An Exchange between Traditionalists

An excerpt from the draft “Introduction” of Protodeacon Andrei Psarev’s Ph.D. dissertation, “The Limits of Nonconformity in the Byzantine Church (861-1300): A Study of Canon 15 of the First and Second Council in Constantinople (861),” pp.11-15, footnotes removed and minor typos corrected.

 

In 1965, the Ecumenical Patriarch and Archbishop of Constantinople, Athenagoras I (d. 1972), together with Pope Paul VI canceled the mutual anathemas of 1054. Patriarch Athenagoras’s ecumenical statements caused embarrassment and protest among many Orthodox Christians. For some of them the question arose whether the time had come to apply the “emergency brake”: Canon 15 of the First and Second Council. This is the background for the emotional correspondence between a famous preacher of the Church of Greece, Archimandrite Epiphanios Theodoropoulos (d. 1989), and those who ceased commemoration of Patriarch Athenagoras.

 

 

In his essay, “On the Commemoration of the Patriarch”, addressed to the Athonite monk Nikodemos, Fr. Epiphanios qualifies Patriarch Athenagoras’s “papal-loving” (φιλοπαπικά) as heresy.

However, Fr. Epiphanios observes that Canon 15 does not require clergy to separate, but gives them the right to cease commemoration of their bishop, noting that those who separated should not be condemned. The next question is whether to follow Canon 15 is a private matter, a matter of conscience:

“That this is the case, is confirmed by the fact that in the long history of the Church, many, many bishops have been defrocked out of their office for heresy, but no cleric has ever been punished or even prescribed a penalty, because he waited for the conciliar verdict on a bishop heretic rather than immediately seceding from him.” [Emphasis in original]

Moreover, Fr. Epiphanios argues against joining a “parallel” Old Calendarist hierarchy. He assumes that Canon 15 does not oblige a cleric who has ceased to commemorate his bishop to hasten to join some other non-heretical bishop. Such a clergyman should limit his protest to ceasing commemoration and waiting for a conciliar decision. In his essay, Fr. Epiphanios explains that the decision of the Athonite monks to stop commemoration of the patriarch of Constantinople is at the limits of the permissible according to the holy canons.

Referring to Canon 15, Fr. Epiphanios explains that it allows the Orthodox to cease commemoration of heretical bishops, but at the same time it does not delegate to clergy and laity the right to try these bishops. Such a right belongs only to a council.

Monk Theodoretos Mavros [d. 2007], an Old Calendarist theologian from St. Anne’s Skete on Mount Athos, wrote a fifty-page untitled thesis against Fr. Epiphanios’s essay “On the Commemoration of the Patriarch”. There is a section dedicated to Canon 15. Fr. Theodoretos believed that Patriarch Athenagoras was a heretic and therefore he had an obligation to cease communion with him. Fr. Theodoretos shifted to Fr. Epiphanios the burden of proof that this patriarch did not preach any heresy “condemned by holy councils or fathers.” Fr. Theodoretos wrote that in fact, Fr. Epiphanios had already excommunicated Patriarch Athenagoros, since he had permitted monks not to pray for him. Fr. Theodoretos emphasized throughout the history of the Orthodox Church, the significance of the defense of the Canon of Truth by the protests of her rank-and-file members. He believed that the ecclesial conscience of God’s nation (or “people”) (λαός το Θεού) never errs. This conscience can be expressed “even by a single member of the laity or a single monk”. The value of the contribution of Fr. Theodoretos to the discussion is that he introduced a number of proof texts from late antiquity and from Byzantine ecclesiastical history. The words of the defender of Orthodoxy against Arianism, Patriarch [St.] Meletios of Antioch (d. 381), are relevant to Canon 15:

“Do not show obedience to bishops who exhort you to do and to say and to believe in things which are not to your benefit. What pious man would hold his tongue? Who would remain completely calm? In fact, silence equates to consent. This was clearly indicated by John the Baptist, and by the Maccabees through their legislation, who went as far as risking death, without overlooking the fact that the law is susceptible to changes.”

The following citation is interesting since it belongs to Patriarch [St.] Photios, who presided over the First and Second Council: “Can a priest be a heretic? The wolf may escape and get away, but do not be fooled and approach it, and even if it appears to be wagging its tail gently, avoid coming into contact with it, as it is like poison from a snake”. It is noteworthy that Fr. Theodoretos refers to the authority of Bishop Nikodim Milaš’s paraphrase of Canon 15.

 

 

Fr. Epiphanios parried Fr. Theodoretos’s blow with his essay “Against the Extremes of Zealotism”. Following a standard canon law procedure for analyzing texts, Fr. Epiphanios poses three questions: What is the basis for Canon 15? What are the premises for this canon and what is its goal? He contends that Canons 13, 14, and 15 were designed by the First and Second Council to prevent and punish intra-clerical ruptures.

Fr. Epiphanios assumes that Canon 15 was not designed to inspire people to stop commemoration. Although the canon praises those who separate on the basis of faith, it does not condemn those who wait for a conciliar decision. Referring to the canons and praxis of the Church without specifying rules and cases, Fr. Epiphanios argues that clergy are liable only when they commemorate a bishop who has already been convicted.

The next year, in 1970, Fr. Theodoretos wrote an untitled repudiation of Fr. Epiphanios’s essay “Against the Extremes of [Old Calendarist] Zealotism”. Arguing with Fr. Epiphanios’s point that, had the Church considered it obligatory for clergy to cease commemoration, she would have articulated special canons, Fr. Theodoretos explains that his position is superior to Fr. Epiphanios’s because “the only thing that the person is able to enjoy by waiting for the decision of the synod is, according to you, not be reprimanded and not be punished.” [Emphasis mine.] However, Fr. Theodoretos’s position is, in fact, that the Church’s praise is reserved not for Christians who remain in communion with a heretical bishop, but only for those who separate from him, before or even after a council if such a council has appeared to be unorthodox.

Fr. Theodoretos continued his excursion in late antique and Byzantine ecclesiastical history. He refers to the priest [St.] Hypatios who, as soon as he found out about the heretical views of Archbishop Nestorius of Constantinople, adamantly refused to commemorate his name.

Similarly, Fr. Theodoretos refers to the period after the pro-Union Council of Lyons of 1274, when Patriarch Joseph was dismissed and replaced by John Bekkos; Priestmonk Galaction was jailed for refusing to have ecclesiastical communion with the patriarch who had entered into communion with Rome.

The vigorous struggle for Orthodoxy during the two periods of Iconoclasm (726-787, 815- 843) provided Fr. Theodoretos with a multitude of examples of ecclesiastical non-conformity. The writings of St. Theodore of Studios (d. 826), a leader of the Byzantine monastic rigorists, became the main source of Fr. Theodoretos’s inspiration. St. Theodore taught that one cannot pray over or even bury a clergyman or layperson who was in communion with heretics if only out of exceptional circumstances; the Orthodox must not have communion with heretics even by sharing meals.

Besides St. Theodore, Fr. Theodoretos refers to two other champions of Orthodoxy: St. Athanasios, Archbishop of Alexandria (d. 373), who fiercely opposed Arianism, and St. Maximos the Confessor (d. 662), a Byzantine monk who stood up against Monothelitism. Having demonstrated various historical cases of non-compliance with deviations from Orthodoxy, Fr. Theodoretos makes the following two thought-provoking statements:

1) Without the protests of holy fathers, the foundation for a future Orthodox council could not be laid;

2) The Canon of Truth would have not come down to us uncorrupted if the Orthodox during all controversies would have passively waited for somebody to convene a council, or if they had constantly exercised oikonomia.

Fr. Epiphanios [also] had intense debates with the Greek Old Calendarist theologian Alexander Kalomiros (d. 1990), who attacked his essay “On the Commemoration of the Patriarch”. In a letter of 19th May, 1970, in an Orthodox newspaper published in Athens, Η φωνη της Ορθοδοξιάς, Fr. Epiphanios cites a piece published in the same newspaper by Kalomiros, who believed that the public proclamation of heresy automatically deprived the bishop of grace:

“The fifteenth canon of the First and Second Council writes clearly that a heretical bishop is not a bishop, but a false bishop, and thereby [the one who follows him is – A.P.] a false priest. His liturgies are fake liturgies. His ordinations are fake ordinations. The chrism is not holy chrism. All the mysteries are without sanctifying grace.”

Fr. Epiphanios does not agree with such linear logic. Arguing against Kalomiros’s exegesis of Canon 15, Fr. Epiphanios explains that the factor of publicity in preaching heresy, mentioned in the second part of the canon, is important only as an indicator for a clergyman that he may cease to commemorate his bishop. This clause of the canon does not define a bishop’s spiritual status: “For God, a bishop with heretical views is already a heretic regardless of whether he preaches his heresy openly or if he conceals it in the innermost depths of his heart”.

 

 

However, Fr. Epiphanios believes that, pending conciliar pronouncement, God bestows his grace, by virtue of oikonomia, to bishops and priests who have fallen into heresy: “Is not it the same as when God acts also through clergy who are thieves, fornicators, adulterers, blasphemers? Does he allow his grace to act through them because of them themselves? - Certainly not! He does so because of the fullness of the Church!”