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John Savvas Romanides (; 2 March 19271 November 2001) was a theologian, Eastern Orthodox priest, and scholar who had a distinctive influence on post-war Greek Orthodox theology.
From 1956 to 1965 he was Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the Holy Cross Theological School in Brookline, Massachusetts. In 1968 he was appointed as tenured professor of Dogmatic Theology at the University of Thessaloniki, Greece, a position he held until his retirement in 1982. His latest position was Professor of Theology at Balamand Theological School, in Lebanon. Romanides died in Athens, Greece on 1 November 2001.
Romanides contributed many speculations, some controversial, into the cultural and religious differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. According to Romanides, these divergences have impacted the ways in which Christianity has developed and been lived out in the Christian cultures of East and West. According to Romanides, these divergences were due to the influences of the Franks, who were culturally very different from the Romans.
His theological works emphasize the empirical (experiential) basis of theology called theoria or vision of God, (as opposed to a rational or reasoned understanding of theory) as the essence of Orthodox theology, setting it "apart from all other religions and traditions", especially the Frankish-dominated western Church which distorted this true spiritual path. Studying extensively the works of 14th-century Byzantine theologian St. Gregory Palamas, he stated religion to be identical with sickness, and the so-called Jesus prayer of hesychasm to be both the cure of this sickness and the core of Christian tradition:
His research on dogmatic theology led him to the conclusion of a close link between doctrinal differences and historical developments. Thus, in his later years, he concentrated on historical research, mostly of the Middle Ages but also of the 18th and 19th centuries.
John Romanides reports that Augustinian theology is generally ignored in the Eastern Orthodox church. Romanides claims that the Roman Catholic Church, starting with Augustine, has removed the mystical experience (revelation) of God (theoria) from Christianity and replaced it with the conceptualization of revelation through the philosophical speculation of metaphysics.Revelation for Palamas is directly experienced in the divine energies and is opposed to the conceptualization of revelation. The Augustinian view of revelation by created symbols and illumined vision is rejected. For Augustine, the vision of God is an intellectual experience. This is not acceptable to Palamas. The Palamite emphasis was that creatures, including humans and angles, cannot know or comprehend God's essence Romanides, Franks, Romans, Feudalism, p.67Revelation for Palamas is directly experienced in the divine energies and is opposed to the conceptualization of revelation. The Augustinian view of revelation by created symbols and illumined vision is rejected. For Augustine, the vision of God is an intellectual experience. This is not acceptable to Palamas. The Palamite emphasis was that creatures, including humans and angles, cannot know or comprehend God's essence Romanides, Franks, Romans, Feudalism, p.67 Romanides does not consider the metaphysics of Augustine to be Orthodox but Pagan mysticism. Romanides states that Augustine's Platonic mysticism was condemned by the Eastern Orthodox within the church condemnation of Barlaam of Calabria at the Hesychast councils in Constantinople.
According to Romanides, the Orthodox Church teaches that both Heaven and Hell are being in God's presence,(St. Isaac of Syria, Mystic Treatises) The Orthodox Church of America website [4] which is being with God and seeing God, and that there is no such place as where God is not, nor is Hell taught in the East as separation from God. One expression of the Eastern teaching is that hell and heaven are being in God's presence, as this presence is punishment and paradise depending on the person's spiritual state in that presence. For one who Misotheism, to be in the presence of God eternally would be the gravest suffering. Aristotle Papanikolaou and Elizabeth H. Prodromou wrote in their book Thinking Through Faith: New Perspectives from Orthodox Christian Scholars that for the Orthodox the theological symbols of heaven and hell are not crudely understood as spatial destinations but rather refer to the experience of God's presence according to two different modes.Thinking Through Faith: New Perspectives from Orthodox Christian Scholars page 195 By Aristotle Papanikolaou, Elizabeth H. Prodromou [5]
The saved and the damned will both experience God's light, the Tabor light. However, the saved will experience this light as Heaven, while the damned will experience it as Hell.Regarding specific conditions of after-life existence and eschatology, Orthodox thinkers are generally reticent; yet two basic shared teachings can be singled out. First, they widely hold that immediately following a human being's physical death, his or her surviving spiritual dimension experiences a foretaste of either heaven or hell. (Those theological symbols, heaven and hell, are not crudely understood as spatial destinations but rather refer to the experience of God's presence according to two different modes.) Thinking Through Faith: New Perspectives from Orthodox Christian Scholars page 195 By Aristotle Papanikolaou, Elizabeth H. Prodromou [6] Theories explicitly identifying Hell with an experience of the divine light may go back as far as Theophanes of Nicea. According to Iōannēs Polemēs, Theophanes believed that, for sinners, "the divine light will be perceived as the punishing fire of hell".Iōannēs Polemēs, Theophanes of Nicaea: His Life and Works , vol. 20 (Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1996), p. 99
Other Eastern Orthodox theologians describe hell as separation from God.Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) speaks of "the hell of separation from God" ( Archimandrite Sophrony, The Monk of Mount Athos: Staretz Silouan, 1866-1938 (St Vladimir's Seminary Press 2001 ), p. 32)."The circumstances that rise before us, the problems we encounter, the relationships we form, the choices we make, all ultimately concern our eternal union with or separation from God" ("Hell is nothing else but separation of man from God, his autonomy excluding him from the place where God is present" ( In the World, of the Church: A Paul Evdokimov Reader (St Vladimir's Seminary Press 2001 ), p. 32)."Hell is a spiritual state of separation from God and inability to experience the love of God, while being conscious of the ultimate deprivation of it as punishment" ( Father Theodore Stylianopoulos)."Hell is none other than the state of separation from God, a condition into which humanity was plunged for having preferred the creature to the Creator. It is the human creature, therefore, and not God, who engenders hell. Created free for the sake of love, man possesses the incredible power to reject this love, to say 'no' to God. By refusing communion with God, he becomes a predator, condemning himself to a spiritual death (hell) more dreadful than the physical death that derives from it" ( Michel Quenot, The Resurrection and the Icon (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press 1997 ), p. 85). Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) speaks of "the hell of separation from God". Archimandrite Sophrony, The Monk of Mount Athos: Staretz Silouan, 1866-1938 (St Vladimir's Seminary Press 2001 ), p. 32. "The circumstances that rise before us, the problems we encounter, the relationships we form, the choices we make, all ultimately concern our eternal union with or separation from God." "Hell is nothing else but separation of man from God, his autonomy excluding him from the place where God is present." In the World, of the Church: A Paul Evdokimov Reader (St Vladimir's Seminary Press 2001 ), p. 32 "Hell is a spiritual state of separation from God and inability to experience the love of God, while being conscious of the ultimate deprivation of it as punishment." Father Theodore Stylianopoulos "Hell is none other than the state of separation from God, a condition into which humanity was plunged for having preferred the creature to the Creator. It is the human creature, therefore, and not God, who engenders hell. Created free for the sake of love, man possesses the incredible power to reject this love, to say 'no' to God. By refusing communion with God, he becomes a predator, condemning himself to a spiritual death (hell) more dreadful than the physical death that derives from it." Michel Quenot, The Resurrection and the Icon (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press 1997 ), p. 85).
According to Iōannēs Polemēs, the important Orthodox theologian Gregory Palamas did not believe that sinners would experience the divine light: "Unlike Theophanes, Palamas did not believe that sinners could have an experience of the divine light ... Nowhere in his works does Palamas seem to adopt Theophanes' view that the light of Tabor is identical with the fire of hell."Iōannēs Polemēs, Theophanes of Nicaea: His Life and Works , vol. 20 (Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1996), p. 100
Theosis (Greek for "making divine", Henry George Liddell; Robert Scott (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon "deification", Archimandrite George, Mount Athos, Theosis – Deification as the Purpose of Man's Life (extract) Translator of Kallistos Katafygiotis, On Union with God and Life of Theoria "to become gods by Grace", Archimandrite George, Mount Athos, Theosis: The True Purpose of Human Life, Glossary and for "divinization", "reconciliation, union with God"Fellow Workers With God: Orthodox Thinking on Theosis (Foundations) by Normal Russell pg and "glorification") Theosis as the Purpose of Mankind's existence by Archimandrite George is expressed as "Being, union with God" and having a relationship or synergy between God and man. God is Heaven, God is the Kingdom of Heaven, the uncreated is that which is infinite and unending, glory to glory. Since this synergy or union is without fusion it is based on free will and not the irresistibly of the divine (i.e. the monophysite). Since God is transcendent (incomprehensible in ousia, essence or being), the West has overemphasized its point through logical arguments that God cannot be experienced in this life.At the heart of Barlaam's teaching is the idea that God cannot truly be perceived by man; that God the Transcendent can never be wholly known by man, who is created and finite.
According to Romanides, following Vladimir LosskyThe mystical theology of the Eastern Church By Vladimir Lossky pgs 237-238 [20] in his interpretation of St. Gregory Palamas, the teaching that God is transcendent (incomprehensible in ousia, essence or being), has led in the West to the (mis)understanding that God cannot be experienced in this life. Romanides states that Western theology is more dependent upon logic and reason, culminating in scholasticism used to validate truth and the existence of God, than upon establishing a relationship with God (theosis and theoria).
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