Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev
Source: Православная Русь, Nos.
17–18, 1942.
What is the difference between
Orthodoxy and other Confessions? Answering this question, many educated
Russians would mention the rites but we hardly need wasting time on this sort
of nonsense. Not much closer to the truth, however, is another opinion, fairly
common among those who are better versed in theology. They
would tell us about the filioque, about Papal supremacy and other
teachings rejected by Orthodoxy, and also about the teachings of both Latin and
Orthodox faiths which are rejected by the Protestants. It would appear then
that Orthodoxy has no specific substance of her own, equally unfamiliar to both
Protestant and Latin. To the Orthodox however, both can’t see the truth in the
Orthodox Church. A heresy born of another heresy must keep some part of the
parent if it is not returning to the True Church.
I. An Incomplete Answer
The Slavophile theologians, Alexei
Stepanovich Khomiakov in particular, were the first to draw the line
between the true Church and the Western denominations based not on any
particular dogmatic element, but rather on the general preference of the inner
ideal of Orthodoxy. This is Khomiakov’s outstanding contribution to theology,
to the Church, as well as to the enlightened West, which appreciated it as
highly as the Russian religious writers. It is most clearly seen in the fact
that all European theologians friendly to Orthodoxy speak of her in Khomiakov’s
terms, using precisely his formulations of the confessional differences.
Specifically, the Old Catholics, who have been attracted to Orthodoxy and got
involved in lengthy official correspondence concerning a rapprochement with us,
followed his views in their presentation of the main questions which, in their
opinion, divide us and Old Catholicism, that is, the filioque as
an innovation contrary to Church discipline which calls us to “guard the unity
of the spirit in the bond of peace”, and transubstantiation in the Eucharist as
a borrowing from Western theologians that was foreign to the Church tradition.
Khomiakov’s short book (The
Church Is One and a few other essays) is the most popular of all Russian
theological works, both among our own learned men and abroad. We shall not
therefore, elaborate on it. Just let us recall that he makes the distinction
between the denominations based on their understanding of the ninth clause of
the Creed, that is, on their teaching about the Church. Presenting the Orthodox
teaching on the Truth, severely distorted and almost lost everywhere in the
non-Orthodox West, Khomiakov aptly demonstrates the moral significance of our
spiritual ideal, the overall preference of our faith in contrast to the Western
confessions which have lost one of the most holy, uplifting truths of
Christianity.
Khomiakov sees the Church not so
much as an authority, but rather as a union of souls, complementing
one another by their mystical communion with Christ Who reveals Himself to the
faithful only in their mutual love, in their unity (epitomized by the Ecumenical
Councils). In all issues of Church discipline, and in the very process of
exploring the divine truth — just as this has been established by Church
tradition — he brings a spirit of joy, a spirit alien to subjugation, a spirit
carrying us into the boundless space of communion with the whole world of the
faithful, with all eternity.
Thus, we admit
without reservations that Khomiakov has correctly presented the Orthodox
teaching about the Church, and that he has clearly shown the value of Orthodoxy
compared to the Western denominations, which have lost the understanding of the
moral union of the faithful both in life and teaching, and which have reduced
the Kingdom of God to the level of either a personal achievement or an external
government-like organization. While recognizing this, and paying homage to
Khomiakov for his great theological and missionary works, we have to note that
his definition of Orthodoxy or, in other words, of true, divinely-revealed
Christianity, as opposed to the Western denominations, is incomplete.
It has long been our wish to complete it.
II. Western Theology and
Christian Life
Actually, the difference between
them is much deeper.
The teaching about the Church is,
of course, extremely important, as our communion has to be renewed continually
in our minds. But even apart from the Church question, in the way one
approaches God and one’s own life, a great difference is felt between a
non-Orthodox Westerner and an Orthodox.
Things small and great are
permeated by this difference. Take for example the sources of instruction in
our personal spiritual life. One part of them, which we study in schools as
dogmatic and moral theology, is a borrowing from the Catholics and Protestants:
only the plainest errors of non-Orthodoxy, known to all and condemned by the
church authorities, are deleted. Another part, well known both to educated and
common men, in our time and in the past, back to the ninth century and earlier,
is in our prayers, hymns of the divine services, and the moral teachings of the
Holy Fathers.
But what a remarkable thing!
There is almost nothing in common between the two sources. Certified
theologians do not know our Prologues, our dogmatic hymns (stichera and
canons), our Lives of the Saints except perhaps as simple church-goers, as
lovers of church music, but not as religious scholars. Meanwhile, these
Slavonic writings in thick, clumsy books are the main, if not the only, origin
and nourishment of the living Russian faith, for both the common men and the
more educated. But official theology cannot tap this source, even out of mere
curiosity.
Now look at the best Christians
among us, our teachers of Christian life: Priest-Monk Ambrose of Optina
(+1891), Father John of Kronstadt (+1909), Bishop Theophan the Recluse (+1894,
all three have since been glorified as saints). By no means can they be called
narrow-minded or ignorant; they are grateful graduates of our seminaries and
academies but try to find borrowings from and references to academic theology
in their writings. Except for a few scattered instances, there are none.
Offer them mountains of scholarly
volumes to help in their teaching; they will treat them with respect but will
find nothing to borrow. The same will be true for the ordinary Christian who
seeks understanding of any event or religious experience. It is quite obvious
that our scholarly theology, having been built upon Western principles even
though free of the Western errors, is so far removed from the Orthodox
spiritual reality, so little related to it, that not only is it useless as a
source of instruction, but it cannot even come close to the real spiritual
life.
This could not have happened had
the Western theology been different from the Orthodox only in the
Church-related teachings. As we see, the Western religions have altered the
very notion of Christian life, of its aims and conditions.
III. A Case of the Two
Teachers
Once, as the Rector of the
Theological Academy, I gave an assignment to a gifted student: Compare and
contrast the moral teachings of Bishop Theophan with those of Martensen.
Martensen is a venerable Protestant preacher, recognized as an outstanding moral
theologian, influenced less than others by confessional errors. Bishop Theophan
is an educated Russian theologian, former rector of St. Petersburg Theological
Academy. And you know what? It turns out that the two authors present Christian
morality in a totally different, often opposite way.
Here is the summary of the
results: Bishop Theophan teaches how to make one’s life meet the standards of
Christian perfection, while the Western Bishop (sit venia verbo) takes
from Christianity only as much as is consistent with the standards of modern
secular life. That is, the former accepts Christianity as the eternal foundation
of normal life, and demands that we forcibly change ourselves to bring our
lives into compliance with that norm; the latter accepts the realities of
modern secular life as unchangeable, and only where they allow some variations
does he indicate which options are preferred from the
Christian viewpoint.
Thus, the former calls for moral
heroism, for a life-long struggle; the latter selects whatever elements of
Christianity are suited to us in our current way of life. For the former, the
true life to which man is called is the life eternal, while our current life on
earth with all its historically shaped devices is all but an illusion for
the latter the notion of the future life is merely an uplifting, noble idea, an
idea which contributes to continual improvement of our real life here
on earth.
In the difference between these
two teachers of morality is manifest the difference between the Orthodox faith
and Western religions. One is based upon the concept of Christian
perfection, or sanctity, and from this standpoint evaluates the present
reality; the other is firmly established on the status quo of
the earthly life and strives to determine the minimum of religious practice which
still allows for salvation — if eternity truly exists.
IV. A Sublime and Basic
Principle
“You are pointing not at the
false belief, but at the poor religious attitudes in the West!” our critics
will say.
“That’s correct,” we will reply.
Thus far we have been concerned with the attitudes, with the degeneration of
Western religious life and thought. Now let us look into a sublime principle
which they have lost.
Christianity is a life-long
pursuit of virtue. Christianity is a pearl for which the wise merchant of the
Gospel parable has had to sell all his possessions. It would seem that in the
course of history this self-denying step, this taking up of the cross, meant
different things: at the time of the earthly life of the Savior it was joining
His disciples and following Him; later it became confession of faith and
martyrdom; then, from the fourth to the twentieth cent: gradual attainment of
spiritual perfection on earth, of the freedom from passions, (the attainment)
of all virtues, — just as we ask in the prayer of St. Ephraim, repeating it
over and over during Great Lent with many bows and prostrations:
O Lord and Master of my life, the
spirit of idleness, despondency, ambition, and idle talk give me not. Prostration.
But rather a spirit of chastity,
humble-mindedness, patience, and love bestow upon me Thy servant. Prostration.
Yea, O Lord King, grant me to see
my own failings and not to condemn my brother; for blessed art Thou unto the
ages of ages. Amen. Prostration.
“This is the will of God, your
sanctification,” says the Apostle Paul. We can attain to it only by setting
this as the main and the only goal of our life, by living for the sake
of holiness. This is what the true Christianity is all about and this is
the essence of Orthodoxy versus the heterodoxy of the West. In this respect
(and, consequently, by their nature) the Oriental heresies such as Monophysites
and Armenians are much closer to Orthodoxy than are the Western ones. Like us,
they have set spiritual perfection as the goal of a Christian life, but they
differ from us in the teachings about the conditions for the attainment of that
goal.
V. Ascetic Faith or Worldly
Faith?
Do the Western Christians really
say that there is no need for moral perfection? Would they deny that
Christianity commands us to be perfect?
They would not say that, but they
don’t see it as the essence of Christianity, either. Moreover, in their
view of perfection and the means to attain it they would disagree with
us on every word; they would not even understand, let alone agree, that it is
precisely moral perfection that is the goal of a Christian
life, and not merely the knowledge of God (as Protestants would say) or service
to the Church (Roman Catholics), for which, in their opinion, God Himself gives
us moral perfection as a reward.
Orthodoxy teaches that moral
perfection is gained by intensive, strenuous effort, by inner
struggle, by deprivations, and most of all by self-humiliation. An Orthodox
Christian, by virtue of sincerely and diligently following the spiritual
discipline, participates to a large extent in that struggle: the discipline
itself is designed to facilitate our gradual mortification of passions and
acquisition of blessed perfection. In this we are assisted by our divine
services, by the efforts in preparation for the Holy Communion, by fasting, and
by that almost monastic order of Orthodox life, codified in our Typicon and
followed by our ancestors before Peter the Great, and by all those who live by
the tradition up until this very day.
In short, the Orthodox
faith is an ascetic faith. Orthodox theological thought does not lie in
dead scholastic baggage but influences our life and spreads among the people,
as a study of the ways of spiritual perfection. As such it is manifest in our
church services through theological statements, references to Biblical events,
commandments and reminders of the Last Judgment.
This, of course, is not foreign
to the Western denominations either but they understand salvation as an
external reward given either for a certain amount of good deeds (also
external), or for an unflinching faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ. They
have no knowledge and often lack interest in how a soul should gradually free
itself from the bondage of passions, of how we should go from strength to
strength on our way to freedom from sin and fullness of virtues. There are
ascetics in the West, to be sure, but their life is dominated by dejected,
senseless obedience to the age-old rules and requirements, for which they are
promised forgiveness of sins and future eternal life. Eternal life has
already appeared, as the Apostle John says, and blessed communion with God
is obtained by unflinching asceticism right now, in the words of St. Macarius
the Great. All this is unknown to West.
This ignorance is growing worse
and more crude. Thus, contemporary Western theologians have lost understanding
of the aim of Christianity, of the reason for Christ’s incarnation being just
that — the moral perfection of man. They have, as it were, lost
their minds over the fable of Christ’s coming to earth to give some sort of
happiness to a mankind of some future ages even though He said with all clarity
that His followers must bear a cross of suffering, that they would be
continually persecuted by the world, by their own brethren, children, and even
parents, especially towards the end.
The good things, which the
believers in the “Superstition of Progress” (a witty phrase by S.A. Rachinsky)
are looking forward to, are in fact promised by the Savior in the future life,
but neither the Latins nor the Protestants are willing to accept this for the
simple reason that, frankly speaking, they believe quite feebly in the
Resurrection, and quite strongly in the happy life here and now, which the
Apostles, on the contrary, call a vanishing vapor (James 4:14). That is why the
Christian West will not and cannot understand the renunciation of this life by
Christianity, which commands us to struggle “having put off the old man
with his deeds and having put on the new, which is renewed after the image of
Him that created him” (Col 3:9-101).
VI. Love and How to Keep It
The modern man would object
saying that Christianity is love of one’s neighbor, and love is
compassion in sorrows, and asceticism is a fabrication of monks.
I will not argue the first point
as K. Leontiev (+1891, Russian author close to the Optina Elders)
once did. Moreover, I will admit that if love were at all possible without
spiritual effort, without inner warfare, and without external labors, then
neither of these would be necessary. But love dried up among men just when
Luther began speaking on their behalf. The prediction came true that “for the
multiplication of lawlessness the love of many will dry up.” In the absence of
external labors and inner struggle, passions and lawlessness reign, and where sin
is in control, love dries up and men begin to hate one another (Matt. 24: 10).
Now let us turn to the second
point. It is quite true that love is expressed most of all in compassion, but
not so much for the material troubles of our fellow men as for their
sinfulness, and this compassion is possible only for someone who is weeping for
his own sins, that is, for a struggler.
Asceticism is a fabrication of
monks… A Muscovite lady once made this point even move vividly: “Your whole
religion is a fabrication of churchmen. I recognize only the Iveron Mother of
God and Martyr Triphon (l’Iverskaya et Triphon le martyr — like
most of the nineteenth-century Russian nobility the lady spoke French rather
than Russian), but the rest is nonsense.” This, of course, is a testimony to
the ignorance of the meaning of asceticism among our educated class.
Her way of thinking does not in
general predetermine the way of our life; it requires neither virginity, nor
fasting, nor seclusion. Asceticism, or spiritual struggle, is a life filled
with work on oneself, a life aimed at the destruction of one’s own passions
such as adultery, fornication, self-love, spite, envy, gluttony, laziness, and
so forth and instead filling the soul with the spirit of chastity, humility,
patience, and love. Love never survives as a stand-alone virtue, but always
follows and helps accomplish other traits of a human soul mentioned above.
Certainly, a Christian willing to
pursue his own way will discover that he has to withdraw from worldly
distractions, to humble the flesh, and pray much more to God, but these actions
have no ultimate value in the eyes of God. They have value for us only as means
to the acquisition of the gifts of the Spirit. Of much greater value is the
spiritual struggle inside the human soul — self-reproach, self-humiliation,
self-resistance, self-constraint, introspection, vision of the Last Judgment
and future life, control over feelings, struggle against evil thoughts,
repentance and confession, wrath against sin and temptation, etc, — things
totally unfamiliar to our modern learned men, yet so clear and well-known to
any faithful villager, present or past. This is precisely the spiritual
alphabet mentioned by Bishop Tikhon of Zadonsk (+1783, glorified as
saint):
“There are two kinds of learned
and wise men: some study in schools from books, and a great many of them are
less intelligent than the simple and unlettered, since they do not know the
Christian alphabet; they sharpen the mind, they correct and adorn words, but
they do not wish to reform their hearts.
“Others who study in prayer with
humility and diligence and are enlightened by the Holy Spirit are wiser than
the philosophers of this age; they are devout and holy and beloved of God;
although these do not know the alphabet, they well comprehend everything; they
speak simply, crudely, but they live beautifully and auspiciously. These, O
Christian, emulate” (III, 193).
This is the
essence of true Christianity as a life-time effort. Disregarded by the Western
denominations, it is still at the center of all Orthodox theology which
interprets the entire Divine revelation, all events and proverbs of the Bible,
in the context of these stages of spiritual perfection. Having been incarnate,
humiliated, and afflicted by our sins, the Savior has granted us, in His Person
and in communion with Him, an opportunity for this spiritual effort, which is
the way to our salvation. Some follow it (Phil 2:12) voluntarily and
consciously, living a spiritual life. Others pass through almost against their
will, reformed by sufferings sent from God and by the Church discipline. Still
others correct their straying by repentance facing their death in this world
and receive enlightenment in the future life. Yet in all cases the meaning of
the Christian endeavor is always in asceticism, in the work on one’s soul and
thus such is also the essence of Christian theology.
VII. Ignorance versus Reason
If we trace all follies of the
West, those developed in its religion as well as those rooted in its customs,
which are transmitted to us through the “window of Europe,” we will see them
all stemming from ignorance of the nature of Christian faith as a personal
struggle for gradual self-perfection. Such, for instance, is the
Latino-Protestant concept of the Redemption as the revenge of the Divine
Majesty (also called forensic soteriology, a concept which grew out of the
feudal notion of knightly honor), where God is offended by Adam’s sin and only
the shedding of the blood of the Son Jesus Christ can avenge the Father’s
anger. Such is their material teaching about the Sacraments. Such is also their
teaching about the new instrument of Divine Revelation — the Pope of Rome,
whoever he might be in actual life. Such, likewise, is the teaching of works of
obligation and of supererogation. Such is, finally, the Protestant dogma
of salvation through faith, which rejects the Church and her structure.
In all these fallacies
Christianity is seen as something foreign to us, to our minds and hearts, some
sort of negotiated agreement between us and the Godhead, stipulating, for
reasons unknown, that we accept certain obscure statements and rules to receive
in return a reward of eternal salvation.
To defend themselves against
obvious objections, Western theologians have reinforced their teachings on the
alleged incomprehensibility not only of the nature of God, but also of the
Divine Law, and sought like the Scholastics, Luther, and even Ritschel in our
times to condemn reason as the enemy of faith, while the Fathers of the Church,
like St. Basil the Great and even St. Isaac the Syrian, see the enemy of faith
not in reason, but rather in human stupidity, neglect, light-mindedness, and
stubbornness.
VIII. Moral Values Revisited
Turning from religious errors to
the moral values of the West, we see in some of them direct opposites of the
Christian commandments, and these perversions are so firmly rooted in the
foundation of Western social and personal life that even the greatest upheavals,
which have toppled Christian altars and destroyed royal thrones, have not
affected those savage and brutal prejudices. The Lord commands us to forgive
but Western morality calls for revenge and bloodshed. The Lord demands that we
humbly think of ourselves as great sinners but the West puts “self-esteem” above
all. The Lord calls us to rejoice and be glad when we are persecuted and cast
out but the West seeks the “restoration of honor.” For the Lord and His
Apostles pride is a demonic sin but for the West it is nobility.
The lowest Russian beggar, or
even a half-believing native, a recent convert who has not yet completely
parted with his pagan practices, can tell good from evil better than the moral
authorities of the thousand-year-old Western culture, a dismal mess of the
shreds of Christianity with the delusions of antiquity.
And the reason for these follies
is the failure to grasp the simple truth that Christianity is an ascetic
religion, a teaching on gradual liberation from the passions, on the means and
conditions of gradual acquisition of virtues, conditions both internal, that
is, personal struggle, and external, that is, dogmatic tenets and grace-filled
Mysteries, all having one purpose: to heal human sinfulness and lead us to
perfection.
Russian source online:
English source:
https://www.stxenia.org/difference
