Greek Orthodox Christian Television

[drewmeister2]

Why do these types of arguments always have to be started on this forum? I simply posted this as an announcement for those who might want to watch these videos. I remember hearing about this TV show that used to be produced in NY, and I am glad to see that not only is it coming back, but now will be able to be seen throughout the nation and throughout the world. I didn't intend for this to turn into a debate on Fr. John Romanides's works.

[Christophoros]

Words of wisdom...

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Lent is for repentance...

[Cyprian]

Thank you for those words of wisdom Christophoros.

Unfortunately John Romanides is dead and can not derive benefit from them. But those of us who are alive may be able to.

You are right. Lack of charity, contumelious criticism, and rude and insulting language is precisely what one will find in the writings of John Romanides.

[L.M.P.]

This is the site:
www.YouTube.com/GreekOrthodoxTV

[ioannis_theologos]

Vladimir Moss has a new article about the "New Soteriology" on his website. It's basically warning us against some of these new ideas about how the Church does not teach that we all inherit Adam's sin at birth. I find it very convincing, and certainly it's hard to read works like St Athanasius "On the Incarnation of the Word" without coming to the conclusion that the Church does in fact teach this, despite what Romanides, Kalomiros etc say. The juridical aspect of the ancestral sin comes out very clearly in Athanasius, and his authority is hardly disputed in the East.
Moss' strongest point in fact comes at the beginning of his essay, where he explains that original sin is a mystery, so we can't hope ever really to understand why or how we inherit sin. A lot of the argument for rejecting that notion is clearly motivated by a rationalistic dissatisfaction with this mystery: we have to 'explain' it somehow, eliminate the paradox, make it acceptable to our personal notions of justice.
It is true that Met Pavlos, Bp Christodoulos and a lot of people in my church have taken Romanides' ideas very seriously (I don't know whether this is the case with our fellow OCists in Greece). No doubt part of the attraction is that R couched his argument in anti-Western rhetoric, which seems to chime with our anti-ecumenist position. Also, although R was a New Calendarist, he was sympathetic to the OC church (Met Pavlos knew him personally). I would certainly agree that his position was inconsistent, but you seem to find a lot of that among conservative NC people (those who aren't slandering us as schismatics, that is).
In the end, I would still be very hesitant about labeling R's followers as heretics. I don't think it's yet become widely known how dangerous R's ideas are; eventually the Church will have to pronounce against them. The same goes for those who argue against the toll-houses, a notion that has been promoted in HOCNA by Fr Michael Azkoul and others (and which fortunately has not become accepted in the Metropolis). While I think this is a dangerous teaching, I don't think its adherents should be called heretics until the Church's position has been made much clearer.

[Cyprian]

From the article you referenced by Vladimir Moss:

First, a word about the term “original sin”. The new soteriologists do not like this term because, as Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev points out, it is “of Western provenance”.[1] They think this term savours of heresy, and prefer the supposedly more Orthodox “ancestral” or “forefather’s”. I have no objection to these latter terms, but will stick to the traditional term “original”, first because I see nothing wrong with a word being of western provenance (especially for one writing in a western language), and secondly because I think it is an exceptionally accurate designation of the subject of our discussion. For this subject is Adam’s sin, understood both as the original sin in the sense of the first one, and as the origin of the sinfulness of the rest of mankind in the sense of the cause, albeit only in part, of our own sinful state.

I am no expert in Greek, but if I am not mistaken, St. Basil the Great used the term "original sin" prior to St. Augustine.

c.f. Homily VIII, "On the Famine and Drought," PG 31: 324C where Basil employs the phrase "prototypon amartian" (Greek)

I believe "ancestral" is translated rather from "propatorikon"

He has a particular contempt for Blessed Augustine of Hippo, whom he accuses of being the “original sinner” in respect of the Franco-Latin doctrine of original sin. His works mention the name of Augustine on almost every page. And yet he very rarely quotes Augustine, and his readers are not given the information necessary in order to judge whether the accusations against him are valid.

Vladimir Moss is right on the mark here. I immediately noticed the exact same thing when perusing the writings of Romanides. He make all sorts of baseless charges against holy Augustine quite frequently, but rarely if ever attempts to support his slanderous assertions with any actual citations. The reader is simply left to take Romanides at his word when it comes to his characterizations of Augustine's theology. Those who have spent some time becoming familiar with Blessed Augustine's works can easily see that Romanides is not portraying the saint's views accurately.

Cyprian