How Apostasy Led to Ecumenism: Precursor Spiritual Movements Behind Ecumenism

Pavlos Klimatsakis

A presentation at the conference with the theme:

Unity of the Church and Union of the Churches

War Museum, Athens – Sunday, May 3, 2026

Center for Patristic Studies

 

 

In our days, Ecumenism is often presented to the broad public as an innocent, spontaneous, and sincere desire for the achievement of unity among divided Christians. It is put forward as a movement of love that responds to the challenges of our times. However, a careful historical and theological analysis proves that this phenomenon is neither innocent nor autonomous. It was not born suddenly in the 20th century out of nothing. On the contrary, it constitutes the mature and necessary result of a long, systematic course of apostasy, which began in the bosom of Western Christianity centuries ago. In order to understand the true nature and aims of contemporary Ecumenism, we must seek out its roots and examine the spiritual substratum from which it emerged.

It is proven that Ecumenism arose through two parallel, but distinct, paths of apostasy in the West: the humanistic-rationalistic tradition and the occultist one. Despite their apparent differences, both of these directions historically converge in precisely the same result. They lead to the gradual undermining and relativization of Christian truth as the sole and exclusive path of salvation.

PART A: The Humanistic and Rationalistic Path

The first path was deprived of the living experience of the Church and relied exclusively on human intellect. It developed in four decisive historical steps:

1. The Renaissance and Humanism: The Shift of the Center

During the period of the Renaissance, a radical spiritual overturning takes place. The center of interest shifts from the God-man Christ to man himself and to his earthly capabilities. In this context, leading scholars, such as Erasmus, begin to envision a universal Christian unity. This unity, however, is no longer based on the common, unshakable dogmatic faith. It is based simply on a common, external moral conduct. At the same time, the appearance of philological criticism of the sacred texts comes to relativize, for the first time, the dogmatic authority of the Church. Thus, the spirit of irenicism is gradually introduced into Western thought, according to which dogmatic differences are deliberately downgraded to secondary issues that must not hinder coexistence.

2. The Enlightenment: The Deification of Reason

With the advent of the Enlightenment, human reason and logic are now proclaimed as the supreme criterion of truth. Philosophers such as Locke and Voltaire develop and teach the theory of religious tolerance. This tolerance is not simply respect for one’s fellow man, but the gradual equating of religious beliefs. In the same period, the Deists propose the adoption of a common “natural religion.” This religion is supposedly accessible to all men through reason, independently of revealed truth. This theory is structurally identical with the basic ecumenical idea of the search for a “common basis” among the confessions. During the same period, the historical criticism of the Bible, with Spinoza as its chief exponent, deconstructs the sacred text. It treats it as a mere human historical creation, profoundly undermining every dogmatic certainty.

3. Liberal Theology: Subjectivism and the Social Gospel

During the 19th century, liberal Protestant theology completely diverts the meaning of faith. Schleiermacher defines religion not as the revelation of doctrines, but as a purely subjective, emotional experience of the individual. A little later, Harnack attempts to strip Christianity bare as he seeks its supposed genuine “core,” beneath the later dogmatic “layers” of the Ecumenical Councils. This logic was simple: if dogma is regarded as a later, human surface, then the various churches can easily be united upon the common moral core. This theory found its practical application in the movement of the “Social Gospel,” where Christian communities began to cooperate closely for social and philanthropic purposes, completely setting aside their dogmatic differences. This is a purely practical Ecumenism, which functioned long before the term itself had even been invented.

4. Postmodernism: The Fluidity of Truth

In our age, postmodernism comes to provide the philosophical legitimation that Ecumenism needed. Lyotard proclaims the end of the “grand narratives.” He claims that no religion or ideology is any longer justified in laying claim to exclusive and absolute truth. At the same time, Derrida’s method of deconstruction is applied to the sacred texts, presenting them as “open” to every kind of subjective interpretation. Within this philosophical climate, religious identity ceases to be stable. It becomes fluid, changing, and the object of continual negotiation, exactly as Ecumenism wants it.

PART B: The Occultist Path

Parallel with rationalism, within the framework of apostasy, a second, equally dangerous path developed in the West. This path used the tools of mysticism and occultism in order to achieve the same goal (p. 2).

1. Gnosticism: The Primordial Undermining

Gnosticism was the first systematic syncretism that the Church was called to confront already from apostolic times. It introduced a specific structure of thought, which has since been repeated in every occultist movement: it claims that there is a hidden, inner truth, which is common to all the religions of the world. It regards the doctrines, the Mysteries, and the institutions of the Church as non-essential, external coverings. It proclaims that the “initiated” can transcend religious divisions. The ancient Church fought Gnosticism with vigor and condemned it. It immediately recognized that its logic was spiritually deadly for revealed truth.

2. Hermeticism and Kabbalah: The Search for the Primordial Theology

During the Renaissance, in parallel with humanism, interest in the ancient Hermetic texts and so-called Christian Kabbalah is revived. Through these searches, the dangerous idea of Prisca Theologia (Primordial Theology) is born. This is the theory that there exists a single, divine knowledge that was given to humanity at the beginning of its history and which is scattered throughout all religions. Pico della Mirandola is a characteristic example. This scholar attempted to prove that Judaism, ancient Greek philosophy, and Christianity converge and are identified on a deeper, mystical level. This effort essentially constitutes the first clear formulation of the ecumenical “common basis,” expressed, however, in occultist terms.

3. Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry: Practical Syncretism

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the various initiatory brotherhoods, chiefly Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry (1717), now set as their explicit and official goal the overcoming of religious divisions. Freemasonry opens its doors to members coming from any religious doctrine. It sets as the only prerequisite belief in a deliberately vague and impersonal higher power, which it calls the “Great Architect of the Universe.” In this way, the particular dogmatic religious identity of each person is downgraded. It is transformed into a purely private matter, which must not hinder spiritual “fraternization.” This is yet another form of practical Ecumenism. Even the papal Church, perceiving the danger, condemned it very early, already from 1738.

4. Theosophy and New Age: The Systematic Culmination

At the end of the 19th century, Helena Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society, succeeding in systematically synthesizing all the previous occultist currents. Theosophy explicitly teaches the existence of an “Ancient Wisdom.” This wisdom supposedly constitutes the common denominator and the hidden source of all the great religions, such as Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam. At the same time, it introduces Eastern beliefs into Western thought, such as reincarnation, the spiritual evolution of humanity, and the expectation of a “New Age” consciousness.

The New Age movement, which has experienced enormous flourishing in recent decades, is nothing other than the popularization and vulgarization of Theosophy. In our days, New Age constitutes syncretism on a purely individual level. Each person can function as an autonomous consumer of spirituality, assembling his own faith from various religious traditions. This deinstitutionalized logic creates the most suitable psychological and social ground for contemporary Ecumenism to be accepted.

The Synthesis of the Two Paths and the Challenge for the Church

Contemporary Ecumenism did not choose between the humanistic and the occultist path. It functioned as the final heir of both of these spiritual currents, synthesizing their characteristics. The central conclusion that emerges is clear and relentless. Ecumenism is not a simple, mistaken idea or a misunderstanding that sprang up suddenly and without cause in the 20th century. It is the mature, necessary, and inevitable result of a spiritual deviation that has been developing unceasingly in the West from the Schism onward.

Every historical step of this course removed one more layer from the exclusivity of Christian truth. Thus, we were led to today’s Ecumenism, where the much-desired union of the churches no longer presupposes the common, unadulterated, and patristic faith. On the contrary, it is satisfied with a vague, emotional, and worldly “good will.” For the faithful of the Church, the understanding of this historical course constitutes a precious resource. It reminds us that genuine Christian unity cannot be achieved through compromises and diplomatic concessions, but only through return to and persistence in the Truth of the Gospel, as the fathers of the Orthodox Church interpreted it, which remains the same yesterday and today and unto the ages.

 

Greek source:

https://www.orthros.eu/2012-09-25-13-07-17/%CE%B7%CE%BC%CE%B5%CF%81%CE%B9%CE%B4%CE%B5%CF%83-%CE%B5-%CF%80-%CE%BC/epm-enotita-enosi/1906-epm-enotita-klimatsakis.html

 

Towards Greater Moderation in the Tendentious Orthodox Dispute Over “Augustinianism”

by the Most Reverend Chrysostomos [+2019],

Former Archbishop and Metropolitan of Etna

 

 

The Editor of Orthodox Tradition recently asked me to write a short article about the status of Bishop Augustine of Hippo Regius (+430) and his writings in the Orthodox Church, an issue that created intense controversy several decades ago—controversy that still persists, unfortunately, in some theological circles. At the peak of that initial dispute, I was, as one of its primary writers, similarly requested to comment on an inquiry to the now defunct “Questions and Comments From Readers” section of Orthodox Tradition regarding the doctrinal orthodoxy of this eminent Latin Father. [1] I have thus decided to reprint, in acquiescing to Bishop Auxentios’ newer request, those original comments, along with a few changes and refinements. This decision came not without some trepidation, stemming from the negative Orthodox attitudes towards St. Augustine that I first encountered in my earlier comments on him. These attitudes are perhaps best summarized by the views of the distinguished Greek theologian and philosopher, Chrestos Giannaras, who, in his book The Freedom of Morality, published in the mid-1980s, described Augustine as the source of virtually all the theological deviations of the Christian West. Expressing the more positive traditional reception of this Father with which I was familiar, and calling him Saint Augustine, I found myself accused by certain clergy, in shockingly contumelious language, of being an “Augustinian heretic” and zealous “λατινόφρων” (Latinophron, Latinizer), if not guilty of sundry impious traducements against the Holy Fathers. Though I knew about various earlier negative reactions in the Slavic Orthodox Churches concerning sundry doctrines of St. Augustine, I was in complete ignorance of the polarization of views in more contemporary theological circles, and I thus entered almost naively into what turned out to be a veritable theological wasp’s nest.

I feel obliged, therefore, to assure my readers that I have no desire whatever to fan the flames of controversy that still exist with regard to the status of Bishop Augustine in the Orthodox Church. Even if I may use nomenclature and adhere to views of the Saint that reflect a moot stand, and even if, in so doing, I seem also to hold his person in high esteem, I assuredly do not do so in a spirit of counter-advocacy or without an awareness of the fact that, whereas for centuries he has been revered in many quarters of the Orthodox Church, the same Fathers who praised him were cognizant of the fact that some of his theological opinions were substantially at odds with the consensus Patrum. I likewise know that the effect of his writings on western Christian thinking was devastating and contributed to the West’s estrangement from the Orthodox East—a truly lamentable legacy. At the same time, I do not think that we can rightly ignore the honor shown Augustine, which has, as I said, been acknowledged for centuries in the Orthodox Church. To the end of making that point, and especially in an epoch when basic Christian virtues are rare, I would like to propose a more moderate approach to the person, writings, and teachings of St. Augustine. There certainly must be more edifying pursuits than those of fervidly arguing against the sanctity of a Churchman who, both his alleged and truly serious errors and misunderstandings notwithstanding, has long served as an example of the power of the Christian Faith to bring sinful men and women out of the delusions of paganism and the ways of iniquity into a life of pious morality, if not Christian enlightenment.

Of those who so vehemently lay such great stress on Augustine’s divers deviations from the consensus of the Orthodox Fathers—starkly so with regard to sin and human guilt before God (his views in this area are diametrically at odds with the pivotal and incisive doctrines of St. Maximos the Confessor), the nature of Grace, and the procession of the Holy Spirit—I would ask some consideration for the fact that further distortions and overstatements of his theological vagaries by Medieval, Reformation, and later thinkers unfairly obfuscate the Saint’s obvious struggle to remain faithful to the Church. One would, indeed, be hard- pressed to find evidence of malice prepense in his writings or his misstatements of the Church’s teachings, let alone tenacious resistance to correction by his contemporaries. Thus, Pope Vigilius (+555), in reconciling himself to the decisions of the Fifth (Ecumenical Synod, invoked the memory, among “...our Fathers,” of the “blessed Augustine” for the Saint’s willingness to retract and correct various errors in his “writings” and “sayings.” [2] Rather, St. Augustine’s works are marked by profound personal piety, a spirit of contrition, and a relentless deference to the teaching authority of the Church: traits of considerable spiritual significance. Moreover, while one may argue that his notions about “created” Grace are incompatible with Orthodox teachings regarding our illumination by Uncreated Grace, this does not mean that he did not experience true Glorification. His lofty spiritual writings would hint otherwise. A purported inability to describe the ineffable, or the perpetuation of conceptual ambiguities in doing so, does not necessarily obviate the possibility of one’s experiencing it.

We might cite such historical luminaries as St. Gregory the Dialogist, the Pope of Rome (+604), St. Photios the Great (+895), and St. Mark of Ephesus (+1444 or 1445), who, while citing him, in specific instances, with pertinent qualifications, nonetheless also pay open homage to Augustine’s sanctity. In his letter, “To Innocent, Prefect of Africa,” Pope Gregory calls St. Augustine “blessed,” [3] and St. Photios refers to him as the “divine Augustine” (“Αυγουστίνον τον ιερόν”) in his “Epistle to the Archbishop of Aquileia,” [4] as does St. Mark in the thirty-fourth of his “Συλλογιστικά κεφάλαια προς Λατίνους,” or syllogistic chapters in defense of the Orthodox Faith against the Latins at the Council of Ferrara-Florence. [5] In our own times, quoting St. Augustine in his arguments against the Latin teaching on the immaculate conception —in fact, from a passage in which Augustine speaks of sanctification and individual union with God (θέωσις, Deification, or Glorification) in a way consistent with the most exalted teachings of the Church Fathers—St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco (+1966) also honors him as “blessed” (see The Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God [Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1987], p. 42). The late Hieromonk Seraphim of Platina perspicaciously comments on this matter:

... [He] has always been regarded with some reserve in the East. In our own days,… there have risen two opposite and extreme views of him. One view, influenced by Roman Catholic opinions, sees rather more importance in him as a Father of the Church than the Orthodox Church has given him in the past; while the other view has tended to underestimate his Orthodox importance, some even going as far as to call him a ‘heretic.’ ...The Orthodox view of him..., held consistently down the centuries by the Holy Fathers of the East and (in the early centuries) of the West as well, goes to neither extreme, but is a balanced appraisal of him with due credit given both to his unquestioned greatness and to his faults. [6]

Though Father Seraphim’s comments are more balanced than most, his observations, too, evidence a critical approach to sanctity that can easily obfuscate its greater dimensions. It is in their fidelity to the common phronema of the Church, and not in the expression of personal opinions that may or may not reflect that commonality, that our Fathers and Saints make manifest their holiness. It is also, and importantly so, in their universal recognition by the Orthodox Church that the verity of their witness is ultimately established. Hence, it is worthy of note that St. Augustine is cited as “shining forth most resplendently among the African Bishops” in the Acts of the Fifth (Ecumenical Synod (553).7 Similarly, in his epistle to the Fathers of the same Synod, St. Justinian (+565) includes Augustine in his references to the “holy Fathers,” along with such renowned luminaries as Sts. Athanasios (+373), Basil (+379), Gregory the Theologian (+389), Gregory of Nyssa (+395), John Chrysostomos (+407), Cyril of Alexandria (+444), et al. [8] In this same spirit, Father Georges Florovsky, not at all timid about criticizing, and not one to underestimate, the Saint’s doctrinal imprecisions, nonetheless called Augustine, in evaluating his spiritual witness in a spirit of moderation that we should emulate, “a Father of the Church Universal.” [9]

The Blessed Augustine is commemorated in the Orthodox Church on June 15, along with his mother, St. Monica (+387).

 

 

NOTES

1. Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XIV (1997), no. 4, pp. 37-39. The inquiry in question read thusly: “I know that you have refused to say that the Blessed Augustine of Hippo was a heretic. Nonetheless, there are those who would say that his teachings on ‘original sin,’ created grace, and the Holy Trinity are errors that cast doubt on his sanctity. Would you address a few words to your readers about this subject?”

2. “Decretal Letter,” The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, Vol. XIV.

3. See “Epistles,” 10.37, NPNF, 2nd series, Vol. XIII.

4. Patrologia Grceca, Vol. CII, col. 809D.

5. While the more pervicacious critics of Augustine have argued that the many Eastern Church Fathers, supposedly unable to read Latin, who held him in high esteem did so simply because they had not read his writings (a rather audacious assertion), both St. Photios and St. Mark (Evgenikos) were familiar enough with his works to evaluate, qualify, and, more significantly, praise his theological thought.

6. The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church (Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1983), p. 8. We might observe in passing that among his collected testimonials from the Fathers to the sanctity of Augustine in this work, Father Seraphim wrongly attributes to St. Gregory the Dialogist a reference to “Saint” Augustine in a letter which was, in fact, not written by the Saint, but addressed to him by Licinianus, the Bishop of Carthagena (in Spain). Using Russian sources for other of his references, his citations from various Greek Fathers are also, at times, not wholly faithful to the original Greek. Finally, the use of the words “blessed” and “saint” to distinguish between two categories of holiness, while a common device in some Orthodox circles, has no counterpart in the Greek Patristic tradition. The words “divine,” “blessed,” “righteous,” and “holy” (the actual meaning of the title “saint,” which in Greek is commonly expressed in two words, “άγιος” and “όσιος”), among others, are used interchangeably to refer to the sanctified.

7. “Rulings of the Synod,” P. Labbe and G. Cossart, Sacrosancta Concilia, 1671, Vol. V.

8. Ibid.

9. The Collected Works of [Father] Georges Florovsky (Vaduz, Liechtenstein: Biichervertriebsanstalt, 1989), Vol. XIV, p. 50.

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XXXIV (2017), No. 3, pp. 5-9.

Ukraine: Testing Ground for a False Union and a “Common Pascha”?

June 4, 2026

 

We present... a relatively recent text, which was published on a special website on the internet,* and which contains certain especially revealing elements concerning the matter of promoting the joint celebration of a Common Pascha of the Papists and the Ecumenists originating among the Orthodox.

In Ukraine, where there are many and serious indications of the experimental operation of a Uniate-type false union, the uncanonical “Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” established by the Phanar, under the supposed Epiphaniy of Kyiv, can also be used experimentally in the matter of establishing a “Common Pascha” with the Uniates of Ukraine under their head, Sviatoslav Shevchuk [of Kyiv–Galicia]

The following text is quite illuminating on this, and it is good for us to know more broadly what exactly is being woven in this matter of the highest importance and gravity.

+ Metropolitan Klemes of Larissa and Platamon

+++

OCU and UGCC get closer to Easter

April 17, 2026

This week’s Easter celebrations expectedly provoked a discussion about the correctness of calculating the date of the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection. After the successful calendar reform, which resulted in the de facto transfer of most church holidays in Ukraine to the Catholic “new style,” Easter remained the only link between Ukrainian society and Eastern Orthodoxy. However, the efforts of representatives of the OCU and the UGCC, who serve the current Ukrainian elites, are slowly shaping the public opinion of the undiscerning ordinary people, the essence of which is that “Easter should be celebrated with the whole world,” that is, by the Latin number.

In this case, the UGCC is the flagship of the discussion on this issue. The head of the Ukrainian Uniates, who until recently dreamed of some kind of “unification of Ukrainian churches around the Kyivan throne,” stopped hiding his gut and openly stated that there can be no alternatives to unity with the Roman throne in the issue of Easter (as, in fact, in all other issues). In this regard, at every opportunity, Sviatoslav Shevchuk throws a message to the masses that celebrating Easter with Catholics is the only right decision that the OCU and the UGCC should make.

It would seem that what prevents the Uniates from switching to the Latin Easter NOW? However, as with the issue of switching to the Gregorian calendar, the UGCC wants to ensure that this topic is raised first in the OCU. The numerical potential of Greek Catholics in Ukrainian society is extremely small, despite the activity of the leadership center. An ordinary Ukrainian citizen, who often does not distinguish between the OCU and the UOC, will most certainly not associate himself with the union, so if the initiative comes from the UGCC, it risks becoming a regional phenomenon, limited to three western Ukrainian regions. That is why the OCU should be the main battering ram in this matter, while the UGCC and its accompanying LOMs should conduct information training.

Although the OCU itself is mentally and ideologically ready to switch to the Latin Easter, it remains silent on this issue, observing the mood in society and waiting for some public steps or unofficial consent to such a step from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Meanwhile, the Phanar has long been discussing this possibility, which, by the way, may occur by 2028, when the Orthodox and Catholic calendars coincide. It is possible that Ukraine could become a test site for a general analysis of the perception of such a step in Orthodox communities.

Thus, there is every reason to believe that closer to 2027-2028, Ukraine will officially switch to the Gregorian calendar, including the issue of Easter. This step will be the final blow to the Slavic mentality of Ukrainians, after which the only option will be to switch from Cyrillic to Latin.

Thanks to the OCU and the UGCC, Ukrainians, in most cases unknowingly, are abandoning their history, and as you know, those who do not preserve their past have no future. Be that as it may, this year and perhaps next year will be a time of active discussion of this possibility and the expansion of the Overton Window into the subject of an even darker fusion of Ukraine’s Orthodox population with the Catholic and Protestant West.

 

* https://raskolamnet.info/en/103786-ru-pczu-y-ugkcz-podbyrayutsya-k-pashe/

Greek introduction source:

https://imlp.gr/2026/06/04/%ce%bf%cf%85%ce%ba%cf%81%ce%b1%ce%bd%ce%af%ce%b1-%cf%87%cf%8e%cf%81%ce%bf%cf%82-%ce%b4%ce%bf%ce%ba%ce%b9%ce%bc%ce%b1%cf%83%cf%84%ce%b9%ce%ba%ce%ae%cf%82-%cf%88%ce%b5%cf%85%ce%b4%ce%ad%ce%bd%cf%89/

 

 

Sermon in Honor of St. Gregory Palamas

Delivered by Archbishop [Metropolitan] Chrysostomos of Etna [+2019] in the Lecture Hall at Synod [in Resistance] Headquarters, Kolonos (Athens), Greece, on the Second Sunday of Great Lent, the Feast Day of St. Gregory Palamas. Translated from the Greek by Bishop Auxentios.

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XVII (2000), No. 4, pp. 14-21.

 

 

Your Eminence, Metropolitan Cyprian,
our beloved Father in Christ;
Your Graces;
Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

At the request of our Metropolitan and Father, out of obedience, and asking the intercession of the Saint, the blessing of His Eminence, and your forgiveness for my shortcomings and the obvious lack of eloquence in my short homily, I would like to say a few simple words about the basic teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki.

This second Sunday of the Great Fast and, as well, our monastery in California—which is a dependency of the Holy Monastery of Sts. Cyprian and Justina—are dedicated to the memory of St. Gregory Palamas, who, as we sing in his Troparion, was a great Teacher of the Church, a defender of theologians, and a luminary of Orthodoxy. That is to say, St. Gregory Palamas, by his life and with his teachings, expresses the catholic and oecumenical truth of Christianity and guides us to the criterion of the Faith, the Orthodox Church. During his life in this world, he tried to preserve the authenticity and purity of the words of the Holy Fathers, just as he protects us now, from the other world, in our humble but indispensable efforts in our own age to safeguard the legacy of the Fathers of the Church. Today, some seven hundred forty years after his repose, we are still illuminated in our Orthodox Faith by the beauty of this great and important example of those enlightened men and women who, by Grace, Christ unites to Himself, His light thus shining in their persons. And, indeed, in the synaxarion for the Feast of St. Gregory Palamas, we read that, from the very day of his Ordination, the Divine Light of the Savior continually showed forth on his countenance.

I am not an accomplished theologian, and I do not have the necessary gifts to set forth for you the profound spiritual essence of the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas. This gift from on high you may see in the work and daily life of our Metropolitan; and, to be sure, a number of the events in the life of St. Gregory Palamas are similar to those in the life of our spiritual Father (I could also, incidentally, draw parallels between the gifts of the Saint and those which I see in the Metropolitan), since God's elect—while each individual may, in his path towards deification by Grace (theopoiesis), remain true to the idiosyncrasies of his character or personality—draw their identity from the universal and archetypical Person of Christ, Who renders us, when He unites us by His love to His Body, authentic, genuine persons through the restoration of the image of God in our sinful hearts.

Therefore, once again because of my lack of gifts and theological knowledge, I will simply describe that which I do not actually know and that in which I am inexperienced. I do not believe that we have anything to lose by my poor words, since, first, I am speaking with the blessing and by the command of my spiritual Father, the Metropolitan (that is, out of obedience); and second, because I do not think that the mere description of spiritual things is without significance all together. In truth, even the Holy Scriptures, despite errors in our thinking in this regard produced by the influence of Protestant theology on the contemporary teachings of our Holy Church, do not contain the Glory of God, but rather—though with the power of the Holy Spirit and in a perfect manner—describe the Glory of God, leading us to an encounter with the reality of life in Christ, wherein by Grace the Lord Himself reveals to us His Glory. With the help of God and with the blessing of our spiritual Father, then, perhaps I can, with my few descriptive words about the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, bring you to an elementary awareness of the theological treasury of this physician of the soul of man, who, unfortunately, is still not so well known in the contemporary Church, despite the importance of his teachings for the witness of the Catholic Church of Christ, that is, the Orthodox Church.

By way of introducing my subject, let me say that the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas constitute a perfect manifestation of the catholic, or universal, truth of our Faith. His teachings express the fullness of Christian cosmology, anthropology, and theology (using the precise definition of the word theologia) and constitute a magnificent solution to the dilemmas of Western philosophy. The wisdom of St. Gregory Palamas, in fact, is based on profound theological principles: revealed truths that eventually lead us, and clearly so, to the scientific revolution in theoretical physics that began, in many ways, with Einstein and which, of late, has reached a stage where it theorizes that physical matter, the material of the physical world, is what we might call metaphysical; that is, that it is comprised not simply of atomic particles, but of elements of immaterial light energy (something which has a clear connection to the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, as we shall see). These imperfect theories of theoretical physics demonstrate to us that the Teachers of Orthodoxy live that about which our scientists only speculate (if at times fruitlessly so, at least from a spiritual standpoint); but they also tell us that God, Who is everywhere present and fills all things, reveals Himself, on account of His love, even in nature and in the secular efforts of mankind to find basic meaning in the world and to discover the ultimate aim of life. 

Thus, in the catholic and oecumenical—and I use these words, too, with their literal and ecclesiastical meaning—teaching of St. Gregory Palamas, we discover a perfect statement of the universality of Orthodoxy.

Before examining briefly the specific teachings of St. Gregory, I must point out two basic things.

First, St. Gregory Palamas was not just an educated Teacher of the Church who spoke in theoretical terms about the Divine revelation and vision of God through the treatment of the ills of the soul of man. He was not just a great philosopher who expressed the doctrines of the Church with singular intellectual precision, as many say today on account of the current rediscovery of the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas in the realm of academic theology. He was, of course, literate and educated; in fact, he was a genius with incredible academic skills. When I read him through the eyes of a former psychologist, I put him on the level of Einstein, to whom I earlier referred. St. Gregory was, in my humble opinion, the most brilliant man of his age. But knowledge is one thing, while wisdom is another, the latter coming forth solely from experience in the spiritual life and through a revealed knowledge of God. St. Gregory Palamas did not theologize in a theoretical way, with the goal of analyzing theological ideas philosophically. Quite the contrary. Just as the Fathers of the Church baptized classical Greek philosophy in order to preach the ineffable truth of Christianity in the language of philosophy (thus making philosophy the slave of Christianity, and not Christianity the slave of philosophy, as happened in Scholastic philosophy in the West, after the tragic breaking-away of the Papists from the Orthodox Church), so St. Gregory baptized his educational accomplishments, making them a slave of the Church. The Divine Palamas, again, did not theologize in an academic sense, but from within his spiritual experience; that is, from within the living experience of the Church.

This fact is exceedingly important, since it allows us to see in a correct way, not only the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, but the general significance of education in the Church. Education, when it adorns our exposition of the Christian Faith, is extremely important for the Christian community. The highly educated Fathers of the Church wrote magnificently about theology. But the spiritual experience which they describe in their words is precisely the same experience as that of wholly illiterate Fathers and Saints of the Church. We thus have the examples of many Saints and holy personages in the Church who, rich in wisdom but lacking literary gifts, transmitted their wisdom to us through spiritual disciples more gifted in letters.

Indeed, our Lord Himself, the Source of both Divine and human wisdom, left with us not a single written word from His hand. Everything of His life we read in the words of His Divine Disciples. This shows us that in the Church, which is ruled by humility, education does not distinguish one person from another. The man of God is distinguished by his wisdom, which is a gift from God that enlightens both the educated and the uneducated man with the same Divine knowledge. For this reason, the educated man of God is not ostentatious in revealing his abilities, unless it is to help the Church or to help some other enlightened Father who does not have the gift of literary expression.

For example, St. Athanasios, the Patriarch of Alexandria, considered St. Anthony the Great, who was wholly illiterate, his teacher. And St. Anthony showed great honor to the person of St. Athanasios. We are mistaken if we believe that, because of the humility of St. Athanasios (who felt and said that St. Anthony had surpassed him in the knowledge of God), this great Patriarch did not have spiritual knowledge. St. Anthony considered Athanasios his own teacher, just as the Patriarch considered St. Anthony his teacher. The Patriarch had the gift of the written word; but his experience and wisdom were the very same experience and wisdom that St. Anthony possessed. These things united them in Christ, such that they spoke, taught, and preached with the same mindset [phronema—Trans.], the same knowledge, the same spirit, and the common mind of Christ. They were separated only by their personal characteristics and gifts. Nothing else. Likewise, the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas and the teachings of the simplest Fathers of the Desert differ, not in essence, but only in presentation, owing to the inimitable philosophical and literary gifts of St. Gregory Palamas.

Second, I must insist that the idea, widely spread by certain contemporary theologians in Russia, that St. Gregory Palamas created, in his epoch, a new and innovative theology is utterly ignorant and based on nothing even resembling decent scholarship. This idea is at very best laughable. As the great Russian theologian, Father Georges Florovsky, emphasized repeatedly in his lectures, the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas are a virtual recapitulation [anakephalaiosis—Trans.] of the teachings of the Fathers of the Church, if not the Holy Gospels, rendered in the nomenclature of his age; they are a synopsis of the Neptic tradition of the Church, which the Lord Himself bequeathed to us in His life of asceticism, a witness which was perfected on the Cross and which blossomed forth in the Resurrection and its restoration of human nature. As His Eminence, Metropolitan Ierotheos of Nafpaktos has written, and quite correctly, St. Gregory Palamas was a synthetic theologian, in the sense that he knew and employed all of the theology of Orthodoxy. He thus underscores the opinion of Father Georges.

Now, then, a few specific words about the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas—about his magnificent synopsis of the Christian Faith: this ontological philosophy of life. As I told you earlier, I am not really a theologian; nor do I have personal knowledge or experience of the lofty gifts of the Spirit about which St. Gregory writes. What little I know, I know from my study of Byzantine history and from the perspective of the psychological presuppositions that I see in the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, and I can express myself only from such platforms. I ask your forgiveness, should I commit some error in my summary of that synopsis of Orthodox soteriology which is, in reality, the theology of St. Gregory Palamas. You must measure my words against the light of spiritual men and women, who live empirically that which I only understand, however imperfectly, from an historical, psychological, and entirely theoretical standpoint. Thus, some basic elements from the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas.

The fall of man. Man was created in the image of God. The disobedience of our forefathers darkened that image of God in man, and therefore, having lost his communion with God, man was separated from the source of life and perfection. As a result of this fall, man came under the dominion of sin and death. However, the fall of man did not entirely destroy the image of God within him, and thus, even in the life of sin, the love of God still acts within the human being, creating in his soul a nostalgia for the life for which our All-Good God created him. And this nostalgia is the source of the human need and search for God and the holy. From a psychological standpoint, we may say that man is ill, suffering because of his alienation from the ontological road which God set out for him. The symptoms of his illness are sin and his inclination towards things—with the aid of the Devil and the evil spirits, who resent the image of God which persists even in sinful men and women—that damage his soul and which even more greatly darken the image of God within him.

The restoration of the image of God in man. By His sacrifice on the Cross, and by His Incarnation, the God-Man Christ, Perfect God and Perfect Man, restored the image of God in man, endowing him with the possibility of returning to the communion with God that he enjoyed before the Fall. Christ became man, so that man might be made, by Grace, god (to paraphrase a Patristic maxim that appears often in the early Church Fathers); that human beings might participate in the Divine Energies of God, Who, in His Essence, naturally transcends even existence and Whom man cannot understand or grasp. God is all that is and all that is not. (Paradoxically, as an aside, those who say that they do not believe that God exists thereby recognize, in accordance with the apophatic theology of the Church, that God does, in fact, exist, since, by affirming that which is not, they have accepted one of the definitions of God, if only in a limited way. This is an interesting point, and it exposes both the illogical nature of atheism and the limitations of a theology that does not understand God in His transcendence of human cognition itself.) Hence, by the Grace of Christ, man may become, not God, of course, but a god by Grace and adoption. This deification (theosis), or theopoiesis, to use the more ancient terminology of the Fathers, takes place through the cure of man's infection by sin and by the restoration of God's image within him, owing, again, to the ontological restoration of human nature by the Resurrection of the Lord, Who, in His life in this world, provided us, by His example, with a vision of the spiritual methods by which we might treat our spiritual illness. Despite His perfection, He became, in His love, an example for the treatment of our sin.

The methodology of spiritual therapy. Man, if he wishes to restore the image of God within him and return to the path which God set out for us at the beginning—that the human being might be taken from glory to glory—, must imitate Christ in His manner of life; that is, a man or woman must fast, remain pure in soul and body (and this purity honors and encompasses, naturally, the mystery of marriage), sacrifice himself for his brother and friend, and live unceasingly in love. The imitation of Christ entails, it goes without saying, a change in one’s life, or metanoia [repentance; that is, a conscious turning from a life of sin to the life of Christian virtue—Trans.]; one must cultivate, in his whole being, the nostalgia for the next life that dwells in his heart, knowing that this life is but a preparation for that other life (something which even the ancient Greek philosophers knew and understood). Thus, we see all things with our eyes directed towards Heaven, to the end that we produce in our minds a kind of passionlessness (passivity), accepting the good and the bad as though they were the same.

From a practical standpoint, we find in the Mysteriological [sacramental] life of the Church, especially by regular confession and frequent Communion, the medicine of immortality, which helps us to return the spiritual mind [nous—Trans.], through its cleansing and purification, to the heart (from which, through the effects of sin, the nous is separated and alienated), wherein, as St. Gregory tells us, there resides the repository of the Holy Spirit. Our evil thoughts separate us from the heart and, likewise, from God. However, when the spiritual mind returns to the heart, through the control of our thoughts, through the therapeutic application of the Mysteries, and by the recitation, unceasingly and continuously, of the entreaty which we make on the prayer rope [proseuche tou komboschoiniou—Trans.], that is, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, the mind is enlightened by the uncreated and immaterial light of God. The light of the heart purifies the mind, in turn, and gives it the power to see the image of God within the receptacle of the heart, which is the well-spring of joy. It is for this reason that St. Gregory Palamas continually had on his lips the words, Illumine my darkness.

When a person controls his evil thoughts, he comes to see, in this effort, the influence of sin on his life; this knowledge, in turn, creates a sadness [penthos] in the mind (a certain kind of spiritual depression or melancholy), and the mind is purified by way of this sadness, too, since such repentant sadness naturally incites in man a desire for the contrasting joy of God; and thus, he turns his mind to the joy of Grace, which is the therapeutic Light of God. In this way, in his mind, in the Mysteriological life of the Church, and in his heart, the human being is literally bombarded, because of the ineffable power of the love of God, by the Light of Christ. He comes to live, in his sadness and in his joy (accepting both with passivity), a positive life that leads to deification, which is the restoration of communion with God, the cleansing of the image of God within him, the salvation of his soul, and the vision of uncreated Light, which, as I have said, fills both the mind and the soul. And this first step towards the life in God leads us, by the Grace of God, to a state of joy that ultimately surpasses even the joy which the first-created ones knew before the Fall, as St. Symeon the New Theologian tells us.

The consequences of the treatment of the spiritual illness of man. When a person clears away the outer covering of sin from his mind, communing with God in his heart, he finds silent peace [hesychia] in his life (and for this reason the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas are called Hesychasm), the gifts of clairvoyance and working miracles, and all of the other gifts of the Holy Spirit. But above all, he acquires the ability to show love to everyone: to his friends, to his enemies, to animals, and even to the dust on which he walks. He becomes a small Jesus Christ within Jesus Christ, a god by Grace within the Divine Energies of the Triune God, an Angel (above the Angels) on earth. But the deification of a man also has consequences for his fellow man. Every man who is enlightened, that is, who is saved (for St. Nicodemos the Hagiorite equates deification, the enlightenment of man, with the salvation of his soul), helps his fellow human beings, and even those (the majority of Christians and other people, unfortunately, who will not come to union with God through a rebirth in Christ) who are lost. Every man or woman who unites himself or herself to Christ enlightens the universe and extends the boundaries of God's love. And this love reaches to Hades, where those who are not united to God are tortured, not by the wrath of God (for God is love and desires the salvation of all mankind), but by their inability to accept and respond to the love of God, a love which is especially fervent in the depths of Hell. The extension of God's love by the salvation of His elect is the comfort of the damned, since every man who accepts and acts within the love of God exalts the whole of humanity in general.

Again, I ask that you forgive my necessary oversimplification of the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, many elements (and essential elements) of which I could not cite in my poor words.

I am sure that I have sufficiently tired you with my clumsy presentation. I thank you for your patience, in that respect. Nonetheless, I hope that, with the blessing of our Metropolitan and Father, I have left you with something positive and useful in my words.

Forgive me.

The Interruption of Commemoration, the Only Effective Measure Against Heresy: Canonical Considerations

Theologian Mihai-Silviu Chirilă

 

 

Separation from the Heretic in Holy Scripture

Separation from the heretical man is commanded by Holy Scripture, through the words of the Holy Apostle Paul and of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John. The Holy Apostle Paul counsels Titus: “A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject. Knowing that he that is such is subverted and has fallen into sin, being self-condemned” (Tit. 3:10–11).

In the Epistle to the Romans, the Holy Apostle Paul warns: “And I beseech you, brethren, to mark those who cause divisions and offenses contrary to the teaching which you have received. Depart from them” (Rom. 16:17).

In the Epistle to the Galatians, the Holy Apostle Paul says: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you another Gospel than that which we preached to you, let him be anathema! As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone preaches to you anything other than what you have received, let him be anathema!” (Galatians 1:8–9).

For his part, the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John teaches: “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into the house and do not say to him: Welcome! For he who says to him: Welcome! becomes a partaker in his evil deeds” (2 John 1:10–11).

Canonical Grounds for the Interruption of Commemoration

The commemoration of the hierarch at services has two meanings: it shows the priest’s submission to the respective hierarch, and the fact that the priest preaches the teachings taught by the hierarch whom he commemorates. For this reason, the cessation of the commemoration of the hierarch for any reason other than his heresy is considered schism and is sanctioned by the deposition of the respective priest. Under the conditions in which the hierarch openly preaches a heresy, the continuation of his commemoration means that the commemorating priest is a partaker in the heresy which the bishop publicly preaches, and at the judgment of Christ he will have the same fate as the heretical bishop with whom he remains in communion.

There are two holy canons which provide that, in the case in which the local hierarch is manifestly teaching a heresy, the priest has the right to fence himself off from this heresy through the interruption of the commemoration of the hierarch at the holy services: Apostolic Canon 31 and Canon 15 of the First-Second Council of Constantinople.

Apostolic Canon 31: “If any presbyter, despising his bishop, shall make a separate assembly and establish another altar, knowing no fault against the bishop in piety and in righteousness, let him be deposed as a lover of rule; likewise also the other clerics who shall join themselves to him, for they are tyrants and usurpers. And let the laymen be excommunicated. But let this be done after the first, and second, and third entreaty of the bishop,” [1] refers to the condemnation of the priest who would separate from his bishop for any reason other than heresy, as results from its interpretation in the Pedalion: “any presbyter who would despise his bishop and, without knowing that he errs manifestly either in piety or in righteousness, that is, without knowing him to be manifestly either a heretic or unjust.” [2] The interpretation introduces the conjunction “or,” showing that, in order for the commemoration of the bishop to be stopped, it is not necessary for both conditions to be met, namely that he be both a heretic and unjust; it is sufficient that one of the two conditions be fulfilled.

When the priest interrupts commemoration on the grounds of the hierarch’s partaking in heresy, the interpretation of Apostolic Canon 31 says that he cannot be subjected to any sanction: “and as many as separate from their bishop before a synodal investigation because he preaches in the hearing of all some evil opinion and heresy, such persons not only are not subject to the examination mentioned above, but are also deemed worthy of the fitting honor of the right-believing, according to Canon 15 of the First-Second Council.” [3] The interpretation introduces the condition mentioned by Canon 15 of the First-Second Council, of separation from the heretical bishop before a synodal investigation, but speaks of the bishop’s preaching of some heresy in general, without retaining the specification from Canon 15 of the First-Second Council that the heresy be condemned by the Holy Councils or by the Holy Fathers.

The same understanding of the canon is also held by the professor of Canon Law Ioan N. Floca, whose manual of Canon Law is normative for contemporary Romanian theological schools, in his work The Canons of the Orthodox Church, Notes and Commentaries: “It is considered that the accomplices of schismatic clerics also fall under the same penalty, of course if these do not separate from their bishop for well-founded reasons, such as the bishop’s deviation from the right faith and from conduct according to justice. From the text of the canon, it results that in such cases the clerics are free to separate from their bishop, that is, to leave his obedience.” [4]

Canon 15 of the First-Second Council has two parts: the first, which speaks about the obligation of commemorating the hierarchical superior and about the relationship between the metropolitan and the patriarch from this point of view, being a continuation of Canons 13 and 14, in which the relationship between priest and bishop, respectively between bishop and metropolitan, is regulated from the perspective of their commemoration at services; the second part of the canon, formulated thus: “for those who separate themselves from communion with their president on account of some heresy of his condemned by the Holy Councils or by the Holy Fathers, that is, from him who publicly preaches the heresy and teaches it with uncovered head, such persons not only are not subject to canonical censures, walling themselves off from communion with the named bishop before a synodal investigation, but they shall also be deemed worthy of the honor due to the right-believing. For they have not condemned bishops, but false bishops and false teachers. And they have not broken the unity of the Church by schism, but have hastened to deliver the Church from schisms and divisions,” permits the priest to cease commemorating his hierarch in the situation in which the latter should publicly preach a heresy.

The second part of the canon introduces the exception of the situation of heresy to Canons 13, 14, and the first part of Canon 15, because these canons refer to the situation in which the priest, bishop, or metropolitan interrupts commemoration “on the pretext of some accusation,” that is, for any other deed which the non-commemorated hierarch may have committed (the interpretation of the canon also gives us two examples of such deeds: fornications or sacrilege), [5] with the exception of heresy, for which the canon permits, in the second part, that the priest, bishop, or metropolitan separate from their president before the synodal investigation. The fact that the priest also has the right to do this results from the formulation “those who separate themselves from communion with their president,” which includes priests as well, and from the connection which the interpretation of Apostolic Canon 31 makes (which speaks strictly about the interruption of the commemoration of the hierarch by the priest) with the second part of Canon 15 of the First-Second Council.

Commenting on Canon 15 of the First-Second Council, Professor Ioan Floca states that: “taking into account the provisions of Canons 13 and 15, it is mentioned that these provide only for the situation when those concerned cause schism against their superior by invoking certain offenses committed by him, but unproven. In the case in which the superior publicly preaches in church some heretical teaching, then the respective persons [the priests – author’s note] have the right and the duty to separate immediately from that superior. In this case, not only will they not be sanctioned, but they will be praised, because they have lawfully condemned the guilty one and have not rebelled against him.” [6]

Father Ioan Floca’s commentary introduces several very important elements in the understanding of this canon:

• It does not strictly condition the public preaching of a heresy condemned by the Holy Councils or the Holy Fathers, it being understood that it is a matter of heresy in general, which is condemned both by councils and by the Fathers, by the fact that it is contrary to their teaching, not only of a certain heresy already condemned by them.

• The interruption of commemoration is perceived as a right and as an obligation of the priest.

• The interruption of commemoration must be done immediately once knowledge has been taken of the existence of a heresy in the bishop’s preaching.

• The priest who interrupted commemoration lawfully condemned the guilty one and did not rebel against him.

The duty of interrupting commemoration by the priest derives first of all from his status as shepherd of the flock of Christ. In this capacity, he has the obligation to obey Christ, the word of His Gospel, the teachings of the Holy Fathers and of the Holy Canons, as he promises in the Confession which he makes at ordination, when he says: “Throughout my whole life I will be guided by the teachings of the Holy Gospel, of the Holy Apostles, by the Holy Canons and the teachings of the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church.” [7] Submission and fidelity toward the bishop, as even the confession at ordination conceives them, invoked insistently in the consistories which judge the confessing priests, are assumed for the situation in which the bishop, for his part, fulfills the promise given at his own ordination as hierarch, to keep all the holy dogmatic and canonical teachings of the Church, the teachings of the Holy Fathers, and the Holy Orthodox Tradition. At the moment when the bishop is no longer guided by these, the priest must remain obedient to Christ and to His Church, as Father Iustin Pârvu also remarked: “Our hierarchs, when they are invested in the episcopacy, take an oath that they oblige themselves to preserve the right faith and the seven Ecumenical Councils. If they violate the oath, then they are no longer bishops, they no longer submit to their superiors, their shepherds. If they do not submit to their superiors, that is, to the Holy Fathers, how can they demand obedience from us? We do not listen to thieves, but to the voice of the Church, which speaks through the Holy Fathers, not through minds intoxicated by the gilded miters on their heads.” [8]

Remaining obedient to Christ and to the Church, to the Holy Apostles, the Holy Fathers, and the Holy Ecumenical Councils, the priest cannot be charged with the dogmatic offense of failing to observe the Confession of ecclesial fidelity (art. 14 RACDIJBOR [“Regulation of the Canonical Disciplinary Authorities and of the Courts of Judgment of the Romanian Orthodox Church”]), or with the administrative disciplinary offenses of disobedience toward ecclesiastical authority (art. 34 RACDIJBOR), or public contradiction of the official position of the Church (art. 39 RACDIJBOR), on the basis of which confessing priests have already been uncanonically deposed.

The fact that the two canons, Apostolic Canon 31 and Canon 15 of the First-Second Council, do not have an imperative provision by which the priest is simply compelled to interrupt commemoration does not mean that they are optional, but that they involve the living priestly conscience of the servant of the altar, called to take the measure which is required and which is permitted to him by the respective canons. The obligatory character is also given by the grave consequences entailed by remaining in communion with heretics, emphasized by other canons of the Holy Church.

In favor of the obligatory character of this canon there also pleads the second thesis of Canon 3 of the Third Ecumenical Council, which commands priests not to remain in communion and obedience toward the heretics condemned at that council: “In general, we command that those clerics who think alike (teach in agreement) with the Orthodox and Ecumenical Council should in no way and by no means be subject to the bishops who have split off or to those who separate themselves (from the Church).” [9] The canon refers to remaining in communion with Nestorius after his condemnation as a heretic by the Ecumenical Council, rehabilitating those who had the courage and the Orthodox priestly conscience to confront the same Nestorius before he was condemned. From this it results that disobedience toward a heretical bishop not yet condemned by an Ecumenical Council is at least a moral imperative, if not a judicial one.

The provisions of the holy canons are obligatory for Orthodox faithful, whether laymen or clerics, even if, taking into account different contexts and realities, their formulation is not always imperative. Regardless of whether or not we accept the obligatory character of Canon 15 of the First-Second Council, the important aspect in the act of stopping commemoration is that this canon permits the priest who wishes to separate himself from the heresy preached by his bishop to do so.

Closely connected with the moral obligation to separate from the bishop who preaches heresies is also the immediate character of the interruption of commemoration. The priest who determines that his bishop is a heretic has to choose between remaining in communion with that bishop and following the exhortation of Saint John Chrysostom, who says: “If your bishop is a heretic, flee, flee, flee as from fire and from a serpent,” and that of Saint Ignatius the God-bearer: “If your bishop should teach anything outside the given order, even if he lives in purity, or performs signs, or prophesies, let him be to you as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, for he works the destruction of souls.” [10]

The eparchial consistories which judge the confessing priests in our Church commit a deliberate confusion between the lawful condemnation of the false bishop for heresy and the introduction of a judicial action against the bishop. In order to maintain this confusion and to try to establish the claim that the priest is not permitted to bring an accusation against his bishop, the consistorial judges invoke the provisions of Canon 6 of the Second Ecumenical Council, which “regulates the manner in which an accusation or judicial action may be introduced against bishops.” [11]

The interruption of commemoration because of the bishop’s partaking in a heretical teaching is not a judicial action against the bishop, nor an act of defaming him by accusing him unjustly, but a measure of non-participation in the heresy in which he becomes a partaker. Apostolic Canon 31 makes a distinction between defaming the bishop, in situations in which he is accused of unproven deeds, and the interruption of commemoration in a situation of partaking in heresy, concerning which it gives one to understand that it does not constitute defamation of the hierarch. In turn, Canon 6 of the Second Ecumenical Council shows us a procedure different from that of the procedure of the interruption of commemoration, precisely because it regulates different situations: ecclesiastical legal action against the bishop is made through a petition in which the bishop is accused of civil or ecclesiastical offenses, whereas the procedure of interrupting commemoration condemns the one who preaches the heresy by the simple disclosure of this heresy and by the positioning of the priest on the side of Orthodoxy, without asking an ecclesiastical tribunal for any kind of reparation for the priest who interrupts commemoration or for any condemnation of the bishop for this, leaving to the local or Ecumenical Council the judgment of the bishop for the respective heresy. For this reason, the accusation brought against the priests that they have substituted themselves for the council in judging the bishop is without substance.

The Interruption of Commemoration for the Bishop’s Heresy Is Not Schism

Through the cessation of commemoration of the heretical bishop or of one who is a partaker in heresy, no schism is produced, nor does there occur the priest’s fall from the state of grace or the invalidity of the Holy Liturgy and of the mysteries performed by him. If this were so, then the Holy Fathers would not have permitted, through the two canons, the practice of ceasing the commemoration of the hierarch by the priest who wishes to fence himself off from the heresy preached by him.

The grace of the priesthood is given by Christ through the performance of the Holy Mystery of Ordination by the bishop, who is the performer of the mystery, and not the source of grace. In the case in which the priest interrupts the commemoration of the hierarch for any reason other than heresy, then he makes himself guilty of schism, according to Apostolic Canon 31 and Canon 13 of the First-Second Council of Constantinople, and for this reason he may bear the penalty of deposition, by which the right to serve the things of the Priesthood is taken away from him. Since the commemoration of the hierarch’s name being stopped for the reason of heresy is not schism, as Canon 15 of the First-Second Council of Constantinople clearly shows, but a defense of the Church from heresy and schism, the work of the grace of the Priesthood cannot be lost by the one who has walled himself off from the heresy preached by the hierarch, and the Mysteries performed by this priest are entirely valid, as Canon 3 of the Third Ecumenical Council also shows, even under the conditions in which a deposition has officially been pronounced against the priest. Moreover, those who stop commemorating a heretical bishop “are not subject to the censure of those above, but are also deemed worthy of the fitting honor of the right-believing, according to Canon 15 of the First-Second Council.” [12]

The central place of the bishop in the Church is recorded both by Orthodox doctrine and by the practice of the holy canons. There is, however, a condition of this important role of the hierarch: the preaching of the truth of the faith and the preservation of the right faith. The operation of the Holy Mysteries in the Church is carried out in full communion with the confession of the true faith, the Mysteries in themselves not being salvific without the right faith. At the moment when the bishop no longer preaches the truth of the faith, he becomes, as Canon 15 of the First-Second Council says, a “false bishop and false teacher,” and no obedience is owed to him anymore as long as he persists in heresy.

The Conditions of the Interruption of Commemoration

The argument is erroneous that if the heretical bishop, not yet judged by a council and not condemned, performs a deposition of an Orthodox priest who has stopped commemorating him because of the heresy which the bishop preaches, the deposition could be valid, because the bishop still has grace, by virtue of the fact that he has not yet been subjected to judgment and condemnation. Even if, until his deposition from rank by a council, the heretical bishop still has sanctifying grace, deposition is not a Holy Mystery, so as to have a connection with the grace of the performer, but a disciplinary measure, which has to do exclusively with the guilt of the one against whom the measure is taken. In the case of deposition for stopping the commemoration of a heretical bishop, the guilt of the priest cannot be invoked, because his gesture is covered by the provisions of Apostolic Canon 31 and Canon 15 of the First-Second Council. What must be established is whether the conditions were respected of the bishop’s preaching the heresy publicly and in church with uncovered head. For this reason, the Third Ecumenical Council recognized the priesthoods performed by Nestorius, in which sanctifying grace was working, although he was a heretic, because he had not yet been deposed from rank by a council, but it annulled all the depositions performed by him, because those deposed were innocent and, instead of being deposed, should have been honored as defenders of the Church.

The first condition which must be fulfilled is that the bishop preach a heresy. The textbook dogmatic definition of heresy is that it represents an opinion or a doctrine contrary to divine Revelation. Therefore, the stopping of commemoration can be done from the moment when the bishop preaches a doctrine contrary to the teaching of the Church, which She has held always, by all, and everywhere. This interpretation excludes the idea that commemoration can be interrupted only when one reaches the “common chalice,” because intercommunion is the final stage of the fall into heresy, the moment at which the interruption of commemoration would already be late. The “common chalice” is nothing but an effect of heresy, whereas the cause is the wrong doctrine accepted by the heretical bishop, who must be a watchman of the Orthodoxy of thought and of the preaching of the Word of God.

Canon 15 of the First-Second Council imposes, as a condition of the canonicity of the cessation of commemoration, that the bishop preach “some heresy condemned by the Holy Councils or by the Holy Fathers.” [13] There is the restrictive interpretation, which some priests schooled in theological argumentation use as an excuse for not interrupting commemoration, and which the decision of the Holy Synod of December 16, 2016, also tried to establish, in which much was made of the fact that Ecumenism has not yet been condemned by a canonical Orthodox council or by canons issued by a Holy Father: namely, that the stopping of commemoration can be done only if the bishop preaches a heresy which has already been condemned by the Holy Councils of the Church or by the Holy Fathers. This interpretation is contradicted, however, by the provision of Canon 3 of the Third Ecumenical Council, which invalidated all the depositions performed by Nestorius against some priests who refused to follow him in his heresy while he was patriarch. At the moment when he performed the respective depositions, Nestorius and his heresy had not yet been condemned by an Ecumenical Council, the condemnation taking place at the Third Council, which also annulled the respective depositions.

The correct understanding of the relationship between the heresy preached by the bishop and its condemnation by canonical legislation and patristic thought was also held by saints such as Saint Maximus the Confessor, whose struggle against Monothelitism took place before the official condemnation of this heresy; Saint Gregory Palamas, who interrupted the commemoration of the hierarch John Kalekas because of his Latin-mindedness, before the latter’s condemnation; or, closer to our own days, Saint Paisios the Athonite, who interrupted commemoration because of the heretical statements and deeds of the Ecumenical Patriarch of his epoch.

Therefore, in order for the priest to stop commemoration, it is sufficient that the heresy which the bishop preaches be condemned by the Holy Canons or the Holy Fathers in the sense that it is contrary to all that these and the mind of the Church in general have established up to now. The use of the conjunction “or” in the expression “the Holy Councils or the Holy Fathers” also leads us to this conclusion, showing that it is not necessary for there to be a definitive synodal decision condemning the heresy which a bishop preaches, in order for his priests to interrupt commemoration, but it is sufficient that this heresy be condemned by the thought of the Holy Fathers, and not necessarily by the canons of the Holy Fathers. If the stopping of commemoration operated only for heresies of the past, it could no longer be a method of defending the Church against the heresies of the present.

Another condition for the interruption of commemoration is the preaching of the heresy with uncovered head, that is, publicly and without any kind of restriction. Participation in a council with a purportedly pan-Orthodox character and the signing of the heretical documents issued by it, or their tacit acceptance, fulfill the condition of preaching the heresy publicly. The transmission of messages of peace and calm in church, by which the hierarchs assure the faithful that the officialization of Ecumenism at the pan-Orthodox level has produced no change at the level of Orthodox ecclesiology and that Orthodoxy is safe, or the condemnation of those who fight against the Council of Crete as schismatics, who, as the Paschal Pastoral Letter sent to all the churches in the Archdiocese of Iași expressed it, “on unfounded grounds accuse the Council of Crete of doctrinal errors,” [14] fully satisfies the condition of preaching the heresy with uncovered head in church.

Relating ourselves to the situation created by the pseudo-synod of Crete, it can be said that both conditions required by Canon 15 of the First-Second Council are met, since the bishops who participated in this council signed documents of a heretical character, which they presented to the whole world as being Orthodox, and these documents contain heretical ideas condemned both by the Ecumenical Councils of old (the idea that heresies are “churches,” that the unity of the Church has been lost, that there exist full Churches and incomplete churches, the idea of religious cooperation between Orthodox and heretics, etc.), and by some local councils of our epoch (the ROCOR Council, the Council of the Georgian Church), or by the thought of the Holy Fathers of the twentieth century (Saint Justin Popović, Saint Nikolai Velimirović, Saint John Maximovitch, Saint Paisios the Athonite, Saint John Jacob of Neamț, Saint Seraphim Sobolev).

The Interruption of Commemoration by the Holy Fathers

There are Holy Fathers who interrupted the commemoration of heretical hierarchs or participation in the services where heretical bishops were commemorated. Among these, the best-known examples are those of Saint John Damascene, Saint Maximus the Confessor, Saint Theodore the Studite, the Athonite Fathers from the time of John Vekkos, the Latin-minded patriarch, Saint Gregory Palamas, Venerable Joseph Bryennios, and Saint Mark Eugenikos. [15]

When he was imprisoned for his opposition to Monothelitism and to the hierarchs who shared the Monothelite heresy, Saint Maximus the Confessor said: “Even if the whole Universe should be in communion with the Patriarch, I will not be in communion with him. As I know that the Holy Spirit, through the Apostle Paul, says that the angels themselves will be anathema if they should preach otherwise, bringing something new into the faith (Galatians 1:8).” [16]

The Holy Mountain of Athos has a tradition of the practice of interrupting the commemoration of the heretical hierarch. In the thirteenth century, the Athonite monasteries interrupted the commemoration of the heretical bishop John Vekkos and endured his armed persecution, giving a number of martyrs on that occasion.

Saint Gregory Palamas interrupted the commemoration of the hierarch John Kalekas while he was a hieromonk on the Holy Mountain, and Kalekas had not been condemned by a Council. The patriarch issued an anathema against the saint, but the saint continued to serve, not taking into account the anathema of the heretical patriarch.

Likewise, the Holy Mountain of Athos practiced the interruption of commemoration at the moment when Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras lifted, by his own authority, the anathemas against the papists in 1965. In 1971, Venerable Paisios the Athonite sent a letter by which he announced the cessation of the commemoration of the Ecumenical Patriarch by Stavronikita Monastery: “In particular, in our monastery, not looking to the reaction of all the monasteries on Athos, the name of the Patriarch was commemorated for the sake of ecclesiastical unity. However, after the Patriarch’s declaration that the Filioque and the primacy of the pope of Rome are only simple traditions, we interrupted his commemoration, feeling that the cup of our patience had been filled and that it was no longer possible to wait. Such declarations represent not only the overthrow of the God-given and life-giving tradition of our Holy Church — but also a mockery of the much-suffering world of the West… In this way, following the Patriarch in his ecumenist acrobatics not only comes into contradiction with Orthodox piety, but in general is also unserious.” [17]

Ecclesiastical Communion

The interruption of the commemoration of the hierarch by the priest has a correspondence among the faithful through the interruption of ecclesiastical communion with the priests who commemorate at the services the hierarchs who are partakers in heresy. The purpose of interrupting the commemoration of the hierarch is to sound an alarm that a heresy is being preached in the Church, and this can only happen at the moment when the faithful people join the priests who interrupt commemoration and no longer frequent the churches where the hierarch is commemorated.

The interruption of commemoration before the synodal investigation of the bishop who is a partaker in heresy is done because in the churches where his name is commemorated there exists heresy, not because grace would no longer exist. The people who separate from the priest commemorating the hierarch who is a partaker in heresy do not do so because valid Holy Mysteries would no longer be performed in that one’s church, but because their partaking of those Holy Mysteries would be unto condemnation, since they know that they receive them from the hand of a priest who is a partaker in heresy.

The patristic argumentation for following the non-commemorating priests and for the interruption of ecclesiastical communion with those who commemorate hierarchs who are partakers in heresy is based on the exhortations of the Holy Fathers, addressed to the faithful, not to be in communion with them. The clearest of these is that of Saint Germanos II, Patriarch of Constantinople (1222–1240): “I adjure all laymen, all of you who are true sons of the Orthodox Catholic Church, to depart as quickly as possible from the priests who have submitted to the Latins, and neither gather with them in church, nor receive any blessing from their hands. It is better for you to pray to God in your houses alone than to gather in church together with those who have a Latin mind. Otherwise, you will suffer the same condemnation as they.” [18] The same counsel is also given by Saint Theodore the Studite to Naukratios, as we shall see in what follows.

The Limits of Economy

Speaking about the application of economy, Saint Theodore the Studite explains that there is “permanent economy,” and gives the example of Saint Athanasios, who used for the faithful in Italy the term “person” instead of “hypostasis,” and “economy for a time,” which he defines thus: “these things are done for a time, having nothing worthy of blame, nor are they in any way outside the law, but they lower the bar and do not belong to excessive exactness. This is economy ‘for a time.’” [19] This definition of Saint Theodore is an answer to Naukratios’s question “why the divine Cyril used economy so as not to separate from those in the East, who commemorated Theodore of Mopsuestia in the diptychs, he being a heretic, if these held the most right and most important dogmas of the right faith?” [20] Saint Theodore’s answer was: “therefore, he endured the slowness of the Easterners, rather than, by their not accepting the one who was truly a heretic, that they accept an inclination toward what is heretical.” [21] And the argumentation of this temporary economy is based on the fact that “once the faith is preached in an Orthodox manner, by this they anathematized even the one commemorated by them. For everyone who is Orthodox in all things potentially [en dunamei] anathematizes every heretic, even if not also by word.” [22]

The application of this temporary economy at the level of relations between bishoprics, metropolitanates, and patriarchates is completed by the answer to another question of Naukratios: “If the bishop was not present at the adulterous council and calls it a false assembly, but commemorates his metropolitan who was present at that council, should we receive communion from a priest of that Orthodox bishop?” The answer is: “For economy, we should [receive communion], provided only that he [the priest] does not liturgize together with the heretics. For there is nothing wrong, since he commemorates the Orthodox bishop, even if that one, out of fear, commemorates his heretical metropolitan.” [23] The answer continues: “If the priest of such a bishop is called to a vigil, we should go, and the church given to him should be accepted, and it should be permitted for him [the priest] to come to liturgize in it or to commemorate some dead person, Orthodox of course, and he is forgiven, and nothing prevents the [priest] who received [the church from that bishop] from liturgizing in it.” [24]

The temporary economy which is applied to the bishop with Orthodox faith is not also applied to the priest with Orthodox faith who commemorates the heretical bishop, because this one, through commemoration, confesses the faith of his bishop: “But if the priest commemorates some heretical bishop, even if the priest has a blessed way of life, even if he is Orthodox, we must depart from divine communion; but when it is a matter of the common table—since only there [at the liturgy] does he commemorate [the heretical bishop] out of fear—he [that priest] could be accepted to bless and to chant with us, but only if he has not served, nor has knowingly had partaking either with a heretic, or with his bishop, or with any other such person.” [25]

This limit of economy is imposed in the relationship between priests and between priests and the faithful in an answer to another question addressed by Naukratios. The question was connected with the Orthodox priest who commemorates the heretical bishop out of fear of persecution, and the answer was: “If he does not liturgize together with a heretic and does not commune with such persons, such a one must be received when it is a matter of eating together and psalmody and the blessing of food, and this by economy, but not for divine communion. And, as long as the heresy lasts, investigation is absolutely necessary; and as for the claim that the confession would suffice for those received, I know only that this is clearly a great deceit… Only in the time when heresy is not unleashed, and only in connection with those who are not clearly condemned, are we taught by the Fathers not to investigate. But such a priest, who is not mixed up with and does not have partaking with heretics, is rarely found now.” [26]

The Bishop Is Not Permitted to Judge His Own Cause

The last aspect which we analyze in this report concerns the grave canonical contradictions which appear at the moment when the ruling hierarchs who are partakers in heresy ignore Apostolic Canon 31, Canon 15 of the First-Second Council, and Canon 3 of the Third Council, and decide to send the confessing priests to trial. Because in the Regulation of the Canonical Disciplinary Authorities and of the Courts of Judgment of the Romanian Orthodox Church (RACDIJBOR) there is no procedure for judging the priest who interrupts the commemoration of his bishop because of the latter’s participation in heresy, since for this interruption of commemoration there should be no procedure, as it is not a disciplinary offense of any kind, the consistories send the priests to trial according to the procedures provided for ordinary offenses.

The first incompatibility which arises in this situation is the violation by the bishops who send the confessing priests to trial of Canon 118, 112 in the Pedalion: “It has pleased that a bishop should not judge his own judgment,” whose interpretation is: “This canon ordains that a bishop may not judge either another bishop who would have some case with him, nor the presbyter who would have some case with him. Nor any other cleric, according to Canon 9 of the Fourth Council. Nor can a single bishop depose either a presbyter accused by another, or a deacon, according to Canon 12 of this Council. See also Apostolic Canon 74.” This canon is a transposition into ecclesiastical life of the principle of Roman law nemo in rem suam auctor esse potest, “no one can judge his own cause.” [27]

From this incompatibility others derive: the consistories are incompatible, because they are appointed by the hierarch and judge in his name; the priests cannot benefit from ecclesiastical lawyers, because these too are employees of the same bishop; the appeal cannot be made to six bishops, plus the suffragan, as Canon 12 of Carthage requires, because the metropolitan consistories and the national ecclesiastical consistory are not composed of bishops; and the bishops who give synodal approvals for appeals are in the same state of incompatibility, being partakers in the same heresy, in some cases themselves pronouncing such uncanonical depositions, and in some situations the hierarchs who approve the appeal are the same ones who pronounced the deposition in the lower court.

All these grave incompatibilities, which, on the one hand, violate the fundamental canonical principle of respecting the canonical provisions of the Orthodox Church, recorded in art. 3, letter g), and, on the other hand, the principle of discovering the truth and guaranteeing the right to defense, provided by art. 3, letter i) RACDIJBOR, make these depositions uncanonical and invalid also from the point of view of the judicial regulations.

They were brought to the knowledge of the Holy Synod in the lawsuits initiated against Fathers Pamvo Jugănaru and Ioan Ungureanu, it being expected that the highest ecclesiastical authority of the Romanian Orthodox Church would give the correct solution for emerging from this grave canonical-juridical impasse.

 

NOTES

1. Pedalion, The Rudder of the Orthodox Church, “Credinţa Strămoşească” Publishing House, 2007, p. 68.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., p. 70.

4 Ioan N. Floca, The Canons of the Orthodox Church. Notes and Commentaries, third improved edition, edition edited by Dr. Sorin Joantă, no publisher, Sibiu, 2005, p. 26.

5. Pedalion, cited ed., p. 362.

6. Ioan Floca, op. cit., p. 347.

7. http://patriarhia.ro/images/pdf/HotarariSinodale/2010/Anexa_1.pdf.

8. Father Iustin Pârvu, The Church and the New Heresies, no publisher, no place, no year, p. 27.

9. Ioan Floca, p. 79.

10. http://lumea-ortodoxa.ro/scrisoarea-marelui-staret-sava-cel-batran-aghioritul-catre-unii-care-l-acuzau-ca-intrerupand-pomenirea-intrat-schisma-cu-biserica/.

11. Ibid., p. 75.

12. Pedalion, p. 70.

13. Pedalion, cited ed., p. 363.

14. http://ortodoxinfo.ro/2017/04/14/ips-teofan-le-spune-de-sfintele-pasti-credinciosilor-moldavi-ca-minciuno-sinodul-din-creta-nu-avut-nicio-eroare-doctrinara/.

15. http://www.aparatorul.md/recomandam-muntele-athos-partea-practica-a-aplicarii-canonului-15-de-la-sinodul-i-ii-constantinopol-861/.

16. http://www.aparatorul.md/fragmente-din-procesul-intentat-de-patriarhia-constantinopolului-sfantului-maxim-marturisitorul-pentru-ca-a-rupt-comuniunea-cu-ea-2/.

17. http://lumea-ortodoxa.ro/ati-stiut-ca-sf-paisie-aghioritul-nu-pomenit-patriarhul-decursul-cativa-ani/.
18. Joseph Bryennios, The Works Found, vol. II Ρ-Θ. 140, 620A, Thessaloniki, 1990.

19. Saint Theodore the Studite, Letter 40, To His Son Naukratios, in the volume The Right Faith in the Writings of the Holy Fathers, vol. 1, Sofia Publishing House, Bucharest, 2016, p. 28.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., p. 30.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid., pp. 30–31.

26. Idem, Letter 40, To His Son Naukratios, p. 44.

27. http://ortodoxinfo.ro/2017/04/21/parintele-pamvo-cere-sfantului-sinod-aplicarea-canonului-care-prevede-ca-episcopul-nu-poate-judeca-chestiuni-care-il-privesc/.

 

Romanian source:

https://ortodoxiadreaptacredinta.wordpress.com/2017/06/19/teolog-mihai-silviu-chirila-intreruperea-pomenirii-singura-masura-eficienta-contra-ereziei-consideratii-de-ordin-canonic/