#john romanides

[grandpasessions]

Since all Western theological systems believe death was instituted by God, irrespective of whether or not it was a punishment for an offense committed against the divine nature, theologians who try to avoid absolute predestination are nevertheless unable to see death as an instrument of Satan and sin as the sting of death.

Since God is regarded as the cause of corruptibility and of man's captivity to the devil, He must also be regarded as the cause of sin. If the present condition of the body and the soul under the power of death and the devil is of God's making, one is then obliged either to subscribe to predestination and Manichaean dualism or to accept as normal the so-called "natural man's" inclination toward self-centered eudaemonia.

Once the present condition of the psycho-physical man under the power of death and the devil was accepted as natural, the parallel acceptance of mankind's eudaemonistic pursuits as primary and essential in creation was a foregone conclusion. According to this point of view, man is ruled by beneficial desires because God wills it so.

It is startling to discover in the thought of the Scholastics and the West in general the prevailing idea that not only man but God Himself is ruled by a kind of self-seeking love, since God cannot have real love for things outside of the divine essence. To love things outside the divine essence would mean He has need of those things. Consequently, God does not love things outside of the divine essence but loves their beginningless, everlasting, and changeless archetypes within the divine essence.

God has a will, but the object willed is from eternity, an accomplished fact, since the divine essence, divine existence, and divine knowledge are one and the same thing. Any new object of the divine will would indicate a change in the divine essence and prove that God is not eudaemon, perfectly content, since He has need of something new to support and fulfill His eudaemonia.

Ancestral Sin John Romanides

[wearetimeblog]

These Roman Councils [7 Ecumenical Councils] happen to be the ones that the Franco-Latin Papacy continued to accept in common with the four East Roman Orthodox Patriarchates after the Franks captured the Patriarchate of Rome.[ 52 ] This reduction of the Ecumenical Councils from Nine to Seven had become a first step in the attempted union between the Franco-Latin Papacy and the Roman Emperors of New Rome during the latter part of the 13th to the middle of 15th centuries. Submission to the Franco-Latin Papacy was the price that the Roman Emperor of New Rome was required to pay for Franco-Latin help against the Turks. This union was supposed to have been consummated at the union Council of Ferrara-Florence in 1438-1442. This Council was condemned by the three Roman Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem at their Council of Jerusalem (1443). These three Roman Patriarchates were within Moslem held territories. Then in 1453 New Rome fell to the Ottoman Turks putting all four Roman Patriarchates within the Moslem world, putting an end to the need for asking for help from the Franco-Latin royalties and nobilities of Western Europe and their Pope.

John S. Romanides, the cure of the neurobiological sickness of religion

[wearetimeblog]

After the disappearance of the Roman Empire in 1453 the Four Roman Patriarchs of Constantinople New Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem continued to oversee this work of the cure within the Ottoman Empire using the monasteries as the training ground for those specializing in this method of cure. Now missing from this foursome was the Roman Papacy of Elder Rome which had been taken over forcefully by the Franco-Latins who transformed it into a Franco-Latin Papacy. These new Franco-Latin proprietors continued to call their Papacy "Roman" in order to trick the West Roman serfs and villains into thinking that the Pope of Rome was still a Roman like themselves. The Franco-Latin struggle to capture the Roman Papacy began in earnest in 983 and reached its climax between 1009 and 1046.[...]  Charlemagne began his attack on the Roman Papacy by contradicting Pope Hadrian's I (771-795) support of the Seventh Ecumenical Council of 786/8. This illiterate king condemned this Ecumenical Council at his own Council of Frankfurt in 794 in the very presence of Pope Hadrian's legates. When the Franks captured the Papacy during 1009-1046, they had rejected not only the Seventh, but also the Eighth Ecumenical Council of 879/80 which had been supported conjointly by Pope John VIII (872-882) of Elder Rome and Patriarch Photius (877-886) of New Rome, as well as the remaining Roman Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. This Council was convened to get the Franks to accept the Seventh Ecumenical Council and to convince them to remove their Filioque which they had added to the Roman Creed of the Second Ecumenical Council. Instead the Franks continued to accept as their Eighth Ecumenical that of 869. This Council had been annulled by the common consent of the Roman Emperor and by all Five Roman Patriarchates, i.e. Elder Rome, New Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem at their Eighth Ecumenical Council of 879/80 already mentioned. [...] In other words a bunch of illiterate and barbarian Franks began their career in dogma during the reign of Charlemagne (768-814) by being against whatsoever is produced by Roman Emperors, Popes, and Patriarchs. This same Charlemagne even added his Frankish Filioque (which has nothing to do with the West Roman Orthodox Filioque[ 51 ]) to the Creed of the Second Ecumenical Council in order to improve it. In addition he condemned all who disagree as heretics at his Council of Aachen in 809. All this has been approved ever since 1009 by all "infallible" Franco-Latin Popes.

John S. Romanides - the cure of the neurobiological sickness of religion

[wearetimeblog]

The Fathers are not exclusively interested in what will happen to a person after his death; what is of primary interest to them is what a person will become in this life. After death, there is no treatment of the mind, so the treatment must begin in this life; for "there is no repentance in Hades." This is why Orthodox theology is not "other-worldly," futurological, or eschatological, but is purely "this-worldly." For the solicitude of Orthodoxy is for man in this world, in this life, not after death. Now, why are purification and illumination necessary? So that a person will go to Paradise and escape going to Hell? Is that why we need them? What constitutes purification and illumination and why do the Orthodox seek after them? In order for one to find the reason and give an answer to this question, he must have the basic key in his possession, which is: All people on earth share the same end, from an Orthodox theological viewpoint. Whether a person is Orthodox, Buddhist, Hindu, agnostic or atheist, or whatever he may be (that is, every person on earth), he is destined to see the Glory of God. He will see the Glory of God at the common end of mankind during the Second Coming of Christ. All people will see the Glory (Uncreated Light) of God, and from this viewpoint they have the same end, but with one difference: The saved will see the Glory of God as a most sweet and never-setting Light, whereas the damned will see the same Glory of God as a consuming Fire that will burn them. That we will all see the Glory of God is a true and expected fact. Beholding God—that is, His Glory, His Light—is something that will happen whether we want it or not. The experience of this Light, however, will be different from one person to another. Thus, the task of the Church and the clergy is not to help us to see this Glory, because this will come to pass one way or another. The work of the Church is focused on how each person will see God, not on whether he will see God. In other words, the task of the Church is to proclaim to people that there is a true God, that God is revealed as either Light or a consuming Fire, and that all people will see God at the Second Coming of Christ, and to prepare its members so that they might see God not as Fire, but as Light.

Orthodoxy Is Not a Religion by Protopresbyter John Romanides http://www.orthodoxheritage.org/MOM%2011%202012.htm

[iskra008]

The Weirdness of the Latin (Roman Catholic) understanding of Apostolic Succession in the Light of the Orthodox teachings of Father John Romanides: The late Orthodox theologian Fr. John Romanides argued that the Latin (Roman Catholic) understanding of apostolic succession is "magical" and institutional, whereas the Orthodox view is fundamentally spiritual, focusing on the empirical healing of the human personality. see his writings at www.romanity.org

The Orthodox Understanding of Apostolic Succession: For Romanides, apostolic succession is not merely the physical laying on of hands or a pedigree of offices. 1)Therapeutic Tradition: True succession is the uninterrupted transmission of the prophetic and apostolic healing process. This consists of three stages: the purification of the heart, illumination of the mind (nous), and glorification (theosis). 2)Primacy of Experience: The Apostles experienced the uncreated light of God (the revelation of the Logos). Apostolic succession ensures the Church continues to produce saints who reach this exact same experiential state of glorification. 3)Vision Over Reason: True bishops and spiritual fathers must be those who have reached the illumination of the heart. Without this, Romanides asserted that Latin bishops teach theology based on rationalism and logic, which he viewed as a distortion of the empirical, therapeutic mission of the Church. (see the writings of Father John Romanides)

[grandpasessions]

Despite the great intellectual excellence of the ancient Greek spirit, completely absent from it was the idea of unselfish love which "seeketh not its own." Philosophy was unable to conceive of a love altogether free of every selfishness and delivered of every necessity. The Greek philosophers' yearning for eudaemonia, of course, was a kind of fall, not because it seeks its own but simply because it remained unfulfilled.

For the philosopher, deliverance from desire was not indispensable in the way that it was to the Christian, i.e. for the attainment of the unselfish and creative love shown freely and unceasingly to one another. On the contrary, for the philosopher freedom from desire only marked the end of all movement and activity and the final achievement of a mathematical stability delivered from all division and replication. Hence, the idea of rigid stability and mathematical precision was divinized in an imaginary and nonexistent fate.

Ancestral Sin John Romanides

[wearetimeblog]

The Roman Catholic teaching of created saving grace arises not only from an erroneous idea of redemption but also from heretical teachings about God. The Greek Fathers teach that there is a distinction without a void between the uncreated divine essence and the uncreated divine energies, and they believe that the worthy partake only of the uncreated energy of God because the divine essence is incommunicable. In the West, on the other hand, they generally identify the uncreated essence with the uncreated energy of God, stating that God is actus purus. For this reason, Roman Catholics do not believe in the true communion of the uncreated divine energies because this would mean the divine essence is communicable to creatures. Therefore, in order to avoid pantheism, i.e., true communion of the divine essence by creatures, they teach that the communicable, saving divine grace in the world is created. Despite this, the Latins teach that there is also a relative communion of the divine essence by the saved and that the Saints enjoy eudaemonia in a vision of the divine essence, a teaching unacceptable to the Greek Fathers. Since the Roman Catholics believe that in the sacraments they commune created graces for their salvation, the rejection of such concepts by the Protestants should not seem strange, since for them the kindness of God suffices for salvation.

The Ancestral Sin - Fr John Romanides

[wearetimeblog]

Franco-Latin and Western Civilizations and Islam have been consistently dominated by the quest for happiness. It is this very sickness which has been at the center of all personal and social ills. When left unchecked it cannot but lead to conflicts of interest at all levels of society and to the selfish exploitation of humans and the environment by humans. Modern science and technology have been forced into the service of this sickness as expressed in consumer economics which is saturating social structures and pushing exploitation of natural resources to the limit. Humanity has managed to survive past destructions caused by this sickness. However, our generation has the honor of being that part of human history which for the first time is witnessing to the ability of humanity to destroy itself completely either by a nuclear event or by ecological contamination and disequilibrium. Sheer self-interest for the world's survival and society's well being may finally force a solution to the specter of either atomic or ecological destruction. Ascetical restraint is the obvious key. The Biblical messages, that 1) the drive for happiness is the sickness of humanity and that 2) its cure is purification, illumination and glorification, are two truths of revelation which society may do well not to ignore. Otherwise, this planet Earth will end up like planet Mars in a state of Actus Purus happiness like that of the god of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and their like.

John Romanides