A Brief-Partial Examination of the Dogma of Orthodox Unity in the Faith and in Divine Worship

Konstantinos L. Georgitsis

 

 

A Few Explanatory Words Concerning the Important Text that Follows

The voice of our Holy Triune Father, as a “voice of many waters,” beseeches us: “That they all may be one.” He simply wants us, as we confess in the Divine Liturgy, to keep “the unity of the Faith and the communion of the Holy Spirit” as the apple of our eye.

The Truth, our Christ, the true faith, Orthodoxy, we know what it cost the enhypostatic Logos. He offered and continues to offer His All-Holy Body and Blood to the light-bearing children of His Church, of which He is the Head and not anyone else; according to the Apostle Paul, the bishop too is “in the type and place” of the Lord, when he rightly divides the word of truth.

Therefore, as members of His Body, the Church, “which He purchased with His own Blood,” He demands unity. Unfortunately, we have tarnished this unity with our “high-minded” behavior and way of life. Indeed, now, as we are facing the last times, by common confession, we observe, especially after the great tectonic earthquake of the Kolymbari Council of Crete in 2016, the powerful sifting even among the few walling off brethren. Thus the word of our Lord is fulfilled: “When I come again, shall I find the faith?”

The praiseworthy work of brother Konstantinos G. awakens us, troubles us, and, as a trumpet of revelation, sets us before our responsibilities. It deserves not only to be read, but to be studied. Let us leave aside our pettiness, our clever sayings and smartness, our own wills. Luke 17:2 should shake us deeply. Let us not make the simple things of God insoluble and difficult. We need simplicity, directness, sincerity, and a humble mind, in order to give God the possibility to cooperate with us.

To our beloved brother in Christ, Konstantinos G., we pray that the Grace of the Comforter may overshadow him, with the prayer that the Lord may open our ears, and the mind and heart of the readers, to the glory of the Holy God in Trinity and for our salvation.

A brother in Christ,

Fr. Georgios D. Angelakakis

 

A Brief-Partial Examination of the Dogma of Orthodox Unity in the Faith and in Divine Worship

 

If one attempts, in good faith and openly, an in-depth penetration into the spirit of the hierarchy of priorities in the pursuits of the Holy Fathers who “conferred together in the Holy Spirit” at the Holy Ecumenical and Local Councils, it is certain that the conclusion will emerge that their primary pursuit was the universal unity of the Church “in all things.” That is, the unity of faith, dogma and ethos, in an unbroken conjunction with one ecclesiastical order, as a single and compact Orthodox ecclesiastical life, which was secured as a dogma of faith in the Symbol of Faith: “I believe ... in One ... Church.”

In this unity, whose dominant characteristic feature is, alongside the dogmatic, its supra-dogmatic and, through the commandment “do not remove the ancient landmarks which your fathers have set” (Prov. 22:28), unchanging character; which was prepared, delimited, built up, and safeguarded “in the Holy Spirit” by the Holy Fathers who “ordered all things well”; and which unity is expressed and made perceptible, that is, becomes apprehensible also through the senses, by means of the worship of the Holy Triune God, Divine Worship, the word of our Lord Jesus Christ is fulfilled: “that they all may be one” (John 17:21).

Divine Worship, then, together with its property as a prerequisite also of the sacred Mystery of the Divine Eucharist, may be characterized as the culmination of the practical Orthodox life of the Church. That is, of the collective life which, being composed of individual ecclesiastical acts, constitutes and achieves the completion of Divine Worship. And these ecclesiastical acts are:

A) The uniform and simultaneous Pan-Orthodox celebration of the movable and immovable Feasts of the Master,

B) The uniform and simultaneous Pan-Orthodox celebration of the Feasts of the Theotokos and of the feasts of the Great Saints of the Church, and

C) The uniform and simultaneous Pan-Orthodox observance of the periods of the Holy Fasts established each year by the Church.

Confirmation of what has been mentioned thus far concerning the unity “in all things,” which the Holy Fathers primarily pursued and achieved through the Holy Ecumenical and Local Councils, is provided by two letters, portions of which it is judged beneficially appropriate to set forth below, following the above.

The letter of the Holy and Equal-to-the-Apostles Constantine the Great, “which he sent from the city of Nicaea to the bishops who were absent from the Council,” obviously after the conclusion of the sessions of the First Holy Ecumenical Council, which the ecclesiastical historian Gelasios of Cyzicus preserved in his work An Account of the Acts Performed at the Holy Council in Nicaea, and the letter of Saint Athanasios the Great which he addressed to the Bishops of Africa.

Constantine the Great writes the following:

“Constantine Augustus to the Churches.

Having gained experience from the prosperity of common affairs, so that the grace of divine power is naturally such, I judged this to be the aim befitting me before all things: that among the most blessed multitudes of the catholic Church, One Faith, sincere love, and like-minded piety toward Almighty God be preserved.... In addition to these things, that too is present for consideration: that in so great a matter, and in the feast of such a religion, it is unlawful for discord to exist, that is, lawless, impious, unholy.... Let the intelligence, then, of our holiness consider how dreadful and unbecoming it is, on the same days, for some to devote themselves to fasts, while others hold banquets. And after the days of Pascha, for some to be examined in feasts and relaxations, while others are given over to the appointed fasts. For this reason, therefore, Divine Providence wills that this should obtain the fitting correction and be brought to one formulation.”

(Acts of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1, p. 281, ed. Holy Skete of St. Anna, Holy Mountain).

And in accordance with the above, Athanasios the Great confirms this with the following:

“For it, that is, the First Ecumenical Council, was convened because of the Arian heresy and because of Pascha... But thanks be to the Lord, just as concerning the Faith, so also concerning the Holy Feast, agreement was reached. And this, that is, the agreement, was the cause of the Council on Nicaea.”

Possibly, in objection to what has been written thus far, the objection may be put forward that the texts of these two letters refer only to the feast of Pascha. However, an objection of this sort may be characterized as pharisaical, deceitfully sophistical, and revealing of a lack of genuine ecclesiastical mind and of insufficient ability for in-depth theological penetration into the spirit of the pursuits of the Holy Fathers that are beneficial for the Church.

A possible claim that the institution, by the Holy Fathers, of Orthodox Unity does not include all the Feasts of the Church, movable and immovable, could be characterized, to put it mildly, as absurd.

That is, the claim that the Holy Fathers did indeed pursue the agreement-unity of the Ecumenical Church in the simultaneous celebration of the feast of Holy Pascha, but were indifferent to her agreement-unity in the simultaneous celebration of all the feasts of the ecclesiastical festal calendar. In other words, this would ultimately mean the prevalence of an incomplete unity, and not of a complete unity, in the Orthodox Faith and in Divine Worship!!!

This claim is refuted by the third discourse of Saint John Chrysostom to Makarios Philogenes, concerning the feast of Christmas, which is highly revealing of the fact that the Holy Fathers regarded all the Feasts of the Master as equal to Holy Pascha, and which he characterizes as “the metropolis of all the feasts,” as follows:

“For from this, that is, from the feast of Christmas, Theophany, and holy Pascha, and the Ascension, and Pentecost received their beginning and their foundation. For if Christ had not been born according to the flesh, He would not have been baptized, which is Theophany; He would not have been crucified, which is Pascha; He would not have sent down the Spirit, which is Pentecost. So from here, as though from some spring from which various rivers flow, these Feasts were appointed for us.”

From all that has been mentioned up to this point, the conclusion follows naturally that the Holy Fathers, being moved by the Holy Spirit, fully understood that the unity of the Faith, joined inseparably with unity in Divine Worship, becomes a compact fundamental condition for the Church, above every dogma and at the same time a parallel dogma alongside all ecclesiastical dogmas, expressed in the Symbol of Faith through the article: “I believe ... in One ... Church.”

It is, moreover, a “commonplace” definition that dogmas are the laws and rules of the Orthodox Faith, which, by their very nature and structure, admit of no alteration.

For this reason, the Holy Fathers primarily pursued the prevalence in the Church of this compact supra-dogmatic condition, and established it as a fixed ecclesiastical order, which they adapted to the Julian calendar that had been in force from the time of the earthly appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ onward.

And this Julian calendar, because of this adaptation, served the Unity of the Faith and of Divine Worship in the Church for one thousand six hundred and more years, despite whatever disagreements and disorders arose from time to time, which were dissolved by the Councils convened after the First Ecumenical Council, those in Antioch, the Fourth, the Sixth, the Seventh, and so forth; and these, after defining the unshakable observance of the terms and canons of the Councils before them, stabilized Ecclesiastical Unity.

Therefore, no one is entitled to lay a profane hand upon the Unity of the Faith and of Divine Worship of the Church, violating her timeless Divine institutions, without running the risk of becoming schismatic or even, depending on the purpose he serves, becoming heretical.

This, unfortunately, took place in the year 1924 on the part of the Church of Greece and the Patriarchate of Constantinople, within the framework of the activation of the ecumenistic encyclical of 1920, where, through the violent, unilateral, and coup-like overthrow of the Orthodox Festal Calendar, without the consent of the whole Church, by the imposition of the papal-Gregorian calendar, despite whatever lies about a corrected Julian calendar were deployed, two conditions were achieved:

A) The lawless, impious, and unholy rupture of the Unity of the Faith and of the Unity of Divine Worship of the Orthodox Church; and

B) The introduction of the Orthodox Church into the pan-heresy of Ecumenism.

The Position of the Julian Calendar in the Ecclesiastical Sphere and its Contribution to the Formation of the Dogma of Orthodox Unity

In former times, and also recently, certain claims of this kind have been put forward: “The Church did not establish any calendar, much less as a dogma of faith!!! Consequently, the calendar reform, according to the view of those who make excuses, is something non-essential and does not constitute an impediment to the salvation of Christians,” and other similar untheological, pretextual claims which flow from ignorance, prejudice, subjective interpretations made without competence, inadequacy of theological ability for deeper penetration, and so forth.

For the refutation and overturning of the above claims, pretexts in sins, it is useful to mention the following:

The Julian calendar, whose unilateral and coup-like change is, with deceitful intent, disconnected by some from the pan-heresy of Ecumenism, being in force at the time of the Divine Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, was accepted by the Christian world, that is, the Church, and was used for the chronological determination of the events of the Incarnate Divine Economy of the Son and Logos of God the Father; that is, for the progressive formation of the Ecclesiastical Festal Calendar, which she adapted to it, the Julian Calendar.

And through this adaptation the Church incorporated it into her Sacred Tradition, for the Festal Calendar too constitutes a part of her Sacred Tradition, so that, through the inseparable conjunction of the Festal Calendar and the Julian calendar, the dogma of Ecclesiastical Unity in the Faith and in Divine Worship might be served in harmony.

However, despite the Church’s use of the Julian calendar, she showed, acting most wisely, indifference toward its scientific-astronomical character, changes of equinoxes, chronological corrections of days, years, and so forth, although many of the Holy Fathers possessed the science of Astronomy; and she showed a parallel indifference to the existence of other calendars, Egyptian, Macedonian, and so forth, which were in use among certain nations.

And this because the Church was not making a choice among calendars, but was hastening to regulate her Unity, within the framework of all that has already been mentioned concerning this Unity.

In this sense Saint Chrysostom says in his famous homily “To Those Who Fast at the First Pascha” that “the Church of Christ does not know exactness of times and observation of days,” according to the interpretation which Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite gives to this in his interpretation of the 7th Apostolic Canon, Pedalion, pp. 8–9, first footnote. Consequently, no one ever “dogmatized” the Julian calendar in itself, and especially not according to its scientific-astronomical character, as is distortedly and prejudicially attributed to those who confessionally opposed the overthrow, introductory into Ecumenism, of the Orthodox Festal Calendar, which is inseparably joined, as was written above, with the Julian calendar.

However, it could be asserted without sin that this calendar, in itself, constituted a dogma of faith both for those who took the lead in the anti-Orthodox innovation of dividing Ecclesiastical Unity in the Faith and in Divine Worship through the unholy and impious overthrow of the Orthodox Festal Calendar-Calendar, and also for those who down to the present day champion it in various ways and without competence, with proclamations “concerning the necessary astronomical corrections of the ecclesiastical calendar” (???) so that there should be no confusion, “shudder, O sun!”, between the ecclesiastical life of Christians and the commercial, social, and other “cosmopolitan” activities of the world possessed by earthly and materialistic mindsets, as though the salvation of Christians were thereby placed at stake!!!

They ignore that this secularization constitutes the central core of Ecumenism, in conjunction with its pan-religious structure.

It is judged beneficially appropriate to note that this deviation into declarations made without competence conflicts:

A) With the timeless indication of Saint Theodore the Studite that “the ecclesiastical canons do not permit points of the Faith which have already been clearly determined by the Church to be set forth for discussion,” that is, a discussion which often constitutes a precondition for questioning the truth, “which is ... the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15); and

B) With the declaration of the whole Church, through the Encyclical of the Patriarchs of the year 1848, that every innovation constitutes “a prompting of the devil,” and that “he who accepts an innovation accuses the proclaimed Orthodox Faith of being deficient...” and in this way “...has already denied the Faith of Christ, has already voluntarily subjected himself to the eternal anathema, which our Savior first pronounced, for blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, as though He had not spoken perfectly in the Scriptures and Ecumenical Councils.”

In answer to the objection that “the festal-calendar reform is some non-essential event, which does not constitute an impediment to the salvation of Christians,” the following must be said.

Every faithful person, in the freedom of his conscience and his disposition, using as a “touchstone” the declaration of the Church set forth above, and the Evangelical and Holy Patristic word which will be cited subsequently, should ask himself, and not according to the dictation or manipulation of other people, whether his salvation is placed at stake because of his acceptance, adoption, and implementation in his life within the Church of this most grievous, most impious, anti-Orthodox and anti-ecclesiastical transgression, introductory into the pan-heresy of Ecumenism.

Two reasons support the fact that the festal-calendar reform is not a non-essential event and does not constitute a triviality, because it is contrary to the fundamental Divine institutions for Orthodox Unity established by the Holy Fathers who “conferred together in the Holy Spirit” at the Holy Ecumenical Councils.

At this point it is worth noting parenthetically that the heresy of Iconoclasm too was characterized by some as an “ecclesiastical reform” (see Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos, History of the Greek Nation).

The first reason comes from the most truthful mouth of the Lord Himself, which He addressed to the Holy Apostles, who constituted “the foundation stones” upon which His Church was built by the Holy Fathers.

The Lord says: “He who rejects you,” that is, my Apostles and, successively, my Saints, “rejects Me,” that is, rejects, despises, “and he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me” (Luke 10:16).

The second reason is that by which, from the mouth of Saint Gregory Palamas, we are informed that “the smallest thing in matters concerning God is not small” (E.P.E. 1, p. 70). And it is not “small,” because “the smallest thing” “in matters concerning God” contributes to the salvation or to the perdition of the people of the Church.

So that the word may not appear excessively harsh, and especially as though it proceeds from “fanaticism,” the question is posed for fruitful reflection:

What, then, is the meaning of the word spoken by the Lord, that “many will say to Me in that day,” that is, of the universal judgment, “‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? And in Thy name cast out demons? And in Thy name done many mighty works?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who work lawlessness.’”

Could it be that some who, according to appearance and according to human, often superficial, criteria are “saints,” but who committed “non-essential” acts of lawlessness, will be driven away into eternal punishment? The Lord knows! Let us pray for the repentance, for the return in humility to the path of the unadulterated and uninnovated Faith, and for the salvation of the well-intentioned brethren among them!

Again, the sacred Evangelical word says: “For whoever shall keep the whole law,” see the Orthodox Faith, “and yet stumble in one point,” see the acceptance and adoption of the anti-festal innovation, “he has become guilty of all,” that is, guilty before the whole Orthodox Faith (Jas. 2:10).

The interpretive confirmation of the above Evangelical word comes from Saint John Chrysostom, who teaches:

“Just as in the case of royal coins, he who clips off even a small part of the stamp has made the whole coin counterfeit, that is, spurious, so also he who has overturned even the very smallest part of the sound faith corrupts the whole, advancing from the beginning toward worse things” (E.P.E. 20, p. 194).

Saint Tarasios, the president of the Seventh Holy Ecumenical Council, summarizes the words set forth above in his saying: “To sin in matters of dogma, whether small or great, is the same thing; for by both the Law of God is rejected” (Acts of the Holy Ecumenical Councils, vol. 3, p. 236, edition of the Holy Skete of Saint Anna, Holy Mountain).

In conclusion to what has been written thus far, it is judged beneficial for many to set forth a word of Athanasios the Great, which confirms in summary all that has been written up to this point: “The tradition and teaching and faith of the Catholic Church from the beginning, which the Lord gave, the Apostles preached, and the Fathers preserved. For in this the Church is founded, and he who falls away from this would neither be, nor be called, a Christian” (E.P.E. 4, pp. 164 & 166).

May this word, in conjunction with what has been set forth above, constitute an exhortation for those who have adopted and follow the evil-believing, anti-festal, and anti-ecclesiastical ecumenistic innovation to return, in repentance and humility, to the unadulterated Way of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, far from every innovation, where, unaffected by heresies and schisms, according to a commandment of the Holy Apostles, the reunion of truly Orthodox Christians on Orthodox ground will be accomplished!

Amen! May it be so!

Konstantinos L. Georgitsis, Molos, Locris.

 

Original Greek source: https://agiooros.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=14586

Reposted: https://krufo-sxoleio.blogspot.com/2019/02/blog-post_14.html