Fr. John Romanides on the Ancestral Sin

Protopresbyter Demetrios Athanasiou | February 21, 2026

 

 

[Protopresbyter] John Romanides formulated a radically different reading of the ancestral sin, abandoning the Western moralistic approach in favor of a therapeutic and ontological consideration of the human condition. His basic position is summed up in a simple observation: man does not inherit guilt from Adam, but illness.

According to Romanides, Western theology transformed the ancestral sin into a juridical problem. Adam transgressed a law, God became angry, and the punishment of death was imposed upon all humanity. Every man is therefore born guilty, charged with a sin he did not commit, and salvation consists in the remission of this guilt through the sacrifice of Christ. Romanides rejects this image as foreign to the patristic tradition. For the Orthodox Fathers, sin is not primarily a transgression of a moral rule, but an illness of existence, a darkening of the nous, a disturbance of the relationship with God. Adam, having withdrawn from living contact with God, became corrupted ontologically, and this corrupted nature—not the guilt—is transmitted to his descendants.

The difference is decisive. When Western theology speaks about ancestral sin, it means a hereditary guilt that renders every man justly condemned from birth. When the Orthodox Fathers speak about ancestral or forefathers’ sin, they mean the consequences of Adam’s act: death and corruption that entered into our nature. Death for Romanides is not a punishment imposed by God in order to satisfy His justice, but a natural result of separation from the source of life. It is the enemy of God, an instrument of Satan, which Christ came to destroy, not to fulfill. Man is therefore born not guilty, but sick—with a nature weak, mortal, attached to the passions, incapable of truly loving. Salvation is not forgiveness that cancels an imaginary penalty, but healing that restores the health of the soul, illumination of the nous, participation in the divine life.

Romanides used a simple example to make the difference perceptible. A father who drinks poison does not transmit to his children the guilt of his act, but the consequences—the children are born with a weak body, a predisposition to illnesses, perhaps even with poison in their blood. They are not punished, they are victims. Exactly so also with Adam: we are not punished for his own fault; we suffer from the consequences of his fall. This distinction radically changes the meaning of salvation. If the problem is guilt, then Christ is the judge who pays the fine in order to acquit us. If the problem is illness, then Christ is the physician who comes to heal us, to unite us again with God, to make us “gods by grace.”

Romanides’ critique of Western theology is strict. He considers that it misinterpreted the Apostle Paul, introducing a pseudo-moralistic philosophy influenced by Neoplatonism. It ignored the experience of the Fathers of the Church, who knew deification as an immediate reality, and developed a theology based on logical categories—essence, existence, justice—which led to a God-punisher and to a man-condemned. For Romanides, this turn distanced the West from the true Christian experience, transforming religion into moralism and salvation into a legal transaction.

Romanides’ theology restores the center of gravity to the medicinal dimension of salvation. Christianity is not a system of moral rules nor a theory about the remission of sins—it is the therapeutic science of souls. Baptism is not merely a symbolic act that erases guilt, but the putting to death of the old man and birth into new life. Holy Communion is not a reward for the good, but a medicine of immortality. The ascetic tradition of the Church—fasting, prayer, vigil—is not a means to appease an angry God, but therapeutic exercises that restore the health of the nous. The aim is not to avoid hell, but to be deified, to become bearers of the love of God in the world.

In summary, Romanides calls us to see man not as guilty who needs forgiveness, but as sick who needs healing. The ancestral sin is not a condemnation that we carry from Adam, but a weakness that we inherit and that we can overcome within the living relationship with God. Salvation is not a judicial decision in heaven, but a real transformation here and now—illumination, deification, eternal life which begins from the moment we are united with Christ.

 

Greek source: https://apotixisi.blogspot.com/2026/02/blog-post_86.html