The Apostle Against Ecumenism

A pastoral reflection on the eve of the feast of the Holy Chief Apostles Peter and Paul — on the Holy Apostle Saint Paul, the original anti-ecumenist, and on what he taught the Church in his own words.

Fr. Athanasios Lampropoulos | July 10, 2026

 

 

Many have been asking me about this.

On the 24th of June, 2026, His Beatitude Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem received Sarah Mullally, the first woman to serve as Archbishop of Canterbury, at the Patriarchate in Jerusalem. Together they visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Photographs of the visit have circulated widely. Good Orthodox people, on every calendar, have been troubled by them and have come to me, and to other priests, asking what to make of it.

Already the explanations are circulating. It was hospitality, we are told. A courtesy between neighbours. No prayer was shared. But there is no need for anyone to argue the point, because the visitors have settled it themselves. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s address to the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, published on her own website, thanks the Patriarch for the welcome at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and calls what took place there “a profound gift” — to have prayed together in that holy place. And the World Council of Churches, the body whose vocation for the better part of a century has been to make such scenes seem ordinary, described the visit in its own reporting as a “joint pilgrimage of prayer and solidarity.” On this one point I am content to take the ecumenical movement entirely at its word. They prayed together. They have said so themselves, in print, with photographs.

As we head into the weekend of the feast of the Holy Chief Apostles Peter and Paul, my thoughts have gone to Saint Paul in particular. Not to what the Fathers wrote about him. Not to what modern theologians say about him. But to what he himself wrote to the young Church, in his own words, in the epistles we still read at Divine Liturgy — because Saint Paul, brothers and sisters in Christ, is the original anti-ecumenist. And what he wrote on this specific question, he wrote plainly, and he wrote often, and it has not been repealed by any council of the Church in the twenty centuries since.

It is no secret that I am a strong Orthodox traditionalist. Anyone who knows me knows where I stand. But I write this reflection not as a partisan, and not from my own opinion. I write it as a priest handing back to his brothers and sisters in Christ what Saint Paul himself taught the Church.

As Saint Ieronymos of Aegina used to say, I am without quarrels. I do not write against persons. I write about what Saint Paul wrote about the specific situation in which teaching contrary to what was received begins to circulate among the faithful — and about what he told the Church, in that situation, to do.

Let us go to the Apostle himself.

To the Christians at Rome, at the close of the epistle in which he laid out the fullest exposition of the gospel we possess, Saint Paul wrote:

Now I urge you, brethren, mark those who cause divisions and offences, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them.

He does not tell the Church to discuss with them. He does not tell her to invite them into fellowship. He does not tell her to co-sign joint declarations with them. He tells her to mark them, and to avoid them.

To the young priest Titus, whom Saint Paul had left in Crete to organise the Church there, the Apostle wrote:

Reject a divisive man after the first and second admonition, knowing that such a person is warped and sinning, being self-condemned.

First warning. Second warning. Then reject. The Apostle does not counsel his priest to enter into a fifty-year theological dialogue. He counsels him to warn twice, and then to break fellowship.

To the Christians at Galatia, who were being visited by teachers proposing a modified gospel, the Apostle wrote what is the most solemn formula in his entire corpus:

Even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.

He says it twice. In adjacent sentences. Because he wants it heard. The word is anathema. Not welcomed. Not engaged as a partner in dialogue. Not received as a sister Church. Anathema. And the anathema stands even against an angel from heaven who would bring such a message. There is no earthly hierarch, however exalted his office, who ranks above an angel from heaven.

To the Christians at Thessalonica, Saint Paul wrote in the name of the Lord:

We command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us.

The tradition. What was received. Not what is being newly negotiated with those outside the Church. Not what is being drafted at joint theological commissions. What was received. And the command, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, is to withdraw from every brother who does not walk according to it.

To the Christians at Corinth, Saint Paul wrote what is perhaps the clearest text in the whole New Testament on the question of shared prayer and shared witness with those outside the received faith:

Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?... Therefore come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you.

What fellowship. What communion. What accord. Saint Paul asks the questions because he wants the reader to answer them. There is no fellowship between righteousness and lawlessness. There is no communion between light and darkness. There is no accord between Christ and Belial. And in the voice of the Lord Himself, the Apostle delivers the command: come out from among them. Be separate.

To the Christians at Ephesus, the Apostle wrote:

Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.

Two commands. First, no fellowship. Second, expose them. It is not enough for the faithful to withhold their own participation. They are commanded to bring into the light what has been done in shadow. What has been done at the Holy Sepulchre is not being exposed by those who did it. It falls to the ordinary priests of the Church, and to the faithful, to bring it into the light.

And to his beloved son Timothy, whom he had ordained to the episcopate, Saint Paul wrote twice, in two separate epistles, the same pastoral counsel:

If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing... from such withdraw thyself.

Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers... having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

From such withdraw thyself. From such turn away. The Apostle repeats himself, in adjacent epistles, to a young bishop, on this exact point. A bishop who does not withdraw from those who teach otherwise cannot preserve for his flock the deposit of faith he was ordained to preserve.

These are not obscure passages. They are not scattered pastoral asides that must be balanced against warmer texts. They are the consistent, repeated, urgent counsel of Saint Paul on how the Church is to respond when teaching contrary to what was received begins to circulate among the faithful. He wrote about it to Rome, to Corinth, to Galatia, to Thessalonica, to Ephesus, to Titus, and to Timothy. He wrote about it in almost every epistle we possess. He said the same thing every time.

Mark them. Warn them once. Warn them a second time. Then withdraw. Be separate. Have no fellowship with the works of darkness, but expose them. Do not receive into your house one who does not bring the received teaching. Turn away.

Saint Paul is the original anti-ecumenist. He wrote against the very posture that dominates the ecclesiastical diplomacy of our day. Shared prayer with those teaching contrary doctrines. Joint declarations of unity across the boundary of the received faith. Mutual recognition between bodies holding incompatible teachings. Saint Paul taught the opposite. Not because he did not love the persons on the other side of the boundary. He wept over them. He prayed for their salvation. But because he understood that shared prayer is a confession of shared faith, and that a Church which blurs the boundary of what she has received will not long possess what she has received.

What Saint Paul warned the Church about is what the ordinary Orthodox reader is now watching happen in his news feed.

And the Church heard him. What Saint Paul wrote in his epistles, the Church wrote into her law. Among the canons of the Holy Apostles, received by the whole Church at the Sixth Ecumenical Council, stands Canon 45:

Let a bishop, presbyter, or deacon, who has only prayed with heretics, be excommunicated: but if he has permitted them to perform any clerical office, let him be deposed.

Who has only prayed. The canon does not wait for concelebration, or intercommunion, or a signed declaration of union. Prayer alone is the threshold. And the Council of Laodicea says the same thing in a single sentence, in its thirty-third canon:

One must not join in prayer with heretics or schismatics.

These canons are not the private severity of zealots. They are the Apostle’s epistles translated into the discipline of the Church, written down by men who had read Galatians and Corinthians and believed that Saint Paul meant what he said. When the ecumenical movement describes shared prayer at the Holy Sepulchre as a gift, the canons of the Church describe it as a matter for excommunication. Both descriptions cannot be true.

This is not only the Apostle’s teaching. It is the teaching the Church has continued to know, even in the most compromised eras of her recent history. Only forty-eight years ago, in July of 1978, the eleven New Calendar Patriarchates and Autocephalous Churches sent delegates to a Joint Doctrinal Commission with the Anglicans at Pendeli Monastery near Athens. The Orthodox delegates unanimously signed a document declaring the ordination of women to be, in their own words, “a violation of the apostolic faith and order of the Church.” They declared further that the Orthodox “cannot regard the Anglican proposals to ordain women as a purely internal matter, in which the Orthodox are not concerned.” The document is preserved at prounione.it/dialogues/a-o. What was signed at Pendeli in 1978 was what the Apostle had written to Galatia in the first century. What is now being done at the Holy Sepulchre in 2026 is what the Apostle told the Church, in the same epistle, to anathematise.

Saint Mark of Ephesus, in the fifteenth century, stood alone against a compromising union between his own Ecumenical Patriarchate and Rome at the Council of Ferrara–Florence. Every other Orthodox bishop present signed the union. Mark refused. He is the reason the Church did not lose her identity in that generation. He was doing what Saint Paul had commanded a thousand years before. Mark those who cause divisions contrary to the doctrine you have learned, and avoid them. Even if it be the Emperor. Even if it be the Pope. Even if it be your own Patriarch. Even if it be an angel from heaven.

So when the brothers and sisters in Christ who have been troubled by the recent photographs come to me and ask what to do, I answer as best I know how. I answer from what Saint Paul wrote in seven separate epistles, from what he said twice in Galatians because he wanted it heard, and from what he told Timothy, Titus, and every Church he founded.

Do not panic. Do not shrug. Be vigilant. Hold what was received. Mark those who bring another teaching. Warn them. After the second admonition, turn away. Not with hatred. Not with contempt for persons. But with the calm confidence that the Apostle knew what he was writing about — and that the Church is not free, on any calendar or in any generation, to negotiate away what he handed down to her.

This weekend, as we keep the feast of the Holy Chief Apostles, I ask you to remember whose feast we are keeping. Pray for me. Pray for every priest of every jurisdiction. Pray for the hierarchs of the Church, that God may return to them the courage of the Apostle whose feast they are about to serve. And may Saint Paul, who paid for his fidelity with his life at Rome under Nero, pray for us who are trying, imperfectly, in our own day, to teach what he taught.

Holy Apostle Paul, pray to God for us.

 

Source: https://patristicwitness.com/ArticleDetail?id=6a5165bd4cb733d6cb7731a7