"Saints on Both Sides"

Saints on Both Sides: Thoughts on the Resistance to Ecumenism

(Excerpts from: Statement on the Supposed “Anti-Patristic” Nature of Our Ecclesiology of Resistance, by Hieromonk Patapios of St. Gregory Palamas Monastery, Etna, CA)

Section C

P.B. These are reasonable points which the author did not sufficiently address. The question is whether conceding these points undermines the author’s argument. I do not think it does (see the closing bullet points). The author also assails the Studite “schisms,” writing that they “were not recognized by anyone, but were instead condemned.” This admittedly contradicts at least two Lives of St. Theodore the Studite. For example, The Synaxarion published by the Holy Convent of the Annunciation of Our Lady, Ormylia, Greece, the reception the Saint and his followers received after return from exile seems to indicate that his resistance was well regarded. Nevertheless, I do not think this possible error renders moot the author’s points. There were Saints on both sides of this controversy: two successive Patriarchs of Constantinople, Tarasius (Feb. 25) and Nicephorus (Jun 2). In reading their Lives no conclusions can be drawn about how the Church ultimately viewed their actions as opposed to those of the Studite party.

F.P. Here, you are wooed into conclusions based on Monk Basil’s poor and amateurish historical scholarship. You also fall to some theological errors upon which I do not think you have adequately reflected. We agree that, with only a perfunctory reading of these Saints’ lives, one might conclude that “no conclusions can [or should — F.P.] be drawn” in the controversy in question. With study and by placing the lives of these Saints in historical and theological context, however, one comes to a very different position — and rightly so. What Father Basil presents to you is a typical scholarly fallacy: illustratio nullius; namely, seeming to make a point by illustrations that demonstrate nothing. This is because, as I said in my introductory remarks, many people in the Church today use Patristic texts as Protestants do, and not to lead them into “rightly dividing the word of the Truth,” which is not just a responsibility for the Hierarchy but for laymen, too. They use the Fathers to support (or, in the case of the Monk Basil, to try to justify) their preconceived ideas. One does not, to reiterate another point that I made earlier, use the Patristic witness to support assumptions drawn from personal opinion (which in Orthodox theology counts as nothing, dogmatically), but uses the writings of the Fathers as a guide in finding the truth, supporting it, and acting on it, whether they support or, in fact, reject one’s personal view. We use the Fathers to make decisions and draw conclusions in and about the Truth.

It is in this spirit that we must evaluate both historical and contemporary events in the Church. Thus, in the case of the Moechian controversy, it should be borne in mind that St. Tarasios was, according to most Orthodox (and many Western) historical sources, acting under duress. His attempts to have the Emperor Constantine’s adulterous marriage annulled were thwarted because the Emperor “threatened that unless he [Patriarch Tarasios] bowed to his will, he would restore the heresy of his imperial predecessors and once again destroy the precious and holy Icons.” In short, St. Tarasios’ stand with regard to the Moechian controversy does not place him in opposition to St. Theodore the Studite. Likewise, St. Nikephoros, though by no means a man “weak in character,” was also similarly forced by imperial authority to reinstate the Priest who performed the illicit nuptials. This did not set him at odds with St. Theodore, either.

Every instance in Church history where “there were Saints on both sides of...[a] controversy” must ultimately be evaluated in accordance with the yardstick of the consensus (or consensio) Patrum. Because the Holy Spirit is made manifest through the Church, there is no event in Her history that is without import and from which “no conclusions can be drawn.” In the case at hand, for example, one can draw the preliminary conclusion that, to the extent that both parties reflected the consensus of the Fathers in their general understanding of the theology and life of the Church, they were saintly. At the same time, their sanctity in this general sense does not mean that the controversies that divided them were of no consequence and that one should avoid evaluating those controversies. The personal sanctity of the parties involved does not obviate the declaration of one view in the controversies that separated them as correct and another as erroneous. It ultimately establishes a principle that you once so perceptively stated: “With all due sympathy to those trying to sort out the nuances of Orthodox ecclesiology, a consistent Orthodox position is definitely discernible, if only one resorts to a careful examination of Holy Tradition, and specifically, Sacred Scripture, the writings of the Church Fathers, and the Sacred Canons.”

Beyond these rudimentary historical, theological, and spiritual facts, from a purely scholarly standpoint one must exercise caution before launching into arguments taken solely from the example of the Studites (and our own ecclesiology, which is based on a firm and very wide Patristic foundation, does not do so, even though some simplistic analyses of it have made that claim). This movement is complex, nuanced, beset by certain deviations from the norms set by St. Theodore, and the subject of scholarship, both amateur and professional, that is open to a great deal of criticism. Indeed, most Orthodox scholars have been formed by Roman Catholic historiography, and not by Patristic sources, in their understanding of the Studite period. They naively repeat conclusions about events, persons, and issues hastily drawn from an historical record that is often unclear. Indeed, even the writings of St. Theodore himself have not, until quite recently, appeared in a carefully edited and critical Greek text (by Professor George Fatouros), and at that only a small part of the full corpus of his works (primarily, his letters and some poetry). It speaks for itself, in support of what I have said, that the only significant annotated collection of St. Theodore’s writings to this day is the product of Jesuit scholarship (which generally opines that St. Theodore was a schismatic) dating to the sixteenth century. In all candor, neither Father Basil nor you has really studied the Studite period in such a fashion as to come to precise knowledge of this period that would justify your saying that “no conclusions” can be drawn from it. I say this with no insult intended, but simply as a statement of fact.

Finally, let me make a statement about Father Basil’s use of the term “schisms,” in referring to the Studites, by which term he apparently believes that he can impugn the nature of our resistance ecclesiology, as though, simply because we borrow the term “resistance” from St. Theodore, our ecclesiological position stands or falls on the Studite experience. Using this term (“schisms”) (so dear to Jesuit scholars, originally) to refer to the Studites immediately exposes the influence that Western sources have had on Father Basil’s grasp of their importance in Orthodox Church history. They, of course, did not consider themselves to be schismatics, neither when they undertook resistance during the Moechian controversy, nor later during the second wave of Iconoclasm. As St. Theodore affirms in a letter to St. Nikephoros: “We are not schismatics [aposchistai] from the Church of God.” The only “Studites” who might with some justification be called “schismatics” were those hard-liners who refused to cooperate with the legitimate Patriarch, St. Methodios, following the Iconoclastic Controversy, and who disallowed the application of oikonomia in the case of those who had renounced their previous adherence or capitulation to Iconoclasm. St. Theodore and the other Studites were simply in resistance, “Orthodox and God-pleasing resistance,” and not in schism. The Orthodox Church has always supported this legitimate resistance, honoring St. Theodore as a great Saint. That Father Basil ignores this point, levelling against the Studites accusations of a very imprudent kind, is rather astonishing.

Section H

P.B. Perhaps once again we will realize that there were Saints on both sides.

F.P. The argument here, which you also put forth earlier, is that because “there were Saints on both sides” of a given ecclesiastical controversy, the Church tacitly endorses both views (or perhaps neither view) on the matter in dispute, thereby neutralizing the whole episode. Aside from the important points that we made above, we have to bear in mind that sanctity does not, in and of itself, entail infallibility; frankly put (and one says things like this with pious fear, of course), Saints can (and do) make mistakes and errors in judgment, just as they are not all, in keeping with the standards of Hollywood, “nice guys.” In any event, there are numerous instances in Church history where there were Saints on both sides of a disputed issue; yet, the Church decidedly considered only one side correct. Among many others, we can cite the Quartodeciman Controversy; the improperly-named “Meletian Schism” (more correctly termed the “Antiochian Schism” [330-485]); the infamous “Synod of the Oak,” which (canonically but unjustly) deposed St. John Chrysostomos; the conflict in the West between Roman liturgical practice and Celtic usage; the improperly-named “Photian Schism”; the conflict in Russia between the Possessors and the Non-Possessers; and on and on. In all of these cases, to retreat into the idea that “no conclusions can be drawn” because “there were Saints on both sides” of the issues under debate is to deny that Orthodoxy is ultimately grounded in the consensus Patrum, not on the teachings or opinions of individual Fathers, who are not by themselves infallible. The sanctity of the Saints involved in a given confrontation rises not from some relativistic view of complex matters, but from the attempts of these holy men to avoid relativism and, at the same time, preserve the unity and integrity of the Church. Therein lie the criteria by which their sanctity was established.

St. Photios the Great provides us with a perfect model to follow in such situations. In the debate over the use of the Filioque, the Franks contumaciously argued that Sts. Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome supported their doctrinal opinion, relying exclusively upon these Fathers. St. Photios, with exemplary piety towards Sts. Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome, admirably upholds their sanctity, while chiding the Frankish theologians for insolently “quot[ing] the statements of the human fathers... as readily supporting their own contentious purpose against God.” Regarding these Western Fathers, St. Photios writes:

“Though they were otherwise arrayed with the noblest reflections, they were human. If they slipped and fell into error, therefore, by some negligence or oversight, then we should not gainsay or admonish them. But what is this to you? For they were not, even in the slightest degree, participants in those things in which you abound. They are rather adorned with many examples of virtue and piety and thus professed your teaching either through ignorance or oversight. ...[T]aking refuge in the fathers, you cast down their great honor with blasphemy. ...You make these your fathers without living the life in yourselves.... ...[I]f any among them has fallen into something unseemly — for they were all men and human, and no one composed of dust and ephemeral nature can avoid some step of defilement — then I would imitate the sons of Noah. I would cover up the shame of my father with silence and gratitude, instead of garments. I would not have followed Ham as you do.”

Then, to refute definitively the error of the Filioque, it is precisely to the “chorus of the Fathers” (the consensio Patrum) — and mainly Western Fathers, to boot —, “these voices [that] all burst forth with the same divine words,” that St. Photios appeals.

Finally, in our own days it can hardly be said that, even if there are holy men (as there well may be) who do not advocate the kind of active resistance to the heresy of ecumenism in which we engage (or who even, in error, resist it), they are justified, not for avoiding resistance, but by such extenuating circumstances as being under the same kind of compulsion or pressure that Sts. Tarasios and Nikephoros were. In some cases, admittedly, they do face the prospect of losing their jobs and the concomitant prestige; but, in the end, they are free to choose whatever course of action to take in response to ecumenism and the calendar innovation that it spawned. To follow them because of their holiness, attempting to justify one’s avoidance of the sacrifices of resistance, is not a prudent thing. The holiness which covers them will not cover you. To think so is to succumb to guruism, “officialdom,” “neo-Papist Patriarchalism,” and Latin legalism.