The Meaning of Life

Bishop Pavel (Ivanovsky) of Vyazma (+1919)   

Source: От святой купели и до гроба: краткий устав жизни православного христианина [From the Holy Font to the Grave: A Brief Rule of Life of an Orthodox Christian].

 

 

 

I am the way and the truth and the life (John 14:6)

To resolve correctly and to pose the question: “Why were we created? To what should we strive?” — means to know the meaning of life. Unfortunately, some do not concern themselves at all with such a fundamental question, but live while life continues, eat in order to exist and exist in order to eat, and moreover as indulgently as possible, so as to pass their days as carelessly and as merrily as possible: “Live,” they say to themselves, “do not grieve; you will die — it is no loss!”… The life of such people in its value differs little from the existence of four-footed animals. To such carefree people applies the terrible word of God: “Woe to you who are full now!… Woe to you who laugh now!” (Luke 6:25).

But there are other people who, understanding the full baseness of animal-like existence and recognizing the relative value of strenuous ascetic struggle (“I want to live in order to think and to suffer!”), nevertheless see nothing beyond the grave, seek and do not find the higher meaning of being, fall into despair, and perish under the weight of life… And this happens because they proudly wish to bear everything themselves, by their own powers, and strive to know the meaning of existence apart from the Creator of the universe. They are like those travelers who, walking through a waterless desert and dying of thirst, spend their strength chasing deceptive mirages (phantoms) and pass hundreds of times by the rock with living water… This rock, or Stone, is Christ (1 Cor. 10:4), whom such builders of life neglect, but who speaks loudly to all who seek truth and spiritual strength, to all who thirst for the higher meaning of being: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink” (John 7:37).

When creating man, the Lord God said: “Let us make man in Our image [and] according to Our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). In the image and likeness of God, which are found in the soul of man, is contained the whole meaning of our life, its highest goal: according to our image and likeness we must strive toward the Prototype, that is, toward God, so as to become more and more like Him and in union with the Lord to find our blessedness; in short, the purpose of man’s existence is “becoming like God.” Concerning this destiny of man, it is clearly said also in the Old Testament: “Be holy, for I [the Lord your God] am holy” (Lev. 11:44; 19:2; 20:7), and in the New: “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). “That they all may be one: as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us” (John 17:21).

Such blessed union and likeness to God was also attained in Paradise by our first parents through obedience to the commandment of God (Gen. 2:16–17).

It is worthy of note that the power of the devil’s temptation and of sinful blindness consisted in this: that the devil promised our first parents that likeness to God which they already had (“you will be like gods” (Gen. 3:5)), but only through the transgression of God’s commandment. Thus, even now “every day” the devil tempts and destroys the souls of people by inclining them to find the meaning of being and to build their life apart from God, through the transgression of His law; and he tempts the body through various forms of gluttony (Gen. 3:6). But if the devil tempts people and casts them into sin and destruction, the Lord Jesus Christ saves sinners (Matt. 9:13; Luke 5:32; 1 Tim. 1:15), shows the true path of life, and gives the highest satisfaction to all the powers of man: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). The Lord Jesus Christ — the Savior — is the “way”; therefore only through Him do we know the meaning of being, through Him we attain salvation. He is the “truth”; therefore only through Him are we enlightened and attain wisdom. He is the “life”; therefore only through Him do we attain blessedness and the peace of the soul, for without Him, as without the sun (Mal. 4:2), there is no life, no spiritual joy, but only darkness and the shadow of death (Matt. 4:16): He is the “light of the world” (John 8:12).

And in what way is salvation attained through the Lord Jesus Christ? By imitating Him, by following after Him (Matt. 10:38), by drawing near to Him: through all this the soul receives true life, its spiritual food and drink, full satisfaction (John 6:35). In other words — our salvation is in “becoming like God,” and becoming like God is walking the path of Christ, that is, in the fulfillment of the Evangelical Law (Matt. 19:17), in the fulfillment of the will of the Heavenly Father (Matt. 12:50; John 15:10). But likeness to God must not be understood in such a way that man can ever become equal to God (this would be senseless), but rather that man, according to the measure of his strength, by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, must always strive to become like God, and indeed more and more approaches the image of God. In this eternal striving toward the Light, in this eternal drawing near to God, lies the mystery of the endless paradisal blessedness of all the saved. Millions upon millions of years will pass; the saved in Paradise with each moment will attain greater and greater likeness to God and blessedness, and yet, just as at   beginning, they will never see its limits, because beyond the grave there is no longer time, the perfections of God are boundless, and the Lord Himself for the blessed souls is the never-setting Sun, pouring forth forever and ever unceasing light and blessedness (Rev. 21:23).

Behold the meaning and the goal of our life: they are so radiantly great and beautiful that they surpass the strength and understanding of weak man. Neither to know fully the true meaning of life nor to attain salvation can we by our weak powers; this is impossible for man, but possible for God (Luke 18:27): “By His divine power (of the Lord Jesus Christ) there has been granted to us everything necessary for life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3). But His gracious powers, as was written in the first part of this little book, are given only in His Holy Church through the Holy Mysteries. “Without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), that is, nothing truly good and beautiful. Why? Because however close one may plant a wild shoot (a wild plant) near the gracious vine, it cannot bear good fruit until it is truly grafted onto the gracious vine and takes its sap.

The Lord Jesus Christ precisely is the gracious, fruitful Vine, and we are the wild shoots. If we are grafted onto Him, then we shall bear beautiful and abundant fruit (John 15:4–5), being sanctified by His most pure sap, that is, by His Holy Blood and the other mysteries. True, even the wild shoot bears not a few fruits, sometimes beautiful in appearance, but only in appearance: in reality these fruits are bitter, hard, and unfit for use. So also are the “good deeds” of unbelieving people: in appearance they seem good, but in reality, they are full of self-love, the bitterness of doubt, and the like. Thus the Lord for us is “Everything,” but we without Him are “nothing”; He is our life, light, strength, and joy: “Thou art my strength, O Lord; Thou art my power; Thou art my God; Thou art my rejoicing” (Fourth Ode of the Resurrectional Canon, Tone 8).

What, then, do those mentioned builders of life without Christ say in their own justification? They say many things, but above all that Christianity has fallen behind life and has become outdated. But who declares this? First of all, those who have an entirely false conception of Christianity: they think that Christianity is nothing more than a teaching, whereas it is precisely life itself, the true life: “The words that I speak to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63), and Christ Himself is our life (Col. 3:4). Therefore, if any life has fallen behind, then, on the contrary, it is their life — the life of unbelievers — that has fallen behind the perfect life, behind Christianity. We repeat: those are in false blindness who think that Christianity is something like a philosophical teaching, Buddhism, Confucianism, and the like.

Secondly, those who reason about Christianity in every distorted way and evaluate it are precisely the persons who in reality have not lived the Christian life and do not know it at all… Were they ever poor in spirit, or meek, or mourning for sins, or hungering for righteousness, and the like? Nothing of the sort! They, being ignorant of the Christian life, wish to measure it with their petty measure, wholly unsuitable — as though beauty were measured in inches or music in pounds — forgetting that this is both unreasonable and false: “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).

The spiritual life can be known and judged only by the righteous man — the spiritual man. “The soul sees the truth of God according to the measure of its life” (Isaac the Syrian). But carnal people — enemies of Christianity — occupy themselves chiefly with this: in bold blindness they build a “tower of Babel” up to heaven, call it “the latest word of science,” supposedly overthrowing Christianity, and in their pride do not wish to see that their tower is collapsing, and that impartial history has already lost count of the former “towers of Babel,” while Christianity stands unshaken and will remain forever unconquerable, despite all the forces of hell (Matt. 16:18).

For Christianity is nothing other than the strength of life, its justification — the beauty of life and holiness: “Whatever things are true, whatever things are honorable, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil. 4:8). Thus Christianity is the light and the sanctity of life. How then can one rise up against what is truly beautiful? This is blindness. Those who do not wish to understand this because of their stubbornness or pride, who assert that Christianity does not correspond to life or has fallen behind it, may be likened to those people who themselves have fallen into a deep dark pit and assure others that the sun no longer exists and that the sun has fallen behind them…

But to those among them who wish to be convinced of the opposite — of the truth of Christianity — it must be pointed out what was said above, namely: that the spiritual is known only through the spiritual life, that the light of Christianity can illuminate a person only gradually through his own personal experience as a living and active member of the Church of Christ: “Come and see” (John 1:46). “Taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Ps. 33:9).

He who has tasted, even for the shortest time, the sweetness of the Evangelical Good News will no longer wish to feed on the bitterness of unbelief, but, on the contrary, sells and gives all that he has only in order to acquire the one pearl precious for life — the faith of Christ (Matt. 13:45–46), through which we attain the eternal salvation of the soul. And this is more precious than all the treasures of the world (Matt. 16:20), for our soul is immortal, whereas the treasures of the world are all corruptible and quickly passing; they lose their value at the grave. But our soul will be completely satisfied only by that which does not die, which is eternal — young — incorruptible… “To an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven” we are all called (1 Pet. 1:4) — young and old, wise and simple, rich and poor — all, all are obliged to seek first of all and above all eternal salvation, “the Kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matt. 6:33).

Let no one think that the Lord calls to Himself and saves only the righteous: He “came to save sinners” through repentance (1 Tim. 1:15).

Let no one think that, in order to obtain salvation, special feats of vigil, fasting, virginity, dwelling in monasteries, in deserts, and the like are necessarily required. Special feats are the path of the chosen: they are only for those who are able to bear them or receive them (Matt. 19:12).

But we, all the rest — ordinary people — can and must be saved also in the world, in the ordinary conditions of life: let us only perform our work without laziness and with God’s blessing (1 Cor. 10:31), not murmur at our lot, considering every blessed task as salvific for ourselves, even if we should have to spend our whole life darning old stockings; let us faithfully fulfill our duty as Christians with respect to the temple of God, confession, and communion, and toward our neighbors “not do to others what we would not wish done to ourselves” (decree of the Apostolic Council), and we shall be saved by the grace of God. Let us say even more than this: from the lives of the saints it is known that some lay people, even in the married state, attained such spiritual perfection as great ascetics and hermits did not attain (see, for example, about the two daughters-in-law, Menaion Reading, Jan. 19); therefore the venerable Macarius the Egyptian wrote for the instruction of us all: “God does not look whether one is a virgin, or a spouse, a monk, or a layman, but seeks only the heartfelt willingness for good deeds. Acquire such willingness, and salvation is near you, whoever you may be and wherever you may live.”

However, those who are able to bear special feats, or can receive the holiness of virginity, are obliged to do so, for we are all called to what is better, not to what is worse: “He who is able to receive it, let him receive it” (Matt. 19:12), the Lord commanded. To such chosen ones the Lord grants higher rewards in heaven and crowns them with special honor. Thus the virgins will be numbered among the firstfruits of God and of the Lamb and will enjoy such blessedness and sing such a wondrous song to the Lord that no one except them can learn it (Rev. 14:3–4). Virgins were the holy prophets Elijah and John the Baptist, the holy apostles John the Theologian, James, Paul, and others. Following their example many saints desired to remain forever in virginity; and in order to preserve themselves from the temptations of the world they withdrew into desert places. From this arose monasteries and monasticism. The foundation of monasticism consists of the vows of virginity, non-possession, and obedience.

Life according to these holy vows is a life like that of the angels; it is a constant sacrifice in which both soul and body are dedicated to God. For such self-sacrifice a hundredfold reward is promised by the Lord: “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My sake and for the Gospel’s, who shall not receive now, in this time, amid persecutions, a hundredfold more houses, and brothers, and sisters, and fathers, and mothers, and children, and lands, and in the age to come eternal life” (Mark 10:29–30).

In order to have an understanding of the monastic vows, let us speak of each of them separately in the words of the holy Fathers of the Church: “Virginity is a work so great and wondrous that it surpasses all human virtues” (St. John Chrysostom).

“Virginity especially makes the soul the bride of the Heavenly Bridegroom — Christ — and the body the temple of the Holy Spirit” (Venerable Nilus).

Concerning the importance of non-possession, the Venerable Peter of Damascus speaks thus: “For the weak it is better to withdraw from everything, and non-possession is much better than almsgiving. He who once has given away everything (which everyone receiving monasticism is obliged to do) has fulfilled the duty of love and mercy toward the poor more perfectly than one who gives them a small part of his possessions but keeps the greater part for himself. It is good for God’s sake to give alms, but no offering is so pleasing to God as wholly to surrender to Him one’s soul and will.”

“Obedience is better than sacrifice and more pleasing to God, for in sacrifices the flesh of another is slain, but in obedience one’s own will” (St. Gregory the Great).

“Obedience uproots all passions and plants every good thing; it brings the Son of God to dwell in man, raises man to heaven, and makes him like the Son of God, Who was obedient to His Father even unto death on the Cross” (Venerable Barsanuphius).

Much has been said by the holy Fathers in defense and praise of monasticism. Whoever wishes to know in detail should read their writings, especially those of Basil the Great and John Chrysostom, Ephraim the Syrian, Abba Dorotheus, and John of the Ladder; but we, from the much that has been said, will take at least a little.

Saint Basil says: “Monks are the true imitators of the Savior and of His life in the flesh. For as He, having gathered disciples, lived with them and had all things in common, so also these, obeying the abbot, truly imitate the life of the apostles and of the Lord, if only they keep the rule of life.”

Saint John Chrysostom, in his sermons to the people in the city of Constantinople, not only praised the monastic life but also advised lay people to visit monasteries. Reasoning about the benefit of such visits, he says: “The poor man, having visited the dwellings of the monks, will depart from the monastery with greater consolation in his poverty. And if a rich man visits the monks, he will return from them a better man and with sound understanding about things. When one clothed with dignity comes to them, here especially all pride disappears. Here even wolves are turned into lambs. If in anyone there has been kindled the desire to lead such a beautiful life, then while this desire is still burning in you, go to these angels and be inflamed still more. For not so much can my words inflame you as the sight of the deed itself.”

One of the sermons of Saint John Chrysostom on monasticism ended with this appeal: “Therefore go to them more often, so that, being protected by their prayers and instructions from the defilements that continually assail you, you may pass the present life as well as possible and be made worthy of the future blessings.”

St. Anatole of Optina, the Elder (+1894): The Lord Sends Temptations for Our Salvation

 

December 23, 1876

I received your letter, sorrowful and infirm D., and I very much regretted that such an intelligent girl conducts herself so unreasonably in the spiritual life. From your words it is evident that you understand the spiritual meaning of monasticism, but in practice you are weak. Well, what are we to do? Humble yourself, reproach yourself for your weaknesses, and hasten with a request for help to God. God never abandons those who flee to Him to temptations beyond their strength, especially His young ascetic. For He, the Lover of mankind, sees the assaults of the passions of dishonor from the devil, but He waits in order to see our free will; and thus, He afflicts us. And for what purpose? So that we, first, may recognize our weakness and humble ourselves; second, so that, seeing our powerlessness and the assaults of the enemy, we may turn to God, the Helper in sorrows who has greatly found us; and third, and most important, so that, having passed through fire and water, we may become experienced. For an untested man is inexperienced, according to the word of God. But God wishes to make you experienced and allows that mother should reprimand you and at times even shake you up. Yes, D., this is very beneficial. And it greatly helps against the passion of fornication. Saint Nilus of Sinai writes: “Do not reject the leather smiths (that is, the tanners); for though they beat, trample, stretch, and scrape, by this very thing your garment becomes bright.” You keep sounding the trumpet: death has come. But the Lord Himself said: “A grain, unless it falls and dies, will not live.” Thus, the Lord sends you temptation so that your living and lively passion may die — and therefore death comes to you. But according to the word of God: “If we die with Christ, with Him we shall also live.”

For all your weaknesses — both for laziness, and distraction, and carnal lust, and vainglory, and other sins — may God forgive you. And I, the unworthy one, do not condemn you, for you are still young and untrained — therefore you are also impatient.

And when there is heaviness, examine your conscience: is there not some unrepented little sin?

When you fulfill your prayers, or your rule, give thanks to God; but if you do not fulfill it, reproach yourself. Blasphemous thoughts strive not to accept and do not believe them, and the Lord will forgive you. When thoughts come, do not accept them, nor repel them, and still less conjure against them or argue with them — this is not according to your measure! But flee to the Lord with prayer and humility. The fornication thought and fear are permitted because of our pride. Reproach yourself and try not to look at that which tempts — and the temptation will pass. The memory of the saints must be honored, expecting mercy from them. And in order to cast out the inner evil — it is necessary to speak much, much. For now this is enough…

Write everything as you are able — do not be constrained; if possible, I will always answer.

 

Russian source: https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Anatolij_Optinskiy_Zercalov/pisma/#0_93

From 2009: What the Holy Synod in Resistance intends by its Resistance to Ecumenism and Papism and How it Views These Objects of Resistance

A Statement of Clarification by Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna [+2019]

“...[S]peak forth the words of truth and soberness”

(Acts 26:25)

I. Our resistance to ecumenism is not undertaken in a spirit of bigotry

To the secular scientist, nothing is more dangerous than committing what, in statistics, is called a Type I error. When a scientist commits such an error, he wrongly accepts as probable fact an incorrect or false hypothesis. As a con­sequence of this, other false hypotheses and theories, predicated on this error, may enter into the body of scientific knowledge. When this happens, the in­tegrity of that body of knowledge is even further compromised. In this same way, the Church Fathers were careful to protect the consensio Patrum, or the common voice of the Fathers with regard to that body of truth believed by the Orthodox Church in all places, at all times, and by everyone, [1] from false teach­ings and assumptions, or heresy (to use that word properly, and not as a mere denunciatory epithet), lest they distort the path towards salvation and human transformation (union with God by Grace, or theosis) which the unique Truth of Orthodox Christianity entails.

Hence, in rejecting the religious syncretism of the contemporary ecu­menical movement, which posits that ultimate Truth derives not from a sin­gle extant criterion, but from the synthesis of many different relative truths (religious traditions) into a single standard of veracity that will emerge in the future, we imitate the scientist in his quest for a single body of Truth and a single criterion for establishing and preserving it. We Orthodox resisters hold that Christ established a single Church, that it is the repository of Christian Truth, [2] and that its Traditions, the very criteria of Truth, contain, encompass, and perpetuate everything that the Lord gave us, that the Apostles preached, and which the Church Fathers have, through the ages, preserved. [3] To admit into the body of theological knowledge anything drawn from another source, or derived from any other set of traditions, is to adulterate the truth and to cut ourselves off from that sui generis quality that belongs only and exclusively to the fullness of truth, and not to its derivatives: that is, Grace.

It is not out of bigotry towards other religions, then, but in fidelity to the theological and ecclesiological principles which lie at the heart of the Ortho­dox confession, that we reject the notion of multiple sources of truth, a di­versity in traditions, and contemporary ecumenism. Like the secular scientist, we, as spiritual aspirants, wish to preserve an empirical, revealed Truth and to avoid its admixture with false hypotheses or groundless opinions. Moreover, we also consider it our sacred duty to resist any attempt to substitute such “demonic heresies”—to employ once again the vocabulary of the Church Fa­thers—for the Truth. In this resistance, we do not approach other religions (or the ecumenical movement, for that matter) as intrinsically evil or diabolical per se, but directly address, rather, the demonic consequences of extraneous and false teachings that impugn the existence of, or lead one away from, the Orthodox repository of truth. [4]

To any ecumenists—and especially those living in religiously pluralistic societies—who may still misunderstand these sacred responsibilities of ours before the Orthodox Church to constitute a condemnation of other confes­sions and religions, let us underscore what we have said above with the words of a contemporary Greek Saint, Nectarios of Aegina. With singular eloquence, this holy personage explains that, in defending the pristine body of Truth con­tained within Orthodoxy, we have in no manner abandoned love and the hope for Christian unity. It is love which transforms our preservative actions and deeds into an open call to those of all religions to join us therein and, ulti­mately, to embrace the fullness of truth which we so sedulously guard:

Dogmatic differences, reduced to an issue of faith, leave the matter of love free and unchallenged; dogma does not set itself against love.... Christian love is constant, and for this reason the deformed faith of the heterodox cannot change our feeling of love towards them.... Issues of faith must in no way diminish the feeling of love. [5]

The Orthodox in resistance see it as their Evangelical duty to expose re­ligious syncretism (ecumenism and the ecumenical movement) as something that, with whatever misguided goodness of intention, leads one away from the conviction that there is a true Church and an established path to spiritual per­fection. At the same time, as we have seen, the ethos and spirit of the Gospel also draw us into a love of our fellow man, such that our defense of the Truth and our resistance to religious syncretism springs from an all-embracing con­cern for the spiritual estate of all mankind, the salvation of every man and woman, and the abhorrence of any sort of religious bigotry, intolerance, or fanaticism, whether among our Orthodox brethren or those of other religions.

II. The true path towards unity begins in and with the Church

The goal of uniting Christianity, which we consider a sacred and desired one, is accomplished, as we see and interpret the teachings of the Orthodox Church and the witness of the Church Fathers, not by dialogue and by com­promise (that is, by overlooking the theological differences between various confessions and religions); it is fully realized only in the unity of Faith. So it is that Christ—to use a Scriptural passage so often abused and misused by the ecumenical movement—expressed His desire, during His earthly mission, that all Christians “may be one,” [6] avoiding the “scandal” of “division,” as St. John Chrysostomos tells us, in his hermeneutical comments on these words of the Lord, by adhering to the faith of the Apostles; [7] avoiding the “scandal” of “teachers” who are “divided” and not “of the same mind,” as St. Theophylact of Ochrid interprets this same passage; [8] and living in unity “not in order that we may believe,” as St. Augustine affirms, “but because we have believed.” [9]

There is, in the sacred Patristic tradition of the Orthodox Church, not a single word about finding ultimate Truth in dialogue (though dialogue and the search for mutual understanding are salutary things when undertaken in the proper context) or in joint prayer and common worship between the Or­thodox and heterodox. Indeed, there are canonical proscriptions against such activities. Rather, “because we have believed” and are “of the same mind,” we are one in our Orthodox confession, constantly, sincerely, and fervently calling others into the communion of the Church. As the late Father John Roma­nides, Professor of Theology at the University of Thessaloniki, says of Christ’s entreaty for unity among men (with a tone of irony directed at the syncretis­tic “ecclesiology” of the modern ecumenical movement), it “is certainly not a prayer for the union of churches,” [10] but for our unity and oneness in the transformative powers of the Orthodox Faith and our “glorification” by Grace, which Grace, as we have said, is a unique quality of Christianity in its fullness. It is in the “one body” of the Orthodox Church—in the “one faith” and the “one Baptism”—that Christ calls us to oneness: a unity to which we, in turn, invite all men and women, freely and openly. [11] So we teach and so our Fathers have called us to teach.

III. We are not Anti-Roman Catholic in our opposition to Papism and Vatican policies

That our opposition to Papism and Vatican policies is not born of backwa­ter anti-Catholic bigotry is evident in what we have said about religious tolera­tion. Moreover, we have a common heritage with Rome—and, by extension, later with its Protestant scions—in the early Church. The Orthodox Church, to quote one encyclopedic source, “stands in historical continuity with the communities created by the apostles of Jesus.” [12] As members of “Christen­dom’s oldest church,” [13] in the words of another standard source book, we Or­thodox resisters are acutely aware of our roots in the undivided Church, in a Christianity which knew no Papacy and which knew no Vatican, and of our responsibility, as the continuators of that Church, to preserve the principles and traditions handed down to us as the only paths to Christian unity.

A. Papism. It follows, therefore, that what we have said about the threats of ecumenism to the integrity of the Faith which we guard and pre­serve also applies to the Papacy, which introduced into the body of Christian doctrine, from an Orthodox perspective, the false claim that Christ built his Church on the person of St. Peter, and not on his confession of Christ’s Divinity, as well as the many heresies which this innovation spawned (Papal infallibil­ity, the Immaculate Conception, etc.), thus cutting itself off from the Ortho­dox Church. As the late Czech Protestant theologian and veteran ecumenist, Joseph Hromádka, avers,

[i]n the judgment of Eastern Christians, ...the Roman Catholic Church...sepa­rated herself—way back in ancient times—from the one Apostolic Church. It was the Bishops of Rome that had set themselves against the mystical fellow­ship of faith, and followed their particular interests and designs. [14]

It would behoove the Orthodox ecumenists, in their dialogues with the Vati­can, to be open and honest and to acknowledge anti-Papism, not only as a fundamental element of Orthodox ecclesiology, but as one of the chief psycho­logical motives behind the tragic schism between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. It is inarguably, after all, the primary source of the theo­logical differences separating Rome from Orthodoxy.

It is also inarguably the case that the “interests and designs” of the Papacy, and especially with the rise of the Papal Monarchy in the Middle Ages, brought much suffering on the Orthodox world (the Fourth Crusade and the conquest of Constantinople by Latin Crusaders in 1204, which Sir Steven Runciman describes as “one of the most ghastly and tragic incidents in history,” [15] being but one instance that we might cite). While, much to his credit, the late Pope John Paul II apologized for these and other assaults and outrages against the Orthodox, and while we Orthodox—though never to such a degree as in the instance cited— have at times also treated Roman Catholic populations within our dominions improperly, and owe apologies for such lapses, one cannot sim­ply dismiss as mere bigotry the historical sensitivities of Orthodox Christians and the rôle of those sensitivities in reinforcing our opposition to Papism.

The Orthodox East has always harbored, furthermore, serious misgivings about the specifically theological consequences of Papism. The Blessed Archi­mandrite Justin (Popovič) argues that the Papacy “replace[s] the God-Man [Je­sus Christ] with an infallible man,” thereby elevating the Bishop of Rome to a status “greater than [that of] the holy Apostles, the holy Fathers, and the Oecumenical Synods.” [16] In a similar vein, the well-known Russian writer A. Khomiakov observes that, for the Orthodox Church, “[t]he grace of faith is not to be separated from the holiness of life, nor can any single community or any single pastor be acknowledged to be the custodian of the whole faith of the Church.” [17] Such misgivings have been expressed, too, in the theological polemics of the Orthodox Church. In reaction to the installation of a Latin Patriarch in Constantinople, after the city’s conquest by the Crusaders, an anony­mous Byzantine author wrote, “The more we separate ourselves from the Pope, the closer we draw to the most blessed Peter and to God Himself.” [18]

When we resisters express our opposition to the Papacy, then, we embrace a long-established tradition in the Orthodox Church, which views Papism as antithetical to the structure of the Church established by Christ, a deviation from the consensus of the Church Fathers, and a source for the introduction of false doctrine, or heresy, into the body of Christian Truth. This does not constitute an assault against Roman Catholicism or an expression of religious bigotry. Indeed, even in its polemical characterizations of the Pope—as the An­tichrist and the source of evil and discord within the Christian world, to quote such Orthodox luminaries as St. Kosmas Aitolos and the celebrated contem­porary Elder, Archimandrite Philotheos (Zervakos)—the Orthodox Church does not ignore the good intentions and often fine character (notwithstanding many historical examples to the contrary) of some who have occupied the Pa­pal See. It focuses, rather, on the anti-Christian spirit of human “infallibility” and, once more, on the demonic and diabolical consequences that fall upon the Church when its faithful are called to pay heed to anyone but Christ Him­self and to recognize any authority outside the unity in Christ which defines the Orthodox Church.

B. The Vatican. With regard to our resistance to Vatican policy, there are many who, in this age of ecumenism, would argue that our negative stance fails to acknowledge the ecumenical outreach of Rome, which has fostered good relations with the Orthodox Church by recasting the prerogatives of the Papacy in more conciliar language. To these would-be critics, we would re­spond with the words of Pope John Paul II, who on May 25, 1995, in his encyc­lical “Ut Unum Sint” (That They Might Be One), affirmed the role of the Pope as the “visible sign and guarantor” of Christian unity—and this in a document issued by the Vatican as a statement of its continued commitment to ecumen­ism and the ecumenical movement!

It is likewise often said that the Vatican, in its ecumenical outreach, has discarded the claims of Roman Catholicism to an ecclesiastical primacy in Christianity, approaching the Orthodox, as we see in the aforementioned doc­ument, “Ut Unum Sint,” as a “Sister Church” or as “one lung” of the “two lungs of Christianity.” [19] Nonetheless, the ecclesiological definitions set forth in the Second Vatican Council’s decree on the nature of the Church, “Lumen Gentium” (A Light for the Nations)—upheld and ratified by every Pope in the four decades since the close of that council—affirm that the Roman Catho­lic Church is the “one holy catholic and apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ” and that “the sole Church of Christ which in the Creed we profess to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic” is found concretely and solely “in the [Roman] Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him.”

It is with some justification, therefore, that we Orthodox critics of the ecu­menical movement have accused the Vatican of disingenuousness and hypoc­risy in its ecumenical overtures. At the same time that we are condemned as virtual bigots and ecclesiastical exclusivists for upholding the primacy of the Orthodox Church (and with no mean historical arguments to support our case), the Vatican at one and the same time supports the ecclesiological syncre­tism of the ecumenical movement and maintains that the Papacy is the source of Christian unity and that the Roman Catholic Church is the one Church. It, along with the World Council of Churches, has also endorsed labels such as “official” and “uncanonical” in differentiating, respectively, those Orthodox who support and participate in the ecumenical movement from us Orthodox resisters: a distinction wholly foreign to the ecclesiological life of the Chris­tian East, where “officialdom” is considered spiritually deadly to the Faith and where canonicity rests on adherence to the canonical directives that dictate the observance of Church traditions and the ascent to holiness.

It is, in the final analysis, obvious to any objective observer, whether he agrees or disagrees with our position, that the opposition of us Orthodox re­sisters to Papism and Vatican Policy is based on firm historical precedents and on theological and ecclesiological principles of long-standing importance, dat­ing back to the age of an undivided Christianity. We moderate Orthodox re­sisters, moreover, are by no means motivated by bigotry or prejudice against Roman Catholicism; instead, it would seem, the characterizations and assess­ments of our efforts by our detractors in the ecumenical movement and in the Vatican leave them open to accusations of unfairness and harshness, if not hypocrisy and holding to a double standard.

IV. Old Calendarism is not a mark of Orthodox troglodytism

It is well known that the Holy Synod in Resistance adheres to the Church Calendar (the so-called Old Calendar); that is, to the Paschalion (or date of “Easter,” or in Orthodox nomenclature, “Pascha”) established by the Oecumen­ical Synod of Nicaea, in 325, and to a festal cycle determined by the Julian Calendar. This Calendar was everywhere used by the Orthodox Church until the early twentieth century, when some local Orthodox Churches adopted the Gregorian Calendar, originally imposed on Western Christians by Pope Gre­gory XIII in the Papal Bull “Inter Gravissimas” (Among the Most Serious—a title taken from the first words of the initial sentence of the Bull), issued on February 25, 1582 (Old Style). The Pope, by virtue of “the attribute of sovereign pontiff,” thus declared that October 4 of the same year would be followed im­mediately by October 15, omitting the ten days separating the Julian from the Gregorian Calendar (a separation which is at present one of thirteen days).

With the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar by various local Orthodox Churches—including the Church of Greece, in 1924—the unity of the faithful in their liturgical celebrations was broken. In addition, among those Churches which adopted the Western date for Pascha (the Church of Romania briefly and the Church of Finland permanently), fidelity to the dictates of the Oecumenical Synods and Canons, by which the canonicity of any Orthodox body is established, was set aside as a criterion of the Faith. As a consequence of this serious rupture with Holy Tradition and the rudimentary definitions of Ortho­doxy, the Orthodox world was divided into two camps: the Orthodox innova­tors, who accepted the calendar reform, and the Orthodox resisters (deprecat­ingly called “Old Calendarists” or “Old Stylists), who rejected the reform and who hold forth today in several national Churches (those of Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania).

Here, too, our position has been misrepresented and we have been ac­cused of promoting separatism and of troglodytic tendencies in adhering to an antiquated and meaningless calendar—of being triskaidekemerolaters, or worshippers of the thirteen days that separate the Julian and Gregorian Calen­dars. Some years ago, a Jesuit ecumenical activist penned an entry for a Roman Catholic guide to world religions that serves as an egregious example of these wrongful allegations. His comments are also, interestingly enough, marked by an apparently deliberate attempt to downplay the importance of the Greek Old Calendar movement by misrepresenting both its foundational precepts and its statistical profile:

Palaioimerologites (Gr. for Old Calendarists), a term used for the 200,000 Greek Orthodox who broke ecclesiastical ties with the main Greek Orthodox Church because of the official Church’s change in 1924 from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. [While accurate statistics are difficult to ascertain and the Old Calendarist population has dwindled, at the outset of the movement, the number of Old Calendarists was many times this number.] In the late 30s they split to form two separate hierarchies. There are about 250 Old Calendar Greek priests [this is an absurdly underestimated statistic] who keep alive among the faithful people the burning conviction that there is an immense importance in maintaining the 13 days that separate the liturgical cycle (the Kingdom of God) from the official state calendar (the Kingdom of this world). The Old Calendar­ists consider the other Greek Orthodox who follow the Gregorian calendar as heretical [this is not universally true and is an outrageous statement] and refuse to communicate with them. [Old Calendarists, by virtue of their opposition to the calendar innovation, do not have intercommunion with the New Calendar­ist innovators.] All the monks on Mt. Athos, except those of Vatopedi follow the Old Calendar. [All of the monastic institutions on Mt. Athos presently fol­low the Old Calendar.] There are two such parishes in the United States. [There are, in fact, scores of Old Calendar Greek parishes in the U.S. and Canada.] [20]

It is, to address these misperceptions (beyond our bracketed interjections above), under the banner of the Church Calendar, and not out of an absurd worship of days, that we Orthodox resisters carry out our opposition to the ecumenical movement and the Papacy. This is because the issue of Church Calendar is, in actuality, closely tied to the doctrine of Papal supremacy and to the emergence of ecumenical ideas that, as we have demonstrated, erode the very foundations of our Orthodox Faith.

A. The Papacy and the Calendar Issue. With regard to the Papacy, the Gre­gorian Calendar was imposed on Western Christianity by the authority of the Pope, as we observed earlier. Issues of astronomical accuracy—which are not of concern to us here—aside, beyond the divisions and strife that the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar by various Orthodox Churches produced, our resist­ance to the Papal Calendar is also an expression of our opposition to the no­tion that Pope Gregory XIII, acting as “sovereign pontiff,” had the authority to impose his calendar reform on the world. The rabidly anti-Protestant Gregory, who considered the calendar reform an effective tool in the Counter-Reforma­tion, generated similar resistance to Papal power in Protestant Europe, where the Gregorian Calendar was not adopted for several centuries after its impo­sition: Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, and Norway in 1700, and England and the American colonies, where the Gregorian (or New) Calendar was considered a “Popish” device, only in 1752. We Old Calendarists, therefore, have an historical counterpart in such Western European and American colo­nial resistance to Papism, and it is only historical amnesia that allows ecclesias­tical polemicists to dismiss our concerns as outlandish or eccentric.

B. Ecumenism and the Calendar Issue. It is an indisputable fact that the ad­vocacy of the calendar reform in the twentieth century had its roots in the ecu­menical policies first embraced officially by the Orthodox Church in an encyc­lical promulgated by the Oecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople in 1920. As part of its program for the reunification of the Orthodox and heterodox Christian confessions, the Patriarchate proposed that Christians everywhere accept “a uniform calendar for the celebration of the great Christian feasts at the same time by all the churches.” [21] It moved forward with this plan, not by offering as a model of uniformity the ancient Orthodox Church Calendar, but by adopting, in 1924, the Papal Calendar (or, as it was euphemistically and a bit ridiculously styled, the “Revised Julian Calendar”). This action was justi­fied by the rejection of the Julian Calendar, by which the Orthodox Church Feasts are partly calculated, on the grounds of its “astronomical” insufficien­cies, which were put forth in such a clearly unscientific and naive way as to be embarrassing.

The hodgepodged New Church Calendar which Constantinople adopted (as did the Church of Greece and other local Orthodox Churches shortly there­after), crudely grafting the traditional Paschalion of the Orthodox Church onto a festal cycle determined by the Gregorian Calendar, was to suffice until such a time as the Orthodox Paschalion could also be abandoned for the celebration of a common Pascha by all Christians. That goal has not yet been achieved by the innovators, who nonetheless still see it, along with the New Calendar, as an essential component of Orthodox participation in the ecumenical move­ment. Hence, while the Orthodox Churches of Russia, Serbia, Georgia, and Jerusalem, among others, still follow the Old Calendar, but are to varying de­grees active in such ecumenical organizations as the World Council of Church­es, they too have flirted from time to time with the idea of adopting the New Calendar or the Western date for Pascha. On account of this—and because of their communion with the Orthodox innovators and ecumenists who follow the New Calendar—the Holy Synod in Resistance does not commune with these Churches (being walled off from them, as it is from the New Calendar­ists, though not denying the Orthodox identity of either group), even if these Churches do follow the Old Calendar. This fact further brings into focus our fundamental raison d’être, which is not a witless commitment to the Church Calendar alone, but that of a sober, circumspect opposition to the compromis­ing effects of ecumenism and Papism on the integrity of the Orthodox Church and its traditions, as evidenced in the calendar reform. In that opposition, our goal is not to condemn and divide our fellow Orthodox, but to return them to the fullness of Holy Tradition that is in the end, rising above temporary divi­sions, the fundamental unitive force of the Church in time space.

V. Concluding Statement

We are acutely aware that many of our intentions and goals, as well as the Patristic language which we employ in formulating and expressing our opposi­tion to ecumenism and Papism, are open to misinterpretation and misunder­standing. This is partly because we are sometimes incautiously identified with those who, departing from the Royal Path of moderation, undertake to oppose the ecumenical movement and the Pope with a spirit of intolerance, disallow­ing that many ecumenists and the vast majority of those who embrace the Roman Catholic confession are individuals—though misguided— of sincere purpose. These same unwise zealots misuse in a denigrating and insulting way the diagnostic theological nomenclature of the Church Fathers, who, in op­posing heresy and decrying the demonic and diabolical nature of that which leads one from Truth to error, speak with analytical purpose and certainly not with ad hominem invective. By way of such mistaken association, the quality of love in which our resistance is undertaken, and at which it inexorably aims, is obfuscated. As we are also painfully aware, we are not infallible, whether in our views or in expressing them, and our Bishops and clergy, individually, have at times spoken or written injudiciously or imprudently. (I count myself chief among these.) Demanding of us a perfection that none of us claims, some de­tractors have used these instances further to denigrate us. This is regrettable.

It is also the case that we resisters are at times the victims of ecumenists gone awry and of Papist policies and their designers gone astray, holding forth, as they do, with the rhetoric of religious toleration and openness, while at the same time deliberately distorting our proclamations and positions. Such unsa­vory assaults against our integrity tend to mask the fact that we, no less than the sincere ecumenist, pine for the unity of all Christians, for tolerance be­tween people of all races and religions, and for peace and harmony, to the extent that these things are possible in a fallen and imperfect world. That our heartfelt quest for such ideals is bound by our commitment to the Truth of the Orthodox Faith and constrained by the observance of our traditions in the pursuit of holiness and perfection in Christ should not be something that excludes us from proper treatment and the freedom to articulate and set forth our views as they are, and not as others would distort them. It is for this reason that I have, with the aid of the Fathers here at the monastery, compiled this personal statement of my understanding of the intentions of the Holy Syn­od in Resistance and the nature of our opposition to ecumenism and Papism, speaking in peace and in love and with truth and sobriety.

 

Notes

1. Cf. St. Vincent of Lérins, “First Commonitorium,” §2, Patrologia Latina, Vol. L, col. 640: “In ipsa item Catholica Ecclesia magnopere curandum est ut id teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est” (Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all).

2. See St. Paul, who calls the Church “the pillar and ground of the truth” (I St. Timothy 3:15); St. John Chrysostomos, who calls the Church “that which ties together the faith and preaching.” (“Homily XI on the First Epistle to St. Timothy,” Patrologia Graeca, Vol. LXII, col. 554); and St. Theophylact of Ochrid, who affirms that the Church is the “mainstay of the truth.” (“Explanation of the First Epistle to St. Timothy, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. CXXV, col. 49B).

3. St. Athanasios the Great, “First Epistle to Serapion,” Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XXVI, cols. 593C-596A.

4. Ecumenists, reacting to such Patristic language, have at times reproached us Old Calendarist resisters with shocking invective. A recent publication of the World Council of Churches, the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: 2002), for example, portrays us as virtual recidivists, “fundamentalists,” and “uncanonical,” citing one critical assessment of ecumenism out of context and leaving the reader with the clearly unfair impression that we are unbridled religious bigots. I am, much to my chagrin, personally characterized as some sort of fundamentalist hothead.

5. St. Nectarios of Pentapolis, Mathema Poimantikes (Athens: 1972), p. 192. 6. St. John 17:21.

7. St. John Chrysostomos, “Homily 82 on the Gospel of St. John,” §2, Patr. Graeca, Vol. LIX, col. 444.

8. St. Theophylact of Ochrid, “Commentary on the Gospel of St. John,” Patr. Graeca, Vol. 124, co. 237C.

9. St. Augustine, “Tractate CX on the Gospel of St. John,” §2, Patrologia Latina, Vol. XXXV, col. 1920.

10. Father John S. Romanides, “Orthodox and Vatican Agreement: Balamand, Lebanon, June 1993,” Theologia, Vol. VI, No. 4 (1993). 11. Ephesians 4:4-5.

12. Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (1983 edition), s.v. “Orthodox Church.”

13. Christendom & Christianity Today, Vol 3 in The World’s Great Religions (N.Y.: Time, Inc., ‘63), p. 266.

14. Joseph L. Hromádka, “Eastern Orthodoxy,” in The Great Religions of the Modern World, ed. Edward J. Jurji (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1946), pp. 286-287.

15. Steven Runciman, The Eastern Schism: A Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches During the XIth and XIIth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), p. 149.

16. Fr Justin Popovic, “The Highest Value and the Last Criterion in Orthodoxy,” in Orthodox Faith & Life in Christ, tr. Asterios Gerostergios et al. (Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1994), p. 89.

17. Alexei S. Khomiakov, The Church is One (Seattle, WA: St. Nectarios Press, 1979), p. 21.

18. Cited in Archimandrite Spyridon S. Bilales, Orthodoxia kai Papismos, 2nd ed. (Athens: Ekdoseis Adelphotetos “Evnike,” 1988), Vol. I, p. 148.

19. This image, which has been employed widely by Orthodox and Roman Catholic ecumenists alike, was actually coined by the Russian poet Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949).

20. George A. Maloney, S.J., Encyclopedic Dictionary of Religion (Washington, DC: Corpus Publications, 1979), s.v. “Palaioimerologites.”

21. “Encyclical of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, 1920,” in The Orthodox Church in the Ecumenical Movement: Documents and Statements 1902-1975 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1978), p. 41.

 

Source: The Shepherd: An Orthodox Christian Pastoral Magazine, Saint Edward Brotherhood, Woking, UK, August 2009.

The Patriarch is NOT our Pope

Archimandrite Auxentios

[Now Bishop of Etna and Portland]

"A definition of Orthodoxy which posits anything but the absolute equality of Bishops, be they Popes, Patriarchs, Archbishops, or whatever, is a definition of precisely what Orthodoxy is not. Where a right-believing Bishop with Apostolic Succession is found, there and there alone is Orthodoxy found." With these blunt words my former mentor, Father Florovsky, distinguished Orthodoxy from papism. So fundamental is this idea to the ecclesiology of our Church that the Oecumenical Patriarch has always been careful to limit the honor due his great See by calling himself the "first among equals." Orthodoxy is decidedly non-papist.

Some time ago, I was speaking to a Uniate convert to Orthodoxy. I commented to him that, while I respected his decision to convert to the Orthodox Church, I had some serious reservations about the abuse of economy by which his reception into the Church was accomplished. Understandably, he had no grasp of the issue which I was addressing, but defended what he mistakenly thought was a challenge to the validity of his conversion by saying, "Well, we are recognized by the Patriarch of Constantinople." I was a bit surprised at this naive response. It highlights what a disservice the modernist Orthodox Churches in this country are doing to converts.

This poor man has, in being misguided about the actual beliefs of the Orthodox Church, come to believe that, in converting to Orthodoxy, he traded a Pope for a Patriarch. As I have noted, this is not the case. The Pope being inerrant with regard to matters of faith, his approval insures one's good standing in the Latin Church. A Patriarch, however, is just a Bishop. If he should err, as he can, he and those who follow him collapse in the Faith. His approval of any act or issue has, as such, no significance whatever outside his fidelity to Holy Tradition. And even then, that approval has no more authoritative weight than the approval of any other, true-believing Orthodox Bishop.

In what is unfortunately an unnecessarily polemical and at times uncharitable little volume, the third chapter of Alexander Kalomiros' Against False Union (tr. George Gabriel; Boston, MA, 1967) constitutes a succinct and brilliant statement with regard to authority in the Orthodox Church: "A local Orthodox church[,] regardless of her size or the number of her faithful[,] is by herself alone, independently of all the others, catholic. ...She has all the grace and truth. ...She is the one flock, and the bishop is her shepherd, the image of Christ, the one Shepherd" (p. 54).

Again, as Father Florovsky emphatically states, the Orthodox Church exists where there is a right- believing Bishop in Apostolic Succession. The criterion of validity in Orthodoxy is focused on that right-believing Bishop, not on a Pope or on some papist notion of Church authority. In fact, defending the validity of one's Orthodoxy by adherence to a Patriarch or some special Church "authority," as opposed to right belief and Holy Tradition, can lead to error.

Many zealots on Mt. Athos, for example, will not commemorate the Patriarch of Constantinople. Because of his uncanonical relations with the Roman Papacy and his unfounded claims to leadership in the Orthodox world, these zealots reckon commemoration a participation in his deviation from the Faith. Even many of those who do commemorate the Patriarch speak of his actions as a great scandal to the Faithful and shun his counsel. Thus, a papist-like fidelity to the present Patriarch of Constantinople risks error.

The papism which has appeared in Orthodoxy since the calendar change in 1924 has misled many converts in the West. This innovation, Kalomiros notes, is expressed in titles such as "Archbishop of All Greece," or "Archbishop of North and South America," or, as it is often said of the Patriarch of Constantinople, "leader of Orthodoxy." "All [of] these are manifestations," he insightfully writes, "of the same worldly spirit, of the same thirst for worldly power, and belong to the same tendencies which characterize the world today.

"...The Orthodox people must become conscious of the fact that they owe no obedience to a bishop, no matter how high a title he holds, when that bishop ceases being Orthodox and openly follows heretics with pretenses of 'unions' on 'equal terms.' On the contrary, they are obliged to depart from him and confess their Faith, because a bishop, even if he be patriarch or pope, ceases from being a bishop the moment he ceases being Orthodox" (p.61).

With all of the recent publicity about the "leader of world Orthodoxy," we would all do well to return to a study of the basic tenets of the Orthodox Faith and heed with great seriousness the errors which are being taught in the name of Orthodoxy! We are not a Patriarchal Church, a Church which has extended the prerogatives of papism beyond Rome to include a multiplicity of papal authorities. The head of the Orthodox Church is Jesus Christ. Through Apostolic Succession, every Orthodox Bishop, together with his flock, constitutes the fullness of the Church, to the extent that he and those with him adhere to the teachings of Christ, the Apostles, Scripture, the Holy Fathers, Holy Tradition, and the Canons of The Church.

Whenever anyone begins to teach, in the name of Orthodoxy, that spiritual authority resides in a Pope or Patriarch, he is initiating a movement that is essentially inimical to our Church's nature—even if he who teaches this is a Patriarch!

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. VII (1990), No. 4, p. 4.

A Sermon on Freedom of Conscience

By Archbishop Ambrose (Klyucharev) of Kharkov and Okhtyrka (+1901),

On the Day of the Accession to the Throne of the Most Pious Sovereign Emperor Alexander II Nikolaevich, February 19, 1875, in the Great Dormition Cathedral in Moscow.

 

 

For why is my liberty judged by another man’s conscience?

…for why should my freedom be judged by another’s conscience? (1 Cor. 10:29)

 

One of the most important questions, which according to the needs of our time requires careful clarification, is the question of freedom of conscience.

We know that by the very attempt to begin explaining and resolving this question from the church pulpit, we arouse in many people perplexity and apprehension. Today, in Christian countries, it has become a political question, and therefore many may suppose that we are entering a sphere that does not belong to the word of the Church, or at least that we cannot be impartial in judging it. But in order to remove all misunderstandings, we must say that the question of freedom of conscience is first of all a moral question, just as conscience itself is the principal agent of the moral life. Therefore, even in order to see to what extent and from which sides it may enter the sphere of political questions, and whether any dangers threaten our moral life from its incorrect understanding and from erroneous methods in resolving it—even for this purpose we must return the question to its proper place and examine it in that sphere of concepts in which alone it can be resolved.

Let us say even more: this is precisely our question, belonging to the sphere of church teaching, because the very doctrine of freedom of conscience became known to the world only through divine revelation. The ancient pagan philosophers, with all their efforts, were unable even to conceive of that height of moral perfection where freedom of conscience begins for man; and the philosophers of modern times have only confused this teaching, as they have many other pure Christian concepts, by mixing them with ideas of a philosophical character. Therefore, with the full boldness of a clear consciousness of the truth, we affirm that in resolving the question of freedom of conscience, this highest manifestation of the true freedom of man, the first place must belong to the Orthodox Church. And whoever knows well the Orthodox Church and her spirit will share with us the conviction that she will never place anyone in a false or unclear moral or social position, provided only that we, the preachers of her teaching, faithfully follow her guidance and direction.

The chief difficulty in applying the Christian teaching on freedom of conscience to life today arises from the fact that many address demands to the ecclesiastical and civil authorities for freedom of life on the basis of the inviolability of conscience, proceeding from an incorrect understanding of this teaching. All such demands, despite the diversity of views and conclusions on which they are based, are reduced to one general proposition: “everyone has his own conscience, and therefore in all his actions he should be left to himself, provided that his actions do not violate the personal freedom of others or public order and security.” It is true that conscience is a sacred and inviolable possession of man as a rational and moral being; it is his chief guide in the striving for perfection along the path of truth and righteousness, and to compel people to act against conscience means to deprive them of their inner light and strength, to morally distort and corrupt them. In a general sense, or, as philosophers say, in an abstract and ideal conception of man as he ought to be, this is entirely correct. But we do not arrive at such a conclusion when we carefully observe man in the experience of real life. What could seem better than to allow people to proceed freely along the straight path toward the knowledge of truth, without restraining or hindering the independent development of their diverse intellectual powers and gifts by any external influence? Yet in reality it turns out that the greater part of them must be taught and guided all their lives on the path toward truth; because they themselves do not find this path, and do not even see or recognize it when it is clearly shown to them. What could be better than to give people freedom to exercise their liberty in independent activity according to the laws of divine and human righteousness, without any intervention of external guides, and simply to rejoice at the manifestation in them of the particular perfections of human nature proper to each person? But in reality, it turns out that they sometimes forget and trample upon these laws to such a degree that it becomes necessary to bind them and confine them in prisons. If such is man in relation to the knowledge of truth and to free activity according to the laws of righteousness, can he be otherwise in his conscience, which is the expression of the general inner state and direction of a person and, so to speak, the conclusion drawn from the whole of his activity? Obviously, he cannot.

Let us explain these thoughts in greater detail. What is conscience? It is called the law of God impressed upon the soul of man, the inner witness of our life, the inseparable judge of our thoughts and deeds, and the like. All these expressions, though correct, only comparatively describe the various actions and states of our conscience. In a more precise definition, conscience is the inner feeling of peace and well-being which we experience when we observe the law, and the feeling of sorrow and suffering when we violate it. What law is meant here? That according to which we are created and by which we ought to live, that is, the law of God. This law of life, placed in the nature of every being, everywhere manifests the same effects: when it is observed, order and well-being are spread abroad; when it is violated, disorder and suffering appear. This is, so to speak, the conscience of all nature as a whole and of each creature separately. The difference with respect to various beings is that inanimate nature does not feel the action of this law in itself or upon itself; animals feel it, but do not understand it. Let us consider examples of the violation of the law. A plant does not develop into the form proper to it, but languishes and withers when the conditions necessary for its nourishment and existence are not maintained, yet it does not feel this. An animal in illness feels suffering (as does a man who lives only the life of an animal, for example in infancy or unconsciousness), but it does not understand either the cause of its suffering or the possibility of escape from its distressing condition. But man, when he fully possesses his powers in his inner spiritual life—for example when he loses innocence, violates the laws of honor, justice, or love for his neighbor—both suffers and at the same time understands why he suffers, how he has fallen into this state, what he felt before his fall, and thereby becomes convinced that in order to regain inner peace and contentment with himself he must necessarily emerge from this unnatural condition. It is clear that here the activity of properly human faculties enters in: rational self-judgment and free self-determination. Therefore, human conscience, like everything founded upon gradually rising free self-development, is subject to change; and because man may violate the law and fall into various errors and delusions, conscience is easily disturbed, shaken, darkened, and perverted. No one knows the various diseased states of the human conscience better than the holy Church. From her instruction, more than from any psychological investigations, we know that there is a coarse conscience, insensitive to the inner sufferings of the spirit even when grave crimes are committed; in such a state a person, like one who is dying and does not feel the destruction of his body, does not perceive the nearness of eternal ruin; or like a poor man accustomed to the stifling air of his dwelling, he breathes in his infected moral atmosphere without burden or revulsion. To such people applies the exhortation: “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead” (Eph. 5:14). There is also a careless and negligent conscience, when a man, not watching over his thoughts and deeds, passes from small violations of the law to greater ones, and by mixing faults with crimes, ignoring rebukes, gradually becomes more deeply corrupted day by day, and, as Scripture says, “when he has come to the depth of evils, he becomes careless” (Prov. 18:3). There is, according to the Apostle Paul, the seared conscience of hypocrites (1 Tim. 4:2), when through habitual calculations of self-love, ambition, and greed, false teachings and false interpretations take the place of truth in a person’s mind, and the triumph of passion in the corrupted heart replaces the consolations of conscience. There is the conscience of literalists, who are more ready to forgive crimes than deviations from an external rite, as the Apostle Paul indicates when he says: “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6). There is a deceitful conscience, when a person excuses and justifies his evil deeds with plausible pretexts. For deliverance from this vice the Church teaches even the ministers of the sacraments to pray: “Cleanse, O Lord, my mind and heart from an evil conscience.” There is a fanatical conscience, when a person, through a burning desire to spread the faith or to establish law and order, is ready to act by violent measures, forgetting the personal rights and freedoms of others; this the Apostle calls “zeal not according to knowledge” (Rom. 10:2). There is a servile conscience, when a person, oppressed by the power of sinful habits or passions, suffers inwardly, fears eternal condemnation, seeks a way out of his condition and does not find it. To this moral state applies the word of the Savior: “Whosoever commits sin is the servant of sin” (John 8:34). There is also a fearful conscience, when a person loses the calm and clear disposition of spirit, being troubled by fear of condemnation for the inevitable sins of human weakness. Here we have indicated only the principal forms of diseased states of conscience. In real life these defects of conscience in our souls are so united, intertwined, and assume such diverse shades and degrees of strength that it is impossible either to trace them all or to describe them in detail. Yet even in this general outline each of us, if he carefully examines himself, will find much that applies to himself as well, that constitutes his own inner illness. Reflecting in this way upon people who are morally sick and corrupted—as we all are more or less—what freedom of conscience could we wish for them? Permission to proclaim aloud what they still inwardly feel ashamed of? To expose before everyone what they carefully conceal? To do openly and before all what, because of the remnants of conscience, is still done within four walls and in the darkness of night? Or, on the other hand, should we allow people freedom, to the harm of others, to do what schemers, hypocrites under various names, unrestrained fanatics, shameless debauchees, thieves, and robbers do according to their conscience? But would this not mean to throw wide open the doors to the immeasurable quantity of evil hidden in human hearts, and permit it to burst forth without restraint—to the scandal and corruption of the innocent and inexperienced, to the temptation of the wavering, to the weakening of those who patiently labor in works of goodness and honor? Clearly, this would not be freedom of conscience, but the release of men from the supervision and judgment of conscience, or in other words the trampling down and destruction of conscience itself.

We shall be told: “But who understands freedom of conscience in such a way? This is an obvious absurdity.” We agree. Yet precisely this absurdity, or inner falsehood, concealed by various sophisms, lies within the modern notion of freedom of conscience that we mentioned at the beginning. “Allow everyone to act according to his own conscience, since conscience is sacred and inviolable.” What does this mean? It means: entrust the moral order of society to the personal conscience of each individual—and first of all to our conscience, to the conscience that we, the preachers of new teachings, possess. But we have the right to say to them: first show us what sort of conscience you have, so that we may know whether it can be trusted. There is a universal human conscience, upon which the universal laws of life are established, expressed in the writings, traditions, rules, and customs of entire nations. Does our personal conscience perhaps contain something diseased, distorted, or deformed? There is also a Christian conscience, guided by divine laws. How does your conscience relate to these holy and immutable laws of morality, which the better part of humanity honors, including the Orthodox Church? Does your conscience, in relation to them, perhaps contain something offensive, hostile, or destructive?

It is impossible to discuss matters according to the laws of any religion with the materialists and their followers, when they reject every religion. They can be judged only by the universal human conscience and by historical conscience. From their actions we shall take those which fall under such judgment. When a man who is married seduces an innocent maiden, and, abandoning his wife and children, enters with her into open cohabitation, by what conscience does he do this? When a wife says to her husband: “I love another; release me quietly, give me all or half of the children, and return my dowry or assign me suitable maintenance from your property,” from what conscience does such a proposal arise? When the husband, respecting this supposed sanctity of his wife’s feeling, himself delivers her into the hands of another, rewards her, and even attends the celebration of the new marriage, not hiding it even from his children—by what conscience does he act? Not by a free conscience, but by a conscience stupefied by sensuality, a conscience deaf to every prompting of shame, moral propriety, parental love, and sound reason, according to which even nations scarcely emerging from ignorance place true family happiness and the firm foundations of upbringing and public well-being in monogamy. They say: “We do not restrict the personal freedom of others and do not produce public disorder.” But the whole world knows that for moral freedom temptations and bad examples present greater dangers than external constraint and restraint; that family disorders are the seeds of every kind of social disorder and calamity. It is time, in warning Christian families, to set the seal not only of social condemnation, but also of ecclesiastical condemnation, upon these preachers of debauchery under the name of freedom of conscience.

What, then, does true freedom of conscience consist in? Not in external rights and advantages—social and political—but in the inner liberation of the spirit from all obstacles to the observance of the law that are encountered in the corrupted human nature; and then in the consciousness of righteousness, in the undisturbed feeling of inner peace and well-being, and in the right to relate to the prescriptions of ritual law according to a higher understanding of the laws and purposes of morality.

We have said that the teaching on freedom of conscience is properly a Christian teaching, and therefore its explanation must be sought in the sphere of Christian truths and church institutions. In the Church we know two kinds of laws: moral laws, the establishment of which in the life and activity of the spirit is the goal of all human labors and efforts; and ritual laws, or educational laws, which assist a person in mastering all his moral powers in order to observe the former. The holy Apostle Paul calls the ritual law of the Old Testament, which imposed upon the members of the Old Testament Church strict rules concerning bodily purity, sacrifices, feasts, distinctions of food, a tutor unto Christ (Gal. 3:24), that is, an educator or guide to Christ. The ritual laws of the New Testament Church have the same significance, such as the times of divine services, feasts, fasts, rules concerning preparation for Communion, domestic prayer, and other religious exercises. Their purpose is to accustom Christians, through experience or moral instruction, to the gathering of the mind, the discernment of thoughts and movements of the heart, self-control and patience in the struggle with the passions of the flesh, self-denial in works of charity, and the perception of higher influences from the spiritual world, which awaken in our soul the striving for a higher and eternal life. In these exercises pure conceptions of good and evil, of the duties of man, of true perfection, and of the means of correcting our innate corruption are continually instilled. Here the natural promptings of conscience are clarified, corrected, and strengthened, so that the divine law is both called forth from the soul itself as something innate, and at the same time introduced into us from without as divinely revealed and positive, and from both together there is formed a complete and clear knowledge and awareness of the will of God concerning man. All this is accomplished under the living influence of the pastors and teachers of the Church, where the human conscience is protected by the veil of profound secrecy, where a person is persuaded but not compelled to moral struggles, where external exercises visible from outside pass into inner and invisible labor before the eyes of God, where the morally sick are lovingly reproved and healed, but not insulted or humiliated. But the inner power, essence, and soul of all these laws and exercises are the holy mysteries (sacraments), in which, through the power of the sacrificial Cross of the Redeemer, the grace of God is communicated to the Christian—grace that regenerates our corrupted nature, assists us, cleanses and sanctifies us. For only the blood of Christ, according to the teaching of the Apostle, cleanses our conscience from dead works (Heb. 9:14) and frees us from an evil conscience (Heb. 10:22). “If the Son therefore shall make you free,” says the Lord, “you shall be free indeed.” (John 8:36).

It is evident that these ordinances, which are difficult for beginners, become easier for those who make progress, and almost imperceptible—losing, as it were, their obligatory force—for perfect Christians. For the one to whom it is the same, like the Apostle Paul, to endure hunger or to be filled, to abound or to suffer need (Phil. 4:12), the fasts, which are so burdensome for us, are scarcely noticeable; for the one who prays without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17), prolonged services are not difficult; for the one who walks in the Spirit (Gal. 5:16), the pleasures of the flesh—delicious foods, costly wines, feasts, spectacles, and the like—are not tempting. In general, whoever has introduced into his nature, as a need and necessity, the fulfillment of the moral law, for him the means that only lead toward this perfection lose their force. “He who has,” says the holy Apostle Paul, “the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, mercy, faith, meekness, temperance—against such there is no law” (Gal. 5:23). “The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless” (1 Tim. 1:9). “If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Gal. 5:18). See upon what moral height the banner of freedom of conscience is raised! Here a man says: “All things are lawful for me” (1 Cor. 10:23), because he knows that he will not only refrain from doing anything harmful or unlawful, but will not even desire it. He says: “I can do all things through Jesus Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13), because he feels within himself the abundance of moral strength proven by struggle and replenished by the grace of God. He says: “Why should my liberty be judged by another’s conscience?” (1 Cor. 10:29), because he bears within himself the Spirit of God, which illumines his conscience (Rom. 9:1). What external signs of freedom, what rights, can ecclesiastical authority grant to such people? The Church herself venerates them as her teachers, guides, examples, and luminaries in the ecclesiastical firmament, whatever their rank may be—bishops, humble monks, slaves, or miners. And what rights of freedom of conscience can state authority give them? They desire none, because they already possess everything. They rejoice when the Church of God is not persecuted, but peacefully and freely accomplishes the great work of the salvation of mankind; yet they also endure persecutions with submission to the will of God that permits them, and afterwards exhort all Christians: “Submit yourselves to every human authority (whether of the same faith or of another) for the Lord’s sake” (1 Pet. 2:13); “servants, obey your masters not only for wrath, but also for conscience’ sake” (Rom. 13:5). Toward all authorities they give Christians one general rule, which protects them from every displeasure of authority: “Do you wish not to fear the authority? Do what is good” (Rom. 13:3). Happy is that Christian state in which such free fulfillers and zealots of the law do not become scarce! From them come servants of the fatherland who labor for it their whole life without thought of ranks or rewards; from them come incorruptible judges, truthful and fearless advisers to the sovereign; from them in the armies are formed thunderous legions.

See how, from this height, the false direction of those Christians is clearly illuminated who demand freedom of conscience for themselves while possessing and having established within themselves none of the moral qualities that constitute the essential features of that freedom. The holy Apostles foresaw that in Christian societies there would be abuses of this lofty teaching. The Apostle Peter, defining the relations of the early Christians precisely toward rulers or civil authorities—and indeed toward pagan ones—says to them: “For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your freedom as a cloak for evil, but as the servants of God” (1 Pet. 2:15–16). The Apostle Paul, on the other hand, warns: “You have been called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an occasion for the flesh” (Gal. 5:13). In these two admonitions the two kinds of modern seekers of freedom in the name of conscience are precisely defined. Some demand that in Christian countries all measures of a religious character be removed from state institutions and laws that concern the education and preservation of public morality—such as the obligatory teaching of the Law of God in schools, the protection of Christian marriage, and the observance of church seasons requiring special reverence, and the like—on the grounds that everyone has the right to act according to his own conscience. Such a demand is a covering of evil or ill intent under the name of freedom. How can it harm the freedom of the Christian conscience to provide youth with sound and scientific knowledge of the Christian religion, to protect the purity of family life precisely from those unlawful unions of which we spoke earlier, or to warn the ignorant masses against drunkenness and disorder during sacred church seasons? These are aids, not obstacles, to the attainment of true freedom of conscience. But the seekers of freedom here are not concerned with conscience and its rights, but with the unhindered spread of their false and anti-Christian teachings. It is easy to disobey ecclesiastical authority and convenient to act to the detriment of the Church, but it is difficult to struggle against state authority. Here lies the true reason for their passionate attacks upon the protection of Christian morality provided by state legislation.

Another kind of abuse of the teaching on freedom of conscience, foretold by the Apostles, concerns the ritual or educational ordinances of the Church. Those guilty of this abuse are all those so-called educated people in our society who rise up against the strict regulations of the Orthodox Church. “Leave aside,” they say to us, “all your reminders about evening and morning services, about fasts and preparation for Communion; do not hinder us from attending theatres and concerts on the eve of feast days; we desire that theatres should be open even during the whole Great Lent, that even the number of your feast days should be reduced, because we need working hands for many necessary tasks, and so forth. Why this compulsion?” Here Christian freedom is turned into an occasion for indulging the flesh, and there is evident a complete misunderstanding that precisely in these church rules lies the path to freedom of conscience. The passion for bodily pleasures will always rebel against the rules of the Church, because the flesh submits to the spirit and its higher aspirations only with great difficulty. But the Orthodox Church knows no compulsion. In extreme cases she only renounces her disobedient children and separates them from herself. These lovers of pleasure are free to do what they wish, whatever their conscience permits. Yet it is regrettable that by such looseness toward the statutes of the Church they disturb the uniformity and order so important for the progress of Christian life; the younger generations become morally weakened, the simple people are scandalized, and the conscience of the zealots of Christian morality is troubled. Here lies a great danger of moral corruption—for the formerly unified and morally strong Russian people. True zealots of freedom of conscience do not act in this way: they are always the most strict observers of the Church’s statutes, and they use the right to depart from them, as we have said, only for higher moral purposes. Even in such cases they are careful that their freedom should not harm anyone, so that, as the Apostle Paul says, “their freedom may not become a stumbling block to the weak, lest through their higher knowledge the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died” (1 Cor. 8:9–11). In view of such dangers they say: “I will never eat meat again, lest I cause my brother to stumble” (1 Cor. 8:13).

Thus, freedom of conscience must be sought not in the sphere of earthly rights, but in the sphere of spiritual perfections. It must be expected not from state laws, but from our own moral labors and struggles, and it must be asked not of earthly kings and rulers, but of the Lord God.

In the sense of expanding rational freedom in social life, speak of the freedom of thought, the freedom of speech, the freedom of convictions, the freedom of confessions, but not of freedom of conscience. All these kinds of freedom may only be paths to freedom of conscience, but it itself stands above them. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17). Amen.

 

Russian source: https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Amvrosij_Klucharev/slovo-o-svobode-sovesti/