John S. Romanides

Fr. John Romanides was an academic theologian of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. He is a well-known 20th Century ecumenist heretic. He is notable for his Frankish thesis: That the Franks distorted the theology of the Church and introduced the filioque heresy centuries before the Great Schism.

Soteriology

Fr. John Romanides taught the now oft-cited formula of purification, illumination, deification. He taught that theology has no other aim than this.

According to Vladimir Moss:

The lower steps of faith, and justification by faith, are one of the central themes of the New Testament. But Romanides says very little about faith, and seriously distorts the dogma of justification by faith...

...

Thus at the Anglican-Orthodox ecumenical conference in Moscow in 1976 he said: "...The Bible speaks to us of revelation, but is not itself to be identified with revelation...God’s revelation to mankind, ... is the experience of theosis. In fact, since revelation is the experience of theosis, an experience that transcends all expressions and concepts, the identification of Holy Scripture with revelation is, in terms of dogmatic theology, pure heresy."

And yet the Holy Fathers (and not only Augustine) appear to have embraced this “pure heresy”! For while they were perfectly aware of the distinction between the Uncreated and the created, and understood that the words of Holy Scripture are created in origin, nevertheless they insisted that they are the words of God. This applies not only to the words uttered by Jesus Christ Himself, the hypostatic Word of God: they apply to every word of Holy Scripture. For the Holy Spirit “spoke through the Prophets”, as the Symbol of Faith says: the Scriptures are the created words spoken through the lips of a created man by the Uncreated Spirit, and as such completely reliable and accurate. Thus St. Basil the Great writes: “Plainly it is a falling away from faith and an offence chargeable to pride, either to reject anything that is in Scripture, or to introduce anything that is not in Scripture”

...

So the Bible is not the Word of God, according to Romanides, because it is contradicted by certain supposed findings of science

This article or section is a stub. If you wish to help True Orthodox Wiki you may expand it. Request an account if you do not already have one.