Ecumenism and the Decline of Our Faith

The following excerpts are from the book The Light of the World (Crestwood, NY, 1982), authored by the late Serge Verhovskoy, former professor at St. Vladimir's Theological Seminary. They provide critical insight into a process of decline in the faith that few of Professor Verhovskoy's successors understand or care to acknowledge.

 

What are the greatest temptations undermining our faithfulness to Orthodoxy and clearly weakening our society? One is that, unfortunately, many Orthodox have hardly any faith and keep only external, earthly relations with the Church. Much more dangerous, however, is the wave of false theology with which the entire Christian world is being corrupted and which is inevitably penetrating more and more into our Church. Some statements of our hierarchs and theologians no longer sound like statements of witnesses to Orthodoxy. The greatest danger is the almost open rejection of the primary and fundamental value and existential meaning of truth. Truth is considered as of no importance for life. Many think that a minimum of knowledge is sufficient for our activity, and that so- called "good relations" with our fellow men do not require communion in truth and faith, which is rather an obstacle for them. We are told openly that the entire teaching of the Church must be totally reconsidered and adjusted to one goal only, which is the immediate unification of all the Christian denominations into an absolute minimum of faith and in a common activity in this world. And this disdain of truth and the minimization of faith is [sic] directly connected in our time with the conscious acceptance of immorality. Those who do not accept the moral principles of the New Testament will inevitably fall into immorality.

...Some Orthodox are so moved by sheer sentimentality that they are, so to speak, ready to kiss the heterodox and recognize their supposed "Orthodoxy," as if by such spectacular actions and superficial proclamations of unity all Christians, so deeply disunited for centuries, can suddenly become members of one Church! Furthermore, some Orthodox think that if they will establish the best possible relations with Western Christians, diluting the Orthodox faith in the sea of ecumenism, they will be helped by these Western Christians in the extremely difficult situations in which many of our Orthodox Churches now find themselves. This, however, is pure illusion. The West did not save us from the Moslems in the fifteenth century, and it will not save us from any of our present terrible problems. Besides, the very idea of betraying our faith to buy favors from the West is an abomination.

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. VIII (1991), No. 2, p. 12.