07 — The Eastern Reception
The collection’s distinctive centerpiece: how the Orthodox East has received Augustine — venerating him as a saint, commemorating him on 15 June, and yet most often calling him “Blessed Augustine” rather than “Saint,” and holding real reservations about his theology of grace, predestination, and the Spirit. This section sets out the fact of his veneration and the title “Blessed,” and then the full modern spectrum of Orthodox opinion — from the sharp critique of Fr John Romanides to the irenic readings of Fr Seraphim Rose and the Orthodox Readings of Augustine scholars — even-handedly, with named proponents on each side, per METHODOLOGY.md §4.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism West; “Blessed Augustine”)
The two preceding sections laid out the contested doctrines; this section lays out the contested reception — the question of how the Orthodox Church holds a Father it both venerates and, on real points, questions. The first file establishes that Augustine is a venerated Orthodox saint and examines the meaning and history of the title “Blessed.” The second maps the modern Orthodox debate across its full range, refusing to flatten it to either uncritical praise or wholesale rejection, and naming the proponents of each position.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Blessed Augustine | The veneration of Augustine in the Orthodox Church; the feast of 15 June; the title “Blessed” (makarios / blazhennyi) and its meanings; the spectrum from Photios’s critique to Fr Seraphim Rose’s The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church; both sides, named. |
| The Spectrum of Orthodox Opinion | The modern debate in full: Romanides’s sharp critique; Lossky; the appreciative and revisionist readings (Rose, the SVS Orthodox Readings of Augustine school, Andrew Louth); the even-handed map of the positions and what divides them. |
See Also
- Predestination and the Eastern Objection — the doctrine behind the reservation
- Augustine and the Filioque — the second contested doctrine
- Augustine East and West — his limited Eastern influence
- St. Photios the Great — the early Eastern critic
- The Church Fathers — Augustine among the Fathers
References
- Rose, Seraphim. The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1983 (rev. 2007).
- Demacopoulos, George E., and Aristotle Papanikolaou, eds. Orthodox Readings of Augustine. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008.
- Romanides, John S. The Ancestral Sin. Trans. George Gabriel. Ridgewood, NJ: Zephyr, 2002.