AGAINST ROMANIDES

AGAINST ROMANIDESWe may distinguish between three types of heretical ideas. The first is heresy in the classical sense, an attack on a specific teaching of the faith, such as the Divinity of Christ, the Procession of the Holy Spirit, the uncreatedness of Grace, or the Unity of the Church. A second type is constituted by the modern heresy of ecumenism, which does not so much attack any specific teaching of the faith, but rather adopts a new attitude to heresy in

We may distinguish between three types of heretical ideas. The first is heresy in the classical sense, an attack on a specific teaching of the faith, such as the Divinity of Christ, the Procession of the Holy Spirit, the uncreatedness of Grace, or the Unity of the Church. A second type is constituted by the modern heresy of ecumenism, which does not so much attack any specific teaching of the faith, but rather adopts a new attitude to heresy in general, arguing that there is no such thing as One True Faith preserved by the One True Church, that the difference between truth and heresy is unimportant or even non-existent, that all denominations or religions are equally true (or untrue), or that, as one reviewer put it, Òthe greatest heresy is to believe that there is such a thing as heresyÓ. A third type consists in taking a true formula, declaring it to be the central truth of the faith, and then ÒrestructuringÓ all the other dogmas around it Ð without specifically denying them, but nevertheless distorting them through the creation of this new dogmatic centre of gravity. This is the path adopted by the most influential thinker in modern Greek Orthodoxy, Fr. John Romanidis, and the large number of his disciples, including Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos), Protopresbyter George Metallinos, Christos Yannaras and others.

There are links between these different types of heresy. Thus it is likely that the Protestant loss of faith in the dogma of the Church led to the disintegration of the Western Christian world, which in turn led to the need to ÒrecreateÓ the Church in the form of a kind of coalition of denominations, which in turn led to the need to create a kind of doctrinal Òlowest common denominatorÓ, which in turn led to the despising of the concept of the One Faith that is characteristic of the heresy of ecumenism. And then there are links between ecumenism and ÒRomanideanismÓÉ