

pastoral/therapeutic nature of Church writings is

fleshed out as a complete theory of knowledge — an
Orthodox epistemology — which contrasts with the
non-Orthodox epistemology of scholastic metaphys-
ics. Though Fr. John does not here develop the eccle-
siological or ascetic contexts of this biblical/pastoral
methodology, one might argue that the ascetic and
eucharistic spheres are already implied in his descrip-
tion of the goal of biblical therapy as “discrimination
of energies”: In the Bible, “one sees a series of spiritual
exercises calculated to free the mind and body from
demonic oppression and to lead the catechumen to a
spiritual condition whereby he is able to distinguish
between the acts of creatures and demons and the un-
created acts or glory of God.”7 Accordingly, the realism
of the Bible and the Fathers is based upon ascetico-
ecclesial methods that allow man to cooperate with
the uncreated glory of God. This cooperation is a syn-
ergy of man and God, and it, therefore, restores man
to normality, which is life in Christ, the second Adam.
The centrality of the incarnation in man’s deification
allows us also to say that the realism of glory is the
union of man with the Godman, so that the former
can be called a God since he co-reigns with Christ.
Unlike Wolfson, whose metaphysical presuppo-
sitions lead him to seek reality in concepts about the
Absolute, the biblical writers knew that man does not

7 J. S. Romanides, “H. A. Wolfson’s Philosophy,” 60.

H. A. Wolfson’s Philosophy 75

possess or apprehend reality merely by his own natural

intellect or energies. Rather, man was created to par-
ticipate in the only source of reality, the life of God
that is made available to man only through the glory
of God. Because of the incarnation, the actual glorified
humanity of Christ is communicated to the faithful in
every generation, including all of the saints and proph-
ets who lived before the incarnation. The glory of God
is the unique source of life and incorruption in which
man participates in reality. We must stress, however,
that this reality which is given to man through the glo-
ry of God is not exterior to man, but is interior to man,
since the first Adam was created in a state of noetic
communion with God, though this communion was
not initially at the higher levels of participation.
True “reality” is self-constituted. Something that
is truly “real” cannot be ontologically dependent upon
some other, higher, “more real” foundation. In accor-
dance with the above presuppositions about reality, it
must be boldly asserted that the Orthodox “realism
of glory” is equivalent to the dogma of creatio ex ni-
hilo, the bedrock Christian teaching that God creates,
sustains, and saves all of creation through His glory
alone, and not through any created medium or fiat.
Not only is there nothing higher than God; one must
further hold that nothing can be compared to God.
God is uncreated and everything outside of God was
created by Him. God creates all things by glory, but
His essence remains unchanged and inaccessible.
76 Realism of Glory

The West’s reduction of God’s essence to ratio-

nal, knowable concepts violates the strict Orthodox
realism of glory which goes hand-in-hand with that
most foundational of dogmas, creatio ex nihilo. What
is amazing is that many non-Orthodox believe that
reality is apprehended through man’s rational intel-
lect, which is supposedly aided in its quest by created
grace from God. In opposition to Western rational-
istic “realism,” the Wolfson article hammers home
the Orthodox teaching that man’s encounter with
reality is not a matter of a mere rational ascent to in-
tellectual forms and concepts,8 but is based instead
upon an actual encounter with God Himself through
His uncreated glory. Even those who experience this
glory cannot circumscribe it in words, though these
prophets are inspired to describe methods of puri-
fication which constitute therapies for neophytes.
These methods of purification are the basis of Ortho-
dox realism because they enable man to open him-
self to God’s uncreated glory, the experience of which
gradually bestows upon man the ability to differenti-
ate demonic energy from uncreated, divine energy.
These methods of purification are not mystical in

8 For a Western religious philospher’s valiant effort at broad-

ening the West’s arid anthropology of “rational mind plus
emotions,” see J. Herlihy, Borderlands of the Spirit: Reflections
On a Sacred Science of Mind (Bloomington IN 2005), esp.
chapter three, p. 50–67, which lays out a more cardiocentric
anthropology than usually holds in the West.
H. A. Wolfson’s Philosophy 77

the Western (or Far Eastern) sense, nor do they have

anything in common with New Age out-of-body ex-
periences. Instead, the Orthodox realism of glory is
based upon the concrete defeat of Satan in the hearts
and bodies of actual men. This defeat of demonic en-
ergy is the simultaneous experience of God’s uncre-
ated glory, which is a reality beyond the senses and
beyond the intellect.
d
 part two

THE NESTORIAN
METAHERESY
d
 chapter 

The Nestorian Metaheresy: Fr. John’s

Teaching on Christology and Its
Ecumenical Implications

F or Fr. John, all types of non-Orthodox Christol-

ogy — whether Nestorian, Samosatene, Arian,
etc. — share an essential feature, the “presupposition
that the uncreated God cannot unite himself by na-
ture with human nature since such a union would be
a necessary union imposed upon God.”1 This wide-
spread Christological error, which appears — in a
multitude of guises—again and again from the pa-
tristic period to the present, we will term the “Ne-
storian metaheresy.” Historically, so Fr. John holds,2
the Nestorian metaheresy emerged in the Oriental
diocese of the Roman Empire, in the heart of Syriac
Christianity. To combat deterministic philosophical
and ethical views that were then widespread, some
Syriac Christians in the second century erected a

1 J. S. Romanides, “Christological Teaching of John of Damas-

cus,” 241.
2 In fact, Fr. John never used the term “Nestorian metaheresy,”
a phrase introduced by the author.
82 Realism of Glory

metaphysical system that privileges what is done by

will over what is done by nature. This system pre-
supposes that man is saved by meritorious, “ethical”
behavior in this life, and that, in the afterlife, man’s
reward for following this divine law code is a kind of
blissful stasis enjoyed as a negation of human muta-
bility. As is turns out, due to the presuppositions of
Hellenistic philosophy which these Syrian Christians
shared with the rest of the Mediterranean world,
man’s changeableness — which in turn is associated
closely with man’s moral imperfection — was viewed
as being rooted in the very category of human en-
ergy and activity. This Syrian world-view also implies
that no “natural” or “hypostatic” union is possible
in the incarnation of the Logos, nothing being truly
assumed, nothing being truly healed. It would be a
short leap to arrive at the later formulations of the
Antiochenes which deny that the incarnation was ac-
complished through the “natural” union of two na-
tures, the human one not pre-existing but rather be-
ing the Logos’ own humanity. However, before flash-
ing forward to the classic Chalcedonian conflict with
those who deny “natural” or “hypostatic union,” we
must first trace the ancient line of proto-Nestorian
Syriac Christianity with its moralistic philosophi-
cal presuppositions. We will then see that the reason
behind Fr. John’s preoccupation with the Nestorian
metaheresy is its underscoring of the fundamental
presupposions behind all non-Orthodox Christology
The Nestorian Metaheresy 83

from the age of the Ecumenical Councils to the pres-

ent day.
The Syriac notion that in both God and man, noth-
ing praiseworthy was done by nature, but only by will
is prominent both in the precursors to Nestorian-
ism — be they the Lucianists Paul of Samosata and Ar-
ius, or the latter’s followers Eunomius and Aetius — as
well as in ecclesiastical writers commonly designated
Nestorian, such as Theodore of Mopsuestia. For Paul
of Samosata, union of God with man was by “good
will,” and there was no “natural union” in Christ to
speak of. “What prevails by reason of nature merits no
praise. But what prevails by the relationship of love is
praiseworthy …”3 In fact, there was no Trinity or in-
carnation at all in Paul of Samosata’s theology, only
an indwelling by adoption of an ordinary man whose
human will was swallowed by a divine will.4
For Arius and his followers, the same Syriac no-
tion used by the Samosatene — that natural relation
is necessary union — is carried into Trinitarian rela-
tions. Viewed from this perspective, we are no longer
constrained, as are many who write histories of dog-
ma in the West, to accuse Arius of stubborn sophistry
in his contention that “Unless He has by will come to
be, therefore God had a Son by necessity and against

3 J. S. Romanides, “Highlights in the Debate over Theodore of

Mopsuestia’s Christology and Some Suggestions for a Fresh Ap-
proach,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 5 (1959–60) 171.
4 J. S. Romanides, Outline, 17–19.
84 Realism of Glory

His good pleasure.”5 Rather, Arius was led to believe

that the Logos was of a different substance than the
Father because if the Logos was Son by nature, then
God was subjected to necessity in begetting Him.
Since nothing that is essentially good or that affects
good can be done by nature, Arius is compelled by
his necessitarian inner logic to speak only of a Logos
created by the will of the Father.
The Eunomians further refined the conclusions
of Arius by denying the distinction between energy
and essence in God6 and even obliterating the differ-
ence between hypostasis and essence. The essence of
God, for Eunomius, is only the hypostasis defined by
the term “Father.” Eunomius’ Father-God is similar
to Arius’ “Unbegotten” Father in that both perform
all works by will, including the willing of the Son and
the Spirit into existence ex nihilo. However, Eunomius
flips the radical unknowability of Arius’ agennetos on
its head, for man can come to know the essence of
the Eunomian Father-God through the unlikely me-
dium of language itself,7 specifically through certain

5 J. S. Romanides, “Highlights,” 172.

6 On the Orthodox distinction between energy and essence,
and its theological importance, see Ch. Yannaras, “The Dis-
tinction Between Essence and Energies and Its Importance
for Theology,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 19 (1975)
232–245; V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern
Church (Crestwood, NY 1976) 67–90.
7 See J. S. Romanides, “Christological Teaching,” on the par-
ticularly Western-Augustinian fixation on terminology which
The Nestorian Metaheresy 85

philosophical terms, which have for the Eunomeans

a strange mystico-intellectual significance.
Once we arrive at Theodore of Mopsuestia, the
“Father of the Nestorians,” we see several of these pro-
to-Nestorian strands coalescing into a well-defined
system. A lengthy quotation from Fr. John outlines
the prominent features of the fully developed system,
for which Fr. John never provided a name, but that
we have called the Nestorian metaheresy:
Faced with the need to combat determinism in
both its ethical and cosmological or philosophi-
cal forms, it seems that a Syrian theological tra-
dition was created which emphasized the supe-
riority of what is done according to will as over
against what is done by nature. What is done by
nature can neither be praised nor rewarded nor
justly punished, whereas what is done by will is
indicative of a higher form of life. A man who
realizes his own freedom to will what is good
can occupy himself with meritorious works, on
the one hand, for the reward of eternal life, and
at the same time become instrumental for the
betterment of society. Such a moralistic foun-
dation would overcome the pessimism of pa-
gan religions and philosophies and at the same
time would be conducive to building up the
moral stamina of the Roman Empire. Within
such categories there would automatically be
a strong tendency to think of divine adoption

perhaps finds a later echo in Occamism and even in Luther’s

sola scriptura.
86 Realism of Glory

primarily as a reward which comes at the end

of a process of meritorious living and the Bib-
lical doctrine of grace and sin would become
subordinated to this principle. The grace of
God would not be so much a gift bestowed
upon man in order to liberate him from the en-
emy, but a reward bestowed upon him because
he has fulfilled the law. The destruction of Is-
rael’s enemies would not be the work of God’s
glory, but rather the work of Israel who would
thereupon be rewarded with the glory of God
for such meritorious efforts. Such an inversion
of the Biblical pattern is perhaps the most char-
acteristic feature of Theodore’s Christology. In
this respect Galtier is entirely wrong in claim-
ing that the sole initiative for the incarnation
lies with the Son of God. For Theodore, God
unites Himself by will to the assumed man, but
this union is dependent on God’s foreknowl-
edge of the assumed man’s merits. Theodore
could not imagine that one could preserve both
the freedom of God and Christ otherwise.8
The notion that God can be defined in a positive man-
ner as immutable truth is the keystone in Theodore’s
system. Indeed, for the Mopsuestian, God’s truth is
based on His immutability and simplicity, His lack
of motion and purity from change. In terms of hu-
man salvation, this means that man is sinful because
he is mutable. True freedom is, paradoxically, giving
up one’s own will and freedom through a pursuit of a
8 Ibid., 168.
The Nestorian Metaheresy 87

good that satisfies, and thereby negates, all desire and

will, since pure immutability is experienced through
a vision of God’s changeless essence.9
Here Fr. John makes an important connection
between 1) the Nestorian tradition, which includes
Arianism and Paulicianism, and 2) the Augustino-
Platonic tradition, which is the root of Roman Ca-
tholicism and Protestantism. Both Nestorians and
Augustinians believe that salvation is the pursuit of
happiness or eudaemonia through both meritorious
good works and irresistible predestination. However,
eudaemonia is not only the way or means to salva-
tion, but also constitutes the goal of the journey, the
very substance of “heaven.” This happiness-heaven is
a vision of God’s very essence, and is a sharing in the
attributes of this divine substance: Absolute Stasis,
Pure Realization, and total self-contentment.10
The sterile motionlessness achieved by means
of this human-divine merger, however, does not in
any way involve the transformation of the inner man
(nous, eso anthropon) from a self-loving and demon-
ized love to a love that “seeketh not its own” in the
image of Christ. The fact that such a non-glorification
soteriology, with its substitution of eudaemonistic
glory for the Orthodox/Chalcedonian realism of glo-

9 Ibid.
10 For a brief description of Dante’s Scholastic cosmology and
its eudaemonia-heaven, which is typical of the Augustino-
Platonic tradition, see H. Butterfield, Origins.
88 Realism of Glory

ry, is found in Arianism, Eunomianism, and Nesto-

rianism on the one hand, and in the Augustino-Pla-
tonic tradition (itself the root of all non-Orthothox
Christian theology in the West) on the other, is the
basis for the term “Nestorian metaheresy,” which
indicates the affinities which cut across (Gr. meta,
across) non-Orthodox theological systems which are
generally thought to be opposed, such as Augustini-
anism and Nestorianism.
Most importantly, Fr. John’s shocking realign-
ment, which places the entire Western Christian edi-
fice on the non-Chalcedonian, non-Nicene side of
the patristic fence, is based upon Fr. John’s insistence
that the determining factor in theology is not ratio-
nal reflection upon patristic terms, as the Augus-
tinian West would have it. Rather, the real question
is one of glory (doxa). What is the truth about the
glory into which all men are created to be deified? In-
deed, what constitutes “right glory” (orthodoxia)?11
11 See P. Galadza, “Restoring the Icon: Reflections on the Re-
form of Byzantine Worship,” Worship 65.3 (May 1991) 240:
“The term [‘orthodox’] which means ‘right belief ’ or ‘opinion’
eventually comes to be understood as ‘right worship’ (liter-
ally ‘glorification’). By the time of the Slavic missions this
transposition has triumphed. Hence the Slavonic pravoslavie,
which can only be understood as ‘right glorification.’” Ken-
neth Leech’s remarks in his introduction to T. Colliander, Way
of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner
Growth, trans. K. Feree (Crestwood, NY 1998 [1960]) viii–ix:
“For Orthodoxy is not primarily a system or a correctness
of doctrinal formulations. Doxa means glory. Orthodoxy
The Nestorian Metaheresy 89

Is this glory created, and does it lead man into a state

of “fulfillment of every desire” after a worldly regi-
men of merit-garnering works? Such a glory, viewed
from the standpoint of the Orthodox Fathers of the
Church, is both idolatrous and demonic. To be more
specific, the Nestorian metaheresy’s eudaemonistic
glory is fantastic, based as it is in fantasia, which are
thoughts colored by passion-inspiring illusions. Fan-
tasia come from the devil and his minions, and they
constitute the “snares” and “wiles” of the devil, as well
as his “wisdom.”
Thus all variations of the Nestorian metaheresy
have in common a similar soteriology, one charac-
terized by the absence of theosis and its replacement
with eudaemonism — a belief in salvation through
either merited or unmerited divine grace. This so-
teriology of philosophical moralism, according to
Fr. John, appears wherever Christians lose contact
with the true spiritual tradition of purification of the
heart and glorification of the whole man in Christ.12

is therefore concerned with ‘right glory,’ and it is therefore

rooted in the sense of theology as inseparable from human
transformation. The purpose of theology is nothing less than
the transfiguring of human life ‘from glory to glory.’”
12 J. S. Romanides, Outline, 101: “In all the systems of the
Franco-Latins, Roman Catholics and Protestants, good
works, whether they are worthy of merit in themselves, or
worthy of merit on account of a preceding, irresistible grace,
or whether they are indications of the saving predestination,
which causes them, are the means, through which the faith-
90 Realism of Glory

Here we should also connect these startling conclu-

sions with Fr. John’s earlier comments in the seminal
Ancestral Sin, where eudaemonia is linked to general
philosophical notions present at all times in history:
The immutable and inactive One of Greek phi-
losophy is rather a projection of the human
thirst for a secure understanding of the mean-
ing of existence itself and for eudaemonia. It is
the object of man’s intellectual desire for an en-
tirely natural certainty of salvation but without
a real revelation and the gradual saving energy
of God in the world. It is also a self-centered
principle imaginatively constructed according
to the desires of man.13
Now that we have placed the Nestorian metaheretical
views on soteriology in their proper Orthodox per-
spective, we will examine the Christological beliefs
of the Nestorians. For Theodore, Nestorius, and their
followers, Christ must have only a single will and en-
ergy, because “two wills and energies in Christ would
clearly presuppose a lack of immutability on the hu-
man side and therefore some measure of imperfec-

ful acquire the satisfaction of their desires and, hence, their

neutralization through the vision of the divine essence. The
vision of the divine essence is the prize or the merit for the
good works, or the result of the first establishment of the rea-
soning faculty in the journey towards eudaemonism. Yet, it is
not viewed as an internal change of a self-interested love into
selfless love by divine grace.”
13 J. S. Romanides, Ancestral Sin, 47.
The Nestorian Metaheresy 91

tion and sinfulness.”14 Here we see the Hellenistic

presupposition that mutability is equivalent to im-
perfection and sin. Indeed, at one point, Theodore, in
his desire to portray a “real” single will, comes close
to imputing sin to the pre-resurrection Christ. Two
things become obvious from such a perspective: 1)
If there is no energy and will in the human nature of
Christ, then our wills and natures cannot be healed
but rather must be nullified, obliterated, or otherwise
ended through submission “not to the will of God,
but to some sort of stiff and impersonal and motion-
less immutability,”15 and 2) the muted determinism
resulting from this non-theosis Christology is re-
flected in the countless misunderstandings amongst
the non-Orthodox about demonology, sacraments,
asceticism, and eschatology.
Perhaps the most unexpected conclusion Fr. John
draws from the Nestorian metaheresy concerns the
Oriental Orthodox Christians. In his Outline of Or-
thodox Patristic Dogmatics, Romanides’ discussion of
the Robber Council at Ephesus leads him to conclude
that “[t]he heretical aspect of the Robber Council
lies in its rejection of the Reconciliation reached be-
tween Cyril and John and its exclusive insistence on
adopting the Alexandrian terminology of one nature
and hypostasis in Christ.”16 Here it is plain that, for

14 J. S. Romanides, “Highlights,” 170.

15 Ibid.
16 J. S. Romanides, Outline, 61.
92 Realism of Glory

Fr. John, the Oriental Orthodox of today are outside

of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy because of a fundamen-
talist adherence to Cyrillian terminology much like
the Fathers at the Ephesian Robber Synod. The im-
portant thing for Fr. John is the positive and ecumen-
ical truth that Dioscorus and all Oriental Orthodox
who follow him to this day proclaim the anti-Nesto-
rian and pro-Chalcedonian dogma of the dual con-
substantiality of Christ, who is both consubstantial
with the Father and consubstantial with humanity:
They accept, as Dioscorus did, that the one,
who was born from the Virgin, is coessential
with the Father with respect to Godhood and
coessential with us with respect to manhood.
Their doctrine, although still remaining un-
clear, states that Christ has two natures before
the union, but one after the union, without this
implying that his humanity is canceled out. This
doctrine, however, is open to the charge of pos-
sibly leading to Nestorianism. For in saying
the humanity is not canceled out, and in iden-
tifying nature and hypostasis, it appears that
they accept two hypostaseis and two persons
in Christ, which amounts to nothing else but
Nestorianism!17
This is an unflinching but nonetheless diplomatic
line for Fr. John to take regarding the Oriental Or-
thodox issue, for he is pointing out that if the Orien-
tal Orthodox accept Chalcedonian Orthodoxy, they
17 Ibid.
The Nestorian Metaheresy 93

would be 1) throwing off their Christological con-

fusions, 2) uniting with the larger Orthodox com-
munion, and — most enticingly — 3) eradicating
any suspicion of Nestorianism from their theology.
Elsewhere, Fr. John points out that the Fourth Ecu-
menical Council was Cyrillian and not Leonine, and
that the view of some Western scholars that Pope
Leo was the criterion of Orthodoxy at Chalcedon is
part of a Nestorian historiography which some have
named “Neo-Chalcedonianism.”18 Overall it is clear
that Fr. John’s notion that an overarching Nestorian-
ism pervades all non-Orthodox Christology is not
intended to drive a further wedge between Ortho-
dox and non-Orthodox, but rather to build a bridge
toward those who have unwittingly fallen prey to
Christological confusions.

18 See especially J. S. Romanides, “Leo of Rome’s Support of

Theodoret, Dioscorus of Alexandria’s Support of Eutyches and
the Lifting of the Anathemas,” Theologia 65.3 (1994) 479–93,
and the earlier, but no less essential “Saint Cyril’s One Physis
or Hypostasis of God the Logos Incarnate and Chalcedon,”
Greek Orthodox Theological Review 10 (1964–65) 82–102.
The latter has been recognized to be a “cornerstone of the
Orthodox-Oriental dialogue” (A. J. Sopko, Prophet of Roman
Orthodoxy: The Theology of John Romanides [Dewdney, B.C.
1998], 160).
 And to the One God in Trinity,
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
Be Glory, Amen.
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