ORLAPUBS P. R52: REVIEW OF SOPKO ON ROMANIDES

REVIEW OF
PROPHET OF ROMAN [i.e. Byzantine]
ORTHODOXY: THE THEOLOGY
OF JOHN ROMANIDES

by Andrew J. Sopko (Synaxis Press, 1998)

© 2000 by Orchid Land Publications

This paperback volume of 160 pages by Prof. Fr. John Romanides, an American who became a professor in Thessalonike, is astoundingly good. Protopresvyter John's writings are in Greek and English. The title of the volume under review is a bit misleading for the many who do not realize that the Roman Empire continued in Byzantion after the fall of Rome to Germanic invaders, who brought in the Western Dark Ages; the Byzantines continued to call themselves "Romans." Sopko presents the views of R by way of recounting the history of the emergence of the works of this brilliant scholar, learned in both Eastern and Latin Christianity, in terms of controversies initiated by opponents of his who were infatuated with Latin-scholastic categories and who objected to R's loyal return to, clarification of, and insistence on traditional Orthodox thinking. The book is not for beginners with little background in theology. But those able to read this book will readily grasp how vast the gulf is that separates Orthodox theology--with basic concepts like energy--from the later-invented frameworks of Mediæval Latin scholasticism--in the case of Nominalism, taken over by the Reformation theologians. R will open the eyes of percipient Orthodox readers, if not those nebulous Latin apologists in America who ideologically but uninsightfully claim to be unable to find any crucial differences between Eastern and Western theology, who therefore persist in the fiction that Latin theological categories invented over a dozen centuries after the Apostles represent a legitimate "development" of original Christianity--even though the basic assumptions of the two frameworks in important ways directly contradict each other! Though R does not (in Sopko's telling) directly deal with this issue, what he does say will dispel among unbiased Christians any likelihood of said fiction's being tenable. This book should of course be a must for seminarians and all Orthodox engaged in "ecumenical" activities.

Sopko shows how R describes and rejects the Latin confusion of essence and energies--the root of vast and highly problematic differences from traditional Christianity--particularly the idea that Grace is created and the idea that the faithful may be able in Paradise to behold the imparticipable and unknowable divine Essence. When R speaks of Latin parallels with Greek energy, he has in mind the term actus "actualization, realization." Papal theologians call God actus purus "pure Realization" and speak of His Essence as being esse "existence." It is not that Greek theology rejects the notion that the divine Essence lacks every perfection. Apophatically, God lacks nothing good; and it should not be forgotten that the name of the LOGOS, YHWH, can be read on nearly all Orthodox icons of the Savior--as O ON "the One Who IS" (see Ex. 3:14 in the LXX). But actus refers to a state resulting from an energization; further, uncreated energies have their origins in the creative activity of the uncreated Energies, operations that bring creatures into being ek toû medenós "out of nothingness"--and nothingness is less than even a potency; divine Energy also sustains creation from falling back into nothingness. R insists that energy is not a result, let alone the accomplished creature, of the Creator's creative Energies--the way Grace is in papal theology; and no energization the essence of anything either divine or created. Divine Energy is an aspect of the uncreated Being of God in His uncreated activity--in Grace as well as in the divine Life and in divine knowing and willing. To confuse the timeful activities of the divine Energies with timeless (eternal) processions in the divine Essence or with that Essence itself introduces chaos into theological thinking.

It may be of value for a reader of these intimations to be advised that Greek makes nouns from verbs (cf. English observe --> observation) in two different ways. Neuter nouns ending in -ma (like [h]omoíoma "likeness"; cf. adjectives in -matikón) are inert--an abstract description of some verbal idea or the result of an action. By contrast, feminine nouns in -sis (from -tis; e.g. [h]omoíosis "cognation, assimilation") are from causative verbs ending in -izein (English "-ize") and are active, generally causative. Note how the West translates [h]omoíosis statically as "likeness," when in Greek it has "energetic" force--"cognation, assimilation." This illustrates the divide between East and West. While the Latin tongue has parallels with Greek static neuter verbal nouns (viz. Latin nouns ending in -mentum), the fact that the Latin neuters do not contrast with active parallels the way their Greek congeners (which, as said, contrast with energetic feminine verbal nouns in -sis) do shows that the Latin forms stand in a different semantic system from that of the Greek verbal nouns. The uniqueness of Greek enéryeia (a feminine noun) lies in its replacing enéryesis (which dictionaries don't list) as a contrast with enéryema. We learn from the beginning (the first five chapters of Genesis) of the Old Testament that the first humans were created in the Icon (Image or Likeness) of God--viz. with a potential for reasoning, willing freely, and being divinized--and also in the Cognation with or Assimilation to God, the uncreated Energy of Grace and Divinization that actualizes or gives life to the potential of the Icon of God and makes it possible for humanity to use reason and freewill in ways pleasing to God. The Icon of God is part of human nature and has not been lost at the Fall; otherwise, humans would be animals lacking the reason and freewill of the Icon of God. What got lost was the Assimilation to God--viz. the Grace to realize or actualize the potential of Divinization. It is the latter that is restored to Christians who, as members of Christ, allow His Life/Grace/Energies to live and work in them according to His will. Even though the Cognation or Assimilation to God is not part of human nature, it is "natural" in the sense that it goes with and fulfills human nature. Human nature, lacking this Energy or Grace subsequent to its loss at the Fall, is from one point of view "unnatural"--though not "guilty of Adam's sin" or "sinful," since sin is what a responsible individual having the reason and freedom of choice of the Icon of God does; natures don't really do anything, good or evil.

Eastern theologians distinguish Essence and Energies. (Phýsis or "nature" is ambiguous between the two.) Note that 2 Pet. 1:5 speaks of Divinization (participation in the divine Energies) as partaking of the divine Nature. In this sense, nature or energy is the function of an essence. The Energies--uncreated Energies in the case of God's Being beyond being--are not as inert as Latin natures. In no philosophical or theological usage (except perhaps in ecological writings) is nature equivalent to what is (e.g. what predominates statistically), a state of nature, what is not artificial, or the like. What is natural is what accords with and/or promotes a thing's nature. CLICK HERE. Fr. Romanides (cf. p. 59) points out that dóxa "glory" is used in various Biblical passages as the equivalent to "energy." (In some passages, dóxa has been thought to represent the Hebrew Shekhinah or divine "Presence.")

Had reason and freedom of the will--i.e. the Icon of God--been lost at the Fall, human nature would be animalish and accordingly unable to sin.

The outspoken opponent of R's academic dissertation, Trembelas, contended that "we can speak in a fully Orthodox manner of created [sic!] energies and graces of God"--a view that R denounced as heresy. Sopko describes R's position thus: "According to the holy Fathers, a created energy always betrays a created nature; and uncreated Energy always indicates uncreated Essence; therefore they are in danger of falling into complete atheism and into Greek mythology. . . ." Sopko cites the Synodikón, read on the Lordsday of Orthodoxy: "Those who attach themselves to the pure and spotless faith of the Church and yet do not confess according to the God-inspired theology of the Saints and the Orthodox Faith of the Church that each particular power and Energy of the triunal God is uncreated, let them be anathema." (Note that in Greek from the time of Aristotle: "power" is dýnamis--a potential; enéryeia is the actualizing of a power. Thus, faith is a dýnamis that gets energized--i.e. actuated, actualized, made real--by love [Gal. 5:6].) Referring to R's thinking (p. 30), Sopko says:

Sopko then states the Latin reasoning, so different from the Greek: "If God’s energy is a creature, then his creative energy is also a creature. Therefore, God has created the world through created means."
A separate section is devoted to the Latin scholastic error of viewing God (in Aristotelian terms) as actus purus, i.e. as lacking any unrealized potential. In fewer than a dozen pages, the idea of the Trinity is gone into very thoroughly and insightfully; Orthodoxy's contrast and incompatibility with Latin theology could not be clearer. R gives short shrift to Augustinian-Thomistic teachings on God as Intellect, which presupposes his "attribution of] the Platonic ideas to divine Nature" (p. 38). God's Essence in Latin scholasticism is perceived as the Latin quasi-equivalent of Eastern Energy. It is quite opposed to St. Gregory Palamas' words earlier on the same page: "If according to the idle tales of our opponent [Barlaam, the Latinizing Calabrian], the divine Energy is in no way different from the divine Essence, then creating (which signifies Energy) will not be by any means different from generating and proceeding [of the Son and the Spirit, respectively, in the holy Trinity]--which refer to the divine Essence."

Generating refers to the ekpórefsis of the Son from the Father; proceeding refers to the ekpórefsis of the Holy Spirit from the Father--the sole Source of all Being. CLICK HERE FOR MORE. In Orthodox (but not Latin) teaching, the all-holy Spirit proceeds (or is spirated) from the Father--which is an ekpórefsis in the one divine Essence; but the Holy Spirit is "sent" to the Church by the Son--which is an energetic ékpempsis of one Hypostasis by Another in the economy (dispensation) of the cosmos. See John 15:26--a passage that the Latins have got to explain away. R (p. 39) points out that ekpórefsis has reference to the Essence, whereas ékpempsis has reference to the Energies. On p. 38, objecting to Tremblas' idea that the Son came out of God's Essence as His "Word" (Logos), R observes that the divine Logos is not the Father's Intellect, any more than foreknowledge (here he takes up a point of St. Vasil's) is the divine Essence; foreknowledge, like knowing and willing, is an Energy.

For R, this leads to a pantheism in which "all creatures are by no means different from the begotten One and the projected [i.e. the proceeding] One, and if this is so according to the [Latins], both God’s Son and the Holy Spirit will be in no way different from all other creatures . . ." (p. 31). That is why Cyril of Alexandria demonstrated the difference between God’s essence and energy in writing that "to generate belongs to divine Nature, but to create belongs to divine Energy. R concludes, as Sopko notes, by again stressing that nature and energy are not the same thing (PG 50, 1189). St. Vasil the Great is cited (p. 31) to like effect: "From such theories, the consequence is either to hold that God’s Energy remains idle or that His works are without beginning or end" [i.e., uncreated like Himself, as R's dissertation on so-called original sin clarifies].
While R's showing of the errors of Latin filioquism (e.g. p. 39) are devastating and cannot fail to impress an Orthodox reader, it would carry this review beyond reasonable bounds to cite R's insightful comments, made in passing--at least in Sopko's account--concerning the relation of divine Energy to the doctrine of perichóresis (p. 33), creation out of nothing (p. 33; but see also below), and the misguided Augustinian and Latin idea of analogia entis (pp. 39f)--a supposititious parallelism between what exists in the created oikonomía and the divine Essence, as though created being reflected unparallel, unknowable, and imparticipable Being beyond being.

R makes valuable comments on Karl Barth's rejection of the analogia entis in favor of the analogia fidei--which R takes issue with--and on attempts by the Latin theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, to square Latin views with an embrace of the Barthian idea--an idea having the effect of opposing the teaching of participation by the faithful in the divine Life--which von Balthasar of course understood in terms of Essence, not Energy. In this connection, the reader should recall the Orthodox view that divine Being is not mere being since God is hyperoúsios or beyond being, being with a capital "B," as we might say. Being beyond being is sometimes even called "non-being"--a term that von Balthasar also uses. The principles of beings created by the divine LOGOS are lógoi/lóyi in Greek (rationes in Aquinas), e.g. in St. Maximos the Confessor. Augustine held these to be real by participation in the divine ideas in God's mind.

R shows (pp. 40f) how Augustine's credo ut intellegam and Anselm's fides quærens intellectum reveal the misorientation of Latin confusions about the divine Essence in their failure to separate It from the divine Energies. One can only wish one had the opportunity to study under such a learnëd systematic intellectual giant. Nevertheless, there are certain statement attributed by Sopko to R that leave one--pending a study of the original writings--wondering how they are justified; e.g. the statement in Sopko's account (p. 42) that "although the Energies are communicable, they are not understandable." Without resort to the source of the quotation (which it presumably comes near to being), I find this problematic unless "fully understandable" is meant, in which case there is no problem, or unless--what is a problem--revelation is not an energy.
     There is, however, the statement that ". . . Scripture is not revelation." (This can be checked on p. 79 of a review that has been readily available (but currently is not available) online--viz. R's review of H. A. Wolfson's Philosophy of the Church Fathers (Greek Orthodox theological review, vol. v.1). Till I can find my copy of this review, I can make no further comment on this. One correspondent points out in response to the foregoing that the LOGOS is "Revelation and Truth itself," not the words of Scripture about Him.
     But a real problem is found in Fr. Romanides assertion (in his "Notes on the Palamite controversy and related topics," part 2, p. 9) that in "the Greek Patristic tradition, . . . only when within the uncreated Light . . . can one see the uncreated Light."   A bit further on in this text, R writes: ". . . Palamas adds the information that on Mount Thavor, the Body of Christ . . . illumined the Apostles from without, whereas now this same Body illumines Christians from within." The same correspondent mentioned above points out that, since "we would be destroyed were we to experience these uncreated Energies unprepared and unpurified," the truth must be found in the Patristic tradition that "only when within the uncreated Light . . . can one see the uncreated Light." This correspondent distinguishes the uncreated Light from the "outcome" of the uncreated Light. "Although the Apostles saw Christ transfigured on Mount Tabor, they saw the Energies of God coming from the Body of Christ Himself. . . . After the Ascension . . . the Saints now experience Christ's Energies from 'within.' What the Bolsheviks saw in Kiev (the halos on the Kievan temples when the Communists murdered hundreds of clergy and monastics in the main square of the city) was not uncreated Energies but their outcome . . . a simple miracle." As for Moses, he "was similarly illumined from within" when he "experienced the uncreated Energies of God."
    While the Fathers maintain the doctrine of divine freedom by retaining the Biblical distinction between the divine essence and uncreated divine Energies, Western theologians, having identified Essence and Energy in God, try to escape pantheism by negating any real contact between God and the world. Thomas Aquinas is quoted (p. 31) as holding that

It is easy to see the blunders that the Latin framework forces the Latins to espouse. R is thoroughly versed and at home in Augustine's Trinitarian views and scholastic theology, which he rejects as based on innovations adopted from (Muslim) Aristotelianism. The consequence of Thomas' view is that in order to avoid obvious pantheism, the papal theologians consider God’s activity and Grace in the world to be created. R adds: "Since these same theologians believe that in the Sacraments divine creatures [reviewer's emphasis] are received for their Salvation, it is not a paradox that the Protestants reject such teachings and believe that God’s benevolence is sufficient for salvation." R make reference to the Reformers' conceptualization of Grace as divine favor or goodwill.
R then comes to participation in divine Life through the divine Energy and opposes this Orthodox teaching to the Western scholastic beatific vision of the God's Essence [sic]. (The Orthodox of course teach that the participation is a real participation in God's Being--but in His uncreated Energies, not in his uncreated Essence--and not in anything created.) The following longish passage sums up in a nutshell a fundamental divergence of Greek and Latin theology, on which other differences depend; the Latin position is entirely innovatory:

In the section that follows--on Energy versus Essence--R is shown to have objected that the actus purus theory was based on the Aristotelian philosophical system; of course, no one denies that the energy/essence distinction also came from Aristotle. (It was incorporated into post-Aristotelian Greek and the conceptual framework of Greek-speakers the same way various scientific ideas of Newton, Einstein, etc. have become part of the conceptuology of many educated English-speakers.) R was, Sopko tells us, mostly irritated by his the departure of his opponent, Tremblas, from the distinction between uncreated energy and essence. T "simply referred to a distinction between energy and essence without any qualification--something alien to the tradition of the Church."T's lack of understanding was evident in his equating "unbegotten" with "uncreated." As Sopko says, to be "begotten" presumably meant "created"--with all of its Arian implications. Sopko also points out that because of T's identification of the uncreated with the Essence of God alone--and not also with the divine Energies--his debate with R "really was largely a confrontation between uncreated essence and uncreated energy as the foundation of theology and participation in divine life" [my italics]. So much for the continuity of Mediaeval and modern Latin theology from early Orthodoxy that online Latin apologetes pretend to find in the historical development of theology!

     Readers should take careful note of the difference between the systematic, explanatory account of different conclusions that often use even the same words, on the one hand, and making a positivistic, unsystematic, and non-explanatory list of isolated sayings or proof texts scattered through the Patristic literature, where the words often mean different things in the different systems (e.g. the energetic system of Orthodoxy and the static systems of the West). This has about as sanguine prospects for being fruitful as trying to replace a blue piece of one jigsaw puzzle with a blue piece from a different jigsaw puzzle simply because the pieces look alike. Fr. Romanides, with his comprehensive knowledge of Augustine, Thomism, and Ockhamism, along with his familiarity with the Greek Fathers, has demonstrated the vast gulf between the Greek and Latin systems with formidable clarity.   It is not to be expected that the Latin apologists will find it easy to refute him without resorting to the positivistic sleight of hand. The early Biblical-Orthodox-Christian system is demonstrably as different from the late-invented systems of the Mediaeval scholastics as can be imagined, partly due to misleading translations of lógos, enéryeia (and its corresponding verb and adjective), and so on. The objectively untenable fiction ("proved" positivistically) that the later Cordova-derived systems are continuations or developments of the former does not manifest a the great "use of the rational intellect" or the intellectual "honesty" that those on the other side pretend.
     What would a defensible use of the intellect be?    Besides avoiding to folly of trying to dissect the inner architecture of Mysteries, it would letting go of the random citation of "proof texts" from diverse systems in which they have different senses as the basis for argumentation, and then coming deal with the systematic bases that explain differences. The object would be to understand (as, e.g., Romanides does) the immensely contrary starting points in early (and later Eastern) Christianity and in Mediæval Frankish-Latin Christianity that form a basis for and lead to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan treatment of the procession of the all-Holy Spirit and the Filioque heresy--whose deep ramifications do not seem to be perceived by those on the Latin side. This would be using reason in its proper, non-positivistic function. Proof texts reached in this manner would be vastly more meaningful than a mere grab bag of things that superficially seem to agree with opinions that a writer favors.
     Particularly useless is the citing of reports of joint commissions between the Orthodox and Latins; for, given the incompatibility of the two thought systems, one can be no more sanguine that these compromises between the two Faiths will bring more unity between the two traditions than the ca. 30 similar attempts in the Middle Ages did. The Latins cannot give up a heresy--e.g. the Filioque--that they've espoused for so many centuries; and the Orthodox are certainly not going to accept it in any form. And so with most of the other Latin innovations.   SEE HERE.

SEE HERE ALSO.
     While Tremblas's equating being begotten with being created is no more present in the Orthodox Fathers than an equating of divine Energies with being created is perceptible in them, the distinction between energy and essence is of course found in the earlier Fathers, even though it was not elucidated "in quite the same circumstances [in which] Palamas" clarified it. St. Gregory Palamas somewhere said that, while essence is like the sun, energy is like the rays of the sun. Sopko notes that R points to Eirenaios’ emphasis on the creative Energy of God in expounding the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo [ktísis ek toû medenós] against the Gnostics (who denied it). For the Gnostics, every emanation was a hypostatization of the essence. This foreshadows the problematic Augustinian-scholastic hypostatization of reason (or even word or saying) and will or love as Persons of the Trinity, as well as the error of the Filioque resulting from viewing the Spirit as a hypostatization of the love of the Father and the Son for One Another (Augustine's teaching). (I understand R's position that all Persons of the Trinity have the Energy of logos to entail something I don't believe he makes explicit at this point: Reason is "appropriated" [admittedly, a Latin expression] to the Creator of the cosmos, Who permeates the creation with order and intelligibility.) R cogently observes that the divine Energies are not hypostatic; they are enhypostatic--"the sustaining Presence of God united with creation, yet not confused with it," as Sopko puts it. (I refer readers unfamiliar with enhypostatic to G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic thought [S.P.C.K.]; check enhypostatos in the Index.) After Augustine, the West has had relations--and even "substantive" relations!--distinguishing the Persons of the all-holy Trinity where Orthodoxy would speak of God's knowing (and foreknowing), willing, and loving as Energies. For R, it is creatio ex nihilo that is the best safeguard for the teaching that "God creates not by Essence but by Energy and will. . . . If we overlook the distinction between Essence and Energy, we shall not be able to fix any clear line between the procession [ekpórefsis in the divine Essence] of the three Persons and the [energetic] creation of the world; both will be regarded equally as acts of the divine Nature."No other divine activity--certainly not the uncreated Energies--than the processions [ekporéfseis] communicates Essence, "as even the Arians agree."
     Sopko notes R's attention to how the term "uncreated energy" is used in an Orthodox context. "Energy has never been relegated to a single type of divine activity but signifies a multitude of divine activities both ad intra and ad extra." If it is the divine Energy of Providence that sustains creation, as Dionysios taught, it is also true that

It is thus not an experience of the Essence of God which a Christian seeks, for the divine Essence remains forever inaccessible in apophatic theology--understandings of what God's Essence is not and could not be--descriptions that would contradict what the One Who IS really is, rather than positive attempts to describe the unknowable Essence of God. And, of course, even the divine Energies would not be knowable or participable if God did not create and sustain creation through them.
In contrast, papal theologians "anticipate a relative beatific vision of the divine Essence by those saved beyond the grave." It is clear that R is concerned with how the Latin preference for an incomprehensible vision of Essence is to be accounted for. He draws parallels between Eunomianism and the Western scholastic characterization of God as actus purus--with the same Western scholastism that identified Essence and Energy in God. That Aquinas teaches in the Filioque that the procession of the Spirit is from the Father and the Son’s commonalty--their Essence--sets up a comparable opposition between the Father/Son and Spirit as did Eunomianism. Where Evnomios confused Hypostasis with Essence and Energy in supposing that "another existing through [the Father] and after it" (the Son) and "a third ranking with neither of these two" (the Holy Spirit) are emanations from "the supreme and absolute Being," Aquinas' "relations of opposition" within the Trinity "bear some resemblance," despite differences, to Evnomios "by similarly confusing Hypostasis, Essence, and Energy." Thirdly, both Evnomios and Aquinas (as well as Augustine) linked divine names with divine Essence (rather than just with Persons) so as to treat the unknowable Essence as an object of study.

A few years after the Trembelas-Romanides debate, the scholastic theologian Karl Rahner tried to rectify the Latin situation--but only within the context of scholastic categories and methodology. Sopko asks whether scholastic terminology can be related to the scriptural and Patristic vocabulary that conveys the essence/energy distinction. He thinks that R's objections would seem to rule this out. "It is one thing to speak about 'uncreated grace' but certainly another to make it a synonym for God’s Energy, activity, will and glory within a scholastic context. . . . The commanding position of created grace has certainly not diminished in Western theology. . . ."
But a similar judgment applies to the commanding position of philosophy in scholasticism. If Augustine bypassed the Energy of God in favor of the view that the knowledge of God concerns His Essence--something conveyable through philosophy and contemplation (credo ut intellegam)--scholasticism rejected participation in God with the intellect or senses. For Aquinas, God can, according to R, dwell in a believer only through a created gift. Even the love of God poured into our hears (Augustine frequently quotes Rom. 5:5, his favorite verse) is a creature!

In the end, the Filioque "is based upon the Western confusion between divine Essence and Energy. (Incidentally, readers may wish to be made aware of Aquinas's On Being and Essence: a translation and interpretation by Joseph Bobik [University of Notre Dame Press, 1965].)

    We turn now to a four-page subsection of Ch. 3 (titled "Theocentric anthropology"--a term that refers to doctrines of human nature) is termed "Body, soul, spirit." At first reading, it seems overly "cerberal," with its predominant emphasis on noëtic faculty of human nature--i.e. on noûs.   Having noted that in St. Paul's Epistles, sarkikón "corporeal" and psychikón "animate" (in contrast with pnevmatikón "spiritual") "mean exactly the same thing" (as Sopko puts it), R proceeds to emphasize the "heart" (kardía) in Patristic or especially Hesychast thinking as the seat of pnevma ("spirit"). Actually pnevma resides in the heart and in the lógos and diánoia--the rational capacities of human beings (SEE HERE). But then R makes a series of statements to the effect that the Fall "occurs through the failure of the noëtic faculty" (i.e. noûs); and that the Salvation of a human being, whose noëtic faculty "has unceasing memory of God (or unceasing prayer)" enters a "state of liberation" when that very same noëtic faculty is activated by the Energy of the Holy Spirit. (The reader should recall that noûs is a kind of spiritual intuitive faculty of immediate apprehension--higher than the potential of reason [lógos] and its actualization in intellectual energy [diánoia].) R proceeds to emphasize that Salvation lies in the noëtic faculty. It sounds a lot like some of that stale, late scholastic emphasis on the mind and soul in the West, at least until one recalls that Pnevma resides in the "heart" as a result of the "the divine Energy carried by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 5:18-20)"--an activity that "initiates illumination or vision (theoria; 1 Cor. 13:12)." What at first blush seems overly intellectualized turns out to be something rather different. (One recalls St. Symeon the New Theologian's emphasis on "experience" [peîra] for comprehending the Gospel.) On p. 50, it is baldly stated that "slavery to the intellect, the passions, the environment, and above to Satan wanes as illumination" increases; intellect is a faculty the way the will and the emotions are. Salvation is no as much slavery to the intellect as to the passions until noûs gets transfigured through the divine illuminating Energy "by the love which does not seek its own."
     R emphasizes that "illumination" [i.e. of the intellect] is not to "be confused with an ecsatsy in which an individual has lost possession of the other faculties." Intellect and also "love and will and passions" are "now cleansed" [quoted from R by Sopko] in a believer who is "one in communion with God but also in communion with creation." Participation in the purifying, illuminating, and divinizing Energies of God fully manifests a human-divine synergy that in turn manifests believers' being God's co-workers (1 Cor. 3:9).   This evokes my own comment that synergy can hardly mean the same thing in an energy-based Eastern theology and in an energy-less Western framework. Using the term without regard to framework differences can, despite the Pauline use of synergoí "co-workers," sound Pelagian to the Westerner--especially to a Denominationist. At the very least, synergy may easily seem to make human effort equal to divine help for the Western viewpoint. But the Eastern view--that a member of Christ is energized by the uncreated Energies of Grace to do what pleases God--obviously does not put human effort on the same level with divine Energy, since the all-holy Spirit is the Doer--humans just consenting to Him to energize them to work with Him.
      But R also treates the Icon of God and the Cognation with God ("image and likeness" in Sopko) as undifferentiated. This I have got to take exception to.   For surely the Icon is a dýnamis or potential (not lost at the Fall, or human nature would become animalish, lacking reason [lógos] and free choice [gnóme]); whereas the Assimilation to God or Cognation with God (an active omoíosis, not the inert result of an activity: omoíoma) is an enéryeia, lost at the Fall, that activates the potential (dýnamis) of the Icon! If we keep the Greek verbal nouns in -sis (feminines that represent energetic activity) separate from comparable ones in -ma (neuters that represent a state, often the result of an activity), it is clear that omoíosis is not an inert "Likeness of God" but an energetic "Assimilation to" or "Cognation with" God--just as Salvation an Energy-based théosis "Divinization" rather than a pagan, Essence-based apothéosis "Deification." (See the box above.)
     R makes a few statements that may evoke surprise. Having pointed out the diversity of Patristic opinion over whether Adam and Eve participated in the divine Nature through the Energies of Glorification or Divinization before the Fall, he observes that possessing virtue (St. John Chrysostom) as a natural energy is not possessing uncreated Energy--Grace--but agrees with St. Eirenaios that our first ancestors were in communion with God. The diversity of opinion on this topic is over whether Adam and Eve were in an advanced or an early phase of illumination before the Fall. St. John of Damaskos held the former view, distinguishing the two trees in Paradise as Glorification/Divinization and discernment (diágnosis) of the various phases of illumination (theoría), whereas Augustine in the West intellectualized the Fall and Salvation in terms of humanity's falling away from our first ancestors' knowledge of the summum bonum [De Civitate XIV,10,12-15] when still being perfect in the Vision of God--a view mostly embraced by Aquinas, who however modified it to the extent of terming the Vision a relative one, since one who has experienced the full Vision could not turn away from it. R. contrasts East and West thus:

To bring all of this together, I tentatively suggest, we must relate omoíosis and théosis in the way suggested below:

The dýnamis (or potential) of the eikón or Icon of God is part of human nature and cannot, since it includes reason and freewill, be lost without loss of the difference between humans and animals. The [h]omoíosis or Assimilation to (Cognation with) God was personal and individual before the Fall; it was the uncreated Grace that energized (activated, actualized, realized) the potential of human nature to live in accordance with the will of God. It was lost at the Fall through the sinning of our first ancestors. Personal Divinization had not (if Fr. Romanides is right) been yet received by Adam and Eve--or they could not have fallen into disobedience and sin. The omoíosis, the energization of the Icon's dýnamis is bestowed on human nature in the Incarnation and in turn serves as a potential for the individual (personal) Assimilation to God of each true and penitent believer the the uncreated Energies of Grace. Assimilation to God (or Cognation with God) is a vectorial beginning of Divinization, which in turn is the full energization of Assimilation. It is the culmination of Assimilation that results in participating in the divine Being--the uncreated Energies, not the uncreated Essence (which would be apothéosis "Deification"). It begins in holy Baptism when the baptized individual becomes a member of Christ--something that is ratified in the penitent and believing reception of the holy Communion. Except for the all-holy Theotokos, théosis or Divinization is not normally complete in a single instant, as Protestants teach; it has its advances and its regressions, its ups and its downs. Note that the Old Testament Prophets and other Hebrew Saints are generally believed to have received Divinization (2 Pet. 1:4) at Christ's Incarnation. Some deny that théosis can be achieved before death. While there is evidence that some Saints have beheld the uncreated Light and received Divinization before dying, the fact that they die argues against it and Saints in fact generally speak of their unworthiness; yet, Saints' bodies are found undecayed (uncorrupted) decades after their deaths, as shown in many examples in our own time (in Russia and elsewhere; note particularly St. John of San Francisco). The ultimate Energization by Grace in beholding the uncreated Light and sharing the divinizing Energies that some miraculously been permitted to see in this life is indicative of Divinization--at least for those assimilated to Christ through Grace. On the other hand, even pagans have seen it under certain circumstances: When the Communists shot hundreds of clergy and monastics in Kiyev, even unbelievers saw the uncreated Light on the city's temples. One notes that the Latins are in great error in supposing that believers can partake of the imparticipable divine Essence--the contradiction of which some of them avoid by saying that such participation is "intentional," not "entitative" (ontological)--like the virtual reality of Reformation "covenantal" union with Christ.
Since the Incarnation, Transfiguration, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of OLGS Jesus Christ, the all-holy Spirit energizes (Philp. 2:13) the members of Christ to do His will; and in freely allowing the Holy Spirit to do the works of Christ in His members with their wills consenting in full coöperation with energizing Grace, believers receive further Grace for Grace (John 1:16), becoming more and more fully divinized--as Eve and Adam would have been had they not sinned. The faithful undergo a constant recycling of lapses and restorations, each cycle becoming smaller and farther apart as the faithful make progress along the vector of omoíosis toward complete or final théosis.

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If ones needs to admit that our first ancestors were blessed with the Cognation with God--the Assimilation to God (omoíosis Theõ) before the Fall, which Scripture and St. Eirenaios and other Fathers affirm to have been possessed by our first ancestors--neither he nor any other thinker need accept that this vector toward Divinization included being in a perfected divinized condition--in which a person would of course do anything to avoid losing. Losing the Assimilation at the Fall (while keeping the Icon of God--necessary for distinguishing humans from animals) would seem to square with the Damascene view, as it is presented by R. I'm not sure that R completely resolves all of the factors involved here in a consistent way, at least in Sopko's recounting.
A second surprise for many will be R's embrace of St. Eirenaios's view that belief in the immortality of the soul comes from Satan (p. 53). For R, immortality is not natural (of nature). Human immortality is a special gift--evidently part of the omoíosis lost at the Fall. But there is surely a distinction between corporeal immortality and the soul's immortality. In the Scriptures, the emphasis is on the body's immortality (after its resurrection), given that it is the body or at least the psychosomatic wholeness of a human being that is able to enjoy the afterlife--or suffer in it. The Biblical and Orthodox emphasis is on being (energetic ontology), not, in the Western manner, on knowing God. If the Orthodox do not believe that the soul, being created rather than divine, has immortality by nature, it nevertheless survives death.

R charges Western theologians in the Augustinian context of treating decay and death as a punishment for sins, even those not yet committed (especially in newborn infants), rather than as being the cause of sin (as in the East)! He says, "Most importantly, in the Augustinian context, corruption and death became a punishment from God for sin rather than only a cause of sins." Hence Salvation is destroying death--"taking the sting" out of death, i.e. making it impotent.
[In his "The ecclesiology of St. Ignatius of Antioch," R explains why death causes sin: "Because [a human] lives constantly under the fear of death, [s/he] continuously seeks bodily and psychological security, and thus becomes individualistically inclined and utilitarian in attitude. Sin . . . is rooted in the disease of death." He cites Heb. 2:14-15, which passage reads: "Since, then, the children [of God] have shared in blood and flesh, and He Himself has likewise participated in those, so that through death He might destroy the one having the power of death, i.e. the devil, and that he might release them, as many as were in the bonds of servitude throughout their life(time)."]