Original Sin, Guilt, Traducianism, and Eastern Orthodoxy

The following is an expansion of a criticism of Eastern Orthodoxy I have only touched on elsewhere: original sin. It seems several Eastern Orthodox adherents prefer to call it "ancestral" sin. In some cases, there is a complete lack of understanding, such as can be seen in this video (the first video that shows up if you search for "original sin eastern orthodox" on Youtube), which is explained by a Ph.D. and priest:

...we have this development, this theological development which is based on this erroneous concept but we also have among the Reformers John Calvin who embraced a lot of the Augustinian concepts including predestination and he also embraced the understanding of Original Sin and the transmission of sin and guilt and the responsibility of Adam based on Augustine's understanding and that has been the case until this day for those who have followed the Calvinist understandings. Of course in the Orthodox Church this is not even a topic to be discussed because we do not see any such possibility of transmission of sin and guilt and responsibility in any possible way.

Perry Robinson similarly writes (link):

For the Orthodox, original sin pertains only to Adam’s transgression, and is not something that his descendants inherit from him. What we get from Adam is corruption and death, which lead us to sin, and separate us from God, in that we live in death.

This is not even remotely in the same league as intramural debates amongst Reformed theologians such as is found in George P. Hutchinson's fantastic work, The Problem of Original Sin in American Presbyterianism. Perhaps this would be less of a problem if the ignorance weren't so seemingly prevalent. 

Or take the following from the introduction to another priest's (Romanides') book, The Ancestral Sin:

Now we sin because we die, for the sting of death is sin. Sin reigns in death, in our corruptibility and mortality. Death is the root; sin is the thorn that springs from it.

This completely reverses cause and effect (Romans 6:23). I've also seen several Eastern Orthodox apologists appeal to John Chrysostom (Romanides and Eastern Orthodox apologists who disagree with Romanides - it seems there may be something of an intramural debate). Chrysostom says (link):

Seeing their children bearing punishment proves a more grievous form of chastisement for the fathers than being subject to it themselves.

Without fail, I find that Eastern Orthodox apologists deny original guilt. But then how is it that they think children may justly bear the punishment for another's sins? Whether Chrysostom himself believed this point is irrelevant. Hutchinson and the Reformed tradition deal with this question directly. Eastern Orthodox apologists seem barely aware of it. And those who are aware of it seem to ignore it! 

On this note, it's helpful to see engagement between theologians or apologists of different traditions. An example may be found in Original Sin and the Fall: Five Views. In it, Oliver Crisp responds to the Eastern Orthodox presentation (Andrew Louth, priest and Ph.D.) with the following on pg. 184:

In the context of expounding the doctrine of ancestral sin in terms of a web of human sinfulness going all the way back to our first parents, he raises the issue of whether this is sufficient as an account of sin. As he puts it, for defenders of original sin, like myself, the ancestral sin view “seems to leave open the possibility (even if totally exceptional) of someone living a blameless life.” And this, of course, is the fundamental worry Augustine had with Pelagius’s doctrine. The problem is, Louth never really addresses this objection to his position head on. He never explains how the Orthodox doctrine of ancestral sin can avoid the traditional Augustinian objection that it leaves conceptual room for the existence of someone that is, for all practical purposes, without sin. This, it seems to me, is a serious lacuna in his presentation.

Note that Louth himself brings up the possibility of all people who are subject to original sin as living blameless lives and then proceeds to cite Mary as a case in which such a possibility actually happens. Even setting aside the problems with Marian devotion and the possibility that all men subject to original sin might refrain from choosing to sin, the immediate point is that Eastern Orthodox apologists think those who are subject to original sin are guiltless subjects of punishment. In the case of Christ - who voluntarily laid down His life - a case can be made that experience of punishment can just. The same cannot be said if our subjection to original sin is involuntary.

Rather than squarely facing this problem, Louth merely notes it and moves on as if it were a mere curiosity. From the same book, the following criticisms of Louth by another contributor are even better than Crisp's (pg. 172):

On a final note, the corruption-only position of ancestral sin is a flawed doctrine; it discounts the truths of imputation (and realism) implied in passages like Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 as well as the broader doctrinal synthesis of the whole Bible on which imputed guilt rests (see my marks to Crisp). I ask Louth, Are there any human beings apart from Christ who were perfectly sinless? Answering yes would suggest he has a defective hamartiology and Christology. Scripture is clear that with the exception of Christ all humans are sinners (e.g., Rom 3:9-20; 1 Jn 1:8); if we presume there were any sinless people, as perfectionists have claimed, such naiveté detracts from the glory of the incarnation and belittles the gravity of sin. I suspect Louth agrees. In that case, it must be our inherited corruption that makes sinning inevitable. But then how is this scenario just? Since no human is responsible for innate corruption, in his view, and since that same corruption leads inevitably to sin, it is unclear how ancestral sin fares any better than original guilt. The concerns surrounding divine justice remain.

Now, Hutchinson's book shows the Reformed view has its own, intramural debates regarding just how it is Adam's ancestors can be considered guilty. I've defended a realist view most extensively here (see also here and here where I engage with different Reformed theologians who disagree with it).

What might be helpful, however, is to draw comparisons to theologians whom Eastern Orthodox apologists respect. Even though their views don't align with mine in every facet, such might anticipate the more typical apologetic concerns that Eastern Orthodox apologists seem to have about the Reformed view as well as facilitate conversation. Discussing the view of Maximus the Confessor, for example, Marcelo Souza writes:

In Christ, the natural will is rooted in his concrete human nature, not an abstract human nature (as some modern philosophers of religion, who reject dyothelitism, haver argued).

This is a helpful point of departure in that it tracks with the sort of theological and anthropological metaphysics I (link) as well as other Protestants agree (as Souza himself notes; e.g. link): Christ has His own, concretely distinctive soul and body. He was, of course, consubstantial with us, but theologians like John of Damascus acknowledge a distinction between the concrete humanity of Christ and that of everyone else. He writes:

And we cannot, if we wish to be accurate, speak of Christ as having judgment (γνώμη) and preference. For judgment is a disposition with reference to the decision arrived at after investigation and deliberation concerning something unknown, that is to say, after counsel and decision. And after judgment comes preference, which chooses out and selects the one rather than the other. But the Lord being not mere man but also God, and knowing all things, had no need of inquiry, and investigation, and counsel, and decision, and by nature made whatever is good His own and whatever is bad foreign to Him.

John of Damascus is referring to what Eastern Orthodox theologians describe as the "gnomic will," a term particularly associated with Maximus the Confessor. Joseph P. Farrell describes it as a "mode of employment of the will" (link). Ian McFarland writes (In Adam's Fall, pg. 112):

Maximus draws a parallel between the natural and gnomic wills on the one hand, and the capacity to speak and the act of speaking on the other... Some monothelites rejected the ascription of a human will to Christ on the grounds that it would imply ignorance (see OTP 19 [PG91:216B – C]). The terms of Maximus’ dyothelitism imply not so much a flat - out rejection of this charge as its deflection by conceding that ignorance is a feature of gnomic will but denying that Christ willed gnomically. To put it another way, from Maximus’ perspective the monothelite charge rests on a failure to recognize that gnome refers to a tropos rather than the logos of the will. 

The idea is that while Christ is consubstantial with the rest of humanity - having the same nature and natural will as we do - the rest of mankind has a mode or tropos or manner or way of will[ing] that Christ did not. As McFarland says (In Adam's Fall, pg. 105):

...a given logos may be instantiated according to a range of possible tropoi. The full humanity of the will is thus unaffected by whether the tropos by which it operates is gnomic deliberation or the immediate presence of God characteristic of deification.

Let us now consider a Reformed engagement with Eastern Orthodox apologists. Given what has been said, McFarland points out (In Adam's Fall, pg. 107):

...while Maximus’ understanding of postlapsarian human willing neither envisages nor requires Augustine’s vision of a fallen humanity unable to avoid sin, it certainly allows for it. If the integrity of the will remains intact when we become unable to sin in glory (as both he and Augustine affirm), there seems nothing inherently problematic about affirming that genuine agency is preserved in circumstances where sinning is unavoidable. 

Satan is an example of an agent who unavoidably sins. So what prevents a Reformed Christian making use of a concept of mode of will[ing] such that in concrete cases (viz. everyone except Christ), "sinning is unavoidable"? 

[As an aside, I don't think McFarland is suggesting that unavoidability implies determinism: we might imagine one's freely (in the libertarian sense) choosing from amongst various, sinful alternatives. On the other hand, it is possible for sin to be predestined (e.g. 1 Kings 22:20-23, Acts 4:27-28).]

Or take an Eastern Orthodox apologist like Jay Dyer, who says: "Christ has not possessed a corrupted, defective will - we do... He's not subject to the corruption that comes through the procreation of man through seminal means." (link). 

A Reformed Christian might say the same. Indeed, traducians like Samuel Baird have argued along these lines. Romanides suggests that the early church "writers regarding the fall and salvation incline strongly toward the theory of traducianismus." The concrete soul of a child is paternally traduced, and this functions to explain why our mode of will[ing] is unlike Christ's (and, for that matter, unlike prelapasarian Adam).

Of course, a point of disanalogy would be that the Reformed position thinks our "corrupted, defective will" entails more than the Eastern Orthodox position, and this might return us to the subject of punishment, original guilt, participation in Adam's sin, and divine justice. But the immediate point is that on both Eastern Orthodox and Reformed positions, it is possible for Christ to be consubstantial with us yet not subject to [certain effects of] original sin.

I believe the foregoing anwers one further counterargument. Joseph P. Farrell writes:

...nature and its properties as created by God, are good. The natural will thus chooses nothing but the good. Opposition to the divine will is thus always in the evil mode of the employment of the will, and is thus always personal. And this in turn means that free choice is not ultimately concerned with a dialectic of opposition between the divine and human natures in Christ, or between evil and good choices in man himself.

Similarly, McFarland writes:

As promising as Maximus’ doctrine of the will may appear for shoring up Augustine’s understanding of original sin, however, further reflection suggests serious obstacles to any proposed marriage of the two theologies. As Augustine himself was very aware, the doctrine of original sin is credible only if the categories of nature (as God’s good creation) and will (as the source of creatures’ deviation from God) are kept distinct. But surely one of the consequences of Maximus’ integration of will and nature is to render this sort of distinction untenable: if sin is a function of the will (viz., its deviation from God’s will for the creature), and the operation of the will is simply an expression of human nature, then the doctrine of original sin (viz., the assertion that the will is congenitally opposed to God) seemingly implies that human nature as such has become evil. It follows either that God is not the creator of human nature (the Manichean position), or, worse, that God –precisely as the creator of human nature – is also the creator of sin.

In the case of Farrell, my first response would be to point out that the natural will qua natural will does not choose anything. Persons enhypostatize natures. A natural will outlines a capacity one has in virtue of his nature. For Farrell to say "The natural will thus chooses nothing but the good" conflates nature with person, because only persons choose.

Ignoring this slip, there is the question of the natural will itself, discussion of which performs the double-duty of responding to Farrell and McFarland simultaneously. What capacity or capacities does the natural will entail (in the context of anthropology)? The simplest answer seems to be that the natural will affords man the capacity to will, act, or choose. This capacity is distinct from the voluntary exercise of will, act, or choice. This capacity is also distinct from that to which one might be disposed to choose. Sin is not a substance, but neither are volitional natures morally neutral in terms of disposition.

[Parenthetically, one might easily expand this discussion on human nature to encompass our rationality. Both the rational and volitional seem to be rooted in one's concrete humanity, viz. one's spirit or soul. What I've said regarding a distinction between a natural will vs. its employment/disposition would analogously apply to a distinction between a so-called natural rationality vs. its employment/disposition. 

Thus, these are two capacities of one nature. In no sense did the Fall destruct our capacity to capacity to think, will, act, or choose. On other other hand, our mode of disposition and action - in obedience or rebellion to God - was mutable.] 

This finally turns us to the fact that God created Adam and Eve good. Of course, God created everyone good. Does this entail that the orientation of one's natural will can only towards the good, as Farrell seems to want to suggest? If so, then why isn't it possible for Satan (for example) to employ his will towards the good?

On the other hand, how does the Reformed position avoid McFarland's point regarding anthropological Manicheanism? If the orientation of a concrete human nature might be to rebel against God, how could this be? As has been mentioned, traducianism seems to solve the dilemma. McFarland seems to assume that this is not a live option - as if the concrete humanities (souls and bodies) of Adam's progeny are created ex nihilo. While John of Damascus is taken to be a creationist, consideration of the following is still useful (link):

...generation means that the begetter produces out of his essence offspring similar in essence. But creation and making mean that the creator and maker produces from that which is external, and not out of his own essence, a creation of an absolutely dissimilar nature....Wherefore all the qualities the Father has are the Son's, save that the Father is unbegotten, and this exception involves no difference in essence nor dignity, but only a different mode of coming into existence. We have an analogy in Adam, who was not begotten (for God Himself moulded him), and Seth, who was begotten (for he is Adam's son), and Eve, who proceeded out of Adam's rib (for she was not begotten). These do not differ from each other in nature, for they are human beings: but they differ in the mode of coming into existence.

After contrasting begetting and creating, he says Adam begot Seth. This implies Adam produced out of his essence an offspring similar in essence. If we highlight that it was out of Adam's concrete humanity that Seth was begotten, we are closer to a biblical and reasonably motivated model on which: 

1. Christ was consubstantial with the rest of humanity yet, unlike them, not subject to [the effects of] original sin.

2. Adam's ancestors are justly punished for having guiltily participated in the original transgression.

3. The Fall did not destruct the image of God in man yet did put us in a terrible mode of need for conformity to Christ's image.

Monkey See, Monkey Don't

I recently talked to someone who observed that Eastern Orthodox apologists have, in the past decade or so, been more apt to try appropriating Reformed apologetics. I've witnessed the same tendency in the likes of Jay Dyer, Joshua Schooping (before he became disillusioned regarding Eastern Orthodoxy), and others I've happened across now and then.

Truth is attractive; hence, many of these Eastern Orthodox apologists once nominally identified as Reformed Christians. As for what reason those who identify as formerly Reformed fall away from the truth, I give some possible reasons here. Regardless, on one level, that such persons retain some truths they learned even after public deconversion is unsurprising. On another level, it is surprising that such apologists have not, by and large, critically self-reflected on whether a fundamentally Reformed apologetic can makes sense within the context of a non-Reformed faith. 

For example, I was recently linked to this article by an Eastern Orthodox philosopher name Erik Sorem. A glaring omission in it - and in Eastern Orthodox apologetics in general - is the connection between apologetics and anthropology. For the Reformed presuppositionalist, one practical purpose for apologetics may be to undermine the false confidence of unbelievers. However, the Reformed Christian acknowledges that man's sinful rebelliousness to God cannot solely be overcome by argumentation. Because of the extent of man's sinfulness, the Holy Spirit must graciously change the mind of the rebellious apart from the help of the rebellious. There is no synergy in regeneration.

By comparison, the author of this article rightly denies the concept of epistemic neutrality but fails to situate the explanation for his denial within the context of a Reformed anthropology, particularly the doctrine of original sin. Thus, the Eastern Orthodox apologist may try to borrow from Reformed apologetics, but their denial of the need for monergistic regeneration both understates man's sinfulness and thereby undercuts any nominal agreement that an "autonomous" epistemology will be false. Gordon Clark didn't write about Eastern Orthodoxy very much, but here's one reference that brings with it a useful reminder:

Eastern orthodoxy stresses the rational nature of man and insists that man remains man after the fall. So far, so good. But the value of this sound position is vitiated by the Eastern churches' failure to recognize the extent of the fall and therefore their inability to see the full need of grace. Some of their theologians toy with a verbally pleasing analogy: as God became man, so man will become God. This is similar to the Gnostic notion that salvation is deification. Partly because of this, some very conservative Protestants have reacted against the identification of the image as reason, believing that this identification implies a superficial view of sin. The implication, however, is fallacious and the reaction extreme. (link)

Speaking of Clark, in my experience, most Eastern Orthodox apologists find their roots in other presuppositionalists such as Bahnsen, Frame, or Van Til (cf. Sorem's article above). Thus, some Eastern Orthodox apologists are unaware that grounding one's justification for belief in the Trinity in Scripture makes more sense than grounding one's justification for belief in Scripture in the Trinity (link; cf. my discussion of transcendental argumentation here and here). 

Of course, there is no question that the Trinity ontologically precede the Scriptures, but I have never witnessed one who takes the Trinity as his epistemic foundation be able to deduce, say, the canon of Scripture. On the other hand, one who takes Scripture as his epistemic foundation may be able to deduce the doctrine of the Trinity. The upshot of this is that presuppositionalism is tied to the doctrines of sola scriptura, perspicuity, self-authenticity, etc. As with the anthropological objection, this epistemic foundations objection is fatal to Eastern Orthodox apologetics and the epistemology its apologists try to defend. 

Such are the general problems with Eastern Orthodox persons who attempt to co-opt presuppositionalism. There are more particular problems I've observed, ones which stem from attempting to follow the Van Tilian brand of presuppositionalism (as all the Eastern Orthodox apologists I have in mind tend to do). 

For instance, I don't know to what extent Eastern Orthodox apologists are familiar with contemporary epistemology - in some cases, self-admittedly not (see Jay Dyer at minute mark 2:03:00 here, for example) - but what I tend to read or hear basic mistakes such as what the meaning of classical foundationalism even is! 

Classical foundationalism is a theory regarding the structure of epistemic justification. In contrast to Sorem's apparent misunderstanding (in which he writes, "Presuppositional apologetics, first and foremost rejected...  classical foundationalism"; see pg. 12ff of his article), foundationalism as such says nothing about whether such justificatory foundations are or must be "autonomous" or "theonomous." Sorem uses the guilt by association fallacy and/or genetic fallacy when he dismisses classical foundationalism seemingly for no other reason than that Aristotle accepted natural theology, that empiricism is flawed, etc. It is painfully apparent Sorem is unaware of theistic foundationalists such as Gordon Clark. 

Ironically, the sort of coherentism Sorem goes on to espouse (see footnote 28) itself collapses into foundationalism, as epistemologists such as Peter Klein have noted: 

The function of the type of reasoning we are considering is to enhance the epistemic status of our belief-states with their propositional contents, and circular reasoning cannot do that. It might appear that some progress has been made when a reason for y, namely x, is offered, but when it turns out that the reason for x is nothing other than y, it is pyrrhic progress.

The second, more plausible form of coherentism - emergent of holistic coherentism - holds that when our reasons have a reciprocal structure they are all at least prima facie justified. The epistemic status of all members of the coherent set is determined by the degree to which the propositions in the set are R-related plus, perhaps, some other properties obtaining. If x and y are members of the coherent set {x, y, ...} and xRy and yRx, it is not x that makes y justified and it is not y that makes x justified, rather what contributes to making each of them justified is that they are members of a coherent set. Being a member of such a set makes them prima facie justified, or, at least contributes significantly to each being prima facie justified (see BonJour 1989). I will not contest that in this paper. What is important to see here is that emergent coherentism, as Ernest Sosa has shown, is a form of foundationalism (Sosa, 1980). The foundational property is being a member of a coherent set of propositions. This form of coherentism is just as much a foundationalist account as, say, an account that takes all believed propositions which represent my conscious mental states as (at least) prima facie justified. Thus, any rapprochement with foundationalism is applicable to emergent coherentism as well." (Klein, Ad Infinitum, pgs. 110-111)

Likewise, Jay Dyer also misunderstands this (see ~minute mark 1:43:00 in the aforementioned video). This is especially inexcusable in that both Dyer and Sorem are aware of and have approvingly cited a paper that makes the same point Klein does above! Both of the apologists recommend Russell Manion's "The Contingency of Knowledge and Revelatory Theism," in which he writes:

Circularity is also not satisfactory, but it is much more interesting. Advocates of a philosophical position called coherentism think they have beaten the foundation dilemma. They point out that beliefs do not neatly divide into the categories of foundational beliefs and justified beliefs. All our beliefs are related to one another in the form of a coherent web. Some subset of our beliefs may be more important and juridical than other beliefs, but all beliefs hang on all other beliefs, and nothing is foundational. 

But as Michael Depaul in his article “Coherentism” points out, coherentism really doesn’t escape the foundational problem at all. It is simply another “version of foundationalism that holds all beliefs to be foundational.” (link)

Further, Dyer and Sorem also miss the important difference between one's having noninferential knowledge and one's defending said knowledge (link, link, link). The structure of one's knowledge - assuming one has "knowledge" (and here I am speaking of "knowledge" about which one may have infallible assurance) - must be founded on divine revelation. 

Now, any defense of our knowledge will of course presuppose that we do indeed have knowledge, but this just means that our defenses or articulations of of our epistemology will ultimately derive from our said foundation, our belief in which is intrinsically justified and meaningful.

So even if circularity appears in one's apologetic argumentation - as Clark might put it, axioms leads to certain theorems, and theorems can help inform whether an axiom has confirmatory evidence or is disconfirmed (e.g. Clark and His Critics, 2007, pg. 53) - it is nevertheless true that we can know the epistemic foundation of revelation without requiring an argument for it. As I suggested earlier, Eastern Orthodox confusion on these points may stem from that they generally follow Van Tilian presuppositionalism, apologists who have discussed epistemic justification in terms of coherence or circularity (e.g. link). 

A side point: contemporary epistemologists such as Richard Fumerton also make use of what are called "conceptual regress arguments" (which are distinct from justificatory regress arguments) to illustrate that the meaning of terms must be intrinsic:

Consider an analogy. One of the earliest distinctions made in ethics is the distinction between different ways in which something can be good. Some things, like taking blood-pressure medication, are good only as a means to something else that is good (perhaps health of the happiness that comes from being in good health). But, one might argue, it can't be the case the everything that is good is good only as means to something else that is good. While we can (partially) define being good as a means in terms of having good outcomes, we cannot complete our definition of goodness this way. To find, even in thought, the source of goodness, we need to form the thought of something that is good in itself (intrinsically good, good just in virtue of what it is).

The suggestion here is that inferential justification stands to noninferential justification as being good as a means stands to being good in itself. (Foundationalism, Cambridge Elements in Epistemology, pg. 8)

Now, Clark and I might nuance where meaning is to be found (e.g. propositions vs. concepts) - and Fumerton in particular might not quarrel with this - but in any case, anyone who has read Clark's book on John Dewey (1963) will recognize Clark's critique of Instrumentalism to be essentially the same as what Fumerton here states. Fumerton also gives the helpful example on the same page of the above work of what it means to be a "descendant": it is to be a child of someone, or a child of a child of someone, or a child of a child of a child of someone, etc. At some point, the ancestor has to make an appearance for it to be meaningful to call a person a "descendant." Recursion eventually bottoms out in foundations.

I'll add to what Fumerton says against an implicitly infinitist view of meaning. When we ask someone to explain what they mean by something like "goodness," we tend to have the expectation that the definiendum won't occur in any attempted definition. If I ask, "what is free choice?" and an Arminian responds, "the ability to choose" (which happened quite often when I used to dialogue with Arminians), I would have to point out that they are repeating what I am asking for them to define (the definiendum) in their attempted definition. That is, such an Arminian has not made any clearer what they mean by "free choice." Of course, I would not childishly ask them to define "free choice" ad infinitum, but the goal was, at some point, to consider a stated definition as symbolizing an intrinsically meaningful proposition... and this is a strike against a circularist view of meaning which, by analogy, helps argue a case for epistemic foundationalism over against epistemic coherentism.

Finally, suppose an Eastern Orthodox apologist were to attempt to reformulate presuppositionalism to be more in line with Clark's view. If they're willing to copy one Reformed view, why not a better one? If one monkey sees another swinging like an Olympic gymnast from one branch of philosophy, he might think to try to graft that branch onto his own tree. Well, because philosophy is interconnected, the monkey's attempt to graft the good branch onto a rotten tree won't take. How much less successful the subsequent mental gymnastics will be as the monkey tries and fails to swing from that branch!

That is, I've already outlined tensions regarding the anthropology and the doctrine of Scripture of Eastern orthodoxy and its presuppositionalist embezzelment. But an Eastern Orthodox apologist has further problems given their theology proper, some of which I've already outlined here and will continue to build a case against now. For instance, take a look at what Eastern Orthodox apologist Perry Robinson admits:

For my part, I affirm rather that God is more than his revelation to put it in biblical terms. Contrary to the Reformed (and the Lutherans) and Rome, metaphysics applies to everything except God ad intra, which is why for them theology is a science and for us it is about the spiritual life in Christ. (link)

This is quite similar to what Eduard Borysov says in "The Doctrine of Deification in the Works of Pavel Florensky and John Meyendorff: A Critical Examination" (Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 2011):

Palamas's theology of energies, according to Meyendorff, has no philosophical rationale behind it. However, one should not forget that the philosophical notions of hypostasis, nature, and energies played a key role in the Christological controversies and had become the basic principles for Palamas's theology proper as well as his soteriology. God is, by definition, unrelated to and above any essence, hence he is unknown by any essence. (Gregory Palamas, Gregory Palamas: The Triads, § 3.2.24, ed. John Meyendorff, trans. Nicholas Gendle (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1983), 95)

Borysov extends the logic of Robinson's statement: insofar as metaphysics and epistemology are intertwined, to say that there can be no divine metaphysics means there can be no knowledge of God. Now compare these statements to what Eastern Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky says:

All the Fathers of the Church, both of East and of West, are agreed in seeing a certain co-ordination, a primordial correspondence between the being of man and the being of God in the fact of the creation of man in the image and likeness of God. (The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, pg. 114)

Robinson and Borysov's statements on metaphysics and epistemology logically extend to anthropology. If metaphysics don't apply to God such that He is unrelated to and above mankind, then there is no "correspondence," "image," or "likeness" of God in man. Considering the emphases Eastern Orthodox apologists tend to put on the early church fathers, it is almost as if the Eastern Orthodox position doesn't cohere at all! Now, where does this finally lead? Palamas says:

...God is not only beyond knowledge, but also beyond unknowing; His revelation itself is also truly a mystery of a most divine and extraordinary kind, since the divine manifestations, even if symbolic, remain unknowable by reason of their transcendence. They appear, in fact, according to a law which is not appropriate to either human or divine nature - being, as it were, for us yet beyond us - so that no name can properly describe them. (The Triads, pg. 32)

Following the logic all the way down, the doctrine of Scripture (and divine revelation) is also destructed. The disharmony of Eastern Orthodoxy leads its apologists to defend they know not what. What one needs for a coherent worldview is not Neo-Orthodoxy or Eastern Orthodoxy but Scriptural orthodoxy:

In reaction against the optimistic modernism of the nineteenth century, contemporary neo-orthodoxy (q.v.) has insisted on the transcendence of God. But it has distorted the biblical concept of transcendence to the degree of making God completely unknowable. Some of their phraseology may be repeated as examples. God has been called the Wholly-Other. Brunner writes, “God can, when he wants to, speak his word even through false doctrine.” Another author denies that a proposition can have the same meaning for man as it does for God. Several theologians collaborated to say that “we dare not maintain that his (God’s) knowledge and our knowledge coincide at any single point.”

Now, it seems obvious that if a man knows any truth at all, he must know a truth that God knows, for God knows all truths. A sentence must mean to a man who knows its meaning precisely what it means to God; for if the man does not know God’s meaning, he does not know the meaning of the sentence. Hence, if man is to know anything, it cannot be denied that there are points of coincidence between human and divine knowledge. Similarly God cannot be Wholly-Other, for this would deny that man was created in the image of God. (link)

For those interested in further reading, I recommend Steve Hays's interactions with EO apologists; e.g. on the issue of divine transcendence, see here.