Wednesday, March 25, 2026

“When we say that heretics and schismatics do not belong to the Church…”


To the Church of Christ belong all who truly and in an Orthodox manner believe—not only the righteous, but also sinners who repent of their sins and, consequently, strive for correction. But there is a limit which one must not transgress, lest one be excluded from the composition of the members of the Church. If any of those who have sinned transgress the established limit, they, by a visible act of the judgment of God, as dead members, are cut off from the body of the Church. Thus, no longer belonging to the Church are apostates from the Christian faith, who reject it, again becoming pagans or, in general, adherents of other religions; heretics and sectarians, who, though they have not completely renounced the Christian faith, deny or distort its fundamental dogmas, do not belong to the church; schismatics do not belong to the Church; although they do not distort the essence of Christian teaching, they do not submit to ecclesiastical authority and thereby arbitrarily separate themselves from the Church, gradually reaching heresy in their extreme conclusions and deductions.

Heresy, schism, and sectarianism indicate an incorrect, abnormal attitude toward the Orthodox faith on the part of erring and disobedient members of the Church, to whom these concepts are applied. Heresy indicates a very significant deviation concerning essential truths of the faith, without the acknowledgment of which, or with a distorted understanding of which, belonging to the Church is inconceivable, such as, for example, the rejection of the equality of the Son of God with God the Father, the denial in Jesus Christ of divinity or humanity, of His Messianic dignity, and the like. Sectarianism pertains more to the canonical, disciplinary, and administrative aspect of the Church; it disputes, for example, the correctness and usefulness of the external ritual aspect of the Church as an institution resembling civil institutions; sectarians reject priests as mediators between God and man, ascribing to every person the capacity, possibility, and necessity of direct appeal to the Deity in the form of prayer, and the like. The followers of schisms, both ancient and recent, seem to deviate less from the faith; but their sad and harmful aspect consists in this, that, beginning with a small deviation in rites and externals, under the influence of hostility and distrust toward ecclesiastical authority, they afterward, gradually and imperceptibly, come to excess and to what is important, from rite to dogma, becoming sectarians and heretics.

When we say that heretics and schismatics do not belong to the Church, we do not mean those among them who hold to heresy or schism in secret, without outwardly separating themselves from the Church, or those who have been led astray by heretical errors out of ignorance and without obstinacy, but those who openly separate themselves from the Church or have been openly excommunicated by it; that is, we mean apostates who are obstinate and malicious, serving as a scandal and harm to the Church. [Emphasis added.]

- Archimandrite Augustin (Sinaysky) (+1916), Abbot of the Pskov-Caves Monastery, ecclesiastical historian, spiritual writer, and lecturer at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. Former rector of the Stavropol Theological Seminary.

Source: О падших и отлученных в древнехристианской церкви и русской [On the Fallen and the Excommunicated in the Ancient Christian Church and in the Russian Church], St. Petersburg: Printing House “Kolokol,” 1908.

Online:

https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Avgustin_Sinajskij/o-padshih-i-otluchennyh-v-drevnehristianskoj-tserkvi-i-russkoj/

 

 

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