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Again, I don't think you understand what the Archbishop has written. The Eastern Church has never taught salvation by works. Here, try this from St. Maximos the Confessor:

"Everyone who does not apply himself to the spiritual contemplation of Holy Scripture has, Judaic-wise, also rejected both the natural and the written law; and he is ignorant of the law of grace which confers deification on those who are obedient to it. He who understands the written law in a literal manner does not nourish his soul with the virtues. He who does not grasp the inner principles of created beings fails to feast his intellect on the manifold wisdom of God. And he who is ignorant of the great mystery of the new grace does not rejoice in the hope of future deification. Thus failure to contemplate the written law spiritually results in a dearth (lack, an indequate supply) of the divine wisdom to be apprehended in the natural law; and this in its turn is followed by a complete ignorance of the deification given by grace according to the new mystery." p. 267 Vol. II The Philokalia.

Or this from the Theoretikon of St. Theodorus the Great Ascetic:

"One must first deny oneself and then, taking up the cross, must follow the Master toward the supreme state of deification." p. 38 Vol. II The Philokalia

"To come to another point: everything may be understood in terms of its purpose. It is this that determines the division of everything into its purpose. It is this that determines the division of everything into its constituent parts, as well as the mutual relationship of those parts. Now the purpose of our life is blessedness or, what is the same thing, the kingdom of heaven or of God. This is not only to behold the Trinity, supreme in Kingship, but also to receive an influx of the divine and, as it were, to suffer deification; for by this influx what is lacking and imperfect in us is supplied and perfected. And the provision by such divine influx of what is needed is the food of spiritual beings. There is a kind of eternal circle, which ends where it begins. For the greater our noetic perception, the more we long to perceive; and the greater our longing, the greater our enjoyment; and the greater our enjoyment, the more our perception is deepened, and so the motionless movement, or the motionless immobility, begins again. Such then is our purpose, in so far as we can understand it." p. 43 Vol. II The Philokalia

Or this from our Father St. Ignatius of Antioch:

"Virtues and vices are the food of the soul and it can feed on either one, turning to whichever one it wants. If it is bent toward moral excellence, it will be fed by virtue - by righteousness, temperance, meekness, endurance. In other words, it is just as St. Paul says, 'being nourished by the word of truth' (1 Tim. 4:6)."

You see, this is what the Fathers have always taught. This position was established without reference to the Pelagian heresy which +Augustine wrote "Concerning Original Sin" in opposition to. In fact, did you know that Augustine wrote in Latin and his work wasn't even translated into Greek until around the 14th Century? Augustine recognized the danger posed by Pelagianism to the Orthodox Faith taught by the Church. His attack on Pelagianism is, for us in the East a bit over the top, but he was writing for a Western ( well at least a Latin North African) audience which viewed the world in a rather more "legalistic" way than Eastern audiences. He probably didn't read Greek or at least not well and worked from Latin translations of earlier Greek Patristic works. The problem is that Latin doesn't translate Greek well at all. One of the major problems arose over the nature of the human soul as expounded by the Greek Fathers and the Latin translations of their works. Be that as it may, Western concepts of justification by faith, works or faith and works simply were not issues in the East. Interestingly, there has been a great deal of discussion on this very question during Orthodox/Lutheran talks and it appears likely that the Lutherans do in fact accept the Orthodox theology on this matter. Again, it was a problem with Westerners trying to express a theology which was expounded originally in Greek and then translated into Latin. In the West, the influence of +Augustine's defense of Orthodoxy as he understood it lead to a distinction which the East simply doesn't make, or doesn't make in the way the West does (it also lead to the idea of predestination, which the East and much of the West rejected). The ramifications of all of this are vast when it comes to theosis or salvation.

Suffice to say that much of the Protestant West's theology on this matter arises out of a different set of assumptions about salvation and the nature of the soul than in the East. For example, the East speaks of the "nous" and yet there is, to my knowledge, no equivalent of the nous in Western theology. It is not my purpose to argue with you. Orthodoxy does not argue with the West on these issues. We believe what God has revealed to the Church in the 7 Great Ecumenical Councils, no more, no less. Extra conciliar Theological developments in the West, like what much of Protestantism did with +Augustine simply don't have much meaning for us. But I am always happy to have the Western pov laid out for me.

I don't argue nor do I take you to be arguing. This type of forum doesn't emphasize what wonderful, warm people we are. :O)

Your post puzzled me since, if the Orthodox hold Augustine in such low regards as a church father, and Augustine had the backing of the Council of Orange, then just who are the church fathers the Orthodox have listen too? If Augustine arch-rival was Pelegian then logic follows that Orthodoxy is built upon the teaching of Pelegian.

I did some research and found the following article. Due to space I'll post only a portion of it and the reference:

John Cassian was a contemporary of St. Augustine in Gaul (modern France). A Semi-Pelagian monk and founder of many monasteries, he wrote The Institutes and Conferences and slightly modified Pelagius's teachings. "The Semi-Pelagian doctrine taught by John Cassian (d. 440) admits that divine grace (assistance) is necessary to enable a sinner to return unto God and live, yet holds that, from the nature of the human will, man may first spontaneously, of himself, desire and attempt to choose and obey God. They deny the necessity of prevenient but admit the necessity of cooperative grace and conceive regeneration as the product of this cooperative grace." A.A. Hodge

While the Pelagian controversy was at its height, John Cassian, of Syrian extraction and educated in the Eastern Church, having removed to Marseilles, in France, for the purpose of advancing the interests of monkery in that region, began to give publicity to a scheme of doctrine occupying a middle position between the systems of Augustine and Pelagius. This system, whose advocates were called Massilians from the residence of their chief, and afterward Semi-pelagians, is in its essential principles one with that system which is now commonly called Arminianism. Faustus, bishop of Priez, in France, from A. D. 427 to A. D. 480, was one of the most distinguished and successful advocates of this doctrine, which was permanently accepted by the Eastern Church, and for a time was widely disseminated throughout the Western also, until it was condemned by the Canons of Orange, A. D. 529. Sadly, just as Eastern Orthodoxy had done, Roman Catholicism in the middle ages also abandoned the clear biblical teachings on salvation by grace alone that were agreed upon in this synod. Later, Arminans were to take the same path, having also embraced the erroneous doctrine that man, in his depraved state, has the moral ability to turn his affections toward God.

Eastern Orthodox Christians will argue that Cassian was not a semi-pelagian but Cassian himself saw grace and freedom as parallel, grace always cooperating with the human will for man's salvation." (p. 56; cf. Phil. 2:12-13) He taught that the grace of God always invites, precedes and helps our will, and whatever gain freedom of will may attain for its pious effect is not its own desert, but the gift of grace - a grace that is resistible and ineffectual. This is none other than the historical error of Semi-pelagianism/Arminianism, call it what you will. For more on this see his writing, On Grace and Free Will: his famous Conference XIII.

Reference: Do Arminian Theology, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy Have Similar Roots?

It should be noted that Arminians, Catholics and Eastern Orthodxy all argue with us Calvinists about these issues so there must be some truth to this article.