Address of His Eminence, Metropolitan Ambrosios of Philippi and Maroneia
In the year 843 A.D., on March
11, under Patriarch Methodios and Empress Theodora, an Endemousa Synod
in Constantinople upheld the 7th Ecumenical Council, restored the veneration of
the Holy Icons, and established the feast as the “Sunday of Orthodoxy.” Since
then, 1,183 years have passed, and this feast remains timely; this demonstrates
the enduring victory of the Orthodox Christian Faith over whatsoever corrupting
heresies.
Iconoclasm, as a vast reformist
endeavor, was directed chiefly against the Holy Icons and came to an end in 787
A.D. with the decisions of the 7th Ecumenical Council. The 367 Fathers of the
Council proclaimed: “The principal purpose of the use of the venerable icons
is, apart from the ‘God-befitting adornment,’ that is, the decoration of the
Holy Temples, on the one hand, the recognition of holiness and the rendering of
honorary veneration, which passes over to the sacred persons depicted, and on
the other hand, the more frequently the faithful behold in the icons the sacred
forms, the more their reverence is increased and their desire to imitate their
example.” Moreover, the icon confesses that truly our Lord Jesus Christ became
man and dwelt among us, thus expressing in this manner the mystery of the
salvation of man.
Your Beatitude Archbishop of
Athens and of All Greece of the Genuine Orthodox Christians, Mr. Kallinikos,
Holy Hierarchs,
Honorable Presbytery,
Venerable Diaconate,
Most Reverend Monks and Nuns,
Choir of the Sacred Chanters,
Chosen people in the Lord,
Christianity, the Christian
Church, from its foundation faced not only external enemies but also internal
ones; these are the false prophets and false teachers, the various heresies and
the heretics. Our Lord Jesus Christ warns us in the Holy Gospel: “false christs
and false prophets will arise and will give great signs, they will perform
great wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect themselves…… (Matt.
24).
Ecclesiastical History describes
to us the dozens of heresies which the holy fathers confronted through local
and Ecumenical Councils, and they formulated the Orthodox teaching, the
Orthodox Faith.
The phenomenon of heresies
appears also before Christ among the people of Israel, as well as in the
idolatrous world. We have the intermingling of the ancient civilizations, with
the result also of the intermingling of the ancient religions; religions, gods
and deities, as well as religious rites, were being mixed together. This
phenomenon is called religious syncretism.
In order to perceive how dreadful
and anti-Christian and demonic religious syncretism is, we must turn to Holy
Scripture, which is the source of our faith.
In the Old Testament, before
Christ, God chooses—elects the Israelites as His peculiar, as His chosen
people: “not because of their virtues, nor because of the purity and piety of
their heart, but because of the incurable impiety of the idolaters” (Deut.
9:5). And although God delivers them from the Egyptians and saves them with
wondrous events in the wilderness, rulers and people fell into Religious
Syncretism, even worshiping idols.
God is absolute in the matter of
the purity of faith and worship. In the first commandment of the Decalogue, He
states it clearly: “I am the Lord your God; there are for you no other gods
besides Me” (Exod. 20:2). When Moses was descending from Mount Sinai holding in
his hands the two tablets of the Ten Commandments and saw the Israelites
worshiping the golden calf, a symbol of the god Baal of the Canaanites, in his
anger he threw down the tablets of the Ten Commandments, breaking them into
pieces; afterwards he burned the golden calf to powder, which he cast into the
torrent that descends from Mount Sinai (Deut. 9:21 & Exod. 32:20).
Of the kings of the Northern and
Southern Kingdoms, of the people of God, most were impious and authoritarian
and did evil in the sight of the Lord. They walked in the way of idolatry, and
together with the worship of the true God, the people continued to sacrifice
and to offer incense also to the idolatrous gods. In the Old Testament this
phenomenon is called spiritual adultery, that is, to believe in the true God,
but also to believe in superstitions and in superstitious practices, as
unfortunately happens also in our time by many Christians.
From the Southern Kingdom an
exception were the Kings Hezekiah and Josiah, who did what was right in the
sight of the Lord and destroyed the shrines and statues of the idolaters.
King Hezekiah, around 720 B.C.,
destroyed the bronze serpent that Moses had made in the wilderness, because
until his days the Israelites were offering to it incense of worship as to a
god (IV Kings 18:4). All the prophets—Elijah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah,
and others—rebuke with boldness the rulers, the priests, and the people for
their departure from the true God; for this reason, they were persecuted and
put to death by their compatriots. Let us recall the words of our Christ:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets…” (Matt. 23:37). From this
Religious Syncretism, therefore, which continues also after Christ, there
arises the dreadful pan-heresy of Gnosticism.
In the years of the holy
Apostles, the Christian Church of the first centuries had to struggle with
syncretistic Judaizing heresies, which mixed Jewish and Christian teachings.
Then there appeared forcefully the dreadful pan-heresy bearing the name Gnosticism,
which reached the point of threatening the Christian Faith by merging it into
the crucible of heresies.
Christianity, which from the
beginning came face to face with Gnosticism, struggled with all its powers to
prevent its flood and to preserve the Apostolic Tradition unadulterated. The
holy Apostles themselves confronted with steadfastness every attempt at the
infiltration of Gnosis, in whatever form, into the Church, refuting and
combating the Gnostics with their teachings, both orally and in writing through
the books of the New Testament.
The complex movement of Gnosticism
made its appearance during the second and first centuries B.C. up to the fourth
century A.D. The Gnostics, dispersed in various autonomous communities without
a centralized priesthood, appeared almost simultaneously in many geographical
regions of the Roman Empire under various names of the leaders of the heresies:
Nicolaitans, Ebionites, Elcesaites, Samaritans, the heresy of Cerinthus, of
Simon the Magician, Dositheus, Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, Isidore,
Carpocrates, Docetists, Encratites, and others.
All these who represented the
conglomeration of Gnosticism took teachings and theories from the idolatrous
religions of the Persians, of Babylonia, of Syria, of Egypt, of the ancient
Greeks, from Judaism, and as a multifaceted religious movement, as was to be
expected, with the appearance of Christianity it attempted to adopt whatever
teachings it considered necessary, such as the person of Jesus Christ and the
principal points of Christian soteriology, and to adapt them to syncretism.
The teachings of Gnosticism are
many, just as many are the leaders of the heresies that belong to this
movement; we shall mention indicatively: It teaches that the creator god of the
Old Testament, of the Law and the Prophets, the god of Israel, is in conflict
with the good God, the Father of Jesus Christ, and that the world is regarded
as the creation of some inferior divine power; for this reason evil prevails.
It is also expressed in the
position that neither faith is useful, nor morality, nor worship, but only
knowledge is able to lead to salvation, and this knowledge is the awareness of
man, self-knowledge through which man reaches God. They taught that the presence
of Christ in the world was apparent. Christ united Himself with the man Jesus
at the Baptism in the Jordan River. The Passion was apparent, imaginary, since
it was not Christ Himself who was crucified, but Simon of Cyrene, to whom
Christ gave His form.
Certain Gnostics considered
matter to be evil and impure and followed a strict ascetic life in order to
destroy the body. Others again, in order to destroy the body, indulged in
insatiable enjoyment of every material pleasure, so that the way might be opened
toward pure knowledge and redemption. Irrational and incomprehensible
teachings.
The holy Apostles and the
Apostolic Fathers are those who discerned the great danger which Christianity
was running from Gnosticism; for this reason, they struggled with all their
powers against it. The whole of the New Testament constitutes a living
testimony to the struggle of the Church against the heterodox teachings which
bear the false name of Gnosis, when it was in development and was attacking
Christianity with syncretistic tendencies.
Perhaps the Evangelist John, in
order to repel Gnosticism, wrote the Gospel and the Epistles. From beginning to
end he insists that: “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14), that is, Christ truly
was incarnate and truly was seen by the eyewitnesses.
Knowing the teachings of
Gnosticism, the Apostle Paul, through his epistles, exhorts the Christians to
be attentive. To his disciple Timothy he draws attention: “O Timothy, guard the
precious treasure of the truth of the Gospel unadulterated, avoiding the
profane babblings and contradictions of the error which bears the false name of
Gnosis” (I Tim. 6:20). For this reason,n he also gives to his disciple Titus
the timeless counsel: “A heretical man, who after a first and second admonition
remains in his error, reject him and no longer discuss with him” (Titus 3:10).
The successors of the holy
Apostles, the Apostolic Fathers—Saint Ignatius, Polycarp, Hippolytus, Irenaeus,
and others—struggled vigorously against Gnosticism; we know this from their
writings. Later, the ecclesiastical writers—Origen, Clement of Alexandria,
Eusebius of Caesarea, Saint Epiphanius—provide us with many pieces of
information concerning the pan-heresy of Gnosticism.
From the time, therefore, of the
holy Apostles, for 2,000 years, many heresies have appeared which have fought
against and torn apart the Church of Christ. All these heresies prepared the
appearance, in our time, of the satanic pan-heresy of Ecumenism, which is being
promoted by Patriarchs and Metropolitans, “from grievous wolves not sparing the
flock” (Acts 20:29), dreadful wolves in the appearance of sheep, who do not
spare the rational sheep of Christ, as the Apostle Paul tells us clearly.
Your Beatitude, holy Hierarchs,
Fathers, brethren in Christ.
In later years, in the Byzantine
period and especially in 1054 A.D., the united Church of Christ, the Christian
world, was divided into the Eastern Orthodox Church with center the
Patriarchate of Constantinople, and into the Western so-called Papal Church
with center the Patriarchate of Rome. The Bishop of Rome and the Bishops of the
West were those who distortedly taught the truths of the Gospel, with the
result that they were cut off, separated from the “One, Holy, Catholic, and
Apostolic Church” and gradually constituted a separate independent
political-economic and diplomatic state with seat the Vatican. Therefore it is
wrong to call Papism a church, and indeed a Christian one, because the Papists
departed from the Apostolic Faith and do not have Apostolic succession, they do
not have Priesthood, they are heretics.
From that time onward the peoples
of the West, with the cooperation of the Pope and through every kind of
crusade, sought to subjugate the Byzantine state and the Orthodox Church. The
Byzantine emperors, in order to avoid the danger also from the western states,
entered into negotiations with the Pope of Rome, met in Councils, and
negotiated the Dogmas of the Church, that is, they bargained Orthodoxy, in
order to receive military assistance from the West against the various enemies
of the Byzantine State.
Ecclesiastical History mentions
ten Councils and as many meetings between Orthodox and Papal representatives
until 1453 A.D., when Constantinople was finally captured by the Ottomans.
Among these Councils two stand out. The first was the Council in the city of
Lyons in France in 1274 A.D., where the union of the Orthodox delegation with
the Papists took place. The decisions of this Council were not implemented,
because of various circumstances and also because of the resistance of the
faithful people of Byzantium. The reaction against the union was general in the
East, and the attempt of the Emperor to impose it by force, provoked even
greater reaction.
The most significant and final
attempt at union took place at the Council of Ferrara–Florence, in Northern
Italy in 1438–1439, fourteen years before the Ottomans captured Constantinople.
For this Council we have the most information from the memoirs of the Grand
Ecclesiarch, theologian and jurist Sylvester Syropoulos, who participated in
the numerous Orthodox delegation for this Council. Syropoulos therefore writes:
“The Byzantine delegation, headed by Emperor John VIII Palaiologos, Patriarch
Joseph, many Hierarchs and officials, went to Italy in order to seek military
assistance from Pope Eugene IV and to negotiate the Orthodox Faith.”
When the Orthodox arrived in the
city of Ferrara, Patriarch Joseph requested that a separate church be granted
to him in order to celebrate the Divine Liturgy apart from the Latins. The Pope
referred him to the Bishop of the city, who, with various pretexts, refused to
grant a church to the Orthodox. Finally, after many theological sessions
lasting seventeen months in Ferrara and Florence, under the pressures of the
Emperor and also the various pressures of the Pope, the Orthodox delegation
signed the union with the Latins; they signed the subjugation of Orthodoxy to
the heretical Pope.
The decision of the Council was
not signed by Saint Mark Eugenikos, by his brother John Eugenikos, by the
Metropolitan of Stavroupolis Isaiah, by the representatives of the Church of
Iberia–Georgia; it was not signed by the brother of the Emperor, Demetrios, by
the philosopher George Plethon, and by George Scholarios.
When the Pope was informed that
Saint Mark did not sign, he declared with bitterness: “So, we have accomplished
nothing,” it is as though we did nothing; and indeed this was so, because when
the Orthodox delegation returned to Constantinople, the people reproached those
who had signed the union and did not attend the churches in which the unionists,
the traitors of our Orthodox Faith, were officiating.
For a year and a half, they were
discussing and holding sessions in Ferrara and Florence; the result was that
they signed the betrayal of Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, the Pope was not able to
provide military assistance, and finally Constantinople fell into the hands of
the Ottomans. What was agreed upon at the Council is preserved for us by
Syropoulos in the words of Emperor John VIII Palaiologos: “We thus acted and
accepted the union, in order that each side might retain the customs and the
order which it had before. Neither did we adopt the doctrine of the Latins, nor
did the Latins adopt that of the Greeks.”
All these things we mention in
order to point out:
First: the delegation of the
Orthodox at the Councils first engaged in dialogue, discussed the differences
in the dogmas, and if the participants agreed, then and only then did they pray
together and concelebrate, in contrast to today’s Orthodox Ecumenists.
Second: from all these Councils,
from 1054 A.D. until 1453, the conclusion emerges that the Papists, the Latins,
were and are unyielding in their heretical teachings. “For we know that the
Latins in no way change anything of what they believe,” notes Sylvester
Syropoulos.
Third: When the Orthodox
representatives yielded in the Dogmas, when they betrayed the Orthodox Faith,
the Priests, the Monks, and the faithful people of God, the Orthodox
Christians, were those who annulled the treacherous decisions and unions,
because to a great extent they possessed the Orthodox phronema, so that
they resisted the decisions of the emperor, the Patriarch, and the
Metropolitans, whom they called traitors of Orthodoxy. In contrast to our time,
when we have fallen into a continual religious lethargy.
Fourth: All this treacherous
disturbance in the sphere of the Church is being created by the group of
Ecumenist Bishops of the Patriarchate of Constantinople together with the
heretical group of the Vatican. These few individuals, in a dictatorial manner,
wish to implement the dark plans of the New World Order and to unite supposedly
all Christians and thereafter to unite all the demonic religions with the
Orthodox Faith into one World Religion, leveling the person of the God-man
Jesus Christ with Muhammad, with Buddha, and with all the deities of Hinduism,
of Brahmanism, and of other beliefs.
The struggle of the Papal heresy
to subjugate and enslave the Orthodox Church of Christ continues. Dozens of
meetings and sessions followed between the Papists and the Orthodox even during
the years of the Turkish rule.
However, all the Local Councils
of Constantinople up to 1895 condemned the Papal heresies. The then sanctified
Fathers, the Bishops, the clergy, the Monks, and the people resisted, because
they believed that Papism is a heresy without divine grace, without Mysteries.
The holy Apostles, therefore, and
the Apostolic Fathers struggled so that the Christian faith might not be mixed
with the pan-heresy of Gnosticism. Persons, however, change, and just as in the
history of states traitors of the homeland appear and become the cause for the
state to be enslaved, so also in the sphere of Christianity. From the end of
the nineteenth century there appeared traitors of Orthodoxy—Patriarchs and
Metropolitans—who, knowing the indifference and the ignorance of the people
concerning the Orthodox faith, in a deceitful manner mixed Orthodoxy with the
pan-heresy of Ecumenism. And today there is a mixing of heresies and religions,
and all have the sense that with different ways of worship they believe in and
venerate the same god. Unified administration, unified economy, one currency,
one religion! Never before could Religious Syncretism have had such favorable
conditions for development as it possesses today.
The atheistic Dogma of Ecumenism
appears for the first time in 1878 in the heretical Protestant sphere, as an
effort at rapprochement and cooperation of all the Protestant groups. In
Europe, filled with heretical parasynagogues, from 1850 there appears a
religious discoloration. The large population of the cities falls into
unbelief, the clergy withdraws from the people, the churches are emptied, and
in general indifference and alienation prevail.
In the face of this danger of the
dissolution of the pseudo-churches, conservative groups appear which seek
cooperation and unification. After many unifications of Protestant groups in
England, in Germany, in France, in Holland, and in America, we arrive in 1948
at the General Assembly in Amsterdam of Holland, where, with the participation
of 147 Protestant confessions, the satanic conglomeration of heresies, the
W.C.C., is founded. Representatives were sent only by the Ecumenical
Patriarchate, the Church of Cyprus, and the pioneering Church of Greece.
In contrast to Papism, the
Orthodox Church is also a founding Member of this Organization called the
W.C.C., and indeed, thanks to the participation of the traitors of the
Ecumenical Patriarchate, the efforts of the Protestants acquired an Ecumenical
character. If the Orthodox Ecumenists had not participated, the whole movement
would have remained within the framework of a dead-end Protestant dialogue,
without authority and without the result of pan-Christian cooperation. Papism
did not become a member of the W.C.C., and this because it proclaims: “the
union of Christians can take place only through the return of all Christians to
the one true Church of Christ which is the Roman Catholic,” but it participates
actively in the work of various committees of the W.C.C. and attempts to
influence its entire course to its own benefit, on the basis of Papocentric
Ecumenism, as it was defined in 1965 at the Second Vatican Council.
And while all the Orthodox
Patriarchates and the local Churches, except that of Constantinople, refused to
participate in the W.C.C., this dynamic movement gradually subsides, and the
Orthodox Churches submit applications in order to be accepted as Members of the
W.C.C. at the General Assembly of New Delhi in 1961. The betrayal of Orthodoxy
in all its magnitude.
Your Beatitude, beloved Fathers
in Christ,
Our era is afflicted by many and
various heresies and chiefly by Ecumenism, which contains the totality of the
heresies and is promoted and imposed by the supposedly Orthodox Patriarchates.
This is the difference of atheistic Ecumenism from the earlier known heresies,
which disputed a specific Christian truth.
The ecumenical vision in its
extension is not limited only to the union of the Christian
churches–parasynagogues of Orthodox, Papists, Protestants, Anti-Chalcedonians,
but it extends also to the “religions of the world.” In its first phase it
begins from the so-called monotheistic religions—Christianity, Judaism, and
Islam—with the prospect of being extended also to the rest, Hinduism, Buddhism,
and others. All will remain immovable in their errors, and only we Orthodox
shall move from the one true faith, in order to accept the demonic theories of
all the heresies and religions, and all these things are done in the name of
hypocritical love.
The observation is that at the
beginning of the third A.D. millennium the Orthodox Church is fighting and
warring with the waves of a treacherous internal enemy, modern religious
syncretism, Ecumenism. The ship of the Church is again being buffeted; we, however,
know that whatever storms may break out, whatever wars may be declared,
whatever waves may rise, the ark of our salvation, our holy Church, “does not
endure shipwreck,” because she has as captain Christ Himself, who assures us,
“and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against her” (Matt. 16:18), that is,
all the powers of darkness shall not prevail against her.
In concluding, I would like to
thank our Beatitude Archbishop Mr. Kallinikos, the holy Hierarchs of our Holy
Synod, for the honor of entrusting to me the address of today’s confessional
gathering.
Thanks to the other Fathers and
to all of you for the effort and the patience to listen to me.
I wish you a good remainder of
the holy and Great Lent, and may God grant us to celebrate the holy Pascha.
Thank you.
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