Advice Is One Thing, a Command Is Another: Elderism and the Limits of Spiritual Authority

By Protopresbyter Christophoros Chronis

Assistant Professor, School of Theology,

Department of Theology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

 

 

Eleni, a teacher of about thirty-five, asked to speak with her parish priest after spending eight years under the guidance of a very well-known spiritual father. Throughout those years, he decided whether she should accept an appointment in another city, instructed her to distance herself from her sister because, as he put it, “she did not understand the spiritual life,” and expected her to seek his blessing before making any significant purchase (a house, a car, etc.). When she once hesitated, he told her that whoever doubts his spiritual father doubts God. Today, prayer frightens her, and she feels guilty whenever she makes a decision on her own. She does not use the word abuse. She simply says, “I was not obedient enough.”

The figure of Eleni has been drawn from numerous pastoral encounters, so that no actual person can be identified. Those who minister the Holy Mystery of Repentance and Confession know that they frequently encounter people like her, and that her words, “I was not obedient enough,” are heard in the confessional far more often than one might expect. By the term “elderism” (γεροντισμός), we do not mean genuine spiritual fatherhood as exercised by the Elders, which has given the Church her saints, but rather its distortion, which leads to its degeneration. The spiritual father, whether a clergyman or a monk, ceases to guide the individual toward Christ and instead binds him to himself, while the faithful person transfers to him decisions that properly belong to his own responsibility. Obedience, which the ascetical tradition places near the summit of the spiritual life, then becomes a mechanism of control. Contemporary research, having listened attentively to the testimonies of those who have been wounded, describes spiritual abuse as the coercion and control of one person by another within a spiritual context. Among its manifestations are the demand for obedience to the spiritual guide and the isolation of the faithful person from those outside that relationship. [1]

Orthodox pastoral theology, on the one hand, cannot deny that such harm also occurs within its own communities. And when it does occur, it constitutes a grave pastoral failing that cannot be justified by any appeal to obedience. The spiritual father who binds a person's soul to himself, rather than guiding it toward Christ, must give an account for the souls whom God entrusted to his care in order that he might set them free, many of whom have been spiritually crushed. On the other hand, however, Orthodox pastoral theology cannot address this problem by abandoning obedience, for in doing so it would abandon a central element of its spiritual heritage. The Fathers knew how easily spiritual authority could be misused, and for this reason they bequeathed to us criteria that distinguish obedience which heals from control which wounds.

1. First Test the Helmsman

St. John Climacus instructs anyone intending to enter the arena of obedience first to examine and, as he writes, to test the helmsman, lest he find himself with a sailor instead of a helmsman, a sick man instead of a physician, a man subject to the passions instead of one free from them, and thus bring about his own shipwreck. [2] The exhortation that the disciple should not judge his Elder for minor human weaknesses comes afterward. Discernment, therefore, is exercised at the beginning of the relationship and is the responsibility of the disciple, who remains free to choose a guide and, consequently, free not to choose one.

The same author calls the spiritual father “a mediator unto God, and after God.” [3] The spiritual father who teaches that doubting him is equivalent to doubting God has silently erased the words “after God.” He now occupies a position that belongs to Christ alone, the “one mediator between God and men,” [4] and this is exceedingly dangerous.

2. Advice Is One Thing, a Command Is Another

The most precise criterion is found in the Questions and Answers of Venerable Barsanuphius and John, where the art of spiritual guidance unfolds through hundreds of written responses to monks and laypeople in Gaza. A brother asks whether he is obliged to carry out without exception every answer he receives from the Fathers. Abba John, the disciple and fellow ascetic of the Great Elder, replies with discernment: “Not all of them. Only those that are given to him as commands. For simple counsel according to God is one thing, and a command is another. Counsel is an admonition, not a binding obligation, and shows a person the straight path of life. A command, on the other hand, has the character of a binding obligation.” [5]

Admonition reveals the path and leaves the person free to walk it. In the following question and answer, the Elder explains what happens when a disciple, who has sought an answer according to God rather than a command, does not follow what he has heard: “Now, if you do not wish to do what your spiritual father has told you, this does not mean that you are a transgressor of a commandment, for you have not received a command. Rather, it shows that you are neglecting your own spiritual benefit, and for this reason you ought to blame yourself.” [6] The disciple does not transgress a commandment. He neglects his own spiritual benefit, and it is for this reason alone that he reproaches himself. An even more crucial clarification follows, since the character of what is said is determined by the intention of the one speaking: “If you ask the Elder to give you a command, but he has no such intention, his answer will not be regarded as a command, even if you have requested one.” [7]

This distinction places a grave responsibility upon anyone who offers spiritual guidance. The spiritual father who wishes to remain faithful to the tradition must know, and must make clear, when he is offering admonition or counsel and when he is giving a command. When this distinction is forgotten, whether inadvertently or deliberately, every piece of advice comes to be heard as a command, and every hesitation as disobedience to God Himself. This is the voice that Eleni still hears.

For laypeople who live in the world and have not made a monastic vow of obedience, what their spiritual father tells them generally falls within the category of counsel. Decisions concerning marriage, profession, place of residence, medical treatment, and so forth belong to the person who will live with their consequences. The spiritual father prays with him, offers counsel, and opens his eyes to the light of the Gospel. He does not make decisions on his behalf. Never, and for no reason whatsoever.

3. Pastoral Observations

The spiritual father-confessor must explicitly state whether he is offering counsel or giving a command, and in dealing with laypeople, he will almost always offer counsel. It is advisable for him to ask permission before addressing matters that the penitent has not himself raised. When someone suffers from depression or another mental illness, the spiritual father encourages him to continue his treatment and, where necessary, cooperates with his attending physician, rather than interpreting the illness as a lack of humility. He may counsel discretion, as the ascetical tradition does, in order to protect the individual from vainglory. He must never, however, forbid him to speak about their relationship with his parents, his wife, or another spiritual father, nor may he present such a prohibition as an act of obedience. The seal of confession binds the spiritual father and protects the penitent, who remains free to speak about his own life to whomever he wishes. When the spiritual father forbids him to do so, he turns a protection established by the Church for the sake of the vulnerable on its head and transforms it into a shield for the powerful.

Church communities also bear responsibility. The freedom to choose a spiritual father and, when necessary, to change him belongs to the tradition, and parishes and monasteries ought to proclaim this openly rather than regard a change of spiritual father as an act of betrayal. The Metropolises need clearly established channels through which the faithful can express their concerns about a particular confessor, together with procedures for examining such concerns seriously. The training of clergy needs to include ongoing pastoral education, so that future spiritual fathers may recognize dependency both in those whom they guide and in their own need to be needed by them.

Those who have been wounded need patience above all. Many, like Eleni, have learned to hear the voice of God in the voice of the person who harmed them. The priest who receives them can offer them the Psalms of repentance that fill our divine services, together with the assurance that every human being bears the image of God, without pressuring them to return hastily to the Mystery of Confession. Some will need to distance themselves from confession for a time, and the Church can respect this distance as part of their spiritual consolation and healing.

Eleni continues to attend church services. For months, she was unable to go to confession, and her new spiritual father did not insist. When she finally knelt beneath his epitrachelion, she did so because she herself wished to. Now she often asks him, half in jest, whether something he has said is “advice or a command.” He always answers her, and she has begun once again to make the decisions concerning her life for herself, while she now listens to her spiritual father’s admonitions without fear.

 

NOTES

1. L. Oakley and K. Kinmond, Breaking the Silence on Spiritual Abuse, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2013, pp. 21–22.

2. St. John of Sinai, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step IV, “On Blessed and Ever-Memorable Obedience,” §7, in Philokalia of the Watchful and Ascetical Fathers, vol. 16, text, translation, and commentary by Eleftherios G. Meretakis, Patristic Publications “Gregory Palamas” (EPE), Thessaloniki, 1996, pp. 80–82. Immediately afterward, the author instructs those who have already entered into obedience no longer to scrutinize their good spiritual guide.

3. St. John of Sinai, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step I, “On Renunciation of the World,” §14, ibid., p. 42.

4. 1 Timothy 2:5.

5. Venerable Barsanuphius and John, Discourses on Discernment and Hesychasm (Questions and Answers), vol. II, “Preparation” Publications, Holy Monastery of the Honorable Forerunner, Kareas, 1996, Question and Answer 368, pp. 252–254. In the edition of St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite (Venice, 1816), the same question and answer is numbered 365: “Not all, but only those given to him as commands. For simple counsel according to God is one thing, and a command is another. Counsel is an admonition without compulsion, showing a person the straight path of life; but a command bears an inviolable yoke.”

6. Ibid., Question and Answer 369, p. 254: “You are not considered to have transgressed a command, for you did not receive it as a command; rather, you have shown yourself to have disregarded what is beneficial to you.”

7. Ibid., Question and Answer 370, p. 256: “If, when questioned, he had no intention of giving a command, it is not reckoned to you as a command, even if you yourself requested it.”

 

Greek source: https://anastasiosk.blogspot.com/2026/11/blog-post_924.html