Biblical & Theological Issues

by Giotis Kantartzis –
The thesis of this article is that the difference between Orthodox and Protestant Christians, in terms of their understanding of what salvation in Christ Jesus is, results from the differences between them regarding their understanding of the Fall, its nature and its consequences. In other words, we disagree on the solution because we do not agree on the exact nature of the problem! It is consequently imperative to attempt a dialogue with Orthodox Christians on this issue.
In this paper, it is our aim to study the basic outline of thought of two significant contemporary Greek Orthodox theologians who represent two basic trends in relation to interpreting the issue of the Fall: John Romanides and John Zizioulas.

The Fall as “Desertion”:¹ John Romanides’ Analysis
Our study on this significant theologian will focus on his work “The Ancestral Sin,”² which is regarded by many as a point of reference in modern Greek theology. Before moving into the analysis of the basic outline of his thought, we should make a general note first. In order to understand Romanides’ basic line of thought, one should rather start from what he himself calls “the entire basis of patristic theology”, that is, from the fact that God “creates and saves not by created means
but by His uncreated energy” (p. 2, note 2). This statement may seem to a Protestant to be, to say the least, incomprehensible or irrelevant. However, it appears to be, in the final analysis, the key principle for understanding and explaining the concept of the Fall as well as of salvation or, more correctly put, of “theosis” (deification) for many Orthodox theologians. In order to understand this let us think of an example. When we as Protestants speak of the Fall and its consequences, we frequently speak about the offended divine righteousness. However, if God’s “righteousness” is not meant as an “attribute” of God which defines His very nature but as an “uncreated energy” distinct from God’s “essence,” then it seems impossible and absurd to “offend” divine righteousness and, as a result, God himself. We understand, thus, the different premises defining the questions of Orthodox and of Protestant theologies. Even though a comprehensive discussion of this distinction lies beyond the scope of this study, I will dare to make a brief comment. Apart from righteousness, Romanides also regards “love” as an “uncreated energy.” This energy, being “uncreated” and not part of God’s nature, can be “absolutely selfless” and “absolutely free” (p. 116), which means that God “loves humanity because He wants to love it” (p. 117) without being obliged by any necessity (namely His essence). That of course is true especially on account of many biblical texts, for example, Deuteronomy 7 and Romans 5:6-9. However, we can point out the following problem. John in his first Epistle states that God “is love” and, thus, love is not an energy emanating from nowhere but stemming from what God is. This act is not, therefore, rootless and detached but the manifestation (or according to the biblical terminology, the “glory”) of the divine being. God loves as a person. This love is not an impersonal energy but the love of the God of the Bible. It is not a love considered vaguely but the love of a specific person. And it is this person which gives it content and form. Otherwise, it will become amorphous and impersonal, a bare notion.³

The Fall and Death
The view that Adam was not created as “morally perfect” but “to become perfect and to reach theosis” (p. 122), which is a situation also entailing immortality, is the key to understand the Fall in Romanides but also in Orthodox theology in general. Therefore, the Fall is not a “fall off” a position or a status, but “man’s failure to become perfect” (p. 122) or, in other words, it is the desertion “from the way to perfection” (p. 123). This would have happened “through the spiritual exercise of will” (p. 100). As a result of the Fall, death and mortality invaded. However, on no account does death mean “punishment,” but “is meant as the automatic result of man’s own distancing from divine life” (p. 21). What is more, death, in a sense, is meant as an act of “injustice” to man, who was misled by the devil to commit disobedience (p. 88). Thus, this “injustice” that happened to us, namely death, “generates” sin from the moment it invades human experience. The tendency to sin is due to our mortality. He writes characteristically that “the source of man’s sins is the power of death in the devil’s hands and man’s voluntary submission to it” (p. 122).

However, apart from mortality as a result of the Fall, Romanides does not fail to note that there is also a kind of moral corruption which has invaded our nature. In his analysis, nevertheless, he will clearly appear to give priority to the significance of death as the center of man’s decadent situation.⁴ God, however, justifies man through Christ Jesus, that is, through the work of Jesus Christ, He destroys the injustice “through the ‘zoopoiesis’ (quickening) of the righteous⁵ detained unjustly by the devil” (p. 89). According to Romanides, the Pauline teaching about justification means only one thing: ‘zoopoiesis’ (quickening). Justification is the removal by God of the injustice man has suffered, that is, death. Death is not the punishment for man’s trespass⁶ but becomes the “fair punishment” of only the unrighteous who will persist in remaining impenitent.⁷ Hence, the removal of the root cause of the human problem is achieved through the work of Jesus Christ, which is primarily the victory over death. Hence, the way is open again so that man will enjoy the life-giving Spirit of God “as the fruit of spiritual exercise” (p. 130). The Spirit provides him now with the power to “crush the sin dwelling in him” (p. 165). The significance of the Spirit is so great that Romanides will say that “the concept of the incorruptibility-granting action [of the Holy Spirit] is the key of his being perceived as created in God’s image and likeness” (p. 144).

Death and Sin
As previously mentioned, a basic thesis in Romanides’ analysis is the connection of sin to mortality. Although one notices that there is an ambiguity in relation to how death enters mankind eventually in his analysis, one thing is absolutely clear: death is on no account a “punishment” or “penalty” imposed on man as a consequence of his sin. In his opinion, it is Augustine, who “due to his wrong concepts about God and to his eudemonistic presuppositions,” processed a “forensic” reading of Genesis chapter 2 according to which “God, along with other commandments, gives also to Adam and Eve a prohibitive commandment the violation of which would entail hardships and death” (p. 119). We ask, is a theologically biased “processing” really necessary in order that one may see death in Genesis as the punishment of God to man as a result of his disobedience? A close reading of this passage is beyond the scope of our study. However, we will make two brief remarks. First of all, the “commandment-warning” scheme, which Romanides attributes to the distortions of Augustine, is visible in the “great theological traditions of the Old Testament. The theology about a covenant, expressed in a clear way in Deuteronomy stresses that disobedience to God’s commandments results in curse and, finally, death (Deut. 30:15-19). The prophecies will speak in the same way and this idea is central also in the wisdom tradition.”⁸ Therefore, the so called “Augustinian” reading of chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis, seeing the existence of a “prohibitive commandment,” is not a theologically biased innovation, but it is in line with what we read in the entire Old Testament. In addition, although we are grateful to Romanides for the way in which he helps us see how mortality generates sin within human experience, I do believe that his analysis is characterised by a significant omission. Saying only that death generates sin without at the same time saying that sin generates death is, at best, a partial picture of biblical teaching. By saying that sin generates death I mean that death is not only the cause of sin but also the penalty of sin. Romanides mentions, as a biblical documentation of his view, Romans 5:21 where we read that “sin reigned in death.” While this is so, it should also be noted that in verses 17-18 the Apostle Paul presents death as “condemnation,” judgement and conviction for the “trespass.” It is this dimension that is absent from Romanides’ analysis as well as from much of Orthodox theology. I dare say that, to a certain extent, Romanides is reduced to the same trespass he accuses Augustine of committing. He bypasses the dimension of death as penalty because he himself—but also Orthodox theologians in general—has rejected the possibility that salvation may have a “forensic” dimension. If death is merely a “power” acting in our lives, salvation is that Jesus Christ “defeated” this power and, in so doing, freed us. That is true of course. However, it is, at the same time, true that death is a penalty encumbering our lives and relations with God and, thus, salvation means that Jesus Christ undertook and lifted the penalty so that we can be forgiven.

The Concept of Justification
We come to another concept we believe is also presented in a way not corresponding to the fullness of biblical revelation, namely, justification. Romanides understands
justification as the removal of injustice towards humanity inasmuch as Jesus Christ acts “by restoring the righteous held unfairly by evil” (p.87). In consequence, justification is identical to ‘zoopoiesis’ (quickening). Commenting on Galatians 3:21, he writes that “it is evident that Paul identifies justification with ‘zoopoiesis’ (quickening)” (p. 87) and continues to say that “thus, the justification of the unjustly or temporarily held righteous by death and the devil is exactly this very ‘zoopoiesis’ (quickening) of them, that is, then the provision of the Holy Spirit’s uncreated and life-giving action and grace” (p. 87). I dare say that this understanding of justification, even though it is absolutely conceivable within Romanides’ system of thinking, is partial and defective when seen within the context of the biblical evidence as a whole. We can see this when we look, for example, at his treatment of Romans 3:21. Romanides argues that “when Paul writes that ‘the righteousness of God is revealed,’ he means that God is revealed through Christ Jesus, destroying evil, abolishing unrighteousness and restoring the righteous held unfairly by evil” (pp. 86-87). However, reading this verse in its context, one may see easily that righteousness or justification concerns a totally different issue. Hence, Paul says to us in Romans 3:19-20 that the law of God exists “so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable [hypodikos] to God.” The issue here is not why good and innocent people die but the fact that “the whole world” is under judgement. Our guilt is the problem. So, we run again into the stumbling block of the “forensic” or “juristic” language which Romanides has decided does not exist (or should not exist) in the Holy Scriptures. The forensic language is not the only way in which we can and should speak about salvation, but we cannot reject it completely.⁹ Moreover, sin is what condemns us in verse 20 and this conclusion is rephrased by Paul also in verse 23. How then does God reveal His righteousness in the context of all this? The Apostle explains in verses 24–26:

“and [we] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his
righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

Let us point out again that the puzzling and at the same time marvelous element in justification is not the justification of the just but, as Paul writes further on, the justification of the unrighteous. So, in verse 4:5, he describes God as He who “justifies the ungodly.” How, though, is this possible? Here the “judicial” jargon will arise inevitably again: it happens because “his faith is counted as righteousness” (v. 5), and negatively, “the Lord will not count his sin”(v. 8). Note, however, that the “judicial” nature of the language does not mean that it is dry and barren. Paul will use the words “blessed” or “blessing” four times. Justification invokes a celebration of doxology and is not just a legal procedure.

The Fall as an “Existential Missing of the Mark”: The Analysis of John Zizioulas
In this part of our study, we will discuss the Fall in the context of a recent trend in Modern Greek Orthodox theology. The critical distinction here is not now to be made between God’s “essence” and His “energies” but between God’s being and His way of being.¹⁰ Speaking of way of being we refer particularly to the fact that God is personal. One could argue that in these personalistic approaches there is a transposition of dynamism from the omoiosis (likeness) of God to the eikona (image). In such a context, sin becomes conceivable in ontological terms as a failure to actualize your very existence. That is the reason why we opted to discuss this approach using the definition of the Fall and of sin as an existential failure or “missing the mark.” For this part of the study, we will look at one of the most significant theologians of modern Greek Orthodoxy, the Metropolitan of Pergamus, John Zizioulas.

The Ontology of the Holy Trinity
A basic stance in Zizioulas’ work is that the study of anthropology, our view about humanity, is determined by theology, our view about God, and, more specifically, by
our understanding of the Trinity. Thus, the question of what man is will be answered only by the question of who God is. Zizioulas’ answer to this question is simple and clear: God is a person. God is not a being which is also personal but someone whose existence is constitutionally personal. In other words, God is not of some other substance which happens also to have, or be in the process of acquiring, personhood, but He exists inasmuch as He is a person. More specifically, he exists as a
“Father.” What then does it mean that God is a person and more specifically a Father? It means He is a Father who begets the Son freely and from whom the Holy Spirit also proceeds freely. Thus God is defined by an absolute freedom in the mode of His existence which is not bound by any necessity (as i.e. of a pre-existing substance) but is spontaneous, unsolicited and self-determining (autexousios). According to his analysis, this introduction of the concept of personhood in the ontology of
the Holy Trinity is a breakthrough made by the Cappadocian Fathers.¹¹This “personalistic” ontology is also what differentiates the east from western “essentialism.” He writes,

The Holy Trinity is a primordial ontological concept and not an idea added to the divine substance or rather following it, as it happens in the Dogmatic Manuals of the West, and, unfortunately, in the modern ones of the East. God’s substance has no ontological content and spiritual existence beyond communion.¹²

The Father is perceived not as a “source” but as the “cause” of divinity. The notion of “source” is related to substance (ousia). However, the “cause” contains the concepts of personal initiative and freedom. The divine being owes its existence to a free person and not to an impersonal substance. Therefore, God exists as a product of freedom. No substance dictating a “necessity” in existence precedes. God exists as a Father continually “affirming His free will to exist.”¹³

Freedom
Of course, it should be noted here that what happens in Zizioulas’ analysis is a shift from the necessity of the substance of God to the necessity of the relational nature of God—from “essence” to “relationship”. In other words, the Father’s monarchy, which is so emphatically stressed by Zizioulas in his works, implies that in order that the Father may exist, He should beget and not merely wish or choose to beget the Son, and in addition He should have the Holy Spirit proceed from Him. If we say that He freely wished so, then we introduce the possibility that God may not have wished them to exist. This way we reach the absurd possibility that God may have not wished to exist since the constitution of His existence is His relationship to the Son. Therefore, although the freedom of God is stressed in this scheme, in reality we have another kind of God’s “hetero-determination.” God is not defined by substance but by relationship.

Nature as Fall and
the Fall as the Image of God
After considering the theological prerequisites set by the Metropolitan of Pergamos we come to discuss and interact with his anthropology and consideration of the meaning of the Fall. The work on which we will focus is the chapter entitled “Man as Priest: The Hope and Earnest Expectation of the Creation” from the book The Creation as Eucharistia: Theological Approaches to the Problem of Ecology.¹⁴ In this book, Zizioulas points successfully to the restrictions that exist in taking the concept of “image” to refer to man’s reason, suggesting freedom in its place. However, what kind of freedom is this? Is it the freedom of choosing from a set of already given possibilities and alternatives, or an absolute freedom corresponding to a creation “ex nihilo”? His analysis and Trinitarian presuppositions will lead him to draw the conclusion that it is about the second kind of freedom. Thus, since man is made in “God’s image”, he prides himself in his autexousio (self-determination), that is, the freedom to be sovereign both over the world and himself. Thus, according to Zizioulas, salvation is defined as the absolute freedom of being liberated from the necessities and limits linked with nature and creatureliness.¹⁵ However, this ontological freedom has to face the inevitable reality of creatureliness, which generates the essence of the tragedy of human existence.

One may wonder here why God would give Adam (creaturely) nature if, simultaneously, He also gave him image, in the sense Zizioulas conceives of it, namely as desire and call for freedom from nature and the necessity derived by it? That is to say, why is it that God should give us something from which He will call on us to escape or exit? According to Zizioulas’ analysis, nature will tend “by nature” towards the “nothingness” from which it came. Adam, as part of the creation, but also as “God’s own
image,” is given the “ontological proposal for exceeding death” firstly for him and then as “the priest of the creation” for the rest of the creation. Therefore, we wonder whether, in the final analysis, Zizioulas suggests (perhaps unconsciously) that the Fall is natural in some sense. Furthermore, his negative conception of nature” bypasses the biblical reference to the divine approval of the created creation. If creation was thought of as “exceeding beautiful” by God, then why should we transcend it? According to Zizioulas, therefore, the basic anthropological question has to do with the “exercise of freedom.” Within this context, the Fall is not a moral trespass but an exercise of freedom missing the mark, the “case of applying absolute liberty in a wrong way” (p.109). The Fall is not failing to give something that we owe to God but something that we owe to ourselves. Nevertheless, despite all these negative aspects and precisely because freedom proves eventually to be of larger importance than any concept of morality or law, man’s choice will not move against the original intention inherent in man’s creation to be “God’s image,” but will do the opposite. As he puts it, “It was better that Adam fell in the pursuit of his right in absolute freedom than having remained not fallen and denying this right, which would reduce him to the status of an animal” (p. 111). Yet, we notice a paradox here: moving against God does not mean moving against my call to be “God’s image” but exactly the opposite since I act in absolute freedom, that is as God’s image. Thus, summarizing Zizioulas’ thought about the Fall, we encounter the paradox that for him the real Fall is creatureliness and nature and that the biblical account of the Fall is not a fall but the rescue of the image of God.

Epilogue: Main Points in the Discussion
As we bring this study to a close, I believe it is worth asking what we should hear, and what we should say, when in discussion with Orthodox Christians on the question we have been considering. I shall start with those points that, while we may disagree, it is good for us to hear. The first is seeing the Fall not only as a falling off from a certain state, but also as a failure to attain a future destiny. This is reminiscent of what Karl Barth in the framework of Protestant dogmatics described as ‘sloth,’ and is a dimension that we should take into account in our analysis. In other words, we should enrich our notion of the Fall with the concept of the failure to fulfill a mission, something that I believe emerges from the Genesis narratives. We should do this, though, without limiting man as a bare potentiality.

Secondly, it is valuable to see the Fall as a failure to fulfill our constituent identity. Here I think however that it is important to prefer as the basic category of our being and destiny not the call to freedom, but the invitation to a relationship. Man is created for relationship and accordingly only finds fulfillment within the framework of that relationship. The fracturing of the relationship with the Creator (i.e., the Fall) brings about an ontological emptiness. On the other hand, we have this to say to the Orthodox: the Fall is an event which does not concern us primarily but God. The sense in most of the Orthodox analyses that we examined is that the Fall is the failure to render things that we owe first and foremost to ourselves. I consider therefore that it is important to emphasize the Fall and sin as a debt we owe to God. Sin is not an issue which we should resolve with ourselves (albeit with the help of God), but a problem and a hindrance which separates us from our relationship with God. If it recovers this dimension, Orthodox theology will be able to recover a view of the death of Christ not only as a means of assuming our mortality, but also as a propitiatory sacrifice which removes our debt and guilt. Only as such does the death of Christ create the context for forgiveness and restoration of the shattered relationship of fallen man with the holy God, a God who insists, at the same time, on being a God of love.

Protestant/Evangelical Beliefs on Sin and Justification
On Sin
I. Our first parents, begin seduced by the subtlety and temptations of Satan, sinned in eating
the forbidden fruit. This their sin God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel, to
permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory.
II. By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became
dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body.
III. They being the root of mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin
and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by original generation.
IV. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite
to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.
(Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter VI)
On Justification
I. Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth: not by infusing righteousness
into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous;
not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; not by
imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their
righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving
and resting on him and his righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves,
it is the gift of God.
II. Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of
justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other
saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.
III. Christ, by his obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are thus
justified, and did make a proper, real, and full satisfaction of his Father’s justice in their behalf.
Yet inasmuch as he was given by the Father for them, and his obedience and satisfaction accepted
in their stead, and both freely, not for any thing in them, their justification is only of free grace,
that both the exact justice and rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners.
(Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter XI)

Giotis Kantartzis is Pastor of the First Greek Evangelical Church of Athens.

Notes
1 The term is borrowed from Florovsky who describes the Fall as follows: “Also the Original Sin was not merely a choice of the wrong direction but rather
a refusal that man ascend to God, a desertion from God’s service” (In Creation and Redemption, [Thessalonica: Pournaras Editions, 2008], 95, emphasis mine).
2 All the references in this article will be from the Second Edition of the book in Greek (Athens: Domos, Second Edition, 1989 [1st Edition 1957]).
3 For a thorough discussion on the problems stemming from the distinction between essence and energies see Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God For Us (New York: HarperCollins, 1991, especially ch. 6 of the book where she deals with Palamite theology).
4 One of the important elements of Romanides’ stance is that the Fall is a “situation” (p. 165).
5 It should be noted at this point that there is an ambiguity here. The passages from Irenaeus that Romanides mentions in order to substantiate his views speak about “man’s” zoopoiesis (quickening) in general. Romanides speaks about the justification of the righteous.
6 The commandment was not a “police regulation” (pp. 120-21) the violation of which would entail punishment. Moreover, God would in the end give the first-created man and woman the right to eat of tree of knowledge (pp. 121-22); he simply wanted them to become mature and perfect so that they could consolidate it.
7 The fact that this was only for them who also had the extenuating element that they already possessed the sinful nature and mortality and not for Adam
only, who in Paradise lacked the encumbrance of sin, is not a problem according to Romanides.
8 Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1 – 15, WBC, 1987, p. 90.
9 He writes, almost aphoristically, that the “interpretation of the word ‘justification’ according to Paul as connoting a quasi change in the divine disposition to man through the satisfaction of the quasi offended divine nature is unacceptable” (the italics in this footnote are mine, p. 88).
10 For an elaborate presentation of the issue which clearly aims to mitigate it, cf. Aristotle Papanicolaou’s article, “Divine Energies or Divine Personhood: Vladimir Lossky and John Zizioulas on conceiving the Transcendent and Immanent God” Modern Theology 19:3 (July 2003).
11 In the chapter entitled, “The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: the Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution” in Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays in Divine Being and Act, ed. Christoph Schwöbel (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995), p. 55.
12 Being as Communion (1985, p. 17, the translation is mine).
13 Ibid., 299.
14 All the references will be from from the Greek edition of this book edited by Acritas Publishing House, Athens, 1992 (first re-edition November 1998).
15 Cf. his article “Preserving God’s Creation: Lecture Three,” King’s Theological Review Vol. 13 (1990), 2.

(First published in Areopagus Journal Vol. 12 No. 3 – Eastern Orthodoxy)