“As befits God, we are not in communion” with the Ecumenists

“For they are not the Church of the Lord”; “they are not the Church of God.”

In... [a]... previous issue of Όρθόδοξος Ένημέρωσις, (No. 28 [1998], p. 109), we wrote that “breaking communion with the ecumenists does not signify a departure from the Church,’’ since schism, which is not forgiven even by the blood of martyrdom, is one thing, and walling-off, which is salvific and worthy of “the honor due to those of right belief,’’ is something else. [1]

The opposite view, that breaking communion with those who “do not conform to the sound teaching of the Faith’’ supposedly constitutes a schism and a departure from the Church, St. Theodore the Studite confronted and successfully and powerfully refuted.

Writing to his “brother and Father,’’ the exiled Confessor, St. Joseph, the Archbishop of Thessalonica, and calling him a “pillar and bulwark of the Church,’’ because “everyone who resists and suffers for the sake of the Truth upholds and exalts Her,” [2] St. Theodore responds to “three straightforward statements’’ by the Archbishop. [3]

These “statements’’ refer to the possibility of “communion,’’ on the one hand, with the “publicly deposed’’ Priest Joseph, who had “performed an adulterous marriage’’; and, on the other hand, with the “ratifiers of adultery,’’ that is, the Patriarch and the other Hierarchs be- longing to the Synod, who had acquitted Joseph and were communing with him, “something that was terrible and went beyond oikonomia.” [4]

In order to make the following response by the Saint fully comprehensible, we should begin by making it clear that St. Theodore had substantiated his opinion that “Moechianism’’ [from the Greek word for “adultery’’; a controversy involving the illicit marriage of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VI to his mother’s lady-in-waiting, after forcing his wife into monasticism—Trans.] was heretical and heterodox “through the voice of the Lord, and of the Apostles and Prophets, and, in addition to these, through the God-Bearing Fathers,’’ [5] characterizing it as “Moechian false belief’ [see note 5] and “a most grievous heresy’’ [see note 5].

In the first place, the Saint declares point-blank that one who does not commune with the “performer of an adulterous marriage’’ and the “ratifiers of adultery’’ is not cut off from the Church: “We are not cut off from the Church because of one man [the Priest Joseph—Trans.],” “for these people are not the Church of the Lord’’; “since they are not the Church of God,’’ “it is they who in truth are themselves cut off from the Church, because of one man who is allied with them.’’ [6]

Next, the Saint explains that he “has no part in’’ the “terrible’’ act of “forgiving’’ Joseph, “who performed the adulterous marriage,’’ an act “which goes beyond oikonomia because he was “not in communion with those who openly absolved him’’: “since, as befits God, we are not in communion with those who absolved him, we certainly have nothing to do with his absolution.’’ [7]

Finally, the zealous Saint confirms that, “we receive communion from every Priest who is irreproachable’’; but Joseph was “publicly deposed,’’ just as those who then communed with him were also assuredly “deposed,’’ [8] being like him: “...Participating with the adulterer in adultery; yoking themselves to him who performed an adulterous marriage; joining with the accuser of God in accusing God; cynically joining with the denier of the Gospel in denying the Gospel.’’ [9]

However, St. Theodore dealt not only with this reproach, that there was, supposedly, no need to “split the Church’’ on account of Moechianism and “on account of the downfall of a single man’’ [see note 3]; he also confronted those who would not admit that Iconoclasm was a heresy and who believed that communion with the Iconoclasts was “a matter of little concern’’; the Saint regarded these, too, as heretics: “If anyone should not rank the heresy that has been raging against the holy Icons with the other heresies, as equally leading to separation from God, but should say that communion with...[Iconoclasts]...is neither here nor there, he is a heretic.’’ [10]

Addressing himself “to all the Brotherhoods or Communities that have been dispersed everywhere (in exile) for the sake of Christ, together with those being detained in prison and exile,’’ [11] he exhorts them:

• first, to avoid communion with the Iconoclasts, “as they would [avoid] the venom of a serpent, which blackens not the body, as the Theologian somewhere states, but the depths of the soul’’; [12]

• and secondly, to “be of the same mind as the Apostolic Church throughout the world,’’ with the exception, of course, of the “official’’ Church of Constantinople, because “this Church of Byzantium is an heretical segment of the Church, being often variously cut off from others.’’ [See note 12.]

Finally, writing to the Iconoclast Synod of 815, “as a representative of all of the Abbots,’’13 St. Theodore sets forth in brief the “evangelical Faith,’’ the “Apostolic confession,’’ and the “creed’’ of the Iconodules, “handed down by the Fathers,’’ and concludes:

...[E]ven if an Angel should descend from Heaven ‘teaching and preaching contrary to this’ Faith, ‘we could not accept him into communion, since he would not conform to the sound teaching of the Faith.’

This has always been the attitude of the Holy Fathers towards those who “do not conform to the sound teaching of the Faith.’’

St. Basil the Great, for example, expressing his support for “(our) God-beloved brethren and fellow-ministers, Meletios [of Antioch] and Eusebios [of Samosata],” who were being persecuted by the “maniacal Arians,’’ but were viewed with grave suspicion by the Orthodox, writes to Peter II of Alexandria, the successor of St. Athanasios the Great, that if these clergymen were not Orthodox, “...if I had found them a stumbling block to the Faith,’’ “...I should certainly not have admitted them to communion even for a moment.’’ [15]

***

Today, ecumenism is being preached and made stronger in both word and deed: “The tempest of heresy is swelling and coming daily to a head,’’ as St. Theodore, again, would say, and in Orthodox ecclesiology there is a discernible “transmutation of all things into ungodliness.’’ [16]

The primal vision of the ecumenist Encyclical of 1920 [17] has been realized: “rapprochement,’’ “fellowship,’’ and “contact’’ between Orthodox ecumenists and heretics have come to fruition; indeed, we have gone beyond the “moment’’ to which St. Basil the Great refers above, and heresy has become entrenched; ultimately, through inter-Christian and interfaith ecumenism, this Encyclical has produced and proclaimed a cloud of false teachings that are lenient towards heresies and the other religions of the world. [18]

• First, the ecumenists dispensed with the soteriological exclusivity of the Orthodox Church: “We are all [Orthodox and heterodox] members of Christ,’’ Patriarch Ignatios of Antioch proclaimed, “a single and unique body, a single and unique ‘new creation,’ since our common baptism has freed us from death.’’ [19]

• Next, they dispensed with the ecclesiocentric exclusivity of salvation: “It is legitimate to evaluate other religions as belonging to the same plan of God for the salvation of the world and as constituting ways willed by God for the glory of God and the salvation of their faithful.’’ [20]

• And now they are posing the unheard-of question: “Whether or not the church and its faith are indispensable for salvation’’; and at the same time they say: “Consequently, to the question of whether there is salvation outside the church, we must give a positive answer.’’ [21]

***

An “Orthodox and God-pleasing resistance’’ [22] demands that we break communion with the ecumenists and that we “wall ourselves off’ [23] from them without even the slightest hesitation, lest such hesitation be taken as a departure and schism from the Church: “For they are not the Church of the Lord’’; the ecumenists “are not the Church of God’’ [see note 6].

• It is now time for people to understand that the ecumenists should not be accused of “misanthropy” alone, as St. Maximos the Confessor puts it, since, by virtue of their “rapprochement,” “fellowship,” and “contact,” they cooperate with heretics and people of other religions, “so as to support their deranged belief,” [24] and in this way assist their fall into greater spiritual corruption: “For I reckon it misanthropy and a departure from Divine love to lend support to error, that those previously captivated by it should undergo still greater corruption” [see note 24].

• But they now also stand accused of being heretics themselves, because, in the words of St. Basil the Great, they are found to be “stumbling in the Faith” [see note 75].

Those who desire to be, and to remain, Orthodox ought not to have any communion with ecumenists; on the contrary, the latter are themselves “excluded from communion,” according to St. Athanasios the Great, who does not view the question of communion with heretics as “a matter of little concern,” even if one claims to be Orthodox in his way of thinking:

‘There are some who, while they protest that they do not hold with Arios, yet compromise themselves and pray together with his followers’; ‘shun those who openly hold the impiety [of Arios], and moreover avoid those who, while they pretend not to hold with Arios, yet commune with the impious’; ‘but if anyone claims that he confesses the right faith, but appears to commune with these others, exhort him to abstain from such communion’; ‘by so doing, you will maintain your faith pure.’ [25]

 

Notes

1. See, for greater detail: Metropolitan Cyprian of Oropos and Fill, “‘Schism’” or ‘Walling-Off’? The Calendar Question and the Heresy of Ecumenism: A Pastoral Epistle” (supplement to Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XV, No. 4 [1998]).

2. St. Theodore the Studite, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XCIX, col. 1064C (Epistle 1.43: “To His Brother Joseph the Archbishop”).

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., col. 1064A.

5. Idem, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XCIX, cols. 1069CD and 1080B (Epistle 1.48: “To Athanasios, His Spiritual Child”).

6. Idem, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XCIX, col. 1065CD (Epistle 1.43: “To His Brother, Joseph the Archbishop”).

7. Ibid., col. 1065D.

8. Ibid., cols. 1065D-1068A.

9. Idem, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XCIX, col. 1088C (Epistle 1.49: “To Navkratios, His Spiritual Child”).

10. Idem, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XCIX, col. 352B (“First Refutation of the Iconoclasts,” §20).

11. Idem, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XCIX, col. 1129C (Epistle II.8: “To All the Brotherhoods”).

12. Ibid., col. 1132C. The reference is to “Oration 33,” by St. Gregory the Theologian (“Against the Arians and on Himself,” §4).

13. Idem, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XCIX, col. 1116C (Epistle II.1: “To the Iconoclast Synod”).

14. Ibid., col. 1120A.

15. St. Basil the Great, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XXXII, cols. 992-994 (Epistle 266: “To Peter, the Bishop of Alexandria”).

16. St. Theodore the Studite, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XCIX, col. 1164B (Epistle 11.15: “To the Most Holy Father of Fathers, Luminary of Luminaries, My Lord and Master, the Patriarch of Jerusalem”).

17. Basil T. Stavrides, History of the Ecumenical Movement [in Greek] (Analekta of the Vlatadon Monastery, No. 47; Thessaloniki: Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, 1996), pp. 332-336 (Appendix 2: “The Encyclical of 1920”). In this Encyclical, “rapprochement” is mentioned five times, “fellowship” twice, and “contact” four times.

18. See, in detail: Bishop Angelos of Avlona, Ecumenism: A Movement for Union or a Syncretistic Heresy? (Contributions to a Theology of Anti-Ecumenism, No. III; Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1998); Hieromonk Klimis Agiokyprianites, The Contribution of the Orthodox Ecumenists to the Interfaith Venture and Their Responsibility for It (Contributions to a Theology of Anti-Ecumenism, No. V; Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1999, in press).

19. Episkepsis, No. 370 (15 January 1987), p. 9 [in Greek]: “The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in Geneva: Address by His Beatitude, Patriarch Ignatios of Antioch.”

20. Metropolitan Damaskinos of Switzerland, The Word of Dialogue: Orthodoxy Faces the Third Millennium [in Greek] (Athens: Kastaniote Publications, 1997), p. 156: “Christian Truth and the Universality of Salvation,” §3; see also Episkepsis, No. 523 (31 October 1995), p. 12.

21. Kath’Hodon, No. 10 (January-April 1995), pp. 85 and 94 [in Greek] (Eleni Pavlides [a Roman Catholic theologian], “Is There Salvation Outside the Church?” pp. 85-94).

22. St. Theodore the Studite, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XCIX, col. 1045D (Epistle 1.39: “To Theophilos the Abbot”).

23. Fifteenth Canon of the First-Second Holy Synod.

24. St. Maximos the Confessor, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XCI, col. 465CD (Epistle 12: “To John the Chamberlain”).

25. St. Athanasios the Great, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XXVI, cols. 1185D-1188C (“To Those Who Practice the Solitary Life and are Established in Faith in God”).

 

Original Greek source: ’Ορθόδοξος Ένημέρωσις, No. 30 (October-December 1998), pp. 125-127.

English source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XVI (1999), Nos. 3-4, pp. 83-86.