Four Epistles of St Symeon the New Theologian (Part 2)

Epistle 2. On repentance, and what the newly confessed should do

 

 

We are taught by the divine Scriptures, spiritual brother, that one must never either despair on account of the multitude of one’s sins, or grow bold on account of the fulfillment of penances — so that neither should the one who stands firm be bold, nor the one who has fallen despair (cf. 1 Cor. 10:12). But even the man who has sinned much ought to hope boldly in repentance, and the man who has sinned only slightly ought not to think to receive the forgiveness of his faults from works alone, but should show forth repentance and contrition — not made manifest by words, by abstinence from food, by drinking only water, by sleeping on the ground, and the like, but arising from the disposition of the soul. This blessed David showed even in the midst of the world and its cares, for he always remembered and pondered within himself how good and tender-hearted a Master he had angered by transgressing His commandments, and by proving ungrateful and forgetful of His many and countless gifts and mercies — as he himself wrote, “I went about mourning… I was troubled” (a conflation of Ps. 34:14 and Ps. 37:7), and he himself — not someone else — afflicted himself and “was humbled exceedingly; I roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart” (Ps. 37:9), and did all the other things the psalms, sung daily, teach us. And this he did while he was a king entrusted with the care of a people, with a wife, children, and a household to look after.

And what of Manasseh? What of those who came after him, who I think are not unknown to you? And Peter himself, I say — the chief of the apostles — the publican, the thief, the harlot — and why should I multiply examples — the prodigal son, who dissipated his father’s substance recklessly with harlots and publicans: look, from what deeds did they receive forgiveness of their offenses? From fasting, vigil, sleeping on the ground, or spending their possessions on the needy, or some other arduous bodily labor? No — but from repentance alone, tears from the whole soul, and the condemnation of conscience. Each of them, having felt his sins, condemned himself, and wept from the soul, received forgiveness for his stumblings. So it happens now with all of us, who come to Christ the Master with genuine and fervent repentance and tears; and the good and man-loving Lord does not shut, nor would He ever shut, the most pure depths of His goodness to us, since it is “not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:9; cf. Rom. 3:20, Gal. 2:16), but by God’s love for mankind and by mercy that the forgiveness of sins is given.

However, one ought not to aim merely at this, but at no longer falling into the same evil, and “not returning, like a dog, to his own vomit” (2 Pet. 2:22). It is impossible to be preserved from this unless we provide ourselves, in every way and with all diligence, with guards and helpers, and clothe ourselves with the spiritual armor (cf. Eph. 6:13ff.) by which we shall be able to withstand our enemies and adversaries. For once the enemy has taken hold of us, once we have been enslaved to pleasures and, by the terms of a truce, become tributaries to the foe, it is entirely inevitable that we shall be carried away by such passions, pleasures, and desires, follow after them, and be led off wretchedly and by force, like cattle, into servitude and slavery to the adversary; we fall away from labor for Christ the Master, and are found to have transgressed His commandments and our covenants with Him. That this may not happen to us, let us take to ourselves a helper and ally against each of the enemies advancing upon us, taught by the God-breathed Scripture: “Therefore I esteemed all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and I hated every false way” (Ps. 118:128), and let us set the remembrance of God, the dread Judgment, and its unendurable torments against the remembrance of shameful thoughts; diligence and zeal against laziness, fasting against gluttony, self-restraint against love of pleasure, moderate drinking against much drinking, and against the burning of the flesh, the remembrance of the eternal fire and earnest supplication to God with vigil and thirst. If we act thus with respect to every passion — not to lengthen my discourse by listing them all — and set the opposite virtue against each passion, then, guarded by them as by soldiers, we shall be kept safe and unharmed; since, for the salvation of the penitent, it is enough merely to cut off one’s evil habit and unseemly actions and deeds, if only this can be done without sweat and labor.

In addition to this, I have written to you, as a small reminder, concerning what you must also do and keep — namely, the following.

At the celebration of the Divine Mysteries, when the priest or deacon says, “As many as are catechumens, depart,” you must be outside the church — not going off anywhere at that time, nor speaking with anyone — but, standing in the narthex before the doors, be contrite, calling your offenses to mind; then, after the elevation of the Divine Gifts, go in again. In the evening, after Compline, being alone, perform the Trisagion, the 50th Psalm, “Lord, have mercy” fifty times, “Lord, forgive me a sinner” fifty times, then the 6th Psalm, “O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath,” “Lord, forgive me whatever I have sinned in deed, word, or thought” fifty times, and twenty-five prostrations.

On Wednesday and Friday, abstain from meat, cheese, eggs, wine, and fish; but if this is too hard for you, take fish and wine in moderation. During the fasts of the Holy Apostles and of the Nativity of Christ, abstain from meat, cheese, and eggs, and take everything else in moderation; and perform your prayer rule — that is, the psalms and prostrations noted above — doubled. During Great Lent, on Wednesday and Friday eat neither wine, nor oil, nor fish; on the other days, with moderation and self-restraint, “keep under thy body, and bring it into subjection” (cf. 1 Cor. 9:27), so far as nature permits, as befits Christians who wish to be saved; and here too perform your prayer rule doubled, just as has been said.

You must abstain from the Divine and Awesome Gifts — that is, the most pure Body and Blood of our Master and Lord God Jesus Christ. I advise you to abstain also from the blessed bread itself, the so-called “broken bread” — the antidoron — until you have formed a firm resolve regarding your sinful deeds, and have acquired an unwavering will toward the good and a final hatred of sin. When you see that you have attained this, then approach, brother, with unwavering faith — not as to mere bread and wine, but communing of the Body and Blood of God, God Himself — and so you will become “a partaker of” His “glory” (cf. 1 Pet. 5:1), and through them will receive the cleansing and complete forgiveness of your own sins, and will possess eternal life within yourself, and will become “a son of light” and “of the day” (cf. 1 Thess. 5:5). But if you receive Christ without having first become such a one, then the demons, growing all the more jealous of you, seeing one who has despised God and approached unworthily, will rush upon you furiously, and, casting you down mercilessly into the mire of disorder, will fling you back again — and you will become, instead of a Christian, a Christ-slayer, and will be condemned together with those who crucified Him, as Paul says: “He that eateth and drinketh the Body and Blood of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord” (cf. 1 Cor. 11:27,29).

Beyond this I command you nothing further, for fear of becoming burdensome to you. But if you should do something more of your own accord, you will do yourself good and gain for yourself future blessings. For I have written to you to do what has been said not as something that itself procures the cleansing of the soul and the forgiveness of sins, but as something that leads you simply to the remembrance of your sins. If we had known that you would in fact be grieved by this, we would not have written even this much to your love — but would have required only the cutting off of your evil habit and the most unseemly deeds and actions, which I ask you to carry out; and if it is possible for you to keep this without labor and sweat, then this alone is enough for us.

Write to us often about your health, so that we too, seeing your faith and affection toward us, may remember you with warmer and more earnest care when we, unworthy as we are, lift up our hands to God. The grace of God be with your spirit.

(To be continued...)

A Clarification of his Pastoral Encyclical by St Chrysostomos the New, Confessor and Hierarch

[Concerning the breakaway bishops, Matthew of Vresthene, and Germanos of the Cyclades]

Dated January 18, 1945

 

 

[A]

“Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned, and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly, and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.” [1]

In our considerable solicitude for the Church, we recently pub­lished a pastoral encyclical, in which we advised the Christian flock of our Churches, who follow the traditional Orthodox Calendar, that, on account of the gravity of the times and the difficulty of the war sit­uation, they should remain loyal guardians of our ancestral Faith and live a Christian life that is irreproachable in every way, walking, “not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil,” [2] as the Divine Apostle of the Nations declares to the Ephesians.

Through this printed pastoral encyclical, as is our duty, we drew to the attention of Christians belonging to our Orthodox faction the fact that they should not give any credence or listen to all of the false and un-Orthodox teachings that are being disseminated by the apostate Bishops of the Cyclades and of Vresthene, under the guise of a suppos­edly pure Orthodoxy. These Bishops are causing divisions and offenses among the Faithful, because such people, according to the Apostle of the Nations, serve not Christ, but their own belly, and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple Faithful.

In the same encyclical, we called the aforementioned Bishops both conventiclers and Protestantizers, judging them as such from their beliefs and their official actions.

For after these men had been Consecrated Bishops by us, in order that our sacred struggle might be better served, instead of contribut­ing to its service and success, coöperating with us in complete harmo­ny and concord, in accordance with the sacred Canons, and, in partic­ular, the Thirty-fourth Apostolic Canon,3 they, on the contrary, used the Episcopal office in order to split and divide the Orthodox Chris­tian flock. To this end, without ecclesiastical or canonical reasons, and without first coming to some common understanding and clarify­ing matters, they disavowed us on the grounds that we had, allegedly, apostatized from our erstwhile Orthodox confession, and they set up their own altars for reasons of ambition and self-interest.

We called them Protestantizers, because the conventicler Bishops in question were not content merely to disavow us, from whom, by the judgments which the Lord alone knows, they received the Episcopal rank, but they also, like Eastern Popes, appropriating the rights of an OEcumenical Synod, declared the Autocephalous Church of Greece and the entire Greek Hierarchy to be actually schismatic, without any trial or defense, for dishonoring the Divine and Sacred Canons and ecclesiastical Canon Law, according to which no clergyman, and cer­tainly no Hierarch, is to be deposed for wrong belief and excised from the universal body of the Eastern Orthodox Church without a prior trial and defense.

Consequently, the aforementioned conventicler Bishops, through their renunciation of us as putative heretics and their breaking of ecclesiastical communion with us, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, through their declaration that, on account of the calendar inno­vation, the Autocephalous Church of Greece is schismatic, not only potentially, but also in actuality, have divested themselves of Orthodoxy and the Apostolic Tradition, which they derived through us from the Autocephalous Church of Greece, and they have taken on a Protestant complexion, representing only their own individual persons and not the notion of the one Orthodox Church, from which the authority for the Divine Mysteries and their ecclesiastical actions is to be drawn.

And this is so, because only according to the Protestant under­standing and interpretation is a faction of clergy and laity justified in high-handedly establishing a Church distinct from that from which they have broken away out of self-will, even for reasons of religious dis­agreement with the presiding ecclesiastical authority; whereas, accord­ing to the Orthodox understanding and belief, the regulations of the Apostles and the Synods reserved the right to establish a Church, and to endow her with Grace and the Divine Mysteries, for the entire Church, when she comes together in a Synod and states her opinions, with the aid of the Holy Spirit, and not for a faction of clergy and laity who have broken away, even for religious reasons.

In view of this, the aforementioned Bishops of the Cyclades and of Vresthene, having lost all dogmatic contact and having broken off all ecclesiastical communion with us and the recognized Orthodox Church of Greece, and not being recognized as Orthodox Bishops by any other local Orthodox Church, have ceased to represent any sense of Orthodoxy, in the name of which they are entitled to celebrate the sacred Mysteries in an Orthodox manner and validly. And having thus cast off the royal robe of Orthodoxy, the wretches have donned the rough sackcloth of Protestantism.

[B]

First to reply to this pastoral encyclical were the followers of the conventicler Bishops, Archimandrites Akakios (Pappas), Artemios of Xenophontos, and Kosmas (Karambelas), to whom we did not deign to respond, since what they wrote, aside from the fact that it consti­tutes a conglomeration of shameless lies and untenable arguments, is composed in language that is irreverent and wholly improper.

There is only one truth that these men utter, and this is their admis­sion that they derive the authority for their actions from the Orthodox character of the Greek Church, which shows that they refute them­selves; for, on the one hand, they assert and proclaim that the Greek Church is actually schismatic, yet, on the other hand, they admit that she is Orthodox in essence. Behold how they have freed us from any need to respond with a refutation.

Second to reply was the Bishop of Vresthene; but we did not respond to him, because he renders it impossible in what he writes, aside from the fact that it constitutes a farrago of incoherent and dis­jointed words and phrases, to answer his perverse arguments, weaving together, as he does, what is incompatible and combining what can­not be combined.

Third to reply were two laymen, A. Demetriades and A. Panagiot­opoulos, to whom, since they expressed themselves piously and sought, in the form of a memorandum, a solution to certain difficulties, not only to allay their scandalized consciences, as they said, but also to clarify and demonstrate the Orthodox spirit of our sacred struggle, we respond as follows.

We received your lengthy memorandum and read it attentively. From the whole style of what you have written and the arguments set forth therein, we ascertained the person who inspired and composed this memorandum, who, for reasons that are easy to understand, did not want to make himself known by his own protest and signature.

We originally thought of not responding in writing, but of orally enlightening those who signed this memorandum, on the ground that they do not possess requisite theological and canonical education, lack the competence to criticize pastoral encyclicals, and are people who ought to have greater confidence in the leader of our Orthodox faction, and all the more because the latter has given clear proof of his Ortho­dox way of thinking and of the holy zeal by which he is motivated in conducting our sacred struggle.

Subsequently, however, suspecting that our silence might be char­acterized as an acceptance, on our part, of the erroneous judgments and opinions contained in the memorandum, or as an inability to rebut them, and taking into consideration, besides, the Apostolic saying, “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians, both to the wise, and to the unwise,”[4] we deemed it reasonable to respond and enlight­en both the one who inspired, as well as those who signed, the memo­randum addressed to us.

There are five main points, on which the entire edifice of the mem­orandum rests, that require clarification; indeed, when we have dem­onstrated that these points are shaky and canonically groundless, the entire heap of arguments which the authors of the memorandum put forward, in support and defense of their mistaken ideas, logically col­lapses.

We ask our readers to pay close attention to these matters, which are as follows:

1) the confusion of the persons of the Hierarchs with the character of the Church to which they belong;

2) a failure to discriminate between and grasp the technical and canonical terms “potentially” and “actually”;

3) ignorance, or, rather, an erroneous understanding of the primary elements of an Orthodox Church;

4) ignorance of when a change of mind can be called a self- con­tradiction and a discrepancy, and when it is to be called an explanation and a clarification;

5) and finally, the mistaken perception of the authors of the memo­randum, who ascribe their Bishops’ ecclesiastical disagreement with, and separation from, us to personal issues.

* * *

1) With regard to the first point, that is, the confusion of the persons of the Hierarchs with the character and the dogmatic significance of the Church, we put forth the following, to the best of our ability:

According to the fundamental principle of Orthodox ecclesiasti­cal Canon Law, and according to the spirit of the dogmatic theology and the age-old practice of the Orthodox Church, the character of the Church, as a Divine and self-subsistent institution, is in principle dif­ferent from, and independent of, that of the persons of the Bishops who represent and administer her. For this reason, any ideas and opin­ions of the Bishops that may be erroneous from an Orthodox stand­point, insofar as they are not judged or condemned by a canonical and valid Synod as un-Orthodox and false, do not affect the Orthodox character of the Church to which these Bishops belong.

For example, when one or more of the Bishops who belong to a ruling Church introduce into her an innovation that is at odds with the healthy and pure spirit of the Orthodox character of the Church, the sinful and anti-Orthodox character of this innovation weighs on the innovating Bishops, as individuals, and renders them culpable before God and the entire Church; but it does not affect or diminish the Orthodox authority of the Church which they govern.

The Orthodox character of the Church is affected and her Divine authority is diminished only when the Bishops who govern her, and who have introduced the innovation, are tried by a valid Synod—either a major local Synod or an OEcumenical Synod—for wrong belief and an anti-Orthodox innovation, and, after being sufficiently enlightened, are unwilling to conform to the recommendations of the Synod or to reject their wrong belief, adhering obstinately and unyieldingly there­to, in which case they are deposed by the Synod and excised from the universal body of the Orthodox Church.

We then read in Church the decree of deposition and excision whereby, together with the heretics, both the innovating Bishops and all of the clergy in communion with them, as well as all of the laity who accept prayers and blessings from them, are anathematized and excommunicated.

All of these people, who are under the anathema of a Synod, then constitute, not an Orthodox, but a schismatic, Church.

Hence, we draw the conclusion that a recognized Orthodox Church only loses her Orthodox character and the validity of her Divine Mysteries when she is recognized as heretical or schismatic by a Pan-Orthodox Synod, which alone has the right to withhold from her the Grace and the Divine validity of her Mysteries, since it alone has the right to impart these to her.

In view of this, since the sanctifying Grace and validity of the Divine Mysteries are not bestowed by the Bishop or the Priest who cel­ebrates them—he being simply a means or an instrument for impart­ing Grace—, but by the Orthodox character of the Church, in whose name these Mysteries are celebrated, what may be an un-Orthodox understanding of certain ecclesiastical questions that are, in the expres­sion of Saint Basil the Great, capable of solution cannot diminish, much less remove, the Orthodox character of a Church or the validity of the Mysteries that are celebrated in her name, as long as this understand­ing is not judged or condemned by a valid Synod.

This is precisely what happens in the case of moral lapses on the part of the Church’s ministers. For example, it may be that certain cler­gy are truly unworthy to approach the holy Altar on account of their moral character; but nonetheless, their bad morals cannot affect the Divine Mysteries celebrated by them, which retain their validity undi­minished, provided that these unworthy clergy have not been tried or deposed by the Church, and provided they perform their sacred duties and celebrate the Divine Mysteries in the name of the Ortho­dox Church.

* * *

2) We now come to the second point of the memorandum, con­cerning the definition of the technical and canonical terms “potentially” and “actually,” which the authors of the memorandum confuse.

Regarding the distinction and the meaning of these two technical and canonical terms, so much was clearly and convincingly written in our recent pastoral encyclical, and so clearly and articulately does the wise Hagiorite Nicodemos write in a footnote in the sacred Pedalion of the Orthodox Church about the distinction and the meaning of these two terms, that we consider it superfluous to explain and elu­cidate these matters, and we refer our readers to the aforementioned encyclical (see Pedalion, pp. 4-5, n. 2).

* * *

3) In response to the third point, concerning the primary ele­ments of an Orthodox Church and who has the right to establish and excise her, we have this to say:

Every local Orthodox Church is established and endowed with sanctifying Grace and the Divine Mysteries by the universal Eastern Orthodox Church, as the Treasurer of Divine Grace.

She is comprised of the Bishops in their entirety, as those who gov­ern her, and of the plenitude of faithful and Orthodox Christians, as those who are governed, and, as such, she is simple and undivided.

If differences of opinion appear in a local Orthodox Church between the governing clergy and the laity whom they govern, and, as a result of these differences, a rupture of ecclesiastical communion between them comes about, the question naturally arises: Who among those who disagree and have broken off ecclesiastical communion with each other represents the one and undivided, recognized Church, given that both of the discordant parties that have separated from one another derive from her and draw from her the sanctifying Grace and the ecclesi­astical validity of their Mysteries?

To this question, which is as important as it is hard to resolve, we reply as follows.

According to the spirit of the Divine and Sacred Canons and the administrative polity of the Eastern Orthodox Church, in the event that a segment of clergy and laity, breaking ecclesiastical communion with the presiding authority for ecclesiastical and canonical reasons and separating itself, for reasons of religious conscience, from the rul­ing Hierarchy, sets up its own altar, however much it may seem, from its separate worship, its own houses of prayer, and its own ministers, that it constitutes a Church distinct from that from which it is sepa­rated, this segment nonetheless does not cease belonging canonically to the same one and undivided Church, as an unsullied and integral part of her, drawing its spiritual life and power from the organism of the Mother Church, whose history it continues under the pure and uncorrupted mien of an unadulterated Orthodox identity, by keep­ing the Canons intact and the reliable Traditions of the Church undi­minished.

And this is so until the difference and the discord between this segment and the ecclesiastical authority and ruling Hierarchy that is deviating from the boundaries of Orthodoxy is adjudicated by a major Synod that represents all of the local Orthodox Churches.

And when this major Synod has tried and condemned the majority of the ruling Hierarchy as thinking and acting contrary to the nature of Orthodoxy, and has vindicated the minority segment that stands on the ground of Orthodoxy, it then deposes and excises the former from the universal body of Orthodoxy if, after being enlightened by the major Synod, they refuse to renounce their error, while it recognizes the latter, who preserve the institutions of Orthodoxy inviolate, as the only canonical representatives of this one and undivided local Ortho­dox Church, from which the former are estranged, being proclaimed schismatics, not only potentially, but also in actuality.

However, until such a thing comes to pass, this minority segment, insofar as a major Synod does not grant it the right to represent the Church or anoint it with sovereignty over the Church, is justified in breaking ecclesiastical communion and ceasing to commemorate the First Hierarch; but it cannot, although it is in all respects right-believ­ing, arbitrarily withdraw the right of sovereignty from the majority of the Hierarchy, even if the latter are innovators, or assert that it alone constitutes the one and undivided local Orthodox Church.

The high-handed claim by such a minority faction to the right to exercise sovereignty over the Church, and its pretension to constitute and represent the autocephalous Church on its own, without being recognized by the universal Church, reeks of Protestantism, which professes that one segment of the clergy and laity can constitute a dis­tinct and self-proclaimed Church independently of the central Church, from which, for one or another reason, it has arbitrarily split off and seceded.

For, according to the Protestant understanding and interpreta­tion, just as the Holy Spirit enlightens the ruling Hierarchy when it comes together in a Synod and states its opinions with the aid of the Holy Spirit, He also enlightens the subordinate clergy and laity in such a way that they, too, are able to establish Churches and endow them with sanctifying Grace and the Mysteries, appropriating, out of self-will, the prerogatives of the universal Church, as the Treasurer of Grace.

This, you see, is why, in our recent pastoral encyclical, we called the Bishops of the Cyclades and of Vresthene conventiclers and Protes­tantizers, because, although they were elected and Consecrated by us as titular Bishops, through the invocation of the All- holy and conse­crating Spirit, they did not hesitate, the wretches, not only to disavow us in encyclicals which they signed themselves, without any ecclesias­tical right, without first coming to some understanding with us, and incontrovertibly for reasons of ambition and self-interest, and to set up their own altars, but also to declare the New Calendar Hierar­chy and Church schismatic, without any trial or defense, as the Can­ons provide, and arbitrarily to seize from the ruling Hierarchy the rights of sovereignty that belong to the Autocephalous Greek Ortho­dox Church.

The Bishops in question, who are conventiclers and Protestantizers, according to the Canons and according to our opinion, become, through such high-handed actions as these, accountable before the universal Orthodox Church, whose Canon Law and Divine and Sacred Canons they have freely violated. For the age- old history of the Orthodox Church teaches us that no wrong-believing person who is liable to deposition and excision has ever been declared hereti­cal or schismatic by Hierarchs acting in isolation, without any trial or defense, but by a valid and canonical Synod, coming together and tak­ing counsel with the aid of the Holy Spirit and putting forth its vote of condemnation only after the defendant has stood trial and defend­ed himself, and after all means of enlightenment and admonition have been exhausted.

This canonical path was recently followed by the Synod of the OEcumenical Patriarchate in the Bulgarian Schism and by the Synod of the Autocephalous Church of Greece in the condemnation of Theophi­los Kaïris for the heresy of Pietism [5] and of Apostolos Makrakis for his heretical teaching concerning the threefold composition of the human person. [6]

* * *

4) Deeming this enough to refute the third point of the memorandum, we now come to an examination and elucidation of the fourth point, which concerns the self-contradiction and discrepancy to which the author of the recent pastoral encyclical allegedly succumbed.

Allow us, in this section, to teach a lesson to the authors of the memorandum, who weave together what is incompatible and com­bine what cannot be combined.

One contradicts and gainsays himself when he expresses one opin­ion about a question today and utterly rejects it the next day, thereby falling into blatant contradiction.

But when, after deeper study of the issue and more serious reflection and judgment, he modifies his previous opinion for the bet­ter, giving it a broader interpretation and formulating it more clear­ly and distinctly, such a modification, broader explanation, and more detailed formulation of an opinion about one and the same issue can­not be called either contradiction or discrepancy, but should rather be called an explanation and a more complete clarification of a com­pact and condensed idea, so that it may more easily be understood by another person.

This can truly be said about that man who begins by stating an opinion about an issue in a rough-and-ready way and at first sight, for­mulating it dimly and imperfectly, but later, delving more deeply into the meaning of the issue and, challenged either by those who do not understand or by those who hold the opposite opinion, proceeds to shape his opinion more completely and to formulate it more clearly and in greater detail, so that it may be more easily understood and its truth more convincingly demonstrated.

The author of the pastoral encyclical can be accused of this, for at the outset, he called the New Calendarist Hierarchs schismatics and the New Calendar Church schismatic, failing to add, owing to an oversight, that they are schismatic potentially, and not in actuality, which means that they will only suffer the consequences of their excision from the body of the universal Orthodox Church, being deprived of the right to celebrate valid Mysteries and to impart Divine Grace and sancti­fication to the Faithful, when they are tried by a valid major Synod and condemned to deposition for wrong belief, as adhering obstinate­ly thereto.

And this is because it is possible that they are erring out of igno­rance and misunderstanding, in which case, when they are tried and enlightened by a Synod, it is not inconceivable for them to change their minds and reject their error, their deposition and excision being thereby averted.

To this point of view the authors of the memorandum pose the objection that it should not be said, and much less written, that the Hierarchs who innovated regarding the calendar will only be deprived of Grace and the right to impart it to the Faithful when they are declared to be actual schismatics and deposed by a major Synod, because this not only does not benefit, but even harms, our sacred struggle through the defec­tion of followers from our Orthodox segment, since they are kept in it by the idea that the New Calendarist clergy, even before they are proclaimed schismatic by a Synod, are deprived of the capacity to perform any sacred functions validly.

But this objection, aside from the fact that it is mistaken, carries with it a certain dose of demagogy and the deception of the Faith­ful, which are antithetical to the Divine mission of the Church, which ought to teach aright the word of truth, in all places and at all times, as well as uphold the uprightness and principles7 of our sacred struggle.

The error of this objection rests on the misapprehension that the Old Calendarists adhered to the ancestral traditions because the New Calendar Church was deprived of Divine Grace from the outset, as the conventicler Bishops say.

This perhaps can happen to those who follow a conventicle. But the Old Calendarists who knowledgeably belong to our Orthodox seg­ment are well aware that following the Old Calendar is not a corollary of the validity or invalidity of the Mysteries of the New Calendarists, a question on which a valid Synod alone has the right to pronounce. It is, rather, an inevitable necessity if one is to avoid sharing in the New Calendarists’ responsibility for the innovation, and a shining example of the boundless reverence and the sacred and godly zeal by which the followers of our Orthodox segment are animated with regard to the venerable traditions of the Church.

The demagogy and the opportunism of the contrary opinion lie, on the one hand, in the hope of attracting other converts to the Old Calendar, brandishing the invalidity of the Mysteries of the New Cal­endarists as a bugbear, and, on the other hand, in keeping these fol­lowers, and especially the gullible and the lukewarm, in our sacred struggle.

But the use of such demagogic and illegitimate means in order to hunt after followers for our Orthodox faction, while it may be per­mitted by the Latin Church, which has as an ethical maxim the Jesuit dictum, “The end sanctifies the means,” is not permitted by the Eastern Orthodox Church, which always teaches aright the word of truth.

With regard to the criticism of us, which the authors of the mem­orandum hurl at us so naïvely and with such an easy conscience, that in our pastoral encyclical we called the Bishops of the Cyclades and of Vresthene conventiclers, we must give them a second lesson, since they are, it seems, unfamiliar with ecclesiastical terms.

The word “conventicler” is applied literally to those clergy who, bereft of ecclesiastical or canonical justification with regard to the Faith or Canon Law, disavow the canonical presiding ecclesiastical authority and set up their own altars, acting in a partisan spirit for per­sonal reasons and serving their own lust for power and self-interest.

The Synods endorsed this term for factionalists and those who lift their heels against the Church without any canonical justification, and all of the Fathers of the Church used it for those who rebel against the presiding ecclesiastical authority in order to replace it with their own unlawful and uncanonical rule.

And just as the word “heretic” was established for those who have wrong beliefs about the dogmas of the Church, and the word “schis­matic” for those who have wrong beliefs about traditions and Divine worship, so the name “conventicler” was established for those who act in a partisan spirit and rebel against the Church for reasons of ambi­tion and personal advantage.

Consequently, we have used this ecclesiastical term for the Bish­ops of the Cyclades and of Vresthene, because these wretches, too, for reasons of ambition and self-interest, dared to split our Orthodox seg­ment and thereby to cause, aside from spiritual damage to themselves and their followers, incalculable harm to our sacred struggle, which is made to appear, in the general conscience of the New Calendarists, as opportunistic and reckless.

This being so, those who wrote and signed the memorandum ought to have addressed their criticism, not to us, who rightly and in accor­dance with the canons called those in question conventiclers and Prot­estantizers, but to the conventicler Bishops, if, as they say in their mem­orandum, they were seeking to allay their scandalized consciences and to serve the sacred goal of our struggle.

* * *

5) Finally, with regard to the fifth and last point of the memo­randum, in which the differences and dissonance that exist between us and the conventicler Bishops are mistakenly characterized as deriving from personal issues, we have this to say.

You do an injustice, gentlemen and authors of this memorandum, to your intelligence and sound judgment, if you suppose that the dis­agreement between us and the conventicler Bishops derives from personal issues. At the same time, you do us an injustice, when you por­tray us as capable of sacrificing on the altar of human passions, not only the precious and lofty interests of our sacred struggle, but also the salvation of our soul and the salvation of the souls of those belonging to our segment, which constitutes the primary spark and the effective fulcrum of our thoughts and activities.

For we, and let this not be construed as boasting, but as a reflection of the truth and as a defense of the honor and reputation that I enjoy—we say that, for the idea of Orthodoxy and its restoration, we have sac­rificed, as you also are aware, the material and social capital that we acquired through the honorable and conscientious services that we rendered on behalf of the Church and the nation during our thirty-five years as a Hierarch. Struggling faithfully and steadfastly with the aid of Divine and all-strengthening Grace on the adamantine battle­ments of Church and nation, we neither hesitated nor shrank from unmurmuringly accepting even this exile, and in old age, at that.

We are truly perplexed at how, despite knowing all of these things, you have succeeded in imagining and persuading yourselves that we, who have sacrificed everything for the ideal of our struggle, would show ourselves to be so lacking in self-respect and so malevolent as to divide our Orthodox segment for reasons of pride and ambition, and to deprive ourselves of the manifest reward which future histori­ans and Jesus Christ, the Giver of rewards, reserve for those who fight the good fight.8

Do not say that you are not attaching this unjust reproach and censure to us, but are encouraging us in our sacred struggle out of love and in order to allay your scandalized consciences, so that we may seize the initiative and take the lead, as first in rank, in the struggle for rec­onciliation and union, pursuing, as you write, a more moderate poli­cy towards these Bishops, as if they were seeking union from us with­out conditions and as if we rejected union for personal reasons that degrade our position and offend our dignity.

For you write all of these things, even though you know, on the one hand, under what conditions—conditions which infringe upon the inviolate and Divine authority of the Canons and essentially wound our sense of honor—these men have sought to have commu­nion with us and to coöperate with us, and, on the other hand, are familiar with the reply that we gave, through the mediation of Mr. Kinias the attorney, in which, to facilitate a union for the good of the struggle and for the joy of Christians, we set aside to some degree our personal honor and dignity, attending only to the honor and dignity of the Canons, as it was our sacred and inviolable duty to do.

Hence, we asked them to express their regret for all that they had said and written in the past by way of misinterpretation or misunder­standing, in such way as to bring the authority of the Canons into disrepute, and to give their promise that they would henceforth work with us in full harmony and concord and on the basis of our struggle against the New Calendar Church as it is set forth in our recent pasto­ral encyclical to the Christian flock.

In accordance with this, if those who composed and signed the memorandum were inspired by the incentive of allaying their scandal­ized consciences and were motivated by the interests of the struggle, they ought to have sent their instructive memorandum, which urges us to seek after unity, not to us, who are not responsible for the division and have no need of instruction or encouragement from individuals whose rôle it is not to enlighten us or urge us on to what is good, but to the conventicler Bishops who created the division and are in greater need of being enlightened and encouraged to look to the good of the struggle, which they have, unfortunately, made the object of ambition and exploitation.

That these Bishops aimed, from the outset, at dividing the struggle with a completely easy conscience is evident from all that the Bishop of the Cyclades, who is of the same mind as the Bishop of Vresthene, wrote to us when we were in Jerusalem during the first year of our exo­dus into the struggle; he encouraged us to depose the ever-memorable president and leader of the struggle [9] and to replace him with our hum­ble self. And because we rejected this malicious proposal and respond­ed to them they should submit to our leader, since we did not throw ourselves into the struggle in order to lay claim to leadership, but to serve Orthodoxy, these men then proceeded to disavow both of us, so that they might themselves be leaders of the struggle and be indepen­dent in their opinions and activities, dividing the benefits of leader­ship equally. But they ended up disavowing each other and excommu­nicating each other as heretics or schismatics.

[C]

This being the case, we advise the authors of this memoran­dum, in a fatherly way, to have more confidence in the leader of our struggle, who is aware of his great responsibilities before God and the Church and who deploys his good will, with strength of soul and by Divine Grace, for the success of the struggle, in which he unswerv­ingly hopes.

We urge them, if they are truly aiming at union for the good of the struggle, to devote their efforts and activities in this regard to the apostate Bishops, pointing out to them the great responsibility which they bear before God and the Church for having, with a complete ease of conscience, split the Orthodox flock into two opposing factions, which inflicted mortal damage on the struggle and made them, as the saying goes, “a spectacle to Angels and to men.” [10]

In order to bring to an end our verbal rowing and weigh anchor in the harbor of our rejoinder, we deem it advisable and exceedingly beneficial, for the dignity and the ideals of our sacred struggle, to draw to the attention of all those who are seeking after union between us and the conventicler Bishops at any cost to the extremely tenuous and precarious future position to which the moral and theoretical aspect of our struggle will be reduced, in the general Christian conscience, by way of union and coöperation with the apostates, who are neither repentant nor wish to come to any understanding, but obstinately cling to their erroneous beliefs.

Indeed, we should not overlook this extremely delicate and sen­sitive point, that if we were to unite and coöperate with the apostate Bishops, who have no intention of putting off the old man of erro­neous beliefs and antiquated ideas—as a consequence of which, they committed uncanonical and altogether outrageous acts, which pro­voked disgust and revulsion in the general conscience of Christians—or of putting on the new man, who is renewed in the spirit of tradi­tional faith and piety, [11] our sacred struggle would, in all probability, be very seriously damaged in thereby adopting the mistaken ideas and arbitrary actions which have beset these apostate Bishops in the recent past, such that the final error would be worse than the first. [12]

Let the authors of the memorandum and all who aspire to such a union at all costs be aware that they become answerable and jointly re­sponsible for the canonical and moral harm that our sacred struggle will suffer in the general conscience of Christians, if our principled and Or­thodox segment, which up to now has commanded the respect of those who adhere steadfastly to Orthodox institutions and ethnic traditions, is joined by corrupt elements and administrative figures whose coöpera­tion will not only not lend glory and honor to the struggle, but will even impute ludicrousness and defectiveness to what has hitherto been its pure and far-gleaming countenance, which radiates in our conservative Orthodox faction. Let this be the last word on this subject, and may the God of peace grant the desired union of all Christian Churches within the bounds of Orthodoxy, that with one mouth and one heart we may all glorify Him at one and the same time.

Athens, 18th January 1945

† Metropolitan Chrysostomos

(formerly) of Florina

 

Notes

1. Romans 16:17-18.

2. Ephesians 5:15-16.

3. This Canon which His Eminence cites reads as follows: “The Bishops of every nation must acknowledge him who is first among them and account him as their head, and do nothing of consequence without his consent; but each may do those things only which concern his own parish, and the country places which belong to it. But neither let him (who is the first) do anything without the consent of all; for so there will be unanimity, and God will be glorified through the Lord in the Holy Spirit” (A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978], 2nd ser., Vol. XIV p. 596).

4. Romans 1:14.

5. Theophilos Kaïris (1784-1853), an apostate Greek intellectual who founded a new re­ligion called Θεοσεβισμός (“Reverence for God”). Born on Andros, he was Tonsured a monk in 1801 with the name “Theophilos.” He studied philosophy in Paris, where he met Adamantios Koraïs and came under the influence of European rationalism. Later in life, he was accused of advocating novel ideas that conflicted with Orthodoxy, and, when ordered to submit a confession of faith, refused; for this, he was deposed, exiled to a monastery, and finally imprisoned in 1852. The philosophico-religious system that he promoted was Deistic in nature and was an amalgam of rationalism and mysticism. Kaïris “gave up the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation on the ground that they were incomprehensible” and “denied the reality of supernatural revelation” (Constantine Cavarnos, Modern Greek Thought [Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1986], p. 24); he even went so far as to replace Orthodox worship with new rites and prayers of his own. (For additional information, see Θρησκευτικὴ καὶ ᾿Ηθικὴ ᾿Εγκυκλοπαιδεία [Athens: 1965], Vol. VII, s.v. “Καΐρης,” by Basil Sphyroeras, cols. 177-179.)

6. Apostolos Makrakis (1831-1905), a prominent philosopher and theologian. Although, like Kaïris, he had studied Western philosophy in Paris, “he was in general faithful to the Orthodox tradition in his theology.” However, he “placed philosophy—in particular his own philosophy—above religion,” maintaining that religion “by nature precedes philoso­phy; because infancy precedes manhood, and faith precedes true knowledge” (Cavarnos, Modern Greek Thought, p. 24). Makrakis earned the displeasure of the Church of Greece for teaching that man is tricomposite, that is, that he consists of body, soul, and spirit, rather than simply of body and soul. (For additional information, see Θρησκευτικὴ καὶ ᾿Ηθικὴ ᾿Εγκυκλοπαιδεία [Athens: 1966], Vol. VIII, s.v. “Μακράκης,” by John Karmiris, cols. 514-517.)

7. Metropolitan Chrysostomos uses the word ἰδεολογία and the adjective formed from it, ἰδεολογικός, several times in this text. We have chosen not to render it liter­ally as “ideology” and “ideological,” on account of the political overtones the word has acquired in this century, and particularly in Marxist and other left-wing circles. Metropolitan Chrysostomos certainly did not intend to present himself as an ideo­logue or a theoretician in the party-political sense, but as a man of principle and the leader of a movement governed by solid theological and intellectual criteria, rather than by merely pragmatic considerations.

8. Cf. i St. Timothy 6:12.

9. This is a reference to Metropolitan Germanos of Demetrias.

10. I Corinthians 4:9.

11. Cf. Colossians 3:9-10.

12. Cf. St. Matthew 27:64.

 

Source: Resistance or Exclusion?: The Alternative Ecclesiological Approaches of Metro­politan Chrysostomos of Florina and Bishop Matthew of Vresthene (Etna, CA: C.T.O.S., 2000), pp. 117-135.

 

 

 

A Pastoral Encyclical of St. Chrysostomos the New, Confessor and Hierarch

[Concerning the breakaway bishops, Matthew of Vresthene, and Germanos of the Cyclades]

Dated June 1, 1944

 

 

To the most reverend Priests, the most honored Trustees, and the entire pious Orthodox Christian flock of our Churches, Grace to you and peace from God, and paternal prayers and blessings from us:

[A]

“Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Spirit hath made you overseers, to feed the Church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood.” [1]

At all times, and above all during these troublesome and critical times, in which falsehood and the debauchery engendered by the passions are running riot, the shepherd who is aware of his pastoral duties ought to be attentive both to himself and to his whole flock, keeping watch and guard over his reason-endowed flock, lest grievous wolves, [2] in the guise of sheep, invade it and, smiting the shepherd, scatter and tear apart his sheep. [3]

“See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,” advises the Divine Apostle, “redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” [4]

In the unstable and difficult circumstances in which we live, beloved children in Christ, we need great prudence and wisdom in both our conversations and our actions, so that we may protect and keep our lives secure from the sundry temptations, both inward and outward, into which we are led by the good-hating and man-slaying demon, who stalks the arrays of the Faithful like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may snatch and devour. [5] The perils that surround us attack us from every direction, threatening to destroy not only our bodily, but also our spiritual, health, when they find us asleep and indolent about watching and guarding our bodies and souls, these two good gifts which constitute the sacred legacy, of which the All-good God and Creator appointed us to be unsleeping sentinels and vigilant guardians.

The watching and guarding of this precious treasure, that is, our bodily and spiritual health, should not be an incidental occupation and a fortuitous acquirement for us, but our primary concern and the most important benefaction that we gained when we were buried with Christ through Holy Baptism and reborn into a new physical and spiritual life by renouncing Satan and joining ourselves to Christ. His Resurrection from the dead and the translation of His immaculate Body from corruption to incorruption, and from mortality to immortality, serve as a pledge of our incorruption and immortality, according to the Divine Apostle to the Nations:

For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His Resurrection, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. [6]

We should treat this new spiritual life in which we are renewed through Holy Baptism as the apple of our eye, being obligated, according to the promise that we made, to mortify our passions which are upon the earth, [7] so that, as “joint-heirs with Christ,” [8] we may enjoy eternal life in Heaven. For in every circumstance of our life, the most wily and all-wicked Devil plots against us, setting various traps before our feet, and he contrives and uses everything to ensnare us and cast us down into the trenches and the abyss of sin and of his demonic tyranny.

Hence, the Divine Augustine has this to say about the Devil:

O Lord, he is the Great Scarlet Dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called Satan and the Devil.... Lo, he has spread countless snares before our feet and filled all our paths with deception, so as to deceive our souls; and who shall escape his snares? He has hidden them in wealth and poverty, he has poured forth traps in luxury, in drink, in pleasure, in sleep, in vigilance, in word, in deed, in every path of ours, and again, do Thou deliver us from our daily adversary, who, whether we are asleep or awake, whether we are eating or drinking, or doing anything else, lies in wait for us in every way, both night and day, with his deceitful tricks, and shoots poisonous arrows at us, now openly, now in secret, in order to slay our souls. [9]

With such a dreadful and wily enemy plotting against our lives and the salvation of our souls, let us keep unsleeping vigil as sentinels on the battlements of the indestructible tower of the Church and of the Faith and piety of our Fathers, which alone is capable of casting down the crooked Dragon, the foe with his many wiles, and of protecting us as we pass through the midst of snares from the innumerable traps set before our feet and the infernal tricks of the Devil, concerning which the Divine Apostle thunders:

“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God Which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” [10]

“Give not sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber with thine eyelids, that thou mayest be saved like a gazelle out of the toils and as a bird out of a snare.” [11]

Or in another place:

“Recognize that thou passest through the midst of snares, and that thou walkest upon the battlements of the city.” [12]

If, in normal circumstances and peaceful periods, our Christian life and the salvation of our souls are difficult, how much more do these prove to be troublesome and precarious in the unstable and hostile circumstances that we are going through today, by the judgments which the Lord alone knows, in which the odious demon of the foul and base passions is running out of control, and a suffocating and malodorous stench, which fills the whole atmosphere, is defiling and ravaging all classes of our Christian society and country. Yes, indeed, to whatever stratum of society one directs his gaze, he sees nothing but lies, insolence, arrogance, sarcasm, irony, envy, hypocrisy, betrayal, and every kind of immorality and wantonness, “because of [which] the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience.” [13]

Let us stand aright, beloved children in Christ, and let us lift up our hearts, [14] and “let us be vigilant, for we know not on what day or at what hour the Son of man cometh.” [15]

[B]

And as if these various trials were not enough, or the perils that surround us, which threaten to corrupt and poison our morals and our Christian life and nation, trials of another kind have, unfortunately, arisen from among those who, departing from the very heart of the Church, endeavor to corrupt your healthy Orthodox outlook and to scandalize the souls and consciences of the Faithful with empty words and foolish arguments. These men pretend to be experts in the Canons and “teachers of the law,” [16] and yet, through their lack of canonical formation and theological education, they “understand neither what they say, nor whereof they af­firm.” [17]

And despite all of this, they contrive to foist their mistaken opinions and their erroneous beliefs not only on the laity, who are devoid of religious education, but also on the clergy of our Orthodox faction, and even on the leader and president of this faction, who is schooled in the Canons and received his theological education at a superb school of theology, and who gives clear proof, not only in words, but also in deeds, of his Orthodox mind-set and of his adherence to the Traditions of the Church.

And do not be surprised at this, beloved children in Christ, because such pseudo-Apostles and false teachers [18] appeared even in the Apostolic era, as the confessions of the Apostles bear witness.

“Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.” [19]

These false teachers

“went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us,” as the Evangelist says. [20]

We made them Bishops by the Grace of the All-holy and consecrating Spirit, so that with us they might serve the sacred struggle for the Orthodox Festal Calendar.

But when these men became Bishops, not only did they not comprehend or value their Episcopal office, and the serious and sacred character of the calendar struggle, but they also fell into a whole host of uncanonical deviations, not flinching or shrinking—the wretched ones—, bereft of ecclesiological or canonical reasons, from breaking their spiritual ties and ecclesiastical communion with us; setting up their own altars and thereby rending the seamless garment of Christ for reasons of personal vainglory and ambition, they created an actual schism in the bosom of our Orthodox faction. [21] When we saw that all of the peaceful means that we had employed to enlighten them and turn them aside from their indefensible schism came to nothing, we were compelled, with grief, to accept their secession and to deprive them and their followers of our blessing. Since that time, separated from our spiritual jurisdiction and care, these men have perpetrated acts that are so uncanonical and criminal from an ecclesiastical standpoint, that they were brought to trial before the Criminal Court of Chalcis, which dismissed the case, not because they were innocent of the accusation, but because they were unfit to stand trial due to mental debility and advanced age. These conventicler Bishops, Matthew (Karpathakis) of Vresthene and Germanos (Varykopoulos) of the Cyclades, from the moment they split off from us, who bestowed Episcopal rank on them, remained Bishops, owing to the indelibility of the Priesthood, but as simple individuals and not as representatives of a Church from which they could draw the Grace and the authority validly to perform any ecclesiastical function and to celebrate her Mysteries.

[C]

According to the Orthodox Faith and understanding, it is the whole Church, as the Treasurer of Grace, that establishes the Church­es and endows them with the Mysteries and the Grace of the All-holy Spirit, and not a certain number of individual laity and clergy who, owing to a disagreement on some ecclesiastical issue that is capable of being resolved, have broken away from a recognized Orthodox Church, one that has not been stripped of its ecclesiastical validity or of the Grace of the All-holy Spirit following a trial and sentence pronounced by the entire Church.

The idea that individuals, be they clergy or laity, are justified in establishing their own Church without the permission and recognition of the entire Church reeks of Protestantism, which does not regard the judgment and the mind of the whole Church as the precise rule and yardstick of Divine truth, but the judgment and the opinion of individuals who, according to the Protestant interpretation of the issue, represent the Grace and power of the Holy Spirit. For this reason, a whole host of heresies has sprung up in the bosom of the Protestant Church, corresponding in number to the plethora of individual judgments and opinions, which are not guided or illumined by the Church. The entire Church not only legitimates a particular Church as Orthodox, and recognizes it through the Grace of the All-holy Spirit, Whose Divine power, sanctifying nature, and will are expressed and manifested, according to the Orthodox Faith and understanding, through an Œcumenical Synod or a major local Synod, but also imparts an Orthodox character and canonical validity to the leaders of local Churches and ratifies this character and validity. This is why, as soon as the leader of a local Church is elected, he is obligated to communicate his election and appointment to the other Orthodox Churches, exchanging what are called letters of commendation with them, through which the new leader of the Church receives the anointing of canonicity and authority to head his Church. This is the order that prevails in the Orthodox Church and this is her age-old practice in matters of Orthodox character and the validity of Churches and their leaders.

This being the case, we ask the conventicler Bishops and the clergy and laity who follow them from where and from what Church they derive the canonical validity of their ecclesiastical acts, since they have broken away from us without ecclesiastical reasons and, without fear of God, have lashed out at those who Ordained them and Consecrated them Bishops by invoking the Grace of the All-holy Spirit? Perhaps they will object that they have not broken away from us without ecclesiastical reasons, citing the fact that, as a particular Church and one independent of the Autocephalous Church of Greece, we refused to proclaim the innovating Hierarchs who accepted the Papal Calendar schismatics. But we ask them: Is it justifiable, according to Canon Law, the Divine and Sacred Canons, and the age-old practice of the Orthodox Church, for a faction of clergy and laity to proclaim Hierarchs schismatics, when they disagree with the latter over an ecclesiastical issue that is capable of being resolved, as Saint Basil the Great, the revealer of heavenly things, puts it, given that this right was bestowed by the Seven Holy Œcumenical Synods, these unerring tablets of Divine truth and the precise yardstick of Orthodoxy, on the whole Church, when she assembles at an Œcumenical or a major local Synod, which, after it has exhausted all peaceful means of enlightening those in error and, pointing out the spiritual ruin and the fearful abyss to which these erroneous religious ideas are driving them, proceeds with sorrow to excise them from the Divinely-established and age-old body of Orthodoxy, depriving them of their right, as Hierarchs, validly to celebrate the Mysteries or to discharge any ecclesiastical function?

We have a recent example of this prerogative being exercised in the major local Synod that convened in Constantinople in 1872, at which all of the Eastern Patriarchates were represented, on account of the accursed heresy of phyletism, which the Hierarchs of Bulgarian nationality wanted to introduce into the Œcumenical Patriarchate. [22] This Synod summoned the apostate Bulgarian Hierarchs to trial, and when they were unwilling to come to their senses, after a lengthy clarification, it deposed them and declared them schismatics. In issuing the decree concerning their deposition and excision, it ordered that this decree be read in Churches, so as to protect the Bulgarian people from the corruption of schism.

Never have any of the ancient or modern heretics and heresiarchs been declared schismatics and deposed by Hierarchs who disagreed with them acting in isolation, without a trial and a defense, but by Synods and canonically established ecclesiastical tribunals, before which such people are summoned to defend themselves, and are only deprived of their rights as Hierarchs and of their authority to govern a Church and to celebrate the Mysteries of the Church validly, when, after the issues have been sufficiently clarified by the Synodal tribunal, they refuse to renounce their error, persisting unyieldingly and obstinately in their heretical ideas and erroneous beliefs.

According to the spirit of the relevant Canons, when the Primate or the majority of the Hierarchs of a recognized Orthodox Church introduce into the Church an innovation that is contrary to the Canons and to Orthodox Divine worship, the right-believing Hierarchs of this Church are justified in breaking ecclesiastical communion with the innovators, even before a Synodal judgment, lest they, too, be responsible before the whole Church for the innovation that has been evilly and uncanonically introduced; but they cannot declare the innovating Hierarchs schismatics or subject them to deposition, for that is the exclusive prerogative of the entire Church when it comes together in a Synod, states its opinions with the aid of the Holy Spirit, and issues its verdict, after a thorough clarification and a detailed defense by the innovating Hierarchs under judgment.

When those who are right-believing sever ecclesiastical communion with a ruling Synod and cease to commemorate it, not only are they not condemned, but they are indeed extolled for not having created a schism, but rather having saved the Church from schism, in accordance with the Fifteenth Canon of the First-Second Œcumenical Synod, which declares the following:

For those who, on account of some heresy condemned by the Holy Synods or Fathers, have separated themselves from communion with the Primate..., such ones are not liable to canonical censure before a Synodal verdict, since they have walled themselves off from communion with the so-called Bishop; but they shall even be deemed worthy of the honor befitting those of right belief.... They have not sundered the union of the Church with any schism, but have been sedulous to rescue the Church from schisms and divisions.

See also the Third Canon of the Third Œcumenical Synod, which enjoins the following:

“And in general, we forbid all the clergy who adhere to the Orthodox and Œcumenical Synod in any way to submit to the Bishops who have already apostatized or shall hereafter apostatize.”

These Canons, as any fair and sincere inquirer can understand, afford right-believing clergy, who reject an innovation on the part of the presiding Church authorities, the right solely to break ecclesiastical communion with the governing body and not to obey or submit to it in any way, the right to pronounce it heretical and to cut it off from the universal body of Orthodoxy being reserved for a canonical Synod.

[D]

However, the conventicler Bishops, Matthew (Karpathakis) of Vresthene and Ger­manos (Varykopoulos) of the Cyclades, despite their knowledge of these Ca­nons, and not being content to break ecclesiastical communion with the innovating Hierarchy of Greece, declared not only the innovating Hierarchs—without any trial or defense—, but also the entire Church of Greece, to be in schism, arrogating to themselves, the wretches, nothing less than a right that belongs to an Œcumenical or a local Synod. In our refusal to follow them on this slippery and hazardous downward slope, which overturns age-old and fundamental canonical norms, and in our vain attempts to turn them aside from this abysmal and soul-destroying precipice, they proceeded to declare us schismatics, without first coming to any understanding with us, rejecting every invitation of ours to clarify matters. And as evidence of their incredible perversity, we cite verbatim their reply to our invitation for a colloquy:

The True Orthodox Church of Greece

 Athens, January 27, 1942

To His Eminence, Archbishop Chrysostomos of Florina.

Your Eminence:

Several days ago, when we received your invitation for us to come on January 15/28, 1942, to discuss certain serious questions concerning our sacred struggle in your offices at No. 7, Chalcondyle, we sent you a letter by way of Mr. Stavrianos, in which we made it known to you that in order for us to come into contact with you and the Metropolitan of Demetrias, it would first be necessary to remove the spiritual reasons for our disagreement, which compelled us to denounce you. Since, as we are informed, you desire union—as, at any rate, you state orally before the people—, for this reason, we state very clearly, through this letter of ours, that meetings and discussions will be superfluous until you accept the points of faith set out below, which provoked our disagreement, and that, from such a moment, we will then be united and can then come together and meet with each other.

1. That the Church of Greece, by accepting the Papal Calendar, has become schismatic.

2. That her Mysteries are invalid.

3. That her Chrism does not have any sanctifying Grace.

4. That the children of those in the Orthodox Church who are wrong-believing should be re-Chrismated.

When you have communicated these points to the wrong-believing Church [23] through a court notary, whose certification you show us; and when, in the same way, you also revoke the document that you sent to the Ministry of Religion; and when you proclaim all of this in the Churches—then, we say, our union will come about automatically, without meetings and disputations. We will await your written response to these questions of ours for a period of eight days from today.

With fraternal greetings,

† Bishop Germanos of the Cyclades † Bishop Matthew of Vresthene

From this document, it is blatantly obvious that its authors not only incur the charge of total ignorance regarding Canon Law and the spirit of the Divine and Sacred Canons, which clearly determine and safeguard the rights of the Church, of the Hierarchs who govern her, and of the entire body of Orthodox Christians, but also blaspheme against Divine Grace itself, which is inherent in the meaning of the Divine Mysteries, whereby the Faithful are sanctified, together with the Priests serving, not as creative means of sanctifying Grace, but as a means of imparting this Grace to the Faithful.

Hence, because the Divine Grace which is imparted to the Faithful through the Holy Mysteries is not bestowed by a faction of clergy or laity, but by the Divine nature and character of the Church, it is self-evident that those individuals who deprive the Church of her Divine and inalienable right and authority, and the Mysteries of their sanctifying power and soul-saving Grace, by a shameless stroke of the pen commit blasphemy and sacrilege, not only against the Divine nature of the Church, but also against the sacredness of her Mysteries. Proof that these conventicler Bishops know “neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm” [24] is that they do not apply all that they teach even to themselves, not daring, the hapless ones, to repeat the Mysteries for those coming over from the Papal Calendar to the Orthodox Calendar, hereby accepting into their bosom those who are un-Baptized, unmarried, and in general, according to their opinion and understanding, unhallowed and un-Chrismated.

The perversity and insanity of such an opinion and doctrine as theirs become more plain and obvious, if one takes into account the fact that these conventiclers restrict themselves to re-Chrismating infants, who are completely innocent of the innovation of the New Calendar, making their parents exempt from such a penalty when they come over, without re-Chrismation, to their brand of Orthodoxy. And when, as we steadfastly believe and hope, after this terrible and most pernicious conflict has come to an end, the innovating Churches, having been suitably enlightened by a pan-Orthodox and legitimate Synod, are compelled to return to the Old Calendar, the calendar of the Holy Fathers, will thousands and millions of Christians who were born in the bosom of the innovating Churches, following the opinion and dogmatic decree of the conventicler Bishops, be re-Baptized, remarried, and re-Chrismated, so that they may receive the anointing of Orthodoxy?

It is not only individual Bishops acting in isolation who are not justified in holding or stating such an opinion regarding the invalidation of Mysteries and the repetition thereof, since they have no competence or authority in this regard, but not even a local Orthodox Church has the right to annul the validity of Mysteries without the judgment of the whole Church, whose exclusive right it is to deprive clergy who fall into heresy, and neither repent nor reject it, of the right to celebrate valid and efficacious Mysteries; for, whoever does not have the ability to confer a Divine gift is, consequently, not entitled to withdraw it.

For this reason, the Canons class those who take away this sacred right with people who commit sacrilege:

“It is sacrilege to demote a Bishop to the rank of a Presbyter.” [25]

And if the Canons regard a demotion of the Mystery of the Priesthood as sacrilege, how much more are we to consider sacrilegious those who dare, without any competence or ecclesiastical authority, to pronounce the Mysteries of a recognized Church invalid, even if that Church is liable to trial before the whole Church for its arbitrary introduction of an innovation.

This, you see, is why we refrain from making statements about the validity of Mysteries, confessing that we have no competence or right in this regard, on the basis of the Divine and Sacred Canons, and being aware of our unworthiness and sinfulness in relation to the sacredness and the sanctifying Grace and power of the Divine and sacred Mysteries. We leave this to the mind and the judgment of the entire Church, which has the exclusive and Divine right, as we have just said, to endow a Church with the mysteriological Grace that is imparted through her ministers, and to withhold this Grace when she, for her part, cuts off the clergy of such a Church—both her Hierarchs and her Priests—for canonical reasons and after a trial and defense.

[E]

Now, it is true that in our publications, in defending ourselves against the sentence of deposition passed against us by the Synodal Tribunal which the innovating Hierarchy convened, we called the innovating Hierarchs schismatics for having created grounds for a schism in the Orthodox Church of Greece, by introducing the innovation of the Western Calendar, and for having cut themselves off from the other Orthodox Churches, which held fast to the Orthodox Calendar in their celebration of the Feasts, and that we have imputed to them the blame and the fearful consequences entailed by the nascent schism in the peaceful and right-believing life of the Church; but we have called them schismatics—and we do not hesitate to this day to call them such—, however, not actually but only potentially. For the former, that is, the proclamation of an innovating clergyman or layman who departs from the enclosure of the Orthodox and Divine Canons as actually schismatic, is a right that belongs only to a Synod when it assembles and states its opinions with the aid of the Holy Spirit, as I have said; whereas the second, that is, calling such a clergyman or layman potentially schismatic, is the right of any Orthodox clergyman, who is justified not only in severing ecclesiastical communion, but also in denouncing him to a competent Synod, which is precisely what we did in denouncing the innovating Hierarchs to the Orthodox Churches.

In our view of this matter, we are in harmony with the Pedalion of the universal Orthodox Church, which, in the first footnote on page 18, [26] makes a clear distinction between a potential and an actual schismatic and calls those who equate these two terms foolish and their language sacrilegious, since they do not understand that unless it is actually implemented by a Synod, the imperative force of the Canons remains unexecuted and does not act of itself, either immediately or before a decision.

For further proof of what we are saying, we cite verbatim the relevant footnote of the sacred Pedalion, so as to silence those who think and speak to the contrary:

We must know that the penalties which the Canons prescribe, that is, ‘let him be deposed,’ ‘let him be anathema,’ and ‘let him be excommunicated,’ are issued, according to grammatical usage, in the third person, there being no one present to impose them. In such a case, of necessity, the presence of a second person is required if this injunction is to be enforced. I will explain this better. The Canons enjoin a Synod of living Bishops to depose Priests or to excommunicate or anathematize laymen who transgress the Canons. But if the Synod does not actually effect the deposition of the Priests, or the excommunication or anathematization of the laymen, these Priests and laymen are neither actually deposed nor actually excommunicated nor anathematized. However, here on earth, they are liable to stand trial, with regard to deposition and excommunication or anathematization, while in the hereafter they are subject to Divine retribution.... Hence, those foolish people greatly err who say that in the present times all clergy who have been Ordained contrary to the Canons are actually deposed. Sacrilegious is the language of those who witlessly babble such words, not understanding that, unless it is actually put into effect by a second person, that is, by a Synod, the imperative force of Canons remains unexecuted and does not act of itself, either immediately or before a decision. Later on, the same Divine Apostles clearly explain themselves in their Forty-sixth Canon, since they do not say that any Bishop or Presbyter who has received Baptism from heretics is immediately and actually deposed, but ‘we enjoin that he be deposed,’ that is, ‘we enjoin that he stand trial and that, if it be proved that he did this, then let him be stripped of the Priesthood by your own decision.’ [27]

From this it follows that no clergyman who deviates from the boundaries of Orthodoxy is reckoned to be actually deposed. If he does not appear before a valid ecclesiastical tribunal, he can nonetheless be considered such potentially, and prior to a Synodal verdict and a final decision about him.

Thus, from a canonical standpoint, the following basic legal principle and dictum holds good: “No one is to be condemned without a defense.” Hence, in order for us to declare the innovating Hierarchs schismatics in actuality, as the conventicler Bishops have arbitrarily and uncanonically done, we would have to have all the requisite ecclesiastical and canonical wherewithal for setting up an ecclesiastical tribunal. This cannot be done, except by a Church that is recognized by all the local Orthodox Churches as autoceph­a­lous and endowed with the right validly to condemn those of her clergy who sin, whether in faith or in morals.

We Old Calendarists, however, do not constitute a particular, independent Orthodox Church in Greece, because no Church has recognized us as such; rather, we exist within the recognized Autocephalous Greek Church as a sentinel that guards the institution of the Orthodox Festal Calendar, which was violated—as it should not have been—by the majority of the Hierarchy; and we, who are the resplendent and unsullied part of the Autocephalous Church of Greece, are continuing her history in the spirit of Orthodoxy.

his erroneous and uncanonical idea, that we constitute a special Church, was thrown into the ring and introduced into political life by the late Archbishop Chrysostomos (Papadopoulos) of Athens, deliberately and maliciously, in order to portray us, in the eyes of the government and Greek society, as rebels who have lifted up our heels [28] against the Autocephalous Church of Greece, and in this way to expose us to the ire of the government and the general disdain of society.

Indeed, in connection with this, he did not shrink, although he had expert knowledge of the Divine and Sacred Canons and was a professor of Church history, from proclaiming that the Old Calendarist Hierarchs, having broken spiritual communion with the ruling ecclesiastical authority and established their own Churches, allegedly without ecclesiastical or canonical reasons, constituted their own Church, and a schismatic one, at that, as the Synodal Tribunal, which condemned and deposed the Bishops of Megara, Diavleia, the Cyclades, and Vresthene, was pleased to call it. [29]

Here is the relevant excerpt from the sentence of this tribunal, which reads verbatim as follows:

For this reason, condemning the accused in absentia, [the Tribunal] declares Christopher Hatzis, Germanos Varykopoulos, Matthew Kar­­pathakis, and Polycarp Liosis guilty of illegal and uncanonical Con­secration to the Episcopacy, and of joining themselves to the schism created by the former Metropolitans Germanos of Demetri­as, Chrysostomos of Florina, and Chrysostomos of Zakynthos, et al.

But this opinion is erroneous and uncanonical, given that, according to the Orthodox Faith and understanding, it is not a single faction of Christian clergy and laity, who are at variance on some ecclesiastical issue with the ruling Hierarchy and are not in ec­clesiastical communion with them, that establishes and cuts off Churches, but the entire Orthodox Church, when she comes together and states her opinions with the aid of the Holy Spirit.

Along these lines, we Old Calendarists, for all that we present the appearance, in our outward expression of faith, of having our own houses of prayer and our own ministers, nevertheless, although we are not in spiritual communion with the innovating Hierarchy, since we adhere steadfastly to the Divine Canons and the Holy Traditions, do not, in terms of canonicity, constitute a Church distinct from that with which we have temporarily broken ecclesiastical communion for canonical reasons, but we are the unsleeping sentinel, as I have already said, which vigilantly keeps the beacons alight on the adamantine battlements of the one Autocephalous Greek Church, in whose name we are continuing her history in the spirit of her original and unsullied Orthodoxy.

he conventicler Bishops, who have a different opinion on this matter, fall into the heresy of Protestantism, and in celebrating the Mysteries in the name of a non-existent Church, or, to put the point better, of their personal Church, they are deprived of all Grace, of which the Treasurer is the entire recognized Orthodox Church. Let these men tell us: to which Church do they belong, when, like Popes of the East, they have quite shamelessly appropriated the power of a Synod and have declared the Autocephalous Church of Greece, in whose name they received from us the rank of Bishop by the visitation of the All-holy and consecrating Spirit, to be actually schismatic?

Since it is well known that none of the local Orthodox Churches that adheres to the Orthodox Calendar of the Fathers has recognized them as constituting an Autocephalous and independent Church, it is self-evident that they do not belong to a recognized Orthodox Church, but to the Church of their followers; and, consequently, they cannot have an Orthodox, but only a Prot­estant, character, because they derive the authority and the Grace of their ecclesiastical acts, not from the notion of the Church as the Treasurer of Grace, but from their persons and those of their followers, as the Protestants think and believe, who substitute their personal and individual character and authority for the Divine character and nature of the Church.

his, you see, is why the conventicler Bishops of Vresthene and the Cyclades cannot have the Grace of Orthodoxy or the right to impart this Grace to those who follow them on this ecclesiastical downward slope of theirs, because they do not belong to the canonical Church, the sole Treasurer of Grace in an Orthodox sense.

[F]

For this weighty reason, from an Orthodox standpoint, we, being familiar with the Divine Canons and the holy Dogmas and Traditions of the Orthodox Church, refuse to consider the Hierarchy of the Greek Church actually schismatic, but only potentially, until a valid Synod convenes in order to try the innovating Hierarchs and, if they refuse, after a sufficient clari­fi­cation, to return to the Tradition of the Orthodox Festal Calendar, to depose them, cut them off, and declare them schismatics in actuality, in which case it will recognize the few right-believing Hierarchs as the sole representatives of the Orthodox Church of Greece.

However, until this happens, and they put both their persons and their affairs in order, if the conventicler Bishops behave as they have been behaving, it is obvious that, according to a precise understanding of the Canons, they are not right-believing but Protestantizers and that, under the pretext of a supposedly pure Orthodoxy and without fear of God, they are dashing themselves and their followers down into the soul-destroying abyss of wrong belief and spiritual perdition.

Let them not say that, such being the case, it is not worth the bother for one to be an Old Calendarist, subject as he is to persecutions, mockery, and so many other difficulties, which are entailed by withdrawing from the innovating Hierarchy and joining the side of the right-believing Hierarchy, because he who knowingly follows a Hierarch who is merely potentially liable to deposition and excision, and embraces his innovation, becomes himself liable to the curses and anathemas which the Divine and Sacred Canons unleash against those who violate written or unwritten Tradition.

“Let anyone who violates written or unwritten Tradition be anathema,”

decrees the Seventh Œcumenical Synod. [30]

* * *

This being so, we exhort the like-minded and faithful followers of our Ortho­dox faction to avoid and to pay no attention to the babblings and foolish arguments of the conventicler Bishops of Vresthene and the Cyclades, whereby they attempt, under the pretext of a supposedly pure Orthodoxy, to ensnare them in the corruption of wrong belief and to lure them into the abyss of spiritual perdition, while we recommend those who follow them in good faith and with a clear conscience to denounce them and their unholy prattle and soul-destroying teachings, which are contrary to the pure and healthy spirit of Orthodoxy, if they desire to obtain the salvation of their souls, which is found only within the saving Ark of a canonical and recognized Church.

Wishing to protect his disciple Timothy from similar false teachers, the Apostle to the Nations offers him the following advice:

“O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called, which some professing have erred concerning the Faith”; [31]

 and elsewhere:

“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived; but continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them.” [32]

Directing, out of pastoral duty, these paternal counsels and exhortations of ours to you, to the spiritual children of our right-believing faction, and to those who in good faith follow the opposing faction of the conventicler Bishops, our hope is that this advice, which flows from Orthodox faith and paternal love, will make the appropriate impression on the hearts of our followers and, above all, of those belonging to the opposing and erring faction of the conventiclers, all the more so because failure to comply with this advice excludes the conventiclers from the precincts of the Greek Church, alienates them from Di­vine Grace, and is fraught with the danger of their spiritual per­di­tion.

With this good hope, we call down upon us all the power from on high and the illumination of our Lord Jesus Christ, Whose Grace and infinite mercy, together with our paternal prayer and blessing, be with you all. Amen.

Athens, June 1, 1944

† Metropolitan Chrysostomos

(formerly) of Florina

 

NOTES

1. Acts 20:28.

2. Ibid., v. 29.

3. Cf. St. Matthew 26:31.

4. Ephesians 5:15-16.

5. Cf. I St. Peter 5:8.

6. Romans 6:5-6.

7. Cf. Colossians 3:5.

8. Romans 8:17.

9. A prayer of Saint Augustine in Ἐρωτικά XV.

10. Philippians 2:12-13.

11. Proverbs 6:4-5.

12. Ecclesiasticus 9:13.

13. Ephesians 5:6.

14. From the Anaphora of the Divine Liturgy.

15. Cf. St. Matthew 25:13.

16. I St. Timothy 1:7.

17. Ibid.

18. II St. Peter 2:1.

19, Acts 20:30.

20. I St. John 2:19

21. Metropolitan Chrysostomos does not say, in so many words, that Bishops Matthew and Germanos are schismatics, and, although in the next sentence he uses the word “schism” to describe the division created by Bishop Matthew, for the most part he prefers to call them “conventiclers.”

22. In all fairness to the Bulgarians, it must be said that they had some legitimate grievances against the Patriarchate of Constantinople, to whose jurisdiction they had been returned by the Ottomans. According to Father John Meyendorff, the Greek Bishops in Bulgaria suppressed the liturgical use of Church Slavonic and attempted, in general, to Hellenize the Bulgarian Church. In view of this policy, and also under the influence of the nationalistic fervor that was sweeping the Balkans in the mid-nineteenth century, the Bulgarians wanted an autonomous national Church of their own, as well as equality with Constantinople in administering the Bulgarian ecclesiastical territories. In 1872, Œcumenical Patriarch Anthimos vi reacted to the Sultan’s grant of a firman, authorizing the establishment of an independent Bulgarian Church, by convening a Synod, in which the Patriarchs of Al­ex­andria and Antioch also took part. This Synod condemned phy­le­tism (nationalism) as a heresy and placed the Bulgarian Church under an interdict that was only lifted in 1945. Noting that there were wrongs on both sides, Father Meyendorff admits that Constantinople was canonically in the right (The Orthodox Church: Its Past and Its Role in the World Today, 3rd ed. [Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1981], pp. 168-169).

23. The Greek word for “wrong-believing” is κακόδοξος, which is the exact opposite of ὀρθόδοξος, i.e., “right-believing.” The word “cacodox” is listed in standard dictionaries of the English language, but it is very rarely used today.

24. I St. Timothy 1:7.

25. Twenty-ninth Canon of the Fourth Œcumenical Synod.

26. Concerning the Third Canon of the Holy Apostles.

27. Pedalion, pp. 4-5, n. 2.

28. Cf. Psalm 40:9; St. John 13:18.

29. These were the four Bishops Consecrated by the aforementioned three Met­ropolitans in 1935, namely Christopher (Hatzis) of Megara, Polycarp (Liosis) of Diavleia, Germanos (Varykopoulos) of the Cyclades, and Matthew (Kar­pa­tha­kis) of Vresthene.

30. Eighth Session: Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Col­lec­tio, Vol. III, p. 416.

31. I St. Timothy 6:20-21.

32. II St. Timothy 3:13-14.

 

Source: Resistance or Exclusion?: The Alternative Ecclesiological Approaches of Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Florina and Bishop Matthew of Vresthene (Etna, CA: C.T.O.S., 2000), pp. 63-82.