Photios Kontoglou (+1965): The Sunday of Orthodoxy and the Current State of Affairs

The Sunday of Orthodoxy was established in order for the Church to celebrate the restoration of the Icons and the victory of true religion over the Iconoclasts. The Iconoclasts were the modernists of that time, who began with the abolition of iconography, so that they might proceed gradually, as all such people are wont to do, to other destructive reforms, the end result being to leave nothing in Orthodoxy intact. The Icon was the symbol of Orthodoxy, and Byzantium was in turmoil over the Icons, in civil war, for 116 years. In 787 A.D., the Seventh Ecumenical Synod took place in Nicaea. This Synod proclaimed the restoration of the Icons, and put an end to the Iconoclasm which had started in 726, in the reign of Leo the Isaurian. But even after the Seventh Ecumenical Synod, Iconoclasm was revived, and so another Synod took place in Constantinople in 842, and this Synod confirmed the Seventh Ecumenical Synod. Thus did that madness of Iconoclasm cease.

Unbelief and rationalism are the causes from which every heresy and modernism in religion proceed. This is why the Iconoclasts were men of cold hearts, unbelievers, braggarts, vainglorious, deprived of spiritual depth, and impelled in whatever they did from political and other similar non-spiritual purposes. The leaders of this movement, emperors and courtiers, attracted to their side the vainglorious and the self-seekers, who counted on the political and social power that these leaders of the Iconoclasts had.

From the other side, the pious clergy, from Patriarch to monk, struggled for their Faith, as did the simple souls who had deep faith in Orthodoxy and its Tradition, the humble and the “poor in spirit,” those blessed by Christ, “the foolish and base of the world” (I Corinthians 1:27-28). Assuredly, among them is the “superstitious rabble,” as the modernists and the reformists call them. But this rabble appears many times to see more clearly and further than the luminaries of cold rationalism, as happened in Constantinople shortly before the Turks seized it, when the people obstructed the union of our Church with the Papists and rescued our nation from annihilation, as the wise Adamantios Koraes says, writing these words: “...[The Latins] mock us in particular because of this superstition and attribute to this the stubbornness of the common people (whom the ‘clever’ call rabble) against uniting with the Papists, and their steadfast resistance to the emperors who wanted so to unite them. We Greeks of today, however, owe our existence to this superstition (if ever superstition gave rise to anything good). Without this most felicitous stubbornness of our forebears, superstition would have increased, and the multitudinous ranks of Western monks would have befouled the soil of poor Greece....”

These words were not written by some spiritually backward reactionary, nor by some “Old Calendarist,” but by Koraes, whose statue the Greeks erected in front of the University of Athens, and who for years was very liberal and an enthusiastic follower of the French Revolution. What reply is there to this from the profound rationalists and modernists, who are confident that they hold the key of wisdom and knowledge, and jeer at us, the “fools and fanatics”?

As we said at the beginning, the cause of every innovation in the Tradition of our Church is lack of fear towards God, impiety and unbelief. Never among the modernists and the reformers has there been found a Christian who believes truly, not falsely. The unbeliever cannot have a humble attitude, but is arrogant and conceited in every way. Saint Ephraim the Syrian puts this succinctly: “Arrogance, unable to endure what is ancient, compels people to devise innovations.” Do you see what he is saying? Arrogance compels, that is, pride and vainglory force him who has it within him to want and to bring about innovations, since he is a slave of this pride! And then he says, “unable to endure what is ancient," - that is to say, because he has no liking for “what is ancient,” namely, Tradition. In other words, he is too burdened by vainglory to accept what his ancestors, “those who came before us,” have handed down to him, as Koraes said. If one is to accept Tradition, he must have humility in himself and must not want to insist on his own will. There is no modernist in the Church who wishes not to demolish what we have received from those who guarded our religion with their piety and their unshakable faith, and who endured every kind of suffering, even death itself; and there is no such thing as a modernist who is not unbelieving. Let him put on a disguise, let him present himself as pious, let him feign humble-mindedness, let him perhaps embrace his enemies with a word; let him give the external impression of a meek and soft-spoken Saint. In truth he is a hypocrite.

Saint Ignatios the God-Bearer, that most holy Saint, one of the most ancient Hierarchs of the Church, a disciple of the Apostle John the Theologian, he who fought with wild beasts for the name of Christ in the Colosseum of Rome, an old man of ninety years, felt such faith rooted in his heart that he told his disciples, when they were working to rescue him from martyrdom: “Do not hinder me, my children, from going to my beloved Lord. I am the wheat of God and I shall be ground (by the teeth of the wild beasts), so that I may be presented to Him as ‘fragrant and pure bread.”’ Since there were many times that the lions did not want to tear apart certain martyrs, Ignatios, this iron-hearted centenarian and warrior, told his own disciples: “If the beasts do not want to eat me, I will force them.”

Oh, the incredible height which the Faith of Christ attains! It makes an Achilles of a guileless old man, the meek Bishop of Antioch, who stepped aside to avoid treading on an ant!

But why did I depart from the subject I was speaking about? I did so in order to mention what the Saint said about the modernizers of religion. He said: “Everyone who speaks contrary to what has been prescribed, even if he fasts, even if he is a virgin, even if he prophesies, even if he works miracles, you should see him as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, who is contriving the destruction of the sheep.”

Hear these things, then, you who read, and impress them on your mind lest you be deluded by flatteries, smooth talk, and the saccharin of “love,” which such transgressors and apostates use, with the intention of deceiving you. They cover all their infernal plans with the all-holy name of Christ, Who said eight times “Woe!” and eight times “Alas!” about the hypocrites.

He said “Alas!” also about those who cause scandals, as do these modernists: “Woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh!” (Matthew 18:7).

Yes! Today, in our days, certain other apostates have appeared, not only Iconoclasts, but also “fighters against Orthodoxy” in general, who pass themselves off as champions of Orthodoxy, just as the Pharisees passed themselves off as champions of the Law, whereas they annulled it.

Forerunners of the modernists that appear in our evil days were certain Hierarchs and Patriarchs who took “progressive” and modernist ideas from “abroad,” and wanted to “reform” the Church, in order to accommodate her to “the demands of our age.” They perceive this need for “adaptations,” since they see that the world is being alienated from religion, and they try, supposedly with the quackery of innovations and “adaptations,” to attract the irreligious. But their zeal is “foolish zeal,” because it shows that they want to support religion with certain innovations that abolish it, and for this reason they achieve nothing, since they are unbelievers. One “grain of faith” would have fallen where the modernists achieve nothing, with all their consultations, world councils, organizations, and “foolish questions, genealogies, and strivings about the law” (Titus 3:9). And that all these things — the innovations in worship and the attempts at “adaptation” — are of no effect is proved by the fact that in the countries where these things are done by the religious leaders, in the countries of Europe and America, the “adaptations” are in vain, since there is no yeast, that is, faith, for the bread to be kneaded with, and because true religious feeling is quenched and lost, while day by day unbelief triumphs. These conceited clergymen of ours who lived abroad and remained astonished at the material power of the West have a hysterical admiration for everything that happens in the West, which renders them blind and totally incapable of appreciating the spiritual depth of Orthodoxy, and makes them ape the Papists, the Anglicans, and the Protestants.

One line of such Europeanized clergymen, like the clergy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Patriarchate of Alexandria, and the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, prepared the way for today’s pope-worshippers and modernists of every kind, who are going to abolish the Faith of our Fathers. A leading modernist was Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis, an unscrupulous, impious, and atheistic man. May God forgive him.

And yet, how many such destroyers of Orthodoxy will celebrate the Sunday of Orthodoxy!

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XII (1995), No. 3, pp. 71-74. 

Confessors and Martyrs of the Truth

Homily at the Second Lenten Vespers, Sunday of Orthodoxy, February 16/March, 2026,

Holy Church of the Annunciation, Larissa

By Metropolitan Klemes of Larissa and Platamon

 

 

Beloved Brethren,

At a certain moment our Lord took His Disciples and Apostles and went somewhat far from His enemies, from the Jews, who not only did not receive Him, but also threatened and persecuted everyone who would acknowledge Him as Christ. And there, at Caesarea of Philippi, He asked them what the opinion of the many was concerning Him, what the multitude of the people said about Him (cf. Matt. 16:13 ff.).

And they told Him that some regarded Him as John the Baptist; others as the Prophet Elijah, because He had and manifested not only love for mankind and beneficence, but also reproof; others as Jeremiah or one of the ancient Prophets, because He possessed unique knowledge and wisdom without having been taught letters by teachers in schools.

And the Lord Jesus, our Savior, accepted this confession as supernatural, as absolutely true, as a divine revelation. Only through the revelation of God the Father does a man receive the ability for a correct and true confession concerning Christ. This the flesh cannot accomplish by itself, that is, the biological man of the fall, who walks only with earthly data; nor even the “sensual” man, the one who relies upon the senses. To him the spiritual revelation appears as “foolishness” (I Cor. 2:14). And especially that revelation which is not proclaimed only with words, but also determines the whole of life. God the Father reveals the knowledge of the unknown and hidden mysteries to those who are able to receive and accept it, in order that they may confess it also publicly to others, without fear, and also that they may be ready to seal their confession even with their blood.

The confession of Simon Peter the Lord hastened to bless, because upon it, as upon a Rock, as upon an unshakable Foundation, He would build His Church so that they might never overcome and overthrow it.

From this we understand that our Lord Jesus Christ, the “Author and Finisher” of our faith (Heb. 12:2), as Master of all, is the only Head of His Church, which He founded upon the Truth of His Theanthropic nature, and which He acquired and sanctified with His All-honorable Blood (cf. Acts 20:28).

His blessed “Bride” (cf. Rev. 21:2; 21:9), the Church, He foretells that the “gates of Hades” (Matt. 16:18) will hate unto death, will fight against, and will plot against in order to strike and destroy her, but they will not succeed.

Who are the “gates of Hades” that fight against the Church relentlessly?

First of all, those rulers, authorities, kings, and governors of this age, who hate the Church and attempt in every way—openly or secretly, directly or indirectly, straightforwardly or obliquely—to strike and annihilate Her, because they view Her with hostility and oppose Her with fury.

This proves their alignment with the devil and with the instruments of darkness, even if these rulers and these authorities falsely proclaim that they are not atheistic and opposed to God. But if they were with the Light and the Truth, they would be with Christ, the Governor of all, as well as with His Church, His “Body” (Eph. 1:23), which is the Ark of Salvation and the antechamber of His Kingdom on earth.

Also, if they were with the Truth and if they considered the good of men, they would have respect for freedom of choice in critical matters that arise in the world, and they would not be distinguished by a mania for subjugation and imposition. The relatively recent trial of humanity with the fabricated pandemic and the manner of its worldwide handling constituted a dreadful experience of the future that certain perverted men are preparing, who desire a global totalitarianism.

Those who fight against the Church of Christ and persecute the faithful and pious in various ways, those who plot against freedom and exploit justice, are essentially kicking against the goads (“kicking against the goads” [Acts 26:6]). They are put to shame and will be put to shame if they do not repent. The end of all the fighters against Christ, fighters against Orthodoxy, fighters against the Church, and murderers of men has always been and is miserable.

The “gates of Hades,” however, are also the heretics, that is, those who do not believe and do not confess, to a small or to a great degree, as the Church of Christ has believed and confessed from the beginning everywhere and always. Those who alter and adulterate the saving Truth of the Confession in the Theanthropic Christ and in His Church. Those who reject or cut off whatever the Church, even as Sacred Tradition, has preserved as a precious treasure and sacred “Deposit” (I Tim. 6:20) until today and until the Second Coming.

To these we may also say that there belong those who set themselves, supposedly, to “correct,” to “normalize,” to “improve,” to “modify,” and to “humanize” the wealth of the divine Adornment in the immaculate Bride of Christ, the holy Orthodox Church. Her beauty is unattainable and indescribable. Its purpose is to captivate us in the Love of Christ in order to save us. If it appears inaccessible to our distorted senses, it means that we are at fault, not it. We must strive toward the divine beauty and not the reverse. We shall not bring down the divine and ineffable beauty to the ugliness of human passion and deviation…

The principal problem of heretics has always been that they were characterized by attachment to human reasoning, by lack of simplicity of faith, by rationalism, by obstinacy, by doubt, by a disposition toward innovation and change, by contempt for the ancient tested and sanctified practices of our living faith, by admiration for the achievements of this world, by servility toward the powerful, by worldly calculation and expediency, by self-interested aims and pursuits, by dark and opaque connections, by various entanglements with the darkness of falsehood, delusion, and deceit.

Heretics and friends of heresy have always put forward and continue to put forward earthly thoughts, earthly interests, and earthly calculations. God, the Truth, the Faith, the Sacred Canons they use selectively (heresy = choice) only insofar as they serve their own aims. But where the abandonment of oneself even unto death is required in the faithful following of Christ, in the confession of His exclusivity and of His one and only Church, in the return of all to Her in repentance for salvation, they raise the objection that this is an extreme exaggeration which must be avoided, rejected, and even condemned. Why is this? Because they believed and believe that they possess absolute authority in the affairs of the Church to manage them as they see fit.

The Lord, of course, gave “the keys” (Matt. 16:19), the “keys” of the Kingdom of Heaven, which indeed “bind and loose” on earth with an immediate effect in heaven, to all those who are deemed worthy of the “grace of the Episcopacy,” like Peter, according to the divine interpreter, the Hierarch Theophylact (cf. Interpretation of the Four Holy Gospels, Athens 1865, p. 32), and in general according to the Orthodox Tradition.

This, however, in the literal sense concerns—so as to be more specific—those among the Bishops who, accepting the entirety of divine Revelation, know precisely the matters of the Faith and walk consistently according to its principles. But those who change the things handed down and apply methods of “cutting and sewing” in the matters of the Faith, while nevertheless considering that they unquestionably possess “authority to bind and to loose” according to their own will—then these are miserably deceived.

Those who attempt, without divine revelation, as well as without a firm and accepted Orthodox foundation, to proceed to changes and novel openings unknown to the Canon of Piety, thinking that in this way they serve the divine Truth, and instead of becoming “exact guardians” are transformed into impious “new lawgivers,” these are rebuked as instruments of Satan. Those who are in inconsistency with the Patristic spirit and mind, as well as with the safeguards that were established by the Holy Spirit in the affairs of the Church, are judged as makers of scandal, who do not mind the things of God but the things of men (cf. Matt. 16:23).

Only those who follow Christ with self-denial, being crucified together with Him and aligning themselves with His Saints, only those who are ready even for martyrdom for the sake of the Confession of His Truth—only these, as true successors of the Apostles, preserve unimpaired the spiritual authority “to bind and to loose” in the administration of the affairs of the Church.

The rest, as usurpers, have only the appearance and form of lambs, or even of shepherds, but in reality, they speak as “dragons” (cf. Rev. 13:11) and do not do those things which contribute to the building up and growth of the Body of Christ, but to its corruption, as false shepherds and false teachers (cf. Canon 15 of the First-Second Holy Council).

All the heretics were and are such “grievous wolves” (Acts 20:29), who are cast out from the divine Camp through the synodal way of the Church, by means of the Orthodox Shepherds.

Those “speaking perverse things” (Acts 20:30) in matters of the faith, their followers and supporters, but also those who tolerate them passively, were and are confronted after suitable “admonition” (Titus 3:10), so that, if they do not come to their senses, they may receive separation and expulsion from the healthy Body of the Church as “incurably diseased.”

Such proved to be the heretics of old and of later times, who, under various names taken either from their principal error or from the name of their leader, constitute an opposing body and a contagious swarm, although they call themselves Christians, perhaps even Orthodox.

Such were and are the ancient Iconoclasts, the Papists, and the more recent Iconoclasts, the Protestants with all their multitude of sects, as well as the innovative Ecumenists of today, who for a century now have been disturbing the Church with their unprecedented error and false doctrine, which abolishes the dogma of the Truth and Unity of the holy Orthodox Church. Their impious work began with the so-called small and insignificant Calendar Reform of 1924, which was imposed uncanonically in a political manner and deceitfully in an ecclesiastical manner, but had been predetermined in order to hasten joint celebration and rapprochement with the heterodox, according to the Patriarchal Encyclical of 1920 and the so-called “Pan-Orthodox Congress” of 1923.

The innovative Ecumenists, with their subsequently openly expressed, supported, and applied “inclusive” and “expanded” ecclesiology, “defile” the Church of Christ, the spotless and undefiled, with the error and filth of the heresies. Their principal slogan in our days is that supposedly all those who participate in the apostatic Ecumenical Movement “have a common mission, give a common witness of faith, and look toward a common Pascha.” Yet this deception has no relation whatsoever to the Patristic and Synodal mind of the holy Orthodox Catholic Church.

For this reason, we, by the grace of God true Orthodox Christians, without any disposition of triumphalism or self-justification, proclaim on the solemn day of the victory of Orthodoxy over all heresies that we turn away from, condemn, and reject this contagious error and heresy, calling the deceived Innovators and Ecumenists to repentance. As long as they follow, promote, and establish their heresy, so much the more do we avoid communion with them in their frenzied course.

As human beings we grieve for them and pray for their recovery. Yet under no circumstance do we accept their sorrowful reasoning, supposedly for the achievement of peaceful and good aims.

We are not against social cohesion and peaceful coexistence. However, we place foremost the good of the correct and consistent confession of the Orthodox faith in the affairs of the Church. Without repentance and conformity in all things to the instructions of our Savior and Redeemer and of His holy Church, every other goal—however lofty and respectable it may appear—passes into second place with respect to our priorities and our choices.

We certainly do not ignore that in the struggle of primary importance for avoiding defilement from communion with the Innovators and Ecumenists, lawful striving is necessary (cf. II Tim. 2:5). The canonical and other principles of the Orthodox Church concern, of course, also those who constitute the confessional Body of the Church. It is not possible for us to overlook various violations and various exploitations in the name of supposedly genuine Orthodoxy. When the correct criteria of Orthodox resistance against heresy are not observed, then deviations arise which tarnish the struggle of the faith and of the good confession (cf. I Tim. 6:12).

Many are those who, even if they do not participate in the communion of those who incline toward heresy and apparently keep the Tradition of the Church, yet unfortunately “err in their heart,” not knowing the saving “ways” of the Lord, and for this reason they go astray and lead astray those who follow them into the danger of not “entering into the divine rest” (cf. Ps. 94:10–11). We call the increased attention of our God-loving flock, exhorting it to have trust in its true Shepherds and not in various cut-off wearers of the cassock and others, whatever pompous label or banner they may use, who, as disorderly and eccentric persons, walk on the dead-end paths of their own will, deceiving and being deceived…

Beloved Brethren;

It is evident that we are living in apocalyptic days of great confusion. Great turmoil prevails because of the lack of love, peace, justice, and unity. All these things occur because the Truth of God does not prevail. Most people are deceived and choose falsehood, thinking that they will find a way out of their dead ends, both personal and social. Wars and rumors of wars disturb the world in a threatening manner, since with modern means it is possible for a literal destruction to come upon the world in a short time. Political understandings and negotiations fail, but also the ecumenical activities, ceremonies, and declarations supposedly for the peace of the world, as lacking blessing, worsen matters instead of helping.

Remaining humbly yet decisively steadfast in the Truth of the faith, we understand the magnitude of our responsibility to be true Orthodox Christians in faith and in life, so that we may constitute agents of blessing in the suffering world around us, calling to Repentance and return to our Triune God and to the Truth of His holy Church, without adulterations and unlawful compromises.

In conclusion, we remind that we remain faithful to the divine Promise, knowing with reverent fear that our Lord will come with the glory of His Father and with His holy Angels, to render to each one “according to his deed” (Matt. 16:27). That is, “to those who by perseverance in a good work [of Orthodox faith] seek glory and honor and incorruption, [He will give] eternal life,” but “to those who are self-seeking [the selfish] and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath” (Rom. 2:7–8).

May we be granted the divine blessing as a worthy reward for our perseverance unto the end! May we remain unshaken in the Truth of our Orthodoxy, as its martyrs and confessors, avoiding at every cost the error of falsehood, whether in faith or in life, which leads to eternal condemnation! May we be shown to be children of obedience, sheep of the Flock of Christ, partakers of His glorious Kingdom. Amen!

I thank you and wish you a good continuation of the holy and great Lent.

 

Greek source:

https://imlp.gr/2026/03/03/%e1%bd%81%ce%bc%ce%bf%ce%bb%ce%bf%ce%b3%ce%b7%cf%84%e1%bd%b2%cf%82-%ce%ba%ce%b1%e1%bd%b6-%ce%bc%ce%ac%cf%81%cf%84%cf%85%cf%81%ce%b5%cf%82-%cf%84%e1%bf%86%cf%82-%e1%bc%80%ce%bb%ce%b7%ce%b8%ce%b5%ce%af/

 

 

Gnosticism and Ecumenism

Address of His Eminence, Metropolitan Ambrosios of Philippi and Maroneia

 

 

In the year 843 A.D., on March 11, under Patriarch Methodios and Empress Theodora, an Endemousa Synod in Constantinople upheld the 7th Ecumenical Council, restored the veneration of the Holy Icons, and established the feast as the “Sunday of Orthodoxy.” Since then, 1,183 years have passed, and this feast remains timely; this demonstrates the enduring victory of the Orthodox Christian Faith over whatsoever corrupting heresies.

Iconoclasm, as a vast reformist endeavor, was directed chiefly against the Holy Icons and came to an end in 787 A.D. with the decisions of the 7th Ecumenical Council. The 367 Fathers of the Council proclaimed: “The principal purpose of the use of the venerable icons is, apart from the ‘God-befitting adornment,’ that is, the decoration of the Holy Temples, on the one hand, the recognition of holiness and the rendering of honorary veneration, which passes over to the sacred persons depicted, and on the other hand, the more frequently the faithful behold in the icons the sacred forms, the more their reverence is increased and their desire to imitate their example.” Moreover, the icon confesses that truly our Lord Jesus Christ became man and dwelt among us, thus expressing in this manner the mystery of the salvation of man.

Your Beatitude Archbishop of Athens and of All Greece of the Genuine Orthodox Christians, Mr. Kallinikos,

Holy Hierarchs,

Honorable Presbytery,

Venerable Diaconate,

Most Reverend Monks and Nuns,

Choir of the Sacred Chanters,

Chosen people in the Lord,

Christianity, the Christian Church, from its foundation faced not only external enemies but also internal ones; these are the false prophets and false teachers, the various heresies and the heretics. Our Lord Jesus Christ warns us in the Holy Gospel: “false christs and false prophets will arise and will give great signs, they will perform great wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect themselves…… (Matt. 24).

Ecclesiastical History describes to us the dozens of heresies which the holy fathers confronted through local and Ecumenical Councils, and they formulated the Orthodox teaching, the Orthodox Faith.

The phenomenon of heresies appears also before Christ among the people of Israel, as well as in the idolatrous world. We have the intermingling of the ancient civilizations, with the result also of the intermingling of the ancient religions; religions, gods and deities, as well as religious rites, were being mixed together. This phenomenon is called religious syncretism.

In order to perceive how dreadful and anti-Christian and demonic religious syncretism is, we must turn to Holy Scripture, which is the source of our faith.

In the Old Testament, before Christ, God chooses—elects the Israelites as His peculiar, as His chosen people: “not because of their virtues, nor because of the purity and piety of their heart, but because of the incurable impiety of the idolaters” (Deut. 9:5). And although God delivers them from the Egyptians and saves them with wondrous events in the wilderness, rulers and people fell into Religious Syncretism, even worshiping idols.

God is absolute in the matter of the purity of faith and worship. In the first commandment of the Decalogue, He states it clearly: “I am the Lord your God; there are for you no other gods besides Me” (Exod. 20:2). When Moses was descending from Mount Sinai holding in his hands the two tablets of the Ten Commandments and saw the Israelites worshiping the golden calf, a symbol of the god Baal of the Canaanites, in his anger he threw down the tablets of the Ten Commandments, breaking them into pieces; afterwards he burned the golden calf to powder, which he cast into the torrent that descends from Mount Sinai (Deut. 9:21 & Exod. 32:20).

Of the kings of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, of the people of God, most were impious and authoritarian and did evil in the sight of the Lord. They walked in the way of idolatry, and together with the worship of the true God, the people continued to sacrifice and to offer incense also to the idolatrous gods. In the Old Testament this phenomenon is called spiritual adultery, that is, to believe in the true God, but also to believe in superstitions and in superstitious practices, as unfortunately happens also in our time by many Christians.

From the Southern Kingdom an exception were the Kings Hezekiah and Josiah, who did what was right in the sight of the Lord and destroyed the shrines and statues of the idolaters.

King Hezekiah, around 720 B.C., destroyed the bronze serpent that Moses had made in the wilderness, because until his days the Israelites were offering to it incense of worship as to a god (IV Kings 18:4). All the prophets—Elijah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others—rebuke with boldness the rulers, the priests, and the people for their departure from the true God; for this reason, they were persecuted and put to death by their compatriots. Let us recall the words of our Christ: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets…” (Matt. 23:37). From this Religious Syncretism, therefore, which continues also after Christ, there arises the dreadful pan-heresy of Gnosticism.

In the years of the holy Apostles, the Christian Church of the first centuries had to struggle with syncretistic Judaizing heresies, which mixed Jewish and Christian teachings. Then there appeared forcefully the dreadful pan-heresy bearing the name Gnosticism, which reached the point of threatening the Christian Faith by merging it into the crucible of heresies.

Christianity, which from the beginning came face to face with Gnosticism, struggled with all its powers to prevent its flood and to preserve the Apostolic Tradition unadulterated. The holy Apostles themselves confronted with steadfastness every attempt at the infiltration of Gnosis, in whatever form, into the Church, refuting and combating the Gnostics with their teachings, both orally and in writing through the books of the New Testament.

The complex movement of Gnosticism made its appearance during the second and first centuries B.C. up to the fourth century A.D. The Gnostics, dispersed in various autonomous communities without a centralized priesthood, appeared almost simultaneously in many geographical regions of the Roman Empire under various names of the leaders of the heresies: Nicolaitans, Ebionites, Elcesaites, Samaritans, the heresy of Cerinthus, of Simon the Magician, Dositheus, Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, Isidore, Carpocrates, Docetists, Encratites, and others.

All these who represented the conglomeration of Gnosticism took teachings and theories from the idolatrous religions of the Persians, of Babylonia, of Syria, of Egypt, of the ancient Greeks, from Judaism, and as a multifaceted religious movement, as was to be expected, with the appearance of Christianity it attempted to adopt whatever teachings it considered necessary, such as the person of Jesus Christ and the principal points of Christian soteriology, and to adapt them to syncretism.

The teachings of Gnosticism are many, just as many are the leaders of the heresies that belong to this movement; we shall mention indicatively: It teaches that the creator god of the Old Testament, of the Law and the Prophets, the god of Israel, is in conflict with the good God, the Father of Jesus Christ, and that the world is regarded as the creation of some inferior divine power; for this reason evil prevails.

It is also expressed in the position that neither faith is useful, nor morality, nor worship, but only knowledge is able to lead to salvation, and this knowledge is the awareness of man, self-knowledge through which man reaches God. They taught that the presence of Christ in the world was apparent. Christ united Himself with the man Jesus at the Baptism in the Jordan River. The Passion was apparent, imaginary, since it was not Christ Himself who was crucified, but Simon of Cyrene, to whom Christ gave His form.

Certain Gnostics considered matter to be evil and impure and followed a strict ascetic life in order to destroy the body. Others again, in order to destroy the body, indulged in insatiable enjoyment of every material pleasure, so that the way might be opened toward pure knowledge and redemption. Irrational and incomprehensible teachings.

The holy Apostles and the Apostolic Fathers are those who discerned the great danger which Christianity was running from Gnosticism; for this reason, they struggled with all their powers against it. The whole of the New Testament constitutes a living testimony to the struggle of the Church against the heterodox teachings which bear the false name of Gnosis, when it was in development and was attacking Christianity with syncretistic tendencies.

Perhaps the Evangelist John, in order to repel Gnosticism, wrote the Gospel and the Epistles. From beginning to end he insists that: “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14), that is, Christ truly was incarnate and truly was seen by the eyewitnesses.

Knowing the teachings of Gnosticism, the Apostle Paul, through his epistles, exhorts the Christians to be attentive. To his disciple Timothy he draws attention: “O Timothy, guard the precious treasure of the truth of the Gospel unadulterated, avoiding the profane babblings and contradictions of the error which bears the false name of Gnosis” (I Tim. 6:20). For this reason,n he also gives to his disciple Titus the timeless counsel: “A heretical man, who after a first and second admonition remains in his error, reject him and no longer discuss with him” (Titus 3:10).

The successors of the holy Apostles, the Apostolic Fathers—Saint Ignatius, Polycarp, Hippolytus, Irenaeus, and others—struggled vigorously against Gnosticism; we know this from their writings. Later, the ecclesiastical writers—Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, Saint Epiphanius—provide us with many pieces of information concerning the pan-heresy of Gnosticism.

From the time, therefore, of the holy Apostles, for 2,000 years, many heresies have appeared which have fought against and torn apart the Church of Christ. All these heresies prepared the appearance, in our time, of the satanic pan-heresy of Ecumenism, which is being promoted by Patriarchs and Metropolitans, “from grievous wolves not sparing the flock” (Acts 20:29), dreadful wolves in the appearance of sheep, who do not spare the rational sheep of Christ, as the Apostle Paul tells us clearly.

Your Beatitude, holy Hierarchs, Fathers, brethren in Christ.

In later years, in the Byzantine period and especially in 1054 A.D., the united Church of Christ, the Christian world, was divided into the Eastern Orthodox Church with center the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and into the Western so-called Papal Church with center the Patriarchate of Rome. The Bishop of Rome and the Bishops of the West were those who distortedly taught the truths of the Gospel, with the result that they were cut off, separated from the “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church” and gradually constituted a separate independent political-economic and diplomatic state with seat the Vatican. Therefore it is wrong to call Papism a church, and indeed a Christian one, because the Papists departed from the Apostolic Faith and do not have Apostolic succession, they do not have Priesthood, they are heretics.

From that time onward the peoples of the West, with the cooperation of the Pope and through every kind of crusade, sought to subjugate the Byzantine state and the Orthodox Church. The Byzantine emperors, in order to avoid the danger also from the western states, entered into negotiations with the Pope of Rome, met in Councils, and negotiated the Dogmas of the Church, that is, they bargained Orthodoxy, in order to receive military assistance from the West against the various enemies of the Byzantine State.

Ecclesiastical History mentions ten Councils and as many meetings between Orthodox and Papal representatives until 1453 A.D., when Constantinople was finally captured by the Ottomans. Among these Councils two stand out. The first was the Council in the city of Lyons in France in 1274 A.D., where the union of the Orthodox delegation with the Papists took place. The decisions of this Council were not implemented, because of various circumstances and also because of the resistance of the faithful people of Byzantium. The reaction against the union was general in the East, and the attempt of the Emperor to impose it by force, provoked even greater reaction.

The most significant and final attempt at union took place at the Council of Ferrara–Florence, in Northern Italy in 1438–1439, fourteen years before the Ottomans captured Constantinople. For this Council we have the most information from the memoirs of the Grand Ecclesiarch, theologian and jurist Sylvester Syropoulos, who participated in the numerous Orthodox delegation for this Council. Syropoulos therefore writes: “The Byzantine delegation, headed by Emperor John VIII Palaiologos, Patriarch Joseph, many Hierarchs and officials, went to Italy in order to seek military assistance from Pope Eugene IV and to negotiate the Orthodox Faith.”

When the Orthodox arrived in the city of Ferrara, Patriarch Joseph requested that a separate church be granted to him in order to celebrate the Divine Liturgy apart from the Latins. The Pope referred him to the Bishop of the city, who, with various pretexts, refused to grant a church to the Orthodox. Finally, after many theological sessions lasting seventeen months in Ferrara and Florence, under the pressures of the Emperor and also the various pressures of the Pope, the Orthodox delegation signed the union with the Latins; they signed the subjugation of Orthodoxy to the heretical Pope.

The decision of the Council was not signed by Saint Mark Eugenikos, by his brother John Eugenikos, by the Metropolitan of Stavroupolis Isaiah, by the representatives of the Church of Iberia–Georgia; it was not signed by the brother of the Emperor, Demetrios, by the philosopher George Plethon, and by George Scholarios.

When the Pope was informed that Saint Mark did not sign, he declared with bitterness: “So, we have accomplished nothing,” it is as though we did nothing; and indeed this was so, because when the Orthodox delegation returned to Constantinople, the people reproached those who had signed the union and did not attend the churches in which the unionists, the traitors of our Orthodox Faith, were officiating.

For a year and a half, they were discussing and holding sessions in Ferrara and Florence; the result was that they signed the betrayal of Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, the Pope was not able to provide military assistance, and finally Constantinople fell into the hands of the Ottomans. What was agreed upon at the Council is preserved for us by Syropoulos in the words of Emperor John VIII Palaiologos: “We thus acted and accepted the union, in order that each side might retain the customs and the order which it had before. Neither did we adopt the doctrine of the Latins, nor did the Latins adopt that of the Greeks.”

All these things we mention in order to point out:

First: the delegation of the Orthodox at the Councils first engaged in dialogue, discussed the differences in the dogmas, and if the participants agreed, then and only then did they pray together and concelebrate, in contrast to today’s Orthodox Ecumenists.

Second: from all these Councils, from 1054 A.D. until 1453, the conclusion emerges that the Papists, the Latins, were and are unyielding in their heretical teachings. “For we know that the Latins in no way change anything of what they believe,” notes Sylvester Syropoulos.

Third: When the Orthodox representatives yielded in the Dogmas, when they betrayed the Orthodox Faith, the Priests, the Monks, and the faithful people of God, the Orthodox Christians, were those who annulled the treacherous decisions and unions, because to a great extent they possessed the Orthodox phronema, so that they resisted the decisions of the emperor, the Patriarch, and the Metropolitans, whom they called traitors of Orthodoxy. In contrast to our time, when we have fallen into a continual religious lethargy.

Fourth: All this treacherous disturbance in the sphere of the Church is being created by the group of Ecumenist Bishops of the Patriarchate of Constantinople together with the heretical group of the Vatican. These few individuals, in a dictatorial manner, wish to implement the dark plans of the New World Order and to unite supposedly all Christians and thereafter to unite all the demonic religions with the Orthodox Faith into one World Religion, leveling the person of the God-man Jesus Christ with Muhammad, with Buddha, and with all the deities of Hinduism, of Brahmanism, and of other beliefs.

The struggle of the Papal heresy to subjugate and enslave the Orthodox Church of Christ continues. Dozens of meetings and sessions followed between the Papists and the Orthodox even during the years of the Turkish rule.

However, all the Local Councils of Constantinople up to 1895 condemned the Papal heresies. The then sanctified Fathers, the Bishops, the clergy, the Monks, and the people resisted, because they believed that Papism is a heresy without divine grace, without Mysteries.

The holy Apostles, therefore, and the Apostolic Fathers struggled so that the Christian faith might not be mixed with the pan-heresy of Gnosticism. Persons, however, change, and just as in the history of states traitors of the homeland appear and become the cause for the state to be enslaved, so also in the sphere of Christianity. From the end of the nineteenth century there appeared traitors of Orthodoxy—Patriarchs and Metropolitans—who, knowing the indifference and the ignorance of the people concerning the Orthodox faith, in a deceitful manner mixed Orthodoxy with the pan-heresy of Ecumenism. And today there is a mixing of heresies and religions, and all have the sense that with different ways of worship they believe in and venerate the same god. Unified administration, unified economy, one currency, one religion! Never before could Religious Syncretism have had such favorable conditions for development as it possesses today.

The atheistic Dogma of Ecumenism appears for the first time in 1878 in the heretical Protestant sphere, as an effort at rapprochement and cooperation of all the Protestant groups. In Europe, filled with heretical parasynagogues, from 1850 there appears a religious discoloration. The large population of the cities falls into unbelief, the clergy withdraws from the people, the churches are emptied, and in general indifference and alienation prevail.

In the face of this danger of the dissolution of the pseudo-churches, conservative groups appear which seek cooperation and unification. After many unifications of Protestant groups in England, in Germany, in France, in Holland, and in America, we arrive in 1948 at the General Assembly in Amsterdam of Holland, where, with the participation of 147 Protestant confessions, the satanic conglomeration of heresies, the W.C.C., is founded. Representatives were sent only by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Church of Cyprus, and the pioneering Church of Greece.

In contrast to Papism, the Orthodox Church is also a founding Member of this Organization called the W.C.C., and indeed, thanks to the participation of the traitors of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the efforts of the Protestants acquired an Ecumenical character. If the Orthodox Ecumenists had not participated, the whole movement would have remained within the framework of a dead-end Protestant dialogue, without authority and without the result of pan-Christian cooperation. Papism did not become a member of the W.C.C., and this because it proclaims: “the union of Christians can take place only through the return of all Christians to the one true Church of Christ which is the Roman Catholic,” but it participates actively in the work of various committees of the W.C.C. and attempts to influence its entire course to its own benefit, on the basis of Papocentric Ecumenism, as it was defined in 1965 at the Second Vatican Council.

And while all the Orthodox Patriarchates and the local Churches, except that of Constantinople, refused to participate in the W.C.C., this dynamic movement gradually subsides, and the Orthodox Churches submit applications in order to be accepted as Members of the W.C.C. at the General Assembly of New Delhi in 1961. The betrayal of Orthodoxy in all its magnitude.

Your Beatitude, beloved Fathers in Christ,

Our era is afflicted by many and various heresies and chiefly by Ecumenism, which contains the totality of the heresies and is promoted and imposed by the supposedly Orthodox Patriarchates. This is the difference of atheistic Ecumenism from the earlier known heresies, which disputed a specific Christian truth.

The ecumenical vision in its extension is not limited only to the union of the Christian churches–parasynagogues of Orthodox, Papists, Protestants, Anti-Chalcedonians, but it extends also to the “religions of the world.” In its first phase it begins from the so-called monotheistic religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—with the prospect of being extended also to the rest, Hinduism, Buddhism, and others. All will remain immovable in their errors, and only we Orthodox shall move from the one true faith, in order to accept the demonic theories of all the heresies and religions, and all these things are done in the name of hypocritical love.

The observation is that at the beginning of the third A.D. millennium the Orthodox Church is fighting and warring with the waves of a treacherous internal enemy, modern religious syncretism, Ecumenism. The ship of the Church is again being buffeted; we, however, know that whatever storms may break out, whatever wars may be declared, whatever waves may rise, the ark of our salvation, our holy Church, “does not endure shipwreck,” because she has as captain Christ Himself, who assures us, “and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against her” (Matt. 16:18), that is, all the powers of darkness shall not prevail against her.

In concluding, I would like to thank our Beatitude Archbishop Mr. Kallinikos, the holy Hierarchs of our Holy Synod, for the honor of entrusting to me the address of today’s confessional gathering.

Thanks to the other Fathers and to all of you for the effort and the patience to listen to me.

I wish you a good remainder of the holy and Great Lent, and may God grant us to celebrate the holy Pascha.

Thank you.

 

Greek source:

https://ecclesiagoc.gr/index.php/%E1%BC%84%CF%81%CE%B8%CF%81%CE%B1/%CF%80%CE%B1%CF%81%CE%B1%CE%B9%CE%BD%CE%B5%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AC/2449-omilia-filipon-ambrosiou-orthodoxias-2026

 

The Case for the Old Calendar: A Response to Fr. John Chryssavgis

Michael W. Davis | March 2, 2026

 

 

Orthodox scholars who urge us to abandon the Julian Calendar think they are fostering unity with Rome. In fact, their proposal would bring about a new and terrible schism within the Orthodox Church.

Recently, a group of Orthodox scholars and clergy led by Fr. John Chryssavgis issued a bold statement urging the Orthodox Church to change the dating of Pascha.

Their essay, “Towards a Common Date of Easter”, argues that the Orthodox must abandon the Julian Calendar. Instead, we must find a new method, one that is faithful to both the “rules established at the Council of Nicaea and accurate astronomical realities.”

[See: https://orthodoxmiscellany.blogspot.com/2026/02/orthodox-clergy-theologians-issue.html]

Fr. John and his cosignatories (whom we’ll refer to collectively as “Chryssavgis,” for simplicity’s sake) seek to “encourage open and frank discussion” about the Church calendar. We are glad to offer our thoughts.

A Lamentable Lack of Unity

As the title of Chryssavgis’s essay implies—and as the text makes clear—the main impetus behind this argument is ecumenism. Fr. John seeks to redress the “lamentable lack of unity among Christians in celebrating the most important feast of the Resurrection of Christ together.”

Yet how was this unity fractured? Let’s consider the facts.

In the first few centuries A.D., Christians disagreed widely on how to calculate the date of Pascha/Easter. One group, known as the Quartodecimans, believed it should take place on 12 Nisan—the date of Jewish Passover—regardless of the day of the week. Others felt that Pascha should always fall on a Sunday. There were at least a dozen alternatives, variations, and hybrids used throughout the Church.

In A.D. 325, Emperor St. Constantine convened the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea. The Council was charged with (among other things) settling a common method for dating Pascha. In the end, the Fathers of Nicaea I declared that Pascha would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon following the Spring Equinox; also, it must take place after Jewish Passover. And since the majority of Christian bishops lived within the Roman Empire, they followed the Julian Calendar.

This is ecumenism in the truest sense of the word. It is a coming-together of the whole Church to make decisions in a spirit of cooperation and consent. “The truth cannot be made clear in any other way,” as the Fathers of Constantinople II pointed out to Pope Vigilius, “since everyone requires the assistance of his neighbor.”

The Orthodox and Catholics continued to use this method for dating Pascha even after the Great Schism. Then, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a new calendar: what is now known as the Gregorian Calendar. Of course, the Eastern patriarchs were not consulted in this matter. Gregory promulgated his new calendar and then wrote to the Orthodox churches urging them to adopt it.

So, we already have an “ecumenical” method for dating Pascha, one that was formulated and promulgated by the universal Church. This is the very same formula that the Orthodox use today. The simplest and easiest way for us to settle upon a common dating system would be for Rome to revert to the Julian Calendar.

As it happens, several Vatican theologians have signaled their willingness to do just that! A number of Melkite (Eastern Catholic) dioceses have already switched to “Julian Easter,” out of solidarity with their Orthodox neighbors.

By All, and in Every Place

Unfortunately, what Chryssavgis proposes is the opposite of ecumenical. He urges the various Orthodox jurisdictions to adopt a “local approach” whereby different synods, dioceses, and even parishes choose their own method for the dating of Pascha. Such a choice “would not require the consent or corroboration of other autocephalous churches,” Fr. John insists.

As we’ve seen, this goes entirely against the spirit of the First Ecumenical Council. The Nicene Fathers made it abundantly clear: their primary objective was to create a system for the dating of Pascha that could be followed by all Christians, everywhere in the world—again, this being the proper definition of “ecumenical.”

In his letter announcing the decisions of Nicaea I, St. Constantine makes this point explicitly:

It was resolved by the united judgment of all present, that this feast ought to be kept by all and in every place on one and the same day. For what can be more becoming or honorable to us than that this feast from which we date our hopes of immortality, should be observed unfailingly by all alike, according to one ascertained order and arrangement?

The Council Fathers, likewise, in their famous Epistle to the Egyptians, wrote:

We further proclaim to you the good news of the agreement concerning the holy Easter, that this particular also has through your prayers been rightly settled; so that all our brethren in the East who formerly followed the custom of the Jews are henceforth to celebrate the said most sacred feast of Easter at the same time with the Romans and yourselves and all those who have observed Easter from the beginning.

The Council did not establish a selection of acceptable dates. No: they settled upon one date for the whole Church to celebrate in common.

Now, one may disagree with St. Constantine’s perspective. One may argue that the Nicene Fathers placed too much emphasis on uniformity in the Church calendar. Those are the arguments Chryssavgis has to make, though, if he wants to advance this “local option.”

It should be noted that the 1923 Council of Constantinople, which promoted the Revised Julian Calendar, retained the old, “unrevised” Julian dating. Even Patr. Meletios IV (Metaxakis) did not dare to introduce a second Paschalion. Even he recognized that the whole Church must celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection together, as one Body. Likewise, the entire Church must consent to change the dating of Holy Pascha—or else it cannot be changed at all.

But to Observe the Stars

Chryssavgis further argues that the Julian Calendar must be abandoned because it is inaccurate.

According to Nicaea, Pascha is to be celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon following the Spring Equinox (and the Jewish Passover). However, the Julian Calendar does not accurately calculate the date of the Spring Equinox. Therefore, in Chryssavgis’s words, “The Orthodox Church’s current method of calculating the date of Pascha is no longer consistently faithful to the Nicaean norms.”

Yet how can that be, when (as we said) the Fathers of Nicaea I also used the Julian Calendar? Are the Orthodox “unfaithful” to the Council Fathers by following their example too closely?

Moreover, the Fathers attached no significance to the Spring Equinox per se. Of course, they understood the spiritual significance in the order of nature! But they also knew that the spiritual reality grants significance to the natural order; the natural order does not determine or dictate the spiritual reality in some pantheistic way.

This is not a new debate, either. It goes back to the 16th century, when Rome first adopted the Gregorian Calendar. Even then, the Orthodox accused Catholics of embracing a sort of “astronomical fundamentalism”—of attaching far too much significance to the movements of these celestial bodies, to the point where they broke with the patristic method for dating Pascha.

For instance, we mentioned that, in 1852, Pope Gregory XIII wrote to the Eastern patriarchs urging them to adopt his new calendar. Joachim V of Antioch wrote him a searing reply:

Our community, our bishops, our kings and all our people, scattered in the four cardinal directions—Greeks, Russians, Georgians, Vlachs, Serbs, Moldovans, Turks, Arabs, and others... from the time of the Holy Apostles and God-bearing fathers of the Seven Ecumenical Councils down to this day recognize one faith, one confession, one Church, and one baptism... and all our nations agree in the four corners of the inhabited world with one word and one affair...

And we did not receive the confession and the holy tradition which is in our hands... from unknown people, like other, foreign communities. But we pray with the Holy Apostles and the 318 fathers [of the Council of Nicaea] whose signs and miracles shine forth from them manifestly. And so how can we change the tradition of such holy fathers and follow after unknown people who have no other trade but to observe the stars and examine the sky?

Now, perhaps a future Ecumenical Council could “update” our method for dating Pascha—one that more accurately reflects these “astronomical realities.” There has been talk of this in the past, as Chryssavgis notes.

The point is that the Fathers of Nicaea I were concerned less with astronomy and more with creating a stable, universal tradition for calculating the date of Pascha. The idea of different Orthodox groups choosing their own preferred method for dating Easter is the worst violation of “Nicaean norms” one could possibly imagine.

Conclusion

To sum up the Chryssavgis thesis: We should weaken the unity of the Orthodox Church in order to strengthen our ties with the heterodox. 

The bonds that unite the Orthodox Church are already strained nearly to the point of breaking. Chryssavgis’s solution is to deliberately weaken the Church’s unity further. And for what? A feeling of togetherness with those who long ago departed from our common path.

If Rome is sincerely interested in unity with the Orthodox, let them return to the Ecumemical Calendar that the East and West agreed upon in A.D. 325, and which served us both very well for over a thousand years.

Nicaea I made it abundantly clear: the entire Church must observe a common celebration of Easter. This is not a matter of convenience. It’s one of the very pillars of ecclesial unity.

If Chryssavgis’s proposal were to be adopted by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, it would almost certainly lead to full-blown schism. This should be painfully obvious to any student of Church history and/or any observer of the Orthodox Church today. 

I wonder, who in the Phanar would want that on his conscience? Who would answer for such a grave and pointless error on Judgment Day?

                                                             

Source: https://uoj.news/defending-faith/86593-the-case-for-the-old-calendar-a-response-to-fr-john-chryssavgis

On Christian Zionism (2017): President Trump and Jerusalem

St. Edward Brotherhood | 21 December 2017

 

 

The recent decision by President Trump to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel resulted in the usual liberal media frenzy that accompanies almost any statement by the current President of the United States. Interestingly, on this occasion, other western political leaders, including the British Prime Minister Theresa May, criticized the President’s statement.

The political situation in the Middle East is far too complicated to discuss here, but the religious reasons behind President Trump’s decision are worth discussing considering that most Protestants we encounter believe in some form of ‘Christian Zionism’.

Zionism is the movement for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Zionists view the State of Israel as the Promised Land promised by God to Abraham in the Old Testament. Zionism is not a modern movement, but it came to prominence following World War Two due to the huge influx of Jews into Palestine, which led to violence between the British forces running Palestine at the time, the Jewish immigrants and the Palestinian inhabitants.

Many Christians are unaware that Zionists perpetrated many terrorist atrocities in their fight to establish a State of Israel. Palestinians were abducted and murdered; British soldiers were murdered in car bombings, shootings, and lynchings in order to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population and to force the British to leave Palestine. By the time the British withdrew, they had lost over three hundred men killed. [1] As well as Muslims, a significant number of native Palestinian Christians and Jews were killed in these terrorist attacks carried out, to a large extent, by recent immigrants to Palestine.

Despite this, most American Evangelicals believe that God has blessed the State of Israel. This belief that the State of Israel is synonymous with the Old Testament Israel blessed by God is what is called ‘Christian Zionism’. In a recent survey, 82% of white Evangelical Protestants stated that God gave Israel to the Jews. [2] Many Evangelicals not only support the State of Israel but also yearn after a return to Jewish worship:

Though it may surprise most Jews, evangelicals feel not only a strong sense of protectiveness toward the state of Israel but a deep cultural affinity with the Jewish people. It is not just that they are well versed in the Hebrew Scripture and its values. More importantly, as convinced Protestants, evangelicals tend to bypass the period of church history between the apostles and the Reformation—more than a thousand years of Christian corruption and paganism, as they see it—and look for inspiration not to Origen or Aquinas but to the heady days when all Christians were, in fact, Jews. In returning to the roots of their faith, they often feel closer to Jewish culture than to other branches of Christianity. Some go the extra mile to don a kippah, observe Passover, or celebrate a bar mitzvah. [3]

Evangelicals also believe that the prosperity and power of America is conditional on its support for Israel. Some of this support for Israel probably stems from a literal Protestant Fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, which associates the Old Testament Israel with the State of Israel simply because of the use of the word ‘Israel’. This interpretation is overly simplistic and not traditionally Protestant. The Israel that God delivered from Pharaoh is not the same as the State of Israel established in 1948.

In the Orthodox Church we venerate the saints of the Old Testament because they struggled out of love for God by obeying the ordinances of the Law, but this law was merely a foreshadowing of grace. St. Paul teaches that ‘the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith’ (Gal. 3:24). Christ is the fulfilment of the law (cf. Matt. 6:7) and its end. We hear this summarized in the Dogmatic Theotokion of the Second Tone sung on Saturday evening:

The shadow of the law is passed away with the coming of grace; for as the bush was not consumed when it was burning, thus as a virgin didst thou give birth, and a virgin didst thou remain. In the stead of a pillar of fire, there hath arisen the Sun of Righteousness; in the stead of Moses, Christ, the Salvation of our souls. [4]

Most American Evangelicals are Christian Zionists, but only a minority believe in its most extreme forms. John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel is one such example. He claims that Hitler was sent by ‘god’ in order to cause Jews to move to Israel. [5]

It is quite understandable that religious Jews believe the State of Israel is their Promised Land although we would disagree. Although there are fanatical religious Zionists, most Israelis are cultural Zionists and do not exhibit the same levels of hatred for Palestinians as do extreme Christian Zionists:

In stark contrast to cultural Zionists who deem ethnic cleansings as a defensible cruelty, Christian Zionists defend ethnic cleansing as a divine command. From Darby in the past to LaHaye in the present, they militantly forward the notion that God has covenanted to give Eretz Israel – from the river of Egypt to the River Euphrates – exclusively to the Jews. “The Lord will purify His land of all the wicked,’ wrote Darby, ‘from the Nile to the Euphrates.’ John Hagee is equally explicit. ‘God has given Jerusalem’, he says, ‘only to the Jews’. Supporting the displacement of Arabs in order to make room for Jews is rationalised as fulfilment of the purposes of God. [6]

Not only is Christian Zionism completely un-Orthodox, it is not even traditionally Protestant. The sixteenth century Protestant Reformer John Calvin strongly condemned the theory of chialism (millennialism) that is closely associated with Christian Zionism.

Different forms of millennialism exist, but most American Evangelicals believe in the idea that, at some point the future, Christ will return secretly and take Christians into heaven (the Rapture) thereby ushering in a period of tribulation before Christ comes again openly to institute a thousand year reign on earth. This type of millennialism (pre-dispensational millennialism is part of a relatively new belief system called dispensationalism invented in the 19^th century by John Nelson Darby (1800-1882). Darby divided the Bible into seven historical periods or dispensations. We are now, apparently, living in the sixth dispensation. This millennium (the seventh dispensation) will be Jewish in origin, with the Temple, animal sacrifices and Old Testament priesthood being re-established. Only after this millennium will the Last Judgment occur.

The idea of re-establishing the Old Testament priesthood and animal sacrifices is unique to dispensationalism; it is a modern heresy unknown to both the Early Church and the Protestant Reformers.

Christian Zionists and Evangelicals who believe in a reintroduction of Temple worship cannot be called Christians because they deny the redeeming sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. We are Christians because we have been redeemed by the ‘precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect’ (1. Pet 1:19).  If we reject this sacrifice and yearn after the sacrifices of the Old Testament we are not Christians.

Christ is our Passover Lamb who was sacrificed for ‘our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world’ (1 John 2:2). Christ, by offering Himself as a sacrifice, redeemed us from the curse of the law so that the blessing of Abraham might come upon us and that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith (cf. Gal. 3:13-14). Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross abolished the sacrifices of the Law as St. Paul makes clear:

Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; Then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By that will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (Heb. 10:8-10).

The Scriptures and the writings of the Church Fathers clearly show that Christ is not only the sacrifice offered, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world (cf. John 1:29), but also the High Priest who offers the sacrifice. We hear this High Priestly prayer of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane on Great Thursday evening (it is the first of the twelve Gospel readings (John 13:31- 18:1)).

In other words, re-establishing the Old Testament priesthood would be rejecting Christ the High Priest’s sacrifice for us. We would be going back to the time when animal sacrifices were used to propitiate God, thereby rejecting the New Covenant of Christ. Saint Paul explains this further:

Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this cause He is the mediator of the new covenant, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, they who are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance (Heb. 9 11-15).

By Christ’s redeeming sacrifice we have become a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation. (cf. 1 Peter 2:9). It is for this reason that the Church is often referred to as the New Israel. St. Paul is clear in his Epistle to the Romans that a remnant of the Old Israel, that is the Jews, will be saved, but this salvation will come through grace and not through a re-institution of the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament.  

Far from believing that Christ’s sacrifice instituted a new, royal priesthood, dispensationalists believe that the Christian faith is actually a result of a failure of Christ. According to this heretical theory, Christ became incarnate to establish an earthly millennial kingdom, but He failed to do this because the Jews rejected him as their leader. As a result, the ‘church’ came into being and God now has two separate plans or ‘dispensations’: one for the church and one for Israel. Members of the church look forward to eternal life in heaven and members of Israel look forward to an earthly Kingdom – the re-establishment of the Old Testament Israel including Temple worship and animal sacrifice.

It should be apparent by now that dispensationalism and Christian Zionism are not Orthodox in the slightest. We do not look for a kingdom on earth, with human priests subject to death, because we have Christ as High Priest as St. Paul teaches:

For such a High Priest was fitting for us, Who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens; Who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. For the law appoints as high priests men who have weakness, but the word of the oath, which came after the law, appoints the Son who has been perfected forever (Heb. 7: 26-28).

Dispensationalism has penetrated so deeply into American Protestantism that most Protestants would fail to recognize the word dispensationalism – for these people, believing in a thousand year earthly kingdom, the rapture and the re-establishment of Jewish Temple worship is part of being ‘Protestant’; this is despite Calvin’s condemnation of millennialism! There is little doubt that President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel was influenced by the powerful American Christian Zionist movement.

Christian Zionists believe that because Jerusalem is the place where the end of the world will occur, the State of Israel needs to be supported; the formation of the State of Israel, according to them, is the first stage of the second coming of Christ and is part of biblical prophecy.

Extreme Christian Zionists have even tried to hasten the second coming of Christ by various means. According to the dispensationalist interpretation of Numbers 19:2, even today everyone that has come into contact with a human corpse, bone, or grave is unclean until cleansed with water containing the ashes of a red heifer. This heifer must be completely red with no hairs of any other colour. The ashes of the last pure red heifer ran out in about 70 A.D. leaving, by now, all Jews impure and incapable of building a new Temple.

In the 1990’s Clyde Lott, a born again Christian and cattle breeder, decided to take matters into his own hands and take care of what God had obviously not provided by breeding fifty thousand Red Angus cattle and shipping them to Israel in the hope that one cow might give birth to a pure, red heifer.

In 1996, a red heifer named Melody was born on a farm near Haifa and was visited by a hundred Protestant pastors from Texas and even featured on the front cover of the Endtime magazine. [7] At eighteen months of age Melody, probably much to her relief, sprouted white hairs which saved her from imminent death and cremation. Although Melody was not the result of Lott’s breeding programme, other American cattle breeders are still trying to raise an unblemished red heifer. The following story was reported in January 2014:

In January a red heifer, or ‘Parah Adumah’, was born to a cow herding family in an undisclosed location in the US, who wish to see the animal used for the purity service during the preparations for the rebuilding of the Third Temple. The family has reportedly not marred or maimed the animal in any way, nor will they be using the animal for work or feeding it any growth hormones. All this to comply with Jewish law of keeping the animal as nature created it. Update: Unfortunately, several months later, the cow was found to have more than one colored hair that is not red. [8]

The site of the proposed new Jewish Temple is Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This site is currently occupied by the Muslim Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque. Melody’s appearance sent some Christian Zionists into such fervour that Israeli security forces even considered the possibility that these ‘christians’ might try to blow up these Muslim holy sites in order to clear the ground for the new Temple. [9]

Many American Evangelical Protestants are not concerned about damaging the Middle-East peace process by their interference because, in their opinion, the bloodshed that would result would be a price worth paying for the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple.  Let’s not forget that these people believe that they will be spared from the tribulation of the end-times by being taken into heaven (the Rapture) at their imagined secret coming of Christ.

The  Rapture is unknown to the Early Church and to traditional Protestantism. It is something forced on to one particular biblical text in order to make Scripture fit the teachings of dispensationalism. Christ Himself explains that His Second Coming will not be secret, but clearly evident to all: 

Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.  For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.  And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other (Matt. 24: 26, 27, 29, 30).

The Second Coming of Christ will also be demonstrated by the resurrection of the dead, and the dead in Christ will be raised first as Saint Paul teaches:

For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not precede them which are asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. (1 Thess. 4:15, 16)

Although many British Evangelicals believe in the Rapture, their beliefs concerning the State of Israel are more moderate than their American co-religionists. Perhaps this is because, until recently, the Middle-East conflict has not featured very much in UK political campaigns. Unfortunately, the infiltration of the Labour Party by both hard-left and Islamic agitators has led to an alarming rise in anti-Semitism in the U.K. Often, this is disguised under the banner of ‘anti-Zionism’ – in fact, in many cases, it is plain anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism has also plagued Orthodox countries for centuries. The Russian pogroms of the nineteenth century in which Jewish villages were burned to the ground are one shameful example. Although the Orthodox Church condemned these acts in the strongest possible terms, widespread suspicion of the Jews in general persisted. This suspicion is manifested today in the form of conspiracy theories detailing Jewish plots to control financial markets and international politics.

Orthodox Christians should leave conspiracy theories well alone. We are not called to reform the world’s banking system, we are called to repent and follow the teachings of the Gospel. Saint Seraphim of Sarov teaches: ‘acquire the spirit of peace and thousands around you will be saved’. We cannot change the whole world, but we can change our lives by repentance and, as a result, change that part of the world in which we live by showing love for God and our neighbour.

Genuine Orthodox Christians demonstrate true Christianity by showing love for their neighbours regardless of their religion. We can see this in the following two examples from World War Two. We ourselves have heard similar accounts from our parishioners, and no doubt there are many, many more.

In September 1943, The Chief Rabbi was ordered by the Nazis to provide the names and addresses of the Jews living in Athens. The Rabbi contacted Archbishop Damaskinos who suggested that the Jews flee rather than identifying themselves to the Nazis. At the same time, the Archbishop, together with the chief of police, began an operation to save as many Jewish lives as possible. He publicly condemned Hitler’s plans and the priests in his diocese condemned the deportation of Jews in their sermons.

As a consequence over six hundred Orthodox priests were arrested and deported to concentration camps. Orthodox clergy issued false baptismal certificates to Jewish families in order to save them from deportation. Over two hundred and fifty Jewish children were saved by being hidden in the homes of Orthodox clergy, and many thousands more were hidden by monasteries and laypeople.

Archbishop Damaskinos, in a final attempt to prevent the deportation, signed a letter appealing to the German commander for clemency. The letter concludes: ‘Our holy religion does not recognize superior or inferior qualities based on race or religion, as it is stated: “There is neither Jew nor Greek” and thus condemns any attempt to discriminate or create racial or religious differences.’ Outraged, the German commander threatened the Archbishop with being taken outside and shot. The Archbishop’s reply was simple and courageous: ‘Greek religious leaders are not shot, they are hanged. I request that you respect this custom.’

The reply so astounded the German that the Archbishop’s life was spared. It is interesting to note how a Jewish Foundation views the contents of this letter: ‘The appeal of the Archbishop and his fellow Greeks is unique; there is no similar document of protest of the Nazis during World War II that has come to light in any other European country.’ [10]

In 1944, the Germans invaded the Greek island of Zakynthos and ordered the mayor to hand over a list of the Jewish inhabitants. By this stage in the war it was evident that Jews handed over to the Germans would be murdered. The mayor enlisted the help of Metropolitan Chrysostomos who presented the mayor’s list to the Germans. The list contained only two names: Metropolitan Chrysostomos and Louka Karrer, the mayor. The Metropolitan bravely told the German commander: ‘Here are your Jews. If you choose to deport the Jews of Zakynthos, you must also take me, and I will share their fate.’ Whilst the Metropolitan was stalling the Germans, the Orthodox Christian inhabitants of Zakynthos hid their Jewish neighbours.

It is also thought likely that Metropolitan Chrysostomos wrote to Hitler interceding for the Jews living within his diocese. Unfortunately, due to the loss of the island’s archives in the devastating 1953 earthquake, copies of this letter no longer exist. We do know that all Zaknythos’ two hundred and seventy-five Jews survived, and no further attempt was made by the Germans to deport them. Indeed, the first boat to arrive with aid to the victims of the 1953 earthquake was from Israel, adorned with a banner that read: ‘The Jews of Zakynthos have never forgotten their mayor or their beloved bishop and what they did for us.’ [11]

It is clear that Christian Zionism is incompatible with Orthodoxy and not even vaguely Christian. However, in rejecting these heretical ideas, we must not allow ourselves to be numbered with the anti-Semites whose stock-in-trade is hatred and division and who are recognized by their fruits (cf. Matt. 7:20). Let us instead follow the example of those Orthodox Christians who were willing to lay down their lives during the Holocaust and recall the words of Christ: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’ (John 15:13).

 

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1. http://www.nam.ac.uk/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/palestine

2.http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/10/03/more-white-evangelicals-than-american-jews-say-god-gave-israel-to-the-jewish-people/

3. http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2013/10/evangelicals-and-israel/

4. Holy Transfiguration Monastery (trans.) The Pentecostarion (Brookline: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1990) p.108

5. http://ww w.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ec-kZGKnQ8

6. H. Hanegraaff, The Apocalypse Code (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007) p.167

7. S. Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The story of Christian Zionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) p.204

8. https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/17303/holy-cow-red-heifer-born-us/

9. Evangelicals and Israel: The story of Christian Zionism p.205

10. http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/es/generales/archbishop-damaskinos/

11. http://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-features/special-focus/holocaust-in-greece/zakynthos

 

Source (typos corrected):

http://brookwoodblogger.blogspot.com/2017/12/president-trump-and-jerusalem.html