Overall, this is a very good article by Fr. John Romanides. It accurately conveys the cardio-centric nature of Orthodox spirituality and the teachings of uncreated Grace, as opposed to the Augustinian heresies. However, his comments towards the end of the article about hell and the devil could be dangerously misconstrued and are very unhealthy to dwell upon. I wished to make this disclaimer before the usual suspects who are entrenched in the Western captivity of the Church start calling me a heretic, or projecting Fr. Romanides' writings onto HOCNA's confession of Faith:
5 Keys To The Bible, by Fr. John Romanides
The key to the Bible is the cure of the sickness of religion.
In John 17, Christ prays for unity in the cure of glorification, not for divided Churches.
We also begin with the key to the Bible which is the cure of the sickness of religion. This sickness from the very beginning took over the society of the Carolingian Franks. This is in sharp contrast to the Merovingian Franks who were Orthodox Christians, as we shall see. The Carolingians knew only Augustine till the 12th century. So the difference between these Frankish races is that the one supported the cure of the sickness of religion and the latter group became the great supporters of the causes of the sickness of religion which their Neo-Platonic form of Christianity has been.
That religion is a sickness with a specific cure is known from the tradition of the Old and New Testaments. However, that this sickness and cure exists in the Bible is known only to those who know that it is there and know how to use the Bible as a guide to said cure. For this reason the Bible is a closed book to all others, even to most Jews and Christians today. This means that Jews who accept the Old Testament alone, or Christians who accept both the Old and the New Testament, yet are not in the process of being cured under the guidance of one already cured, i.e. "glorified" (1 Cor. 12:26), automatically and unknowingly distort these books into supports for the sickness of religion, rather than its cure. Many such students of the Bible become Fundamentalists and at times quite dangerous. On the other hand the critical Biblical scholar, who uses whatever tools he has at his disposal to understand the Bible, cannot complete his task unless he knows the existence of the sickness of religion and its cure, and indeed in a Bible which is supposed to be his specialty. This holds especially true for those Orthodox 'scholars' who do not know that an Old and New Testament term for theosis is glorification.
The Five Keys to the Bible
What is missing in the work of such Biblical scholars and especially of those who work within and under the weight of the Franco-Latin Augustinian tradition, are the following five keys:
1) That the very core of the Biblical tradition is that religion is a specific sickness with a specific cure. This is what the claim "there is no God except Yahweh" means. Not knowing this fundamental first key one cannot know the second key:
2) That there is a clear distinction between Biblical terms which denote that which is "uncreated" and that which is "created." Not knowing this context one cannot know the third key to Biblical terms:
3) That "it is impossible to express God and even more impossible to conceive Him." In other words there is no similarity whatsoever "between the created and the uncreated." Anyone who thinks that Biblical expressions convey concepts about God is sadly mistaken. When used correctly Biblical words and concepts lead one to purification and illumination of the heart which lead to glorification but are not themselves glorification. An integral and essential part of knowing these foregoing three keys is the fourth key:
4) That the cure of the sickness of religion involves at all stages "the transformation of selfish happiness-seeking love" into "the selfless love of one's own crucifixion which is glorification." This glorification, therefore, is not only that of the Lord of Glory Incarnate, "but also that of all prophets and apostles (sent ones) before and after the Incarnation of the Lord of Glory." These four keys become the fifth contextual key of cure.
5) That "the expressions about God in the Bible are not intended to convey concepts about God. They act only as means to guide one to the purification and illumination of the heart and finally to glorification by the Pre-Incarnate and Incarnate Lord (Yahweh) of Glory which is to see Him by means of His uncreated glory or rule" and "not by means of ephemeral created symbols and concepts about Him" as is the case in the Augustinian tradition.
In John 17, Christ prays for the cure of the glorification of His disciples and their disciples, not for divided Churches — indeed not for traditions which have not the slightest idea what the cure of glorification is.
Nothing of the above can be found in Augustine
In sharp contrast to these five keys are the 5th century writings of bishop Augustine of Hippo (354-430) which survived the capture of his city by the Vandals in 430 AD. Augustine died during the siege on August 28, 430. Augustine writes that his Archbishop of Carthage Aurelius had commanded him to present his book De Trinitate to him for examination[ 16 ] but we have no record of the result of this action. Both Arius and Eunomius were condemned by the First (325) and Second (381) Ecumenical Councils respectively for teaching that the Messenger Logos Who appeared to Moses in the burning bush is a creature. Augustine, of course, believes that the Logos is indeed uncreated. However, he came up with his own innovation that the whole Holy Trinity appeared to Moses and the prophets by means of such an angel or angels which God brings into existence to be seen and heard and then passes back into non-existence when their mission is accomplished. Evidently Archbishop Aurelius heard about this and possibly also Augustine's teaching about original sin and predestination and wanted to see for himself.
Augustine's writings found their way to parts of the West Roman provinces. St. John Cassian (circa 360-433), former ascetic in the deserts of Egypt and then deacon of the Patriarch of Constantinople St. John Chrysostom, challenged Augustine's teaching about original sin and pre-destination without mentioning him. The teachings of Augustine on these points were condemned by the Council of Orange in 529. Augustine's writings completely captured the 8th century Carolingian tradition which knew basically only Augustine until the 12th century. At that time the Franks acquired a translation of St. John of Damascus' "Book on the Orthodox Faith" which they simply understood within their own Augustinian categories. By the 11th century the Franks had taken over all of Western Europe, except Spain, by either conquest or diplomacy. The Spanish Romans under Arab rule were still under the direct surveillance of the Roman Emperor of Constantinople New Rome. The Umayad Arabs of Spain and the Abbasid Arabs of Damascus and then Baghdad called their Roman Orthodox subjects Melkites, i.e. those who belong to the religion of the Roman Emperor in New Rome Constantinople.
According to this Augustinian tradition God supposedly brings into existence creatures to be seen and heard and which He passes back into non-existence after their mission of conveying messages and visions has been accomplished. Higher than this revelation by means of such ephemeral creatures are, according to this tradition, the concepts which God supposedly injects directly into the human intellect.
Biblical scholars who either accept this tradition or believe that this is actually what the Bible is saying, unknowingly contribute to the concealment of both the sickness of religion and its cure and so the correct reading of the terms used in the Bible to denote the difference between what is "created" and "uncreated." What is worse, the adepts of such interpretations of the Bible think that the biblical writers themselves believe that God can be expressed with words and indeed conceived by the human intellect, not perfectly, but at least approximately.
In sharp contrast to this type of tradition is that of the Fathers of the Roman Ecumenical Councils. Only those prophets, apostles and fathers who have reached glorification, both before and after the Incarnation of the Lord of Glory, can know what glorification means and how to lead others to this cure and thus to the correct distinction between the created and the uncreated in the Bible.
Therefore, both fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist biblical scholars, who have been victims of Augustinian and Carolingian presuppositions, become prone to misunderstandings of what they read in the Bible, especially when terms and symbols denoting glorifications which produce prophets are alluded to. A classical example is 1 Cor. 12:26. Here St. Paul does not write, "If one is honored," but "If one is glorified," i.e. has become a prophet. To be glorified means that one has seen the Lord of Glory either before His incarnation or after, like Paul did on his way to Damascus to persecute the Incarnate Lord of Glory's followers. Another example is the phrase "kingdom of God" which makes it a creation of God instead of the uncreated ruling power of God. What is amazing is that the term "kingdom of God" appears not once in the original Greek of the New Testament. Not knowing that the "rule" or "reign of God" is the correct translation of the Greek "Basileia tou Theou," Vaticanians, Protestants and even many Orthodox today, do not see that the promise of Christ to his apostles in Mt.16:28, Lk. 9:27 and Mk. 9:1, i.e. that they will see God's ruling power, was fulfilled during the Transfiguration which immediately follows in the above three gospels. Here Peter, James and John see Christ as the Lord of Glory i.e. as the source of God's uncreated "glory" and "basileia" i.e. uncreated ruling power, denoted by the uncreated cloud or glory which appeared and covered the three of them during the Lord of Glory's Transfiguration. It was by means of His power of Glory that Christ, as the pre-incarnate Lord (Yahweh) of Glory, had delivered Israel from Its Egyptian slavery and lead It to freedom and the land of promise. The Greek text does not speak about the "Basileion (kingdom) of God," but about the "Basileia (rule or reign) of God," by means of His uncreated glory and power. At His Transfiguration Christ clearly revealed Himself to be the source of the uncreated Glory seen by Moses and Elijah during Old Testament times and who both are now present at the Transfiguration in order to testify to the three apostles that Christ is indeed the same Yahweh of Glory, now incarnate, Whom the two had seen in the historical past and had acted on behalf of Him.
The Vaticanians have, or used to have, a tradition of identifying their Church with the earthly kingdom established by Christ with the Franco-Latin Pope as the Vicar of Christ, Emperor and Bishop of Rome.
Neither Protestants nor Vaticanians know said four keys for reading the Bible. But what is worse, many of them allow themselves to look upon others as either among God's chosen ones (like themselves), or else not chosen and therefore destined to hell since all have supposedly inherited the guilt of Adam and Eve. Also, they continue with Augustine, that a certain number of those who have inherited the guilt of Adam and Eve are, like themselves, among the ones chosen by God for salvation without any merit of their own. God chooses them, in spite of their inherited guilt, to replace that number of angels which had fallen. Because of this paganism, Franco-Latin Christianity was destined to lose ground before the onslaught of modern science and democracy. Chosen ones can never be part of a democracy.
Augustinian Christians, both Vaticanians and Protestants, are literally unbalanced humans, and had been indeed very dangerous up to the French Revolution and are potentially still quite dangerous. They were never capable of understanding that God loves equally both those who are going to hell and those who are going to heaven. God loves even the Devil as much as He loves the saint. "God is the savior of all humans, indeed of the faithful" (1 Tim. 4:10). In other words hell is a form of salvation although the lowest form of it. God loves the Devil and his collaborators but destroys their work by allowing them to remain inoperative in their final "actus purus happiness" like the God of Thomas Aquinas.
The question at hand is not, therefore, whom God loves and saves. God loves all and God saves all. Even human doctors are morally obliged to cure all patients regardless of who and what they are. From this viewpoint hell is indeed salvation, but the lowest form of it. One either chooses or one does not choose to be cured from the short-circuit which makes one religious. The one who chooses cure exercises himself like an athlete who follows the Lord of Glory's directions for purifying his heart. "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." One cooperates with Christ in the purification of one's heart and in acquiring the illumination of the unceasing prayer in the heart. This allows love to do away with self-centeredness and selfishness, but at the same time increases one's dedication to destroying the work of the Devil. When God sees that one is ready to follow the cure which will make him selfless He guides him into the courtyard of glorification and takes him from being a child to manhood, i.e. prophethood (1 Cor. 13:11). One begins with sick love concerned with one's own salvation and graduates into selfless Love which, like Saint Paul, would forego one's own salvation for that of others. In other words one either chooses cure or refuses cure. Christ is the Doctor who cures all His patients to that degree of cure they accept, even that of hell.