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>I asked a while back if it was possible to be Orthodox AND Thomist and the reply from an Orthodox was "yeah, but it's uncommon." I forgot to screencap it so I can't remember the reasoning. Can someone help me with this?
I believe I am that guy.
There are no anathemas against Thomism, and Aquinas was a real genius, and in fact his writings were very well received in the Orthodox world at first. Ecumenical Patriarch Gennadius II Scholarius in particular was a huge fan of Aquinas.
Modern Orthodox criticism of Aquinas is often that he is a scholastic, and scholasticism isn't Orthodox. These people often sweep St. John of Damascus under the rug.
Another modern criticism is that Aquinas's defense of the beatific vision (that we see God's essence) is at odds with the essence-energy distinction of Palamas that was dogmatized at the 5th Council of Constantinople. That often comes from a faulty reading of Palamas (indeed, Palamas himself admits that what some Fathers have called "essence" is really "energy") and a mindless opposition to everything associated with Barlaam (yes, Barlaam was a Thomist, but a really terrible one).
Finally, another common criticism is that Aquinas neglected prayer and humility in favor of scientific scholasticism. These people usually know nothing about Aquinas anyway.
However, Aquinas is nonetheless not part of Orthodox tradition, especially since the East began to drop Aristotle around the same time the West began to pick him up. It may also be difficult to treat everything Aquinas wrote as gospel, for obvious reasons (the filioque, the beatific vision, the defense of papal supremacy). You can be an Orthodox Thomist, but you have to keep in mind that it'll make you a tiny minority - not because Thomism is anathematized but because it's just not a remarkable part of our tradition.
>I would like to ask also if it's possible to be Orthodox and follow Augustine on original sin (and Augustine in general) or is that treading into heresy territory?
St. Augustine, as great as he was, found himself dealing with a theological question that simply does not appear for the Greeks because of a mistranslation in the Septuagint, giving rise to a wonky understanding of original sin, and of guilt and divine punishment. That's one thing Augustine got definitely wrong and we cannot accept as Orthodox. But does anybody really even follow Augustine at all? Augustine most certainly didn't have the impact on Latin theology that Orthodox polemicists like to claim, at least on the subject of guilt. If you follow everything Augustine wrote word for word, you'll be one of two persons in the world who does so, the other one being Augustine himself.
Because of the "Latin captivity," the Orthodox have become allergic to St. Augustine and to scholasticism, but this trend is starting to change, thankfully. You can most definitely be Orthodox and a fan of Augustine and of Aquinas, of course, just as long as you keep in mind the things they didn't get right.