The Orthodox Attitude Towards Heresy and Ecumenism

By Hieromonk Sava

Monastery of Decani, Serbia

Having found many different views regarding the Orthodox attitude towards heresy, I would like to add a few thoughts which we have expressed on this subject in our recent book Ecumenism and the Age of Apostasy.

Indisputably, it is our obligation to show Christian love to non-Orthodox Christians and to honor the image of Christ which they bear. However, with regard to matters of the Faith, it behooves us to show humility and love for our Lord and to act in accordance with the principles of the Church, which were established by the (Ecumenical Synods and the teachings of the Holy Fathers.

At a personal level, we must maintain feelings of human compassion and respect for non-Orthodox Christians who suffer for their faith in Christ, or for their monastics, who struggle within their monastic disciplines and often approach some level of moral perfection. But we can in no way simply disregard the decisions of the Church and accept heretics into Eucharistic communion, or, similarly, engage them in liturgical or joint prayer, without their first converting to Orthodoxy.

As well, we cannot embrace the notion that heterodox “churches" are able to provide eternal salvation. It is possible for the Grace of God to act in a variety of ways outside the Church, but no one can be truly deified or attain to real and full union with Christ outside the Orthodox Church—without the spirit of true humility and holiness, which resides only within Orthodoxy. One cannot say with certainty if the non-Orthodox are saved or not; but what is clear is that, according to Patristic teaching, no one can be saved within a heretical confession, regardless of whether he considers it to be the true Church.

This is why we are bound to tell the heterodox, sincerely and with brotherly love, that some (if not all) of their beliefs are mistaken and need to be corrected. This correction entails the acceptance of all of the teachings of the Orthodox Church, which she has preserved since Apostolic times and which the heretical confessions have, to one extent or another, lost.

If we succumb to human sentimentalities and abstain in whatever way from confessing the truth that the Orthodox Church is the only true Church of Christ, and that all of the other (heterodox) “churches" have deviated from the truth, then we are in reality responsible for their error.

Let us recall the words of St. Maximos the Confessor:

“I write these things, not wishing to cause distress to the heretics or to rejoice in their ill-treatment—God forbid; but, rather, rejoicing and being gladdened at their return. For what is more pleasing to the Faithful than to see the scattered children of God gathered again as one? Neither do I exhort you to place harshness above the love of men. May I not be so mad! I beseech you to do and to carry out good to all men with care and assiduity, becoming all things to all men, as the need of each is shown to you. I want and pray you to be wholly harsh and implacable with the heretics only in regard to cooperating with them or in any way whatever supporting their deranged belief. For I reckon it misanthropy and a departure from Divine love to lend support to error, that those already captivated by it should undergo still greater corruption" (Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XCI, col. 465CD [Epistle 12: “To John the Chamberlain"]).

Do we have greater love than the Apostle John, who hastened to flee from the baths where Cerynthos, “the enemy of God" was? Do the Orthodox ecumenists have greater love than the Holy Fathers? To my mind, the problem of our generation is that we often fall into the temptation of thinking that we have greater love than the Saints, or that we know matters better than they did. There is obviously something seriously mistaken in the contemporary humanistic idea of love. We Orthodox should strive to confess boldly the true love of Christ, regardless of what others say.

 

Translated from the Greek by Archbishop Chrysostomos [of Etna] from the periodical Όρθόόοξος Ένημέρωσις, No. 23 (January-March 1997), p. 87.

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XV (1998), Nos. 2-3, pp. 19-20.