Resolution of the Moscow Conference of the Heads of the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches on the Question of the Ecumenical Movement and the Orthodox Church

July 17, 1948

 

 

We have arrived at a full and complete understanding, that at the present time the influence of the non-Orthodox is directed upon the Orthodox Church from at least two sides.

On the one hand, the head of the Roman Catholic Church (in the person of the Pope) having lost, as it were, the feeling of a saving faith in the invincibility of the Church of Christ by the gates of hell, and being concerned with maintaining earthly authority by following the line of utilizing political ties with the great ones of this world, is trying to tempt the Orthodox Church to an agreement with her. The Papacy tries to achieve this latter aim by creating various forms of unifying organizations, which tend in this direction.

On the other hand, Protestantism, in all its multiformity and division into sects and movements, has lost faith in the eternal nature and the immutability of Christian ideals, in its proud disdain of Apostolic rules and of those of the ancient Fathers, and strives to enter upon a way of resistance to Roman Papalism. Protestantism seeks an ally for this struggle in the Orthodox Church so as to acquire for itself the significance of an influential international force.

And here Orthodoxy will be faced with an even greater temptation, that of evading the search for the Kingdom of God and of entering into a political realm which is so alien to it. Such is the practical task of the ecumenical movement today.

Together with Orthodoxy proper, other Churches are subjected to the same kind of influence—the Armeno-Gregorian, the Syro- Jacobite, the Abyssinian, the Coptic and Syro-Chaldean non- Roman Churches, and also the Old Catholic Church, so closely related to Orthodoxy.

Taking into consideration that:

(a) The aims of the ecumenical movement, as expressed in the formation of the ‘World Council of Churches’, with the further aim of organizing an ‘Ecumenical Church’, in our contemporary sphere, do not correspond to the ideal of Christianity or to the aims of the Church of Christ, as understood by the Orthodox Church.

(b) The directing of their efforts into the main stream of social and political life, and to the creating of an ‘Ecumenical Church’ as an important international power, appear to be, as it were, a falling into that temptation which was rejected by Christ in the. desert, and a turning of the Church on to the path of attempting to catch human souls in the nets of Christ by un-Christian methods.

(c) The Ecumenical movement, in its present plan of work in the ‘World Council of Churches’, unfavourably for the Church of Christ and far too prematurely, has renounced its confidence in the possibility of reunion within the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. The predominantly Protestant membership of the Edinburgh Conference in 1937, either having failed or anticipating failure, hastened to close down any efforts towards the achievement of the reunion of the Churches through grace. For the sake of self-preservation Protestantism followed along the line of least resistance, along a path of abstract ‘unionism’, based on social-economic and even political foundations. This movement has even based its further work on the theory of the creation of a new external apparatus, “The Ecumenical Church’, as an institution within the State, which is in one way or another tied to it and which possesses secular influence.

(d) In the course of the whole of the last ten years (from 1937 to 1948 inclusive) the theme of the reunion of the Churches on dogmatic and doctrinal grounds, so far as documents show, is no longer discussed, only a secondary pedagogical significance is ascribed to it for some future generation. Thus our contemporary ecumenical movement does not safeguard the task of the reunion of the Churches by the way and means of grace.

(e) The lowering of the requirements for conditions of unity to a single one, namely that of recognizing Jesus Christ as Our Lord, debases Christian doctrine to the kind of faith which, according to the Apostle, is available to devils (James ii, 19; Matthew viii, 29; Mark v, 7). Hence, making a statement about this present-day situation, our Council of Heads and Representatives of Autocephalous Orthodox Churches, having called in prayer for the help of the Holy Spirit, has resolved as follows:

To inform the ‘World Council of Churches’, in reply to the invitation sent to all of us to participate in the Amsterdam Assembly as its members, that all the Orthodox National Churches, which are participating in the present Conference, are obliged to refuse to take any part in the ecumenical movement in its present-day shape.

(Signed) humble ALEXEI, by the mercy of God Patriarch of Moscow and of all Russia.

humble CALLISTRAT, Catholicos Patriarch of all Georgia.

A.E.M. Patriarch of Serbia, GABRIEL.

humble JUSTINIAN, by God’s mercy Patriarch of Rumania.

humble STEPHAN, Exarch of Bulgaria.

From the Church of Antioch:

Metropolitan of Emessa, ALEXANDER;

Metropolitan of the Lebanon, ELIJAH.

From the Church of Alexandria:

Metropolitan of Emessa, ALEXANDER; Metropolitan of the Lebanon, ELIJAH.

From the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church:

humble TIMOTHY Archbishop of Byelostock and Belsk.

From the Albanian Orthodox Church:

Bishop of Korchinsk PAISSY.

The Exarch of the Moscow Patriarchate in Czechoslovakia, ELEUTHERIUS, Archbishop of Prague and Czechoslovakia.

The Armenian Church joins the above in this decision on the question of the ecumenical movement.

(Signed) GEORGE VI, Catholicos of all Armenians.

 

Source: Documents on Christian Unity, Fourth Series, 1948-1957, edited by G. K. A. Bell, Oxford University Press, London, 1958, pp. 33-35.

Ethnicity and Orthodoxy

We are often astounded at the number of letters we receive from converts to the Orthodox Church who express absolute outrage at the idea that we refer to American Orthodoxy as immature and the Orthodoxy in Greece, Russia, Romania, Serbia, and so on as an example to be drawn on. Often the nastiness towards ethnic Orthodox —what one Priest recently called "ethnic bashing"— is so extreme that it goes beyond the boundaries of common civility. The consequent feelings of hatred and disdain towards "ethnic Orthodox" thwart objective thought about this issue and more often than not preclude further dialogue. This is unfortunate.

We recently saw a statement by the late Hieromonk Seraphim of Platina rather misleadingly used to suggest that Christianity is meant to change people, not society. At a basic level, since people do, indeed, constitute society, the Christian journey begins with individuals; but it triumphs in our common salvation. As Khomiakov the Russian philosopher noted, in an oft-cited aphorism, we may be lost individually, but we are saved only together. After all, this vision of God's people is as old as the covenant between God and the Jews. And just as the Jews passed on the fruits of that covenant to the New Israel, so in modern times —like it or not— the West, which lost and squandered its Orthodoxy, inherited from Byzantium and from the Eastern European Churches the treasury of Orthodoxy. Those who cannot accept this are not mature Christians. Those who do not appreciate it are poor receivers.

Talk about "those Greeks," "the Russians," etc. in deprecating terms is un-Christian. Certainly ethnic Orthodox are not all good members of the Church. And certainly many converts surpass them in piety. But the ethnics are the hosts and the converts are the guests. Those who fail to see this also fail to learn the lesson in humility contained in the Gospel accounts of Christ's statement to the Greek woman who asked that He heal her demonized daughter: that the children's bread should not be cast to dogs. Rather than expressing rage at being called a dog, the woman humbly told Christ that the dogs under the table also eat of the children's crumbs. Thereupon, "for this saying" [St. Mark 7:29], her daughter was healed. Such humility can quickly heal the strife between so-called "ethnic Orthodox" and converts, too, for it demonstrates the great error of those who demand rights and equality in a realm where privilege should always succumb to humility and submission.

Using the word "Byzantine" in an anti-Orthodox, polemical way, denigrating those who, however imperfect in their Faith, have bequeathed that Faith to a lost West, and insulting others because they may have insulted you — these things are not, again, Orthodox. Nor are they basically Christian.

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. VI (1989), No. 1, p. 2.

The Father of Rusyn Orthodoxy in America

 

The chief credit for the reunion with the Orthodox Church of a significant portion of the Carpatho-Rusyn and Galician emigrants in North America belongs to the “father of Rusyn America,” Protopresbyter Alexis Toth/Tovt (1854–1909), formerly a professor of canon law at the Greek-Catholic seminary in Prešov.

Alexis Toth was born on March 14, 1853, into the family of the Rusyn Greek-Catholic priest George, not far from the city of Prešov in northeastern Slovakia, which at that time was part of Austria-Hungary. His brother was also a priest, and his uncle was a bishop in Prešov. He received his theological education at the Roman Catholic seminary in the city of Esztergom and at the Uniate seminary in the city of Ungvár. He served as rector of a Uniate parish and held the post of director and professor of the seminary in Prešov. Having been widowed and being childless, he received an appointment to America, where he arrived in 1889 and began serving in the Rusyn parish in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the simple Rusyn people of Galicia and Transcarpathia, despite their formal Uniatism, continued to adhere to the “old faith,” as Orthodoxy was called there. In the parishes the Julian calendar and the Church Slavonic language in divine services were preserved, along with the ecclesiastical chants traditional for that region, the rites, and ancient iconography. The divine services helped them preserve their native spirit and resist Catholicization, Polonization, and Magyarization up to the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Austro-Hungarian state reduced the Rusyns to such poverty that, fleeing death by starvation, tens of thousands of Galicians and Carpatho-Rusyns streamed into North America, where they realized that they had been confused and deceived in their homeland. This is precisely why they returned en masse from Uniatism to the faith of their forefathers — to true Orthodoxy. In all, during the period from 1891 until the First World War, about 120 Uniate Carpatho-Rusyn parishes, numbering around 90,000 faithful, were reunited with the Russian Orthodox Church in America.

And this return to the native Orthodox Church began in 1891, when Father Alexis Toth, together with his parish, was reunited with Orthodoxy. At that time, misunderstandings began between him and the Roman Catholic bishop of the local diocese, to whom he was supposed to be subject. This bishop was a supporter of Americanization and of the unification of the rite of the Catholic Church in America, and he also had a negative attitude toward married clergy, non-Latin worship, and Uniatism as such. Father Alexis came to the conclusion that the only way out of the conflict was a return to the bosom of the Orthodox Russian Church.

“When I saw and heard all this, then I resolved upon what had long been living in my heart, and because of which my soul had been aching… to be Orthodox… but how?… It was necessary to be very cautious. That unfortunate union — the beginning of decline and of every evil — had taken deep root among our people; 250 years had passed since this yoke was laid upon our necks!… I fervently prayed to God that He would give me help and strength to enlighten my darkened faithful… In this matter the parishioners themselves helped me. When I summoned my parishioners, explained to them my sorrowful situation, and declared that nothing remained but to leave them, some of them said: ‘No, let us go to the Russian bishop; we cannot forever bow down to strangers!’” [1]

In 1891, the first 365 Carpatho-Rusyns followed him.

In San Francisco, where since 1872 the center of the only diocese of the Orthodox Russian Church in America at that time had been located, the first meeting of Father Alexis Toth with Vladimir Sokolovsky-Avtonomov, Bishop of the Aleutians and Alaska from December 12, 1887, to June 8, 1891, and a native of the Poltava region, took place in February 1891. A month later the Russian hierarch arrived in Minneapolis and, on March 25, 1891, received the rector, together with his entire parish, into the Orthodox Church. On July 14, 1892, the Holy Synod of the Russian Church officially confirmed the reception of Father Alexis and his parishioners into the Aleutian and Alaskan Diocese. Bishop Vladimir appointed him dean and also entrusted him with the parish in Chicago. Father Alexis’s parish became the first Orthodox parish in the entire area between San Francisco and New York.

In the early period, Protopresbyter Alexis and his parishioners had to face open religious and national hostility. He was accused of selling his faith and his Rusyn birthright to the “Muscovites” for money. However, for a year and a half he received no salary at all from the Synod in Russia, and in order to support himself he was forced to work in a bakery. The conversion of Father Alexis Toth’s parish to Orthodoxy served as an example for many Uniate communities in the United States and Canada.

Father Alexis knew Hungarian, Carpatho-Rusyn, Russian, German, and Latin. Father Alexis’s best-known book was Where to Seek the Truth?, which was reprinted several times in several languages, serving as an Orthodox catechism for former Uniates. For his labors in the field of establishing Orthodoxy in America, Father Alexis was awarded the mitre by the Synod of the Orthodox Russian Church, and from Emperor Nicholas II he was honored with the Orders of St. Vladimir, 4th and 3rd Class, and of St. Anna, 3rd and 2nd Class. In 1907, St. Tikhon Bellavin proposed that he become a vicar bishop of the diocese of the Russian Orthodox Greek-Catholic Church in America for the Rusyns, but he declined, citing his advanced age. In 1909, shortly before his repose, Father Alexis was elevated to the rank of protopresbyter.

Father Alexis Toth reposed on May 7, New Style, April 24, Old Style, 1909. In 1916, seven years after the repose of Father Alexis Toth, his body was reinterred in a special crypt behind the altar wall of the main church of St. Tikhon’s Monastery in South Canaan, Pennsylvania. At that time, it was found to be incorrupt. In 1994, Father Alexis’s coffin was opened once more, and again his body was found incorrupt. On May 29, 1994, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Orthodoxy in America, he was glorified among the saints by the Orthodox Church in America, his feast day being May 7, as the “Father of American Orthodoxy” and “Confessor and Defender of Orthodoxy in North America.”

The canonization of Protopresbyter Alexis took place on May 29–30, 1994, at St. Tikhon’s Monastery, where his holy relics rest in a reliquary by the iconostasis inside the monastery church. A particle of the relics of righteous Alexis is located in the Orthodox Church of the Holy Great-Martyr George in Lviv. Father Alexis is venerated not only in Transcarpathia, but also in the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia.

This holy Enlightener of the Uniates bears witness that the return of the Rusyns to Orthodoxy, including in Galicia, before 1946 was voluntary, and that the Russian Orthodox Church was reborn in Western Rus’, where it had been native since the time of the holy Prince Vladimir, not “with the help of Stalinist-Soviet tanks,” but as the result of God’s Providence and of the conscious striving of many Galicians toward Orthodoxy. [2] At the very beginning of the twentieth century, Orthodoxy reached Galicia not only across the border with Russia, but also to a considerable extent across the ocean — through emigrants returning from America. At [Uniate Metropolitan Andrey] Sheptytsky’s demand, the Uniate priests took an oath from emigrants before their departure for work, that they would not convert to Orthodoxy in America. Despite this, the settlers returned en masse to the faith of their forefathers, and upon arriving in New York their first act was to come to an Orthodox church and demand from the Orthodox priest release from the oath previously given under compulsion. [3]

According to the recollections of Archbishop Vitaly Maximenkov of Eastern America and New Jersey (1873–1960), who arrived in New York in October 1934 from Carpathian Rus’, his “American Orthodox flock consisted 80% of Carpatho-Rusyns and Galicians.” [4] In the 1930s, in the Carpathian region, for example in Maramureș, which after the First World War was incorporated into Czechoslovakia, conversions from Uniatism to Orthodoxy took on a mass character. In Galicia, the Polish authorities placed various obstacles in the way of reunion with the Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, in Lemkovyna and Galicia, from 1923 to 1929, the number of those who returned to Orthodoxy was about 30,000 people, and by 1933 this figure had increased to 60,000 people.

 

1. Memoirs of Father A. Toth. From the book by Protopresbyter Peter Kohanik, The Beginning of the History of American Rus’. [Connecticut: Petr Gardy Publishing, 1970], p. 488.

2. Frolov, Kirill Aleksandrovich. Carpatho-Russian Moscophilism — a “Blank Spot” in National History and Culture. // Institute of CIS Countries. Institute of Diaspora and Integration. Information-Analytical Bulletin. No. 6 (May 19, 2000). http://www.zatulin.ru/institute/sbornik/006/01.shtml

3. An Independent Church. http://do.znate.ru/docs/index-3124.html?page=7

4. Frolov, K. Saint Alexis Toth — Spiritual Leader of the American Carpatho-Rusyns // http://www.pravoslavie.ru/put/sv/svalexiytovt.htm; Protopresbyter Gabriel Kostelnik and the Lviv Council of 1946 // The Union in the Twentieth Century. http://unia-vs.narod.ru/material/kost.htm; Sulyak, S. G. The Rusyns in History: Past and Present (II) — http://odnarodyna.com.ua/content/rusiny-v-istorii-proshloe-i-nastoyashchee-ii; Mironov, Gregory. A Divided People. Rusyn American Rus’. Part 1. http://ruskline.ru/analitika/2014/09/12/razdelennyj_narod/ Part 2. http://ruskline.ru/analitika/2014/10/14/razdelennyj_narod/

 

Russian source: https://www.orthodox-canada.com/ru/russkiy-otets-pravoslaviya-v-amerike/

 

An Important Anniversary (June 1755 – June 2025): 270 Years Since the Synodal Condemnation of the Baptism / Sprinkling of the Latins

Metropolitan Cyprian [II] of Oropos and Fili | June 4/17, 2025 [1]

 

 

A. In the year 1755, a bull was issued by Pope Benedict XIV (1740–1758), which recognized the validity of the Orthodox Mysteries and Rites, following a relevant suggestion from the Jesuits and Uniates, who were especially active in proselytizing in our East and were spreading the claim that supposedly there was no difference whatsoever between Orthodox and Latins, especially in the Mystery of Baptism, so as to attract the pious to Papism.

Meanwhile, a deep division had already arisen in Constantinople between those who were in favor of accepting, by economy, the baptism / sprinkling of the Westerners, and those who rejected it as “falsely so called,” since it was performed by sprinkling and not by three full immersions.

Because of the long and vigorous disputes, the Patriarch of Constantinople Cyril V (first tenure: 1748–1751; second tenure: 1752–1757) convened a Synod in July 1755, in which the Patriarchs of the East also took part: Matthew of Alexandria (1746–1765) and Parthenius of Jerusalem (1737–1766).

This holy Synod condemned and rejected the baptism / sprinkling of the Latins, and generally of all the Westerners; and this Act (the relevant Definition was published in 1756) is, and continues to be, down to the present day, the last relevant official decision of the Orthodox Church.

It is noteworthy that the best Orthodox theologians of that period, for example Eustratios Argentis and Eugenios Voulgaris, together with the People and the Monks, aligned themselves unreservedly in favor of this stance of the ever-memorable Patriarch Cyril V, who possessed all the marks of a genuine Orthodox Hierarch, embracing the Hesychastic-Kollyvades Tradition.

In this regard, the characterization of Patriarch Cyril V by the distinguished scholar of his time, Sergios Makraios (1735?–1819), is very significant:

“He was ... upright in judgment, simple in manner, although to some he seemed crafty, since he opposed in many ways the many devices of his adversaries; a lover of virtue, a lover of the good, gentle, fond of learning, devoted to the reading of the divine books, having chosen the more perfect life. For this reason, he also kept greater vigils and more continuous fasts, loved longer ecclesiastical services, and seemed noble in all things; keen in matters to be done, resolute in what seemed good, unbending and fearless before opposing forces. Hence he was known as a fervent zealot of the Orthodox doctrines, and was spoken of by all the people and loved exceptionally, enchanting and drawing to himself the souls of all by the splendor of his own virtues, even though his slanderers contrived in various ways to conceal the true zeal of the man, calling him cunning, just as the heretics defamed the most Orthodox man as a heretic...” [2]

***

B. Within the circles of the so-called Ecumenical Movement (1920 ff.), extensive discussions have taken place and continue to take place, especially concerning the Mystery of Baptism, by which entrance into the One and Only Church is accomplished.

The Ecumenists of Orthodox origin, in these discussions, do not take into account the Revealed Truth; they do not follow the Evangelical, Apostolic, Synodal, and Patristic Tradition.

They have formulated with utmost clarity the anti-Orthodox view, and they insist upon it, that the “spirit of brotherhood” between them and the Papists “derives from the one Baptism and from participation in the sacramental life,” since “by virtue of their Baptism they are incorporated into Christ”! [3]

Also, in the Text of the Balamand Union (Lebanon, June 1993), the following declaration, among others, was signed by the Ecumenists of Orthodox origin and by the Vatican, by which their self-consciousness was very clearly proclaimed: that Papism and Orthodoxy are supposedly Sister Churches, supposedly have Common Mysteries, and supposedly have Common Soteriological Possibilities:

“On both sides it is recognized that what Christ entrusted to His Church—confession of the apostolic faith, participation in the same mysteries, especially in the one priesthood which celebrates the one sacrifice of Christ, apostolic succession of the bishops—cannot be regarded as the exclusive property of one of our Churches. It is clear that within this framework every rebaptism is excluded.” [4]

It is most evident that the Union of the Orthodox and Papist Ecumenists at Balamand in Lebanon constituted the triumph of papal diplomacy and proved in the most indisputable manner that what was initially regarded as the small and secondary issue of the change of the Calendar in 1924 led to the rejection of the great and primary things, that is, to the complete ecumenization and Latinization of the Orthodox.

***

C. Yet for one more reason, too, the review of the Definition of 1755 concerning the so-called baptism of the Westerners is very timely, since the baptism performed today, even within the bounds of Innovation, that is, of Ecumenism–New Calendarism, tends to become, according to exactness, sprinkling.

The differences, however, between the one who is baptized and the one who is sprinkled are unbridgeable, as the ever-memorable Teacher of the Nation, Konstantinos Oikonomos ex Oikonomon (1780–1857), very characteristically points out:

a) The first “is buried as one dead in a tomb,” “and rises again,” in “imitation of the Lord.” The second, “being wetted, stands upright” and “neither descends nor rises again ... as from a tomb.”

b) The first “depicts through his own body the three-day burial and resurrection.” The second “does not himself in any way depict the mystery,” not participating in the event itself. Through sprinkling, rather, he undergoes “a strange and unnatural ... burial.”

c) The first “has the tomb ... into which ... he descends.” The second “bears the tomb, as it were, placed upon his head, and from there descending down to his feet; what could be more false than this?” [5]

It is thus established that the Holy Fathers were indeed God-bearing and God-moved, when they maintained through Saint Gregory of Nyssa that: “the slight deviation from the truth has given passage to impiety.” [6]

[the small departure from the truth has given entrance / a passageway to impiety].

***

The Decree (Ὅρος) of the Holy Church of Christ Concerning the Baptism of the Westerners

[July 1755]

There being many means through which we are vouchsafed our salvation, and these, so to speak, being interlinked and intercon­nected in a ladderlike manner, in that they all look to the same end, the first of such means is Baptism, which was entrusted by God to the Sacred Apostles, inasmuch as without it the rest are inefficacious. For Scripture says: “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.” For it was altogether fitting that, whereas the first birth brings man into this mortal life, another, more mystical mode of generation should be found, one neither be­ginning from corruption not terminating therein, through which it would be possible for us to imitate the Author of our salvation, Jesus Christ. For the water of Baptism in the font is understood as a womb and becomes the birth for him who is born, as Chrysostomos says; while the Spirit that descends into the water is understood as God, Who forms the embryo. And just as He, after being placed in the sepulchre, returned to life on the third day, so those who believe, go­ing under the water instead of the earth, in three immersions depict in themselves the Grace of the three-day Resurrection, the water being sanctified by the descent of the All-Holy Spirit, so that the body might be illumined by visible water and that the soul might receive sanctification by the invisible Spirit. For just as the water in a cauldron partakes of the heat of the fire, so the water in the font is likewise transformed by the energy of the Spirit into Divine power, cleansing those who are thus baptized and making them worthy of adoption as sons. But as for those who are initiated in any other way, instead of granting them cleansing and adoption, it renders them impure and sons of darkness.

Since, therefore, the question arose three years ago now as to whether the baptisms of heretics, which are administered contrary to the tradition of the Holy Apostles and Divine Fathers and con­trary to the custom and ordinance of the Catholic and Apostolic Church, are to be accepted when they come over to us: we, as having by Divine mercy been raised in the Orthodox Church, following the Canons of the Sacred Apostles and the Divine Fathers, acknowledg­ing only one—our own—Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, and accepting her Mysteries and, consequently, her Divine Baptism, ab­hor by common verdict all of those rites—the inventions of corrupt men— administered by heretics not as the Holy Spirit commanded the Sacred Apostles and as the Church of Christ performs them to this day, knowing them to be strange and alien to the entire Apos­tolic Tradition. And such as come over to us from them we receive as unordained and unbaptized, following our Lord Jesus Christ, Who enjoined His Disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”; [following] the Sacred and Divine Apostles, who command us to baptize proselytes with three immer­sions and emersions, and at each of the immersions to pronounce one Name of the Holy Trinity; following the Sacred Dionysios, equal to the Apostles, who tells us “to baptize the proselyte, stripped of every garment, thrice in a font containing sanctified water and oil, invok­ing the threefold Hypostasis of the Divine Blessedness, and, as soon as he has been baptized, to seal him with the most divinizing Chrism and to render him thenceforth a participant in the most sanctifying Eucharist”; and following the Second and Quinisext OEcumeni­cal Synods, which decree that we receive as unbaptized those coming to Orthodoxy who were not baptized with three immersions and emersions and who did not invoke one of the Divine Hypostases at each immersion, but were baptized in some other fashion.

Therefore, we also, following these Divine and sacred decrees, deem the baptisms of heretics worthy of rejection and abhorrence as being disconsonant with and alien to the Divine Apostolic edict and as ineffectual waters, as the Divine Ambrose and St. Athanasios the Great say, since they provide no sanctification to those who receive them, nor are they of any avail to the cleansing of sins. We receive as unbaptized those who come over to the Orthodox Faith, who were baptized without being baptized, and without any hazard we baptize them in accordance with the Apostolic and Synodal Can­ons, upon which Christ’s Holy, Apostolic, and Catholic Church, the common Mother of us all, firmly rests. On the occasion of this our joint determination and declaration we seal this our Decree, which is consonant with the Apostolic and Synodal ordinances, confirming it by our signatures.

In the year of salvation 1755,

† Cyril, by the mercy of God Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and OEcumenical Patriarch

† Matthew, by the mercy of God Pope and Patriarch of the Great City of Alexandria, and Judge of the OEcumene

† Parthenios, by the mercy of God Patriarch of the Holy City of Jerusalem and All Palestine

 

Footnotes

1. Principal sources:

a. Protopresbyter G. Metallinos, “I Confess One Baptism...,” Athens 1983.

b. Ioannis Karmiris, The Dogmatic and Symbolic Monuments..., vol. II, Athens 1953.

c. Rallis-Potlis, Syntagma..., vol. V, Athens 1858.

d. Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum..., vol. 38, Paris 1907.

e. Eustratios Argentis, The Flower of Piety, 2nd ed., Leipzig 1757.

f. Evangelos A. Skouvaras, Censuring Texts of the 18th Century Against the Anabaptists, Athens 1967.

g. Eleni G. Giannakopoulou, The Baptism of the Non-Orthodox, 1453–1756..., 2nd ed., Athens 2015.

h. Christos K. Papathanasiou, Baptism “According to Exactness” and the Deviations from It, Athens 2001.

The Definition was first published in 1756, in the work Censure of Sprinkling, pp. 173–176.

2. P. G. Metallinos, as above, p. 62, note 287.

3. Archim. Cyprian Agiokyprianites, Orthodoxy and the Ecumenical Movement, p. 18, Athens 1997 (“Common Communiqué” of Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope John Paul II, Rome 1995. See the periodical Episkepsis, no. 520/31 July 1995, p. 20).

4. Newspaper Katholiki, no. 2,705/20 July 1993, p. 3: “Uniatism as a Method of Union in the Past, and the Present Search for Full Communion,” § 13 (the official text of the “Seventh Plenary Session of the International Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue,” Balamand, Lebanon, 17–24 June 1993).

5. P. G. Metallinos, as above, p. 42, note 184.

6. Saint Gregory of Nyssa, PG vol. 44, col. 1249.

 

Greek source: https://www.imoph.org/pdfs/2026/05/08/20260508a270-eti-syn-katadikis.pdf

Translation of the Oros is from the text previously distributed by the Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, Etna, CA.

The Example of Job

An excerpt from the book, Ο Θεός δεν θέλει τον πόνο των ανθρώπων, by Dr. Jean-Claude Larchet.

 

The Book of Job constitutes, with regard to the question of suffering, one of the deepest and most powerful reflections ever written. This particular book, in the spirit that pervades it, stands at the threshold between the Old and the New Testament.

God is not the cause of the afflictions that suddenly befall Job

It is a teaching of the Book of Job that God is not the cause of the afflictions that suddenly befall Job, and, beyond him, human beings.

Job, of course, throughout the book, appears to see God as the author of the things that have happened to him. This bears witness to his deep faith in God, his devotion to Him, his reverence for His omnipotence, and his hope in His person. This particular attitude is also attested by the fact that Job, although he considered that God stood at the origin of the things that were happening to him, refuses to accuse Him, to question His justice and goodness, and to rise up against Him.

We shall note, however, that Job sees in the person of God Him Who had given him all his former goods. In his misfortune, he continues to glorify Him for them, and considers it natural that those goods, which he did not deserve and which were freely given to him by God, were also taken away from him without cause: “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there, to mother earth. The Lord gave everything, and the Lord has taken it back. Blessed be His name unto the ages” (Job 1:21). As Saint John Chrysostom observes in his Commentary on this particular passage, Job, far from accusing God of having taken these goods away from him, considers that they did not belong to him, and glorifies Him especially for the fact that He had offered them to him. Job maintains the same attitude toward his wife as well, when she comes to propose to him that he curse God; and indeed, he answers her: “Shall we receive only good things from God? Should we not also receive evil things?” (Job 2:10). And Saint John Chrysostom comments on these words as follows: “For what reason did He give the good things? Not because they deserved them. Therefore, let us not now be grieved because we suffer hardship although we do not deserve such a thing. Especially since He was sovereign and could have given only evil things. But since He also gave good things, why are we distressed?”

Thus God, Who appeared above all as the One Who had given Job his former goods, is also presented—and this is very vivid in the epilogue of the book—as the One Who restores him to his goods and even grants him greater goods (Job 42:10–16). Between these two points in time, God appears as the One in Whom Job must, and rightly ought to, place his hope, in order both to endure the afflictions that crush him and also to be delivered from them.

The afflictions that befall Job are not a punishment for his personal sins

It constitutes a fundamental teaching of the Book of Job that the afflictions that befall him, as likewise those that befall human beings in general, are not a punishment for some personal sin.

Job’s friends seek to prove to him and to make him admit the opposite, namely, that his misfortunes are a just punishment from God for his sins.

Job’s friends place themselves within a logic that predominates in the Old Testament, according to which, in this world, God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. This schema is confirmed throughout by their words: “Those who cultivate injustice and sow calamity, they reap injustice and calamity. By the breath of God they are destroyed; by the blast of His wrath they perish” (Job 4:8–9); “The whole life of the impious man is a continual torment” (Job 15:20); “So it shall happen also to all those who forget God” (Job 8:13); “But God never rejects the devout man, while He will certainly not give help to the wicked” (Job 8:20); “The wicked man becomes the victim of terrifying fears that follow him step by step. Hunger becomes his companion, and misery stands beside him. Disease will devour his skin” (Job 18:11–13); “Since God placed man upon the earth, the triumph of the wicked does not last long, and the joy of the impious lasts only for a single moment” (Job 20:4–5); “This is the recompense that the impious man shall have, this is the inheritance that God appoints for him”—“this is the portion of an impious man from the Lord, and the possession appointed to him by the Overseer” (Job 20:29; cf. 20:5–28; 27:13–24); “[The Lord] repays each one according to his works, and gives to each according to his conduct” (Job 34:11); “Know […] that the Lord does not reject the blameless man, and does not allow the impious man to live in all his strength” (Job 36:5–6).

Starting from these principles, Job’s friends conclude that he is being tormented and is suffering various misfortunes necessarily because he is a sinner; if he were righteous, as he continues incessantly to maintain, he would still be enjoying all forms of prosperity and wealth, and misfortune would not have destroyed him. The first aim of all their speeches, therefore, is to bring to light, if not Job’s obvious and conscious guilt, then at least his hidden and unconscious guilt, and to convince him of it: “The consciousness of your error dictates your words” (Job 15:5); “Is it because of your piety that [the Lord] reproves you? […] Is it not rather because of your great wickedness and your endless iniquities?” (Job 22:4–5); “You said: ‘My conduct is pure, and I am blameless in His eyes.’ But if God wished to speak, […] you would learn that He calls you to account for your error. […] He knows the craftiness of man. He sees iniquity and watches it” (Job 11:4–11).

Because they consider Job’s sin to be the source of his afflictions, they invite him to repent, and they see repentance as the only means by which he may put an end to his sin: “Therefore, be reconciled with [the Lord] and make peace with Him: thus you will find happiness. […] And if you return to [the Lord] and if you drive injustice far from your house […] whatever you decide, you will accomplish. […] Let your hands be clean, and you will be saved” (Job 22:21–30); “But if you turn to God and entreat the Lord from now on, He will send you His grace and will restore the house of a righteous man” (Job 8:5–6); “Turn your heart toward God, lift up your hands to Him. Renounce the iniquity that stains your hands, and do not allow injustice to remain any longer in your house. […] Then you will forget your trial” (Job 11:13–16).

They thus express an erroneous conception of God, of His goodness, and of His justice. But they also reveal a mistaken view by considering that the sufferings and afflictions that befall man constitute a punishment for his errors of the present and the past, a penalty for his own guilt, or that, in any case, they are necessarily connected with his personal sins.

When, convinced by the answers of Job, who ceaselessly proclaims his innocence, his three friends cease blaming his responsibility (Job 32:1), they act in this way simply in order to accuse God of injustice. In other words, they continue, in one sense or another, to create a necessary cause-and-effect relationship between the afflictions that befall a man, his sin, and the justice of God: if man suffers, this is because he has sinned and God is justly punishing him. If, consequently, it is confirmed that Job suffers without having sinned, this means that God is unjust. They do not escape from this binary logic, and they prove incapable of considering, for example, the possibility that a man may suffer without having sinned, or may perhaps have sinned without necessarily suffering, and that in both of these cases God nevertheless remains just.

The opinion and attitude of Job’s friends are rejected from a theological standpoint, as well as from a moral and spiritual one. It is characteristic that many commentators have discerned, in Job’s wife and friends, hidden types of the devil behind the mask not only of a false wisdom, but also of a hypocritical compassion.

Indeed, their attitude is treacherous and deceitful, since, while they claim to be helping Job understand the causes of his trials and to be consoling him for them, they do nothing other than crush him even more, adding moral and spiritual torments to the physical ones he is undergoing, when they attempt to make him admit that he himself is responsible for what is happening to him, because of his faults.

As regards the way in which they understand God and His relations with men, this is rejected by Job [“Do you think that you are defending God with wicked words, and His cause with words of falsehood?” (Job 13:7)], but also, above all, by God Himself, Who exposes their radical hypocrisy, while making the truth shine forth on Job’s side: “The Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, ‘I am very angry with you and with your two friends, because you have not spoken rightly of Me, as My servant Job has’” (Job 42:7).

From the study of the Book of Job, it follows that there is no necessary relationship between the afflictions a man suffers during his life and the sins he may personally have committed.

The view that man must undergo afflictions as punishment for the sins committed by those near him is rejected in the same way. The view that afflictions are to be attributed to a guilt of nature, which Job’s friends defend, does not appear to be accepted by Job himself.

Job rightly refuses to connect his personal guilt with the afflictions that befall him

Job’s understanding is contrary to that of his friends. His conscience brings no accusation against him; he appeals to the uprightness of his attitude and of his conduct toward God (Job 23:11–12), mentions his virtues (Job 29:12–17; 30:24–25; 31:1–34), and does not cease to proclaim his innocence (cf. Job 6:24; 7:20; 9:20; 11:4; 13:15–18, 23; 23:10; 27:3–6; 32:1). Inwardly he believes that the sufferings he is undergoing cannot be a penalty for his transgressions, nor even their natural consequence.

Nevertheless, Job is not proud and arrogant. His words bear witness to his humility, as well as to a spirit of repentance. He appears entirely willing to acknowledge his sinfulness: “Teach me, then, and I will be silent; show me wherein I have erred” (Job 6:24). He knows that, beyond all doubt, he is not entirely pure: “Who is clean from defilement? No one, certainly” (Job 14:4). Nevertheless, there is such a great disproportion between his possible guilt and the afflictions he is called to suffer that he is unable to discern a cause-and-effect relationship, or any connection between it and his afflictions.

Conversely, moreover, Job refuses to associate the fact that he is righteous with the wealth he previously enjoyed, recognizing the latter as a free gift of God and not as a reward for his good works (cf. Job 2:10).

Job does not entertain illusions in considering himself righteous. His righteousness is confirmed by the author of the book, who begins his narrative as follows: “In the land of Uz there once lived a man whose name was Job. This man was righteous and perfect, feared God, and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1). In his Commentary, Saint John Chrysostom insists especially on the word “blameless”: “The text does not say sinless, but blameless, that is, that no fault could be found in him. Not only did he not commit acts burdened with sin, but not even blameworthy and condemnable acts.” Moreover, Job’s qualities are also confirmed by God Himself, Who twice says to Satan when he appears before Him: “Have you considered My servant Job? There is no one like him upon the earth. He is an upright, righteous, and honest man; he fears Me and turns away from evil” (Job 1:8; 2:3). As Saint John Chrysostom observes, “God gives the testimony that [Job] is blameless.” In the eyes of God, Job is even the holiest man of his time. He regards as nonexistent the impurity that Job is willing to confess (cf. Job 14:4).

Job does not embrace the notion of God’s “immanent justice,” which his friends express. Reality refutes the view that the afflictions man is called to undergo are punishments for his transgressions, because we are able to observe many innocent people who have suffered such afflictions. Job recalls especially entire populations who, although faithful to God, have unjustly fallen victim to oppression and exploitation, and have ended up enduring every kind of hardship and destitution (Job 24:1–12; see also 9:23).

Job observes, on the contrary, that many of those who commit evil are rich: “Why does God allow the impious to live, to grow old, and their goods to increase? They see their descendants established. […] The peace of their houses is not threatened, and the scourge of God protects them. Their bull is always vigorous and fertile, and their cow gives birth without miscarriages. […] They sing songs with tambourines and lyres, and rejoice at the sound of the flute. They spend their life in happiness; […] Yet they say to God: ‘Leave us alone. We do not want to learn Your will!’ But do they not hold their happiness in their hand, without God being among their counsels? Do you often see the lamp of the impious man’s life go out, misfortune strike him, divine wrath destroy his goods, the wind scatter him like straw, and the whirlwind carry him to and fro like chaff?” (Job 21:7–18; cf. 21:19–34).

The same observation is found in other books of the Old Testament as well. Thus the Psalmist exclaims: “I envied the impious when I saw the peace of sinners. […] The toil of men is not found among them. And they are not harshly punished like others. […] And my people turn to them, since with them they find happy days. […] Behold who the sinners are: those who prosper and flourish” (Ps. 72:3–12). The Prophet Jeremiah asks God: “Why do the impious prosper? Why do all the faithless enjoy security and peace?” (Jer. 12:1). And the Prophet Malachi observes: “Now we have come to call the arrogant fortunate: those who sin prosper; they provoke God and are saved” (Mal. 3:15).

The devil is the first cause of Job’s sufferings and other afflictions

Satan, moved by his malice and envy, is the primary cause of the afflictions that befall Job. The author of the narrative gives us a clear indication of this. When Satan says to God: “Stretch out Your hand and touch his possessions; I swear to You that he will blaspheme You publicly” (Job 1:11), there is no question of God doing any such thing. Satan is the one who, according to his own will, will take this task upon himself and will become the cause of all Job’s misfortunes that follow.

In the second cycle of the discussion, the same procedure is repeated, and Satan is identified even more clearly as the author of the illness and sufferings that appear in Job: “Satan departed from the assembly of God and struck Job with a malignant ulcer from his feet to the crown of his head” (Job 2:7). As Saint John Chrysostom observes: “For no attack against him [Job] was caused by God, but all things came from the hand of the devil.”

Moreover, the devil himself retains the initiative throughout the whole process of slandering Job before God, when he assures Him that Job is faithful to Him exclusively and only for reasons of self-interest (cf. Job 1:9–2:4).

If Satan had not intervened, Job would in all likelihood have continued to enjoy the prosperity that God had given him at first, and to which He would finally restore him. And this shows doubly that it is not essentially God’s will that afflictions should befall Job.

Job was righteous during the period of his prosperity, before he was struck by misfortune. And this shows that misfortune is not a prerequisite of righteousness, nor a means of attaining it, even if it is true that, after he overcame the trial, Job’s virtue was manifested in an even more brilliant manner.

Nevertheless, it was the devil, and not God, who doubted the steadfastness of his conduct and needed to verify it. The Book of Job provides clear testimony to the decisive role of the devil’s actions in the world in bringing forth afflictions and sufferings within it, motivated by his envy and malice.

A problem arises, however, because of the fact that God permits the devil to act as he does. In order to carry out his plans, Satan asks for and receives permission from God (Job 1:11–12; 2:5–6).

We consider, at this point, that on the part of the author of the narrative, the same attention and care is worthy of note which will move the Fathers when they maintain that afflictions befall man by God’s allowance: namely, to avoid creating the erroneous conviction that there exists some autonomous principle of evil which struggles against a corresponding principle of good, with the possibility that the former has the ability to prevail over and supplant the latter. The idea of God’s omnipotence dominates the whole of the Book of Job: this idea is found in the words of Job’s friends, but also in the words of Job himself (Job 9:4–13; 12:10, 14–25; 42:2), and, finally, it also holds a significant place in the discourse of God Himself (Job 38:4–40:26).

The beginning of the book presents to us Satan, a fallen angel, who, together with the angels, is called to give an account to God of his activity upon the earth (cf. Job 1:6–7; 2:1–2). We may discern that, although He permits this particular activity, God does not approve it, but on the contrary limits it in a direction favorable to man and to creation, which is an expression of His Providence; for, as we have observed, without this Providence—in other words, if the powers of the evil one moved freely—the world would have been sunk and destroyed by them: “Then the Lord said to Satan: ‘Behold, I deliver all his possessions to you; only do not stretch out your hand against him himself’” (Job 1:12); “Then the Lord said to Satan: ‘Behold, I deliver him to you; only do not touch his life’” (Job 2:6).

Here again we encounter the source of evil: it is the freedom that God granted to all rational beings, angels and men, at their creation. This is a gift, the use of which, out of respect for them, He granted to them to a great extent, even if that use is not “for good.”

From this point of view, Job must suffer because he is righteous and not because he is a sinner

The devil therefore takes up his attack against Job with the aim, above all, of making him fall, of making him sin. His motives are malice and envy.

This fact confirms in another way that man does not have to suffer because he is a sinner, and it refutes the idea that suffering is necessarily a punishment for a personal sin or its natural consequence. We may truly say, conversely, that because he is righteous and not sinful, Job must suffer: his holiness provokes the envy of the devil and arouses his passionate activity.

It must be pointed out that at this point we again find the negative bond that develops between suffering and sin, which we emphasized in the previous chapter: the devil uses suffering, relies upon it, in order to push man into sin.

Job implicates fallen nature as a second cause

Job appears not to know that it is the devil who is warring against him. He believes that God is behind his sufferings, but he refuses to accuse Him, and he does not understand why God would be warring against him, since he considers himself blameless before Him. This ignorance of Job, the questions and the doubt that ignorance gives rise to within him, the uncertainty and anxiety that result from it, form part of Job’s trials and contribute, in the most striking and impressive way, to the manifestation of his blind trust in God and the expression of his absolute faith in Him.

Seeking an answer to the questions that arise, Job nevertheless implicates the impurity that would affect every man from his conception: “For who is clean from defilement? No one, certainly. Even if his life upon the earth lasted only one day” (Job 14:4–5). This particular passage is often connected by interpreters with the seventh verse of Psalm 50: “Behold, I was born in iniquity; in sin have I lived since my mother bore me.” The essence of the problem, however, is to learn how the concepts of “defilement” and “sin” should be understood. Some interpreters have approached them within the framework of a sin for which every man would be guilty by nature: this is an explanation that anticipates or confirms the doctrine of Saint Augustine concerning original sin. Others, again, have considered that these affirmations aimed at the natural impurity that accompanies man at his conception (cf. Lev. 15:19 ff.) and at his birth (cf. Lev. 12:2), without this impurity involving any other factor except a certain moral weakness and a certain inclination toward sin. Others, finally, recall the term “the law of sin,” that is, the limiting consequences of the ancestral sin which affect every man from the hour he is born, without his being personally sinful or guilty for all these things. Commenting on these verses of Job, Saint John Chrysostom reasonably considers that Job seems to have in mind the weakness of human nature. And this particular weakness concerns nature after the fall, which bears all the negative consequences of the ancestral sin. We shall observe that Job himself does not seem to be aiming at any personal sin, since this assessment does not prevent him from continuing to regard himself as righteous; let us remember that God Himself also regards Job as “blameless,” a reality likewise confirmed by the author of the book. By contrast, Job’s friends hypocritically create a bond between the impurity that they attribute to every man from his conception and guilt (cf. Job 4:17; 15:14; 25:4). It is also significant that the expression “a mortal […] born of woman,” used by Job (14:1), which in his mouth “reveals nothing other than the decay of human existence,” finds its divergent meaning among his friends (cf. Job 15:14; 25:4): “from the concept of finitude, Eliphaz at once slides into that of guilt. Bildad, in turn, repeats […] the same pattern of reasoning.”

We may therefore say that here Job recalls, as one cause of his afflictions, the consequences of the ancestral sin, which affects human nature. However, this appeared in his discourse only briefly, allusively, and indirectly: it is nothing but “a first perception, as through a mist, of what in the New Testament will be visible ‘as in a mirror.’”

Job’s suffering as temptation

The suffering and all the afflictions that Job undergoes clearly appear as temptations. The devil exerts pressure on him through temptations, in order to lead him into sin and the passions. The devil hopes that Job will accuse God and thus be led to insult His goodness, and furthermore will turn against Him and finally reject Him. This goal which the devil wishes to achieve is clearly expressed by Job’s wife: “Do you still persist in this piety of yours? […] Curse God, then, and die” (Job 2:9). And the manner is so clear that certain interpreters have seen in the person of Job’s wife not only an instrument of the devil, but even an embodiment of him. Through these words are formulated the four greatest temptations that man can experience in his encounter with pain: 1) loss of patience, 2) surrender to passions connected with the avoidance of suffering, 3) accusation and curse against God, 4) surrender to death. But the final insult, “die,” also has another meaning: it foretells what will happen to the man who yields to these temptations, and it also expresses very clearly the devil’s most chthonic design: the spiritual death of man. This occurs especially if man yields to the third temptation, the one at which the devil primarily aims, as his words before God reveal twice: “Stretch out Your hand and touch his possessions; I swear to You that he will blaspheme You publicly” (Job 1:11); “So then, act as though You touch his very body, and see whether he will not blaspheme You publicly!” (Job 2:5).

The exceptional character of Job

What would have caused the fall of the common mortal did not lead Job to fall. “Thus, despite all these calamities, Job did not sin and did not utter anything improper against God” (Job 1:22; cf. 22:10). Not only did Job not blaspheme God during his trial, but he glorified Him (cf. Job 1:21).

To Satan’s temptations Job opposed three basic attitudes: 1) steadfast patience in trials, 2) unwavering faith in God, within which he not only did not blaspheme Him, but also did not accuse Him and, although he was convinced of his own justice, did not regard His justice as guilty, and even went so far as to admit that He could be the author of his afflictions, 3) true hope in God, without evasions.

Job attributed his resistance to, and victory over, the temptations not only to his own powers, but to strengthening and support from divine power as an answer to his prayer.

We may also observe that, like all the Righteous of the Old Testament whom God had enlisted in a mission of instruction and prophecy, Job here bears witness to a certain special grace, which gave him the ability, at least to some degree, to escape the common lot of mankind, which is under the dominion of the consequences of ancestral sin. And in the present case, it allows him to resist the pressure which, directly or indirectly, the devil exerts upon him through the body or through the passible element of the soul, and therefore not to be defeated by afflictions, not to yield easily to temptations, and not to be subjected to sin and the passions.

We have pointed out that this characteristic concerning the Righteous of the Old Testament was connected with the mission that God had entrusted to them: to announce the coming of Christ and to prefigure His saving economy.

 

Online Greek source:

https://alopsis.gr/%cf%84%ce%bf-%cf%80%ce%b1%cf%81%ce%ac%ce%b4%ce%b5%ce%b9%ce%b3%ce%bc%ce%b1-%cf%84%ce%bf%cf%85-%ce%b9%cf%8e%ce%b2-jean-claude-larchet/

Wisdom from the Matthewite Elder Gennadios of Akoumia (+1983)

 

Relevant to the confession of the Venerable Father is also the following incident (Stylianos Papadogiannakis describes it in his book)… When the blessed Gennadios “was caught up into Paradise,” he saw, among others who were saved, a Christian woman from Akoumia…Then a woman, whom Mr. Papadogiannakis characterizes as “hasty,” asked him:

“Father Gennadios, but how did this woman go to Paradise, since she lived according to the New Calendar?”

“How many people with the New,” the Venerable One clarified, “will be found in Paradise, and how many with the Old will be found in Hell! The old festal calendar is, without doubt, the correct one; however, the calendar alone will not save us, whether old or new, but our works, our Christian life, and above all the philanthropy of God.”

From this incident it follows that the blessed Father HAD NOT DOGMATIZED THE QUESTION OF THE CALENDAR, just as, moreover, the Genuine Orthodox Church has not dogmatized it either. The Elder taught that man’s salvation is “above all” the work of the philanthropy of God and not the result of a formal attachment to the Old Calendar; that man is saved in the Church and through the Church; that the Church is One, the very Church in which he himself lived, struggling, and was perfected, being sanctified: the Genuine Orthodox Church, which on the local level was expressed by his spiritual father, Hieromonk Kallinikos, and not by the New Calendarist priests of his area, with whom he maintained excellent friendly relations, but no spiritual relations at all.

- Ο Όσιος Γεννάδιος Ακουμίων Κρήτης (+1983), by Professor Antonios Markou. Translated from the original Greek.

 

Source: https://syghorisis.blogspot.com/2013/12/1983_29.html

St. Myrtidiotissa of Klissoura: “This is the Correct Calendar.”

Source: Eldress Myrtidiotissa: The Ascetic Struggler of Klissoura (1886-1974), by Metropolitan Cyprian of Oropos and Fili, Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, Etna, CA, 1999, pp. 77-79.

 

 

When the virtuous Sophia arrived in Greece, the Church Calendar had not yet been changed. In 1924, to the great national upheaval over the disaster in Asia Minor there was added turmoil in the Church over the introduction of the New Calendar.

Tightly knit populations, particularly in the provinces, and entire villages, refused to accept this innovation. They continued to observe the Feasts and to fast according to the traditional Calendar.

The saintly struggler of Klissoura also adhered to the Old (Church) Calendar. On Feast Days according to the New Calendar, when a great many people came to the monastery for Liturgy, she would withdraw to a hill, where she would hide and pray by herself. She was also accustomed to doing vigils in the Church without a Priest, together with other pious and virtuous believers who followed the Old Calendar.

And she would advise people thus: “The Fathers! The Old Calendar is their calendar. Go with the Old. That’s the right thing to do.”

This stand of hers was not undiscerning or taken without knowledge. She had been “informed” regarding this issue, too. On one occasion, she confided to me: “The Panagia told me: “This is the correct Calendar.”

If Old Calendar Priests would happen to go to the Shrine and Liturgize, the Saint would commune of the Immaculate Mysteries. She also kept the fasts according to the Old Calendar. During fasting periods according to the New Calendar, it often often so happened that compatriots of hers who followed the traditional reckoning would visit. She would rejoice and sit down with them to eat non-fasting meals, saying: “This (Calendar) is the correct one. Follow the Old Calendar.”

***

A very telling event that occurred in connection with this issue was the following.

In January of 1969, our monastery in Fili finally broke ecclesiastical communion with the New Calendar Church. This was the beginning of a period of great tribulations and various trials for us.

During those difficult times, a spiritual child of mine from Ptolemais went to Klissoura to have a Paraklesis served to the Theotokos.

“How is the Elder doing?” asked the ascetic.

“He’s fine, he’s fine. My father went to Athens and he stopped by the monastery. Things are fine,” the young man replied.

“He’s not fine,” said the ascetic with a frown. “They are going to close his monastery. Only now that you're going to Kailaria, phone him. Tell him that they’re going to close down the monastery. But that he shouldn’t be afraid. The Panagia is protecting him and he won’t come to any harm.”

My spiritual son was uneasy. When he returned to Ptolemais, he got in touch with me and informed me accordingly. My astonishment was indescribable! The Saint’s “message” was clear: she knew the present and the future.

***

On account of the profound impression that the “message” of the enlightened handmaiden of God had made on me and my spiritual child, I went to visit her very shortly. There she was at her fireplace, a queen on her throne, curled up in the bliss of poverty and obscurity.

In a hushed voice, so that those who were greeting her might not hear, she asked me: “How are things going?”

“Eldress, how did you hear about it?”  I stammered.

She raised her hand and her eyes to Heaven discreetly: “God revealed it to me!”

And she continued: “Don’t be afraid. You won’t come to any harm. I’m praying very hard for you. I have great love for you.”

And so it was. In spite of the difficulties and the hazards, the Panagia ultimately came to our aid. The ship of our monastery continued its journey to the Kingdom of Heaven in safety....

Dialogue Between an Elder and an Atheist

One morning Fr. Epiphanios [Theodoropoulos] was speaking with two or three visitors at his home. One of them was an ideological communist. At one point someone came in from outside and informed them that Athens had been filled with photographs of Mao Tse-tung bearing the inscription: “Glory to the great Mao.” It was the day on which the Chinese dictator had died.

 

Fr. Epiphanios: That is how it is, my child. There are no atheists. There are idolaters, who remove Christ from His throne and place their idols in His place. We say: “Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.” They say: “Glory to the great Mao.” Choose and take your pick.

Communist: And you too, little father, take your drug. Only you call it Christ, another calls it Allah, a third calls it Buddha, and so on.

Fr. Epiphanios: Christ, my child, is not a drug. Christ is the Creator of the entire universe. He is the One Who governs all things with wisdom: from the multitude of the boundless galaxies down to the infinitesimal particles of the microcosm. He is the One Who gives life to us all. He is the One Who brought you into the world and has given you so much freedom that you are able to question Him, and even to deny Him.

Communist: Little father, it is your right to believe all these things. But that does not mean they are also true. Do you have proofs?

Fr. Epiphanios: You consider all these things fairy tales, do you not?

Communist: Of course.

Fr. Epiphanios: Do you have proofs? Can you prove to me that what I believe is false?

…

Fr. Epiphanios: You do not answer, because you too have no proofs. Therefore, you too believe that these things are fairy tales. I, for my part, speak of faith when I refer to God. You, however, while rejecting my faith, in essence believe in your unbelief, since you cannot substantiate it with proofs. But I must tell you that my faith is not groundless. There are certain supernatural events upon which it is founded.

The Criterion of Truth

Communist: One moment! Since you are speaking about faith, what will you say to the Mohammedans, for example, or to the Buddhists? For they too speak of faith. They too teach lofty moral teachings. Why is your faith better than theirs?

Fr. Epiphanios: With this question of yours, the criterion of truth is being raised. For certainly the truth is one and only one. There are not many truths. But who possesses the truth? Behold the great question. Thus, it is not a matter of a better or worse faith! It is a matter of the only true faith!

I accept that the other beliefs also have moral teachings. Certainly, the moral teachings of Christianity are incomparably superior. But we do not believe in Christ because of His moral teachings. Not because of “Love one another,” nor because of His preaching about peace and justice, freedom and equality. We believe in Christ because His presence on earth was accompanied by supernatural events, which means that He is God.

The Divinity of Jesus Christ

Communist: Look. I too acknowledge that Christ was a remarkable philosopher and a great revolutionary, but let us not make Him God now…

Fr. Epiphanios: Ah, my child! That is where all the great unbelievers of history stumbled. The fishbone that stuck in their throat and that they could not swallow was precisely this: that Christ is also God.

The leader of the chorus of deniers, Ernest Renan, cries out concerning Christ: “For tens of thousands of years the world will be uplifted through You”; You are “the cornerstone of humanity, so that for someone to remove Your name from this world would be equal to shaking it from its foundations”; “the ages will proclaim that among the sons of men no one greater than You has been born.” But there they stop, both he and those like him. Their next phrase? “But You are not God!”

And the poor wretches do not understand that all these things constitute an inexpressible tragedy for their soul! The dilemma is inevitably relentless: Either Christ is God incarnate, in which case truly, and only then, He constitutes the most moral, the holiest, and the noblest figure of humanity. Or He is not God incarnate, in which case it is impossible for Him to be any of these things. On the contrary. If Christ is not God, then He is the most wretched, the most dreadful, and the most hateful existence in human history.

In other words: Any man who demanded this sacrifice from his followers would be the most wretched figure in history. But Christ both demanded it and achieved it. Nevertheless, by those who deny His divinity He has been proclaimed the noblest and holiest figure in history. Therefore: Either the deniers are reasoning absurdly by calling the most wretched the holiest, or, in order for there to be no absurdity, but for the coexistence of Christ’s demands and His holiness to have logic, they must necessarily accept that Christ continues to remain the noblest and holiest figure of humanity only on the condition that He is also God! Otherwise, He is, as we have said, not the holiest, but the most dreadful figure in history, as the cause of the greatest sacrifice of the ages in the name of a lie!

The divinity of Christ is proven on the basis of the descriptions given of Him by His deniers!…

Communist: What did you say?

Fr. Epiphanios: You heard me! The statement is weighty, but absolutely true. And here is why: What did all the truly great men of humanity say about themselves, or what idea did they have of themselves?

Socrates, “the wisest of all men,” proclaimed: “One thing I know, that I know nothing.”

All the great men of the Old and New Testaments, from Abraham and Moses to John the Forerunner and Paul, describe themselves as “earth and ashes,” “wretched,” “untimely births,” and the like.

The behavior of Jesus, by contrast, is strangely different! And I say strangely different, because the natural and logical thing would have been for His behavior to be similar. Indeed, as superior and greater than all the others, He should have had an even lower and humbler opinion of Himself. Being morally more perfect than anyone else, He should have surpassed all the aforementioned persons, and anyone else from the creation of the world until the end of the ages, in self-reproach and humble-mindedness.

But the exact opposite occurs!

First of all, He proclaims that He is sinless: “Which of you convicts Me of sin?” (John 8:46). “The ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me” (John 14:30).

He also expresses very lofty ideas concerning Himself: “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

And now I ask you: Has anyone ever dared to claim for himself the love of men above even their very life? Has anyone ever dared to proclaim his absolute sinlessness? Has anyone ever dared to utter the words: “I am the truth”? (John 14:6). No one, anywhere! Only a God could do these things. Can you imagine your Marx saying such things? They would have taken him for a madman, and no one would have been found to follow him.

Now think how many millions of people sacrificed everything for the sake of Christ, even their very life, believing in the truth of His words about Himself! If His proclamations about Himself were false, Jesus would have been the most wretched figure in history, leading so many people to such a heavy sacrifice. What man, however great, however important, however wise he may be, would be worthy of such a great offering and sacrifice? Who? No one! Only if He were God!

In other words: Any man who demanded this sacrifice from his followers would be the most wretched figure in history. But Christ both demanded it and achieved it. Nevertheless, by those who deny His divinity He has been proclaimed the noblest and holiest figure in history. Therefore: Either the deniers are reasoning absurdly by calling the most wretched the holiest, or, in order for there to be no absurdity, but for the coexistence of Christ’s demands and His holiness to have logic, they must necessarily accept that Christ continues to remain the noblest and holiest figure of humanity only on the condition that He is also God! Otherwise, He is, as we have said, not the holiest, but the most dreadful figure in history, as the cause of the greatest sacrifice of the ages in the name of a lie! Thus the divinity of Christ is proven on the basis of these very descriptions of Him by His deniers!…

The Historical Evidence for the Divinity of Jesus Christ

Communist: What you have said is indeed impressive, but it is nothing more than reasoning. Do you have historical evidence that establishes His Divinity?

Fr. Epiphanios: I told you previously that the proofs of His Divinity are the supernatural events that took place while He was here on earth. Christ was not content merely to proclaim the above truths, but He also confirmed His words with a multitude of miracles. He made the blind see, the paralyzed walk; He fed five thousand men, and many times more women and children, with two fish and five loaves; He commanded the elements of nature and they obeyed Him; He raised the dead, among whom was Lazarus, four days after his death. But greater than all the miracles is His Resurrection.

The whole edifice of Christianity rests upon the event of the Resurrection. I am not the one saying this. The Apostle Paul says it: “If Christ has not been raised, our faith is vain” (1 Cor. 15:17). If Christ did not rise, then everything collapses. But Christ did rise, which means that He is Lord of life and death, and therefore God.

The Testimony of the Holy Apostles

Communist: Did you see all these things? How do you believe them?

Fr. Epiphanios: No, I did not see them. But others saw them: the Apostles. They then made them known and even signed their testimony with their blood. And, as everyone accepts, the testimony of life is the highest testimony.

Bring me someone who will tell me that Marx died and rose again, and who will sacrifice his life for that testimony, and I, as an honest man, will believe him.

Communist: Let me tell you. Thousands of communists were tortured and died for their ideology. Why do you not also embrace communism?

Fr. Epiphanios: You said it yourself. Communists died for their ideology. They did not die for facts. But in an ideology, delusion can very easily enter in. And since it is characteristic of the human soul to sacrifice itself for something in which it believes, this explains why many communists died for their ideology. But this does not oblige us to accept it as correct.

It is one thing to die for ideas and another to die for facts. The Apostles, however, did not die for ideas. Nor for “Love one another,” nor for the other moral teachings of Christianity. The Apostles died bearing witness to supernatural facts. And when we say fact, we mean that which falls under our senses and is perceived by them. The Apostles bore witness “to that which they heard, which they saw with their eyes, which they beheld, and which their hands touched” (1 John 1:1).

Pascal’s Reasoning

On the basis of a very fine argument of Pascal, we say that one of three things happened with the Apostles: either they were deceived, or they deceived us, or they told us the truth.

Let us take the first possibility. It is not possible that the Apostles were deceived, because what they report they did not learn from others. They themselves were eyewitness and earwitnesses of all these things. Moreover, they were not at all fanciful, nor did they have any psychological predisposition toward accepting the event of the Resurrection. On the contrary, they were terribly unbelieving. The Gospels are fully revealing of these dispositions of their souls: they disbelieved the assurances that some had seen Him risen.

And something else. What were the Apostles before Christ called them? Were they perhaps ambitious politicians or visionaries of philosophical and social systems, who were waiting to conquer humanity and thereby satisfy their fantasies? Far from it. They were unlettered fishermen. And the only thing that interested them was catching some fish to feed their families. For this reason, even after the Lord’s Crucifixion, despite all that they had heard and seen, they returned to their boats and their nets. That is, there was in them, as we have said, not even a trace of predisposition toward the things that were about to follow. And only after Pentecost, “when they received power from on high,” did they become the teachers of the inhabited world.

The second possibility: Did they perhaps deceive us? Did they perhaps tell us lies? But why would they deceive us? What would they gain by lies? Money? Positions? Glory? For someone to tell a lie, he expects some benefit. But the Apostles, preaching Christ, and Him crucified and risen from the dead, secured for themselves only hardships, labors, scourgings, stonings, shipwrecks, hunger, thirst, nakedness, dangers from robbers, beatings with rods, imprisonments, and finally death. And all this for a lie? It is completely foolish even to think it.

Consequently, the Apostles were neither deceived, nor did they deceive us. Therefore, the third possibility remains: that they told us the truth.

Indeed, I must also emphasize the following to you: The Evangelists are the only ones who wrote true history. They narrate the events, and only the events. They do not proceed to any personal judgment. They praise no one; they condemn no one. They make no attempt to magnify one event or to erase or diminish another. They let the events speak for themselves.

The Resurrection of Christ as Apparent Death

Communist: Is it impossible that, in the case of Christ, there was an apparent death? The other day the newspapers wrote about some Indian whom they buried and then, after three days, dug up again, and he was alive.

Fr. Epiphanios: Ah, my little child. I shall recall again the saying of blessed Augustine: “Unbelievers, you are not hard to convince. You are the most gullible. You accept the most improbable, the most absurd, the most contradictory things, in order to deny the miracle!”

No, my child. We do not have an apparent death in the case of Christ. First of all, we have the testimony of the Roman centurion, who assured Pilate that death had occurred.

Then the Gospel informs us that the Lord, on the very day of His Resurrection, walked along and conversed with two of His disciples on the way to Emmaus, which was more than ten kilometers from Jerusalem. Can you imagine someone having suffered what Christ suffered, and three days after his “death” an apparent death occurring to him? At the very least, for forty days they would have had to feed him chicken broth so that he could open his eyes, not have him walking and conversing as though nothing had happened.

As for the Indian, bring him here so that we may scourge him with a flagellum—and do you know what a flagellum is? A whip to the ends of which they added balls of lead, or broken bones, or sharp nails—bring him, then, so that we may scourge him, place a crown of thorns on him, crucify him, give him gall and vinegar, pierce him with a lance, place him in the tomb, and if he rises, then we shall talk.

Communist: Nevertheless, all the testimonies that you have invoked come from disciples of Christ. Is there any testimony concerning this that does not come from the circle of His disciples? That is, are there historians who certify the Resurrection of Christ? If so, then I too will believe.

Fr. Epiphanios: Wretched child! You do not know what you are asking! If there were such historians who had seen Christ risen, then they would necessarily have believed in His Resurrection and would henceforth have reported it as believers, in which case you would again deny their testimony, just as you reject the testimony of Peter, John, and so forth. How is it possible for someone to certify the Resurrection and at the same time not become a Christian? You are asking us for “a roasted partridge on a wax skewer that also sings”! Ah, it cannot be done!

Nevertheless, since you ask for historians, I remind you of what I mentioned to you earlier: namely, that the only true historians are the Apostles.

Nevertheless, despite all this, we also have just such a testimony as you want: that is, from someone who did not belong to the circle of His disciples. Paul’s testimony. Paul was not only not a disciple of Christ, but even persecuted His Church with fury.

Communist: But they say of him that he suffered sunstroke and, because of it, had a hallucination.

Fr. Epiphanios: My dear child, if Paul had had a hallucination, what would have emerged would have been his subconscious. And in Paul’s subconscious the Patriarchs and the Prophets held a lofty place. He should have seen Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, not Jesus, whom he regarded as a deceiver of the people and an impostor!

Can you imagine some faithful old woman, in her dream or in her delirium, seeing Buddha or Zeus? She will see St. Nicholas and St. Barbara. For these are the ones in whom she believes.

And one more thing. In Paul, as Papini notes, there are also the following wondrous things: First, the suddenness of the conversion: directly from unbelief to faith. No preparatory stage intervened. Second, the strength of the faith: without wavering or doubts. And third, lifelong faith. Do you believe that these things can take place after a case of sunstroke? These things are not explained in such ways. If you can, explain them. If you cannot, admit the miracle. And you should know that Paul, by the standards of his time, was a highly educated man. He was not some little nobody who did not know what was happening to him.

But I shall add something further. We, my child, live today in an extraordinary age. We are living the miracle of the Church of Christ.

When Christ said of His Church that “the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18), His followers numbered only a few dozen persons. Since then, approximately two thousand years have passed. Empires have dissolved, philosophical systems have been forgotten, worldviews have collapsed, yet the Church of Christ remains unshaken despite the continual and terrible persecutions against Her. Is this not a miracle?

And one last thing. In the Gospel according to Luke, it is mentioned that, when the Panagia, after the Annunciation, visited Elizabeth, the mother of the Forerunner, the latter blessed her with the words: “Blessed are you among women.” And the Panagia answered as follows: “My soul magnifies the Lord... For behold, from now on all generations shall call me blessed” (Luke 1:48).

What was the Panagia then? She was an unknown maiden of Nazareth. Who knew her? Nevertheless, since then empresses have been forgotten, brilliant names of women have faded away, wives and mothers of military commanders have been forgotten. Who knows or who remembers the mother of Napoleon the Great or the mother of Alexander the Great? Almost no one. Yet millions of lips, in every length and breadth of the earth and in every age, hymn the humble maiden of Nazareth as “more honorable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim.” Are we or are we not, today, the people of the twentieth century, living the fulfillment of this prophetic word of the Panagia?

The very same things happen also with regard to one of Christ’s “secondary” prophecies: when, in the house of Simon the leper, a woman poured precious myrrh on His head, the Lord said: “Verily I say unto you, wherever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, what this woman has done shall also be spoken of in memory of her” (Matt. 26:13). How large was the circle of His followers then, for one to say that they would do everything possible so that this prophecy of their Teacher might be fulfilled? And especially such a prophecy, which, by the criteria of the world, has no particular importance for the many?

Are these miracles or are they not? If you can, explain them. But if you cannot, admit them as such.

Was the Work of Christ Incomplete?

Communist: I confess that your arguments are strong. But I have something further to ask you: Do you not think that Christ left His work incomplete? Unless, of course, He abandoned us. I cannot imagine a God remaining indifferent to the drama of man: we are tossed about here and there, while He stands above, impassive.

Fr. Epiphanios: No, my child. You are not right. Christ did not leave His work incomplete. On the contrary, He is the unique case of a man in history who had the certainty that He had completed His mission, and that He had nothing else to do or say.

Even Socrates, the greatest of the wise, who spoke and taught for an entire life, at the end also composed an elaborate apology and, had he lived, he would have had still more to say.

Only Christ, in three years, taught what He had to teach, did what He wished to do, and said, “It is finished.” This too is a sign of His divine perfection and authority.

As for the abandonment which you mentioned, I understand you. Without Christ the world is a theater of the absurd. Without Christ you cannot explain anything. Why sorrows, why injustices, why failures, why illnesses, why, why, why? Thousands of enormous “whys.”

Understand this! Man cannot approach these “whys” with his finite reason. Only with Christ are all things explained: they prepare us for eternity. Perhaps there the Lord will count us worthy to receive an answer to some of these “whys.”

It is worth the trouble for me to read you a beautiful poem from the collection of Konstantinos Kallinikos, Daphnes and Myrtles, entitled “Question Marks.”

I said to the elder ascetic, the seventy-year-old,
whose hair waved like a branch of lilac:

Tell me, my father, why upon this sphere here below
do night and day walk inseparably?
Why, as though they were twins, do there spring up together
the thorn and the flower, laughter and weeping?
Why, in the most attractive greenery of the forest,
do scorpions and vipers nest, and cold venom?
Why, before the tender bud appears
and unfolds before the light its scentless beauties,
does a black worm come, give it a stab,
and leave it a lifeless rag in its cradle?
Why does the ear of grain need plough and sowing and laborers,
until it becomes bread and loaf,
and why is everything useful and noble and divine
paid for with tears and blood in life,
while parasitism grows strong by itself
and baseness seeks to swallow the whole earth?
Finally, why, amid so much harmony of the universe,
do confusion and disorder force their way in?

The ascetic answered with his deep voice,
raising his right hand toward the heavens:

Behind those golden clouds up there,
the Most Gracious One is embroidering a priceless tapistry.
And as long as we walk down below,
we see the reverse side, my child.
And so it is natural for the mind to see mistakes
where it ought to give thanks and glorify.
As a Christian, the day must come
when your winged soul will cleave the ether
and look upon God’s embroidery from the good side,
and then… all will appear to you as system and order!

Christ, my child, has never abandoned us. He remains near us, a helper and supporter, until the end of the ages. But you will understand this only if you become a conscious member of His Church and are joined to Her Mysteries.

 

Greek source: https://katanixi.gr/archim-epifanios-theodoropoylos-dialo/