THE
TRUE CHURCH IN THE LAST TIMES
Vladimir Moss
© Vladimir Moss, 2005
CONTENTS
Introduction…………………………………………………………………...……….4
1. Dialogue between an Orthodox Christian and a
Genuine Seeker on the Orthodox Faith……………………………………………………...…...…………….5
2.
On Forgiveness, or: Catholic and Orthodox Ecumenism……………...……..14
3.
Memory and the Moscow Patriarchate…………………………………………27
4.
10 Reasons why the Ecumenical Patriarchate is not Orthodox….…………..39
5.
A Letter to an Anglican Friend on Heresy……………………………………..59
6.
On Mystery and Mystification, or: Anglican Ecumenism……….…………..64
7.
Fr. Seraphim Rose: A Modern St. Augustine………..…………...……………68
8.
A Review of “The Struggle Against Ecumenism”……………………………73
9.
Quo Vadis, Science?……………….……………………………………………...76
10.
Orthodoxy, Feminism and the Science of Man………..……..……………..103
11.
Abortion, Personhood and the Origin of the Soul…………………………112
12.
A Reply to David Bercot on the Mother of God……….……….…………..118
13. A Dialogue between an Orthodox Christian and a
Rationalist on the Body and Blood of Christ……………………………..………………………………….126
14.
Patristic Testimonies on the Body and Blood of Christ....…..…………….132
15.
An Orthodox Approach to Art………….….………………………………….139
16.
A Reply to David Bercot on the Holy Icons…………………………………155
17. The Icon of the Holy
Trinity……..…………………………...……………….160
18. On Christian Marriage…………………………………………………………166
19. The Marriage in Cana of
Galilee……………………………………………..174
20.
A Dialogue between an Orthodox Christian and a Manichaean on
Marriage……………..……………………………………………………………….178
21. Cultism Within: A Rejoinder…………………………………………………202
22.
The Diana Myth and the Antichrist………………………………………….207
23.
The Seal of the Antichrist in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia……………..211
24.
On Death, the Toll-Houses and the Judgement of Souls………………….232
25.
Is Hell Just?……………………………………………………………………...243
26.
God and Tsunamis……………………………………………………………..257
INTRODUCTION
This book consists of a collection of
articles and dialogues written in the last twelve years or so on various themes
relating to Orthodox Christianity. Most of them reflect controversies that have
divided Orthodox Christians in this period, such as: ecumenism, sergianism, the
icon of the Holy Trinity, the relationship between faith, science and art,
eldership in the Church, the nature of the sacrament of the Eucharist,
feminism, cloning, marriage and sexuality, abortion and the soul, the seal of
the Antichrist, the soul after death, the Last Judgement and the problem of evil. It is hoped that they will show that the
Orthodox world-view based on the teaching of the Holy Fathers is consistent and
able to answer all the perplexities posed by modern life.
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers,
Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us! Amen.
January 24 /
February 6, 2005.
The Holy New Martyrs
and Confessors of Russia.
1.
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN AN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN AND A GENUINE SEEKER ON THE ORTHODOX
FAITH
Seeker. What is Orthodoxy?
Orthodox. “Orthodoxy” means “right glory”, giving the
right glory to God. For there is also a wrong glorification of God, a
glorification in which He takes no pleasure. “Unto the sinner God hath said:
Why declarest thou My statutes and takes up My covenant in they mouth?” (Psalm
49.17 (LXX)). Thus Orthodoxy is the giving of right glory to God through the
right faith and right worship. In fact, “Orthodoxy” is often equivalent to
“right faith”.
Seeker. Why is right faith necessary?
Orthodox. We cannot glorify that which we do not
know, and right faith is the true knowledge of God. Those who do not have the
right faith cannot glorify God rightly. To them the true believers say, not
with arrogance but in humble recognition of the treasure they have received:
“Ye know not what ye worship: we know what we worship” (John 4.22).
Seeker. What is the Orthodox Church?
Orthodox. The Orthodox Church is the Church which has
Orthodoxy – “the faith once given to the saints”(Jude 9) and the
“worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4.23) – that is, the worship of
God the Father in the Son, Who is the Truth, and in the Holy Spirit, Who is the
Spirit of truth. She is the Body of Christ, the Dwelling-place of the Holy
Spirit, the Ark of salvation, the True Vine. By another definition She is the
Church that is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic – One in Her unity in faith
and worship, Holy in Her sacraments and the multitude of holy men and women she
has produced, Catholic in Her wholeness in each of Her constituent parts,
Apostolic in Her origin and unbroken succession from the Apostles and in Her
fidelity to the Apostolic teaching. St. Germanus of Constantinople defines the
Church as “a divine house where the mystical living Sacrifice is
celebrated,... and its precious stones are the divine dogmas taught by the Lord
to His disciples.”
Seeker. What
bigotry! What, then, are the other Churches – the Roman Catholic and the
Protestant, for example?
Orthodox. They
are branches that have been cut off from the True Vine in the course of the
centuries. The Western Church was Orthodox for the first thousand years of
Christian history. But in 1054, after a long period of decline, Rome broke away
from the Orthodox East and introduced a whole series of heretical teachings:
the infallibility and universal jurisdiction of the Pope, the procession of the
Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (the Filioque), indulgences,
purgatory, created grace, etc. The Protestants broke away from Rome in the
sixteenth century, but did not return to Orthodoxy and the True Church.
Instead, they introduced still more heresies, rejecting Tradition, the
Sacraments, praying for the dead, the veneration of Saints, etc.
Seeker. But
are there not good people among the other Churches?
Orthodox.
“Someone came and said unto Him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that
I may have eternal life? And He said unto him, Why callest thou Me good? There
is none good but One, that is, God. But I thou wilt enter into life, keep the
commandments” (Matt. 19.16-17).
Man in his present fallen state is not,
and cannot be, good. “There is none that doeth good, no not one” (Psalm 13.4).
Even the Apostles were called evil by the Lord (Luke 11.13). Man can
become good only through union with the only Good One, God. And this union is
possible only through keeping the commandments, of which the first is the
command to repent and be baptized. Unless a man has repented and been baptized
through the One Baptism of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church,
thereby receiving God’s goodness within himself, he cannot be said to be good
in any real sense. For the “goodness” of the fallen, unbaptized man is not good
in God’s eyes, but “filthy rags”, in the words of the Prophet Isaiah.
Seeker. So the
Orthodox are good, and all the rest are bad? A pretty self-righteous religion,
I should say, just the kind of Pharisaical faith the Lord condemned!
Orthodox. No, we do not say
that all the Orthodox are good, because it is a sad fact that many, very many
Orthodox Christians do not use the goodness, the grace that is given to them in
Holy Baptism to do truly good works. And their condemnation will be greater
than those who have never received Baptism. “For it had been better for them
not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to
turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them” (II Peter 2.21).
“For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there
no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgement,
and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries. A man who has violated
the law of Moses dies without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses.
How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has
spurned the Son of God, and profaned the Blood of the Covenant by which he was sanctified,
and outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know Him Who said, ‘Vengeance is Mine,
I will repay.’ And again: ‘The Lord will judge His people.’ It is a fearful
thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Heb. 10.26-31).
Seeker. What a
bleak picture you paint! The unbaptized cannot do good, and those who sin after
baptism are destined for even worse condemnation!
Orthodox. Not
quite. Although we cannot be baptized again for the remission of sins, we can
receive remission of sins in other ways: through prayer and tears, through
fasting and almsgiving, above all through the sacraments of Confession and Holy
Communion. God does not reject those who repent with all their heart. As David
says: “A heart that is broken and humbled God will not despise” (Psalm
50.17).
Seeker. But is
not such repentance possible for all men? Did not David repent in the Psalm you
have cited, and receive forgiveness from God?
Orthodox. Yes,
but salvation does not consist only in the forgiveness of sins, but also in
acquiring holiness, that holiness “without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb.
12.14), that holiness which is given only in the sacraments of the Church and
which can be lost unless we conduct an unremitting ascetic struggle against
sin. Moreover, original sin can only be remitted in the baptismal font.
Seeker. So not
even David was saved?
Orthodox. Not
even David was saved before the Coming of Christ. Even the Patriarch Jacob
anticipated going to Hades (Sheol) after his death together with his righteous
son Joseph: “I shall go mourning down to my son in Hades” (Gen. 37.35).
For “all these [Old Testament righteous], though well attested by their faith,
did not receive what was promised, since God had foreseen something better for
us [the New Testament Christians], that apart from us [outside the New
Testament Church] they should not be made perfect” (Heb. 11.39-40).
Seeker. What
is original sin?
Orthodox. A
certain contagion that we receive by inheritance through our parents from Adam,
who committed the original sin.
Seeker. How
can we be responsible for Adam’s sin?
Orthodox. We are
not responsible for it, but we are defiled by it.
Seeker. Even
children?
Orthodox. Even
children. For “even
from the womb, sinners are estranged” (Psalm 57.3). And as Job says:
“Who shall be pure from uncleanness? Not even one, even if his life should be
but one day upon the earth” (Job 14.4 (LXX)).[1] Again,
St. Gregory of Nyssa writes: “Evil was mixed with our nature from the
beginning… through those who by their disobedience introduced the disease. Just
as in the natural propagation of the species each animal engenders its like, so
man is born from man, a being subject to passions from a being subject to
passions, a sinner from a sinner. Thus sin takes its rise in us as we are born;
it grows with us and keep us company till life’s term”.[2] That is
why the Church has from the beginning practiced infant baptism “for the
remission of sins”.
Seeker. It still seems unfair to me that anyone,
let alone tiny children, should suffer for someone else’s sin.
Orthodox. God’s justice is not our justice. And
remember: if it is unfair that we should suffer because of Adam’s sin, it is no
less unfair that we should be redeemed because of Christ’s virtue. The two
“injustices” are symmetrical and cancel each other out: “As by one man’s
disobedience many were made sinners, so by one Man’s obedience many will be
made righteous” (Romans 5.19).
Seeker. So it is impossible to be good outside the
Church, because sin and the roots of sin are extirpated only in the Church?
Orthodox. More than that: only in the Church can sin
be known. For only to the Church has the will of God been made known in
its fullness. And if we do not know what the will of God is, we cannot repent
properly of our transgression of His will. The Church is the only hospital in
which we receive both the correct diagnosis of the disease and complete healing
from it.
Seeker. Alright. But how, then, are miracles are
done outside the Church, and even in non-Christian religions?
Orthodox. Miracles – if they are truly from God, and
not from the evil one – are a proof, not (or not necessarily) of the goodness
of the human miracle-worker, but of the mercy of God.
Seeker. So if a Catholic or an Anglican or a Hindu
works a miracle, that is nothing, whereas if an Orthodox does it, it’s great!
Orthodox. I didn’t say that. What I said was that the
working of a miracle, if it is of God, tells us first of all that God is
merciful. Whether it also proves the goodness of the human miracle-worker (or
of the recipient of the miracle) is quite another question, which requires
careful examination.
I
do not deny that true miracles can take place outside the Church. After all,
God “maketh His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the
just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5.45). And when St. John forbade a man
who was casting out demons in Christ’s name “because he followeth not us”,
Christ did not approve of his action. “Forbid him not,” he said; “for there is
no man which shall do a miracle in My name that can lightly speak evil of Me.
For he that is not against us is on our side” (Mark 9.38-40).
On the other hand, the Lord also said: “Many will say to Me in that day,
Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? And in Thy name cast out
demons? And in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto
them: I never knew you, Depart from Me, ye workers of iniquity!” (Matt.
7.22-23). So it is possible to work a miracle in Christ’s name, and yet be an
evil man. And God may work the miracle through the evil man, not in order to
testify to the man’s (non-existent) goodness, but purely out of compassion for
the miracle’s recipient. After all, Judas worked miracles – but St. John the
Baptist, the greatest born of woman, worked no miracles…
Nor must we forget that Christian-looking
miracles and prophecies can be done through the evil one. Thus a girl spoke the
truth about the Apostle Paul, exhorting people to follow him – but she spoke
through a pythonic spirit which Paul exorcised (Acts 16.16-18). I
believe that the vast majority of miracles worked in pagan religions such as
Hinduism are from the evil one; for “all the gods of the heathen are demons” (Psalm
95.5).
Seeker. If even miracle-workers can be of the evil
one, who can be saved?
Orthodox. One must always distinguish
between the possession of spiritual gifts and salvation. “Do not rejoice in
this, that the spirits are subject to you;” said the Lord, “but rejoice that
your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10.20). “If I have prophetic powers,
and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as
to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (I Cor. 13.2).
Seeker. Ah now that’s where I agree with
you! Love is the essential mark of the Christian. And I have to say that’s just
what I find distinctly lacking in your exposition. Such pride to think that you
Orthodox, and you alone, belong to the True Church! And such hatred to think
that everyone except you is going to be damned!
Orthodox. But I didn’t say that!
Seeker. You did!
Orthodox. I said that the Church of Christ, by which
I mean exclusively the Orthodox Church, is the only Ark of salvation. But I did
not say that all those in the Ark will be saved, for they may cast themselves
out of it by their evil deeds. And I did not say that those who are swimming
towards the Ark but who were cut off from entering it before their death,
cannot be saved. Who knows whether the Sovereign God, Who knows the hearts of
all men, may not choose to stretch out His hand to those who, through ignorance
or adverse circumstances, were not able to enter the Ark before the darkness of
death descended upon them, but who in their hearts and minds were striving for
the truth? “Charity hopeth all things” (I Cor. 13.7).
Seeker. [ironically] How charitable of you! But
this is more a pious hope than an article of faith for you, isn’t it?
Orthodox. Of course. From the point of dogmatic
faith, we can and must assert that, as St. Cyprian of Carthage said, “there is
no salvation outside the Church”.[3] For the
Lord Himself says, with great emphasis: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, unless
a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God” (John
3.5). And again: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, unless you eat of the Flesh
of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, you have no life in you” (John
6.53). And the Apostle Peter says: “If the righteous man is scarcely saved,
where will the impious and sinner appear?” (I Peter 4.18).
Moreover, if we, arrogantly presuming to be more “merciful” than the
Merciful Lord Himself, take it upon ourselves to “absolve” those living in
false religions or heresies, we sin not only against dogmatic faith, but also
against love. For then we make ourselves guilty of misleading them and leading
them further into error by giving them the false hope that they can stay in
their falsehood without danger to their immortal souls. We take away from them
the fear of God and the spur to search out the truth, which alone can save
them.
Seeker. And yet you spoke earlier about “ignorance
and adverse circumstances”. Surely God takes that into account!
Orthodox. Of course He does. But “taking into
account” is not the same as “absolving of all guilt”. Remember the parable of
the negligent servants: “That servant who knew His master’s will, but did not
make ready or act according to His will, shall receive a severe beating. But he
who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, shall receive a light
beating” (Luke 12.47-48). In other words, ignorance of the Lord’s will
and of His truth can mitigate His sentence, but it cannot remove it altogether.
Seeker. Why? Did not the same Lord say: “If ye were
blind, ye would have no sin” (John 9.41)?
Orthodox. Because we are never totally blind, and,
being rational sheep made in the image of the Good Shepherd, always have some
access to that “Light that enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world” (John
1.9). Thus the Apostle Paul says plainly that pagans who do not believe in the
One Creator of the universe are “without excuse”; “for what can be known about
God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation
of the world His invisible nature, namely, His eternal power and divinity, has
been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom.
1.19-20). God “did not leave Himself without witness” even among the pagans,
“for He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons,
satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14.17).
The Holy Fathers say that every man has creation outside him and
conscience within to lead him away from falsehood and towards the Church, which
is the third great witness to the truth, “the pillar and ground of the truth”,
as St. Paul calls it (I Tim. 3.15). Creation and conscience alone cannot
reveal the whole truth to him; but if he follows that partial revelation which
creation and conscience provide, God will help him to find the fullness of
truth in the Church. Nor is there any situation in life, however remote from,
and opposed to, the Church, from which the Lord, Who wishes that all be saved
and come to a knowledge of the truth, cannot rescue the genuine seeker.
Seeker.
But what if the pagan or the heretic has never met the truth in the Church, or
has met only very sinful or ignorant representatives of the Church? Can he not
then be said to be blind and ignorant, and therefore not sinning?
Orthodox. Everything depends on the nature and degree
of the ignorance. There is voluntary ignorance and involuntary ignorance. If
there were not such a thing as involuntary ignorance, the Lord would not have
said on the Cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke
23.34). And His prayer was answered, for on the Day of Pentecost, Peter called
on the Jews to repent, saying, “I know that you acted in ignorance” (Acts
3.17), after which thousands repented and were baptized. Again, the Apostle
Paul “received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief” (I Tim.
1.13). But note that all these people responded to the truth when it was
presented to them. This showed that their ignorance had been involuntary, and
therefore excusable.
On the other hand, there is a hardness of heart that refuses to respond
to the signs God gives of His truth, the signs from without and the promptings
from within. This is voluntary ignorance. People who are hardened
in this way do not know the truth because they do not want to know it.
This stubborn refusal to accept the truth is what the Lord calls “the blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 12.32), which will not be forgiven in
this world or the next.
Seeker. Why can it not be forgiven?
Orthodox. Because forgiveness is given only to the
penitent, and penitence is a recognition of the truth about oneself. However,
if a man refuses to face the truth, and actively fights against it in his soul,
he cannot repent, and so cannot be forgiven. In fighting against truth, he is
fighting against the Holy Spirit of truth, Who leads into all truth (John
16.13). It is possible for a man to be sincerely mistaken about Christ for a
while, and this can be forgiven him, as it was forgiven to the Apostle Paul.
But if such ignorance is compounded by a rejection of the promptings to truth
placed in the soul by the Spirit of truth, there is no hope. So the pagan who
stubbornly remains in His paganism in spite of the evidence of creation and
conscience, and the heretic who stubbornly remains in his heresy in spite of
the teaching of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, are both
blaspheming against the Spirit of truth, and cannot be saved.
Seeker. So is there really no hope for the heretic?
Orthodox. While there is life there is hope. And
there are many examples of people who have remained in heresy all their lives
but have been converted to the truth just before their death. There is no hope
only for those who do not love the truth. Such people the Lord will not lead to
His truth, because they do not desire it. Rather, He will allow them to be
deceived by the Antichrist “because they refused to love the truth and so be
saved. Therefore God sendeth upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe
what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but
had pleasure in unrighteousness” (II Thess. 2.10-12).
Seeker. Alright. But I am still not convinced that
only your Church is the True Church. In fact, I am not happy with the concept
of “the One True Church” in general. It smacks of bigotry and intolerance to
me.
Orthodox. You know, tolerance is not a Christian
virtue. Love is.
Seeker. You amaze me! Is not tolerance a form of
love? And is not all hatred forbidden for the Christian?
Orthodox. No. The Lord our God is a zealous God, and
He expects zeal from us – zeal for the good, and hatred for the evil. “Ye that
love the Lord, see to it that ye hate evil” (Psalm 96.11). What He hates
most of all is lukewarmness: “I know your works: ye are neither cold nor hot.
Would that ye were cold or hot! So, because ye are lukewarm, and neither cold
nor hot, I will spew you out of My mouth… So be zealous and repent” (Rev.
3.15-16, 19). St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote: “The Lawgiver of our life has
enjoined upon us one single hatred. I mean that of the serpent, for no other
purpose has He bidden us exercise this faculty of hatred, but as a resource
against wickedness.”[4]
Seeker. But that still means we are not allowed to
hate human beings. Are we not meant to hate the sin and love the sinner? This
is the kind of teaching that leads to burning heretics at the stake!
Orthodox. No. Neither St. Gregory nor any other saint
of the Orthodox Church that I know of advocated persecuting people for their
religious convictions. Christian love abhors using violence as a means of
persuading people. But it does not go to the other extreme and ceases trying to
persuade them. Nor, if they persist in their false teachings, does it hold back
from protecting others from their influence! If we love the sinner and hate his
sin, then we must do everything in our power both to deliver him from that sin
and protect others from being contaminated by it.
Seeker. I think this is the kind of bigotry that
comes from believing that one is in “the One True Church”. It is the source of
religious persecution, the Inquisition, etc.
Orthodox. The cause of religious persecution is not
the claim to possess the truth, which all rational people who have thought out
their beliefs claim, but human passions.
Seeker. What about Ivan the Terrible? What about
most of the Orthodox emperors? Did they not discriminate against heresy?
Orthodox. Ivan was excommunicated by the Church, and
was rather a persecutor of the Orthodox than an instrument of their persecuting
others. As for the emperors’ discriminating against heresy, I am all in favour
of that. It is irrational to place truth and falsehood on an equal footing. St.
Theodosius of the Kiev Caves, one of the greatest saints who ever lived, said
that by honouring others’ faiths we dishonour our own. Do our schools give
equal honour to the theories of Ptolemy and Newton? Of course not!
Seeker. But that’s different! There we’re talking
about scientific facts!
Orthodox. I don’t see any difference in principle.
Our principle is: speak the truth at all times, reject falsehood at all times.
If scientists do that in their sphere, where there is no certainty and “facts”
are constantly being disputed by later investigators, why should we not do it
in the incomparably higher and more important sphere of religious faith, whose
incontrovertible facts have been communicated to us by the Truth Himself? For
as St. Paul says about the Gospel: “I did not receive it from man, nor was I
taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal.
1.12).
Seeker. And if everyone claims to have received a
revelation from God?
Orthodox. Then we must patiently investigate who is
telling the truth and who has been deceived by “the father of lies”. Just as
scientists have methods for comparing different hypotheses and determining
which (if any) is the correct one, so do we Orthodox Christians have methods of
determining what is truth and what is falsehood in the religious sphere. And
just as scientists will never accept that there can be more than one true
explanation of an empirical phenomenon, so we will never accept that there can
be more than one religious truth.
Seeker. Cannot different religious faiths each
reveal part of the truth?
Orthodox. No. The Truth is One, and has been revealed
to us by the Truth Himself: “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism” (Eph.
4.4).
Seeker. So there is no truth at all in any of the
non-Christian religions?
Orthodox. I didn’t say that. Satan likes to appear as
an angel of light (II Cor. 11.14); he mixes “truth with unrighteousness”
(Rom. 1.18). Thus with the bait of such fair-seeming ideals as “love”,
“peace” and “freedom”, which correctly interpreted are indeed goods from God,
he lures them into an abyss of falsehood. There is only one religion which
contains “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. All the
others, being parasitical on the One Truth, contain partial truths, but make
even these partial truths false by association with falsehood, just as even a
small dose of poison in a wholesome loaf makes the whole loaf poisonous.
Seeker. So there are partial truths in other
religions, but no salvation?
Orthodox. Right. For as St. Peter said of Christ:
“There is salvation in none other: for there is no other name under heaven
given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4.12).
Seeker. What about the Muslims and the Jews? Do
they not believe in the same God as we – the God of Abraham, their common ancestor?
Orthodox. The Lord said to the Jews: “If ye were
Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham” (John 8.39). And
St. Paul said: “Know ye therefore that they which are of the faith” – that is,
the faith in Christ – “are the children of Abraham” (Gal. 3.7). The God
of Abraham is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ; Abraham himself looked forward
to the Coming of Christ in the flesh – “Abraham saw My day and was glad” (John
8.56).
Seeker. Alright. But do not the Jews and Muslims
also believe in the God of the Old Testament, Jehovah, Who is the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ?
Orthodox. We believe that the great majority of the
Old Testament Theophanies were in fact appearances of God the Son, not God the
Father. Contrary to the belief of the Jehovah’s witnesses, the “Jehovah” of the
Old Testament is Christ Himself; Moses and Elijah appeared with Christ at the
Transfiguration to show that it is He Who appeared to them in the cloud and the
fire and the still, small voice; it is He Who is the God of the Law and the
Prophets.
In any case, since God is a Trinity of Persons, it is impossible rightly
to believe in One of the Persons and not in the Others. For “whosoever denieth
the Son, the same hath not the Father” (I John 2.23).
Seeker. But do not the Muslims believe in Christ
after their fashion?
Orthodox. They believe that He is a prophet who is
coming again to judge the world. But they do not believe in His Divinity, nor
in His Cross and Resurrection – the central dogmas of our Faith. Moreover, they
believe in the false prophet Mohammed, who contradicts Christ’s teaching in
many respects. If they truly believed in Christ, they would not follow
Mohammed’s teaching instead of Christ’s.
Seeker. But the Jews are the chosen people, are
they not?
Orthodox. They were the chosen people, but
then God rejected them for their unbelief and scattered them across the face of
the earth, choosing the believing Gentiles in their place.
Seeker. But the religion of the Old Testament was
the true religion, was it not? And insofar as they practise that religion, they
are true believers, are they not?
Orthodox. The religion of the Old Testament was a
true foreshadowing of, and preparation for, the full revelation of the Truth in
Jesus Christ. But once the fullness of the Truth has appeared, it is impious to
remain with the shadow; indeed, to mistake the shadow of the Truth for the
Truth Himself is a grievous delusion. In any case, the Jews do not practise the
Old Testament religion.
Seeker. What are you talking about?! Of course they
do!
Orthodox. Since the destruction of the Temple in 70
A.D., it has been impossible for the Jews to practise the main commandment of
their religion, which was to worship God with sacrifices in the Temple three
times a year – at Pascha, Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles. Thus has the
prophecy of the Prophet Hosea been fulfilled: “The children of Israel shall
dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without
ephod or teraphim” (Hosea 3.4).
Seeker. What is their present religion then?
Orthodox. Not the religion of the Old Testament, but
the religion of the Pharisees, which Christ rejected as being merely “the
traditions of men”. Its relationship to the Old Testament is tenuous. Its real
holy book is not the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, but the Talmud, a
collection of the teachings of the Pharisees.
Seeker. And what does that teach?
Orthodox. The most extreme hatred of Christ and
Christians. Not only does the Talmud deny the Divinity and Resurrection of
Christ: it reviles Him as a sorcerer and a bastard, the son of a Roman soldier
called Panthera and an unclean woman. Moreover, it teaches a double standard of
morality: one for fellow Jews, quite another for the goyim, the
Gentiles, who are not even accorded the dignity of fully human beings.
Seeker. But is this not anti-semitism?
Orthodox. Anti-semitism as a racist attitude of
hatred for all Jews as such is of course contrary to the Christian Gospel. Nor
can Christians approve of those cruelties that have been perpetrated against
them (not the discrimination against their teaching, but the physical violence
against their persons) down the centuries. But this in no way implies that
Christians must participate in the campaign of whitewashing the Jews that has been
continuing for nearly a century in both religious and non-religious circles. As
the Gospels clearly indicate, the Jews killed Christ and brought His Blood upon
themselves and upon their children. Nor has their hatred of Christ and
Christians lessened down the centuries: anti-semitism is in large measure the
reaction of Christians and Gentiles to the anti-Gentilism of the Talmud, which
approves of all manner of crimes against Gentiles, including murder and
extortion. In recent times, as Winston Churchill and many others have
testified, the Jews were the leaders and inspirers of the anti-Christian and
anti-monarchical revolutionary movement; they plotted the Russian revolution
and put it into effect with the utmost ruthlessness – 95% of the leading
Bolsheviks were Jews. (Of course, the Bolsheviks were atheist rather than
Talmudic Jews. Nevertheless, the influence of the Talmud and the Rabbis on
their hatred of Christian civilization cannot be denied.) The promise, in the
same week of October, 1917, of a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine
was a “coincidence” no discerning Christian can ignore, and whose significance
for our times is immense. For the constant tradition of the Church has been
that the Antichrist will be a Jew ruling from Jerusalem in a reclaimed State of
Israel…
Seeker. But must we not love the Jews, even if they
are our enemies?
Orthodox. Indeed, we must love our enemies and pray
for them, as Christ commanded. In particular, we must pray that they will be
converted and return to Christ, as St. Paul prophesied would happen in the last
times. “For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what
shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” (Rom. 11.15).
Seeker. What you say makes sense, but I have one
fundamental objection to everything you say.
Orthodox. What is that?
Seeker. You claim that this is Orthodoxy, but I
know that it is not.
Orthodox. What do you mean?
Seeker. Your hierarchs participate in the
ecumenical movement, which is based on principles completely contrary to the
Orthodoxy you preach.
Orthodox. Actually, my hierarchs do not participate
in the ecumenical movement. However, your mistake is understandable, because
those large organizations and patriarchates which are associated in the public
eye with Orthodoxy, such as the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Moscow
Patriarchate, the Serbian Patriarchate, etc., do take part in the ecumenical
movement. But we have no communion with them, because they have betrayed
Orthodoxy.
Seeker. How can the leaders of Orthodoxy be said to
have betrayed Orthodoxy?! It’s like saying that the Pope has betrayed
Catholicism!
Orthodox. But he did! It was the Popes who in the
second half of the eleventh century betrayed Orthodox Catholicism and the
Orthodox Catholic Church, making it – or rather, that part of it which
submitted it to them – into something quite different: the Roman (pseudo-)
Catholic Church. In the same way, in the twentieth century, it is the leaders
of the official Orthodox Churches who have betrayed Orthodoxy, making it into
something quite different: “World Orthodoxy” or “Ecumenist Orthodoxy”.
You must remember that just as “he is not a Jew who is one outwardly” (Rom.
2.28), but only he who belongs to “the Israel of God” (Gal. 6.16), that
is, the Church of Christ, so he is not an Orthodox Christian who is one
outwardly, but only he who confesses his Orthodoxy in word and deed.
Fortunately, there are still Orthodox Christians who are so in truth, and not
merely in appearance, and who have separated from the prevailing apostasy. And
these, however few they are or will become, remain that Church against which
the gates of hell will not prevail (Matt. 16.18), and of whom the Lord
of the Church said: “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good
pleasure to give you the Kingdom” (Luke 12.32).
Seeker. Well, I am relieved to hear that. For I was
convinced by your words, but was beginning to think that nobody practised that
truth which I have come to believe in.
Orthodox. Welcome to the true Faith of Christ,
brother! And do not fear: however small the Church on earth becomes, the Church
in heaven is growing all the time, until the very end of the world. For “you
have come to Mount Zion and to the City of the Living God, the Heavenly
Jerusalem, and to innumerable Angels in festal gathering, and to the Assembly
of the Firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to a Judge Who is God of all,
and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the Mediator of the
New Covenant, and to the sprinkled Blood that speaks more graciously than the
blood of Abel…” (Heb. 12.22-24).
May 21 / June 3, 2004.
Holy Equals-to-the-Apostles Emperors
Constantine and Helena.
2.
ON FORGIVENESS, or:
CATHOLIC
AND ORTHODOX ECUMENISM
Introduction. The Papal Initiative.
On Forgiveness Sunday, 2000, according to the Orthodox Church calendar,
the Pope of Rome issued an appeal for pardon for the sins of Catholics over the
ages. “As the successor of Peter,” he writes in his Bull of Indiction of the
Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, Incarnationis Mysterium, “I ask that in
this year of mercy the Church, strong in the holiness which she receives from
her Lord, should kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past and
present sins of her sons and daughters…. Christians are invited to acknowledge,
before God and before those offended by their actions, the faults which they
have committed… Let them do so without seeking anything in return… All of us,
though not personally responsible and without encroaching on the judgement of
God, who alone knows every heart, bear the burden of the errors and faults of
those who have gone before us.” Among the specific acts repented of by the Pope
are the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. He also admitted that the
Catholics had been unjust to ethnic and religious minorities, especially the
Jews, women and natives of the Third World.
How are we Orthodox Christians to react to this declaration? Is it
simply a political manoeuvre on the part of the world’s chief heretic, or is
something deeper and more sincere contained in it? Can we refuse forgiveness to him who asks us
for it? Must we forgive? These are some of the questions elicited by
this declaration by the Pope.
1 Our Sins and the Sins of our Fathers.
First of all, it is necessary to say that if we are talking about
personal sins committed against us personally, then we must not only forgive
him who asks us for forgiveness, whoever he might be and whatever faith he
might confess, but we must forgive him before he asks for forgiveness: the
Christian must immediately and “from the heart” forgive every one who has
offended him. For “if you will not forgive men their sins,” said the Lord,
“then your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matt. 6.15).
But can we forgive personal sins not committed against ourselves
personally, but against our ancestors? Can, for example, an Orthodox Englishman
forgive the Pope blessing the Norman invasion of England in 1066, which
resulted in the destruction of 20% of her population and the complete annihilation
of English Orthodox culture? Can an Orthodox Greek forgive the destruction of
Constantinople during the fourth crusade in 1204? Can an Orthodox Russian
forgive the persecution of the Orthodox by the Catholics in the 16th
and 17th centuries or the support given by the Pope to the
revolution of 1917? Can an Orthodox Serb forgive the deaths of 750,000 Serbs at
the hands of Catholic persecutors in Croatia in 1941?
This is a more complicated question, which demands a more detailed
reply. On the one hand, insofar as it was our ancestors who perished first of
all, it is up to them to forgive, not to us. And if amidst those who suffered
there were some who died without forgiving their enemies, we can only pray for
the forgiveness both of them and of their persecutors.
On the other hand, there is a definite sense in which we, being bound to
our ancestors by bonds not only of blood but also of spiritual kinship, suffer
together with them even to the present day. If the sins of the fathers affect their
children, then exactly the same applies to their sufferings and offences: “The
fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge” (Jer.
31.29). In this sense, actions directed at the redemption of the guilt on the
part of the heirs of the persecutors can significantly lighten the bitterness
felt by the descendants of those who suffered.
But, leaving psychological considerations to one side, can we demand
repentance for sins committed against our ancestors? The answer to this
question depends on the answer to the following: what is the motive eliciting
this demand for repentance? If it is a desire to humiliate an opponent or in
some way take revenge on him, then the answer will be negative, for “Vengeance
is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Rom. 12.19).
But if we are moved by love for justice, then the answer must be
positive, for the love of justice is natural for man, created as he is in the
image of the righteous God. Indeed, according to St. John of the Ladder, “God
is called love, and also justice.”[5] Thus the
desire for justice, if it is not mixed with any sinful passion, is good and
worthy of honour. This is evident from the words which may at first sight
appear a bloodthirsty cry from the souls under the altar depicted in the
Apocalypse: How long, O Lord, holy and true, will you not judge and be avenged
for our blood on those living on the earth?” (Rev. 6.10). For “they cry
out these words,” according to the English Orthodox Father, the Venerable Bede,
“not out of hatred for enemies, but out of love of justice”.[6]
Moreover, if the heirs of the persecutors come to recognize the sins of
their fathers, then they thereby come closer to the truth and to their own
salvation. And this is precisely the aspect that should interest Orthodox
Christians first of all in the Pope’s declaration. Are we witnessing the
return, albeit partial and not completely conscious, of the western papist
church to the faith of our fathers?
2. The Sins of the Papacy.
There are good grounds for adopting a sceptical and even cynical
attitude to this. The Pope remains a potential threat to the salvation of
millions of Orthodox Christians, having recently added to his many doctrinal
sins the heresy of ecumenism. He promised his church a jubilee gift for the
year 2000: reunion with the Orthodox, a gift which for the Orthodox would
signify spiritual death and which, however painful it is to say it, the
overwhelming majority of them have already accepted.
Moreover, the Pope’s repentance excludes that which is most important
for the Orthodox: repentance not so much for the personal sins of the Roman
Catholics as for the heresies of Roman Catholicism.
The Greek Old Calendarist Archimandrite Gregory of Dormition Skete,
Colorado, U.S.A. has expounded those thoughts that in his opinion would
constitute a more correct repentance on the part of the Pope:
“I, Pope John-Paul, would like to ask the forgiveness of the whole world
for spreading my evil and destructive doctrine, which is called Roman
Catholicism.
“Among the heresies I would like to renounce is the heresy of the Filioque,
which destroys the theological understanding of the Trinity. I would also like
to renounce the following heresies:
“our diabolical teaching on purgatory, which is similar to the teaching
of Origen;
“the teaching on the immaculate conception which we have thought up;
“our use of statues, like the pagans and idol-worshippers;
“the ban on our clergy entering into marriage;
“our introduction of the papist calendar;
“our distortion of all the sacraments which we accepted when we were
Orthodox – for example, our heretical practice of baptism by sprinkling, which
is like the practice of the Protestants, and our use of unleavened bread, which
is like the Jews;
“our teaching that I the Pope am infallible, a teaching that forms the
foundation of all the above-mentioned sins, which thereby witness to the fact
that I am not infallible.
“I would also like to repent of the fact that I have drawn the Orthodox
patriarchs of our century into the new heresy of ecumenism.
“From all the above examples it is evident that I have fallen away from
True Christianity, and therefore both my actions and those of my predecessors
are like the actions of the pagans, like whom I in the name of ‘Christianity’
killed, burned and destroyed everything that I could and everyone that I could
for the sake of spreading my false teachings.
“The list of such evil works includes the Inquisition, when innocent
people were burned at the pillar of shame, which witnesses to my unchristian
attitude to people; and the crusades, which ravaged the capital of Orthodox
Byzantium, Constantinople; the invasion and conquest of America, as a result of
which with my blessing the two main indigenous civilizations there were
annihilated; the murder by dismemberment of the holy Martyr Peter the Aleut, an
Orthodox Christian who suffered in San Francisco at the hands of my Jesuit
monks because he did not want to convert to my disgusting faith; and in our
century, my predecessor Pius XII’s blessing of forcible conversion in Croatia,
during which 800,000 Orthodox were killed because they did not want to convert
and be subject to my papal authority.
“From
all the above it follows that I am in a wretched condition, and I intend to ask
forgiveness. I intend to renounce this heretical teaching and accept Orthodox
baptism…”
Approximately some such list of sins would be demanded from the Pope if
his request for forgiveness were to correspond to the Orthodox world-view. But
insofar as the present declaration of the Pope is far from this, it is
difficult to quarrel with those who see in this act a purely political trap,
yet another move in the ecumenical game, a new tactic in the papacy’s age-old
attempts to draw the Orthodox into a false union with itself.
Some may object: but have not Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras of
Constantinople already forgiven each other by means of the lifting of the
anathemas in 1965? If the Pope and the Patriarch no longer have anything
against each other, why should we renew the quarrel between them? Can an act of
mutual lifting of anathemas really be “invalid”, when anathematising someone is
so obviously an act of hatred?
No: an anathematisation of that which is truly false is an act of love,
not hatred. How can it be otherwise when the Apostle Paul himself anathematises
(I Cor. 16.22, Gal. 1.8,9), and when the Church herself in her
Seven Ecumenical Councils and on the Sunday of Orthodoxy anathematises all
heretics?
It is necessary at this point to return to the distinction between
personal sins and sins against the faith. We have the right and the duty to
forgive personal sins committed against us, even if the offender does not ask
for forgiveness. And if the original hurling of the anathemas in 1054
was caused by purely personal sins and passions, then the meeting of the
hierarchs some 900 years later, could, if not remove that original sin, at any
rate help to remove any residual bitterness passed down the generations. And it
seems that this is how the hierarchs understood the act. Thus the epistle sent
by the Pope to the Patriarch expressed his regret that the Church of
Constantinople had been offended by the papal legates in 1054: “We
deeply regret this, and all excommunications and anathemas that the legates
placed upon Patriarch Michael Cerularius and upon the Holy Church of
Constantinople we declare to be null and void”.
But if the “offence” is not (primarily, at any rate) a personal one, but
a sin against the faith, then it can be healed only by repentance specifically
for that dogmatic sin on the part of the sinner. But of such repentance
there was not a trace in the meeting in 1965: dogmatic differences, the
original and true cause of the schism, came into the discussion not at all. And
yet sins against the faith remain unforgiven until the sinner has completely
renounced them. For a sin against the faith is primarily a sin, not against man,
but against God, since it is in essence blasphemy, an affirmation that God is a
liar in His witness about Himself. In relation to such sins the words of David
are especially applicable: “Against Thee only have I sinned” (Psalm
50.4). And if the heretic sins against God alone, then only God can forgive
him. Or the Church of God, to which God has given the power to bind and to
loose, that is, to discern whether a sinner has truly repented of his sin. That
is why we, as individuals, cannot forgive a heretic his heresy, but only the
Church - through baptism and anathematisation of his heresies if he was not a
member of the Church in the first place, or confession if he is already
baptised.
As regards anathemas against heresies, these can never be removed. For
since God and His truth does not change, the sentence against that which
contradicts this truth is also immutable. People can change; they can change
from confessing heresy to confessing the truth; and so they can change from
being under anathema to being freed from anathema. But the heresy itself
remains under anathema unto the ages of ages.
3. False Forgiveness and Ecumenism.
It is significant that the papists began for the first time to ask for
forgiveness from their “separated brethren” (the Orthodox), from the Jews and
from others only when they accepted the heresy of ecumenism during the Second
Vatican Council in the 1960s. This permits us to suppose that there is a close
link between ecumenism and the false understanding of forgiveness.
It is often said that the essence of ecumenism consists not in some
particular heretical teaching, but in a false understanding of heresy in
general. One reviewer of a book on the Anglican Reformation in Church Times
remarked that the real heresy consists in the idea that there exists such a
thing as heresy! In other words, heresy does not exist! But if heresy does not
exist, then neither does truth. For heresy is simply the denial of a particular
truth about God.
The strange thing is that the same ecumenists who are so indifferent to
religious truth and falsehood, even denying that the latter exists, can be
extremely zealous for what they consider to be the truth in other,
non-theological matters. Only when the matter concerns Divine truth do they
suddenly become amazingly “tolerant”, thereby confirming the truth of the
apostolic words: “they received not the love of the truth, that they might be
saved” (II Thess. 2.10).
This is particularly obvious in the case of Patriarch Athenagoras – the
man who supposedly “lifted the anathemas” against the papacy in 1965. Fr. Basil
Lourié writes : « Athenagoras … did not consider [the Latins]
to be heretics. But his denial of their hereticalness was not a manifestation
of his special love for them: Athenagoras did not recognize the existence of
heresy in general! Having heard of a certain man who saw heresies everywhere,
Athenagoras said: ‘I don’t see them anywhere! I see only truths, partial,
reduced, sometimes out of place…”[7]
And so we can define the essence of
ecumenism as indifference to religious truth, or, in its extreme
manifestations, the absence of faith in the existence of objective truth
generally. In the words of Metropolitan Philaret of New York in his Sorrowful
Epistle to Patriarch Athenagoras, ecumenism “places a sign of equality
between error and truth”. This is the same indifference that was manifested by
Pontius Pilate, when, standing in front of Truth Incarnate, he wearily asked:
“What is truth?” – and would not stay for an answer…
But this is only one side of the question.
Ecumenism also displays a striking indifference to justice. Again, the
ecumenists, like everyone else, can be zealous in relation to justice in
non-theological, especially political, matters – for example, the injustice of
Third World debt or racism or sexism or some other form of discrimination.
Moreover, they do not fear to accuse God Himself of injustice, as when the
Anglican Bishop of Durham (Northern England) declared that if God permitted
Auschwitz, he was a devil… But when we are talking about injustices committed
in relation to Christians because they are Christians – for example, the
persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union, - then they become suddenly
silent. Here again we see a similarity with Pilate, who washed his hands after
committing the greatest of all injustices, while claiming to carry out the
duties of an impartial judge.
The most important value for the ecumenist
is peace – not peace with God or with the true people of God, but peace with
the world and the rulers of this world. And if truth and justice have to be
sacrificed for the sake of this worldly peace, then so be it. Thus Pilate
betrayed Truth and Justice for the sake of peace with, and out of fear of, the
Jews. And thus do the present-day leaders of the ecumenical movement, for fear
of the non-ecumenical confessions (primarily, Judaism and Islam), strive first
of all to establish peace amongst themselves so as to be able to present a
united front in their pursuit of a general peace with – or rather, capitulation
before – their enemies, whom they fear because of their secular power. But
“there have they feared where there is no fear” (Psalm 13.6); for it is
not fitting to fear the enemies of God, friendship with whom is enmity with God
(James 4.4), Whom alone they have to fear as being able “to destroy both
soul and body in gehenna” (Matt. 10.28).
Where there is no consciousness of sin, or
a distorted understanding of sin, a request for forgiveness is seen to be in essence
a request for something else – perhaps the conclusion of a non-aggression pact,
or an agreement on cooperation for the attainment of some common goal. “And the
same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together; for before they were at
enmity between themselves” (Luke 23.12). Why? Because their mutual
rivalry was less important than their mutual desire to placate the Jewish
religious establishment, to whom Christ was to be thrown like meat to a hungry
animal. In the same way the dogmatic differences between the Pope of Rome and
the “Orthodox” ecumenists are less important to them than their retention of a
place at the table of the world’s rulers – who are once again, as in the time
of Christ, mainly Jewish.
4. Orthodox Herods
and Catholic Pilates.
Let us continue for a time to draw out the
parallels between Pilate and Herod, on the one hand, and Catholic and Orthodox
ecumenism, on the other.
Were Pilate and Herod equally guilty in
the eyes of God? Not at all. Christ spoke with Pilate, but refused to speak to
Herod (Luke 23.9). Herod mocked Christ and arrayed Him in a gorgeous
robe, thereby mocking His assertion that he was the king of the Jews (Luke
23.11). But Pilate wanted to know more about Christ’s claims to a kingdom, and,
bringing Him out to the Jews, said, not without some genuine admiration:
“Behold your King!” (John 19.14). And again he asked, not without some
genuine fear: “Shall I crucify your King?” (John 19.15). Moreover,
overcoming for once his fear of the Jews, he refused to remove the inscription
on the Cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”. We have no evidence that
Herod had any gnawings of conscience in handing over Christ, Who was in Herod’s
jurisdiction and Whom he could have released. But Pilate found no fault in Him
and was searching for a way of releasing Him. To the end he retained a definite
consciousness of his sin, and God had given him a further impulse to stand firm
through his wife’s exhortation. And even after he had betrayed Him, his guilty
conscience revealed itself in his washing his hands and saying: “I am innocent
of the blood of this Righteous Man” (Matt. 27.24).
Just as Herod’s sin was greater than Pilate’s, so the crime of the
Orthodox ecumenists is greater than that of the Catholic ecumenists. This
assertion may shock many Orthodox zealots who are accustomed to see in
Catholicism and the apostate West the root of all evil. But after some thought
it becomes obvious that, in accordance with the principle: “to whom much is
given, much is required”, greater responsibility is undoubtedly borne by those
to whom the treasures of Orthodox Tradition have been entrusted than by those
who have never been Orthodox.
The Orthodox ecumenists are like the Pharisees, who, having the keys to
the Kingdom of Heaven, shut up that Kingdom against men; for they neither go in
themselves, nor suffer those that are entering to go in (Matt. 23.13).
One of the most shameful documents in the history of Christianity is the
resolution accepted by the heads of the Local Orthodox Churches in
Constantinople on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, 1992. On that day the Orthodox
triumphantly declare about their faith: “This is the Apostolic Faith! This is
the Orthodox Faith! This is the Faith that supports the world!”, and anathematize
all the heresies, including those of the Catholics and Protestants. And yet in
their 1992 council these so-called Orthodox leaders officially renounced
proselytism among the heretical Christians of the West! It was as if they said
to the westerners “Yes, ours is the Apostolic Faith, and yes, we have just
anathematized your heresies. But these are only words. The world does not need
our faith. And the world need not fear our anathematisms. Remain where you are.
Remain in your heresy. We will not try and convert you.”
Nine years later, the Moscow Patriarchate’s Metropolitan Cyril
(Gundiaev) of Smolensk put it as follows: “In practice we forbid our priests to
seek to convert people. Of course it happens that people arrive and say: ‘You
know, I would like, simply out of my own convictions, to become Orthodox.’
‘Well, please do.’ But there is no strategy to convert people.”[8]
And this at a time when the Christians of the West are undergoing the
deepest crisis in their history, when thousands of Western Christians, and
especially Catholics, are turning their eyes to the Orthodox in the hope that
they will extract them from the terrible dead-end in which they find
themselves. Thus traditional Catholics brought up in accordance with the
decrees of their “infallible” first bishop, that their Church is the one saving
Church, and that their faith is the one saving faith, were profoundly shaken,
in some cases even to the extent of mental disorder, to learn, during the
Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, that not only the Catholics, but also the
Orthodox and even Protestants, Jews and Muslims belong to the People of God and
can be saved, and that that which they considered to be heresy was no longer
heresy, and that which they consider to be mortal sin was no longer mortal sin…
Is there a way out of this situation? One possibility is to declare,
with the Swiss Cardinal Lefèbvre, that the Pope of Rome has fallen into
heresy, that he is an anti-pope, and that the true Catholic Church is another
place, among the Catholics who do not recognize the present Pope. But if
the Pope is infallible, how can he fall into heresy? Of course, there were
Popes who fell into heresy even before the rise of the papist heresy itself –
Pope Honorius, for example, who was condemned by the Sixth Ecumenical Council.
But the papists have always tried to explain away such examples because the
idea of a heretical Pope actually undermines their faith at its very base. For
if the Pope falls away from the truth, he is no longer Peter, no longer the
rock on which the Church is built. And then the Catholics will have to look for
their Catholic faith outside the (pseudo-) Catholic Church, which is an
absurdity for them. For according to their papist faith, there can be no true
faith, and no true Church, without the Pope. If the Pope falls, then the
Universal Church falls with him[9], and the
gates of hell, contrary to the promise of the Saviour, have prevailed against
her (Matt. 16.18).
Another possibility is to declare that the
Roman see is temporarily vacant. But again: can the Church exist without Peter
according to papist doctrine? If the Church is founded on the rock, and that
rock is Peter and his successors, the Popes of Rome, how can the Church
continue to exist without the rock?
A third possibility is to declare,
together with the True Orthodox Christians, that the Roman Catholic Church is
not only in heresy, but has been in heresy ever since she fell away from her
true Mother, the Orthodox Church, to which her children must return if they
want to receive the grace and truth that is in Christ. And, glory to God, many
in the West, both Catholics and Protestant, are doing just that – to the extent
that the Orthodox ecumenists are allowing them.[10] In
England, for example, Orthodoxy has doubled in size during the last decade.
But this growth in converts to Orthodoxy
from the Western confessions has taken place not thanks to, but in spite of,
the preaching of the official Orthodox Churches. For how often have potential
converts to Orthodoxy been dissuaded from joining by the Orthodox hierarchs
themselves! Even when already Orthodox, these neophytes from the West have
often been made to feel like second-class citizens who cannot really know the
mystery of Orthodoxy because of their “western mentality”.
Thus one English Orthodox Christian, on
arriving at a Greek church one Sunday morning, was politely but firmly directed
to an Anglican church, in spite of his protests that he was Orthodox. The
explanation: “Orthodoxy is for Greeks and Russians: for the English there is
Anglicanism…” In this way do the heresies of ecumenism and phyletism grow into
each other, combining to shut the door on those searching for, and even those
who have already found, the truth!
Something similar to the present crisis in
the Roman Catholic church took place in the 14th-15th
centuries, when for many years there were two popes, and once even three! In
reaction to this crisis there arose the conciliar movement, which strove to
return to the Orthodox teaching on authority in the Church, declaring that the
highest authority in the earthly Church was not the Pope, but the Ecumenical
Councils. Here was a wonderful opportunity for the Orthodox to support this
beginning of a return to Orthodoxy, if not in the papacy itself, at least in a
large portion of its (former) followers), and direct it to its consummation in
the bosom of the Orthodox Church.
But this opportunity was missed largely
for the same reason as it is being missed today: because the Orthodox leaders of the time,
having lost the salt of True Orthodoxy themselves, were seeking a union with
Roman Catholicism for political motives. Thus in 1438-1439, when the most
representative council of the Western Church was convening in Basle in Switzerland,
so as to resolve the problems of the Western Church on the basis of
conciliarity, the Orthodox leaders preferred to meet the Pope in Florence and
conclude a false union with him, betraying the purity of the Orthodox Faith for
a mess of pottage. The victory of the Pope signified not only the fall of the
Patriarchate of Constantinople (fortunately, only temporarily), and of
Constantinople itself a few years later, but also the crushing of the hopes of
the conciliarists in Basle…
Of course, it could be argued that the
conciliarists were not really ready for Orthodoxy, not really seeking it, which
is why the Lord did not allow them to be united to it. That may be true. But it
does not remove the responsibility of those Orthodox hierarchs then and now who
put obstacles in the way of potential converts to the faith through their own
lukewarmness about that faith.
Thus the Orthodox uniates of the fifteenth
century, like the Orthodox ecumenists of the twentieth century, betrayed not
only their Orthodox flock but also the potential flock to be gathered from
those outside Orthodoxy. Through their refusal to carry out missionary work
among the heterodox, in accordance with the Lord’s command to go out and make
converts of all the nations (Matt. 28.19), they have in effect denied
themselves the right to call themselves Orthodox. For as St. Theodosius of the
Kiev Caves (+1054) said, he who honours the faith of another dishonours his
own…
Since the “Orthodox” ecumenists refuse to
carry out missionary work in view of their ecumenist convictions, why should
they object if the True Orthodox take this burden upon themselves? But this is
where the ecumenists show their true face. For while serving with and flatter
the heretics, whose faith is far from Orthodoxy, they actively persecute the
True Orthodox whose faith they supposedly share. They secretly kill their
priests, send the secular powers to take away their churches and in the West
deny their very existence. Like Herod, they claim that they, too, worship
Christ in the true faith, but will not accompany the true seekers, the Magi, to
Bethlehem, but will rather kill the innocents who bear witness to the existence
of the True Body of Christ.
Thus in the 1970s, as reported in Church
Times, an Australian journalist once asked Metropolitan Nicodemus of
Leningrad about the existence of the Russian Catacomb Church. “Have they got a
bank account?” asked the metropolitan (now exposed as KGB Agent “Sviatoslav”
and a secret Catholic bishop!). The journalist had difficulty in replying.
Nicodemus triumphantly concluded: “If it doesn’t have a bank account, then it
doesn’t exist!”
Actually, from the point of view of the
Orthodox Herods, this was a completely adequate answer. For to them the
significance of a Church is defined, not by the strength of its Orthodox faith,
but by its worldly strength – and worldly strength in the contemporary world is
measured by the size of one’s bank account. From their point of view, a Church
without a bank account is truly of no significance and can be swept off the
face of the earth without the slightest torments of conscience.
On the other hand, if an unbeliever has a
large bank account, then he is worthy of every honour and even of Orthodox
baptism – as was granted, for example, to the mayor of Moscow Luzhkov. And what
business is it of anyone’s that the mayor happens to be an unbeliever? For the
sergianist concept of “economy”, this is a trivial problem. Did not
Metropolitan Pitirim of Volokolamsk say, towards the end of the 1980s, that
true ecumenism is the gathering together into one Church or religion “of all
people of good will”, including even atheists?
In comparison with the cunning and spite
of this “Orthodox Herodianism”, the “Pilatism” of the Catholics and Protestants
looks almost innocent. At least they believe in their own faith, false though
it is, with sufficient sincerity and conviction to want to convert others to it
– and not in exchange for money, but at the cost of money. Thus the
Vatican organization “Aid to the Church in Need” offered a yearly subsidy of
$1000 to every priest in the Moscow Patriarchate![11]
Of course, such bribery cannot in any way
be approved. But it is hardly worse than the sheer mercenariness of, for
example, Archbishop Lev of Novgorod, who openly admits Protestants and
Catholics to communion in his cathedral, his obvious motivation being,
according to Liudmilla Perepiolkina, “the material benefit gained as a result
of attracting foreign tourists, along with their dollars, pounds and marks,
into the Patriarchate’s churches.”[12]
The truth is that many educated Roman
Catholics look with sincere respect at their “separated brethren”, the
Orthodox, and long for reunion with them, hoping that an injection of eastern blood
may reanimate, as it were, the ailing body of their own church. For they know
that the Orthodox Church is no less traditional than their own (in fact, much
more so), and that it occupies precisely those lands in Greece and the Middle
East that are the birthplace of Christianity. They would really prefer to be on
the side of the Orthodox, forming a “united front” of Traditional Christianity
against the ravages of modern secularism and atheism. Indeed, in the
subconsciousness of the Catholics a question arises concerning the Orthodox
Church: could this really be our real Mother? In the same way, Pilate secretly
respected Christ, was half-persuaded by his wife not to harm “that Righteous
Man”, Who, he suspected, might truly be the Son of God, and betrayed him only
because the respect he felt for Him was outweighed by his fear of the Jews.
It goes without saying that the above
paragraph in no way represents a justification of Roman Catholicism, nor a
denial that it remains a most dangerous heresy. Indeed, the corruption and
heresy of Roman Catholicism grows deeper every year, especially now that it has
absorbed all manner of Protestant ideas into itself. However, “the Spirit blows
where It wills” (John 3.8), and God can make sons of Abraham even out of
the stoniest of hearts (Matt. 3.9). Who could have foreseen, during the
savage persecutions under Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth century,
that the Roman Empire would very soon be converted to Christ and remain, in its
Byzantine and Russian incarnations, the main support of Christianity right
until the revolution of 1917? And if, as the famous novelist F. M. Dostoyevsky
said, the heretical Roman papacy is the regeneration of the pagan Roman empire
in a new form, who can be certain that the grace of God cannot again
transfigure that organism, so that it suddenly, after centuries of cruel
despotism and proud blindness, loses faith in itself, begins to investigate its
past and beseech, albeit hesitantly and imperfectly at first, the forgiveness
of its sins?
Conclusion. The
Unforgivable Sin.
The Lord said on the Cross: “Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23.34). And many
were forgiven and joined the Church after Pentecost, because “you did it
through ignorance” (Acts 3.17). An important principle follows from
this. To the extent that we remain in ignorance, to that degree we can hope for
forgiveness from God, if we repent. Conversely, to the extent that we know that
we are sinning, but still continue in that sin, to that degree we remain
unforgiven, for forgiveness is given only to those who seek it through
repentance.
Even the greatest sins can be forgiven if
the sinner is truly, involuntarily ignorant. Thus the Apostle Paul wrote: “I
obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly, in unbelief” (I Tim. 1.13; Acts
17.30). For our Great High Priest is truly the One Who “can have compassion on
the ignorant, and on those who are led astray” (Heb. 5.2).
However, there is such a phenomenon as
voluntary, conscious ignorance. Thus the Apostle Paul says of those who do not
believe in the One God, the Creator of heaven and earth, that they are “without
excuse” (Rom. 1.20), for they reject that which is evident to all
through contemplation of creation. Similarly, the Apostle Peter says: “This
they are willingly ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of
old” (II Peter 3.5). Moreover, if someone says that he knows, when in
fact he is ignorant, this is counted to him as conscious ignorance. For Christ
said to the Pharisees: “If ye were blind, ye would have no sin; but now that ye
say, We see, your sin abides” (John 9.41).
Voluntary ignorance is very close to
conscious resistance to the truth, which, according to the word of God, will
receive the greater condemnation. Thus those who will accept the Antichrist
will accept him because “they received not the love of the truth, that they
might be saved. For this reason God will send them the working of deception,
that they should believe in a lie, that they all might be damned who believed
not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (II Thess. 2.10-12).
And if it seems improbable that God should
send someone the working of deception, let us recall that God allowed a lying
spirit to enter into the lips of the prophets of King Ahab, because they
prophesied to him only that which he wanted to hear (III Kings
22.19-24).
Voluntary, conscious resistance to the
truth is “the sin unto death” (I John 5.16) or the blasphemy against
the Holy Spirit, which, according to the Lord’s word, “will never be
forgiven” (Matt. 12.31). Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) writes:
“The Seventh Ecumenical Council in its fifth canon explains what a sin unto
death is. Here, in the Saviour’s well-known words about this sin, it is not
blasphemy in the usual sense of the word that is meant, but a conscious
opposition to the truth, to which one’s soul bears witness, as the Lord said:
‘If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they
have no cloak for their sin’ (John 15.22). Here is an example of an unforgivable sin.
The Lord first spoke about an unforgiven blasphemy in Mark 3.29, here
the Evangelist explains: ‘Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit’ (Mark
3.30). As you see, there was no direct blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, but
there was an opposition to evident truth.”[13]
It is not that God does not want to
forgive all, even the most terrible sins; he wishes that all should come to a
knowledge of the truth and be saved (I Tim. 2.4). The point is that if a
man stubbornly refuses to respond to the promptings of the Spirit of truth, Who
“guides into all truth” (John 16.3) about God and man, he cannot come to
repentance, which is based on a knowledge of the truth. And so he cannot
receive forgiveness from the Truth. As Blessed Augustine said: “the first gift
is that which concerns the forgiveness of sins… Against this free gift, against
this grace of God speaks the impenitent heart. And so this impenitence is the
blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.”[14]
Voluntary ignorance can be of various
degrees. There is the voluntary ignorance which refuses to believe even when
the truth is staring at one in the face. This is the most serious form of
ignorance, which was practiced by the Pharisees and heresiarchs. But the
voluntarily ignorant can also be he who does not take the steps that are
necessary to find the truth. This is less serious, but still worthy of
punishment and is a characteristic of many of those who followed the Pharisees
and heresiarchs.
Thus we read: “That servant who knew his
lord’s will, and prepared not himself neither did according to his will, shall
be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and committed things worthy
of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is
given, of him shall much be required: and to whom men have committed much, of
him they will ask the more” (Luke 12.47-48).
A fitting commentary on this is provided
by Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria: “Some ask: ‘Let us grant that the man who
knew the will of his master and did not do it merited his punishment. But why
was there punishment for the man who did not know the master’s will?’ He too
was punished because he was able to learn the will of the master, but did not
want to do so. Because of his laziness, he was the cause of his own ignorance,
and he deserves punishment for this very reason, that of his own will he did
not learn.”[15]
And St. Cyril of Alexandria writes: “’How can he who knew it not be guilty? The
reason is, because he would not know it, although it was in his power to
learn.”[16]
And to whom does this distinction between
different degrees of ignorance apply? According to St. Cyril, to false teachers
and parents, on the one hand, and those who follow them, on the other. In other
words, the blind leaders are subjected to a greater punishment than the blind
who are led by them, but both the leaders and followers fall into a pit (Matt.
15.4).
In the light of this teaching, the
greatest and least forgivable sinners in the present-day ecumenical movement
are the Orthodox hierarchs. They know the truth; they know that the Orthodox
Church, and only the Orthodox Church, is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic
Church, “the pillar and ground of the truth” (I Tim. 3.15) and the only
ark of salvation. Those who follow these false hierarchs are also guilty,
albeit to a lesser degree, because although, in many cases, they may not know
the truth as clearly and fully as their leaders, they can easily take steps to
learn the truth, by more attentively studying the Holy Scriptures and Divine
Services of the Church.
As for the Western heretics who partake in
the ecumenical movement, some may know as much as their Orthodox colleagues and
are therefore as guilty as they. But generally speaking, the western heretics
must be considered to be less guilty than the Orthodox ecumenists. For while
they have the Holy Scriptures, they do not have the God-inspired interpretation
of the Scriptures that is to be found in the Holy Fathers and Divine services
of the Orthodox Church. Moreover, their striving for union with the Orthodox is
natural insofar as they feel themselves spiritually unfulfilled in their own
churches and seek to satisfy that hunger in union with Orthodoxy. The tragedy –
and it is a great tragedy for all concerned – is that when they seek the truth
from the Orthodox, the Orthodox usually push them back to their own spiritual
desert, saying that they are already in the truth. They seek bread, but are
given a stone…
And
so when we seek the causes of the present-day ecumenical catastrophe, let us
not accuse the western heretics first of all. Paradoxical as it may seem, the
further away a person is from the truth, the more forgivable and his blind
wanderings in the sphere of theology. That who “sit on Moses’ seat”, and call
themselves Orthodox and successors of the Holy Fathers – they are the ones who
bear the greatest responsibility. They build the tombs of the prophets, the
holy elders and hierarchs of Orthodoxy, and adorn the monuments of the
righteous, the shrines of the new martyrs and confessors, and say that they
would not have taken part in the shedding of their blood. And yet by their
betrayal of Holy Orthodoxy they witness against themselves that they are the
sons of those who killed the martyrs (Matt. 23.29-31).
March 6/19, 2000;
revised June 17/30, 2004.
Holy Monk-Martyr
Nectan of Hartland.
3. MEMORY AND THE MOSCOW PATRIARCHATE
I will not assemble their assemblies of blood,
Nor will I make remembrance of their names through my lips.
Psalm 15.4.
The Holy Church has decreed
the singing of “eternal memory” to all those who have died in the True Faith,
and glorifies a number of them by enrolling them among the saints, specifying
special days on which services are to be conducted in their honour. But she
forbids the public commemoration of those who have died outside the faith, and
even anathematizes certain of them – the heretics and heresiarchs. In this way
she has a selective memory, a memory that reflects the memory of God Himself,
who gives everlasting life to those who love Him but blots out those who betray
Him from the book of life.
The false church, the “church
of the evil-doers” (Psalm 21.16) also has a selective memory.
She “forgets” the saints who have rebuked her, and casts out their name as
evil. And she glorifies her own leaders, who have led her on the path to
destruction. Sometimes, if the glory of the true saints cannot be hidden, she
also “appropriates” them to herself – but carefully edits their words and deeds
to ensure that their real message will not get through to the people. As for
her own evil deeds and betrayals, these, too, are edited out…
Glasnost’ and Sergianism
Much of the past fifteen years
in the history of the Russian Church has been a struggle between true memory
and false memory. Fifteen years ago, Russia was in the throes of glasnost’, when Russians were learning, often with astonishment and
horror, the full depth of the fall of their people and their official “church”
in the Soviet period. The creation of such societies as Pamyat’ and Memorial symbolized the
process that was taking place – the recovery of the people’s memory. But then,
in June, 1990, the first major attempt to turn the clock back and the people
back to the amnesiac state of Sovietism took place. Metropolitan Alexis
(Ridiger) was elected as the new “patriarch” of Moscow. At a time when past
cooperation with the KGB was being denounced in the newspapers and on the
television, it was “forgotten” that this Alexis was a KGB agent whom the Furov
report of 1974 had called the most pro-Soviet of all the bishops after the
patriarch, and who had been prepared to report to the KGB even on his own
patriarch!
As if to confirm that, yes,
he was that most pro-Soviet of all bishops, and therefore probably the least
suitable person to lead the Russian Church into the new era, on July 4/17,
1990, the day of the martyrdom of Tsar Nicholas II, Alexis announced publicly
that he was praying for the preservation of the communist party!
But of course, “Patriarch” Alexis did not reach his lofty rank by being
stupid. And so after this gaffe he quickly recovered his balance, his sense of
which way the wind was blowing; and there was no further overt support of the
communists. True, he did attach his signature, in December, 1990, to a letter
by 53 well-known political, academic and literary figures who urged Gorbachev
to take urgent measures to deal with the state of crisis in the country,
speaking of “… the destructive dictatorship of people who are shameless in
their striving to take ownership of territory, resources, the intellectual
wealth and labour forces of the country whose name is the USSR”.[17] But the
patriarch quickly disavowed his signature; and a few weeks later, after the
deaths in Vilnius, he declared that the killings were “a great political
mistake – in church language a sin”.
Then, in May, 1991, he publicly disagreed with a member of the hardline Soiuz
bloc, who had said that the resources of the army and the clergy should be
drawn on extensively to save the people and the homeland. In Alexis’ view,
these words could be perceived as a statement of preparedness to use the Church
for political purposes. The patriarch recalled his words of the previous
autumn: the Church and the Faith should not be used as a truncheon.[18] By
June, the patriarch had completed his remarkable transformation from
dyed-in-the-wool communist to enthusiastic democrat, saying to Yeltsin: “May
God help you win the election”.
Still more striking was his apparent rejection of Sergianism. Thus in an
interview granted to Izvestia on June 6 he said: “This year has freed us
from the state’s supervision. Now we have the moral right to say that the
Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius has disappeared into the past and no longer
guides us… The metropolitan cooperated with criminal usurpers. This was his
tragedy…. Today we can say that falsehood is interspersed in his Declaration,
which stated as its goal ‘placing the Church in a proper relationship with the
Soviet government’. But this relationship – and in the Declaration it is
clearly defined as being the submission of the Church to the interests of
governmental politics – is exactly that which is incorrect from the point of view
of the Church… Of the people, then, to whom these compromises, silence, forced
passivity or expressions of loyalty that were permitted by the Church
leadership in those days, have caused pain – of these people, not only before
God, but also before them, I ask forgiveness, understanding and prayers.”[19]
And yet, in an interview given to Komsomolskaia Pravda only two
months earlier, he had said: “The most important thing for the Church is to
preserve itself for the people, so that they should be able to have access to
the Chalice of Christ, to the Chalice of Communion… There is a rule when a
Christian has to take on himself a sin in order to avoid a greater sin… There
are situations in which a person, a Christian must sacrifice his personal
purity, his personal perfection, so as to defend something greater… Thus in
relation to Metropolitan Sergius and his successors in the leadership of the
Church under Soviet power, they had to tell lies, they had to say that
everything was normal with us. And yet the Church was being persecuted.
Declarations of political loyalty were being made. The fullness of Christian
life, charity, almsgiving, the Reigning icon of the Mother of God were also
renounced. Compromises were made.” In other words, Sergianism, though sinful,
was justified. It may have “disappeared into the past”, but if similar
circumstances arise again, the “sacrifice” of personal purity can and should be
made again!…[20]
The patriarch showed that the poison of sergianism was in him still
during the attempted coup of August, 1991. When the Russian
vice-president, Alexander Rutskoy, approached him on the morning of the 19th,
the patriarch, like several other leading political figures, pleaded “illness”
and refused to see him. When he eventually did issue a declaration – on the
evening of the 20th, and again in the early hours of the 21st
– the impression made was, in Fr. Gleb Yakunin’s words, “rather weak”.[21] He
called on all sides to avoid bloodshed, but did not specifically condemn the
plotters.
As
Jane Ellis comments: “Though Patriarch Alexis II issued statements during the coup,
they were bland and unspecific, and he was widely thought to have waited to see
which way the wind was blowing before committing himself to issuing them. It
was rather the priests in the White House – the Russian Parliament building –
itself, such as the veteran campaigner for religious freedom, Fr. Gleb Yakunin,
as well as the Christians among those manning the barricades outside, who
helped to overthrow the Communist Party, the KGB and the Soviet system.”[22]
(During the 1993 attack on parliament he showed a similar
indecisiveness. “He promised to excommunicate the first person to fire a shot,
but when shooting… thundered around the ‘White House’, he forgot about his
promise.”[23])
It was not until Wednesday morning that the patriarch sent his
representative, Deacon Andrew Kurayev, to the Russian parliament building, by
which time several dissident priests were already established there. And it was
two priests of the Russian Church Abroad, Fr. Nicholas Artemov from Munich and
Fr. Victor Usachev from Moscow, who celebrated the first supplicatory service
to the New Martyrs of Russia on the balcony of the White House. Not to be
outdone, the patriarchate immediately responded with its own prayer service,
and at some time during the same day the patriarch anathematized all those who
had taken part in organizing the coup.
By these actions the patriarch appeared to have secured his position
vis-à-vis Yeltsin’s government, and on August 27, Yeltsin attended a
memorial service in the Assumption cathedral of the Kremlin, at which the
patriarch hailed the failure of the coup, saying that “the wrath of God falls
upon the children of disobedience”.[24] So in
the space of thirteen months, the patriarch had passed from a pro-communist,
anti-democratic to an anti-communist, pro-democratic stance. This lack of
principle should have surprised nobody; for the essence of sergianism, the root
heresy of the Moscow Patriarchate, is adaptation to the world, and to
whatever the world believes and praises.
But while he was now a democrat, the patriarch still remained a
sergianist – only in a more subtle way, appearing to distance himself from the
sin of sergianism while still insisting that it had to be done. Thus in
September, 1991, in an interview with 30 Dias, he said: “A church that
has millions of faithful cannot go into the catacombs. The hierarchy of the
church has taken the sin on their souls: the sin of silence and of lying for
the good of the people in order that they not be completely removed from real
life. In the government of the diocese and as head of the negotiations for the
patriarchate of Moscow, I also had to cede one point in order to defend
another. I ask pardon of God, I ask pardon, understanding and prayers of all
those whom I harmed through the concessions, the silence, the forced passivity
or the expressions of loyalty that the hierarchy may have manifested during
that period”.[25]
This is closer to self-justification than repentance. It is similar to
the statement of Metropolitan Nicholas (Corneanu) of Banat of the Romanian
Patriarchate, who confessed that he had collaborated with the Securitate and
had defrocked the priest Fr. Calciu for false political reasons, but
nevertheless declared that if he had not made such compromises he would have
been forced to abandon his post, “which in the conditions of the time would not
have been good for the Church”. In other words, as Vladimir Kozyrev writes: “It
means: ‘I dishonoured the Church and my Episcopal responsibility, I betrayed
those whom I had to protect, I scandalized my flock. But all this I had to do
for the good of the Church!’”[26]
KGB
Agents in Cassocks
One of the biggest fruits of glasnost’ – which did not, however,
lead to a real ecclesiastical perestroika – was the confirmation in
January, 1992 by a Russian parliamentary commission investigating the
activities of the KGB that for several decades at least the leaders of the
Moscow Patriarchate had been KGB agents. The records of the fourth, Church
department of the KGB’s Fifth Directorate revealed that Metropolitans Juvenal
of Krutitsa, Pitirim of Volokolamsk, Philaret of Kiev and Philaret of Minsk
were all KGB agents, with the codenames “Adamant”, “Abbat”, “Antonov” and
“Ostrovsky” respectively.
This news was not, of course, unexpected. Konstantin Kharchev, Chairman
of the Council for Religious Affairs from 1984 to 1989, confirmed in 1989 that
the Russian Orthodox Church was rigorously controlled by the Central Committee
of the Communist Party, especially its Ideological Department, and by the KGB.[27] Again,
Victor Sheimov, a former KGB major with responsibilities for upgrading the
KGB’s communications security system until his defection in 1980, described the
Fifth Directorate as being “responsible for suppressing ideological dissent,
running the Soviet Orthodox Church and laying the groundwork for the First
Chief Directorate’s subversive promotion of favourable opinion about the
country’s position and policy.”[28] One of
Sheimov’s jobs was to draft agents to infiltrate the “Soviet Orthodox Church”.
Again, in 1992 a former KGB agent, A. Shushpanov, described his experiences
working in the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department of External Ecclesiastical
Relations. He said that most of the people working there were in fact KGB
agents.[29]
But it was the revelations unearthed by the parliamentary commission
that were the most shocking. They included:- (i) the words of the head of the
KGB Yury Andropov to the Central Committee sometime in the 1970s: “The organs
of state security keep the contacts of the Vatican with the Russian Orthodox
Church under control…”; (ii) “At the 6th General Assembly of the
World Council of Churches in Vancouver, the religious delegation from the USSR
contained 47 (!) agents of the KGB, including religious authorities, clergy and
technical personnel” (July, 1983); (iii) “The most important were the journeys
of agents ‘Antonov’, ‘Ostrovsky’ and ‘Adamant’ to Italy for conversations with the
Pope of Rome on the question of further relations between the Vatican and the
Russian Orthodox Church, and in particular regarding the problems of the
uniates” (1989).[30]
The parliamentary commission also discovered that Patriarch Alexis
himself was an agent with the codename “Drozdov”. It is now known that Alexis
was recruited by the Estonian KGB on February 28, 1958[31]; and in
the 1974 Furov report to the Central Committee of the USSR he (together with
his predecessor Patriarch Pimen) was placed in the category of those bishops
who “affirm both in words and deeds not only loyalty but also patriotism
towards the socialist society; strictly observe the laws on cults, and educate
the parish clergy and believers in the same spirit; realistically understand
that our state is not interested in proclaiming the role of religion and the
church in society; and, realizing this, do not display any particular
activeness in extending the influence of Orthodoxy among the population.”[32]
Moreover, according to a KGB document of 1988, an order was drafted by
the USSR KGB chairman to award an honorary citation to agent DROZDOV for
unspecified services to state security.[33] But
these facts were not made public because, according to Fen Montaigne, “members
of the parliamentary commission had told the patriarch that they would not name
him as an agent if he began cleaning house in the church and acknowledging the
breadth of cooperation between the church and the KGB. ‘So far, we have kept
the silence because we wanted to give the patriarch a chance,’ said Alexander
Nezhny, a journalist who said his comparison of the archives and church
bulletins convinced him that Alexis II is indeed ‘Drozdov’…”[34]
The parliamentary commission was almost immediately closed down by the
President of the Supreme Soviet, Ruslan Khasbalutov, at the insistence,
according to Ponomarev, of Patriarch Alexis himself and the head of the KGB, E.
Primakov. One of the commission’s
members, Fr. Gleb Yakunin, “was accused of betraying state secrets to the
United States and threatened with a private persecution. Father Gleb remained
defiant. He wrote to the Patriarch in 1994:
“’If the Church is not cleansed of the taint of the spy and informer, it
cannot be reborn. Unfortunately, only one archbishop – Archbishop Chrysostom of
Lithuania – has had the courage publicly to acknowledge that in the past he
worked as an agent, and has revealed his codename: RESTAVRATOR. No other Church
hierarch has followed his example, however.
“The most prominent agents of the past include DROZDOV – the only one of
the churchmen to be officially honoured with an award by the KGB of the USSR,
in 1988, for outstanding intelligence services – ADAMANT, OSTROVSKY, MIKHAILOV,
TOPAZ AND ABBAT. It is obvious that none of these or the less exalted agents is
preparing to repent. On the contrary, they deliver themselves of pastoral
maxims on the allegedly neutral character of informing on the Church, and
articles have appeared in the Church press justifying the role of the informer
as essential for the survival of the Church in an anti-religious state.
“The codenames I discovered in the archives of the KGB belong to the top
hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate.”[35]
Keston News Service reviewed all the available documentary evidence from
the various activities of the KGB and concluded that long-standing allegations
that the Patriarch and other senior bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church
collaborated with the KGB were based on fact.[36] And,
writing in 1995, John Dunlop concluded that “the overwhelming majority of the
current one hundred and nineteen bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate were
ordained to the episcopacy prior to August of 1991. This suggests that each of
these bishops was carefully screened and vetted by both the ideological
apparatus of the Communist Party and by the KGB.”[37]
In 1992, Archbishop Chrysostom
of Vilnius declared to the Council of Bishops of the MP: “In our Church there
are genuine members of the KGB, who have made head-spinning careers; for example,
Metropolitan Methodius of Voronezh. He is a KGB officer, an atheist, a liar,
who is constantly advised by the KGB. The Synod was unanimously against such a
bishop, but we had to take upon us such a sin. And then what a rise he had!”
Memory Loss
At the same Council, a
commission of eight MP bishops headed by Bishop Alexander of Kostroma was
formed to investigate the charges of collaboration with the KGB. This
commission has so far (12 years later) produced absolutely nothing![38] In view
of the lack of a clear-out (chistka) of KGB
hierarchs, it remains true that, as the saying went, “the MP is the last
surviving department of the KGB” or “the second administration of the Soviet
state”.
As the memory loss in church
and society became greater and greater in the later 1990s, Patriarch Alexis
felt ready to return to the theme of sergianism. In an interview in 1997 he,
referring to the Church in the time of Patriarch Tikhon: “The Church could not,
did not have the right, to go into the catacombs. She remained together with
the people and drank to the dregs the cup of sufferings that fell to its lot.”[39] Patriarch Alexis here forgot to mention that
Patriarch Tikhon specifically blessed Michael Zhizhilenko, the future
Hieromartyr Maximus of Serpukhov, to become a secret catacomb bishop if the
pressure on the Church from the State became too great. As for his claim that
the sergianists shared the cup of the people’s suffering, this must be counted
as conscious hypocrisy. It is well known that the Soviet hierarchs lived a life
of considerable luxury, while lifting not a finger for the Catacomb Christians
and dissidents sent to torments and death in KGB prisons!
On November 9, 2001, the
patriarch threw off the mask of repentance completely, stating in defence of
Sergius’ declaration: “This was a clever step by which Metropolitan Sergius
tried to save the church and clergy. In declaring that the members of the
Church want to see themselves as part of the motherland and want to share her
joys and sorrows, he tried to show to those who were persecuting the church and
who were destroying it that we, the children of the church, want to be loyal
citizens so that the affiliation of people with the church would not place them
outside the law. So this is a far-fetched accusation…’[40]
But it is not enough to justify betrayal:
the traitor himself has to be canonized. And it is the canonization of
“Patriarch” Sergius, the author of the notorious declaration, that is the goal
of the MP. For such an act would complete the selective loss of memory that has
been taking place since 1990 and complete the justification of the “Soviet” church and its cooperation
with the KGB.
However, such an act needs a lengthy preparation. The opponents – those
whose memory is not completely gone – have to be neutralised. A first step was
taken by the patriarch already in 1991, when he wrote: “I believe that our
martyrs and righteous ones, regardless of whether they followed Metropolitan
Sergius or did not agree with his position, pray together for us.”[41] Then,
in 1993, he said: “Through the host of martyrs the Church of Russia bore
witness to her faith and sowed the seed of her future rebirth. Among the
confessors of Christ we can in full measure name… his Holiness Patriarch
Sergius.”[42]
It is as if he was contemplating a trade-off: if we recognize your
martyrs, he is saying to the opponents of Sergius, then you must recognize ours
– including Sergius himself.
Of course, Alexis still regarded the Catacomb martyrs as “uncanonical”.[43] But he
was prepared to canonize them, thus introducing the concept of “uncanonical
martyrs” into the Church (!), so long as Sergius himself, their betrayer and
persecutor, could also be canonized eventually. However, by the time of the MP’s
hierarchical council in 2000, at which many Catacomb martyrs were canonized,
the patriarchate still did not feel able to canonise Sergius – probably because
it feared that it would prevent a union with the ROCOR. But neither did it
canonise the leader of the Catacomb Church, Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd.
This suggested that a canonisation of the two leaders – the leader of the True
Church, and the leader of the false - was in the offing, but depended on the
success of the negotiations between the MP and the ROCOR.
Those negotiations were officially launched in May, 2004, during the
visit of the leader of the ROCOR, Metropolitan Lavr, to Russia. And the manner
in which they were launched is extremely significant. On May 15, the
anniversary of “Patriarch” Sergius’ death, Alexis demonstratively served a
panikhida for Sergius, and then, during a liturgy at Butovo, where thousands of
Catacomb Christians were martyred and sergianists killed in 1937, he had this
to say to his foreign guests:
“Today is the 60th anniversary since the death of the
ever-memorable Patriarch Sergius. The time of the service of this archpastor
coincided with the most terrible years of the struggle against God, when it was
necessary to preserve the Russian Church. In those terrible years of repression
and persecutions there were more sorrows. In 1937 both those who shared the
position of Metropolitan Sergius and those who did not agree with him suffered
for the faith of Christ, for belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church. We pay a
tribute of respect and thankful remembrance to his Holiness Patriarch Sergius
for the fact that he, in the most terrible and difficult of conditions of the
Church’s existence in the 1930s of the 20th century led the ship of
the Church and preserved the Russian Church amidst the stormy waves of the sea
of life.”[44]
And yet only the year before, in a book dedicated to the glorification
of Sergius (and Stalin), Sergius Fomin wrote: “If Metropolitan Sergius, in
agreeing in his name to publish the Declaration of 1927 composed by the
authorities, hoping to buy some relief for the Church and the clergy, then his
hopes not only were not fulfilled, but the persecutions after 1927 became still
fiercer, reaching truly hurricane-force in 1937-38”.[45]
Clearly,
Patriarch Alexis, “forgetting” historical facts and ignoring even the MP’s
panegyrists of Sergius, is determined to justify even his most shameful acts,
claiming that the “ever-memorable” Sergus indeed “saved the Church” by his
agreements with the God-haters. There can be no doubt, therefore, that he
remains a dyed-in-the-wool sergianist – that is, an adherent of the heresy that
the Church of God, “the pillar and ground of the truth” (I Timothy
3.15), can be saved by the lies of men. And there can similarly be no doubt
that Metropolitan Lavr, in listening to this speech in respectful silence and
without interjecting the slightest objection, is a sergianist, too.
Conclusion
The phenomenon of the loss of memory in
the Moscow Patriarchate is inseparable from the loss of historical memory in
Russia as a whole.
In a chapter entitled simply “Memory”, the
American journalist and historian of the Soviet Gulag, Anne Applebaum, has
written movingly and truthfully about this: “Ten years after the collapse of
the Soviet Union, Russia, the country that has inherited the Soviet Union’s
diplomatic and foreign policies, its embassies, its debts and its seat at the
United Nations, continues to act as if it has not inherited the Soviet Union’s
history. Russia does not have a national museum dedicated to the history of
repression. Nor does Russia have a national place of mourning, a monument which
officially recognizes the suffering of victims and their families. Throughout
the 1980s, competitions were held to design such a monument, but they came to
nothing. Memorial succeeded only in dragging a stone from the Solovetsky
islands – where the Gulag began – and placing it in the centre of Dzerzhinsky
Square, across from the Lubyanka.
“More notable than the missing monuments,
however, is the missing public awareness. Sometimes, it seems as if the
enormous emotions and passions raised by the wide-ranging discussions of the
Gorbachev era simply vanished, along with the Soviet Union itself. The bitter
debate about justice for the victims disappeared just as abruptly. Although
there was much talk about it at the end of the 1980s, the Russian government
never did examine or try the perpetrators of torture or mass murder, even those
who were identifiable. In the early 1990s, one of the men who carried out the
Katyn massacres of Polish officers was still alive. Before he died, the KGB
conducted an interview with him, asking him to explain – from a technical point
of view – how the murders were carried out. As a gesture of goodwill, a tape of
the interview was handed to the Polish cultural attaché in Moscow. No
one suggested at any time that the man be put on trial, in Moscow, Warsaw, or
anywhere else.
“It is true, of course, that trials may
not always be the best way to come to terms with the past. In the years after
the Second World War, West Germany brought 85,000 Nazis to trial, but obtained
fewer than 7,000 convictions. The tribunals were notoriously corrupt, and
easily swayed by personal jealousies and disputes. The Nuremberg Trial itself
was an example of ‘victors’ justice’ marred by dubious legality and oddities,
not the least of which was the presence of Soviet judges who knew perfectly
well that their own side was responsible for mass murder too.
“But there are other methods, aside from
trials, of doing public justice to the crimes of the past. There are truth
commissions, for example, of the sort implemented in South Africa, which allow
victims to tell their stories in an official, public place, and make the crimes
of the past a part of the public debate. There are official investigations,
like the British Parliament’s 2002 inquiry into the Northern Irish ‘Bloody
Sunday’ massacre, which had taken place thirty years earlier. There are
government inquiries, government commission, public apologies – yet the Russian
government has never considered any of these options. Other than the brief,
inconclusive ‘trial’ of the Communist Party, there have in fact been no public
truth-telling sessions in Russia, no parliamentary hearings, no official
investigations of any kind into the murders or the massacres or the camps of
the USSR.
“The result: half a century after the
war’s end, the Germans still conduct regular public disputes about victims’
compensation, about memorials, about new interpretations of Nazi history, even
about whether a younger generation of Germans ought to go on shouldering the
guilt about the crimes of the Nazis. Half a century after Stalin’s death, there
were no equivalent arguments taking place in Russia, because the memory of the
past was not a living part of public discourse.
“The rehabilitation process did continue,
very quietly, throughout the 1990s. By the end of 2001, about 4.5 million
political prisoners had been rehabilitated in Russia, and the national
rehabilitation commission reckoned it had a further half-million cases to
examine. Those victims – hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions more – who
were never sentenced will of course be exempt from the process. But while the
commission itself is serious and well-intentioned, and while it is composed of
camp survivors as well as bureaucrats, no one associated with it really feels
that the politicians who created it were motivated by a real drive for ‘truth
and reconciliation’, in the words of the British historian Catherine Merridale.
Rather, the goal has been to end discussion of the past, to pacify the victims
by throwing them a few extra roubles and free bus tickets, and to avoid any
deeper examination of the causes of Stalinism and its legacy.
“There are some good, or at least some
forgivable, explanations for this public silence. Most Russians really do spend
all of their time coping with the complete transformation of their economy and
society. The Stalinist era was a long time ago, and a great deal has happened
since it ended. Post-communist Russia is not post-war Germany, where the
memories of the worst atrocities were still fresh in people’s minds. In the
twenty-first century, the events of the middle of the twentieth century seem
like ancient history to much of the population.
“Perhaps more to the point, many Russians
also feel that they have had their discussion of the past already, and that it
produced very little. When one asks older Russians, at least, why the subject
of the Gulag is so rarely mentioned nowadays, they wave away the issue: ‘In
1990 that was all we could talk about, now we don’t need to talk about it any
more.’ To further complicate things, talk of the Gulag and of Stalinist
repression has become confused, in the minds of many, with the ‘democratic
reformers’ who originally promoted the debate about the Soviet past. Because
that generation of political leaders is now seen to have failed – their rule is
remembered for corruption and chaos – all talk of the Gulag is somehow tainted
by association.
“The question of remembering or
commemorating political repression is also confused…. by the presence of so
many other victims of so many other Soviet tragedies. ‘To make matters more
complicated,’ writes Catherine Merridale, ‘a great many people suffered
repeatedly; they can describe themselves as war veterans, victims of
repression, the children of the repressed and even as survivors of famine with
equal facility. There are plenty of memorials to the wartime dead, some
Russians seem to feel: Will that not suffice?
“But there are other reasons, less
forgivable, for the profound silence. Many Russians experienced the collapse of
the Soviet Union as a profound blow to their personal pride. Perhaps the old
system was bad, they now feel – but at least we were powerful. And now that we
are not powerful, we do not want to hear that it was bad. It is too painful,
like speaking ill of the dead.
“Some – still – also fear what they might
find out about the past, if they were to inquire too closely. In 1998, the
Russian American journalist Masha Gessen described what it felt like to
discover that one of her grandmothers, a nice old Jewish lady, had been a
censor, responsible for altering the reports of foreign correspondents based in
Moscow. She also discovered that her other grandmother, another nice old Jewish
lady, had once applied for a job with the secret police. Both had made their
choices out of desperation, not conviction. Now, she wrote, she knows why her
generation had refrained from condemning their grandparents’ generation too
harshly: ‘We did not expose them, we did not try them, we did not judge them…
merely by asking such questions each one of us risks betraying someone we
love.’
“Aleksandr Yakovlev, chairman of the
Russian rehabilitation commission, put this problem somewhat more bluntly.
‘Society is indifferent to the crimes of the past,’ he told me, ‘because so
many people participated in them.’ The Soviet system dragged millions and
millions of its citizens into many forms of collaboration and compromise.
Although many willingly participated, otherwise decent people were also forced
to do terrible things. They, their children, and their grandchildren do not
always want to remember that now.
“But the most important explanation for
the lack of public debate does not involve the fears of the younger generation,
or the inferiority complexes and leftover guilt of those now ruling not only
Russia, but also most of the other ex-Soviet states and satellite states. In
December 2001, on the tenth anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union,
thirteen of the fifteen former Soviet republics were run by former communists,
as were many of the former satellite states, including Poland, the country
which supplied so many hundreds of thousands of prisoners for Soviet camps and
exile villages. Even the Communist Party, former communists and their children
or fellow travellers also continued to figure largely in the intellectual, media
and business elites. The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, was a former KGB
agent, who proudly identified himself as a ‘Chekist’. Earlier, when serving as
the Russian Prime Minister, Putin had made a point of visiting the KGB
headquarters at Lubyanka, on the anniversary of the Cheka’s founding, where he
dedicated a plaque to the memory of Yuri Andropov.
“The dominance of former communists and
the insufficient discussion of the past in the post-communist world is not
coincidental. To put it bluntly, former communists have a clear interest in
concealing the past: it tarnishes them, undermines them, hurts their claims to
be carrying out ‘reforms’, even when they personally had nothing to do with
past crimes. In Hungary, the ex-Communist Party, renamed the Socialist Party,
fought bitterly against opening the museum to the victims of terror. When the
ex-Communist Party, renamed the Social Democrats, was elected to power in
Poland in 2001, it immediately cut the budget of the Polish Institute of National
Memory, set up by its centre-right predecessors. Many, many excuses have been
given for Russia’s failure to build a national monument to its millions of
victims, but Aleksandr Yakovlev, again, gave me the most succint explanation,
‘The monument will be built,’ he said, ‘when we – the older generation – are
all dead.’”[46]
This quotation is long because every point
it makes about the loss of memory and the corruption of memory in Russia as a
whole can be paralleled in that microcosm of Russia today that is the Moscow
Patriarchate.
If the Russian state and people want to
keep silent about the past, then so does the MP – and for very similar reasons.
If Putin the Chekist places a plaque to the memory of Yuri Andropov at the
Lubyanka, then Alexis the Chekist goes one better by building a church inside
the Lubyanka for the spiritual needs of the KGB agents who work in it. If Putin
now raises a toast to Stalin, then priests of the MP write articles glorifying
him (and Ivan the Terrible and Rasputin!). If Lenin still lies in his
mausoleum, an object of veneration as before, the same is true of the founder
of the Moscow Patriarchate, “Patriarch” Sergius. If a true and adequate
monument to the victims of the Gulag will not be built until the older generation
is dead, then the same is probably true about the holy martyrs and confessors
of the Catacomb Church: not until the present rulers of the Church and State in
Russia are dead or removed will they be given a fitting memorial...
A man is to a large extent constituted by
his memory. If he forgets his past, he has to a large extent lost himself. The
same applies to a nation. And to a Church. Therefore, lest the sleep of
forgetfulness overtake us completely before that glorious day of the full
restoration of memory comes, let us remember the words of the Lord: “Take heed
to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which
thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy
life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons” (Deuteronomy 4.9).
For the sin of forgetfulness - both of the
great deeds of God and His saints, and of the great iniquities of the devil and
his followers - is indeed the sin unto death. And the path to life for those
sitting by the waters of the Babylon of this world is the path of constant
vigilance and memory: If I forget thee, O Jerusalem…
July 13
/ August 13, 2004.
Forefeast
of the Procession of the Honourable and Life-Giving Cross.
Hieromartyr
Benjamin, Metropolitan of Petrograd, and those with him.
4.
TEN REASONS WHY THE ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE IS NOT ORTHODOX
I. The Heretical Encyclical of 1920.
In January, 1920, Metropolitan Dorotheus,
locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, and his Synod issued what was in effect
a charter for Ecumenism. It was addressed “to all the Churches of Christ
everywhere”, and declared that “the first essential is to revive and strengthen
the love between the Churches, not considering each other as strangers and
foreigners, but as kith and kin in Christ and united co-heirs of the promise of
God in Christ.”
It went on: “This love and benevolent disposition towards each other can
be expressed and proven especially, in our opinion, through:
“(a) the reception of a single calendar for the simultaneous celebration
of the great Christian feasts by all the Churches;
“(b) the exchange of brotherly epistles on the great feasts of the
single calendar..;
“(c) close inter-relations between the representatives of the different
Churches;
“(d) intercourse between the Theological Schools and the representatives
of Theological Science and the exchange of theological and ecclesiastical
periodicals and writings published in each Church;
“(e) the sending of young people to study from the schools of one to
another Church;
“(f) the convening of Pan-Christian conferences to examine questions of
common interest to all the Churches;
“(g) the objective and historical study of dogmatic differences..;
“(h) mutual respect for the habits and customs prevailing in the
different Churches;
“(I) the mutual provision of prayer houses and cemeteries for the
funeral and burial of members of other confessions dying abroad;
“(j) the regulation of the question of mixed marriages between the
different confessions;
“(k) mutual support in the strengthening of religion and philanthropy.”[47]
The unprecedented nature of the encyclical consists in the fact: (1)
that it was addressed not to the Orthodox Churches only, but to the Orthodox
and heretics together, as if there were no important difference between them
but all equally were “co-heirs of God in Christ”; (2) that the proposed rapprochement
was seen as coming, not through the acceptance by the heretics of the Truth of
Orthodoxy and their sincere repentance and rejection of their errors, but
through various external measures and, by inference, the mutual accomodation of
the Orthodox and the heretics; and (3) the proposal of a single universal
calendar for concelebration of the feasts, in contravention of the canonical
law of the Orthodox Church. There is no mention here of the only possible
justification of Ecumenism from an Orthodox point of view – the opportunity it
provides of conducting missionary work among the heretics. On the contrary, as
we have seen, one of the first aims of the ecumenical movement was and is to prevent proselytism among the
member-Churches.
II. The Uncanonical Election of Meletius
Metaxakis.
In 1918 the traditionalist Archbishop Theocletus of Athens was
uncanonically defrocked “for having instigated the anathema against [the Cretan
Freemason] Eleutherios Venizelos”. Two years later, Theocletus was vindicated.
But the damage was done. In his place another Cretan Freemason, Meletius Metaxakis,
was enthroned as Archbishop of Athens in November, 1918. However, in November,
1920 he was defrocked “for uncanonical actions” and confined to a monastery on
Zakynthos as a simple monk. But by December, 1921 he was Patriarch of
Constantinople! How did this transformation of a defrocked monk into Patriarch
of Constantinople take place?
Bishop Photius of Triaditsa writes: “Political circles around Venizelos
and the Anglican Church had been involved in Meletius’ election as Patriarch.
Metropolitan Germanus (Karavangelis) of the Holy Synod of Constantinople wrote
of these events, ‘My election in 1921 to the Ecumenical Throne was
unquestioned. Of the seventeen votes cast, sixteen were in my favour. Then one
of my lay friends offered me 10,000 lira if I would forfeit my election in
favour of Meletius Metaxakis. Naturally I refused his offer, displeased and
disgusted. At the same time, one night a delegation of three men unexpectedly
visited me from the “National Defence League” and began to earnestly entreat me
to forfeit my candidacy in favour of Meletius Metaxakis. The delegates said
that Meletius could bring in $100,000 for the Patriarchate and, since he had
very friendly relations with Protestant bishops in England and America, could
be useful in international causes. Therefore, international interests demanded
that Meletius Metaxakis be elected Patriarch. Such was also the will of
Eleutherius Venizelos. I thought over this proposal all night. Economic chaos
reigned at the Patriarchate. The government in Athens had stopped sending
subsidies, and there were no other sources of income. Regular salaries had not
been paid for nine months. The charitable organizations of the Patriarchate
were in a critical economic state. For these reasons and for the good of the
people [or so thought the deceived hierarch] I accepted the offer…’ Thus, to
everyone’s amazement, the next day, November 25, 1921, Meletius Metaxakis
became the Patriarch of Constantinople.
“The uncanonical nature of his election became evident when, two days
before the election, November 23, 1921, there was a proposal made by the Synod
of Constantinople to postpone the election on canonical grounds. The majority
of the members voted to accept this proposal. At the same time, on the very day
of the election, the bishops who had voted to postpone the election were
replaced by other bishops. This move allowed the election of Meletius as
Patriarch. Consequently, the majority of bishops of the Patriarchate of
Constantinople who had been circumvented met in Thessalonica. [This Council
included seven out of the twelve members of the Constantinopolitan Holy Synod
and about 60 patriarchal bishops from the New Regions of Greece under the
presidency of Metropolitan Constantine of Cyzicus.] They announced that, ‘the
election of Meletius Metaxakis was done in open violation of the holy canons,’
and proposed to undertake ‘a valid and canonical election for Patriarch of
Constantinople.’ In spite of this, Meletius was confirmed on the Patriarchal
Throne.” [48]
Two members of the Synod then went to
Athens to report to the council of ministers. On December 12, 1921 they
declared the election null and void. One of the prominent hierarchs who refused
to accept this election was Metropolitan Chrysostom (Kavourides) of Florina,
the future leader of the True Orthodox Church, who also tried to warn the then
Prime Minister Gounaris about the dangers posed by the election of Meletius.
The Sublime Porte also refused to recognize the election, first because
Meletius was not an Ottoman citizen and therefore was not eligible for the
patriarchate according to the Ottoman charter of 1856, and secondly because
Meletius declared that he did not consider any such charters as binding insofar
as they had been imposed by the Muslim conquerors.
On December 29, 1921, the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece deposed
Metaxakis for a series of canonical transgressions and for creating a schism,
declared both Metaxakis and Rodostolos Alexandros to be schismatics and
threatened to declare all those who followed them as similarly schismatic.
In spite of this second condemnation, Meletius was enthroned as
patriarch on January 22, 1922; and as a result of intense political pressure
his deposition was uncanonically lifted on September 24, 1922! [49] Thus there arrived at the peak of power one
of the men whom Metropolitan Chrysostom (Kavourides) called “these two Luthers
of the Orthodox Church”. The other Orthodox Luther, Archbishop Chrysostom
(Papadopoulos) of Athens, would come to power very shortly…
III. The EP’s uncanonical annexation of vast
territories belonging to the Russian and Serbian Churches.
Meletius and his successor, Gregory VII, undertook what can only be
described as a wholesale annexation of vast territories belonging to the
jurisdiction of the Serbian and Russian Patriarchates. Basing his actions on a
false interpretation of the 28th canon of the Fourth Ecumenical
Council, which supposedly gives all the “barbarian lands” into the jurisdiction
of Constantinople, he and his successor created the following uncanonical
autonomous and autocephalous Churches on the model of the “Greek Archdiocese of
North and South America”:-
1. Western Europe. On April 5, 1922, Meletius named
an exarch for the whole of Western and Central Europe. By the time of Gregory
VII’s death in November, 1924, there was an exarchate of Central Europe under
Metropolitan Germanus of Berlin, an exarchate of Great Britain and Western
Europe under Metropolitan Germanus of Thyateira, and a diocese of Bishop
Gregory of Paris. In the late 1920s the Ecumenical Patriarch received into his
jurisdiction the Russian Metropolitan Eulogius of Paris, who had created a
schism in the Russian Church Abroad, and who sheltered a number of influential
heretics, such as Nicholas Berdyaev and Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, in the
theological institute of St. Sergius in Paris.
[50]
2. Finland. In February, 1921 Patriarch
Tikhon granted the Finnish Church autonomy within the Russian Church. On June
9, 1922, Meletius uncanonically received this autonomous Finnish Church into
his jurisdiction. The excuse given here was that Patriarch Tikhon was no longer
free, “therefore he could do as he pleased” (Metropolitan Anthony
Khrapovitsky). This undermined the efforts of the Orthodox to maintain their
position vis-à-vis the Lutherans. Thus under pressure from the Lutheran
government, and in spite of the protests of Patriarch Tikhon, Patriarch Gregory
allowed the Finnish Church to adopt the western paschalion. Then began the persecution
of the confessors of the Old Calendar in the monastery of Valaam.
“Even more iniquitous and cruel,” continues Metropolitan Anthony, “was
the relationship of the late Patriarch Gregory and his synod towards the
diocese and the person of the Archbishop of Finland. The Ecumenical Patriarch
consecrated a vicar bishop for Finland, the priest Aava, who was not only not
tonsured, but not even a rasophore. Moreover, this was done not only without
the agreement of the Archbishop of Finland, but in spite of his protest. By
these actions the late Patriarch of Constantinople violated a fundamental canon
of the Church – the sixth canon of the First Ecumenical Council [and many
others], which states, ‘If anyone is consecrated bishop without the consent of
his metropolitan, the Great Council declares him not to be a bishop.’ According
to the twenty-eighth canon of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, the patriarch
cannot even place a bishop in his diocese without the approval of the local
metropolitan. Based on precisely this same canon, the predecessors of Gregory
vainly attempted to realize his pretensions and legalize their claims to
control. This uncanonical ‘bishop’ Aava, once consecrated as bishop, placed a
monastic klobuk on his own head, and thus costumed, he appeared in the foreign
diocese of Finland. There he instigated the Lutheran government to persecute
the canonical Archbishop of Finland, Seraphim, who was respected by the people.
The Finnish government previously had requested the Ecumenical Patriarch to
confirm the most illegal of laws, namely that the secular government of Finland
would have the right to retire the Archbishop. The government in fact followed
through with the retirement, falsely claiming that Archbishop Seraphim had not
learned enough Finnish in the allotted time. Heaven and earth were horrified at
this illegal, tyrannical act of a non-Orthodox government. Even more horrifying
was that an Orthodox patriarch had consented to such chicanery. To the scandal
of the Orthodox and the evil delight of the heterodox, the highly dubious
Bishop Germanus (the former Fr. Aava) strolled the streets of Finland in
secular clothes, clean-shaven and hair cut short, while the most worthy of
bishops, Seraphim, crudely betrayed by his false brother, languished in exile
for the remainder of his life in a tiny hut of a monastery on a stormy isle on
Lake Ladoga.” [51]
On November 14/27, 1923, Patriarch Tikhon and the Russian Holy Synod,
after listening to a report by Archbishop Seraphim decreed that “since his
Holiness Patriarch Tikhon has entered upon the administration of the Russian
Orthodox Church, the reason for which the Patriarch of Constantinople
considered it necessary temporarily to submit the Finnish Church to his
jurisdiction has now fallen away, and the Finnish eparchy must return under the
rule of the All-Russian Patriarch.”[52]
However, the Finns did not return to the Russians, and the Finnish Church
remains to this day within the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and
the most modernist of all the Orthodox Churches.
3. Estonia. In February, 1921
Patriarch Tikhon granted a broad measure of autonomy to the parts of the former
Pskov and Revel dioceses that entered into the boundaries of the newly formed
Estonian state. On August 28, 1922, Meletius uncanonically received this
Estonian diocese of the Russian Church into his jurisdiction, under
Metropolitan Alexander. The recent renewal of this unlawful decision by the
present Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew, nearly led to a schism between the
Ecumenical and Russian patriarchates.
4.
Latvia. In June, 1921 Patriarch Tikhon granted the Latvian Church a
large measure of autonomy under its Latvian archpastor, Archbishop John of
Riga, who was burned to death by the communists in 1934. In March, 1936, the
Ecumenical Patriarch accepted the Church of Latvia within his own jurisdiction.
5. Poland. In 1921 Patriarch
Tikhon appointed Archbishop Seraphim (Chichagov) to the see of Warsaw, but the
Poles, whose armies had defeated the Red Army the year before, did not grant
him entry into the country. So the patriarch was forced to bow to the Poles’
suggestion that Archbishop George (Yaroshevsky) of Minsk be made metropolitan
of Warsaw. However, he refused Archbishop George’s request for autocephaly on the
grounds that very few members of the Polish Church were Poles and the Polish
dioceses were historically indivisible parts of the Russian Church. [53]
Lyudmilla Koeller writes: “The Polish authorities restricted the
Orthodox Church, which numbered more than 3 million believers (mainly
Ukrainians and Byelorussians). [54] In 1922
a council was convoked in Pochayev which was to have declared autocephaly, but
as the result of a protest by Bishop Eleutherius [Bogoyavlensky, of Vilnius]
and Bishop Vladimir (Tikhonitsky), this decision was not made. But at the next
council of bishops, which gathered in Warsaw in June, 1922, the majority voted
for autocephaly, with only Bishops Eleutherius and Vladimir voting against. A
council convoked in September of the same year ‘deprived Bishops Eleutherius
and Vladimir of their sees. In December, 1922, Bishop Eleutherius was arrested
and imprisoned in a strict regime prison in the monastery of the Camaldul
Fathers near Krakow, from where he was transferred to Kovno in spring, 1923’.” [55]
Two other Russian bishops, Panteleimon (Rozhnovsky) and Sergius
(Korolev), were also deprived of their sees. The three dissident bishops were
expelled from Poland.
In November, 1923, Metropolitan George was killed by an opponent of his
church politics, and was succeeded by Metropolitan Dionysius “with the
agreement of the Polish government and the confirmation and blessing of his
Holiness Meletius IV [Metaxakis]”. Patriarch Tikhon rejected this act as
uncanonical[56],
but was unable to do anything about it. In November, 1924, Patriarch Gregory
VII uncanonically transferred the Polish Church from the jurisdiction of the
Russian Church to his own.
5. Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
According to the old Hungarian law of 1868, and confirmed by the government of
the new Czechoslovak republic in 1918 and 1920, all Orthodox Christians living
in the territory of the former Hungarian kingdom came within the jurisdiction
of the Serbian Patriarchate, and were served directly by Bishops Gorazd of Moravia
and Dositheus of Carpatho-Russia.
However, on September 3, 1921, the Orthodox parish in Prague elected
Archimandrite Sabbatius to be their bishop, and then informed Bishop Dositheus,
their canonical bishop about this. When the Serbian Synod refused to consecrate
Sabbatius for Prague, he, without the knowledge of his community, set off for
Constantinople, where on March 4, 1923, he was consecrated “archbishop” of the
newly created Czechoslovakian branch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which included
Carpatho-Russia. Then, on April 15, 1924, the Ecumenical Patriarch established
a metropolia of Hungary and All Central Europe with its see in Budapest -
although there was already a Serbian bishop there.
“The scandal caused by this confusion,” writes
Z.G. Ashkenazy, “is easy to imagine. Bishop Sabbatius insisted on his rights in
Carpatho-Russia, enthusiastically recruiting sympathizers from the
Carpatho-Russian clergy and ordaining candidates indiscriminately. His
followers requested that the authorities take administrative measures against
priests not agreeing to submit to him. Bishop Dositheus placed a rebellious
monk under ban – Bishop Sabbatius elevated him to igumen; Bishop Dositheus
gathered the clergy in Husta and organized an Ecclesiastical Consistory –
Bishop Sabbatius enticed priests to Bushtin and formed an Episcopal Council.
Chaos reigned in church affairs. Malice and hatred spread among the clergy, who
organized into ‘Sabbatiites’ and ‘Dositheiites’.
“A wonderful spiritual flowering which gave birth to so many martyrs for
Orthodoxy degenerated into a shameful struggle for power, for a more lucrative
parish and extra income. The Uniate press was gleeful, while bitterness settled
in the Orthodox people against their clergy, who were not able to maintain that
high standard of Orthodoxy which had been initiated by inspired simple folk.” [57]
In 1938 the great wonderworker Archbishop John Maximovich reported to
the All-Diaspora Council of the Russian Church Abroad: “Increasing without
limit their desires to submit to themselves parts of Russia, the Patriarchs of
Constantinople have even begun to declare the uncanonicity of the annexation of
Kiev to the Moscow Patriarchate, and to declare that the previously existing
southern Russian Metropolia of Kiev should be subject to the Throne of
Constantinople. Such a point of view is not only clearly expressed in the Tomos
of November 13, 1924, in connection with the separation of the Polish Church,
but is also quite thoroughly promoted by the Patriarchs. Thus, the Vicar of
Metropolitan Eulogius in Paris, who was consecrated with the permission of the
Ecumenical Patriarch, has assumed the title of Chersonese; that is to say,
Chersonese, which is now in the territory of Russia, is subject to the Ecumenical
Patriarch. The next logical step for the Ecumenical Patriarchate would be to
declare the whole of Russia as being under the jurisdiction of Constantinople…
“In sum, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, in theory embracing almost the
whole universe, and in fact extending its authority only over several dioceses,
and in other places having only a superficial supervision and receiving certain
revenues for this; persecuted by the government at home and not supported by
any governmental authority abroad; having lost its significance as a pillar of
truth and having itself become a source of division, and at the same time being
possessed by an exorbitant love of power – represents a pitiful spectacle which
recalls the worst periods in the history of the See of Constantinople.” [58]
IV. The EP’s communion with the Russian
renovationist heretics and uncanonical deposition of ROCOR Bishops.
In 1922 the so-called “Living Church” came to power in Russia, deposed
Patriarch Tikhon, and instituted a programme of modernistic reforms that was
very close to those Meletius was to introduce. He promptly entered into
communion with the schismatics. As the synod of the “Living Church” wrote to
Meletius in 1925: “The Holy Synod [of the renovationists] recall with sincere
best wishes the moral support which Your Beatitude showed us while you were yet
Patriarch of Constantinople by entering into communion with us as the only
rightfully ruling organ of the Russian Orthodox Church.”[59]
Moreover, his successors Gregory VII and Constantine VI remained in communion
with the “Living Church”.
Patriarch Gregory first called for Patriarch Tikhon’s resignation, and
then demanded “that the Russian Metropolitan Anthony and Archbishop Anastasius,
who were residing Constantinople at the time, cease their activities against
the Soviet regime and stop commemorating Patriarch Tikhon. Receiving no
compliance from them, Patriarch Gregory organized an investigation and
suspended the two bishops from serving. He asked Patriarch Demetrius [of
Serbia] to close down the Russian Council of Bishops in Sremsky-Karlovtsy, but
Demetrius refused…”[60]
Gregory then decided to send a special mission to Russia to investigate
the church situation there.
Patriarch Tikhon wrote to Gregory: “Attached to the letter of your
Holiness’ representative in Russia, Archimandrite Basil Dimopoulo, of June 6,
1924, no. 226, I received the protocols of four sessions of the Holy
Constantinopolitan Synod of January 1, April 17, April 30 and May 6 of this
year, from which it is evident that your Holiness, wishing to provide help from
the Mother Great Church of Christ of Constantinople, and ‘having exactly
studied the course of Russian Church life and the differences and divisions
that have taken place – in order to bring peace and end the present anomalies’,
.. ‘having taken into consideration the exceptional circumstances and examples
from the past’, have decided ‘to send us a special Commission, which is
authorized to study and act on the spot on the basis and within the bounds of
definite orders which are in agreement with the spirit and tradition of the
Church’.
“In your Holiness’ instructions to the members of the Mission one of the
main points is your desire that I, as the All-Russian Patriarch, ‘for the sake
of the unification of those who have cut themselves off and for the sake of the
flock, should sacrifice myself and immediately resign from the administration
of the Church, as befits a true and love-filled pastor who cares for the
salvation of many, and that at the same time the Patriarchate should be
abolished, albeit temporarily, because it came into being in completely
abnormal circumstances at the beginning of the civil war and because it is
considered a major obstacle to the reestablishment of peace and unity’.
Definite instructions are also given to the Commission regarding which
tendencies [factions] they should rely on in their work.
“On reading the indicated protocols, we were in no small measure
disturbed and surprised that the Representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,
the head of the Constantinopolitan Church, should without prior contact with
us, as the lawful representative and head of the whole of the Russian Orthodox
Church, interfere in the inner life and affairs of the Autocephalous Russian
Church. The Holy Councils... have always recognized the primacy in honour, but
not in power, of the Bishop of Constantinople over the other Autocephalous
Churches. Let us also remember the canon that ‘without being invited, bishops
must not pass beyond the boundaries of their own jurisdiction for the sake of
ordination or any other ecclesiastical affair.’ For that reason any attempt by
any Commission without consulting me, the only lawful and Orthodox
First-Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, and without my knowledge, is
unlawful and will not be accepted by the Russian Orthodox peoples, and will
bring, not pacification, but still more disturbance and schism into the life of
the Russian Orthodox Church, which has suffered much even without this. This
will be to the advantage only of our schismatics – the renovationists, whose
leaders now stand at the head of the so-called (self-called) Holy Synod, like
the former archbishop of Nizhegorod Eudocimus and others, who have been
defrocked by me and have been declared outside the communion of the Orthodox
Church for causing disturbance, schism and unlawful seizure of ecclesiastical
power.
“I, together with the whole mass of Russian Orthodox believers, and with
all my flock, very much doubt that your Holiness has, as you declare, ‘studied
exactly the course of Russian church life’. I doubt it because You have not
once turned to me for documentary explanations of who is the true and real
cause of disturbance and schism.
“The whole Russian Orthodox people long ago pronounced its righteous
word concerning both the impious meeting which dared to call itself a Council
in 1923, and the unhappy leaders of the renovationist schism… The people is not
with the schismatics, but with their lawful Orthodox Patriarch. Allow me also
to be sceptical about the measure your Holiness suggests for pacifying the
Church – that is, my resignation from the administration of the Church and the
abolition, albeit temporary, of the Patriarchate in Rus’. This would not pacify
the Church, but cause a new disturbance and bring new sorrows to our faithful
Archpastors and pastors who have suffered much even without this. It is not
love of honour or power which has forced me to take up the cross of the
patriarchy again, but the consciousness of my duty, submission to the will of
God and the voice of the episcopate which is faithful to Orthodoxy and the
Church. The latter, on receiving permission to assemble, in July last year,
synodically condemned the renovationists as schismatics and asked me again to
become head and rudder of the Russian Church until it pleases the Lord God to
give peace to the Church by the voice of an All-Russian Local Council.” [61]
Relations between Constantinople and the Russian Church continued to be
very frosty. Constantine’s successor, Basil III, broke communion with the
Living Church in 1929 – but then entered into communion with the Sovietized
Moscow Patriarchate of Metropolitan Sergius! When Metropolitan Peter came to
power in Russia in April, 1925, he was presented a letter from Patriarch Basil
III which called on the “Old Churchmen” to unite with the renovationists. His
comment was: “We still have to check whether this Patriarch is Orthodox…”
Metropolitan Sergius was also sceptical; he reacted to Constantinople’s
recognition of the renovationists as follows: “Let them recognize them; the
renovationists have not become Orthodox from this, only the Patriarchs have
become renovationists!” [62]
V. The EP’s false “Pan-Orthodox” Council of
1923 and acceptance of the uncanonical papist calendar in 1924.
At the beginning of 1923, a Commission was set up on the initiative of
the Greek government to see whether the Autocephalous Church of Greece could
accept the new calendar – the first step towards union with the West in prayer.
The Commission reported that “although the Church of Greece, like the other
Autocephalous Orthodox Churches, is inherently independent, they are
nevertheless firmly united and bound to each other through the principle of the
spiritual unity of the Church, composing one and one only Church, the Orthodox
Church. Consequently none of them can separate itself from the others and
accept the new calendar without becoming schismatic in relation to them.”
On February 3, Meletius Metaxakis wrote to the Church of Greece, arguing
for the change of calendar at his forthcoming Pan-Orthodox Council “so as to
further the cause, in this part of the Pan-Christian unity, of the celebration
of the Nativity and Resurrection of Christ on the same day by all those who are
called by the name of the Lord.”[63]
Shortly afterwards, on February 25, Archimandrite Chrysostom
Papadopoulos, was elected Archbishop of Athens by three out of a specially
chosen Synod of only five hierarchs – another ecclesiastical coup
d’état. During his enthronement speech, Chrysostom said that for
collaboration with the heterodox “it is not necessary to have common ground or
dogmatic union, for the union of Christian love is sufficient”. [64]
As one of the members of the commission which had rejected the new
calendar, Chrysostom might have been expected to resist Meletius’ call. But it
seems that the two men had more in common than the fact that they had both been
expelled from the Church of Jerusalem in their youth; for on March 6 Chrysostom
and his Synod accepted Meletius’ proposal and agreed to send a representative
to the forthcoming Council. Then, on April 16, he proposed to the Hierarchy
that 13 days should be added to the calendar, “for reasons not only of convenience,
but also of ecclesiastical, scientifically ratified accuracy”.
Five out of the thirty-two hierarchs – the metropolitans of Syros,
Patras, Demetrias, Khalkis and Thera – voted against this proposal. Two days
later, however, at the second meeting of the Hierarchy, it was announced that
Chrysostom’s proposal had been “unanimously” approved, but “with absolutely no
change to the Paschalion and Calendar of the Orthodox Church”. Moreover, it was
decided that the Greek Church would approve of any decision regarding the
celebration of Pascha made by the forthcoming Pan-Orthodox Council, provided it
was in accordance with the Canons…[65]
It was therefore with the knowledge that the Greek Church would support
his proposed reforms that Meletius convened a “Pan-Orthodox Council” in
Constantinople from May 10 to June 8, 1923, whose renovationist resolutions
concerned the “correction” of the Julian calendar, a fixed date for Pascha, the
second marriage of clergy, and various relaxations with regard to the clothing
of clergy, the keeping of monastic vows, impediments to marriage, the transfer
of Saints’ feasts from the middle of the week, and fasting.
However, hardly more than ten people, and no official representatives of
the Patriarchates, turned up for the “Pan-Orthodox Council”, so discredited was
its convener.[66]
And even Archbishop Chrysostom (Papadopoulos) had to admit: “Unfortunately, the
Eastern Patriarchs who refused to take part in the Congress rejected all of
its resolutions in toto from the very outset. If the
Congress had restricted itself only to the issue of the calendar, perhaps it
would not have encountered the kind of reaction that it did.” [67]
In his “Memorandum to the Holy Synod of the Hierarchy of Greece” (June
14, 1929), Metropolitan Irenaeus of Kassandreia wrote that the council was not
“Pan-Orthodox” but “anti-Orthodox”: “It openly and impiously trampled on the 34th
Apostolic Canon, which ordains: ‘It behoves the Bishops of every nation to know
among them who is the first or chief, and to recognize him as their head, and
to refrain from doing anything superfluous without his advice and approval… But
let not even such a one do anything without the advice and consent and approval
of all. For thus will there be concord, and God will be glorified through the
Lord in the Holy Spirit: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’. He replaced
the Julian calendar with the Gregorian in spite of all the prohibitions
relating to it; he decided to supersede the Paschalion which had been eternally
ordained for the Orthodox Church by the decision of the First Ecumenical
Council, turning to the creation of an astronomically more perfect one in the
observatories of Bucharest, Belgrade and Athens; he allowed clerics’ hair to be
cut and their venerable dress to be replaced by that of the Anglican Pastors;
he introduced the anticanonical marriage and second marriage of priests; he
entrusted the shortening of the days of the fast and the manner of their
observance to the judgement of the local Churches, thereby destroying the order
and unity that prevailed in the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches of the East.
Acting in this way, he opened wide the gates to every innovation, abolishing
the distinctive characteristic of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is its
preservation, perfectly and without innovation, of everything that was handed
down by the Lord, the Apostles, the Fathers, and the Local and Ecumenical
Councils.” [68]
What made the council’s decisions still less acceptable was the reason
it gave for its innovations, viz., that changing the Paschalion “would make a
great moral impression on the whole civilized world by bringing the two
Christian worlds of the East and West closer through the unforced initiative of
this Orthodox Church…”[69]
The council was rejected by the Alexandrian, Antiochian and Jerusalem
Churches, and by the Russian Church Abroad and the Serbian Church. Metropolitan
Anthony (Khrapovitsky) called the calendar innovation “this senseless and
pointless concession to Masonry and Papism”.
That the adoption of the new calendar was an abomination in the sight of
God was clearly indicated by the great miracle of the sign of the cross in the
sky over the Old Calendarist monastery of St. John the Theologian in Athens in
September, 1925. In fact the new calendar had been anathematised by the Eastern
Patriarchs in three Councils, in 1583, 1587 and 1593, and synodically condemned
again in 1722, 1827, 1848, 1895 and 1904. By adopting it, the EP, as the
Commission of the Greek Church had rightly declared, became schismatic in
relation to the Churches keeping the Church calendar.
VI. The participation of the EP in the World
Council of Churches.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate was a founder-member of the WCC. It had
participated in several ecumenical conferences with the Protestants since its
official espousing of Ecumenism in 1920 and up to the founding congress of the
WCC in Amsterdam in 1948. A.V. Soldatov has chronicled the progressive
weakening in the Orthodox position during these years: “At the conference [of
Faith and Order] in Geneva in 1920 the spirit of extreme Protestant liberalism
gained the upper hand. It came to the point that when the Orthodox Metropolitan
Stephen of Sophia noted in his report: ‘The Church is only there where the
hierarchy has apostolic succession, and without such a hierarchy there are only
religious communities’, the majority of the delegates of the conference left
the hall as a sign of protest. At the next conference on Faith and Order [in
Lausanne] in 1927, victory again went to the extreme left Protestants. The
Orthodox delegation, experiencing psychological pressure at this conference,
was forced to issue the following declaration: ‘in accordance with the views of
the Orthodox Church, no compromises in relation to the teaching of the faith
and religious convictions can be permitted. No Orthodox can hope that a reunion
based on disputed formulae can be strong and positive… The Orthodox Church
considers that any union must be based exclusively on the teaching of the faith
and confession of the ancient undivided Church, on the seven Ecumenical
Councils and other decisions of the first eight centuries.’ But the numerous
speeches of the Orthodox explaining the teaching of the Church on the unity of
the Church seemed only to still further increase the incomprehension or
unwillingness to comprehend them on the part of the Protestant leaders of
Ecumenism. This tendency was consistently pursued by the Protestants at the
conferences in 1937 in Oxford and Edinburgh. Summing up this ‘dialogue’ at the
beginning of the century, Fr. Metrophanes Znosko-Borovsky remarks: ‘The
Orthodox delegates at Edinburgh were forced with sorrow to accept the existence
of basic, irreconcilable differences in viewpoint on many subjects of faith
between the Orthodox East and the Protestant West.’
“After the Second World War, the World Council of Churches was created.
It is necessary to point out that the movements ‘Faith and Order’ and ‘the
Christian Council of Life and Work’ were viewed by their organizers as
preparatory stages in the seeking of possible modes of integration of ‘the
Christian world’. The World Council of Churches differed from them in
principle. It set out on the path of ‘practical Ecumenism’ for the first time
in world history, declaring that it was the embryo of a new type of universal
church. The first, so to speak founding conference of the WCC in Amsterdam
chose as its motto the words: ‘Human disorder and God’s house-building’. At it,
as Archbishop Vitaly remarks, ‘every effort was made to destroy the teaching on
the One, True, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’. “[70]
Among the rules of the WCC which bind every member is the following: “A
church must recognize the essential interdependence of the churches, particularly
those of the same confession, and must practise constructive ecumenical
relations with other churches within its country or region. This will normally
mean that the church is a member of the national council of churches or similar
body and of the regional ecumenical organisation."
Article I of the WCC Constitution reads:
"The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which
confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the scriptures
(sic) and therefore seek to fulfil together their common calling to the glory
of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit." And the Constitution also
declares that the
primary purpose of the fellowship of churches in the World Council of Churches
is to call one another to “visible unity in one faith and in one eucharistic
fellowship, expressed in worship and common life in Christ, through witness and
service to the world, and to advance towards that unity in order that the world
may believe”.
Further, according to Section II of the WCC
Rules, entitled Responsibilities of
Membership, "Membership in the World Council of Churches signifies
faithfulness to the Basis of the Council, fellowship in the Council,
participation in the life and work of the Council and commitment to the
ecumenical movement as integral to the mission of the church.”
In accepting these terms the Orthodox
churches that entered the WCC clearly accepted a Protestant ecclesiology.
VII. The
Apostasy of Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras.
In 1949 there flew into Constantinople – on US President Truman’s plane
– the second Meletius Metaxakis, the former Archbishop of North and South
America Athenagoras, who in 1919 had been appointed secretary of the Holy Synod
of the Church of Greece by Metaxakis himself. [71] By an
extraordinary coincidence Athenagoras was a former spiritual son of
Metropolitan Chrysostom of Florina, leader of the Greek Old Calendarists, so
that the leaders of the opposing sides in the Church struggle in the early
1950s were, like David and Absalom, a holy father and his apostate son.
Patriarch Maximus was forced into retirement on grounds of mental
illness and the 33rd degree Mason Athenagoras took his place. In his
enthronement speech he went far beyond the bounds of the impious masonic encyclical
of 1920 and proclaimed the dogma of ‘Pan-religion’, declaring: “We are in error
and sin if we think that the Orthodox Faith came down from heaven and that the
other dogmas [i.e. religions] are unworthy. Three hundred million men have
chosen Mohammedanism as the way to God and further hundreds of millions are
Protestants, Catholics and Buddhists. The aim of every religion is to make man
better.”[72]
In 1960 the Orthodox Churches in the WCC met on Rhodes to establish a
catalogue of topics to be discussed at a future Pan-Orthodox Council. “In the
course of the debate on the catalogue,” write Gordienko and Novikov, “the
Moscow Patriarchate’s delegation suggested the removal of some of the subjects
(The Development of Internal and External Missionary Work, The Methods of
Fighting Atheism and False Doctrines Like Theosophy, Spiritism, Freemasonry,
etc.) and the addition of some others (Cooperation between the Local Orthodox
Churches in the Realisation of the Christian Ideas of Peace, Fraternity and Love
among Peoples, Orthodoxy and Racial Discrimination, Orthodoxy and the Tasks of
Christians in Regions of Rapid Social Change)… Besides working out the topics
for the future Pre-Council, the First Conference passed the decision ‘On the
Study of Ways for Achieving Closer Contacts and Unity of Churches in a
Pan-Orthodox Perspective’, envisaging the search for contacts with Ancient
Eastern (non-Chalcedonian) Churches (Monophysites), the Old Catholic, Anglican,
Catholic, and Protestant Churches, as well as the World Council of Churches.” [73]
In other words, the Orthodox henceforth were to abandon the struggle
against Atheism, Freemasonry and other false religions, and were to engage in
dialogue towards union with all the Christian heretics – while at the same time
persecuting the True Orthodox and using ecumenical forums to further the ends
of Soviet foreign policy in its struggle with the Capitalist West!
It is not recorded that the EP objected to this programme…
Athenagoras’ apostate course received a boost from the WCC’s General
Assembly in New Delhi in 1961, which marked the decisive dogmatic break between
“World Orthodoxy” and True Orthodoxy. If, until then, it could be argued,
albeit unconvincingly, that the new calendarists had not apostasised, and that
only a few of their leaders were ecumenist heretics, this could no longer be
maintained after the summary statement signed by all the delegates at New
Delhi, which declared, among other things: “we consider that the work of
creating the One, Universal Church must unfailingly be accompanied by the
destruction and disappearance of certain outmoded, traditional forms of
worship”.
This was an outright challenge delivered to the Holy Tradition of the
One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church! And, having delivered it, the
Orthodox delegates seemed to lose all restraint. After the New Delhi congress,
convened, appropriately enough, in the centre of the Hindu world, the
ecumenical movement climbed into a higher gear, and even, within a decade or two,
into the realm of “Super-ecumenism” – relations with non-Christian religions.
Already before the Delhi Assembly, in April, 1961, the Greek Archbishop
James of North and South America (a Freemason of the 33rd degree)
had said: “We have tried to rend the seamless robe of the Lord – and then we
cast ‘arguments’ and ‘pseudo-documents’ to prove – that ours is the Christ, and
ours is the Church… Living together and praying together without any walls of
partition raised, either by racial or religious prejudices, is the only way
that can lead surely to unity.” What
could these “pseudo-documents” and “religious prejudices” have been if not the
sacred Canons which forbid the Orthodox from praying together with heretics?
Then, in April, 1963, he said: “It would be utterly foolish for the true
believer to pretend or to insist that the whole truth has been revealed only to
them, and they alone possess it. Such a claim would be both unbiblical and
untheological… Christ did not specify the date nor the place that the Church
would suddenly take full possession of the truth.” This statement, which more
or less denied that the Church is, as the Apostle Paul said, “the pillar and
ground of the Truth” (I Timothy. 3.15), caused uproar in Greece and on
Mount Athos. However, Athenagoras supported James, calling his position
“Orthodox”. From this time on, the two Masons went steadily ahead making ever
more flagrantly anti-Orthodox statements. As we shall see, there was some
opposition from more conservative elements in the autocephalous Churches; but
the opposition was never large or determined enough to stop them…
At a meeting of the Faith and Order movement in Montreal in 1963, a
memorandum on “Councils of Churches in the Purpose of God” declared: “The
Council [WCC] has provided a new sense of the fullness of the Church in its
unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity. These marks of the Church can no
longer be simply applied to our divided churches, therefore.”
Although this memorandum was not accepted in the end (Fr. George
Florovsky objected to it in the plenary session), it showed how the WCC was
encroaching on the Orthodox Church’s understanding of herself as the One
Church. Indeed, it could be argued that the Orthodox participants had already abandoned
this dogma. For as early as the Toronto, 1950 statement of the WCC’s Central
Committee, it had been agreed that an underlying assumption of the WCC was that
the member-churches “believe that the Church of Christ is more inclusive than
the membership of their own body”. [74]
At the Second Pan-Orthodox Conference in Rhodes, in September, 1963, it
was unanimously agreed that the Orthodox should enter into dialogue with the
Catholics, provided it was “on equal terms”. In practice, this meant that the Catholics
should abandon their eastern-rite missions in Orthodox territories. The
Catholics have never shown much signs of wishing to oblige in this, but they
did help to make a dialogue easier by redefining the Orthodox, in Vatican II’s
decree on Ecumenism, as “separated brethren” rather than “schismatics”.
In 1968 the Fourth General Assembly of the WCC took place in Uppsala. It
considerably furthered the ecumenical movement, with the Orthodox, as the new
general secretary Carson Blake joyfully pointed out, taking full part in all
the sections and committees and not, as often in the past, issuing separate
statements disagreeing with the majority Protestant view. Archbishop Vitaly
(Ustinov) of Canada said to the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside
Russia: “At the opening of the Assembly an ecumenical prayer was read in the
name of all those assembles: ‘O God our Father, You can create everything anew.
We entrust ourselves to You, help us to live for others, for Your love extends
over all people, and to search for the Truth, which we have not known…’ How
could the Orthodox listen to these last words? It would have been interesting
to look at that moment at the faces of the Orthodox hierarchs who had declared
for all to hear that they, too, did not know the Truth. Every batyushka of ours
in the remotest little village knows the Truth by experience, as he stands
before the throne of God and prays to God in spirit and in truth. Even The
Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, which is completely subject to the
censorship of the communist party, in citing the words of the prayer in its
account of this conference, did not dare to translate the English ‘truth’ by
the word ‘istina’, but translated it as ‘pravda’ [‘righteousness’]. Of course,
everyone very well understood that in the given case the text of the prayer was
speaking without the slightest ambiguity about the Truth. Perhaps the Orthodox
hierarchs have resorted, in the conference, to the old Jesuit practice of reservatio
mentalis, but in that case if all these delegates do not repent of the sin
of communion in prayer with heretics, then we must consider them to be on the
completely false path of apostasy from the Truth of Orthodoxy… Ecumenism is the
heresy of heresies because until now each heresy in the history of the Church
has striven to take the place of the true Church, but the ecumenical movement,
in uniting all the heresies, invites all of them together to consider
themselves the one true Church.”[75]
VIII. The EP’s “Lifting of the Anathemas” on
the Roman Papacy.
On January 5 and 6, 1964, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras met in
Jerusalem and prayed together. This was a clear transgression of the canons
concerning relations with heretics (Apostolic canon 45). Archbishop Chrysostom
of Athens was reported as saying that “while the Pope is going to the Holy Land
to kneel before the Saviour’s sepulchre, you (Athenagoras) are going to kneel
before the Pope and bury Orthodoxy.”
Further intense activity led, on December 7, 1965, to the “lifting of
the anathemas” of 1054 between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. The
announcement was made simultaneously in Rome and Constantinople. It included
the following words: “Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I with his synod,
in common agreement, declare that: a. They regret the offensive words, the
reproaches without foundation, and the reprehensible gestures which, on both
sides, have marked or accompanied the sad events of this period [viz. In the 11th
century]. B. They likewise regret and remove both from memory and from the
midst of the Church the sentences of excommunication which followed these
events, the memory of which has influenced actions up to our day and has
hindered closer relations in charity; and they commit these excommunications to
oblivion.” [76]
It should be pointed out, first, that in
saying that the schism of 1054 was based on “reproaches without foundation”,
the Patriarch was in effect saying that the Papacy was not, or never had been,
heretical – although the Papacy had renounced none of its heresies, and Pope
Paul VI had reasserted papal infallibility as recently as Vatican II. Secondly,
while relations with excommunicated individuals or Churches can be restored if
those individuals or Churches repent, anathemas against heresies cannot be
removed insofar as a heresy remains a heresy forever.
In the journal Ekklesia Archbishop Chrysostom of Athens denied
that the Patriarch had the authority to act independently of the other Orthodox
Churches. And he said: “I am convinced that no other Orthodox Church will copy
the Ecumenical Patriarch’s action.”[77] From
this time, several monasteries and sketes on Mount Athos ceased to commemorate
the Patriarch.
On December 15, 1965, Metropolitan Philaret, First-Hierarch of the ROCA,
wrote to the Patriarch protesting against his action: “Your gesture puts a sign
of equality between error and truth. For centuries all the Orthodox Churches
believed with good reasons that it has violated no doctrine of the Holy
Ecumenical Councils; whereas the Church of Rome has introduced a number of
innovations in its dogmatic teaching. The more such innovations were
introduced, the deeper was to become the separation between the East and the
West. The doctrinal deviations of Rome in the eleventh century did not yet
contain the errors that were added later. Therefore the cancellation of the
mutual excommunication of 1054 could have been of meaning at that time, but now
it is only evidence of indifference in regard to the most important errors, namely
new doctrines foreign to the ancient Church, of which some, having been exposed
by St. Mark of Ephesus, were the reason why the Church rejected the Union of
Florence… No union of the Roman Church with us is possible until it renounces
its new doctrines, and no communion in prayer can be restored with it without a
decision of all the Churches, which, however, can hardly be possible before the
liberation of the Church of Russia which at present has to live in the
catacombs… A true dialogue implies an exchange of views with a possibility of
persuading the participants to attain an agreement. As one can perceive from
the Encyclical Ecclesiam Suam, Pope Paul VI understands the dialogue as
a plan for our union with Rome with the help of some formula which would,
however, leave unaltered its doctrines, and particularly its dogmatic doctrine
about the position of the Pope in the Church. However, any compromise with
error is foreign to the history of the Orthodox Church and to the essence of
the Church. It could not bring a harmony in the confessions of the Faith, but
only an illusory outward unity similar to the conciliation of dissident
Protestant communities in the ecumenical movement.” [78]
IX. The EP’s Heretical “Thyateira
Confession”.
In 1975, Archbishop Athenagoras of Thyateira and Great Britain
published, with the explicit blessing and authorisation of Patriarch Demetrius,
his Thyateira Confession, which expressed the novel idea that the Church
is a house without walls which anyone can enter freely and receive “eucharistic
hospitality”. And he wrote: “Orthodox Christians believe that the following
Churches have valid and true Priesthood or Orders. The Orthodox, the Roman
Catholic, the Ethiopian, the Copto-Armenian and the Anglican. The Ecumenical Patriarchate
of Constantinople, the Patriarchate of Alexandria, the Patriarchate of
Jerusalem, the Patriarchate of Romania and the Church of Cyprus half a century
ago declared officially that the Anglican Church has valid Orders by
dispensation and that means that Anglican Bishops, Priests and Deacons can
perform valid sacraments as can those of the Roman Catholic Church.”[79] This
heretical confession was condemned by Metropolitan Philaret and his Synod.
X. The EP’s Participation in “Super
Ecumenism”.
In
the early 1980s inter-Christian ecumenism was succeeded by inter-faith
ecumenism, or “super ecumenism”, with the EP, as usual, taking a leading role.
Already in the WCC’s General Assembly at Nairobi in 1975, the Orthodox
delegates, having signed an agreement to recognize the sacraments of the
non-Orthodox delegates, had declared that “the Orthodox do not expect the other
Christians to be converted to Orthodoxy in its historic and cultural reality of
the past and the present and to become members of the Orthodox Church” – which
gave the lie to their excuse that they were participating in the ecumenical
movement “to witness to the non-Orthodox”.[80]
Again, in 1980, the Ecumenical Press Service declared that the
WCC was working on plans to unify all Christian denominations into a single new
religion.[81]
Then, in 1982, an inter-denominational eucharistic service was
composed at a conference in Lima, Peru, in which the Protestant and Orthodox
representatives to the WCC agreed that the baptism, eucharist and ordinations
of all denominations were valid and
acceptable.[82]
But the greatest shock came in 1983, at the Vancouver General Assembly
of the WCC. This was attended by representatives of every existing religion and
began with a pagan rite performed by local Indians. The participation of
Orthodox hierarchs in religious services with representatives of all the
world’s religions required a rebuke – and a rebuke was forthcoming.
First, the Greek Old Calendarist Metropolitan Gabriel of the Cyclades
attempted to address the Vancouver Assembly. But he was not allowed to speak by
the ecumenists, who thereby demonstrated that they are “tolerant” and “loving”
to every kind of blasphemy, but not to the expression of True Christianity.
Then the Synod of the ROCA, also meeting in Canada, anathematised ecumenism,
declaring: “To those who attack the Church of Christ by teaching that Christ’s
Church is divided into so-called ‘branches’ which differ in doctrine and way of
life, or that the Church does not exist visibly, but will be formed in the
future when all ‘branches’ or sects or denominations, and even religions will
be united in one body; and who do not distinguish the priesthood and mysteries
of the Church from those of the heretics, but say that the baptism and
eucharist of heretics is effectual for salvation; therefore to those who
knowingly have communion with these aforementioned heretics or advocate,
disseminate , or defend their new heresy of Ecumenism under the pretext of
brotherly love or the supposed unification of separated Christians, Anathema.”[83]
The implication of this anathema was clear: since the EP was a fully
participating member of the WCC, it was under anathema and deprived of the
grace of sacraments. As I.M. has written: “There is no heresy without heretics
and their practical activity. The WCC in its declarations says: The Church
confesses, the Church teaches, the Church does this, the Church does that. In
this way the WCC witnesses that it does not recognize itself to be simply a council
of churches, but the one church. And all those who are members of the WCC are
members of this one false church, this synagogue of satan. And by this
participation in the WCC all the local Orthodox churches fall under the
anathema of the ROCA of 1983 and fall away from the True Church.…” [84]
In 1990, a Declaration was agreed at Chambésy in Switzerland
between a Joint Commission of theologians of the Orthodox (including the EP)
and the Monophysites (called “Oriental Orthodox” in the documents), in which
the Orthodox and Monophysites were called two “families of churches” (a phrase
unknown to Orthodox ecclesiology).
Paragraph Four of the Declaration said: “The two families accept that
the two natures [of Christ] with their own energies and wills are united
hypostatically and naturally without confusion, without change, without
division and without separation and that they are distinguished only in thought
(en qewria).”
This is already completely unacceptable from an Orthodox point of view,
and represents a heretical, Monophysite formulation. The two natures and wills
of Christ are not distinguishable “only in thought”, but also in reality.
Paragraph Seven also speaks of the two natures being distinguishable
“only in thought”, which implies, as Ludmilla Perepiolkina points out “an absence
of this distinction in reality”.[85]
Paragraph Five states: “The two families accept that the One Who wills
and acts is always the single Hypostasis of the incarnate Logos”. However, as
Perepiolkina again correctly points out, according to the teaching of St.
Maximus the Confessor,
“the concept of energy (activity) of nature is attributable only to nature as a
whole, and not to the hypostasis. This teaching was affirmed at the Sixth
Ecumenical Council. In the Chambésy Declaration, as it is evident from
Paragraph Five, natural wills and energies in Jesus Christ are attributed to
His Hypostasis. In other words, this Paragraph is a purely Monothelite
formula”.[86]
Paragraph Eight states: “The two families accept the first three
Ecumenical Councils which form our common heritage. With regard to the four
later Councils of the Orthodox Church, the Orthodox affirm that, for them,
points one through seven are also the teaching of these four later Councils, whereas
the oriental Orthodox consider this affirmation of the Orthodox like their own
interpretation. In this sense the oriental Orthodox respond positively to this
affirmation.”
An unclear statement, about which one thing, however, is clear: the
Monophysites do not commit themselves to accepting the Fourth, Fifth,
Sixth and Seventh Ecumenical Councils in the way the Orthodox do, but only
“positively respond to their affirmation”, which means nothing in dogmatic
terms.
Paragraph Nine states: “In the light of our joint declaration on
Christology and the joint affirmations mentioned above, we now clearly realize
and understand that our two families have always loyally guarded the same and
authentic Christological Orthodox Faith, and have maintained uninterrupted the
apostolic tradition although they may have used the Christological terms in a
different manner. It is that common faith and that continual loyalty to the
apostolic tradition which must be the basis of our unity and communion.”
This is in flat contradiction to 1500 years of Orthodox Tradition. In
this period all the Holy Fathers unambiguously affirmed that the Monophysites
had not “loyally guarded the same and authentic Christological Orthodox
Faith”, and were in fact heretics. But the modern ecumenists claim that all the
six hundred and thirty holy Fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, as well
as all the Fathers of all the succeeding Council that condemned Monophytism,
were wrong, and the whole controversy was simply based on some linguistic
misunderstandings!
Paragraph Ten of the Declaration states: “The two families accept that
all the anathemas and the condemnations of the past which kept us divided must
be lifted by the Churches so that the last obstacle to full unity and communion
of our two families can be removed by the grace and power of God. The two
families accept that the lifting of the anathemas and the condemnations will be
based on the fact that the Councils and the father previously anathematised or
condemned were not heretics.”
So the Seven Ecumenical Councils need to be amended, say these
“theologians”, and the anathemas against all the Monophysite councils and
fathers, including the notorious heresiarchs Dioscurus, Timothy and Severus,
lifted! This is a clear and explicit rejection of the Faith of the Seven
Ecumenical Councils! Of course, the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches (with the
exception of Jerusalem) have already implicitly
rejected the Councils and the Fathers by their communion in prayer and the sacraments
with all sorts of heretics, and even pagans, the WCC General Assembly in
Canberra in 1991 being perhaps the most extreme example. Nevertheless, it is a
further and important stage to say explicitly
that the Ecumenical Councils were wrong,
that the Monophysites should not have been condemned, that they were Orthodox
all these centuries although the Holy Fathers and all the saints of the
Orthodox Church considered them to be heretics. This is not simply a failure to
come up to the standards of the Ecumenical Councils: it is a renunciation of the standards themselves.
In essence, the Local Orthodox Churches, led by the EP, here placed
themselves under the anathemas against Monophysitism from the Fourth Ecumenical
Council onwards, and must be considered to be “semi-Monophysites”.
The ROCOR and the Greek Old Calendarists quickly condemned the
Chambésy agreement.[87]
Nevertheless, in 1992 the patriarchate of Antioch entered into full, official
communion with the Monophysites. There is every indication that the Moscow
Patriarchate wants to go along the same path. The MP’s relations with the
Armenian Monophysites are especially close.
Chambésy was followed by the Seventh General Assembly of the WCC
in Canberra in 1991, in which the Orthodox delegates blasphemed against the
Faith still more blatantly. Thus aboriginal pagans invited the participants to
pass through a “cleansing cloud of smoke” uniting Aboriginal spirituality to
Christian spirituality!
In March, 1992, the heads of the Local Orthodox Churches met in
Constantinople and official renounced proselytism among Western Christians. Of
course, this renunciation had been implicit in the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s
statements since the encyclical of 1920. But it still came as a shock to see
the “Church” renounced the hope of conversion and therefore salvation for
hundreds of millions of westerners.
Union with the Monophysites proceeded in parallel with moves for union
with the Catholics. In 1994 the Local Orthodox churches signed the Balamand
agreement with the Catholics, in which the Orthodox and the Catholics were
declared to be sister-Churches in the full sense, “two lungs” of the same
organism (with the Monophysites as a “third lung”?). The Balamand Agreement,
which was signed on the Orthodox side by Moscow, Constantinople, Alexandria,
Antioch, Romania, Cyprus, Poland and Finland, declared: “Catholics and
Orthodox… are once again discovering each other as sister churches” and
“recognizing each other as sister churches”. “On each side it is acknowledged
that what Christ has entrusted to His Church – the profession of the apostolic
faith, participation in the same sacraments, the apostolic succession of
bishops, and, above all, the one priesthood celebrating the one Sacrifice of
Christ – cannot be considered to be the exclusive property of one of our
Churches.” The baptism of penitent papists into the Orthodox Church was
prohibited: “All rebaptism (sic) is prohibited.” The Orthodox Church
“recognizes the Catholic Church in her entirety as a sister Church, and
indirectly recognizes also the Oriental Catholic Churches” (the Uniates).
“Special attention should be given on both sides to the preparation and
education of future priests with regard to the new ecclesiology, (that they
may) be informed of the apostolic succession of the other Church and the
authenticity of its sacramental life, (so that) the use of history in a
polemical manner (may be avoided)”.
This was an official acceptance of the “branch theory” of the Church.
There were protests in Greece and Mount Athos, but Patriarch Bartholomew forced
the protestors to back down. This was the same Patriarch, the most senior in
Orthodoxy, who said a few years later: “Orthodox Christian and modernist,
Protestant and modernist, Jew and modernist, Catholic and modernist: however we
worship, as long as we abide in our faith and unite it to our works in the
world, we bring the living and always timely message of Divine wisdom into the
modern world.”[88]
So the EP today combines the broadest welcome to almost all contemporary
heresies and false religions while persecuting those who hold to the True
Orthodox faith. To him and to those with him the Church proclaims: Anathema!
July 28 / August 10, 2004.
5. A LETTER TO AN ANGLICAN FRIEND ON HERESY
Dear C.,
I
think it’s a little unfortunate that this conversation centres on the calendar
question, because we can’t profitably discuss this question until we have
agreed on certain basic principles. But let me say this much before turning to the
more basic issues. The calendar question is not about astronomical accuracy: it
is about unity of worship. Unity of worship between the Heavenly and the
Earthly Church, and between all parts of the Earthly Church, has always been of
great importance to the Orthodox. That is why it occupied the heads of the
Churches in the second century (Rome and the East), at the First Ecumenical
Council (where the basic rules of our calendar were established), the Synod of
Whitby in 664 (unity between the Celts and Saxons), many Synods in East and
West in the 16th-18th centuries (England waited 169 years
before adopting the Gregorian calendar, and even then there were riots in the
streets), and in modern times. If unity of worship is unimportant to you, then
the calendar question will be unimportant to you. But it is important to us,
and has been important to most of the Christian world for most of Christian
history.
But let’s get down to basic principles. You haven’t answered my question
about how you interpret the Scriptural passages I cited. So let me take the
first: “If he refuses to hear even the Church, let him be to you as a heathen
and a tax collector” (Matthew 18.17). This passage indicates the great
importance of the Divinely founded institution of the Church – that institution
which St. Paul called “the pillar and ground of the Truth” (I Timothy
3.15). The Lord says that we must obey the Church; St. Paul - that we cannot be
in the truth without being in the Church. Now we cannot obey the Church unless
we know where it is. So what are the marks of the Church? True faith and true
worship. (Using more technically theological language, the Creed says they are
Unity (or Singleness), Holiness, Catholicity and Apostolicity.) When quarrels
arose over what was the true faith and worship of the Church, the bishops got
together in Councils to thrash the matter out. When the Councils had reached a
decision, all the bishops were required to sign a confession of faith
expressing that decision. Those who refused, insofar as they were refusing to
obey the Church, were treated, in accordance with the Lord’s words, “as heathen
and tax collectors”. Of course, there were some “robber councils” – that is,
councils at which heresy, rather than Orthodoxy, triumphed. But over the years
and centuries seven particularly important Councils were accepted in both East
and West (excluding the Monophysite and Nestorian “Churches”) as having
particular authority. These define both the dogmatic faith and the canonical
discipline of the Orthodox Church to this day.
Unfortunately, however, in the West since the rise of the Papacy, and
especially since the Reformation, the Ecumenical Councils have been
increasingly ignored, even despised. The result is that the West has not only
lost unity of faith and worship within itself: it has also lost it with the
Church of the Seven Ecumenical Councils – that is, the Church of the first
millenium of Christian history. Now anyone can proclaim just about any kind of
teaching, however far removed from Christianity, label it “Christian” and pass
muster as a “Christian” and a member of the “Church” (you can be a member of
the Methodist “Church” in England, for example, without even believing in
God!).
Until the early twentieth century the Orthodox Church retained both its
internal unity and its unity with the Early Apostolic Church through its
faithfulness to the teachings of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, “the seven
pillars of wisdom”. However, under the twin hammer blows of Communism and
Ecumenism (“Ecucommunism”, as I have called it), the major part of the Orthodox
Church has also fallen away. This should not surprise us: the Lord called His
Church a “little flock” and put the rhetorical question: “When I come again,
shall I find faith on the earth?” (Luke 12.40, 18.8). (Answer: not
much.) But He also said that “the gates of hell will not prevail against the
Church” (Matthew 16.18). So even in the last, most terrible times, when
the vast majority of mankind will fall into the abyss, there will still be the
opportunity for the lover of truth to find the One True Church, Christ’s
“little flock”; and even in our terrible times there have been literally millions
of martyrs for the truth, and great wonderworkers whom God has glorified with
great signs and miracles on the earth. However, to those who “did not receive
the love of the truth, that they might be saved,… God will send a strong
delusion, that they should believe the lie” (II Thessalonians 2.11-12).
They will include the “believers” of the last, “Laodicean” period of Church
history, of whom the Lord says: “Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor
hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth” (Revelation 3.16).
Now the modern, lukewarm “believer” trots out a number of standard
arguments against the view I have just propounded. I shall call them the
“persecution” argument, the “linguistic” argument, the “doctrine doesn’t matter
anyway” argument and the “God is merciful” argument.
1.
The Persecution Argument. This may be stated as follows: If we
become obsessed with doctrinal niceties, we’ll only end up killing each other
without anyone coming any closer to the “truth”. This is the way to the
Inquisition, to Auschwitz, etc.
Needless to say, arguments about fundamental truth do not always end in
blood; and the fact that they do occasionally should not put us off from “the
one thing necessary” – the search for the truth. In any case, as I have already
indicated, the Orthodox Church believes that peaceful persuasion, not physical
persecution, is the right method for bringing people to a knowledge of the
truth. That has been the method employed by all Orthodox missionaries and
preachers in all ages. The teaching that heretics should be killed was first
officially proclaimed, not by any Orthodox saint or council, but by Thomas
Aquinas and the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, whence it entered the
bloodstream of the Early Protestants and Anglicans. The Inquisition was a
Catholic institution, and I know of no similar institution established by any
Church authority in any Orthodox land.
Some physical persecution has been undertaken by secular authorities, it
is true. For example, St. Constantine the Great exiled Arius and his followers
after the First Ecumenical Council, and his example was followed by some other
Orthodox emperors and kings. However, before condemning such an act, it would
be worth asking why it was done.
Two possible answers suggest themselves.
First, that, having failed with peaceful persuasion, the Emperor may have thought
that a little physical and psychological suffering would humble the heretics
and therefore dispose them to receive the truth, which always requires
humility. This is an unlikely explanation in this case, but it should not be
forgotten that “spare the rod and spoil the child” is a Biblical precept, and
that God Himself often imposes physical sufferings on His people in order to
bring them to their senses – there are many examples in the Bible from the
Babylonian captivity to the plagues of the Book of Revelation.
More likely, the Emperor recognised that the Arians were beyond
persuading, and that he exiled the heretics in order to protect those who were
still Orthodox, but weak or immature in their thinking, from the corrupting
influence of their teaching. Don’t forget that in the understanding of the
Early Church, and of the Orthodox Church to this day, heresy is a disease which
kills the soul, cuts it off from God; it is far worse in its effects than the
worst of physical afflictions. That is why the apostles were so severe in
relation to it. “If anyone preaches any other gospel to you that what you have
received, let him be anathema” (Galatians 1.8). “A heretic after the
first and second admonition reject” (Titus 3.10). “Whoever transgresses
and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God… If anyone comes
to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor
greet him” (II John 9-10).
2.
The Linguistic Argument. How often have I heard the argument, even
from very intelligent people: “These disputes were just about words; we mustn’t
quarrel just about words; the truth cannot be wrapped up in linguistic
definitions.” Of course, the truth cannot be “wrapped up” in words. But words
can point to a truth – or a falsehood. “You obeyed from the heart that form of
doctrine to which you were delivered,” says St. Paul (Romans 6.17).
Obviously he was talking about some teaching expressed in words. Again, “hold
fast the form of sound words you have heard from me,” he says (II Timothy
1.13). What is he talking about if not about some verbally expressed teaching
of the faith? Again: “With the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with
the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10.10). So our
words matter: with them we confess the truth or heresy, unto salvation or
damnation. By what other way, besides “the form of sound words” and “confession
with the mouth”, do we distinguish truth from falsehood?
If words
are vitally important to scientists and writers and lawyers, why should they be
any the less important to theologians? To say that Christ is “of one substance”
with the Father is to express a radically different idea from saying that
Christ is “of a similar substance” to the Father, yet this enormous difference
in ideas is expressed by the difference of only one letter (iota) in Greek
(“homoousios” as opposed to “homoiousios”). As the Lord Himself said, “not one
iota shall pass away…” In the fourth century, both learned people and simple
people, both Orthodox and heretics, understood both the difference in these
words and the enormous importance of the difference. Not now! Why? The answer
to this question brings me to:
3. The “Doctrine Doesn’t Matter Anyway”
Argument. For nearly nineteen centuries, Christians and heretics
argued about truth and heresy, but they had this in common: they agreed that
there was a difference, and that the difference was vitally important.
What distinguishes 20th-century heretics from almost all previous
ones is that they don’t even believe in the existence of heresy – or, if they
do, they don’t believe it’s important. I once read a review in Church Times
of a book on the wars between Anglicans and Catholics in sixteenth-century
England. The reviewer said that both sides were equally right, and the
“martyrs” on both sides were martyrs, even though they died for completely
contradictory “truths”, because the only real heresy is the idea that there is
such a thing as heresy. This is essentially the doctrine of ecumenism, which
would unite every conceivable truth and heresy in a pan-cosmic religious stew
in which everyone can believe as they like “because all paths lead to God”. But
this is simply the abandonment of reason and objectivity in favour of complete
subjectivism. And the Orthodox Church has officially defined it as “the heresy
of heresies” because it combines all heresies in itself while denying the very
existence of objective truth.
For if heresy doesn’t exist, then truth doesn’t exist either. And if the
difference between truth and heresy is unimportant, then Christianity and
religion in general are unimportant. Because if Christianity is anything at
all, it is TRUTH. “Father, sanctify them by Thy truth”, said the Lord. But if
anything goes, if anything is accepted as the truth, then where is the
possibility of sanctification?
Or of salvation? Until our inglorious twentieth century, all those who
called themselves Christians, heretics as well as true believers, accepted that
in Christ alone is salvation, and that the way to salvation is through true,
correct faith in Him – faith that is then expressed and confirmed by good
works. Faith without works is dead, and works without true faith, as the
Venerable Bede says, is also dead. It does not lead to salvation. Heretics are
not saved themselves, and lead others to perdition.
Let us hear some apostolic testimonies on this subject. “Their message
will spread like cancer. Hymenaeus and Philetus are of this sort, who have
strayed concerning the faith, saying that the resurrection is already past; and
they overthrow the faith of some” (II Timothy 2.17-18). “As Jannes and
Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt
minds, disapproved concerning the faith” (II Timothy 3.8). “Rebuke them
sharply, that they be sound in the faith” (Titus 1.13). “Heresies… and
the like: of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past,
that those who practise such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God“ (Galatians
5.20-21). “There will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in
destructive heresies, even denying the Lord Who bought them, and bring on
themselves swift destruction” (II Peter 2.1).
Do we need any more testimonies to the undeniable fact that heretics
destroy themselves and those who listen to them, and that, as St. Paul said,
“their mouths must be stopped” – by persuasion if they will listen, by
expulsion from the Church if they will not. For they are blind leaders of the
blind, as the Lord said – and both leaders and followers fall into a pit. They
are dry branches who will be cut off from the True Vine and thrown into the
fire, as the Lord again said.
But all this is too terrifying for some tender (St. Paul calls them
“itching”) ears, and they want to change the Gospel to make it “nicer”. So we
come to the following very nice “argument”:
4.
The “God Is Merciful” Argument. God will not condemn heretics, goes
the argument, for the simple reason that He is merciful. He is too compassionate
to send His creature to hell. The very idea is so uncivilized!
“Civilized” or not, it happens to be what we read in the Word of God –
and what we read in the word of God inscribed on our hearts, our conscience, if
only we read it honestly. Yes, God is merciful – to the merciful. But He is
also just, and rewards every man according to his works. Yes, He gives the
Truth – Himself – to those who love the truth. But the corollary is also true:
those who do not love the truth He gives over to the father of lies, Satan.
Sometimes this happens even in this life. Thus about one sinner St. Paul said:
“In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along
with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to
Satan for the destruction of the flesh” (I Corinthians 5.4-5). And St.
Peter wasn’t exactly merciful to Ananias and Sapphira… As David says in the
Psalms: “With the holy man wilt Thou be holy, and with the innocent man wilt
Thou be innocent. And with the elect man wilt Thou be elect, and with the
perverse wilt Thou be perverse…” (Psalm 17.25-26 (LXX)).
Any careful reader of the Gospel will agree that it is both the most
comforting, and the most terrifying book ever written. “Many are called, but
few are chosen.” “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” “Depart from
Me, ye cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his
angels.” “Whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him,
either in this age or in the age to come.” “It is more difficult for a rich man
to enter the Kingdom of heaven than…” “Depart from Me, I never knew you…” “You,
Capernaum,… will be brought down to hell.” “Better were it for that man if he
had never been born…”
Yes, God is merciful, because He gives us every opportunity to be saved,
and warns us in every way against the path that leads to damnation. But we are
unutterably foolish, because we want to rewrite the rules, as if we were the
Judge and not the man standing in the dock. “Wait a minute, you can’t really
mean that all who… will be damned!” “Okay, let Hitler and Stalin rot in hell,
but we’re such nice people, I’m such a nice person…!”
What a shock death will be for the vast majority of mankind! And all
because we do not want to believe what Christ has written with such clarity in
His Gospel. We want dispensations for our lusts and passions, for our criminal
indifference to the truth. We want to rewrite the Gospel, make it the Gospel
according to Luther, or John-Paul II, or George Carey, which absolves all
manner of heretics, all manner of evil perversions, all manner of betrayals of
the One Saviour of mankind. But St. Paul consigns all those who preach a
different Gospel to the terrible sentence of anathema. And what does the Apostle
of love and mercy say in the very last chapter of God’s Word? “I testify to
anyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to
these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book;
and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall
take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the
things which are written in this book….” (Revelation 22.18).
With love,
Vladimir.
September 3/16, 1999.
St. Edward the Martyr, King of England.
6.
ON MYSTERY AND MYSTIFICATION, or: ANGLICAN ECUMENISM
"None of the mysteries," writes Metropolitan Philaret of
Moscow, "of the most secret wisdom of God ought to appear alien or
altogether transcendent to us, but in all humility we must apply our spirit to
the contemplation of divine things." And so, in the Divine services of the
Orthodox Church, we are constantly being drawn to contemplate the mysteries of
our salvation - especially the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ, but also
those of the Holy Trinity, the creation of the world out of nothing, the Cross
and the Resurrection, the Church, the Second Coming and the Terrible Judgement,
man made in the image of God, eternal life and eternal damnation. By
contemplating these mysteries, our faith is strengthened and deepened, we draw
closer to God and His saints and further away from the abyss of unbelief and
heresy.
However, there is a trend in contemporary heretical thought that seeks
to use the concept of "mystery" to overturn faith in the mysteries
and replace it by a false religious mysticism and a pseudo-intellectual mystification.
This current of thought does not openly deny any of the mysteries of the faith
- with the exception of the mystery of the Church, upon whose denial the whole
of Protestantism is based. Rather, it loves to talk about "the eternal
Christ" of St. John's Gospel (their favourite because it is so
"mystical"), about "parousia" and "eternal life",
about "transfiguration" and "deification" and "resurrection"
- but in senses that are so alien to the Orthodox understanding that we have to
use these terms in quotation marks. Characteristic of this current of thought
is its blurring of the boundaries between psychology and religion, between
experiences of the soul and dogmas of the faith. Characteristic, too, is its
syncretism, its willingness, indeed determination, to identify Christian
concepts with pagan (especially Buddhist) ones, and the Christian world-view
with the scientific world-view - even those elements of the scientific
world-view, such as evolutionism, which are most contrary to traditional,
Orthodox Christianity.
When one asks the "mystifiers", as I shall call them, whether
they believe, for example, that Jesus Christ is God, the Creator of the
universe, one rarely gets a straight answer. Thus they may admit that Christ is
"divine" - but not that He is "God", that "God is
uniquely expressed in Christ" - but not that He created the universe. And
then if one shows some dissatisfaction by this lack of clarity, one is told
that one must not try to "analyze the mystery", that "words
cannot express the mystery", with more than a hint that one is not
"deep" or "mystical" or "apophatic" enough. And
if one counters that the Apostles and Fathers of the Church, who invented the
term "apophatic" and knew a great deal more about mysticism than any
of us, were nevertheless quite prepared to make the clear and categorical
statements of faith which the mystifiers are not prepared to make, one is
gently chided for being too "dogmatic" and "rationalist".
The unspoken assumption behind the mystifiers' "argument" is that
they, as educated people of the twentieth century, do not need the Apostles or
Fathers to guide them any more; like the gnostics of all ages, they know
better, they have a special insight into religious truth which does not
need words and definitions, because "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one
must keep silent"...
*
The leaders in this heretical trend are the Anglicans. Beginning from
the 1960s and the infamous book Honest to God, the Anglican Church has
undergone a most astonishing doctrinal degeneration. All the basic
truths of the faith have been denied, with astounding arrogance, from the
highest pulpits in the land, and with minimal resistance from the so-called
believers. The only issue which has produced any real rebellion has been the
ordination of women as priests - and this drew from the archbishop of
Canterbury the amazing reaction that those who believed in an exclusively male
priesthood (that is, 99.9% of all Christians, Orthodox and heretical, before
our present "enlightened" age) were "heretics"! In 1995,
after an Anglican priest was (very belatedly) defrocked for saying that God
"has no objective existence", 65 priests wrote an open letter to The
Times protesting the decision on the grounds that it was a “violation of
human rights”! It is in this "Church" of rampant liberalism, if not
outright atheism, that the mystifiers have flourished and prospered.
But the roots of Anglican mystification go much deeper; we see it
already in that issue which was at the heart of the Anglican Reformation - the
Eucharist. The early Anglican Reformers, being true Protestants, denied that
the sacrament of the Eucharist is the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross and
truly His Body and Blood - and they were prepared to be burned at the stake for
this denial. However, since King Henry VIII remained a Catholic at heart, the
first Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, was forced to conceal his
Protestant tendencies and devise a form of words which could be interpreted in
either a Catholic or Protestant sense. Thus was invented the first
mystification of modern times - the doctrine of the "Real Presence"
of Christ in the Eucharist. The Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church could take it
to mean that Christ is “truly present” in His Body and Blood in the Eucharist.
The Low Church wing could take it to mean that Christ is not present
literally and physically, but only spiritually and symbolically. And the broad
mass of believers in the middle could take refuge from the necessity of
choosing between the two, mutually incompatible doctrines by saying simply that
it was an inexplicable mystery.
Of course,
the Eucharist is a great mystery. Of course, one cannot say how this, or
any of the other great mysteries of the faith takes place, nor subject them to
scientific analysis. But that is no reason for deliberate doctrinal ambiguity,
for making a mystification out of the mystery. The Apostles and the
Fathers of the Church were so conscious of the mystery of the Eucharist that it
was the one doctrine of the Church which was not proclaimed from the rooftops,
and which was hidden even from catechumens until after they had actually
partaken of it. But this is no way preventing them, when necessity (in the form
of the appearance of heresy) presented itself, of proclaiming the mystery
clearly and unambiguously - and of making the acceptance of the definitions of
the Seven Ecumenical Councils the touchstone of true belief in, and passport to
participation of, the mysteries.
That is why the Orthodox Church chants: "The preaching of the
Apostles and the doctrines of the Fathers confirmed the one Faith of the
Church. And wearing the garment of truth woven from the theology on high, she
rightly divideth and glorifieth the great mystery of piety." And again:
"The choir of the holy Fathers, which hath gathered from the ends of the
earth, hath taught the single essence of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and
hath carefully committed to the Church the mystery of theology." The
Church "rightly divides" the great mystery of piety from the mystery
of iniquity by uttering God-inspired definitions of the faith which are
immediately recognized by those who truly believe as expressing their own
faith. But those who are outside the Church, to whom the mystery of theology
has not been committed, instinctively feel that this definition does not
express what they believe; and so, if they are honest, they openly reject it,
and if they are dishonest, they resort to mystification.
Mystification like the following, which is to be found in the
theological novel Mystical Paths by the Anglican writer Susan Howatch:
"He paused again, and in that silence I heard the sentence resonate as the
footsteps of mysticism and Gnosticism echoed and re-echoed in the classic
Christian corridor. Then I saw Truth as a multi-sided diamond with the themes
of heresy and orthodoxy all glittering facets of a single reality, and beyond
the facets I glimpsed that mysterious Christ of St. John's Gospel, not the
Jesus of history but the Christ of Eternity who is turn pointed beyond himself
to the Truth no human mind could wholly grasp..." As if Truth were on a
par with heresy, or Gnosticism could co-exist with "classic"
Christianity, or "the Christ of Eternity" were not at the same
time "the Jesus of history"!
This passage comes in the middle of a "healing" session
conducted by an Anglican priest, which actually describes a psychic seance. And
this leads us to another important fact concerning the mystifiers: that in
rejecting the mystery of theology as defined by the Seven Ecumenical Councils,
they lay themselves open to a false and demonic mysticism. Hence the speaking
in tongues and emotional outpourings and "healings", the inter-faith
services and homosexual marriages and calling up of dead spirits by women
"priests". For just as Orthodox faith and obedience to all the
teachings of the Orthodox Church is the only entrance to true mysticism, so
heresy and mystification is the immediate passport to false mysticism, to
spiritual deception and, ultimately, to possession by demonic spirits. And such
possession can spread from individuals and groups of individuals to whole
churches and nations, as we see in the Russian revolution (which was preceded
by the spread, not only of Marxism, but also of Theosophy) and in the rise of
Nazism in Germany in the 1930s (which was preceded by the widespread practice
of occultism).
But the true mystics, such as St. John and St. Paul, were the sworn
enemies of all kinds of heresy, mystification and pseudo-mysticism. Thus St.
John says: "If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine,
receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed, for he that biddeth
him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds" (II John, 10-11). And
St. Paul says: "Examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith" (II
Corinthians13.5), and: "God is not the author of confusion, but of
peace" (I Corinthians 14.33), and: "The Spirit speaketh
expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving
heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons" (I Timothy 4.1).
*
The Greek word for "mystery" means literally that which is
shut or closed or hidden. Thus St. Paul was speaking of a mystery when he said
that he was "caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words, which it
is not lawful for a man to utter" (II Corinthians 12.4). These
words are hidden from us because we are not worthy, we are not in a spiritual
condition to receive them.
But this is not to say that mysteries cannot, in any
circumstances, be understood. On the contrary, that which is hidden from some
in some circumstances can be opened and revealed to others. Such was the
mystery of the Divinity of Christ, which was revealed to the Apostle Peter, as
the Lord Himself declared: "Blessed art Thou, Peter, Bar Jona, for flesh
and blood hath not revealed it [the mystery] unto thee, but My Father Which is
in heaven" (Matthew 16.18). As Blessed Theophylact, archbishop of
Bulgaria, comments: "He calls Peter blessed for having received knowledge
by divine grace. And by commending Peter, He thereby shows the opinion of other
men to be false. For He calls Him 'Bar Jona', that is, 'son of Jona', as if
saying, 'Just as you are the son of Jona, so am I the Son of My Father in
heaven, and of one essence with Him.' He calls this knowledge 'revelation', speaking
of hidden and unknown things that were disclosed by the Father."
In this sense, all true believers in the Divinity of Christ are
"mystics"; for to them has been made known "the mystery of His
will", they have been given "the spirit of wisdom and revelation in
the knowledge of Him" (Ephesians1.9,17). And indeed, "all
men" are called "to see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which
from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, Who created all things by
Jesus Christ, to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in
heavenly places might by known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God" (Ephesians
3.9-10). Thus the mystery is made known by the Father to the Church, which in
turn makes it known both to men and to the ranks of the angels.
From this it should be clear that the mysteries of God are neither
radically unknowable, nor is it impossible to express them in words - although
the understanding of the words, and the communication of the mystery, is
impossible without grace, the sending of the Holy Spirit from the
Father. Without grace the mystery will remain hidden; for faith is a gift of
grace (Ephesians 2.8).
But words, too, are important; for they show us whether a man has truly
received the mystery or not. Just as Christ is called the Word of God because
He reveals to us the mystery of the Father, so the words of our confession of
faith reveal the presence of the mystery of Christ in us. For "I believed,
and therefore I spoke" (Psalm 115.1). And "with the heart man
believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto
salvation" (Romans 10.10).
And that is why the words and definitions of the Seven Ecumenical
Councils must be accepted by all true Christians. For they are not foolish
attempts to express the inexpressible, as the mystifiers would have it, but
living words from the Word, "the garment of truth woven from the theology
on high." Therefore St. Paul says: "Hold fast the form of sound words
which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus" (II
Timothy 1.13).
It follows that those who refuse to give a clear and unambiguous
confession of faith, but rather resort to mystification on the basis of a
supposed reverence for "the mystery", are in fact strangers to the
mystery of Christ and partakers of “the mystery of iniquity” (II
Thessalonians 2.7). They will not express the right confession because they
do not have it - although they are not slow to express their judgement of those
who do have it. To them, therefore, we can with justice say: whereof you cannot
speak - because you do not believe it - thereof you should keep silent...
7. FR. SERAPHIM ROSE: A MODERN ST. AUGUSTINE
A Review of Monk
Damascene’s book, “Not of this World”
This is an instructive and moving book, big both in its length (over
1000 pages) and in its significance. The subject is the life of the
American-born member of the Russian Church Abroad, Hieromonk Seraphim Rose, who
died in 1982 at the age of 48 after an amazingly productive life as a
missionary and church writer. A man of Fr. Seraphim’s stature would be worthy
of a biography whatever age he lived in or country he came from. But his life
is of particular significance for our particular age and our particular
culture.
First, he represents one of the few, very few westerners who, having
brought up in our spiritual Babylon, have not only converted to the True Faith
of Orthodoxy, but have brought forth much spiritual fruit. This should lead us
westerners to study his life with particular attention; for, as Fr. Damascene
points out, Fr. Seraphim vaulted many of the hurdles that present such
difficulties to the Orthodox western convert, and his life and writings offer
many valuable “tips” for the convert. Coming from a typical White Protestant
background, he seemed set for a brilliant academic career as a Chinese expert. But
his agonized striving for the truth led him to reject the vanities of academe,
and after a brief descent into the hell of nihilism and the self-indulgent
life-style of the San Francisco hippie culture, his soul was resurrected in the
light of Orthodox Christianity.
Secondly, Fr. Seraphim’s brilliant and cultured mind, illumined by true
faith and honed on the writings of the Holy Fathers, produced book-length
studies of various theological topics that have deservedly acquired “classic”
status. Fr. Damascene quotes at length from his works on the soul after death,
the western saints, eastern religions, Blessed Augustine, evolution and other
topics, in which Fr. Seraphim’s contribution is second to none. However, on one
topic – the “jurisdictional issue” and the Soviet Moscow Patriarchate in
particular – Fr. Seraphim’s opinions do not reflect the consensus of the Holy
Fathers of our time, and Fr. Damascene’s uncritical acceptance of Fr.
Seraphim’s position here shows a certain bias.
Thirdly, Fr. Seraphim did not only speak
and write about the faith: he also put it into practice: as a monk and
co-founder of the Brotherhood of St. Herman of Alaska in Platina, California,
as a missionary, and as a priest and spiritual father. Much of the value of this
book resides in the accounts given by his spiritual children and his
co-struggler, Fr. Herman, that witness to his quiet wisdom and warm charity.
And this reviewer, for one, has no difficulty in believing the accounts at the
end of this book of his appearances to, and intercession for, his spiritual
children after his death.
So in turning now to the opinions of Fr.
Seraphim which are likely to prove less enduring and solidly based, we are in
no way disputing his reputation as one of the truly righteous men of his
century. Like Blessed Augustine, whom he so ably defended, he made errors while
remaining Orthodox. And so of him we say, as St. Photius said of St. Augustine:
“We embrace the man, while rejecting his errors.”
The one major question on which, in the
reviewer’s opinion, Fr. Seraphim was wrong was the jurisdictional issue, or, if
we accept that “there are no such things as jurisdictions, only the Church”,
the question: Where is the True Church? While accepting that inter-faith and
inter-Christian ecumenism were heresies, as also the policy of submitting to
atheist political power that is called sergianism, Fr. Seraphim did not accept
that the Orthodox Churches which practiced these heresies officially were
heretical and deprived of the grace of true sacraments. Again, there is a
remarkable similarity here to St. Augustine, who rejected the Donatists as
schismatics while accepting their sacraments.
Fr. Seraphim had not always been a
“liberal” on this question, as early issues of his monastery’s publication, The
Orthodox Word, demonstrate. However, from the mid-1970s another influence
began to bear on his views on the subject: the “zealot” rejection of the
sacraments of the ecumenist Orthodox on the part of the “Hartford” monastery, a
pseudonym for the Greek-American Monastery of the Holy Transfiguration in
Boston. Finding the Boston monastery and its “super-correct” followers lacking
in charity and the true warmth of Orthodox piety, and quite rightly rejecting
their views on other subjects such as the soul after death, Fr. Seraphim
over-reacted, in the present reviewer’s opinion, by adopting the “liberal”
position rejected by Boston.
Another factor that influenced his
conversion to the liberal position on this matter was the so-called “rebaptism”
controversy. Boston, with the blessing of Metropolitan Philaret, first-hierarch
of the Russian Church Abroad, had baptized several converts to Orthodoxy who
had been received into the Russian Church Abroad without baptism. Fr. Seraphim
considered this practice over-zealous and harmful (he himself had been received
from Protestantism by chrismation only).
Now since the “rebaptism” controversy
started, as Fr. Damascene says, in England in 1976, and since the present
reviewer was the first to be “rebaptised” there, it may not be out of place for
him to correct Fr. Damascene on certain points of fact in this connection.
First, the English converts were not
“rebaptised” since they had never received baptism in any Orthodox jurisdiction
(Anglican sprinkling is not baptism in any sense). Secondly, in asking for
baptism, they had not acted at the instigation of the Boston monastery, but at
the promptings of their own conscience; nor, contrary to what Fr. Damascene
writes, was Archbishop Nicodemus of Great Britain, who granted the converts’
request, in any way influenced by Boston. Thirdly, neither Archbishop Nicodemus
nor the converts insisted that everyone else in a similar situation to theirs
should be baptized, or that they had been outside the Church before their
baptism (for they had previously been received into the ROCOR by confession).
Now it may be that Fr. Seraphim felt that he and others who had been received
into the ROCOR by “economy”, i.e. without baptism, would now be forced to
accept “rebaptism”, which would explain Fr. Damascene’s vehemence against the
“rebaptism” in England. However, we can only reaffirm that neither Archbishop
Nicodemus nor the priest who baptized us nor we ourselves had any such ideas.
What is true is that we asserted
that when we moved from the Moscow Patriarchate to the ROCOR, we moved from a
heretical “church” into a true one, and that the chrismation we received in the
MP was graceless. This opinion Fr. Seraphim contested on several grounds: (1) Hieromartyr
Cyril of Kazan had accepted the sacraments of the MP in 1934; (2) the ROCOR had
not made any declaration on the subject, and (3) there were still supposedly
great confessors in the MP – for example, Fr. Demetrius Dudko. Let us look
briefly at each of these arguments.
1. Metropolitan Cyril expressed his
opinion with great caution and admitted that he might be being over-cautious.
Moreover, he asserted – this is an important point always passed over by the
“liberal” tendency – that those who partook of the sacraments of the MP knowing
of its evil partook to their condemnation. In any case, Metropolitan
Cyril’s opinion was expressed in 1934, when the schism of the MP was
incomplete, since both sides still commemorated Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsa.
It is extremely unlikely that Metropolitan Cyril would have continued to
maintain what he admitted might be an over-cautious position after the death of
Metropolitan Peter and the completion of the schism in October, 1937. Moreover,
already in March, 1937 he wrote a letter in which, while not expressly saying
that the MP was graceless, he noted that it was “renovationist in essence” and
that enough time had passed for people to evaluate its nature and leave it. And
by his death in November, 1937, according to Catacomb sources, he had come to
full agreement with the “zealot” position of Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd
on this point before they were shot together in Chimkent. Can there be any
doubt what his opinion would be now, when the MP has added, among many other
crimes, the “heresy of heresies”, ecumenism, to its original sin of sergianism?
2. It is true that the whole ROCOR
Synod made no declaration on this subject. But individual leaders did – and
they were not speaking only for themselves. For example, in his encyclical of
1928 Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev declared in the name of his
whole Synod that the leaders of the MP were schismatics and apostates. This
declaration was quoted by Metropolitan Philaret in his 1969 encyclical on the
American Metropolia, and in 1977 the same Metropolitan Philaret told the
present writer in the presence of witnesses that he should remain faithful to
the anathema of the Catacomb Church against the MP. Other members of the ROCOR
Synod who adopted this zealot position were Archbishop Averky of Jordanville,
Archbishop Nicodemus of Great Britain, Archbishop Anthony of Los Angeles,
Archbishop Andrew of Rockland, Protopresbyter Michael Polsky and Professor
Andreyev, the last three of whom had all been members of the Catacomb Church.
Even Fr. Seraphim himself once compared the sergianists and ecumenists to the
iconoclasts, who were graceless heretics.
The position of the Catacomb confessors on
this question is critical, since they knew the MP at first-hand and were in the
best position, canonically speaking, to judge it. Among the martyr-hierarchs
about whose zealot views there can be no doubt we can mention Bishop Maximus of
Serpukhov (who said that the Catacomb Church had formally anathematized the
MP), Archbishop Demetrius of Gdov, Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd, Archbishop
Andrew of Ufa, Archbishop Theodore of Volokolamsk and the four bishops who
attended the Ust-Kut Council of 1937. Again, Fr. Ishmael Rozhdestvensky, whose
life was translated by Fr. Seraphim, forbade his spiritual children even to look
at churches of the MP.
3. Fr. Seraphim defended Fr. Demetrius out
of a sense of deep compassion. Now compassion, when purified, is a great
virtue. But it should not be allowed to hinder sober and dispassionate
judgement, and there is no doubt that Fr. Seraphim allowed his heart (“the
heart is deceitful above all things” (Jer. 17.9) to cloud his judgement
in this matter.
Let us consider the facts. Fr. Demetrius
was a priest of the Soviet church who refused the invitation of the Catacomb
Church to join it. He was an ecumenist – he revered the Pope and asked his
blessing on his work, and those who published the English edition of Our
Hope told the present reviewer that they had had to edit out large amounts
of ecumenist material from the work. And he was a sergianist – under pressure
from the authorities, he once told a 15-year-old spiritual son of his to return
to the Komsomol. In 1980 he publicly recanted of his anti-Soviet activities on Soviet
television. When the ROCOR first accepted parishes on Russian soil in 1990, he
stubbornly refused to join it, although there was now far less danger in doing
so. And towards the end of his life (he died in June, 2004) he became an ardent
advocate of the canonization of – Stalin!
When speaking about Fr. Demetrius, Fr.
Seraphim’s usual discernment seems to have deserted him. Thus he wrote that Fr.
Demetrius’ “fiery, urgent preaching hasn’t been heard in Russia and probably
the whole Orthodox world since the days of St. John of Kronstadt” (p. 859) – an
amazing exaggeration which placed Fr. Demetrius above Patriarch Tikhon and
other great preachers among the true martyrs and confessors of Russia. Again,
he often said that he was in the same Church as Fr. Demetrius, quoting his
words: “The unity of the Church at the present time consists in division” (p.
863), as if to assert that the obvious division between the MP and the ROCOR
either did not exist or was of little significance.
When Fr. Demetrius “repented” before
Soviet power in 1980, thereby fulfilling the prediction of Metropolitan
Philaret, who stated quite bluntly that he would fall because he was not in the
True Church, there was much talk about the danger of “gloating”. But nobody gloated.
Fr. Demetrius’ fall was clearly a matter of profound sorrow, not triumphalism.
But neither Fr. Demetrius nor anyone else was served by denying that it was a
fall – which is what many liberals tried to assert. The present reviewer heard
from a spiritual son of Fr. Demetrius, now a priest of the True Church inside
Russia, that he was never the same after his public recantation. And, as was
noted above, in his later years he actually became an ardent supporter of the
worst aspect of the MP, its worship of Stalin. For the fact is that his house
was built on sand, the sand of Soviet communism, and this alone is the reason
why he fell (Matt. 7.27).
However much compassion he felt for Fr.
Demetrius, Fr. Seraphim was wrong to hold him up as a role model and
“confessor”. First, because he did not belong to the True Church and did not
confess the True Faith (which is not to say, of course, that he did not
sometimes write, good things). And secondly, because to glorify a priest of the
Soviet church, however courageous, is to undervalue the podvig of the
true confessors of the Catacomb Church. If it is possible to be a “martyr” and
“confessor” while belonging to a false church and confessing heresy, why should
anyone take the trouble and undergo the danger of joining the True Church? But
many thousands, even millions, did just that, preferring death to doing what
Fr. Demetrius did; and we must recognize that their position was not only
canonically “correct”, but the only Christian way.
To take just one example: in the 1970s, at
precisely the time that Fr. Demetrius was preaching his fiery sermons, the
Catacomb hierarch Gennadius (Sekach) was living near Novy Afon in the Caucasus.
The Soviet hierarch Ilia of Sukhumi (a KGB agent since 1962 and now “patriarch”
of the official Georgian church), hearing of his whereabouts through spies,
offered Gennadius a comfortable place in the Soviet church organization.
Gennadius refused, saying that if he accepted the offer he “would lose
everything”. Ilia then denounced him to the KGB, who put him prison in Georgia
and tortured him till the blood flowed…
Gennadius was a true confessor – and Fr.
Seraphim devoted a chapter to him in his book Russia’s Catacomb Saints.
But then why did he devote another chapter to Dudko, who did everything
Gennadius refused to do? How could they both be confessors?!
The present reviewer’s position may
perhaps be criticized as being “over-logical” and “super-correct”,
demonstrating typically convert pride and lack of compassion. Certainly, he can
recognize many of the traits Fr. Seraphim identifies as being typical of the
convert mentality in himself. But God forbid that we should ever devalue the podvig
of the true confessors by glorifying false ones – that is not the path
of true humility and compassion. For let us make no mistake: if we glorify
pseudo-confessors, we both injure them (by confirming them in their heresy or
schism), and may end up falling away from the truth ourselves. Which is
precisely what happened, tragically, to some of Fr. Seraphim’s fellow
strugglers after his repose…
Fr. Seraphim himself, in spite of his
errors, remained in the True Church until his death, and deserves to be
remembered among the true confessors. Indeed, the present reviewer believes
that if he had lived to witness the ROCOR’s Anathema against Ecumenism in 1983,
and the extraordinary pagan festivals of the ecumenists in Vancouver in 1983,
Assisi in 1986 and Canberra in 1991, not to mention the unias of the Orthodox
ecumenists with the Monophysites at Chambesy in 1990 and with the Roman
Catholics at Balamand in 1994, he would have returned to his earlier, more
zealous position and the common mind of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic
Church on this question. For there is only One Church, just as there is only
one true confession of the Faith; and all those who deny that fact, such as the
present-day Moscow and Ecumenical Patriarchates, have no part in that Faith and
that Church, according to the sacred canons and dogmas.
To recognize this in a humble and obedient
spirit is not to be “super-correct” or pharisaical, but correct and Orthodox;
for “Orthodoxy” means “correct belief”. Moreover, it is to be truly
compassionate; for “the greatest act of charity,” as St. Photius the Great
says, “is to tell the truth”. It follows that if we arrogantly mock the need
for such correctness while glorying in our “Orthodoxy of the heart” – which
none of the Holy Fathers did – we run the risk of condemnation. For, as the
Lord Himself said: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least
commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the
Kingdom of Heaven…” (Matt. 5.19).
Revised June 19 /
July 2, 2004.
St. John Maximovich.
8.
A REVIEW OF “THE STRUGGLE AGAINST ECUMENISM”
The
Struggle against Ecumenism by the Holy Orthodox Church in North America
(Boston, Mass., 1998) has two aims, the first explicitly stated and the second
implicit. The first is to provide a history of the True Orthodox Church of
Greece, the so-called “Old Calendarists”, in its struggle against the heresy of
Ecumenism from 1924 to 1994. The second is to provide an apologia on
behalf of the “Auxentiite” branch of the Greek Old Calendarist Church, and in
particular of its North American affiliate centred in Boston and calling itself
the Holy Orthodox Church in North America. In its first, major aim this book
must be judged to have succeeded; it is probably the best book on its subject
to have appeared in English, and quite possibly in any language. With regard to
its second aim, however, the present reviewer remains unconvinced that the book
has proved its case.
The heresy of Ecumenism was first officially proclaimed by the
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in its Encyclical, “To the Churches
of Christ wheresoever they may be”, dated 1920. In addition to recognizing the
Catholics and Protestants as “fellow-heirs” of Christ with the Orthodox, this
Encyclical made a number of proposals of a renovationist character, including
the introduction of the new, papal or Gregorian calendar, all with the aim of
bringing union between the Orthodox and the western heretics closer. That is
why the introduction of the new calendar is regarded as the first concrete step
(apart from the 1920 Encyclical itself) in the introduction of the heresy of
Ecumenism.
In 1924, the new calendar was introduced into the State Church of
Greece, and later in the same year into the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the
Church of Romania. This provoked the emergence of the Old Calendarist movement
in Greece, Romania and some other places where the Ecumenical Patriarchate had
jurisdiction (e.g. the Russian monastery of Valaam, which was on the territory
of the Finnish Church, which had been granted autonomy by Constantinople). From
1924 to 1935 the movement had a predominantly lay character, consisting of
several hundred thousand Greek laymen and women with only a few priests (mainly
hieromonks from Mount Athos) and no bishops. In 1935, however, three bishops
from the new calendar State Church of Greece (two of them consecrated before
1924) returned to the Old Calendar and consecrated four new bishops. They then
proclaimed that the State Church had fallen into schism and was deprived of the
grace of sacraments.
The years 1935 to 1937 probably represented the peak of the Greek Old
Calendarist Church, with a united and rapidly expanding membership that posed a
serious threat to the official church. In 1937, however, after persecution from
the State Church had reduced the number of Old Calendarist bishops to four, a
tragic schism took place between two factions that came to be called the
“Florinites” (after their leader, Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Florina) and the
“Matthewites” (after Bishop Matthew of Bresthena) respectively. The “Florinites”
declared that the new calendarists were only “potentially” and not “actually”
schismatics, and still retained the grace of sacraments. The “Matthewites”
considered that this was a betrayal of the 1935 confession and broke communion
with the “Florinites”.
By the late 1940s the Florinites had only one bishop (Metropolitan
Chrysostomos) but the majority of the clergy and laity, while the Matthewites
had two bishops (Matthew and Germanos, the latter of whom was in prison).
Attempts at union between the two factions foundered not only on the question
of grace, but also on Metropolitan Chrysostomos’ refusal to consecrate any more
bishops (even after Bishop Germanos had rejoined him). So in 1948, fearing that
the Old Calendarist Church would again find itself without bishops, Bishop
Matthew was persuaded (not immediately, but only after several years of
pressure from his supporters) to consecrate some bishops on his own, the first
of whom was Bishop Spyridon of Trimythus (Cyprus).
At this point the authors of The Struggle against Ecumenism make
their first error of fact. On page 64 they write: “The saintly Spyridon of
Trimithus spent the last years of his life in seclusion, refusing to celebrate
as a hierarch because he had repented of being consecrated in this completely
uncanonical way [that is, by one bishop alone].” This is not true. In 1981
Bishop Spyridon's closest disciple, Abbot Chrysostomos of Galactotrophousa
monastery, near Larnaca, Cyprus, told the present reviewer a very different story
– which is supported by the letters to him of Bishop Spyridon himself. He said
that shortly after starting to serve as the only Old Calendarist bishop in
Cyprus in 1949, Bishop Spyridon was exiled from the island to Greece by the
British acting at the behest of the new calendarists. After some years, the
Matthewite Synod decided to replace Spyridon as bishop in Cyprus. They invited
Monk Epiphanius to Greece and ordained him to the priesthood. Then, in 1957 an
election took place in Cyprus at which Fr. Epiphanius was elected to the
episcopate, which was followed by his consecration in Greece. All this took
place, however, without the blessing of the still-living Bishop of Cyprus,
Spyridon, who refused to recognize Bishop Epiphanius. And he told his disciples
on Cyprus, including Abbot Chrysostomos (who had been his candidate for the
episcopate), not to serve with Bishop Epiphanius. Meanwhile, he entered into
seclusion in Greece and did not serve with the Matthewites as a protest. After
some time Abbot Chrysostomos entered into communion with Bishop Epiphanius, for
which he was punished by his spiritual father, Bishop Spyridon. So he again
broke communion with Epiphanius. The Matthewites responded by defrocking Abbot
Chrysostomos (although he was simply following the command of his spiritual
father), but did not touch Bishop Spyridon until his death in 1963. A few years
ago, shortly before his death, Abbot Chrysostomos' defrocking was rescinded by
the Matthewite Synod. When his remains were exhumed they were discovered to be
partially incorrupt...
In spite of this error the schism between the Florinites and the
Matthewites is in general treated with admirable fairness by the authors of
“The Struggle against Ecumenism”. This is important, not only because the
schism still exists (and has now been transposed onto Russian, American and
West European soil), but also because existing accounts in English are heavily
biassed in favour of the Florinites. But the Boston authors, while in general
inclining towards the Florinites (as does the present writer), not only note
that “Bishop Matthew’s integrity, personal virtue, and asceticism were admitted
by all” (his relics are very fragrant, and he was a wonderworker both before
and after his death in 1950), but also give reasons for supposing that a union
between Chrysostomos and Matthew could have been effected if it had not been
for the zeal without knowledge of certain of Matthew’s supporters. They also do
not conceal the fact that in 1950 Metropolitan Chrysostomos repented of his
confession of 1937 and returned to his confession of 1935, declaring that the
new calendarists were deprived of sacraments. In fact, this remained the
official confession of faith of all factions of the Greek Old Calendarist
Church until the appearance of the “Synod of Resistors” led by Metropolitan
Cyprian of Fili and Oropos in 1984…
The Boston authors continue their history of the Old Calendarist
movement by relating how the Florinites, after the death of Metropolitan
Chrysostomos in 1955, eventually received a renewal of their hierarchy through
the Russian Church Abroad in the 1960s, and how the Matthewites also achieved
recognition by the Russian Church Abroad in 1971. Again, the treatment of this
phase in the history is objective and fair. Especially valuable is the
translation of all the relevant documents in full and with a helpful
commentary.
The rest of the book is mainly devoted to a defence of the Florinite
Archbishop Auxentius of Athens, who was defrocked by a Synod composed of the
majority of the Florinite bishops in 1985. The Boston authors do not hide the
fact that Auxentius made many mistakes; but their account of these mistakes,
and especially of his trial in 1985, is sketchy and biassed. They write: “Some
of His Beatitude’s mistake were notable, while others were debatable… His
errors were often mistakes made in good faith, often on the advice of clergy
who wittingly or unwittingly misled him.” (pp. 125, 129). However, it is one
thing for the Boston authors to try and see extenuating factors alleviating the
guilt of their archpastor – charity (and the canonicity of their own
ecclesiastical position) demanded that. But it is another to slander those
other Orthodox bishops who tried to introduce canonical order into the Church
in the only canonical way open to them – by a hierarchical trial conducted
according to the holy canons. Whatever the personal virtues of Auxentius, in
the opinion of the present reviewer the Boston authors have not succeeded in
demonstrating that his defrocking in 1985 was not canonical and just.
The second half of the book consists of a number of useful appendices on
various topics related to Ecumenism.
In conclusion, this book can be recommended both as a history of the
Greek Old Calendarist Church and as a good introduction to the ecclesiological
issues surrounding the great heresy of our time, Ecumenism. However, for those
seeking to find a clear answer to the question: which of the many Greek Old
Calendarist jurisdictions is the most canonical and true?, this book will
provide a mixture of light and darkness. Such seekers will have to conduct
further research, and investigate other points of view.
9.
QUO VADIS, SCIENCE?
I am Thy slave and the son of Thy handmaid,
a man who is weak and short-lived, with little understanding of judgement and
laws; for even if one is perfect among the sons of men, yet without the wisdom
that comes from Thee he will be regarded as nothing... For a perishable body
weighs down the soul, and this earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind. We can
hardly guess at what is on earth, and what is at hand we find with labour; but
who has traced out what is in the heavens, and who has learned Thy counsel,
unless Thou give him wisdom, and send Thy Holy Spirit from on high?
Wisdom of Solomon 9.5-6, 15-17.
Only Christianity is a reliable and useful
philosophy. Only thus and for this reason can I be a philosopher.
St. Justin the Philosopher.
Introduction
What is the truth about science? Is it, as
its worshippers claim, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Or are there
other truths that both stand independent of science and contradict it, both in
its general assumptions and in some of its most cherished and universally
accepted hypotheses? To what extent can we trust scientists? What is the
relationship between science and faith, and can we expect any change in that
relationship in the future?
Such questions cannot be avoided by any
Orthodox Christian who has a conscious attitude towards his faith. For science
is now more powerful than ever; it transforms the external conditions of man’s
existence at an ever-accelerating rate, and generates an ever-growing army of
servants with ever-increasing demands for money and resources. So unquestioned
is the dogma that the well-being of mankind depends on scientific progress more
than anything else that science may be said to rule governments and their
budgets rather than being ruled by them. One of the two greatest powers of the
twentieth century, the Soviet Union, fell in the 1980s largely because it
bankrupted itself in the arms race, which was a struggle for scientific and
technological superiority. The one that survived, the United States, retains
its military, political and cultural power largely because it is able to
attract more top-grade scientists from all over the world, and do more
scientific research in every field, than any other state – at the price of the
largest federal deficit in history.
But these material and external effects of
science pale into insignificance beside its spiritual, internal effects:
the corrosive effect of the scientific world-view on all traditional religions,
and its self-exaltation above all other faiths as their ultimate arbiter and
judge.
Bertrand Russell once wrote: "Almost everything that distinguishes
the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which
achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century."[89] Michael
Polanyi confirms this judgement: "Just as the three centuries following on
the calling of the Apostles sufficed to establish Christianity as the state
religion of the Roman Empire, so the three centuries after the founding of the
Royal Society sufficed for science to establish itself as the supreme
intellectual authority of the post-Christian age. 'It is contrary to religion!'
- the objection ruled supreme in the seventeenth century. 'It is unscientific!'
is its equivalent in the twentieth."[90]
At first, from the seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries, the scientific
world-view coexisted in an increasingly uncomfortable and schizoid manner with
various forms of the Christian and other traditional religious world-views. But
it has ended, in the twentieth century, by more or less completely banishing
Christianity from the minds of "educated" men, whether or not they
still call themselves "Christian". Science has indeed become the god
of our age, worshipped both by scientists and by non-scientists, both in the
democratic West and in the non-democratic East. Indeed, one of the most
powerful arguments for the superiority of democracy and the market economy over
other forms of politico-economic organization is that it promotes science,
which in turn promotes peace, prosperity and democracy: authoritarian forms of
government are rejected because they undermine the flee flow of ideas and
criticism that fosters the scientific enterprise. There is no getting away from
the influence of science: even the power of prayer to produce healings is now
subject to controlled scientific experiments.
The cult of science was described in dark, almost apocalyptic colours by
Dostoyevsky: "Half-science," says one of his characters, "is
that most terrible scourge of mankind, worse than pestilence, famine, or war,
and quite unknown till our present century. Half-science is a despot such as
has never been known before, a despot that has its own priests and slaves, a
despot before whom everybody prostrates himself with love and superstitious
dread, such as has been inconceivable till now, before whom science trembles
and surrenders in a shameful way."[91]
Dostoyevsky was careful to distinguish between science and
"half-science", or what we would now call "scientism". This
implies that he saw science as a legitimate pursuit, but one in danger of
subjection to its parasite or counterfeit, “half-science”.
How can this be?
The
Foundations of Science
Science obviously contains some measure or
kind of truth, otherwise it would not have such formidable predictive power or
generate such wonderful technologies. It has therefore been a natural and
laudable quest on the part of educated Christians to try and find some way of
resolving the apparent contradictions between science and Christianity. Indeed,
this is a necessity of our faith. For if the universe is one and created by one
God, we must believe that the truths of the faith and the final conclusions of
science (if such there can ever be) are compatible. To believe otherwise leads
to a kind of epistemological Manichaeism postulating two kinds of mutually
impenetrable universes which cannot be comprehended from a single viewpoint,
or, alternatively, to a kind of solipsistic Buddhism according to which one of
the two realms is considered to be illusory.
Thus Fr. Seraphim Rose writes: “Even though revealed knowledge is higher
than natural knowledge, still we know that there can be no conflict between true
revelation and true natural knowledge. But there can be conflict
between revelation and human philosophy, which is often in error. There
is thus no conflict between the knowledge of creation contained in Genesis,
as interpreted for us by the Holy Fathers, and the true knowledge of
creatures which modern science has acquired by observation; but there most
certainly is an irreconcilable conflict between the knowledge contained in Genesis
and the vain philosophical speculation of modern scientists, unenlightened
by faith, about the state of the world in the Six Days of Creation.”[92]
That human philosophy (philosophy as the world knows it) and natural
philosophy (science) are often in error and in conflict with the revealed truth
of the Scriptures is not surprising if we consider the different origins of the
two kinds of knowledge.
The knowledge that science gives can be compared to the light of the sun
that we know, which was created on the fourth day of creation; whereas the
knowledge contained in the Scriptures and Tradition of the Church can be
compared to that original light which flooded the universe on the very first
day at the Lord’s word: “Let there be light!” The light of the sun lights up
only one planet among the millions of planets in the universe; it is itself
only one out of millions of stars in millions of galaxies. Moreover, the
knowledge it gives us only illumines a part of the planet’s surface; for much
of the time it is covered with clouds or completely obscured by night. As for
what is under or beyond the earth, that remains completely unillumined by it.
However, the light created at the beginning of creation, though we can only
guess at its nature, was certainly such as to reveal the whole of material
reality without casting any shadows or leaving any nook or cranny unillumined.
Science became useful only with the fall of man; it is a method of reasoning
carried out by fallen men with fallen faculties and with strictly limited and
earthly aims. As we shall see in more detail later, it cannot give real
knowledge of the unfallen world, neither the world of unfallen spirits nor the
world that will be after the restoration at the Second Coming of Christ. It is
of limited use for limited men – that is, men who use only their fallen
faculties; and when the true light of knowledge comes, as we see it come in the
lives of the saints, the truly enlightened ones, it ceases to have any use at
all.
Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, who had a thorough training in physics,
mathematics and engineering, writes: “You ask what is my opinion of the human
sciences? After the fall men began to need clothing and numerous other things
that accompany our earthly wanderings; in a word, they began to need material
development, the striving for which has become the distinguishing feature of
our age. The sciences are the fruit of our fall, the production of our damaged
fallen reason. Scholarship is the acquisition and retention of impressions and
knowledge that have been stored up by men during the time of the life of the
fallen world. Scholarship is a lamp by which ‘the gloom of darkness is guarded
to the ages’. The Redeemer returned to men that lamp which was given to them at
creation by the Creator, of which they were deprived because of their
sinfulness. This lamp is the Holy Spirit, He is the Spirit of Truth, who
teaches every truth, searches out the deep things of God, opens and explains
mysteries, and also bestows material knowledge when that is necessary for the
spiritual benefit of man. Scholarship is not properly speaking wisdom, but an
opinion about wisdom. The knowledge of the Truth that was revealed to men by
the Lord, access to which is only by faith, which is inaccessible for the
fallen mind of man, is replaced in scholarship by guesses and presuppositions.
The wisdom of this world, in which many pagans and atheists occupy honoured
positions, is directly contrary according to its very origins with spiritual,
Divine wisdom: it is impossible to be a follower of the one and the other at
the same time; one must unfailingly be renounced. The fallen man is
‘falsehood’, and from his reasonings ‘science falsely so-called’ is composed,
that form and collection of false concepts and knowledge that has only the
appearance of reasons, but is in essence vacillation, madness, the raving of
the mind infected with the deadly plague of sin and the fall. This infirmity of
the mind is revealed in special fullness in the philosophical sciences.”[93] And
again he writes: “The holy faith at which the materialists laughed and laugh,
is so subtle and exalted that it can be attained and taught only by spiritual
reason. The reason of the world is opposed to it and rejects it. But when for
some material necessity it finds it necessary and tolerates it, then it
understands it falsely and interprets it wrongly; because the blindness
ascribed by it to faith is its own characteristic.”[94]
St. Basil the Great said: “At all events let us prefer the
simplicity of faith to the demonstrations of reason.”[95] These
words should be our guide whenever science – or, as happens more often,
philosophy clothed in “half-scientific” arguments - appears to contradict faith.
That science could ever really refute faith is the opinion only of those who do
not know what faith is, who have not tasted of that knowledge which comes, not
from the fallen faculties of fallen men applied to the most limited and
circumscribed of objects, but from God Himself.
The scientific world-view proclaims that the only reliable way of
attaining non-mathematical truth is by inferences from the evidence of the
senses. This principle, the principle of empiricism, was first proclaimed by Francis
Bacon in his Advancement of Learning (1605). It rejects the witness of
non-empirical sources – for example, God or intuition or so-called “innate
ideas”. The reverse process – that is, inferences about God and other
non-empirical realities from the evidence of the senses – was admitted by the
early empiricists, but rejected by most later ones.[96]
Thus in time empiricism became not only a methodological or
epistemological, but also an ontological principle, the principle, namely, that
reality not only is best discovered by empirical means, but also is,
solely and exclusively, that which can be investigated by empirical means, and
that non-empirical reality simply does not exist.
By contrast, the Christian Faith makes no radical cleavage between empirical and non-empirical truth, accepting evidence of the senses with regard to the existence and activity of God and the witness of God Himself with regard to the nature of empirically perceived events.
In accordance with this difference in the kinds of truth they seek,
there is a difference in spirit between science (in its more “advanced”,
materialist form) and faith. The spirit of true religion is the spirit of the
humble receiving of the truth by revelation from God; it does not preclude active
seeking for truth, but recognizes that it will never succeed in this search if
God on His part does not reveal it. For Wisdom “goes about seeking those worthy
of her, and She graciously appears to them in their paths, and meets them in
every thought” (Wisdom 6.16). Science, on the other hand, is supremely
self-reliant…
Moreover, there is a Faustian spirit in science, a striving for power
over nature, rather than simply knowledge of it, which is incompatible with
the true religious spirit. Thus Bacon thought that the “pure knowledge of
nature and universality” would lead to power - “knowledge is power”, in his
famous phrase - and to “the effecting of all things possible”.[97] This is
even more true of modern scientists, who place no limits to the powers of
science.
Bacon compared science to the knowledge Adam had before the fall – “the
pure knowledge of nature and universality, a knowledge by the light whereof man
did give names unto other creatures in Paradise, as they were brought to him”.[98] “This
light should in its very rising touch and illuminate all the border-regions
that confine upon the circle of our present knowledge; and so, spreading
further and further should presently disclose and bring into sight all that is
most hidden and secret in the world.”[99] “God
forbid,” he wrote, “that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for
a pattern of the world: rather may He graciously grant to us to write an apocalypse
or true vision of the footsteps of the Creator imprinted on His creatures.”[100]
As J.M. Roberts writes, Bacon “seems to have been a visionary, glimpsing
not so much what science would discover as what it would become: a faith. ‘The
true and lawful end of the sciences’, he wrote, ‘is that human life be enriched
by new discoveries and powers.’ Through them could be achieved ‘a
restitution and reinvigorating (in great
part) of man to the sovereignty and power… which he had in his first creation.’
This was ambitious indeed – nothing less than the redemption of mankind through
organised research; he was here, too, a prophetic figure, precursor of later
scientific societies and institutes.”[101]
This striving for power by wresting the secrets of nature indicates a
kinship between science and magic, if not in their methods, at any rate in
their aims. And while Erasmus’ humorous critique of scientists in the
early fifteenth century could not be applied to their early twenty-first
century successors without qualification, he unerringly pointed to a common spirit
between science of all ages and magic: “Near these march the scientists,
reverenced for their beards and the fur on their gowns, who teach that they
alone are wise while the rest of mortal men flit about as shadows. How
pleasantly they dote, indeed, while they construct their numberless worlds, and
measure the sun, moon, stars, and spheres as with thumb and line. They assign
causes for lightning, winds, eclipses, and other inexplicable things, never
hesitating a whit, as if they were privy to the secrets of nature, artificer of
things, or as if they visited us fresh from the council of the gods. Yet all
the while nature is laughing grandly at them and their conjectures. For to
prove that they have good intelligence of nothing, this is a sufficient
argument: they can never explain why they disagree with each other on every
subject. Thus knowing nothing in general, they profess to know all things in
particular; though they are ignorant even of themselves, and on occasion do not
see the ditch or the stone lying across their path, because many of them are
blear-eyed or absent-minded; yet they proclaim that they perceive ideas,
universals, forms without matter, primary substances, quiddities, and ecceities
– things so tenuous, I fear, that Lynceus himself could not see them. When they
especially disdain the vulgar crowd is when they bring out their triangles,
quadrangles, circles, and mathematical pictures of the sort, lay one upon the
other, intertwine them into a maze, then deploy – and all to involve the
unitiated in darkness. Their fraternity does not lack those who predict future
events by consulting the stars, and promise wonders even more magical; and
these lucky scientists find people to believe them.”[102]
C.S. Lewis writes: “There is something which unites magic and applied
science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men
of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and
the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and
applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of
men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique,
are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious – such as
digging up and mutilating the dead.”[103]
Fr.
Seraphim Rose writes: “Modern science was born [in the Renaissance] out of the
experiments of the Platonic alchemists, the astrologers and magicians. The
underlying spirit of the new scientific world view was the spirit of
Faustianism, the spirit of magic, which is retained as a definite undertone of
contemporary science. The discovery, in fact, of atomic energy would have
delighted the Renaissance alchemists very much: they were looking for just such
power. The aim of modern science is power over nature. Descartes, who
formulated the mechanistic scientific world view, said that man was to become
the master and possessor of nature. It should be noted that this is a religious
faith that takes the place of Christian faith.”[104]
Faith, on the other hand, does not seek power over nature, but obedience
to God. It relies on no other ultimate authority than the Word of God Himself
as communicated either directly to an individual or, collectively, to the
Church, “the pillar and ground of the Truth” (I Timothy 3.15), which
preserves and nurtures the individual revelations.
The
Fallibility Principle
Science is in principle fallible, not only because scientists are
fallen human beings, but also because the only way in which they progress in
their work is by showing that the work of earlier scientists is fallible. It is
not simply that they add to the work of earlier scientists, discovering
facts that were concealed from their predecessors: they actively try and disprove
the currently reigning hypotheses. No hypothesis can ever be proved beyond
any possible doubt, and science advances by the systematic application of doubt
to what are thought to be weak points in its hypothetical structure. This was
seen already by John Donne, who said: “the new philosophy [science] calls all
in doubt”.[105]
And in the twentieth century it was confirmed by Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn and
others: verifiability equals disprovability.
Now this is a paradox if ever there was one: that truth is truth only if
it can, in principle, be proved to be not true! And yet this is the very
corner-stone of the scientific method and the scientific world-view! Of course,
scientists try and soften the force of this paradox. Even if we cannot be
certain about the truth of any scientific hypothesis, they say, we can be sure
that our present hypotheses are closer to the truth than those of our
predecessors. And the proof of that is that science works: our science
is truer than Aristotle’s because we can fly to the moon and explode atomic
bombs, whereas he couldn’t.
And yet the paradox is not so easily disposed of, nor the destructive
effects of the scientific world-view so easily forgiven. And by “destructive”
here I do not mean the obviously destructive effects of atomic bombs, or of the
pollution of the atmosphere caused by space flights, carbon gas emissions, etc.
Science can defend itself against the charge of this kind of
destructiveness by arguing, with greater or lesser plausibility, that it is not
responsible for the use that is made of its discoveries. Knowledge is good in
itself, or at least not evil: it is the use made of knowledge by
irresponsible men that is evil. However, much more serious and fundamental than
this is the charge that the principle of systematic and universal doubt that
lies at the foundation of the modern scientific world-view is simply false,
that there are certain very important truths we can be completely
certain of, which we cannot and must not doubt, and that the enthroning of
the scientific world-view in the heart of man actually makes it impossible
for man to acquire these truths.
Faith is the opposite of doubt; it is defined by the apostle as “the certainty of things not seen” (Hebrews
11.1). Doubt has no place within the
true religion, but only when one is still outside it, in the process of seeking
it, when different religious systems are being approached as possible truths, that is, as hypotheses. Having cleaved to the true
religion by faith, the religious
believer advances, not by subjecting his faith to doubt, but by deepening that faith, by ever deeper
immersion in the undoubted truths of religion.
When the differences between science and faith are viewed from this
perspective, the perspective of Orthodox Christianity, there are seen to be
important differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. For from this
perspective, Catholicism is more “religious”, and Protestantism – more
“scientific”. For Protestantism arose as a protest against, and a doubting of,
the revealed truths of the Catholic religion. From an Orthodox point of view,
some of these doubts were justified, and some not. But that is not the
essential point here. The essential point is that Protestantism arose out of
doubt rather than faith, out of negation rather than assertion, and, like
Descartes in philosophy, placed doubt at
the head of the corner of its new theology.
How? First, by doubting that there is any organization that is “the
pillar and ground of the truth”, any collective vessel of God’s revelation. So
where is God’s revelation to be sought? In the visions and words of individual
men, the Prophets and Apostles, the Saints and Fathers? Yes; but – and here the
corrosive power of doubt enters again – not all that the Church has passed down
about these men can be trusted, according to the Protestants. In particular,
the inspiration of the post-apostolic Saints and Fathers is to be doubted, as
is much of what we are told of the lives even of the Prophets and Apostles. In
fact, we can only rely on the Bible – Sola Scriptura. After all, the
Bible is objective; everybody can
have access to it, can touch it and read it; can analyse and interpret it. In
other words, it corresponds to what we would call scientific evidence.
But can we be sure even of the Bible? After all, the text comes to us
from the Church, that supposedly untrustworthy organization. Can we be sure
that Moses wrote Genesis, or Isaiah Isaiah, or John John,
or Paul Hebrews? To answer these questions we have to analyze the text,
subject it to scientific verification. Then we will find the real text, the text we can really trust,
because it is the text of the real author.
But suppose we cannot find this real text? Or the real author? And suppose we
come to the conclusion that the “real” text of a certain book was written by
tens of authors, none of whom was the “inspired” author, spread over hundreds
of years? Can we then be sure that it is the Word of God? But if we cannot be
sure that the Bible is not the Word of God, how can we be sure of anything?
Thus Protestantism, which begins with the
doubting of authority, ends with the loss of truth itself. Or rather, it ends
with a scientific truth that accepts religious truth only to the extent that it
is “confirmed by the findings of science”. It ends by being a branch of the
scientific endeavour of systematic doubt, and not a species of religious faith
at all.
If we go back to the original error of Protestantism, we will find that
it consists in what we may call a false
reductionist attitude to Divine Revelation. Revelation is given to us in
the Church, “the pillar and ground of the truth”, and consists of two
indivisible and mutually interdependent parts – Holy Scripture and Holy
Tradition. Scripture and Tradition support each other, and are in turn supported
by the Church, which herself rests on the rock of truth witnessed to in
Scripture and Tradition. Any attempt to reduce
Divine Revelation to one of these elements, any attempt to make one element
essential and the other inessential, is doomed to end with the loss of
Revelation altogether. The Truth is one irreducible whole.
Where does the false reductionist attitude come from? Vladimir
Trostnikov has shown that it goes back as far as the 11th century,
to the nominalist thinker Roscelin. Nominalism, which had triumphed over its
philosophical rival, universalism, by the 14th century, “gives
priority to the particular over the general, the lower over the higher”. As
such, it is in essence the forerunner of reductionism, which insists that the
simple precedes the complex, and that the complex can always be reduced, both
logically and ontologically, to the simple.[106]
Thus the Catholic heresy of nominalism gave birth to the Protestant
heresy of reductionism, which reduced the complex spiritual process of the
absorption of God’s revelation in the life of the Church to the unaided
rationalist dissection of a single element in that life, the book of the Holy
Scriptures. As Trostnikov explains, the assumption – against all the evidence –
that reductionism is true has led to a series of concepts which taken together
represent a summation of the contemporary world-view: that matter consists of
elementary particles which themselves do not consist of anything; that the
planets and all the larger objects of the universe arose through the gradual
condensation of simple gas; that all living creatures arose out of inorganic
matter; that the later forms of social organization and politics arose out of
earlier, simpler and less efficient ones; that human consciousness arose from
lower phenomena, drives and archetypes; that political rulers must be guided,
not from above, but from below, by their own subjects...
We see, then, why science, like capitalism, flourished especially in the
Protestant countries. Protestantism, according to Landes, “gave a big boost to
literacy, spawned dissent and heresies, and promoted the skepticism and refusal
of authority that is at the heart of the scientific endeavor. The Catholic
countries, instead of meeting the challenge, responded by closure and censure.”[107]
However, it is misleading to make too great a contrast between
science-loving, democratic religion and science-hating authoritarian religion.
Much confusion has been generated in this respect by Galileo’s trial, in which,
so it is said, a Pope who falsely believed that the earth was flat and that the
sun circled the earth persecuted Galileo, who believed on empirical evidence
that the earth circled the sun. Other
scientists persecuted by the Catholics, it is said, were Copernicus and Bruno.
But the truth, as Jay Wesley Richards explains, was different. “First of
all, some claim Copernicus was persecuted, but history shows he wasn’t; in
fact, he died of natural causes the same year his ideas were published. As for
Galileo, his case can’t be reduced to a simple conflict between scientific
truth and religious superstition. He insisted the church immediately endorse
his views rather than allow them to gradually gain acceptance, he mocked the
Pope, and so forth. Yes, he was censured, but the church kept giving him his
pension for the rest of his life.”[108]
“Indeed,” writes Lee Strobel, “historian William R. Shea said,
‘Galileo’s condemnation was the result of the complex interplay of untoward
political circumstances, political ambitions, and wounded prides.’ Historical
researcher Philip J. Sampson noted that Galileo himself was convinced that the
‘major cause’ of his troubles was that he had made ‘fun of his Holiness’ – that
is, Pope Urban VIII – in a 1632 treatise. As for his punishment, Alfred North
Whitehead put it this way: ‘Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild
reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed.’”[109]
“Bruno’s case was very sad,” Richards continues. “He was executed in
Rome in 1600. Certainly this is a stain on [Roman Catholic] church history. But
again, this was a complicated case. His Copernican views were incidental. He
defended pantheism and was actually executed for his heretical views on the
Trinity, the Incarnation, and other doctrines that had nothing to do with
Copernicanism.”[110]
In fact, neither Holy Scripture[111], nor
the Holy Fathers[112], nor
even the Roman church as a whole denied the idea of a spherical earth. “The
truth is,” writes David Lindberg, “that it’s almost impossible to find an
educated person after Aristotle who doubts that the Earth is a sphere. In the
Middle Ages, you couldn’t emerge from any kind of education, cathedral school
or university, without being perfectly clear about the Earth’s sphericity and
even its approximate circumference.”[113]
The Fallibility of Science: (1) The New Physics
Let us now turn to some of the ways in which the scientific enterprise
has run aground in modern times, beginning with the new physics.
Since the time of Galileo a certain degree of counter-intuitiveness has
come to be seen as an essential ingredient of "real" science; for
science progresses by challenging accepted assumptions. And yet there is a very
large difference between the counter-intuitiveness (to some in the 16th
century) of an earth circling the sun and the plain nonsensicality of, for
example, a universe in which time can go backwards! But this is one of things
that some modern physicists are saying: since physics expresses all its laws in
time-reversible equations, there is no reason in principle why time should not
go backwards – and so no reason in principle (according to some of the more
melodramatic writers) why one should not be able to go back in time and kill
one’s own father!
To these writers we are tempted to say: you can't be serious! But
many of them are being perfectly serious – and the idea of time-travel has now
entered, through Hollywood, into the consciousness of a whole younger
generation. So we have to take this phenomenon, if not these ideas, seriously.
Humility is required here, as in all spheres of knowledge. If our
knowledge of physics and mathematics is as limited as the present writer's,
then we are not in a position to argue with the scientists on their own ground.
So should we retire from the fray hurt and simply bow down before the
scientists' superior knowledge?
Many Christians have been prepared to do just that. But, bearing in mind
Dostoyevsky's warning about “half-science”, we should be more careful. After
all, if these scientists are right, we shall have to change, not only our ideas
about the physical universe, but also our ideas about just about everything
else, including God, freewill, morality and the human person. And since we have
"many infallible proofs" (Acts 1.3) of our traditional beliefs
in these spheres, we have good reason to pause.
For it would be false humility, even irrational, to abandon
well-established beliefs out of respect for a tiny group of men, whose work
extremely few understand (it is said that only about six people in the world
fully understand “string theory”, for example, with its eleven dimensions of
reality), and who are themselves far from agreed about how their results should
be interpreted. If Einstein could not believe that God plays with dice, why
should we? We know that these scientists are wrong in some of their
wilder judgements - they must be wrong; the problem is discerning why,
or rather how they are wrong.
But we are being too alarmist, we are told. These problems are simply
temporary inconsistencies in the scientific picture of the world that will
eventually be removed as science progresses and new theories are constructed.
Thus the problems relating to the nature of time, we are told, will eventually
be overcome in the unified field theory, the so-called TOE or "Theory of
Everything".
This touching faith in the new physics is reminiscent of those
biologists who say: although nobody has actually seen the evolution of a
new species, “it is only a matter of time”; eventually (perhaps in a few
million years) we shall see it. Thus time is the great healer of the
wounds of modern science. And yet that is simply to place a non-religious faith
and hope (in the eventual omniscience of science) in place of solid
hypotheses based on firm evidence.
The problem is that physics, far from gradually removing all anomalies
and contradictions in our understanding of the world, seems to be throwing up
still more intractable ones. Thus quantum physics undermines not only the
category of time, but also the category of substance; in fact, it undermines
the very notion of objective reality. For the quantum wave function that is the
fundamental unit of the modern physicist's universe is not a thing or an event,
but a spectrum of possible things or events. Moreover, it exists as such
only while it is not being observed. When the wave function is observed (by a
physical screen or living being), it collapses into one and one only of
the possibilities that define it. Thus the price of the birth of reality in
this way is the destruction of the fundamental unity of reality!
But still more mind-bending anomalies are to come. Thus according to
Everett, "the universe itself is described by a wave-function which
contains the ingredients of any outcome. His interpretation carries with it a
bizarre implication - that innumerable 'parallel' universes, each as real as
our own, all exist independently. Your wildest dreams may be fulfilled within
these other worlds. With every measurement made by an observer, who is by
definition within a universe, the entire universe buds off an uncountable
multitude of new universes (the 'many worlds'), each of which represents a
different possible outcome of the observation (for example, a living or a dead
cat)."[114]
Some people optimistically think that the new physics vindicates belief
in God. Thus, after believing for decades in the (quasi-Hindu) “steady state”
theory, physicists now believe in the (quasi-Christian) “big bang” theory,
which appears to admit the possibility, not only that the universe had a
beginning, but that its beginning was God, “the Beginning of every beginning” (I Chron. 29.12). For it is only natural to ask: What
caused the Big Bang? And since a material cause of the whole material universe
is excluded, and since every beginning in time must have a cause, it follows
that the cause of the universe must be immaterial – that is, God.
Again, scientists have discovered that there are about 10 constant
physical and chemical values – for example, the distance of the earth from the
sun – which, if altered even to the slightest degree, would immediately make
life on earth impossible. The combination of these 10 values in one place at
one time would seem to be an enormous – in fact, unbelievable - coincidence.
The most natural explanation is that it is in fact no coincidence, but
that these 10 values have been precisely calibrated by a Creator in order
that there should be life – and specifically, human life - on earth (the
anthropic principle).
Of course, these facts do point to the existence of a Creator
God. However, we must never underestimate the ability of scientists to refuse
to accept the obvious conclusion if that conclusion involves the existence of a
Being higher than themselves. Thus when we point out the extraordinary
non-coincidence of the 10 constant physical and chemical values that make life
on earth possible, the scientists resort to the innumerable parallel universes
argument. It probably is a coincidence, they say, if we suppose that our
universe is just one out of billions and billions of other universes, in one of
which the values of these 10 constants as we find them in our universe is bound
to occur by chance. And yet there is no reason whatsoever for believing that
there are billions and billions of other universes other than the scientists’
need to reject the hypothesis of God…
Again, if we say that God must have caused the Big Bang, they reply:
“And who caused God? (and who caused the Creator of God?, etc., etc.)” If we
say: “But God has no cause”, then they reply: “Why not? Everything has a
cause”. However, those who reply in this way are making what the linguistic
philosophers call a “category mistake”. Empirical causality, as Kant pointed
out in his Critique of Pure Reason, is one of the basic categories (the
others are substance and time) by which we order the flux of sensory
experience. The category of empirical causality can be applied to any segment
of space-time. But it cannot be applied to space-time as a whole,
because, while the effect here will be spatiotemporal, the cause will be outside
space-time. And a fortiori it cannot be applied to a supposed Creator of
the Creator of space-time.
But are we not contradicting ourselves
here? Did we not agree that God, Who is immaterial and outside space-time, is
the Cause of the spatiotemporal universe? There is no contradiction here if we
carefully distinguish between three types of causality: empirical, human
and Divine.
Let us begin with empirical causality, which is the weakest, most
insubstantial form of causality. For, strange as it may seem, we never actually
see an empirical causal bond. What we see is events of class A being
regularly followed by events of class B. We then infer that there is
something forcing this sequence of events, or making it happen;
and this we call causality. But, as David Hume pointed out, we never
actually see this force, this bond uniting A and B: we only see regular
sequences of events. We say that A causes B, but all we actually ever
see is events of classes A and B in regular, predictable succession to one
another, not the force that joins A to B.
In fact, our only direct experience of causality is when we cause our
own actions. Thus when I decide to open the door, I have a direct
experience of myself making my hand go towards the door-knob and turn it. This
experience of causality is quite different from watching events of class A
“causing” events of class B in empirical nature. I do not see the exercise of
my will being constantly followed by the opening of doors. I know by
direct, irrefutable, non-sensory (what the philosophers call phenomenological)
experience that the cause of that door opening was I. This is the second
type of causality, human causality; and our knowledge of it, unlike our
knowledge of any empirical causality, is both direct and certain.
Moreover, - and this, as we shall see, is a very significant point for
the so-called science of psychology – I know that my decision to open the door
was uncaused in the scientific, empirical sense. Even if a man
were standing behind me with a gun and ordering me to open the door, this would
not take away from the uncaused nature of my action. It might explain why I
decided to open the door at that moment; but, as the philosophers have
demonstrated, to give the reasons for an action is not the same as
describing the causes of an event; to confuse reasons with causes is
another “category mistake”. Only if the man with a gun took away my power of
decision – that is, hypnotized me to open the door, or took hold of my hand
and placed it on the door-knob and then turned my hand, would it be true to say
that my action was caused. Or rather, then it would no longer be my action,
for my action can only be the free result of my will: it would be
the action of another person, he would be the cause (the uncaused cause)
of the action.
Both human and empirical causality are caused by God, Who brings all
things into being out of nothing. Thus it is the Divine Causality which causes
events of type A to be followed always (or almost always – the exception is
what we perceive to be miracles) by events of type B: He is the Cause of all
empirical causation. But Divine Causality is closer to human causality, in
Whose image it was made, insofar as It, too, is (a) empirically uncaused, and
(b) personal, whereas every empirical cause is (a) empirically caused (because
God has caused it to be so), and (b) impersonal.
We experience Divine Causality in moments of grace. It has this effect
on human causality that it does not violate the latter’s free and uncaused
nature; It informs it without compelling it. Thus when a saint speaks under the
influence of God’s grace, he retains complete control over his own words while
submitting to the influence of God’s Word. This is incomprehensible within the
scientific world-view. But since the scientists cannot see even the empirical
causes they postulate, why should this concern us?…
The Fallibility of Science: (2) The New
Biology
Let us take as another example of the
radical fallibility of science Darwin’s theory of evolution. One of the few
encouraging developments in the modern world is the gradual undermining, from
many directions, of the hitherto unchallenged pseudo-dogma of Darwinism.
However, long before modern scientists began to doubt it (and it is still only
a minority that doubts), it was considered false by the saints both on
empirical grounds and, much more importantly, because it conflicted with the dogmas
of the Christian faith and morality.
It is sometimes supposed that the saints
disdained to speak of science as being a lower form of knowledge irrelevant to
questions of faith. But this is not so. That they were not afraid to discuss
science on its own terms, the terms of empirical evidence, is indicated by the
following conversation between Elder Nectarius of Optina (+1928) and one of his
spiritual children, who sorrowfully remarked to her friend in his reception
room:
"I don't know, perhaps education is altogether unnecessary and only
brings harm. How can it be reconciled with Orthodoxy?"
The elder, coming out of his cell, rejoined: "Once a man came to me
who simply couldn't believe that there had been a flood. Then I told him that on
very high mountains in the sand are found shells and other remains from the
ocean floor, and how geology testifies to the flood, and he came to believe.
You see how necessary learning is at times." And again the elder said:
“God not only permits, but demands of man that he grow in knowledge. However,
it is necessary to live and learn so that not only does knowledge not ruin
morality, but that morality not ruin knowledge."[115]
Thus in answer to the question how Orthodox could be reconciled with
“education”, i.e. modern science, the elder pointed, on the one hand, to the
geological evidence for the flood of Noah - the fossil evidence on which
Darwinism rests can much more easily be explained by the flood than by
Darwinism itself. However, he did not linger on this evidence. More important,
in his view, was the effect that scientific hypotheses like Darwinism had on
morality. For, as St. Nectarius’ fellow-elder at Optina, St.
Barsanuphius (+1912) said: “The English philosopher Darwin created an entire
system according to which life is a struggle for existence, a struggle of the
strong against the weak, where those that are conquered are doomed to
destruction and the conquerors are triumphant. This is already the beginning of
a bestial philosophy…”[116]
More important still is the incompatibility of Darwinism with certain
cardinal dogmas of the Christian faith. Thus the consistent Darwinist must
believe: (i) that God did not create the heavens and the earth, or that if He
did, He did it through death, the destructive forces of mutation and
natural selection (but “God did not create death” (Wisdom 1.13); (ii)
that the species came into being through chance (St. Basil says that
anyone who believes in chance is an atheist[117]);
(iii) that death was not the result of sin, as Scripture says (Romans
5.19), but existed even before sin was possible; (iv) that man, being only
matter, does not have free will, and therefore cannot be judged; and (v) that
man does not have an immortal soul, but is wholly the product of chance forces
operating on matter.
St. Nectarios of Aegina wrote: “The
followers of pithecogeny [the derivation of man from the apes] are
ignorant of man and of his lofty destiny, because they have denied him his soul
and Divine revelation. They have rejected the Spirit, and the Spirit has
abandoned them. They withdrew from God, and God withdrew from them; for,
thinking they were wise, they became fools… If they had acted with knowledge,
they would not have lowered themselves so much, nor would they have taken pride
in tracing the origin of the human race to the most shameless of animals.
Rightly did the Prophet say of them: ‘Man being in honour, did not understand;
he is compared to the dumb beasts, and is become like unto them.”[118]
It is amazing how many so many Christians fail to see the
incompatibility of Darwinism with Christian dogma and morality. Or perhaps they
see it, but suppress this perception because of the choice it will then place
before them: to accept the modern world-view and reject Christianity, or
vice-versa. They prefer the muddled and impossible compromise of “theistic
evolution”, choosing to believe that God somehow works through death and
chance, that He could not or would not make His creation perfect from the
beginning, but had to go through billions of years of bloody experiments before
He “hit upon” the world as it is now![119] Or
perhaps they are seduced by the perspective of infinite progress through
unending evolution that Darwinism offers, as one Masonic writer puts it: “First
a mollusc, then a fish then a bird, then a mammal, then a man, then a Master,
then a God”.[120]
In any case, it must be firmly understood: it is impossible to be a Christian
and a Darwinist.
It is important to remind ourselves at this point that science is
hypothetical in essence; it proclaims no certainties; what is declared to be a
self-evident law of nature in one generation is denounced as false in the next.
Moreover, several of the major hypotheses of science appear to contradict each
other, at least in the opinion of significant sections of the scientific
community - for example, the time-reversible laws of quantum physics and the
Second Law of Thermodynamics. Darwinism also contradicts this latter law, since
evolution involves the build-up of complexity and information rather than its
inexorable loss, as the Second Law says.
In fact, Darwinism is essentially a fairy-tale dressed up in scientific
language. As A. N. Field writes: ‘With oaks to be seen sprouting from acorns,
grubs turning into butterflies, and chickens pecking their way out of eggs, it
is not surprising that human fancy from an early date toyed with the notion of
one kind of living thing being transformed into some other kind. This idea has
been the stock-in-trade of folk-lore and fairy tales in all ages and all lands.
It was the achievement of Charles Darwin to make it the foundation of modern
biological science.”[121]
However, as Field goes on to say, a major difficulty is encountered by
the Darwinists at the very outset of their argument: “There is… not a shred of
evidence of any living thing ever evolving into some different kind of living
thing capable of breeding but infertile with its parent stock. All that
breeding experiments have produced is mere varieties fertile with their parent
stock, or else sterile hybrids, incapable of breeding, such as the mule
produced by a cross between horse and donkey.”
Darwin admitted as much in a private letter to Dr. Bentham on May 22,
1863: “In fact belief in Natural Selection must at present be grounded entirely
on general considerations… When we descend to details, we can prove that no one
species has changed (i.e. we cannot prove that a single species has changed);
nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the
groundwork of the theory.” Nearly 150 years, this statement is still true.
Moreover, developments in genetics and molecular biology have placed further
vast obstacles in the way of the possibility of natural selection. It seems
that the “ignorant” St. Basil was right after all: “Nothing is truer than that
each plant produces its seed or contains some seminal virtue; this is what is
meant by ‘after its kind’. So that the shoot of a reed does not produce an
olive tree, but from a reed grows another reed, and from one sort of seed a
plant of the same sort always germinates. Thus all that has sprung from the
earth in its first bringing forth is kept the same to our time, thanks to the
constant reproduction of kind.”[122]
Since this is the case, there is no need to concede to the scientific
world-view more than it claims for itself (in the mouths of its more honest and
intelligent spokesmen). Otherwise we fall into the trap which so many
non-scientific Christians have fallen into of immediately accepting the latest
scientific fashion and adapting one's faith to it, only to find that science
has moved on and left their "modernised faith" as an out-of-date
relic. This has been the fate of the "Christian Marxists" and
"theist evolutionists", who in trying slavishly to adapt Christianity
to the latest and least credible fashion in science show themselves to be
neither Christians nor scientists. What we must always remember is that,
whatever its many and undoubted achievements, science is a fallible enterprise conducted
by sinful men. Therefore scientists individually and collectively are not
immune from deception, and we Christians should not be cowed by their
supposedly superior knowledge from subjecting their conclusions to criticism.
This is especially the case with regard to the new biology, because in
this field, at any rate, there is a growing minority of fully qualified
scientists who reject the Darwinist myth. They point to a vast number of facts
that contradict Darwinism: not only the familiar one of the missing links in
human evolution, but such facts as the impossibility of generating even a
single-cell organism out of a primitive biochemical soup, the impossibility of
assembling the elements of a cell into working order one by one (they all have to
be present simultaneously and in exactly the right relationship to each other),
the impossibility of understanding the evolution of sexually differentiated
species from asexual ones (since the vastly complicated differences between the
male and the female of the new species have to be emerge, in perfect working
order, in a single generation), the circularity and radical unreliability of
the Darwinist methods of dating rocks and fossils, the fact of the universal
flood as witnessed in the folk lore of all peoples, etc., etc. “Creationism” is
not, as many suppose, the imposition of Protestant fundamentalism into the
realm of pure science, but simply honest science.
And if elements of heretical Protestantism have crept into some
creationist work, these are easily separated from the science, like wheat from
the chaff. There is no reason why the great bulk of creationist work – as well
as all conventional science that does not rest on Darwinist assumptions - could
not be absorbed into a new project of “Orthodox creationism”, which will be
honest both to God and to science, being interested in truth alone…
The
Fallibility of Science: (3) The New Psychology
The modern scientific project of encompassing the whole universe from
the primal matter of the Big Bang to all the planets and galaxies and all the
species of plants and animals in a single explanatory framework, that is, in a
single causal nexus, would surely be judged to have failed if it stopped short
at man. After all, while earlier generations of men wished to
demonstrate that man is a “fifth essence” separate from the four natural
essences of fire, earth, water and air, and not included in the causal
nexus of the material universe, modern scientists think just the opposite. They
have an enormous respect for matter as the origin of all things, and the fount
of the evolutionary ascent of man; and they wish to be included in that
evolutionary ascent at all costs – even at the cost of denying the existence of
their own souls![123]
The hub of the scientific project in its application to man is what is
sometimes called the Artificial Intelligence or "AI" hypothesis.
According to this hypothesis, mental states are to be identified with brain
states, which in turn can be described exclusively in terms of computer
states. The crucial test of this
hypothesis would be to build a robot whose behaviour would simulate the
behaviour of a man in every way. If the behaviour of the robot were
indistinguishable from what we recognize as the behaviour of a man, then we
would be forced to admit that the robot is a man. And then we would be
forced to the further conclusion that man is the product of evolution: the last
link in the chain would be complete.
However, the philosopher John Searle has argued that however accurately
a machine could mimic the behaviour of an intelligent human being, it cannot be
said to understand what it is doing. And he proves his contention by
describing an imaginary "Chinese room" experiment. Suppose a person
is locked in a room and is given a large amount of Chinese writing. Suppose,
further, that he understands not a word of Chinese, but is given a set of
instructions in a language he does understand which teaches him to correlate
one set of Chinese symbols with another. If the rules correlating input and
output are sufficiently complex and sophisticated, and if the man becomes
sufficiently skilled in manipulating them, then it is possible to envisage a
situation in which, for any question given him in Chinese, the man will be able
to give an appropriate answer also in Chinese in such a way that no-one would
guess from his answers that he knows not a word of Chinese![124]
Thus scientists will never be able to explain their own thought
processes by purely scientific means - by building a model of the brain on a
computer. For such functions as "understanding meaning" and
"intending" cannot be simulated on a machine, no matter how
sophisticated. As Michael Polanyi writes: "These personal powers include
the capacity for understanding a meaning, for believing a factual statement,
for interpreting a mechanism in relation to its purpose, and on a higher level,
for reflecting on problems and exercising originality in solving them. They
include, indeed, every manner of reaching convictions by an act of personal
judgement. The neurologist exercises these powers to the highest degree in
constructing the neurological model of a man - to whom he denies in this very
act any similar powers."[125]
This conclusion reached by philosophical thought is confirmed by the
findings of mathematicians. Thus the Oxford professor Roger Penrose, relying on
the work of other mathematicians such as Godel and Turing, has given some
excellent reasons for not believing that minds are algorithmic, i.e.
mechanistic entities. For example, there are certain necessary mathematical
truths which are seen to be true but cannot be logically deduced from the
axioms of the system to which they belong; that is, although we know that they
are true, we cannot prove them to be true. This suggests that the seeing of
mathematical truths is a spontaneous, uncaused, yet completely rational act.
Penrose believes that mathematical truths are like Platonic ideas, which exist
independently both of the mind and of the physical world. Whether or not he is
right in this, he has clearly demonstrated that mathematical thinking cannot be
described or explained in deterministic terms. And if mathematical thinking,
the most rigorous and logical of all kinds of thought, is free and not
determined, the same must be true of scientific thought in general.[126]
It follows that if psychologists try to deny that thinking is free, they
cut the ground from under their own feet and deprive their own thought of any
credibility. For let us suppose that the thinking of psychologists is in fact
determined by certain natural laws. The question then arises: if that is so,
what reason do we have for believing that their reasoning is rational and true?
For if a man speaks under some kind of compulsion, we conclude either that he
does not understand what he is saying, or that he is lying, or that he is
telling the truth "by accident", as it were. In any case, we attach
no significance to his words; for free and rational men believe only the words
of free and rational men.
Now just as rational thought presupposes freedom, so does responsible
action. The whole of morality and law is based on the premise that the actions
of men can be free, although they are not always so. If a man is judged to have
committed a criminal offence freely, then he is blamed and punished
accordingly. If, on the other hand, he is judged to have been "not in his
sound mind", he is not blamed and is sent to a psychiatric hospital rather
than a prison. If we could not make such distinctions between various degrees
of freedom, civilized society would soon collapse.
Now, as we have seen, free will is a completely different kind of
causality from empirical causality. Unlike empirical causality, it is not
inferred, but directly perceived by the cause himself. As such, we can be
certain about our human causality, whereas empirical causality can never be
more than a subject of conjecture or hypothesis.
Free will is only faintly discerned at the subconscious level of human
life, where we feel that we are being pushed and pulled in a dark sea of
desires and aversions, of attractions and repulsions, over which we have little
control. In this context we can see that it was no accident that psychology
should have begun its section of the scientific enterprise at the beginning of
the twentieth century with the psychoanalytical study of the subconscious and
of those pathological states in which free will and rationality appear to be
suspended. For, with his freewill and rationality removed, man can be more
easily treated as if he were just a biological organism, subject to the same
empirical laws as other biological organisms.
However, even psychoanalysis was forced to introduce the concept of the
ego – that is, the person, the seat of free will and rationality. For insofar
as a man feels himself to be the victim of subconscious forces that he cannot
yet conceptualize or control, he also feels himself to be distinct from them,
and therefore potentially able to resist them. Moreover, at the higher level of
consciousness, this feeling of passive
"victimization" is translated into active attention to objects
and resistance to (some) desires; Prometheus bound becomes Prometheus unbound,
at least in relation to some elements of his mental life.
The phenomenon of attention is of particular interest here because it is
at the same time the sine qua non of all perception and thought and the
first real manifestion of freedom of the will, the will being bound at the
lower, subconscious level. As the Russian religious philosopher S.L. Frank
points out, some element of will is present in all perception and thought
insofar as it is not imposed by either the environment or the subconscious.
Even if our attention is involuntarily drawn to an object, the perception of it
as occupying a definite place in the objective world requires an effort of will
directing our cognitive faculties upon it. Thus my attention may be
involuntarily drawn by a bright light or a pretty face - at this moment I am
under the control of subconsciously registered images, sensations and desires.
But immediately I try to perceive where and what it is that has attracted my
attention, I am displaying freedom of will.[127]
However, it is above in all in the experience of resisting one or other
of our desires that we become conscious that our will is free. This freedom is
only relative insofar as the resistance to one desire is conditioned by
submission to another, stronger one. But introspection reveals that in any
struggle between two desires at the conscious level there is always a third
element, the ego, that chooses between them, however under pressure by one of
the desires the ego may feel itself to be. It is in the hesitation before
choice that we become conscious of our freedom. And it is in the consciousness
that we could have chosen differently that we become conscious of our
responsibility.
Empirical psychology cannot provide us
with knowledge of the workings of our free will insofar as it is dominated by
the dogma of scientism, which excludes specifically human, as opposed to
empirical causality. In the most extreme manifestation of psychological
scientism, behaviourism, even the word "action" is removed from the
scientific vocabulary and replaced by the word "behaviour", which has
fewer connotations of free will and choice. According to the behaviourists, our
“behaviour” is exclusively determined by biological drives and learned
conditional reflexes. Fortunately, behaviourism is now generally admitted to
have been a mistake; but we must not underestimate the continued influence of
scientistic modes of thought in psychology. If the mechanistic model of the
behaviourists is simply replaced by the computer models of the cognitive
scientists, then we are no nearer the truth now than we were in the 1950s.
It is not only free will and rationality that empirical psychology
cannot comprehend. Consider, for example, the important phenomenon of falling
in love. Frank writes: "What can so-called empirical psychology observe in
it? First of all it will fall on the external, physical symptoms of this
phenomenon - it will point out the changes in blood circulation, feeding and
sleep in the person under observation. But remembering that it is, first of
all, psychology, it will pass over to the observation of 'mental phenomena', it
will record changes in self-image, sharp alterations in mental exaltation and
depression, the stormy emotions of a pleasant and repulsive nature through
which the life of a lover usually passes, the dominance in his consciousness of
images relating to the beloved person, etc. Insofar as psychology thinks that
in these observations it has expressed, albeit incompletely, the very essence
of being in love - then this is a mockery of the lover, a denial of the mental
phenomenon under the guise of a description of it. For for the lover himself
all these are just symptoms or consequences of his feeling, not the feeling
itself. Its essence consists, roughly, in a living consciousness of the
exceptional value of the beloved person, in an aesthetic delight in him, in the
experience of his central significance for the life of the beloved - in a word,
in a series of phenomena characterizing the inner meaning of life. To elucidate
these phenomena means to understand them compassionately from within, to
recreate them sympathetically in oneself. The beloved will find an echo of
himself in artistic descriptions of love in novels, he will find understanding
in a friend, as a living person who has himself experienced something similar
and is able to enter the soul of his friend; but the judgements of the
psychologist will seem to him to be simply misunderstandings of his condition -
and he will be right."[128]
A description of love in terms of drives, stimuli and learning will
invariably miss out the most important element, the element that makes love
love – the perception of another person as a person. Nor is it simply
the one-way perception of another as a person that is important:
it is the mutual perception that the other is perceiving oneself in the
same way. This is the fact of inter-personal communion, which enables
two people to relate to each other not as subjects and objects but as
inter-penetrating subjects whose knowledge of each other, though from different
points of view, is identical, and though taking place in space and time seems
to transcend space and time. Heron has described this fact as follows: "My
awareness of myself is in part constituted by my awareness of his awareness of
me, and my awareness of him is in part constituted by my awareness of his
awareness of me."[129]
I am not here talking simply about empathy, which is another basic
psychological phenomenon that transcends empirical science. Empathy lies at the
root of art, and has been described by one Russian scientist as "a
necessary and most important, although not the only condition of creativity in
any sphere of human activity".[130]
But empathy is a one-way relationship, like art itself: here we are talking
rather about mutual and simultaneous empathy which creates a new content as
well as form of consciousness.
Thus two people in relation to each other as people are like two mirrors
placed opposite each other. That which is reflected in mirror A is mirror B,
and that which is reflected in mirror B is mirror A. The "knowledge"
that each has is therefore objective and subjective at the same time; in fact,
the objectivity and subjectivity of the vision or visions are logically and
chronologically inseparable. But this amounts to a radically different kind of
knowledge from that of scientific, empirical knowledge, which Frank calls
"object consciousness".[131]
For whereas object consciousness entails a radical separation between a
spaceless and timeless subject and a spatial (if material) or temporal (if mental)
object, person consciousness entails an equally radical identity-in-diversity
of subject and object which we may simply call communion.
Frank describes communion as follows: "When we speak to a person,
or even when our eyes meet in silence, that person ceases to be an 'object' for
us and is no longer a 'he' but a 'thou'. That means he no longer fits into the
frame-work of 'the world of objects': he ceases to be a passive something upon
which our cognitive gaze is directed for the purposes of perception without in
any way affecting it. Such one-sided relation is replaced by a two-sided one,
by an interchange of spiritual activities. We attend to him and he to us, and
this attitude is different from - though it may co-exist with - the purely ideal
direction of attention which we call objective knowledge: it is real spiritual
interaction. Communion is both our link with that which is external to us, and
a part of our inner life, and indeed a most essential part of it. From an
abstract logical point of view this is a paradoxical case of something external
not merely coexisting with the 'inward' but of actually merging into it.
Communion is at one and the same time both something 'external' to us and
something 'inward' - in other words it cannot in the strict sense be called
either external or internal.
"This can still more clearly be seen from the fact that all
communion between 'I' and 'thou' leads to the formation of a new reality
designated by the word 'we' - or rather, coincides with it."[132]
The fact is that human beings can relate to themselves and each other
not only in the scientific, "I-it" mode, but also in the artistic
"I-thou" mode, and in what we may call the religious "I-we"
mode.[133]
It follows that if psychologists are to truly understand their subject, and not
dehumanize man by pretending that he exists only on the "I-it" mode
of our limited scientific understanding, then they must be prepared to ascend
to the "I-thou" and "I-we" modes, and understand him in
these, more intimate and at the same time more comprehensive and universal
modes. For how can we understand the humanity of another man if we do not exert
our own humanity to its fullest extent?
In the Steven Spielberg film Artificial Intelligence a boy who is
in fact a robot is rejected by his human “parents” because the son whom they
lost is brought to life and begins to be jealous of the “brother” robot who had
been constructed to replace him. The robot makes it his life’s mission to find
his “mother” again and prove to himself that she loves him just as much as her
“real”, human son. In the course of the film, humanity destroys itself, and
only the robots are left “alive”. With the help of some fellow-robots, and some
DNA preserved from a wisp of his mother’s hair, the robots are able to bring
the mother to life again for a single day. And so the boy-robot is at last able
to enjoy the supreme pleasure of hearing her say that she loves him…
The “message” of the film (for this writer, if not for Spielberg) is by
no means that robots will one day be just as human as real human beings. It is
rather that scientific advances in artificial intelligence, and in the
knowledge of man’s genetic and physiological make-up, will never penetrate to
the heart of man’s mystery, which is the capacity to love, freely and not in
order to fulfil a biological desire, but simply because an object worthy of
love exists. For, as Hamlet says:
You would play upon me;
You would seem to know my stops;
You would pluck out the heart of my mystery;
You would sound me from my lowest
note to the top of my compass.
And there is much music, excellent voice,
in this little organ.
Yet cannot you make it speak...
Science
and the Word of God
The study of science gives us many reasons for believing in God. After
all, “since the creation of the world”, says St. Paul, “His invisible
attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even
His eternal power and Godhead”; which is why those who do not believe in the
Creator God “are without excuse” (Rom. 1.20). This leads many to believe
that science and the Word of God must be compatible.
If they mean by “science” real science, science unaffected and
unpolluted by scientism and “half-science”, then they are right. But modern
science has long ago been hijacked, as it were, by a project that actually has
nothing to do with real science: the project, namely, to prove that empirical
reality, the reality studied by the scientists, is the only reality, and that
scientific truth is the only truth. It is therefore naïve to expect that
science as it is presently practised in most universities and laboratories will
be found to be compatible with the Word of God. In the end, in spite of all
attempts to reconcile the one with the other, glaring contradictions will
remain, because it is not only in theological science that the truth is
unattainable without the help of God. In every sphere the full truth can
be found only with the help of the Truth Himself, that is, God, and will remain
hidden unless the Truth Himself is invoked.
Thus one fact clearly proclaimed by the Word of God is that the sun and
all the heavenly bodies were created after the earth. This fact is in no
way compatible with any modern hypothesis put forward by godless science about
the origin of the solar system. And it would dishonest of us to try to
“reinterpret” that fact to make it “fit” with modern physics in the way that
the theistic evolutionists try to make Genesis’s seven days of creation
somehow “fit” with the million-year epochs of Darwinist time.
Instead of trying to reinterpret or allegorise the Word of God to make
it fit with godless science, we should heed the words of St. Basil the Great:
“I know the laws of allegory, though less by myself than from the works of
others. There are those truly who do not admit the common sense of the
Scriptures, for whom water is not water, but some other nature, who see in a
plant, in a fish, what their fancy wishes, who change the nature of reptiles
and of wild beasts to suit their allegories, like the interpreters of dreams
who explain visions in sleep to make them serve their own ends. For me grass is
grass; plant, fish, wild beast, domestic animal, I take all in a literal sense.
For I am not ashamed of the Gospel. Those who have written about the nature of
the universe have discussed at length the shape of the earth. If it be
spherical or cylindrical, if it resemble a disc and is equally rounded in all
parts, or if it has the form of a winnowing basket and is hollow in the middle;
all those conjectures have been suggested by cosmographers, each one upsetting
that of his predecessor. It will not lead me to give less importance to the
creation of the universe that the servant of God Moses is silent as to shapes;
he has not said that the earth is a hundred and eighty thousand furlongs in
circumference; he has not measured into what extent of air its shadow projects
itself while the sun revolves around it, nor state how its shadow, casting
itself upon the moon, produces eclipses. He has passed over in silence, as
useless, all that is unimportant for us. Shall I then prefer foolish wisdom to
the oracles of the Holy Spirit? Shall I not rather exalt Him Who, not wishing
to fill our minds with these vanities, has regulated all the economy of
Scripture in view of the edification and the making perfect of our souls? It is
this that those seem to me not to have understood, who, giving themselves up to
the distorted meaning of allegory, have undertaken to give a majesty of their own
invention to Scripture. It is to believe themselves wiser than the Holy Spirit,
and to bring forth their own ideas under a pretext of exegesis. Let us hear
Scripture as it has been written…”[134]
One may object that the book of Genesis was not written as a
scientific textbook, so it is useless to cite anything from it as if it
contradicted any scientific hypothesis. Now it is, of course, true that Genesis
is not a scientific textbook – as St. Basil himself points out. But at the same
time, as the same saint pointed out, it is not allegory, and it does describe facts.
And if these facts, whether expressed in scientific language or not, contradict
the hypotheses of modern science, such as the fact that the earth was created
before the sun, or that man was created separately from the other species, or
that there was once a universal flood which destroyed the old world and laid
down the fossils that we see now, then there is no way of getting round this
for the honest, truly believing Christian. We either believe the Word of God,
or we believe modern godless science.
The problem with trying to reconcile the Word of God with modern godless
science is that in our joy at finding certain points of concord, or apparent
concord, between the two, we may subconsciously accept certain ideas of science
which are definitely heretical. Thus the anthropic principle in physics can be
interpreted to imply that God created the universe in precisely such a way that
man should be able to study and understand it, which is clearly what Christians
believe. However, it may also be interpreted in a quite different way more in
accordance with Hindu ideas about the divinity of man; for according to Marek
Kohn, the principle "seems to be on the verge of substituting man for God,
by hinting that consciousness, unbound by time's arrow, causes creation"![135] In
fact, the eastern idea that every man is by nature a god gains credence from
both from the Darwinist idea that we are evolving into gods, and from the
physicists’ idea that our consciousness causes creation.
These parallels between ideas in modern science and eastern religions
suggest that the strange path that science is treading may be connected with
the general penetration of western civilisation by these religions. For centuries,
Christians have believed that there are clear and important differences between
the Creator and creation, matter and spirit, time and eternity, freedom and
determinism, man and animal, soul and body, life and death. But in the
twentieth century, the age of relativity and relativism, all these terms have
melted into each other; under the combined onslaught of modern science and
eastern religion, the distinctions which are so basic to our understanding of
ourselves and the world we live in have tended to disappear in a pantheist,
panpsychic or panmaterialist soup.
However, the recognition that all these alarming intellectual and
spiritual trends are related makes the task of resisting them only a little
easier. For even if we reject eastern religion as false and satanic, and
suspect that the god of this world has also had a hand in blinding some
scientists, we cannot say the same about science in general. We have to explain
both how science has gone wrong and why it still manages to get so many things
right...
One obvious way in which science has gone wrong is by drastically
narrowing a priori the range of date it examines, eliminating
from its field of observation the vast sphere of phenomena that we call
religious. Concealment of data which conflicts with one's hypothesis is usually
considered dishonest science. And yet in relation to religion it has been
practised on a massive scale by most of the scientific community for centuries.
Even when scientists do deign to study religion, their methods and conclusions
are often blatantly biassed and unscientific. This was obvious with regard to
the "achievements" of Soviet "scientists" as they tried to
explain, for example, the incorruption of the relics of the Russian saints: but
western scientists have been hardly less biassed, if usually more sophisticated
than their Soviet counterparts.
Of course, some "miracles" are contrived, just as some
religious beliefs are superstitious; and science can do a genuine service to
the truth by exposing these frauds.[136] But
the existence of some frauds does not undermine religion in general, any more
than the existence of quack doctors undermines genuine medicine. Moreover,
science itself has not been immune from quackery of its own in its eagerness to
explain away the phenomena of religion. Particularly useful to it in this
respect has been the concept of psychosomatic illness and psychology in
general. But psychology is the least developed of the sciences; and, as we have
seen, there are strong reasons for disputing whether it can ever be a genuinely
empirical science.
We must also remember that, as Sir Peter Medawar writes, "it is
logically outside the competence of science to answer questions to do with
first and last things."[137] For
any such answers must be in principle unverifiable insofar as no man
observed the beginning of the universe and no man can see its end. As the Lord
said to Job: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Declare, if thou hast understanding” (Job 38.4). Science, however, - or
rather, false science - denies any such limits to its competence; and so, by
the just judgement of God, it proceeds further and further away from the
knowledge of the greater mysteries of the universe - of God, of the soul, of
the origins and destiny of creation, - while puffing itself up by its knowledge
of the lesser mystery of how to build a rocket to the moon.
To understand the first and last things we have to resort to another
method, that of faith; for, as St. Paul says, "we walk by faith,
not by sight" (II Corinthians 5.7). In this sphere we cannot walk
by sight, because, as Fr. Seraphim Rose writes, “the state of Adam and the
first-created world has been placed forever beyond the knowledge of science by
the barrier of Adam’s transgression, which changed the very nature of Adam and
creation, and indeed the very nature of knowledge itself. Modern science knows
only what it observes and what can be reasonably inferred from observation… The
true knowledge of Adam and the first-created world – as much as is useful for
us to know – is accessible only in God’s revelation and in the Divine vision of
the saints.”[138]
Walking by faith does not mean ignoring the evidence of our senses or
the methods of logical reasoning. Thus the central truth of our Faith, the
Resurrection of Christ, was verified by the Apostle Thomas in a simple
scientific experiment involving the sense of touch. And the main physical
evidence of the Resurrection, the Turin Shroud, has been subjected to analysis
by scientists from practically every discipline from botany to astrophysics -
and remains inexplicable by any other hypothesis (a recent carbon-14 analysis
of its age conducted with the aim of refuting its authenticity turned out to be
based on false presuppositions.[139]
And yet millions of people confronted by these "many infallible
proofs" do not believe; they cannot make the for us eminently logical
deduction that the man who fulfils so many prophecies in His own life must
be "my Lord and my God" (John 20.28). They cannot do this
because, while science and logic confirm the Resurrection of Christ, the Person
they point to is an unseen reality Who cannot be contained within the confines
of the senses and logic and therefore represents a challenge to their carnal
nature. Thus their seeing and reasoning are not mixed with faith, which is, in
St. Paul's words, "the reality (Greek hypostasis: literally
"substance") of things hoped for, the proof of things not
seen" (Hebrews 11.1).
When a man, following the evidence of his senses and the reasoning of
his logical mind, penetrates, through faith, beyond the veil of the senses to
the Logos Himself, He receives further revelations about things not seen
in accordance with his spiritual level. He learns about the creation of the
world in the beginning, and its judgement at the end, about angels and demons,
the souls of men and the logoi of all created beings. Nature becomes for
him, in the words of St. Anthony the Great, "a book in which we read the
thoughts of God". Only those "thoughts" are not mathematical
formulae describing the structure of matter or space-time. Rather, they express
the essential nature and purpose for which each thing was
created, its place in the structure of the universe as a whole and in
eternity.
Conclusion:
Two Approaches to Nature
The scientific approach to nature may be described as analytic and
reductionist; the Christian approach as analogical and symbolic.
The essence of the one approach is mathematical and quantitative; of the other
- spiritual and qualitative.
The two approaches are compatible; there is no reason why one cannot go
up the great ladder of Being at one moment and go down it at another. At the
same time, they are not on a par with each other; for while the analogical
approach ascends from one level of reality to a higher one which is closer to
Absolute Reality, the analytical approach sheds, as it were, dimensions of
reality, as it descends lower. Thus by reducing psychology and the social
sciences to neurophysiology analytical science loses the reality of freewill
and consciousness; by reducing biology to chemistry it loses the élan
vital; and by reducing chemistry to quanta it loses, time, substance and
causality.
Indeed, the analytical approach reduces itself to absurdity by claiming
that there is nothing else than these "no-things" - the ultimate
statement of nihilism. This is what happens when qualities are redefined as
quantities, when the analytical approach is adopted on its own without any
reference to the truths and dimensions of reality revealed by the analogical
approach. That is how we come to have theories which deny the arrow of time
while trying to describe its supposed beginning (the Big Bang) and end (the Big
Crunch); and theories about the origin of life which are based on destruction
(mutation) and death (natural selection); and theories about the neurological
nature of mind which, if they were true, would deprive us of any reason for
believing in the truth of any theories whatsoever - for why should I believe
that the chance product of one set of neuronal firings is "truer"
than any other?[140]
Reductionism leads to nihilism and absurdity: the opposite process
reveals an ever-increasing fullness of reality leading to God Himself. “In nature,
in this visible world, various forces function, and the lowest of them yield to
the higher: the physical yields to the chemical, the chemical to the organic,
and finally, all of them together to the highest of all, the spiritual. Without
the intervention of the higher forces, the lower forces would function in a
homogeneous, immutable order. But the higher forces alter, and sometimes even
suspend the actions of the lower. In such a natural subordination of the lower
forces to the higher, not one of the laws of nature is changed. Thus, for
example, a physician changes the progression of a disease, a man changes the
face of the earth by digging of canals, and so on. Cannot God cause the same
thing to a boundlessly greater extent?”[141]
Orthodox Christianity is not against science that stays humbly within
its limits, which recognises that the universe is not an isolated system, but
one that is open to the God Who created it, Who preserves it and all its parts
in existence, and Who sustains every one of its laws by His Providence until
the day when He will come to judge it, when "the heavens shall pass away
with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth
also and the works that are therein shall be burned up" (II Peter
3.10).
Orthodoxy declares that there is nothing more real than God, that all
things "live and move and have their being in Him" (Acts
17.28), and that things lose reality when they begin to move away from Him and
cease to reflect His light. Some things reflect God more fully and therefore
partake in more dimensions of His reality. Christ is His perfect,
consubstantial Image and Name; for He "reflects the glory of God and bears
the very stamp of His nature, upholding the universe by the word of His power"
(Hebrews 1.3). Men are also images of God, though not consubstantial
ones; and their ability to use the word in science, art and religion in order
to describe and understand the universe is a true reflection of the power of
the Word of God.
Indeed, Adam's "naming" of the animals in Paradise may be seen
as the beginning of true, analogical science; for through it, in St. Ambrose's
words, "God granted [us] the power of being able to discern by the
application of sober logic the species of each and every object, in order that
[we] may be induced to form a judgement on all of them."[142] Again, Nicetas
Stethatos writes, God made man “king of creation”, enabling him “to possess
within himself the inward essences, the natures and the knowledge of all
beings”.[143]
Lower levels
of being do not have the power of the word and can therefore symbolise higher
levels less fully and deeply. And yet in Christ and the Church, "the
fullness of Him that filleth all in all" (Ephesians 1.22), even the
lowliest wave-function acquires reality and meaning and the ability to partake
in some measure in the Providence of God.
The proof of the primordial unity of the universe, and the guarantee of
its eternal unity, is the Incarnation of Christ. For when the Word became
flesh, He that is absolutely immaterial and unquantifiable took on matter and
was as it were "quantised". Thus in His one and indivisible Person
was united the Godhead, mind, soul, body, atoms and quanta.
We might call this the First Law of Analogical Thermodynamics. It is the
Law of the conservation of matter and life and meaning in the Light and Life
and Logos of the universe, the Lord Jesus Christ.
However, the unity of the universe has been threatened by man, who,
misusing the freedom and rationality given him in the image of God's absolute
Freedom and Rationality, has turned away from God to the lower levels of
reality. Thus instead of contemplating all things in symbolic and symbiotic
relation to the Word and Wisdom of the universe, he has considered them only in
relation to himself, the observer and user; instead of offering nature up to
God in eucharistic thanksgiving, he has dragged it down to the level of his own
self-centred desires. As a result, both he and nature have disintegrated, and not
only abstractly, in the systems of scientists and philosophers, but concretely,
in history; for there has been a progressive seepage or dissipation of reality
and meaning from the universe separating man from God, then man from woman, the
soul from the body, and all the elements of nature from their original
moorings.
In scientific terms, this seepage or disintegration or expanding chaos
is expressed in the second law of thermodynamics, the best verified law in the
whole of science. We might call it the Second Law of Analogical Thermodynamics.
In theological language it is known as original sin or, in St. Paul's words,
"the bondage of corruption", under which the whole of creation has
been groaning to the present day (Romans 8.21-22).
The thesis of the First Law, and the antithesis of the Second Law,
require a Third Law which restores or recreates the order that was in the
beginning. This Third Law began to operate at the Incarnation of Christ, when
human nature was recreated in the image and likeness of God, but with a
new energy that took it onto a higher plane, the plane of deification.
This Third Law is in fact no law at all, in the sense of a constraint upon
nature, but rather "the law of liberty" (James 2.12),
"the glorious liberty of the sons of God" (Romans 8.22), the
law of grace...
We fell through partaking of the tree of knowledge prematurely, before
partaking of the tree of life. We began to analyse and reduce and kill and
consume before we had acquired real, stable life in Christ. God did not say
that knowledge was evil, nor that Adam and Eve would not acquire a certain kind
of knowledge by partaking of the forbidden tree; but since this knowledge was
not a knowledge of life grounded in life it became a knowledge of death that brought
in death.
Science has repeated this original fall, coming to the bitter and
senseless and deadly conclusion that all life has evolved through a struggle to
the death, being constructed out of ghostly spectra of possibilities that
disappear on encountering the first dawn of knowledge. The universe, according
to science, is indeed, as Macbeth said, "a tale told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury, signifying nothing". Science can only come to life again
by coming into contact with the true Light, Christ, "in Whom are hidden
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2.3).
Science and faith can come to a single, mutually consistent
understanding of the universe. But only if science takes the absolute truths
revealed by faith as its starting point, and not the fallen mind of man.
Scientific method that does not attempt to compete with faith but is grounded
in faith will lead to the truth, the whole truth. Let us hope and pray that,
grounded in this way in absolute truth, a resurrection of science will take
place.
But in the meantime let us not be deceived by "antitheses of
science falsely so called" (I Timothy 6.20). Let us "continue
in the faith grounded and settled", taking care lest any man rob us
"through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the traditions of men,
according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ" (Colossians
1.23, 2.8). For the words of St. Basil the Great about the
"half-scientists" of his day are no less relevant in our own:
"Have not those who give themselves up to vain science the eyes of owls?
The sight of the owl, piercing during the night time, is dazzled by the
splendour of the sun. Thus the intelligence of these men, so keen to
contemplate vanities, is blind in the presence of the true Light..."[144]
January 1/14, 2005.
St. Basil the Great.
(Revised and greatly expanded from the
article, “An Orthodox Approach to Science”, in Orthodox America, vol.
XV, no. 5 (137), January, 1996, pp. 6-7, 10; and in Russian in Pravoslavnaia
Tver’ (Orthodox Tver), ¹¹ 5-6-7 (54-55-56), May-June-July, 1998, pp. 20-21)
10. ORTHODOXY,
FEMINISM AND THE NEW SCIENCE OF MAN
"There is nothing new under the sun," said the wise Solomon (Ecclesiastes
1.9). And truly, there is nothing new either in the sexual so-called revolution
of the 1960s, or in the horrific scientific experiments on the human
reproductive system of the 1990s (whether performed by humans or
"aliens"). The former was foreshadowed by the depravity of Sodom and
Gomorrah, and the latter - by the giants born from the unnatural unions of the
sons of God (perhaps fallen angels) with the daughters of men.[145]
Orthodox Christians will not have been seduced by either, knowing that their
end is the same - wholesale destruction from the face of the Lord.
However, there is something at least relatively new, and potentially
much more seductive, in the new theory of man that has been built up on the
basis of these sexual and scientific "revolutions". This new humanism
is much more radical than the humanism of the early modern period, although it
shares the same basic presuppositions. The basic tenet of humanism in all its
periods is that man is autonomous and can control his own destiny without
recourse to God, Who either does not interfere in human affairs (Deism) or does
not in fact exist (atheism).
From the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries humanism asserted
that man could control his own destiny, and ultimately human nature itself, by
controlling his environment. The genetic inheritance of man was assumed
to be relatively immutable; but that did not matter, because education and
environmental manipulation were thought to be capable of producing all the
changes necessary to make man as an individual, and society as a whole, "without
spot or wrinkle". The most characteristic result of this old-style
humanism in the theoretical field was the American B.F. Skinner's behaviourist
psychology, which reduced most of human life to operant conditioning; and in
the practical sphere - the Soviet Gulag and Homo Sovieticus.
This first, what we might call masculine phase of humanism ended in 1953
with the death of Stalin and the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick. This
discovery meant that now not only the environment,
but also the genes of man could be in
principle manipulated and controlled. However, neither science nor the moral
climate of the humanist world was yet prepared to see the path to total control which, according to the
humanist model of man, this discovery opened up. For if man is the interaction
of his genes and his environment, with no "intervening variables"
such as human freewill or Divine grace, then the possibility of manipulating both genes and environment is equivalent to the possibility of a control of
man and society far more totalitarian
in principle even than the Soviet experiment that was just beginning to run out
of steam.
The event which began to change the moral climate in the desired
direction was the discovery of the female contraceptive pill and the subsequent
revolution in the role of women in society, which is why we might call this the
feminine phase of humanism. If the
driving force of the earlier, masculine phase had been the will to power, then the driving force of this later, more
radical, feminine phase has been the lust
for pleasure. For the discovery of the pill opened up a new prospect - that
of maximising sexual pleasure while minimising any unpleasant consequences in
the shape of pregnancies.
But democracy demanded that the fruits of this revolution should not be
enjoyed only by heterosexuals, and so homosexuals, too, won that recognition of
their activities as natural and moral which all monotheist, and even many pagan
societies have always refused them.
The feminization of western civilization continued apace with the rise
of feminism, and the appearance of women priests. Perhaps this was the
fulfilment of the vision of St. John of Kronstadt, which though considered by
some to be inauthentic, is nevertheless full of profoundly prophetic images:
"O Lord, how awful! Just then there jumped onto the altar some sort of
abominable, vile, disgusting black woman, all in red with a star on her
forehead. She spun round on the altar, then cried out in a terrible voice like
a night owl through the whole cathedral: 'Freedom!' and stood up. And the
people, as if out of their minds, began to run round the altar, rejoicing and
clapping and shouting and whistling."[146]
With the last vestiges of tradition in Christian thought and worship
swept aside, the stage was set for a really new, really radical stage in the
revolution: the abolition of sexuality.
The Soviets, to the applause of western liberals, had tried, and to a large
extent succeeded, in abolishing religion, the nation, the law and the family.
But sexuality remained as one of the last bastions of normal human life, and
therefore a potential nest of counter-revolution, as was recognized by Zamyatin
in his novel We and by Orwell in 1984.
And so it has been left to the capitalism of the 1990s to carry through
this, one of the last steps of the revolution. Its executors, appropriately
enough, have been the scientists, the high priests of humanism. What they
appear to be saying is that: (i) sexuality, and sexual orientation, is largely in
the genes; therefore (ii) sexuality, and sexual orientation, can be predicted
and, if necessary, changed before birth through genetic therapy; (iii) men can
become women, and women can become men; (iv) hybrid species can be created, and
(v) sexuality is unnecessary from a
reproductive point of view, because human beings can be cloned from a single
adult cell.
Of course, the latter statement has not yet been experimentally proved
(and, as I shall argue, it could never in fact be proved). Nor is there any
lack of voices warning against the dangers of such an experiment. But in spite
of all these warnings there seems to be an implicit acceptance, not only that
the cloning of human beings is possible, but that it must come sometime.
If (and it is a very big "if",
as we shall see) the cloning of human beings were possible, then man would
potentially be master of his destiny in a quite new sense. Although the
original building blocks of human nature, the cell and its components, would
still come to him ready-made (creation ex nihilo remains the only feat
which man still feels compelled to concede to God alone), he would then be able
to manipulate the building blocks in such a way as to make human beings to
order, having whatever physical or psychological characteristics he chose.
Frankenstein already seems crude compared to what scientists can theoretically
do comparatively soon.
It has often been observed that science, far from being the domain of
the purely disinterested observation of nature, is often closely connected with
moral or religious impulses - more often than not, immoral and irreligious
ones. Thus the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century was closely
linked to a falling away of faith in Divine Revelation and a corresponding
increase of faith in man's ability to discover the truth by means of his own
intellect, unaided by the Divine Logos. The Darwinian revolution of the
nineteenth century was likewise closely linked to the desire to prove the
autonomy of man and his ineluctable progress to ever great moral and spiritual
heights - again, by his own (or rather, Blind Chance's) efforts alone. Now the
genetic revolution of the late twentieth century has raised man's autonomy to
godlike status; for having reduced all life to "the selfish gene" it
has claimed mastery of the gene itself - all for the sake of the lowest and
most selfish of aims. In this way has the native heresy of the British Isles,
Pelagianism, which denies original sin and over-emphasizes the power of man's
unaided freewill, come to find its most developed and dangerous expression in
the worship of science in the Anglo-Saxon countries, and from there -
throughout the world.
Each stage of the scientific-humanist revolution has seemed to justify
one part of man's fallen nature as being in fact unfallen. The Newtonian
physics of the seventeenth century established the credentials of science as
such, and therefore of the power of the
mind, which since Thomas Aquinas had been declared to be unfallen. The
Darwinian biology of the nineteenth century justified man's aggression at the individual level and cut-throat competition at the level of
corporations and nations; for did not the law of the survival of the fittest
demonstrate that only the aggressive and merciless survive, and that the meek
not only do not inherit the earth but are exterminated from it? Finally, the
Watsonian genetics of the twentieth century has justified even the basest of
man's desires by demonstrating to him
that he can't help it, there's nothing to be ashamed of, because it's all in
our genes anyway. And if for some hedonistic reason (it couldn't be a moral reason, for how can one moralize
about Mother Nature?) he doesn't like the inherited pattern of his own
desiring, he can modify it by a mixture of surgery and gene and hormone
therapy.
The immediate reaction of Orthodox Christians to this is, of course, one
of horror that human beings should seek to play God and seriously contemplate
such experiments in the re-creation of human nature as make Hitler's eugenics
look like child's play by comparison. An intellectual response might proceed
from two cardinal tenets of Orthodox anthropology: (1) the immortality and
relative immateriality of the soul; and (2) the immorality of any attempt to change
the nature of sexuality insofar as the latter symbolizes immutable and eternal
relationships in the Divine order of things.
Let us briefly consider each of these. (1) Whereas the body was made
from the earth, the soul was made from God's inbreathing and therefore does not
perish with the body. As Solomon says: "The dust returneth to the earth,
as it was, and the soul returneth to God Who gave it" (Ecclesiastes
12.7). The soul thus freed from the body is fully conscious. This is shown by
the Prophet Samuel's speaking to King Saul from beyond the grave (I Kings
28.11-19). For "even after he had died he prophesied and revealed to the
king his death" (Sirach 46.20).
This being so, the cloning of a human being, assuming it were possible,
would be a cloning only of his physical nature, his body, and not of his soul.
Souls cannot be cloned, for they are not material. Even if the clone spoke and
acted just like a human being, it or he would be at best a different human
being, with a different soul, just as twins born from the same fertilized egg
are nevertheless two different human beings with two different souls. At worst
it might not be a human being at all, but a demon inhabiting a human body that
had no human soul. And if this seems fantastic, we may recall the opinion of
the well-known Lutheran researcher into the occult, Dr. Kurt Koch, who in the
1970s claimed that so-called "resurrections from the dead" in
Indonesia were in fact cases of demons entering into corpses and "resurrecting"
them.
For true resurrection from the dead, and
therefore also true cloning, can be accomplished only by God, because while men
have a certain power over flesh alone, God is the Lord both of spirits and of
flesh, and only He can either send a spirit into a newly-formed body or reunite
it with a dead one.
This point is well illustrated in one of the homilies of St. Ephraim the
Syrian on the last days, in which the one thing which the Antichrist is shown
to be incapable of doing is raising the dead: "And when 'the son of
perdition' has drawn to his purpose the whole world, Enoch and Elias shall be
sent that they may confute the evil one by a question filled with mildness.
Coming to him, these holy men, that they may expose 'the son of perdition'
before the multitudes round about him, will say: 'If you are God, show us what
we now ask of you. In what place do the men of old, Enoch and Elias, lie
hidden?' Then the evil one will at once answer the holy men: 'If I wish to seek
for them in heaven, in the depths of the sea, every abode lies open to me.
There is no other God but me; and I can do all things in heaven and on earth.'
They shall answer the son of perdition: 'If you are God, call the dead, and
they will rise up. For it is written in the books of the Prophets, and also by
the Apostles, that Christ, when He shall appear, will raise the dead from their
tombs. If you do not show us this, we shall conclude that He Who was crucified
is greater than you; for He raised the dead, and was Himself raised to heaven in
great glory.' In that moment the most abominable evil one, angered against the
saints, seizing the sword, will sever the heads of the just men."[147]
We may rest assured, therefore, that no man, not even the Antichrist,
will ever be able to create a new human being possessed of both soul and body
from one cell of another human being - although he may well be able to create
what seems to be a true clone; for in
those days "by great signs and wonders he will lead astray, if it were
possible, even the elect" (Matt. 24.24).
(2) It is striking that so many of the "advances" in the
modern science of man have been made in connection with experiments on
sexuality. We have seen one reason for this - the sudden general slackening of
morals in the western world in the 1960s, which gave science the task of
pandering to the newly liberated desires of the people. But there is another
and profounder reason connected with the fact that, from an early age,
sexuality is felt to be at the deepest, most intimate core of the child's
personality.
Thus the greatest, most wounding insult you can give to a young boy is
to say that he is a "sissy" or like a girl. A boy would rather be
dead than be seen wearing pink or having a close friendship with a girl. And
similarly with girls. And although psychologists and educators have had some
success in bringing dating down to an unnatually early age, they have failed
completely to make boys play with dolls or make girls like typically boyish
pursuits. For boys will be boys, and girls - girls.
Why should this be? After all, is it not the case that in Christ there
is "neither male nor female" (Gal. 3.28), which would seem to
imply that sexual differentiation is not a fundamental, eternal category? And
did the Lord not say that there would be no marrying or giving in marriage in
heaven, but that the saved would be like the sexless angels?
On the other hand, is it conceivable that Christ should ever be anything
other than male in His humanity? Or the Mother of God female? And is not the
very idea of a change of sex repugnant to us, which implies that there is
something deeper to sexuality than meets the eye, something more than merely a
set of biological differences.
Let us then consider the question: what is the significance of sexual
differentiation?
Genetics tells us that the essential difference between men and women
consists in the possession by men of one X and one Y chromosome, whereas women
possess two X chromosomes. This might at first suggest that men have something
"extra" which women do not have. However, neither biology nor
theology has ever pinpointed what that something "extra" might be.
Nor is it at all clear that the interaction of one X and one Y chromosome makes
for a superior creature to the product
of the interaction of two X chromosomes. In any case, genetics, like all the
sciences, studies nature after the
Fall, and cannot tell us anything directly about nature before the Fall, still
less what the deeper purpose of sexual differences might be in Divine
Providence.
Nevertheless, it can provide some intriguing pointers; and the
biological evidence suggests that sexual differences are deep in some respects
and superficial in others. Thus chromosomal masculinity or femininity appears
to be present at birth and relatively immutable. On the other hand, many sexual
differences, including the external genitalia, can be changed and even reversed
from one gender to the other by hormone therapy and surgery - but without
changing the patient's feeling of who, sexually speaking, he or she really is.[148]
Could this contrast between "deep" and "superficial"
sexual differences reflect a contrast between sexual differences before the
Fall and sexual differences after the Fall?
Before the Fall there was Adam and Eve, male and female; and this
difference was "deep" in the sense that it existed from the beginning
and will continue to exist, presumably, into eternity. But after the Fall
further, more "superficial" differences were added to enable mankind
to reproduce in a fallen world. In the same way, the eye was refashioned after
the Fall, according to St. John Chrysostom, to enable it to weep.
This means that sexuality was there from the beginning, and that the
essence of the relationship between the sexes is an essential part of human
nature, but that human reproductive anatomy and physiology as we them know
today - including the painfulness of childbirth itself - were superimposed upon
the unfallen image. This idea of the "superimposition" of sexual
differences upon the original image was developed by, among others, St. Gregory
of Nyssa and St. Maximus the Confessor. It may also be that some of the
particularities of women that Holy Scripture refers to - their domination by
men (Gen. 3.16) and their being "the weaker vessel" in terms
of emotional control (I Peter 3.7) - belong to these more superficial
characteristics that were added only after the Fall and can therefore be
overcome in Christ.
This brings us to the complaints of the feminists. First, there is the
complaint that women are not treated as equal to men. Now Holy Scripture and
Tradition agrees with the feminists that women are essentially equal to men,
being made, like them, in the image of God, and to that extent should be treated
equally. However, if "equal treatment" means "same treatment", then Orthodoxy
disagrees. For men and women have always been different, both before and after
the Fall, and these differences entail that women should have a different place
in society from men.
The "deep", antelapsarian differences between men and women
cannot be changed, and the attempt to change them is disastrous, both for men
and for women. The "superficial", postlapsarian differences between
men and women can be changed, not in the sense that sex-change operations are
permissible (the Church forbids self-mutilation), but in the sense that the
fallen character of relationships between men and women can be overcome in
Christ. Marriage in Christ is one of the ways in which sexuality is stripped of
its superficiality, going from the Fall to Paradise: the other is monasticism,
in which a man becomes a eunuch, spiritually speaking, for the Kingdom of
heaven's sake (Matt. 19.12).
Let us try and define this "deeper", antelapsarian nature of
sexuality.
St. Paul gives us the clue: "I want you to understand," he
writes, "that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her
husband, and the head of Christ is God... A man ought not to cover his head,
since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man.
For man was not made from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created
for woman, but woman for man. That is why a woman ought to have a veil on her
head" (I Cor. 11.3.7-10).
In other words, the relationship between man and woman in some respect
reflects and symbolizes the relationship between God the Father and God the
Son, on the one hand, and God the Son and mankind, on the other. Each of these
is a hierarchical relationship, which
is compared to that between the head and the body. Thus while God the Father is
equal to God the Son in essence, which is why He says: "The Father and I
are one" (John 10.30), the Son nevertheless obeys the Father, the
Origin of the Godhead, in all things, which is why He says: "My Father is
greater than all" (John 10.29). In the same way, man and woman are
equal in essence, but the woman must "be subject to her husband in all
things" (Eph. 5.24). By contrast, the relationship between God the
Son and mankind would at first sight appear to be different from these insofar
as the Divinity is not equal in
essence to humanity. However, the Incarnation of the Son and the Descent of the
Holy Spirit has effected an "interchange of qualities", whereby God
the Son has assumed humanity, and humanity has become "a partaker of the
Divine nature" (II Peter 1.4) - as the Fathers put it, "God
became man so that men should become gods". Therefore the originally
unequal relationship between God and man has been in a certain sense levelled
by its transformation into the new relationship between Christ and the Church,
which can now be described, similarly, in terms of the relationship between
head and body.
Now we can see that the very "primitive", very human
relationship between head and body, or between male and female, has within
itself the capacity to mirror and illumine for us, not only the supremely
important, and more-than-merely-human, relationship between Christ and the
Church, but also - albeit faintly, "as through a glass darkly" - the
more-than-Divine, intra-Trinitarian relationship between the Father and the
Son. Thus the male-female relationship, and even the basic structure of the
human body, is an icon, a material likeness, of the most spiritual and ineffable
mysteries of the universe. For just as the head (the man) is lifted above the
body (the woman) and rules her, but is completely devoted to caring for her, so
does Christ love the Church, His Body, and give His life for her - all in
obedience to His Head, the Father,
Who "so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believeth
on Him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3.16). That
is why the relationship between man and woman is not accidental or superficial,
still less fallen, but holy - and the entrance into the Holy of Holies. And
that is why, according to the holy canons, the sacrament of marriage can only
be celebrated on a Sunday, the eighth day, which symbolizes eternity; for even
if there will be no marrying or giving in marriage in eternity, marriage will
forever symbolize that eternal relationship of love between Christ and the
Church which underpins the whole of reality, both temporal and eternal.
From this perspective we can see that the psychological differences between
man and woman correspond precisely to the differences in spiritual function
between Christ and the Church, and that these differences were implanted in
human nature from the beginning precisely in order to mirror the spiritual
relationships. The man is more intellectual, because he, like Christ, must lead
and take the initiative; the woman is more emotional, because she, like the
Church, must respond to him in love. The man is more aggressive, because he,
like Christ, must wage war on the devil; the woman is more sensitive and
intuitive, because she, like the Church, must be sensitive to the will of her
husband.
Of course, these natural, unfallen differences have been corrupted by
the Fall: men tend to be crude and boastful, women - weak-willed and easily led
by all kinds of influences. If the man must still lead the woman in the Fall,
this is not because he is less fallen than her, or less in need of being led by
his Head, but because obedience to
the hierarchical principle at all levels is the only way out of the Fall. For
only if the woman obeys the man, and the man obeys Christ, as Christ obeyed the
Father, can grace work to heal the fallen nature of mankind. This is not to say
that the woman must obey the man in any circumstances; for if he disobeys
Christ, and demands that she follow him in his disobedience, she must disobey
him out of obedience to Christ. In this case the hierarchical principle has
been violated at one level (the level of the man), but remains intact at
another (the level of the woman).
It should be obvious - but needs saying, in view of the blasphemous
things that are being said by today's modernist theologians - that the fact
that the relationship between man and woman mirrors the relationships between
Christ and the Church in no way implies that God is subject to sexual passion,
or that He is masculine (or feminine) in essence. We are not projecting human
sexuality onto God. The point is rather the reverse: that sexuality was created
by God in order that man should understand, even in the depths of his physical
being, the fundamental pattern and dynamic that holds the universe together in
God. This pattern is unity-in-hierarchy, and the dynamic is the attraction of
complementaries on one level of hierarchy into unity on a higher level. The
initiative in the attraction of complementaries comes from the male pole. The
male seeks out the female, and the female responds to the male. Having united
they become "a new creature" on a higher plane of existence, that of
Christ, Who in relation to the newly formed dyad is Himself the male partner
and the initiator of the whole process on the lower plane, so that the human
monads become a dyad only in the third, Divine Monad. That is why Christ, on
becoming man, had to become male. For,
as the fairy-tales of all lands testify, it is the man who saves, the woman who
is saved; it is the man whose masculine strength and courage destroys the
destroyer, it is the woman whose extraordinary beauty and grace inspires him to
such feats. So when God came to save mankind from the power of the devil, he
necessarily came as a man to save His woman...
Of course, when we speak of "necessity" here, we are not
speaking of physical necessity; nor are we placing any limitations on God, for
Whom all things are possible. We are simply responding to the clues God has
given us in the universe to show why it had to be so; we are recognising that
there is a spiritual necessity in
what actually took place. We are recognising that a drama reflects the mind of
a dramatist, and that the Divine Actor of the Drama of our salvation would
never allow Himself to give a performance in life which did not exactly match
the conception of the Divine Dramatist, which did not perfectly embody the
canons of Divine Beauty.
Now there is another sacrament that, like marriage, almost precisely
mirrors the relationship between Christ and the Church - that of priesthood.
The priest (and especially the bishop) is the head of his flock as Christ is
the Head of the Church, and the priest must lay down his life for his flock as
Christ laid down His life for the Church. There is even a sense in which the
priest may be said to be the husband of his flock, which may be the reason why
there is a canon (unfortunately, very often violated today) forbidding bishops
to move from one diocese to another.
Just as Christ had to be born a male, so the icon of Christ, the bishop,
and his representative, the priest, must be a male. For "since the
beginning of time," as St. Epiphanius of Cyprus says, "a woman has
never served God as a priest".[149] If the
priest is a woman, the iconic relationship between Christ the Saviour and Great
High Priest and the priesthood is destroyed.
As Bishop Kallistos (Ware) writes: "The priest is an icon of
Christ; and since the incarnate Christ became not only man but a male - since,
furthermore, in the order of nature the roles of male and female are not
interchangeable - it is necessary that a priest should be male. Those Western
Christians who do not in fact regard the priest as an icon of Christ are of
course free to ordain women as ministers; they are not, however, creating women
priests but dispensing with priesthood altogether...
"It is one of the chief glories of human nature that men and women,
although equal, are not interchangeable. Together they exercise a common
ministry which neither could exercise alone; for within that shared ministry
each has a particular role. There exists between them a certain order or
hierarchy, with man as the 'head' and woman as the partner or 'helper' (Gen.
2.18); yet this differentiation does not imply any fundamental inequality
between them. Within the Trinity, God the Father is the source and 'head' of
Christ (I Cor. 11.3), and yet the three Persons are essentially equal;
and the same is true of the relationship of man and woman. The Greek Fathers,
although often negative in their opinion of the female sex, were on the whole
absolutely clear about the basic human equality of man and woman. Both alike
are created in God's image; the subordination of woman to man and her
exploitation reflect not the order of nature created by God, but the
contra-natural conditions resulting from original sin. Equal yet different
according to the order of nature, man and woman complete each other through
their free co-operation; and this complementarity is to be respected on every
level - when at home in the circle of the family, when out at work, and not
least in the life of the Church, which blesses and transforms the natural order
but does not obliterate it...
"Men and women are not interchangeable, like counters, or identical
machines. The difference between them… extends far more deeply than the
physical act of procreation. The sexuality of human beings is not an accident,
but affects them in their very identity and in their deepest mystery. Unlike
the differentiation between Jew and Greek or between slave and free - which
reflects man's fallen state and are due to social convention, not to nature -
the differentiation between male and female is an aspect of humanity's natural
state before the Fall. The life of grace in the Church is not bound by social
convention or the conditions produced by the Fall; but it does conform to the
order of nature, in the sense of the unfallen nature as created by God. Thus
the distinction between male and female is not abolished in the Church."[150]
The perverseness of female "priesthood" is somewhat similar to
the perverseness of homosexual "marriage". In both cases, the
"innate preaching" of Christ's Incarnation that is implanted in our
sexual nature, instead of being reinforced and deepened by the sacraments of
the Church, is contradicted and in effect destroyed by a blasphemous parody of
them.
That is why such things are felt to be unnatural by men and condemned as
abominations by God. And if scientific humanism seeks to redefine what is
natural, let us recall that such humanism, according to Fr. Seraphim Rose, is subhumanism. It is "a rebellion
against the true nature of man and the world, a flight from God the center of
man's existence, clothed in the language of the opposite of all these."[151]
(Published in Orthodox America, vol.
XVI, ¹¹ 7-8
(147-148), March-June, 1997, pp. 13-15).
11. ABORTION,
PERSONHOOD AND THE ORIGIN OF THE SOUL
The origin of the soul has never been a
subject of major controversy in Orthodoxy as it has been in Catholicism. Thus
the argument between creationists and traducianists, which was the subject of
several papal bulls, has not received a final resolution in Orthodox dogmatics.
The creationist view is that each individual soul is separately created by God;
while the traducianist view, in the words of Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky,
is that it “is created from the souls of a man’s parents and only in this
general sense constitutes a new creation of God”.[152]
But "how the soul of each individual man originates is not fully revealed
in the word of God; it is 'a mystery known to God alone' (St. Cyril of
Alexandria)[153],
and the Church does not give us a strictly defined teaching on this subject.
She decisively rejected only Origen's view, which had been inherited from the
philosophy of Plato, concerning the pre-existence of souls, according to which
souls come to earth from a higher world. This teaching of Origen and the
Origenists was condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council."[154]
However, the dramatic changes that modern
science has created in man's image of himself have elicited attempts to define
the Church's teaching on the soul more precisely. Darwinism, in particular, has
elicited some development in the thinking of Orthodox theologians. Thus when
the Russian Bishop Theophan the Recluse (+1894) was suspected of coming close
to Darwinism because he said that the soul of man is like the soul of the animal,
he replied: "We have in us the body, then the soul, whose origin is in
natural generation, and finally the spirit, which is breathed in by God. It is
said that man is a rational animal. To be an animal means not only to have
flesh, but also the whole animal life. Only man possesses in himself the nouV, that is, the spirit. So man is a
spiritualized animal.”[155]
Other, especially Greek theologians,
reacted still more strongly against Darwinism, pointing out that Darwinism is
incompatible with the Church's teaching on the purposiveness of creation and
the immortality of the soul (first and fifth anathemas of the Order of the
Week of Orthodoxy). Thus in the works of St. Nectarios of Aegina (+1920),
the most recent canonized saint of the Greek Orthodox Church, we find twenty
arguments for the immortality and rationality of the soul, and a very robust
rejection of Darwinism: "The followers of pithecogeny [the derivation of
man from the apes] are ignorant of man and of his lofty destiny, because they
have denied him his soul and Divine revelation. They have rejected the Spirit,
and the Spirit has abandoned them. They withdrew from God, and God withdrew
from them; for, thinking that they were wise, they became fools... If they had
acted with knowledge, they would not have lowered themselves so much, nor would
they have taken pride in tracing the origin of the human race to the most
shameless of animals. Rightly did the Prophet say of them: 'Man, being in
honour, did not understand; he is compared to the mindless cattle, and is
become like unto them' (Psalm 48.21 (LXX))."[156]
In the twentieth century it is especially
the debate over abortion that has elicited further thinking on this subject.
The abortionists try to justify the murder of human foetuses by arguing that
the foetus is not fully a person at the moment of conception or for some time
thereafter. In response to this, Orthodox apologists have shown, on the basis
of the Holy Scriptures, that life and “personhood” begin at conception.
Thus Presbytera Valerie Brockman writes:
“Human life, personhood, development begin at conception and continue until
death. There are no magic humanizing events, such as quickening or passage
through the birth canal. There are no trimester milestones, no criteria for
independence.”[157]
Now a compromise between the pro- and
anti-abortion positions is sometimes sought in the gradualist argument that
there is no definite time when the foetus has personhood and when it does not,
but personhood develops gradually, so that in early stages of pregnancy the
foetus is less personal and in later stages more personal. This viewpoint is
sometimes expressed by saying that foetuses are “potential persons”. Thus
“according to this viewpoint,” writes Gareth D. Jones, “there is no point in
development, no matter how early on, when the embryo or foetus does not display
some elements of personhood – no matter how rudimentary. The potential is
there, and it is because of this that both the embryo and the foetus have a
claim to life and respect. This claim, however, becomes stronger as foetal
development proceeds, so that by some time during the third trimester the claim
is so strong that the consequences of killing a foetus are the same as those of
killing an actual person – whether child or adult.”[158]
However, all gradualist arguments run up
against the powerful moral argument concerning the injustice of
abortion, which is the same regardless when the abortion takes place. Thus in
his Second Canon, St. Basil the Great states that a woman who deliberately
aborts her child is a murderess, “for here there is involved the question of
providing justice for the infant”. For insofar as the foetus would have
developed into a full-grown man in normal circumstances, he must be considered
to have been deprived of life whether the abortion took place early or late in
pregnancy.
To this the gradualist may reply: “Even
though the deprivation is the same in the two cases, the ‘patient’ is not the
same. For in the case of early abortion, the foetus is, say, a ‘half-person’,
whereas in the other it is, say, a ‘quarter-person’. So the injustice is not
the same, just as it is not the same injustice to deprive a dog of life as it
is to deprive a man.”
In order to counter this argument, we have
to demonstrate that personhood cannot be quantified or divided. In other
words, we have to show that the whole concept of a young foetus being a lower
form of life than an older foetus is invalid. There is no such thing, therefore,
as a ‘half-person’ or ‘quarter-person’.
*
One approach to this problem is to
identify personhood with the image of God in man, as is done by the Russian
Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky.
Now the image of God has been identified
with various faculties of man’s spiritual nature, such as mind, reason and free
will. However, St. Gregory of Nyssa asserts that “the image is not in
part of our nature, nor is the grace in any one of the things found in that
nature”.[159] This idea has been taken up in
our time by Lossky and others, who assert that the
image of God is not to be identified exclusively with any single faculty or
ability. Still less, a fortiori, can it be identified with properties or
faculties that can be physically observed and measured by doctors or
scientists.
Thus Lossky writes: “The
image cannot be objectified, ‘naturalized’ we might say, by being attributed to
some part or other of the human being. To be in the image of God, the Fathers
affirm, in the last analysis is to be a personal being, that is to say, a free,
responsible being. Why, one might ask, did God make man free and responsible?
Precisely because He wanted to call him to a supreme vocation: deification;
that is to say, to become by grace, in a movement as boundless as God, that
which God is by nature. And this call demands a free response; God wishes that
this movement be a movement of love…
“A personal being is capable of loving
someone more than his own nature, more than his own life. The person, that is
to say, the image of God in man, is then man’s freedom with regard to his
nature, ‘the fact of being freed from necessity and not being subject to the
dominion of nature, but able to determine oneself freely’ (St. Gregory of
Nyssa). Man acts most often under natural impulses. He is conditioned by his
temperament, his character, his heredity, cosmic or psycho-social conditioning;
and his dignity consists in being able to liberate himself from his nature, not
by consuming it or abandoning it to itself.”[160]
But, the gradualist may object: “It is
precisely the foetus that least shows this ability to liberate oneself
from one’s nature; it is completely dominated by natural impulses.”
However, in Jeremiah we read: “The
word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘Before I formed thee in the belly I knew
thee, and before thou camest forth from the womb I sanctified thee. I appointed
thee to be a prophet to the nations” (1.4-5). On which Brockman comments:
“Jeremiah is treated by God as a personal being and was sanctified before
birth. Surely this indicates that the sanctity of human life and personhood
extend back to the time in the womb.”[161]
Again, in Luke we read the words of
St. Elizabeth, the mother of St. John the Baptist, when the Virgin Mary visited
her: “As soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped
in my womb for joy” (1.44). St. John, even as a foetus, felt joy, an emotion
very close to love, at the presence of the incarnate God. The fact that we
cannot imagine the mental and spiritual processes of a foetus, still less of
fetuses in relation to each other, should not prevent us, as Christians, from
accepting the evidence of Holy Scripture. Let us not forget, moreover, that
Christ Himself was a Divine Person from before eternity, and did not cease to be
that Person when He Himself became a foetus in the Virgin’s womb. Thus the
encounter between the Lord and St. John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s house was a
fully personal meeting between two “whole persons”, in spite of the fact that
neither had yet been born…
We may compare a foetus to a comatose or
sleeping person, to whom we do not refuse the status of personhood just because
he is not exhibiting the signs of sentient and/or conscious life at that
moment. Thus a person who is asleep or in a coma is still a person, and to kill
a person in such a state is still considered murder. Even in those cases when
permission is given to kill a person who is in an irreversible coma by turning
off his life-support machine, the usual justification given is not that the
patient is no longer a person and can therefore be disposed of as being
sub-human, but that he cannot now “enjoy” his personhood.
Of course, an adult who becomes comatose
is different from a foetus in that he has already shown signs of a fully personal
life over a long period. However, from the materialist point of view, leaving
aside the differences in levels of brain and autonomic nervous system activity
between a foetus and a comatose adult, it is difficult to see how a
fundamental, qualitative distinction between the two can be made. Both
would appear – again, from a materialist point of view - to be lacking certain
fundamental features of personhood, such as consciousness and the ability to
communicate with other persons.
And if the materialist says that the
foetus is only a “potential person”, whereas the comatose adult is an “actual
person” who has temporarily lost, or is failing to display, some elements of
his nature, then we may justifiably challenge him to give an operational definition
of this distinction. How can something be “actual” when it is not being
actualized? Cannot we say that a foetus, too, is an “actual person” who is
temporarily failing to display certain elements of his nature?
*
Another approach to the problem is from the direction of the soul/body
distinction. Now most pro-abortionists explicitly or
implicitly deny the existence of the soul except in the
Aristotlean-Aquinean-evolutionist sense of an “emergent function” of the body.
This allows them to look on the unborn as on people whose “souls” have not
fully emerged, and so can be treated as if they were just bodies, matter which
has not reached its full degree of development or evolution. The Orthodox,
however, while not going to the opposite, Platonist-Origenist extreme of
identifying the person exclusively with the soul, nevertheless assert that man
is, in St. Maximus’ words, a “composite” being made up of two separate and
distinct natures from the beginning.
Thus St.
Basil the Great writes: “I recognize two men, one of which is invisible and one
which is hidden within the same – the inner, invisible man. We have therefore
an inner man, and we are of dual make-up. Indeed, it is true to say that we
exist inwardly. The self is the inner man. The outer parts are not the self,
but belongings of it. For the self not the hand, but rather the rational
faculty of the soul, while the hand is a part of man. Thus while the body is an
instrument of man, an instrument of the soul, man, strictly speaking, is chiefly
the soul.”[162]
Again, St.
John of Damascus writes: “Every man is a combination of soul and body… The soul
is a living substance, simple and without body, invisible to the bodily eyes by
virtue of its peculiar nature, immortal, rational, spiritual, without form,
making use of an organized body, and being the source of its powers of life and
growth and sensation and generation… The soul is independent, with a will and
energy of its own.”[163]
Since the
soul is distinct from the body, the Orthodox have no difficulty conceiving of
it as existent, active and conscious even while the body is an undeveloped
foetus or showing few signs of life; for, as Solomon says, “I sleep, but my
heart waketh” (Song of Solomon 5.2). Moreover, since the soul is not a
function of the body, but the cause of its activity, the death or comatose
state of the body is no reason for believing that the soul, too, is comatose or
dead. For “the dust shall return to the earth as it was, but the spirit to God
Who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12.7).
As for the
question when the soul is joined to the body, this is answered by St.
Maximus the Confessor in the context of a discussion of Origenism as follows:
“Neither [soul nor body] exists in separation from the other before their
joining together which is destined to create one form. They are, in effect,
simultaneously created and joined together, as is the realization of the form
created by their joining together.”[164]
“For if,” he writes in another place, “the body and the soul are parts of man,
and if the parts necessarily refer to something (for it is the whole which has
the full significance), and if the things which are said to ‘refer’ are
everywhere perfectly simultaneous, in conformity with their genesis – for the
parts by their reunion make up the whole form, and the only thing that
separates them is the thought which seeks to discern the essence of each being,
- then it is impossible that the soul and the body, insofar as they are parts
of man, should exist chronologically one before the other or one after the
other, for then the logos (of man), in relation to which each of them
exists, would be destroyed.”[165]
Another
argument put forward by St. Maximus is that if nothing prevented the soul and
body from changing partners, one would be force to admit the possibility of metempsychosis,
or reincarnation. However, the fact of their creation simultaneously and for
each other, thereby forming a single logos, rules out the possibility;
for created beings cannot violate their logoi – that is, their essential
nature in the creative plan of God. Even the separation of the soul from the
body at death, and the dissolution of the body into its constituent elements,
does not destroy this logical unity; for the soul is always the soul “of
such-and-such a man”, and the body is always the body “of such-and-such a man”.[166]
St. John of
Damascus sums up the matter: “Body and soul were formed at the same time, not
first the one and then the other, as Origen so senselessly supposes.”[167]
The above conclusion is not affected by
the view one may take on the traducianist versus creationist controversy.
Whether the soul of an individual man comes from the souls of his parents (the
traducianist view), or is created by God independently of his parents (the creationist
view), it remains true that it comes into existence as a new, independent soul
at the same time as his body, that is, at conception. And since the new soul is
already in existence at the time of conception, abortion is the killing of a
complete human being made up of both soul and body, and therefore must be
called murder.
12. A REPLY TO DAVID BERCOT ON THE MOTHER OF GOD
David Bercot is a continuing Anglican
who has produced a number of cassettes on spiritual themes. In several of
these, he criticizes the position of the Orthodox Church from the point of view
of what he considers the classical Anglican via media – that is, a
position midway between Protestantism, on the one hand, and Orthodoxy and
Catholicism, on the other. Bercot claims that he was very sympathetic to
Orthodoxy, but was put off by the attitude of the Orthodox to the Mother of
God, which he considers to be clearly contrary to the teaching of the
Pre-Nicene Church. The following is a reply to Bercot in defense of the Orthodox
teaching.
I
come now to Bercot’s third tape, on Mary, the Mother of God. I find this the
most interesting of Bercot’s tapes so far, not because it is correct – I think
it contains the same mixture of true and demonstrably false statements as in
the earlier tapes – but because it points to a certain mystery of Divine
Providence which has been little inquired into. This is the mystery of why the
veneration of the Mother of God, though present in the Early Church, acquired,
relatively suddenly, such a great impetus and development in the fifth century.
For I accept that there is little written
evidence for the veneration of Mary in the Early Church. I do not accept that
there is absolutely no evidence, as Bercot claims, even in the writings
of the early Fathers. For example, St. Gregory the Wonderworker, a pupil of
Origen and the apostle of Cappadocia, composed hymns in praise of the Holy
Virgin which are just as “extravagant” as those of later Byzantine Fathers.
Moreover, Bercot completely ignores the evidence from unwritten Tradition – the
iconography of the early Church (in the Roman catacombs, for example), and
liturgical tradition – which does, in a quiet way, point to the great honour in
which Mary was held by the early Christians. And I firmly reject Bercot’s
rejection of the oral traditions concerning Mary’s earthly life and assumption
to heaven, which, while committed to writing only in the fifth century, witness
to a strong oral tradition in the Church of Jerusalem since the first century. This points to a characteristically
Protestant flaw in all of Bercot’s reasoning: his reliance only on written
evidence – the Holy Scriptures, or the writings of the Pre-Nicene Fathers,
while completely ignoring all the evidence from art and oral tradition.
Having said that, I accept that the
veneration of Mary takes a huge leap – not in dogmatic development, but in
sheer volume and extravagance of expression – in the fifth century. Why? Bercot
offers a typically modernist, psychologising explanation: the post-Nicene
Christians felt a need for a more feminine, less wrathful God, so they elevated
Mary to divine status on the analogy of the Great Earth Mother. I find this
explanation absurd. Does he mean to say that the whole Church, from the
Celts of Britain to the Copts of Egypt, suddenly and without external pressure,
abandoned its belief in the Trinitarian God and went back to paganism?! Let us
remember that, to my knowledge, nobody throughout the whole Christian
world objected to the post-Nicene veneration of Mary except a few western
heretics who denied the virginity of Mary and were refuted in Blessed Jerome’s
two books against Jovinian already in the fourth century. It follows that if
Bercot is right, the Saviour’s promise that the Church would prevail against
the gates of hell even to the end of the world is wrong, and the whole Church
fell away from the truth in the fifth century, only to be recreated by a few
continuing Anglicans 1500 years later!
I offer another explanation. It is only a
hypothesis, and I may well be wrong. But I think it fits the fact much better
than Bercot’s explanation, while removing the necessity of concluding that the
whole Church apostasised in the fifth century – a conclusion that Bercot does
not draw explicitly, but which must be drawn if his argument is correct.
The first point that needs to be made is
that the growth in the public veneration of Mary coincided with the debates
over the term “Theotokos” (Birth-Giver of God) at the Third Ecumenical Council
in Ephesus in 431. That Council decreed that henceforth hymns to Christ and the
Saints should always conclude with a hymn to the Mother of God, a rule that is
followed to this day in the liturgical practice of the Orthodox Church. The
Council’s decree naturally stimulated a great deal of hymnography and
iconography glorifying the Mother of God. This does not mean that the cult of
Mary became more important than that of Christ, as Bercot quite wrongly asserts
– a cursory examination of the liturgical texts of the Orthodox Church
demonstrates that all services begin with prayers to one or other of the
Persons of the Holy Trinity (Vespers and Mattins, for example, begin with a
prayer to the Holy Spirit), and that prayers to God are far more frequent than
prayers to the Mother of God and the Saints, especially in the central service
of the Divine Liturgy. But it is certainly true that the veneration of the
Mother of God became more prominent, in the sense of more public, after the
Third Ecumenical Council.
However, the decrees of the Third Council
provide only a partial explanation of the facts. We still need to explain why
the pre-Nicene Fathers said so little about the Mother of God, and in language
that was so restrained by comparison with what came later. I think that the
explanation is to be found in a principle that we find exemplified throughout
the history of Divine Revelation: the principle, namely, that while the whole
truth has been committed to God’s people from the time of the apostles, certain
aspects of that truth are concealed from the outside world at certain times
because a premature revelation of them would be harmful to the acceptance of
the Christian Gospel as a whole.
Let us take as an example the most
cardinal doctrine of the Church, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The doctrine
of the Trinity is implicit even in the first chapter of Genesis, where
we read of the Father creating the material and noetic worlds through His Son,
the Word of God, and with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, Who broods like a
bird over the waters of the abyss. And in the creation of man the
multi-Personed nature of God is clearly hinted at in the words: “Let Us make
man in Our image…” (Gen. 1.27). And yet the mystery is only
gradually revealed in the course of the Old Testament, and becomes fully
explicit only on the Day of Pentecost in the New.
Let us take another example: the doctrine
of the Divinity of Christ. In the Synoptic Gospels this mystery is only
partially revealed, more emphasis being attaché to the full Humanity of
Christ. In the Gospel of John, however, the veil is lifted with the words: “In
the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God…
And the Word was made flesh” (John 1.1, 14), and it is clearly explicit
in the Epistles and in Revelation. So why did the Synoptic Evangelists
not declare the mystery openly? Because they did not know it, as the Arians and
modern heretics such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses would have us believe? Of
course not! The mystery is there, in Matthew, Mark and Luke,
for all those with ears to hear and eyes to see. So why is it not made explicit
in them as it is in John?
As always, the Holy Fathers provide us
with the answer. They explain that John wrote his Gospel later, after the fall
of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., not in order to correct the earlier Gospels, which
were flawless in themselves, but in order to “fill in the gaps” which they had
left unfilled under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The first three
Evangelists faithfully reflect the general sequence of Christ’s teaching in not
immediately and explicitly proclaiming His Divinity, for which the people (and
even the apostles themselves) were not yet ready. Another reason was that, as
St. Paul says, “none of the princes of this world knew [this], for had they
known [it], they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (I Cor.
2.8). This is confirmed by St. Ignatius the God-bearer, a disciple of St. John,
who says that certain facts were concealed from the devil, such as the virginity
of Mary[168],
because, had he known them, he would not have stirred up the Jews to kill
Christ and so bring about the salvation of the world. Moreover, we see from Acts
that the earliest sermons of St. Peter and St. Stephen also did not emphasize
the Divinity of Christ, but rather concentrated on His being the Messiah. One
step at a time: for the Jews, it was necessary to demonstrate that Christ was
the Messiah before going on (in private, perhaps) to the deeper mystery of His
Divinity. St. Matthew, who wrote in Hebrew for the Jews, undoubtedly followed
this method under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And the same applies to
Saints Mark and Luke, who, though not writing exclusively for the Jews, had to
take the Jewish religious education of many of their readers into account.
After the fall of Jerusalem, however, when the power of the Jews had been
broken, and when Christian heretics such as Cerinthus arose, openly denying the
Divinity of Christ, a more explicit affirmation of the mystery became necessary.
And that was what St. John – who fled from a bath-house in which he was washing
in order not to remain under the same roof as Cerinthus - provided in his
writings.
Now let us turn to the mystery of Mary,
the Mother of God. As St. John of Damascus points out, the mystery of Mary is
the mystery of the Incarnation, and the glory of Mary derives wholly from the
glory of her being chosen to be the Mother of God.[169] All
the titles and honour we ascribe to her do not add to, but express that
original glory; they are a direct consequence of her being, in the words of St.
Photius the Great, “the minister of the mystery”.[170] For
only a being of surpassing holiness could have given her flesh to the All-Holy
Word of God, becoming the new Eve, as Saints Justin and Irenaeus point out, to
Christ’s new Adam.
But just as the glory of Christ Himself
was temporarily concealed for the sake of the more effective long-term
propagation of the Gospel, so the glory of Mary was concealed – from the world,
but not from the Church – until the time when it was safe to reveal it, that
is, when idolatry had been destroyed and the dogmas of the Divinity of Christ
and of the Mother of God had been defined in theologically precise terms. Until
that time, however, such a revelation would have been dangerous, for in a world
in which paganism was still strong, and female goddesses, as Bercot points out,
were common, many would have seen Christ and His Mother as two gods – the
Christian equivalent of Jupiter and Juno. And indeed, as Bercot again rightly
points out on the basis of the writings of St. Epiphanius of Cyprus, in the
fourth century there existed a heresy which consisted in the worship of the
Mother of God and the offering of sacrifices to her. That is why the apostles
and their successors preached to the truths of the faith to the pagan world in
a definite order, with each successive stage beginning only when the previous
stage was firmly established in the minds of their hearers. First came the
teaching about God, then about the Incarnation of the Word and the Redemption
through Christ; then about the Church and the sacraments; and then about the
Mother of God.
The Church displayed a similar reticence
with regard to another of her cardinal doctrines – that of the Body and Blood
of Christ in the Eucharist. When the Lord first expounded this mystery, many
even of His disciples left Him (John 6.66). It is not surprising,
therefore, that the Church should have refrained from preaching this doctrine
from the roof-tops, and kept it even from the catechumens, or learners, until
after they had actually partaken of the sacrament. And as with the Divinity of
Christ, so with the sacraments, the Church’s teaching is only sketchily
outlined in the Synoptic Evangelists, but more fully expounded later, in the
Gospel of John. In both cases, the Church’s early reticence was not the product
of some kind of esotericism in the Gnostic sense, but a prudent desire to give
her children the meat of the Word only after they have been strengthened on the
milk, the rudiments of the Gospel. For to entrust people with the holy
mysteries before they are ready for them is like giving pearls to “swine” –
they will trample on them by interpreting them in their own swinish, carnal
way. Thus the doctrine of the Mother of God, while always known to the Church,
was not preached openly until the world had become solidly Christian.
An illustration of the wisdom of this
principle is found in the life of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, the disciple of
St. Paul and first bishop of Athens. When he first met the Mother of God, as he
confesses in a letter, he was so struck by her extraordinary, other-worldly
beauty, that he was tempted to think that she was in fact a goddess. It was not
until the apostles took him aside and explained that she was not herself Divine
by nature, but the created Mother of the pre-eternal Creator, that he abandoned
his error. If such a holy man as Dionysius was tempted to make such an error,
we can imagine what would have been the consequences if the apostles had openly
preached the Mother of God to the pagan world! And we see in modern Roman
Catholic Mariolatry what happens to the understanding of Mary even among
Christians when those Christians have lost the salt of the grace of God.
If the Catholics have become like the
pagan Greeks in their Mariolatry, the Protestants have embraced the opposite,
Jewish error in refusing to see anything special in the Holy Virgin, even
denying her holiness and virginity. To be fair to Bercot, he never descends to
such blasphemy, and is willing to accept both her virginity and her exceptional
blessedness. He does not even object to the term Theotokos, or Mother of
God, although, revealingly, he never uses it himself.
But Bercot displays a definite Protestant
bias and superficiality in his interpretation of those passages in the Gospel
in which Christ speaks to or about His Mother. In all these passages (Matt.
12.46-50; Luke 2.48-49, 8.19-21; John 2.4, 19.26-27), Bercot sees
Christ as “putting down” His Mother, as if He needed to suppress an incipient
rebellion on her part, an attempt to impose her will upon Him. Nothing could be
further from the truth. Although the Orthodox do not believe in the absolute
sinlessness of the Mother of God, at any rate before Pentecost, and admit that
she may have had moments of doubt, hesitation or imperfect comprehension, there
can be no question of any conflict between her and her Son. Christ was not so
much rebuking His Mother in these passages, as teaching a general truth which
the carnally and racially-minded Jews very much needed to absorb: the truth,
namely, that closeness to God depends, not on racial affiliation, but on
spiritual kinship. Moreover, when He said, “My Mother and My brethren are those
who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 8.21), He was not excluding
His physical Mother from the category of those close to Him. On the contrary,
it was precisely because she, more than anyone, knew the word of God and kept
it, thereby acquiring spiritual kinship with God, that Mary was counted worthy
to give birth to God in the flesh.
That is also why Christ entrusted the Holy
Virgin to St. John at the foot of the Cross. This was actually a very
surprising thing for the Lord to do, for the Virgin did have a family – the
sons of Joseph referred to above – and the normal custom in the East would have
been for them to take her into their care. But here again, as often in the
Gospel, the Lord indicates that spiritual kinship, kinship in the Church, is
higher and deeper than kinship after the flesh or in law.
Bercot makes another error of
interpretation when he says that Mary was not one of the first witnesses of the
Resurrection. The oral tradition of the Church, confirmed in the writings of
St. Gregory Palamas[171],
affirms that Mary was in fact the very first person to see the Risen Christ,
being none other than the person whom the Evangelists call “Mary, the mother of
James and Joses” (Matt. 27.56) and “the other Mary” (Matt. 27.81,
28.1). For the sons of Joseph, the Betrothed of Mary, were James, the first
bishop of Jerusalem, Simon, the second bishop of Jerusalem, Jude, one of the
twelve apostles, and Joses; which meant that Mary was in law, if not by blood,
their mother, “the mother of James and Joses”. St. Matthew conceals her
identity in this way for the same reason that the inner greatness Mother of God
is concealed throughout the first centuries of the Christian preaching: because
it was dangerous to reveal her great glory and pre-eminent closeness to Christ
before the doctrine of Christ Himself, perfect God and perfect Man, had been
firmly established in the world through the Ecumenical Councils. Moreover, if
it had been said that the first witness of Christ’s Resurrection had been His
Mother, the Jews would have seized on this to pour scorn on the fact, saying:
“What trust can we place in the visions of an hysterical woman, crazed with
grief over the death of her only son?”
Bercot is again wrong in asserting that
the Lord was rebuking Mary at the marriage of Cana, when He said: “Woman, what
have I to do with thee?” (John 2.4). If Mary was really sinning by
asking the Lord to intercede for the married couple, why did He then fulfil her
request and change the water into wine? According to St. Gaudentius of Breschia,
the Lord was not rebuking the Virgin, but drawing her mind forward to the
mystery of the Cross: “This answer of His does not seem to me to accord with
Mary’s suggestion, if we take it literally in its first apparent sense, and do
not suppose our Lord to have spoken in a mystery, meaning thereby that the wine
of the Holy Spirit could not be given to the Gentiles before His Passion and
Resurrection, as the Evangelist attests: ‘As yet the Spirit was not yet given,
because Jesus was not yet glorified’ (John 7.39). With reason, then, at
the beginning of His miracles, did He thus answer His Mother, as though He
said: ‘Why this thy hasty suggestion, O Woman? Since the hour of My Passion and
Resurrection is not yet come, when, - all powers whether of teaching or of
divine operations being then completed – I have determined to die for the life
of believers. After My Passion and Resurrection, when I shall return to My
Father, there shall be given to them the wine of the Holy Spirit.’ Whereupon
she too, that most blessed one, knowing the profound mystery of this answer,
understood that the suggestion she had just made was not slighted or spurned,
but, in accordance with that spiritual reason, was for a time delayed.
Otherwise, she would never have said to the waiters, Whatsoever He saith
unto you, do it.”[172]
Bercot displays a similar obtuseness when
discussing the fact that Mary was not present at the Last Supper. Since the
Passover meal was a family occasion, he says, Mary’s absence shows that the
Lord was “putting her in her place” and placing his bonds with the apostles
above all carnal bonds. Well, it is true, as we have seen, that the Lord often
emphasizes the superiority of spiritual bonds to carnal ones. But Mary was most
closely related to Him, as has already been said, both spiritually and
by blood.
In any case, the Last Supper did not
require the presence of Mary for a quite different reason. At this Supper the
Lord introduced the fundamental sacrament of the New Testament Church, the
Eucharist, and Himself performed the sacrament as the eternal High Priest of
the New Testament, being a priest not after the order of Levi, but of
Melchizedek. He as the Priest offered Himself as the Victim to Himself and the
Father and the Holy Spirit as the Receivers of the Sacrifice. And He wished the
apostles to be present because they also were to be priests according to this
new and higher order, and would themselves offer the same Sacrifice of Christ’s
Body and Blood, saying: “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee…” But Mary,
being a woman, was not and could not be a priest.
Not that Mary’s ministry was any less
important than the apostles’. On the contrary: without the ministry of the
Virgin at the Incarnation neither Christ’s ministry at the Cross and
Resurrection, nor that of the apostles after Pentecost, would have been
possible. For if the apostles, through the priestly gift bestowed on them,
multiplied the Church to the ends of the earth, the Virgin, having given birth
to the High Priest Himself, and having been made the Mother of His closest
disciple at the Cross, may be said to have given birth to the Church as a
whole, to be the Mother of the Body of which He is the Head to all generations.
Indeed, in a deeper sense the Virgin is not only the Mother of the Church but
the Church herself; for if Christ is the New Adam and the Head of the Church,
and Mary is the New Eve and “flesh of His flesh”, then through the mystery of
marriage the Virgin (i.e. the New Eve or the Church) is the Body and
Bride of Christ…
It is in the context of this mystical
relationship between Christ and the Holy Virgin that we must understand the
extraordinary epithets that the Church bestows on her, such as mediatress and
Queen of Heaven.
At this point, however, it is important to
distinguish the Orthodox position from that of the Roman Catholics and from
that of certain Orthodox who have been infected by the Romanist point of view.
Contrary to the Romanist teaching, the Holy Virgin was conceived in original
sin, and therefore was as much in need of salvation as any other mortal.
Moreover, as St. John Chrysostom says, it is possible that she committed some
actual sins, although these could only have been minor ones resulting from her
less that perfect knowledge of the ministry of her Son before she received
complete enlightenment at Pentecost. The salvation of the world was effected by
Christ alone, the only Mediator between God and man, for He alone is both God
and man. At the same time, Christ could not have become man without the
cooperation of a human being who was both humble enough to receive the Word of
God into her flesh without being destroyed by Him, and believing enough to
consent to the mystery without doubting: “Be it unto me according to they word”
(Luke 1.38). For, as Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow says, “In the days
of the creation of the world, when God was uttering His living and mighty ‘Let
there be’, the word of the Creator brought creatures into the world. But on
that day, unparalleled in the life of the world, when divine Miriam uttered her
brief and obedient: ‘Be it unto me’, I hardly dare to say what happened then –
the word of the creature brought the Creator into the world.” In this sense,
the Virgin, too, can be called a mediatress insofar as she mediated our
salvation. To say, as Bercot does, that Christ could have effected the
salvation of the world in some other way if the Virgin had refused is to
indulge in idle hypothesizing which illumines nothing. For the fact is that the
Virgin did not refuse and God did not choose another person or another method.
Now, having entered into such an
extraordinarily intimate union with God, and with such enormous consequences
for the whole of created being, who can doubt that the Virgin has become
deified, “a partaker of the Divine nature”, as St. Peter puts it (II Peter
1.4), “on the border between the created and uncreated natures”, as St. Gregory
Palamas puts it?[173] And,
this being so, who can doubt that all her petitions are granted by God, that
her “mediation” before God, in the sense of intercession for mankind, is always
heard? It is not that what she demands she always gets, as the Romanists
blasphemously say; for that would imply that the creature can dictate to the
Creator, the pot to the Potter. No: the Virgin is always heard by God because,
being in complete harmony with His will, she never asks for anything that is
contrary to His will. Like the perfect wife, she both knows the will of her
Husband and wills it herself, so that she neither compels Him nor is herself
compelled by Him “Whose service is perfect freedom”. For “where the Spirit of
the Lord is, there is liberty” (II Cor. 3.17).
Where there is such perfect spiritual
union and freedom, the distinctions between Master and servant, even Creator
and creature, become, if not less real than before, at any rate less prominent.
The Protestants are very jealous to preserve God’s rights and sovereignty; but
they forget that God Himself “emptied Himself” of His Divine rights, and became
a servant to His own creatures, so that they should acquire His rights and
privileges. As the Fathers say: “God became man, so that men should become
gods.” And the word “gods” means what it says – the saints truly become gods by
grace: “I said: ye are gods, and all of your sons of the Most High” (Psalm
81.6; John 10.34). For if the Holy Scripture calls Christians now,
before they have become completely freed from sin, “brothers” and “friends” and
“sons of God”, of what great “weight of glory” will they not be accounted
worthy when they are completely freed from sin, in the life of the age to come?
And if this is true of all the saints, how can it be denied of the Virgin
Mother of God, she who even at the beginning of her ministry was already “full
of grace”, and who by offering herself as “the minister of the mystery” made it
possible for all men to become gods? And if, as St. Paul says, the saints shall
judge angels (I Cor. 6.3), how can it be hyperbole to say that she, the
mother of all the saints in the spiritual sense, is “more honourable than the
Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim”? Indeed, if
Christ, the New Adam, is the King of Heaven, how can she, the New Eve, be
denied her rightful side at His side as the Queen of Heaven? For it is of her
that the Prophet David spoke: “At Thy right hand stood the queen, arrayed in a
vesture of inwoven gold, adorned in varied colours” (Psalm 45.8).
The mystery of Mary is the mystery of the
deification of man. The path she traversed from humility on earth to glory in
the heavens is the path that all Christians hope to traverse. And while it was
God’s will that she should remain in the background until the ministry of her
Son should be completed and firmly established in the world through the
teaching of the Fathers, so it is God’s will now that her glory should be
revealed and all generations call her blessed (Luke 1.48); that all men
should see the hope that is set before them and strive for it with redoubled
zeal. And to that end God has bestowed on her the grace of miracles and the
fulfillment of all the godly petitions that men address to her, as is witnessed
by thousands upon thousands of Christians in all countries and generations.
Only the blindest bigot could deny all these witnesses, or ascribe them all to
the workings of Satan. Or rather, only one who is blind to the true depth of
the mystery of which she was the minister, would seek to detract from the glory
of the Virgin...
Let me end, then, with a witness from the Early,
Pre-Nicene Church, that of St. Gregory the Wonderworker: “Thy praise, O most
holy Virgin, surpasses all laudation, be reason of the God Who took flesh and
was born of three. To thee every creature, of things in heaven, and things on
earth, and things under the earth, offers the meet offering of honour. For thou
has indeed been shown forth to be the true cherubic throne, thou shinest as the
very brightness of light in the high places of the kingdoms of intelligence,
where the Father, Who is without beginning, and Whose power thou hadst
overshadowing thee, is glorified; where also the Son is worshipped, Whom thou
didst bear according to the flesh; and where the Holy Spirit is praised, Who
effected in thy womb the generation of the Mighty King. Though thee, O thou who
art full of grace, is the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity known in the world.
Together with thyself deem us also worthy to be made partakers of thy perfect
grace in Jesus Christ, our Lord, with Whom and with the Holy Spirit, be glory
to the Father, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.”[174]
(Published in Living
Orthodoxy, May-June, 1996, pp. 8-14; revised June 18 / July 1, 2004)
13. A DIALOGUE BETWEEN AND ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN AND A
RATIONALIST ON THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST
Orthodox. My
friend, I would like to ask you a question: what do you understand by the
words: “We are saved by the Blood of Christ”?
Rationalist. That we
are saved by the Sacrifice of Christ Crucified, whereby He washed away our sins
in His Blood shed on the Cross.
Orthodox. I agree.
And how precisely are our sins washed away?
Rationalist. By true
faith, and by partaking of the Holy Mysteries of the Church with faith and
love, and especially the Mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ in the
Eucharist.
Orthodox. Excellent!
So you agree that in the Mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ we partake of
the very same Body that was nailed to the Cross and the very same Blood that
was shed from the side of the Saviour?
Rationalist. Er, yes…
Orthodox. I see
that you hesitate, my friend. Is there something wrong in what I have said.
Rationalist. Not
exactly… However, you must be careful not to understand the Mystery in a
cannibalistic sense.
Orthodox.
Cannibalistic? What do you mean, my friend? What is cannibalistic here?
Rationalist. Well, I
mean that we must not understand the Body of Christ in the Eucharist to be a
hunk of meat. That would be close to cannibalism – to paganism.
Orthodox. You
know, the early Christians were accused of being cannibals by their enemies.
However, cannibals eat dead meat. In the Mystery we do not partake of
dead meat, but of living flesh, the Flesh of the God-Man. It is alive
not only through Its union with His human Soul, but also through Its union with
the Divine Spirit. And that makes It not only alive, but Life-giving.
Rationalist. Still,
you mustn’t understand this in too literal a way. Did not the Lord say: “The
flesh is of little use; it is the spirit that gives life”(John 6.63)?
Orthodox. Yes
indeed, but you must understand this passage as the Holy Fathers understand it.
St. John Chrysostom says that in these words the Lord was not referring to His
own Flesh (God forbid!), but to a carnal understanding of His words. And “this
is what carnal understanding means – looking on things in a simple manner
without representing anything more. We should not judge in this manner about
the visible, but we must look into all its mysteries with internal eyes.”[175] If you
think about the Flesh of Christ carnally, you are thinking about It as if it
were just flesh, separate from the Divine Spirit. But we must have
spiritual eyes to look beyond – to the invisible reality.
Rationalist. But this
is just what I mean! You are reducing a spiritual Mystery to something carnal,
material. But we are not saved by matter!
Orthodox. St. John
of Damascus did not agree with you. “I do not worship matter,” he said, “but I
worship the Creator of matter Who became matter for my sake and Who, through
matter, accomplished my salvation!”[176]
Rationalist. But
“flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God” (I Cor. 15.50).
Orthodox. Fallen
flesh and blood is what the Apostle means. But if our fallen flesh and
blood is purified and transfigured by the incorrupt Body and Blood of Christ,
then our bodies will be raised in glory at the Second Coming and we will be
able to enter the Kingdom – in our bodies. Indeed, the Lord makes
precisely this link between eating His Flesh and the resurrection of the body:
“He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life, and I will raise
him up at the last day” (John 6.54).
Rationalist.
Nevertheless, the Lord’s Body in the Sacrament is different from ours…
Orthodox. In
purity – yes, in essence – no. For, as St. John of the Ladder says, “The blood of God and the blood
of His servants are quite different – but I am thinking here of the dignity and
not of the actual physical substance.”[177]… But
let me understand precisely what you mean. Are you saying that when we speak of
the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, we are speaking not literally, but
metaphorically or symbolically?
Rationalist. No, of course not! I believe that
the Consecrated Gifts are the True Body and Blood of Christ!
Orthodox. I am glad to hear that. For you know, of
course, that the metaphorical or symbolical understanding of the Mystery is a
Protestant doctrine that has been condemned by the One, Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic Church. Thus St. John of Damascus writes that “the Lord has said,
‘This is My Body’, not ‘this is a figure of My Body’; and ‘My Blood’, not ‘a
figure of My Blood’.”[178]… So are you saying that the bread and wine are
in some sense transfigured or “spiritualized” at the consecration through their
union with the Divine Spirit of Christ, “penetrated” by the Spirit, as it were,
so that we can then call them the Body and Blood of Christ, although they do
not cease to be bread and wine?…
Rationalist. Er, let me think about that…
Orthodox. Well, while you’re thinking let me remind
you that the Eastern Patriarchs in their Encyclical of 1848 also condemned this
teaching, which is essentially that of the Lutherans. It is also very close to
the Anglican idea of the “Real Presence” of Christ in the Eucharist – although
it is notoriously difficult to say precisely what the Anglicans believe. And
you will remember that the Anglicans and Catholics killed each other during the
Anglican Reformation precisely because the Catholics had a realistic
understanding of the sacrament, whereas the Anglicans, being Protestants, did
not. A recent Anglican biography of the first Anglican archbishop, Cranmer, has
demonstrated that he was a Zwinglian in his eucharistic theology.
Rationalist. You know, I think that you are
misrepresenting the Anglican position. Fr. X of the Moscow Theological Academy
has told me that the Orthodox teaching coincides with that of the Anglicans,
but not with that of the Catholics.
Orthodox. Really, you do surprise me! I knew that
your Moscow theologians were close to the Anglicans, the spiritual fathers of
the ecumenical movement and masters of doctrinal double-think, but I did not
know that they had actually embraced their doctrines! As for the Catholics –
what do you find wrong with their eucharistic theology?
Rationalist. Don’t you know? The Orthodox
reject the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation!
Orthodox. I do not believe that the Orthodox reject
transubstantiation. We dislike the word “transubstantiation” because of
its connotations of Aristotlean philosophy and medieval scholasticism, but very
few people today – even Catholics – use the word in the technically Aristotlean
sense. Most people mean by “transubstantiation” simply the doctrine that the
substances of bread and wine are changed into the substances of Body and Blood
in the Eucharist, which is Orthodox. The Eastern Patriarchs in their Encyclical
write that “the bread is changed, transubstantiated, converted,
transformed, into the actual Body of the Lord.” They use four words here,
including “transubstantiated”, to show that they are equivalent in meaning. In
any case, is not the Russian word “presuschestvlenie” a translation of
“transubstantiation”? It is important not to quarrel over words if the doctrine
the words express is the same.
Rationalist. Nevertheless, the doctrine of
transubstantiation is Catholic and heretical.
Orthodox. If that is so, why has the Orthodox Church
never condemned it as heretical? The Orthodox Church has on many occasions
condemned the Catholic heresies of the Filioque, papal infallibility,
created grace, etc., but never the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist.
Rationalist. It’s still heretical. And I have
to say that I find your thinking very western, scholastic, primitive and
materialist!
Orthodox. Perhaps you’ll find these words of the Lord
also “primitive and materialist”: “Unless you eat of My Flesh and drink of My
Blood, you have no life in you” (John 6.53). And these words of St. John
Chrysostom written in his commentary on the Lord’s words: “He hath given to
those who desire Him not only to see Him, but even to touch, and eat Him, and
fix their teeth in His Flesh, and to embrace Him, and satisfy their love…”[179] Was
St. John Chrysostom, the composer of our Liturgy, a western Catholic in his
thinking?
Rationalist. Don’t be absurd!
Orthodox. Well then… Let’s leave the Catholics and
Protestants and get back to the Orthodox position. And let me put my
understanding of the Orthodox doctrine as concisely as possible: at the moment
of consecration the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of
Christ in such a way that there is no longer the substances of bread and wine,
but only of Body and Blood.
Rationalist. I accept that so long as you do
not mean that there is a physico-chemical change in the constitution of the
bread and wine?
Orthodox. But can there not be a physico-chemical
change?! Are not bread and wine physical substances?
Rationalist. Yes.
Orthodox. And are not human flesh and blood
physico-chemical substances?
Rationalist. Yes…
Orthodox. And is not a change from one
physico-chemical substance into another physico-chemical substance a
physico-chemical change?
Rationalist. Here you are demonstrating your
western, legalistic, primitive mentality! All Aristotlean syllogisms and empty
logic! The Orthodox mind is quite different: it is mystical. You forget that we
are talking about a Mystery!
Orthodox. Forgive me for offending you. I quite
accept that we are talking about a Mystery. But there is a difference between
mystery and mystification. If we are going to speak at all, we must speak
clearly, with as precise a definition of terms as human speech will allow. The
Fathers were not opposed to logic or clarity. Illogicality is no virtue!
Rationalist. Alright… But the fact remains that the
change is not a physico-chemical one, but a supernatural one. It says so in the
Liturgy itself!
Orthodox. I agree that the change is supernatural in
two senses. First, the instantaneous change of one physical substance into
another is obviously not something that we find in the ordinary course of
nature. Of course, bread and wine are naturally changed into flesh and blood
through the process of eating and digestion. But in this case the change is
effected, not by eating, but by the word of prayer – and it’s instantaneous.
For, as St. Gregory of Nyssa points out, “it is not a matter of the bread
becoming the Body of the Word through the natural process of eating: rather it
is transmuted immediately into the Body of the Word.”[180]
Secondly, the change is effected by a supernatural Agent – God. So what we have
is the change of one physico-chemical substance into another through a
non-physical, supernatural Agent, the Spirit of God.
Rationalist. But if I were to accept your
western logic, I should have to believe that the Body of Christ is composed of
proteins and enzymes and such things, and that the Blood of Christ contains
haemoglobin!
Orthodox. Well, and what is impious about that?
Rationalist. It is the height of impiety! My
faith is not based on scientific molecular analysis!
Orthodox. Nor is mine.
Rationalist. But you have just admitted that
the Body and Blood of Christ contain proteins and enzymes and haemoglobin!
Orthodox. Well, does not human flesh and blood
contain such elements?
Rationalist. Yes, but these words are
scientific terms that were unknown to the Fathers. You don’t seriously think
that in order to understand the Mystery, you have to have a degree in biology?!
Orthodox. Not at all.
Rationalist. So you accept that the Blood of
Christ does not contain haemoglobin…
Orthodox. No I don’t. Your argument is a non-sequitur.
I believe by faith alone – not by molecular analysis, nor by any
evidence of the senses – that the consecrated Gifts are human Flesh and Blood
united to the Divine Spirit. Biologists tell me – and no one, as far as I know,
disputes this – that human blood contains haemoglobin. So it seems eminently
reasonable to believe that the Blood of Christ also contains haemoglobin. Of
course, this fact was discovered, not by faith, but by scientific research, so
it does not have the certainty – or the importance – attaching to revelations
of faith. But if we suppose that human blood contains haemoglobin, and
if we accept that Christ’s Blood is human, then it follows that Christ’s Blood
also contains haemoglobin. Or do you think that Christ is not fully human and
does not have fully human flesh and blood like ours?
Rationalist. There you go with your syllogisms
and empty logic again! Always trying to catch me out! I never said that
Christ’s Blood was not human!
Orthodox. Nevertheless, you seem to have great
trouble accepting the consequences of that statement.
Rationalist. They are consequences for you,
but not for me. Thus you, but not I, are committed to the consequence that a
molecular analysis of the Blood of Christ would reveal haemoglobin.
Orthodox. Not so… I think it was Vladimir Lossky who
said that hypothetical situations are not a fitting subject of theological
discourse, which deals only in absolute realities. However, let us follow your
thought experiment through for a moment. I do not know, of course, what would
happen if anyone – God forbid! – were so blasphemous as to perform such a
molecular analysis. Nevertheless, if God allowed him to do it, and to
analyze the results, I expect that they would indicate that the consecrated
Gifts are bread and wine, not flesh and blood, and so contain no haemoglobin.
Rationalist. Now you’re the one who’s being
illogical! One moment you say that Christ’s Blood contains haemoglobin, and the
next you say that a physico-chemical analysis would reveal no haemoglobin!
Orthodox. Precisely, because the reality revealed by
faith is not the appearance revealed to the fallen senses, of which
science is simply the organized extension. Faith, as St. Paul says, “is the
certainty of things unseen” (Heb. 11.1); science is an uncertain
apprehension of things seen. In the case of the Mystery we see and taste one
thing; but the reality is something quite different. God veils the reality from
our senses; and no amount of scientific observation can discern the reality if
God chooses to hide it.
Rationalist. Why should he do that?
Orthodox. He does this in order that we should not be
repelled by the sight and taste of human flesh and so refrain from partaking of
the Saving Mystery. As Blessed Theophylact says, “Since we are weak and could
not endure raw meat, much less human flesh, it appears as bread to us although
it is in fact flesh”.[181] It is
absolutely essential to realize that we cannot understand our senses here –
even if aided by a microscope. In fact, when it comes to the Mystery, all
sense-perception, of any kind, must be discarded; it can be seen by faith
alone.
Rationalist. Of course, I agree with that.
Orthodox. So what’s your problem?
Rationalist. I don’t have a problem. You have a
problem, a very serious one.
Orthodox. What’s that?
Rationalist. A diseased imagination, what the
Greeks call “plani” and the Russians – “prelest”. Instead of simply receiving
the sacrament in faith, you are imagining that it is composed of all sorts of
things – molecules, proteins, haemoglobin, etc. This is western rationalism!
Orthodox. No, I can sincerely assure you that I don’t
use my imagination in any way when approaching the Mystery. And forgive me, but
I think it is you who are infected with rationalism, insofar as you have such
difficulty in accepting what the Church plainly teaches.
Rationalist. My advice to you is: when you
approach the Mystery, just believe the words of the priest that this is the
True Body and Blood of Christ, and don’t feel or think or imagine anything
else.
Orthodox. Thank you for your advice. I shall try to
follow it in the future, as I have followed it in the past.
Rationalist. You are not being honest. You do
use your imagination, the intellectual imagination of the scientist; you
think of haemoglobin, proteins, molecules, etc.
Orthodox. There’s no point arguing about this. How
can I convince you? You know, I think the difference between us is not that I
use imagination and you don’t, but that I rely on faith alone and entirely
reject the evidence of my senses while you waver between what the Church
teaches and what your senses tell you. I believe, contrary to the evidence of
my senses, that the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist is exactly the
same Body and Blood as that which He received from the Virgin, in which He
walked on this earth, and in which He was crucified on the Cross. You, on the
other hand, whether you admit it or not, think that it is in some sense the
same Body and Blood but in another not the same, because it looks and tastes
different.
Rationalist. You’ll have difficulty proving
that!
Orthodox. Will I? Well, just let me try by putting a
few questions to you.
Rationalist. Go ahead.
Orthodox. Now I am going to talk about blood with
haemoglobin in it, not because I think that blood having haemoglobin is such an
important fact, but simply because it enables me to identify whether you are
referring to the same kind of blood as I. Agreed?
Rationalist. Okay.
Orthodox. Right then. First question: Did the Holy
Virgin have human blood with haemoglobin in it?
Rationalist. Very likely.
Orthodox. Second question: Was the Blood which the
Lord Jesus Christ receive from the Virgin blood with haemoglobin in it?
Rationalist. If the Virgin had that blood,
then the Lord had the same blood.
Orthodox. Good. Now the third question: Did the Lord
on the Cross shed human Blood with haemoglobin in it?
Rationalist. I think I see what you’re leading
to…
Orthodox. Please answer the question: yes or no?
Rationalist. Yes, of course.
Orthodox. Fourth question: Bearing in mind that, as
St. John Chrysostom says, “that which is in the chalice is the same as that
which flowed from Christ’s side”[182], is
that which is in the chalice human blood with haemoglobin in it?
Rationalist. You have convinced me! I did see
them as different, but now I agree with you!
Orthodox. Not just with me, brother: with the Church,
which is the Body of Christ insofar as it is composed of members who
have partaken of the Body of Christ. For, as a recently canonized saint of the
Church, St. John Maximovich, wrote: “Bread and wine are made into the Body and
Blood of Christ during the Divine Liturgy… How is the Body and Blood of Christ
at the same time both the Church and the Holy Mystery? Are the faithful both
members of the Body of Christ, the Church, and also communicants of the Body of
Christ in the Holy Mystery? In neither instance is this name ‘Body of Christ’
used metaphorically, but rather in the most basic sense of the word. We
believe that the Holy Mysteries which keep the form of bread and wine are the
very Body and the very Blood of Christ… Christ, invisible to the bodily eye,
manifests Himself on earth clearly through His Church, just as the unseen human
spirit manifests itself through the body. The Church is the Body of Christ both
because its parts are united to Christ through His Divine Mysteries and because
through her Christ works in the world. We partake of the Body and Blood of
Christ, in the Holy Mysteries, so that we ourselves may be members of
Christ’s Body, the Church.”[183]
Rationalist. Yes, I agree with the Body about
the Body, I agree with the Church!
Orthodox. Glory to God! “What is so good or so joyous
as for brethren to dwell together in unity!” (Psalm 132.1).
(Pentecost, 1998; revised Pentecost, 2004)
14. PATRISTIC TESTIMONIES ON THE BODY AND BLOOD OF
CHRIST
St. Ignatius of Antioch. “They abstain from the Eucharist
and prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our
Saviour, Jesus Christ.” (To the Smyrnaeans, 8).
St. Justin the Martyr. “As Jesus Christ our Saviour was
made flesh through the word of God, and took flesh and blood for our salvation;
in the same way the food over which thanksgiving has been offered by the prayer
of the word which came from Him – the food by which our blood and flesh are
nourished through its transformation – is, we are taught, the Flesh and Blood
of Jesus Christ Who was made flesh.” (First Apology, 65-66).
St. Irenaeus of Lyons. “As the bread, which comes from the earth,
receives the invocation of God, and then it is no longer common bread but
Eucharist, consisting of two things, an earthly and a heavenly; so our bodies,
after partaking of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of
the eternal resurrection.” (Against Heresies, IV, 18).
St. Irenaeus of Lyons. “If this flesh is not saved,
then the Lord has not redeemed us by His Blood, and the bread which we break is
not a sharing in His Body. For there is no blood except from veins, and from
flesh, and from the rest of the substance of human nature which the Word of God
came to be, and redeemed by His Blood, as His Apostles also says: ‘In Him we
have redemption through His Blood, and the forgiveness of sins’ (Col.
1.14). And since we are His members, and are nourished through creation – the
creation He furnishes for us, causing the sun to rise and rain to fall as He
pleases – He declared that the cup, which comes from His creation, is His own
Blood, from which He strengthens our blood; and He affirmed that the bread,
which is from creation, is His very own Body, from which He strengthens our
bodies. Since, therefore, both the mixed cup and the prepared bread receive the
Word of God, and become the eucharist of Christ’s Body and Blood, from which
the substance of our flesh is strengthened and established, how, then, can they
say that the flesh, which is fed on the Body and Blood of the Lord, and is one
of His members, is incapable of receiving the gift of God which is everlasting
life? As the blessed Paul also says in the Letter to the Ephesians: ‘We are
members of His Body, from His Flesh and from His Bones’ (Eph. 5.30),
saying this not about some kind of spiritual and invisible human nature, for a
spirit has neither flesh nor bones, but about that arrangement which is
authentic human nature, which consists of flesh and sinews and bones, and is
fed from the cup, which is His Blood, and is strengthened by the bread, which
is His Body” (Against Heresies, V, 2, 3).
St. Cyril of Jerusalem. “Once, in Cana of Galilee, He
changed water into wine (and wine is akin to blood); is it incredible that He
should change wine into blood?… Therefore with complete assurance let us
partake of those elements as being the Body and Blood of Christ… so that by
partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ you may be made of the same Body and
Blood with Him. For in this way we become Christ-bearers, since His Body and
Blood is distributed in the parts of our body. Thus, as blessed Peters says, we
‘become partakers of the Divine nature’… Do not think, then, of the elements as
mere bread and wine. They are, according to the Lord’s declaration, body and
blood. Though the perception suggests the contrary, let faith be your stay.
Instead of judging the matter by taste, let faith give you an unwavering
confidence that you have been privileged to receive the Body and Blood of
Christ” (Catechetical Discourses, IV, 6).
St. Hilary of Poitiers. “Christ gives evidence of this
natural unity in us: ‘He who eats My Flesh, and drinks My Blood, dwells in Me,
and I in him’. For no one will be in Christ, unless Christ is in him, unless he
has taken into himself the Flesh of Christ, Who took man’s flesh… He ‘lives
through the Father’: and as He lives through the Father, so we live through His
Flesh… This is the cause of our life, that we have Christ dwelling in our
fleshly nature, in virtue of His Flesh, and we shall live through Him in the
same way as He lives through the Father. We live through Him by nature,
according to the flesh, that is, having acquired the nature of the flesh. Then
surely He has the Father in Himself according to the Spirit, since He lives
through the Father. The mystery of the
real and natural unity is to be proclaimed in terms of the honour granted to us
by the Son, and the Son’s dwelling in us through His Flesh, while we are united
to Him bodily and inseparably.” (On the Trinity, 8.16,17).
St. Gregory the Theologian. “Do not hesitate to pray for me,
to be my ambassador, when by your word you draw down the Word, when with a
stroke that draws no blood you sever the Body and Blood of the Lord, using your
voice as a sword.” (Letter 171).
St. Gregory of Nyssa. “The subsistence of every body
depends on nourishment… and the Word of God coalesced with human nature and did
not invent some different constitution for man’s nature when He came in a Body
like ours. It was by the usual and appropriate means that He ensured the Body’s
continuance, maintaining its subsistence by food and drink, the food being
bread. Now in our case one may say that when anyone looks at bread he is
looking at a human body, for when the bread gets into the body it becomes the body. Similarly in the case
of the Word of God, the Body which received the Godhead, when it partook of
nourishment in the form of bread, was in a manner of speaking identical with
that bread, since the nourishment was transformed into the natural qualities of
the body…the Body which by the indwelling of the God the Word was transmuted to
the dignity of Godhead. If this is so, we are right in believing that now also
the bread which is consecrated by the Word of God is transmuted into the Body
of God the Word… It is not a matter of the bread’s becoming the Body of the
Word through the natural process of eating: rather it is transmuted immediately
into the Body through the Word, just as the Word Himself said, ‘This is My
Body’… The God Who was manifested mingled Himself with the nature that was
doomed to death, in order that by communion with the Divinity human nature may
be deified together with Him. It is for this purpose that by the Divine plan of
His grace He plants Himself in the believers by means of that Flesh.” (The
Great Catechism, 37).
St. Ambrose of Milan. “Whenever we take the
sacraments, which through the mystery of the sacred prayer are transfigured
into His Flesh and Blood, we ‘proclaim the Lord’s death’.” (On the Faith,
4.125).
St. Ambrose of Milan. “First of all, I told you about the saying
of Christ, whose effect is to change and convert the established kinds of
nature. Then came the saying of Christ, that He gave His Flesh to be eaten, and
His Blood to be drunk. His disciples could not stand this, and they turned away
from Him. Only Peter said: ‘You have the words of eternal life; how I take
myself away from you?’ And so, to prevent others from saying that they are
going away, because of a horror of actual blood, and so that the grace of
redemption should continue, for that reason you receive the sacrament in a
similitude, to be sure, but you obtain the grace and virtue of the reality. ‘I
am,’ He says, ‘the living Bread Who came down from heaven.’ But the Flesh did
not come down from heaven; that is to say, He took flesh from a virgin. How,
then, did bread come down from heaven – and bread that is ‘living bread’.
Because our Lord Jesus Christ shares in both Divinity and body: and you, who
receive the Flesh, partake of His Divine substance in that food.” (On the
Sacraments 6.3,4).
St. Ambrose of Milan. “It is clear, then, that the
Virgin gave birth outside the order of nature. And this Body which we bring
about by consecration is from the Virgin. Why do you look for the order of
nature here, in the case of the Body of Christ, when the Lord Jesus Himself was
born of a virgin outside the natural order? It was certainly the genuine
Flesh of Christ that was crucified, that was buried: then surely the sacrament
is the sacrament of that Flesh. The Lord Jesus Himself proclaims, ‘This is
My Body’. Before the blessing of the heavenly words something of another
character [alia species] is spoken of; after consecration it is
designated ‘Body’. He Himself speaks of His Blood. Before consecration it is
spoken of as something else; after consecration it is named ‘Blood’.” (On
the Mysteries, 54).
St. Ephraim the Syrian. “He stretched forth His hand and
gave them the bread which His right hand had sanctified: ‘Take, eat, all of you
of this bread which My word has sanctified. Do not regard as bread what I have
given you now… Eat it, and do not disdain its crumbs. For this bread which I
have sanctified is My Body. Its least crumb sanctifies thousands of thousands,
and it is capable of giving life to all that eat it. Take, eat in faith,
doubting not at all that this is My Body. And he who eats it in faith eats in
it fire and the Spirit. If anyone doubts and eats it, it is plain bread to him.
He who believes and eats the bread sanctified in My name, if he is pure, it
will keep him pure, if he is a sinner, he will be forgiven. He, however, who
despises it, or spurns it, or insults it, he may be sure that he is insulting
the Son Who has called the bread His Body, and truly made it so.” (Station
of the Night of the Fifth of Passion Week)
St. John Chrysostom. “Because the earlier nature of
flesh, that which had been formed from the earth, had become dead through sin
and was devoid of life, He brought in an another sort of dough and leaven, so
to speak, His own Flesh, by nature the same, but free from sin and full
of life… What the Lord did not endure on the cross [the breaking of His legs]
He now submits to in His Sacrifice for His love of you: He permits Himself to
be broken in pieces that all may be filled… What is in the chalice is the
same as that which flowed from Christ’s side. What is the bread? Christ’s
Body.” (Homily 24 on I Corinthians).
St. John Chrysostom. “Not only ought we to see the
Lord: we ought to take him in our hands, put out teeth into His Flesh, and
unite ourselves with Him in the closest union. ‘I shared in flesh and blood for
your sake. I have given back again to you the very flesh and blood through
which I became your kinsman.” (Homily 46 on John).
St. John Chrysostom. “Moses in his account of the
first man has Adam say: ‘Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh’, hinting to us
of the Master’s side. Just as at that time God took the rib of Adam and formed
a woman, so Christ gave us blood and water from His side and formed the Church…
Have you seen how Christ unites to Himself His Bride? Have you seen with what
food He nurtures us all? It is by the same food that we have been formed and
are fed. Just as a woman nurtures her offspring with her own blood and milk, so
also Christ continuously nurtures with His own Blood those whom He has begotten”
(Baptismal Instructions, III, 18,19).
St. Augustine of Hippo. “How was He ‘carried in His own
hands’? When He gave His own Body and Blood, He took in His own hands what the
faithful recognize; and, in a manner, He carried Himself when He said, ‘This is
My Body’.” (On Psalm 32, 2.2).
The Anaphora of St. Mark. “This is in truth the Body and Blood of
Emmanuel our God, Amen. I believe, I believe, I believe and I confess unto the
last breath that this is the vivifying Flesh which Thine Only-Begotten son our
Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ took of the Lady of us all, the holy
Theotokos Mary.”
St. Cyril of Alexandria. “We shall see that the flesh
united with Him has life-giving power; it is not alien flesh, but flesh which
belonged to Him Who can life to all things. Fire, in this world of the senses,
can transmit the power of its natural energy to any materials with which it
comes into contact; so that it can change even water, which is in its own
nature a cold substance, to an unnatural condition of heat. This being so, is
it strange or in any way incredible that the very Word from God the Father, Who
is in His own nature life, should give to the Flesh united to Himself this
life-giving property? For this Flesh belongs to the Word; it does not belong to
some other being than Himself Who may be thought of separately as another
member of the human race. If you remove the life-giving Word of God from this
mystical and real union with the body, if you completely set Him apart, how are
you to show that Body as still life-giving? Who was it Who said, ‘He who eats
My Flesh, and drinks My Blood, remains in Me, and I remain in Him’? If it was a
man who was born in his own separate nature; if the Word of God did not come to
be in our condition; then indeed what is performed is an act of cannibalism,
and participation in it is of no value at all. I hear Christ Himself saying,
‘The flesh is of no value; it is the Spirit that gives life.’” (Against
Nestorius, 4.5).
St. Cyril of Alexandria. “We approach the consecrated
Gifts of the sacrament, and are sanctified by partaking of the holy Flesh and
the precious Blood of Christ, the Saviour of us all. We do not receive it as
common flesh (God forbid!), nor as the flesh of a mere man...; we receive it as
truly life-giving, as the Flesh that belongs to the Word Himself. For as being
God He is in His own nature Life, and when He became one with the Flesh which
is His own, He rendered it life-giving.” (Epistle 17).
St. Cyril of Alexandria. “He said quite plainly This is My Body, and
This is My Blood, so that you may not suppose that the things you see are a
type; rather, in some ineffable way they are changed by God, Who is able to do
all things, into the Body and Blood of Christ truly offered. Partaking of them,
we take into us the life-giving and sanctifying power of Christ. For it was
necessary for Him to be present in us in a Divine manner through the Holy
Spirit: to be mixed, as it were, with our bodies by means of His holy Flesh and
precious Blood, for us to have Him in reality as a sacramental gift which gives
life, in the form of bread and wine. And so that we should not be struck down
with horror at seeing flesh and blood displayed on the holy tables of our
churches, God adapts Himself to our weakness and infuses the power of life into
the oblations and changes them into the effective power of His own Flesh, so
that we may have them for life-giving reception, and that the Body of Life may
prove to be in us a life-giving seed.” (On Luke 22.19).
St. Cyril of Alexandria. “It was necessary that not only
the soul be recreated into the newness of life through the Holy Spirit, but
that this gross and earthly body be sanctified and called to incorruptibility
by a grosser and kindred participation” (On John 6.54).
St. Cyril of Alexandria. “We have Him in us sensibly and
mentally and intellectually. He dwells in our hearts through the Holy Spirit,
and we share in His holy Flesh, and are sanctified in a double manner” (On I
Corinthians 6.15).
St. John of the Ladder. “The blood of God and the blood
of His servants are quite different – but I am thinking here of the dignity and
not of the actual physical substance” (The Ladder, 23.20).
St. John of Damascus. “The bread and wine are not
merely figures of the Body and Blood of Christ (God forbid!) but the deified
Body of the Lord itself: for the Lord has said, ‘This is My Body’, not ‘this is
a figure of My Body’; and ‘My Blood’, not ‘a figure of My Blood’. And on a
previous occasion He had said to the Jews, ‘Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son
of Man and drink His Blood ye have no life in you. For My Flesh is meat indeed
and My Blood is drink indeed’.” (On the Orthodox Faith 4.13).
The Synodicon of Orthodoxy. To those who do not partake of
His holy and immortal Mysteries with fear, since they consider them to be mere
bread and common wine rather than the very flesh of the Master and His holy and
precious blood shed for the life of the world; to such men be Anathema.
St. Nicetas Stethatos. Those who accept unleavened
wafers remain under the shadow of the law and eat the Jewish meal, and not the
rational and living God, [which is] superessential (epiousion) and consubstantial with us, the
faithful. We have received the superessential bread from the heaven, for what
is that which is superessential if not that which is consubstantial with us?
But there is no bread that is consubstantial with us besides the Body of
Christ, which is consubstantial with us according to His human flesh.” (Dialexis
(1054), to Cardinal Humbert).
St. Nicetas Stethatos. “Performing on Himself the
sacred mystery of our re-creation, the Word offered up Himself on our behalf on
the Cross, and He continually offers Himself up, giving His immaculate Body to
us daily as a soul-nourishing banquet, so that by eating it and by drinking His
precious Blood we may through this participation consciously grow in spiritual
stature. Communicating in His Body and Blood and refashioned in purer form, we
are united to the twofold Divine-human Word in two ways, in our body and in our
soul; for He is God incarnate Whose flesh is the same in essence as our own.
Thus we do not belong to ourselves, but to Him Who has united us to Himself
through this immortal meal and has made us by adoption what He Himself is by
nature.”
St. Theophylact of Bulgaria. “By saying, ‘This is My Body’,
He shows that the bread which is sanctified on the altar is the Lord’s Body
Itself, and not a symbolic type. For He did not say, ‘This is a type’, but
‘This is My Body’. By an ineffable action it is changed, although it may appear
to us as bread. Since we are weak and could not endure raw meat, much less
human flesh, it appears as bread to us although it is indeed flesh” (On
Matthew 26.26).
St. Nicholas Cabasilas. “If we speak of re-creation, it
is from Himself and from His own Flesh that He restored what is necessary, and
He substituted Himself for that which had been destroyed.” (The Life in
Christ, 17).
St. Nicholas Cabasilas. “So precisely does He conform to the things
which He assumed, that, in giving these things to us which He has received from
us, He gives Himself to us. Partaking of the body and blood of His humanity, we
receive God Himself in our souls – the body and blood of God and the soul, mind
and will of God – not less than His humanity.” (The Life of Christ, 4)
St. Gregory Palamas. “The Body of Christ is truly the
Body of God and not a symbol.” (Against Akindynos, VII, 15).
St. Gregory Palamas. “In His incomparable love for
men, the Son of God did not merely unite His Divine Hypostasis to our nature,
clothing Himself with a living body and an intelligent soul, ‘to appear on
earth and live with men’, but, O incomparable and magnificent miracle! He
unites Himself also to human hypostases, joining Himself to each of the
faithful by communion in His holy Body. For he becomes one Body with us, making
us a temple of the whole Godhead – for in the very Body of Christ ‘the whole
fulness of the Godhead dwells corporeally’. How then would He not illuminate
those who share worthily in the Divine radiance of His Body within us, shining
upon their souls as he once shone on the bodies of the apostles on Tabor? For as this Body, the
source of the light of grace, was at that time not yet united to our body, it
shone exteriorly on those who came near it worthily, transmitting light to the
soul through the eyes of sense. But today, since it is united to us and dwells
within us, it illumines the soul interiorly.” (Triads I, 3, 38).
Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848). “We believe that in this sacred
rite our Lord Jesus Christ is present not symbolically [typikos], not
figuratively [eikonikos], not by an abundance of grace, as in the other
Mysteries, not by a simple descent, as certain Fathers say about Baptism, and
not through a ‘penetration’ of the bread, so that the Divinity of the Word
should ‘enter’ into the bread offered for the Eucharist, as the followers of
Luther explain it rather awkwardly and unworthily – but truly and actually, so
that after the sanctification of the bread and wine, the bread is changed,
transubstantiated, converted, transformed, into the actual true Body of the
Lord, Which was born in Bethlehem of the Ever-Virgin, was baptized in the
Jordan, suffered, was buried, resurrected, ascended, sits at the right hand of
God the Father, and is to appear in the clouds of heaven; and the wine is
changed and transubstantiated into the actual true Blood of the Lord, which at
the time of His suffering on the Cross was shed for the life of the world. Yet
again, we believe that after the sanctification of the bread and wine there
remains no longer the bread and wine themselves, but the very Body and Blood of
the Lord, under the appearance and form of bread and wine.”
St. John of
Kronstadt. "What a wonderful creation of God is man! God
has wonderfully placed in the dust His image, the immortal spirit. But marvel,
Christian, still more at the wisdom, omnipotence and mercy of the Creator: He
changes and transforms the bread and wine into His most pure Body and into His
most pure Blood, and takes up His abode in them Himself, by His most pure and
Life-giving Spirit, so that His Body and Blood are together Spirit and Life.
And wherefore is this? In order to cleanse you, a sinner, from your sins, to
sanctify you and to unite you, thus sanctified, to Himself, and thus united to
give you blessedness and immortality. 'O the depth of the riches both of the
wisdom and knowledge of God!' (Rom. 11:33)." (My Life in Christ:
Part 1, Holy Trinity Monastery, p. 100)
St. John Maximovich. “Bread and wine are made into
the Body and Blood of Christ during the Divine Liturgy… How is the Body of
Christ at the same time both the Church and the Holy Mystery? Are the faithful
both members of the Body of Christ, the Church, and also communicants of the
Body of Christ in the Holy Mysteries? In neither instance is this name ‘Body of
Christ’ used metaphorically, but rather in the most basic sense of the word. We
believe that the Holy Mysteries which keep the form of bread and wine are the
very Body and the very Blood of Christ… For the full sanctification of man, the
body of the servant of the Lord must be united with the Body of Christ, and
this is accomplished in the mystery of Holy Communion. The true Body and the
true Blood of Christ which we receive, becomes a part of the great Body of
Christ… Christ, invisible to the bodily eye, manifests Himself on earth clearly
through His Church just as the unseen human spirit manifests itself through the
body. The Church is the Body of Christ both because its parts are united to
Christ through His Divine Mysteries and because through her Christ works in the
world. We partake of the Body and
Blood of Christ in the Holy Mysteries, so that we ourselves may be members of
Christ’s Body: the Church.” (“The Church as the Body of Christ”, Orthodox
Life, no. 5, 1981).
Archbishop Averky of Jordanville. “’It is the Spirit that gives life, the
flesh profiteth little. The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and
life.’ This means that the words of Christ must be understood spiritually, and
not in a crudely sensual way, that is, as if He offered His Flesh for eating
like the meat of animals, being consumed for the satisfaction of a carnal
hunger. It is as if the Lord says, ‘My teaching is not of meats, nor of meals
that nourish the bodily life, but of the Divine Spirit, of grace and eternal
life, which are established in people by grace-filled means.’ ‘The flesh
profiteth little’ – He by no means said this of His own Flesh, but about those
who understand His words in a carnal manner. What does understanding carnally
mean? ‘To look on things in a simple manner without representing anything more
– that is what understanding carnally means. We should not judge in this manner
about the visible, but we must look into all its mysteries with internal eyes.
That is what understanding spiritually means’ (Chrysostom). The Flesh of Christ
separated from His Spirit could not give life, but it is understood, of course,
that in the words of Christ He is not talking about His soulless, lifeless
Flesh, but about His Flesh, indivisibly united with His Divine Spirit… All
three Synoptics describe this in approximately the same way. The Lord
‘received’ that is, ‘took’ bread and blessed and broke it, and distributed it
to the disciples, saying: ‘Take, eat; this is My Body’. ‘Bread’ here is ‘artos’
in Greek, which means ‘risen bread’, leavened with yeast, as opposed to
‘aksimon’, which is the name for the unleavened bread used by the Jews for
Pascha. One must suppose that such bread was deliberately prepared at the
command of the Lord for the institution of the new mystery. The significance of
this bread lies in the fact that it is as it were alive, symbolizing life, as
opposed to unleavened bread, which is dead bread. ‘He blessed’, ‘He gave
thanks’, refer to the verbal expression of gratitude to God the Father, as it
was, for example, at the moment of the resurrection of Lazarus: that which was
asked was fulfilled at the very moment of asking, which is why at that same
moment it became an object of thanksgiving. What the Lord said here is
exceptionally important: ‘This is My Body’: He did not say ‘this’ [in the
masculine gender], that is: ‘this bread’, but ‘this [in the neuter gender],
because at that moment the bread had already ceased to be bread, and had become
the genuine Body of Christ, having only the appearance of bread. The Lord did
not say: ‘This is an image of My Body’, but ‘This is My Body’ (St. Chrysostom,
St. Theophylact). In consequence of the prayer of Christ, the bread acquired
the substance of Body, preserving only the external appearance of bread. ‘Since
we are weak,’ says Blessed Theophylact, ‘and could not endure raw meat, much
less human flesh, it appears as bread to us although it is indeed flesh’.
‘Why,’ asks St. Chrysostom, ‘were the disciples not disturbed on hearing this?
Because before that Christ had told them much that was important about this
mystery (we recall His conversation about the bread that comes down from
heaven) (John 6).’ By the ‘Body of Christ’ is understood the whole physical
substance of the God-man, inseparably united with His soul and Divinity.” (Guide
to the Study of the Sacred Scriptures of the New Testament, vol. I, 1954,
pp. 156, 275).
15.
AN ORTHODOX APPROACH TO ART
To those who, like the present writer,
have derived such pleasure and benefit from the great classics of world art and
literature, such as Bach and Beethoven, Rembrandt, Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky,
it would seem obvious that art, and the artistic faculty, are implanted in man
by God to bring him closer to Himself. At the same time, it is no less evident
that the great mass of contemporary “culture” not only does not bring anyone
closer to God, but is in fact an instrument – a very powerful instrument - of
the devil. How are to understand these antipodes of the artistic spirit? Under
what conditions does art ascend to God, and under what – descend to the devil?
How, and to what extent, can a Christian take part in the cultural life of his
age?
Man
the Artist
God reveals Himself first of all as the Creator – in the words of the
Symbol of faith, the “Maker” or “Poet” (PoihthV) of all things visible and
invisible. In a sense, therefore, man, as being in the image of God, is also a
poet, a creator – not as an incidental or minor aspect of his being, not as a
mere “talent”, but essentially, by virtue of the image of God that is in him.
And he makes things both visible and invisible. The visible things are the
works of his own hands, and his own visible actions. The invisible things are
his inner thoughts and feelings. His aim is to bring all that is his, visible
and invisible, into one harmonious whole which will be a beautiful likeness of
his Creator. It is, with the help of God, to make himself into what the
Russians call a prepodobnij, a being “very like” his Creator – in other
words, a saint. Thus man is a work of art created by God in
order to mirror Himself. But with this difference from “ordinary” art, that the
Artist has given to His creature a share in that artistic work, enabling him to
correct the faults that the fall has introduced into it, to shape himself into
a truly beautiful likeness of God.
The image of God, according to Christian thought, is man's rationality
and freewill, which is made in the image of God's absolute Reason and Freedom.
The likeness of God is the virtuous life, which makes us like God in His
perfect Goodness. We all have the image of God - that is, we are all free and
rational; but sin has destroyed the likeness of God in us. The aim of the
Christian life, therefore, is to restore the original likeness. This process of
restoring the likeness is compared to a painter's restoration of an old
portrait whose original features have become overlaid by dirt.
As St. Gregory of Nyssa writes: "Just as painters transfer
human forms to their pictures by means of certain colours, laying on their copy
the proper and corresponding tints, so that the beauty of the original may be
accurately transferred to the likeness, so… also our Maker also, painting the
portrait to resemble His own beauty, by the addition of virtues, as it were
with colours shows in us His own sovereignty."[184]
That is why prayer, the Christian's main path to Godlikeness, is called
"the science of sciences and art of arts". For, as Colliander writes,
"the artist works in clay or colours, in words or tones; according to his
ability he gives them pregnancy and beauty. The working material of the praying
person is living humanity. By his prayer he shapes it, gives it pregnancy and
beauty: first himself and thereby many others."[185]
Artists themselves, even secular ones, have often sensed this truth.
Thus when the poet W.B. Yeats wrote:
Gather my soul
Into the artifice of eternity,
the word
“artifice” was highly appropriate, insofar as the poet was hoping that his soul
would be worked upon by God in such a way as to make a truly artistic offering,
fit for entrance into eternity.
The Russian religious philosopher S. L.
Frank writes: “Man is in one respect a creature in exactly the same sense as
the rest of the world: as a purely natural being, he is part of the cosmos, a
part of organic nature; in man’s inner life this fact finds expression in the
domain of involuntary mental processes, strivings and appetites, and in the
blind interplay of elemental forces. But as a personality, as a spiritual being
and ‘an image of God’ man differs from all other creatures. While all other
creatures are expressions and embodiments of God’s particular creative ideas,
man is a creature in and through which God seeks to express His own nature as
spirit, personality and holiness. An analogy with human artistic creativeness
will make the point clearer.
“In poetry
(and to some extent, by analogy with it, in other arts) we distinguish between
epic and lyric works, between the artist’s intention to embody some idea
referring to the objective content of being, and his intention to express his
own self, to tell of his own inner world, and as it were to make his
confession. The difference, of course, is merely relative. The poet’s creative
personality involuntarily makes itself felt in the style of an ‘objective’
epic; on the other hand, a lyric outpouring is not simply a revelation of the
poet’s inner life as it actually is, but an artistic transfiguration of it, and
therefore inevitably contains an element of ‘objectivisation’. With this
proviso, however, the difference between the two kinds of poetry holds good.
“Using this analogy we may say that man
is, as it were, God’s ‘lyric’ creation in which He wants ‘to express’ Himself,
while the rest of creation, though involuntarily bearing the impress of its
Creator, is the expression of God’s special ‘objective’ ideas, of His creative
will to produce entities other than Himself. The fundamental point of
difference is the presence or absence of the personal principle with all that
it involves, i.e. self-consciousness, autonomy, and the power of controlling
and directing one’s actions in accordance with the supreme principle of the
Good or Holiness…”[186]
Man as a work of art is like an unfinished
symphony. All the essential elements or content are there, implanted by God at
conception; but the development and elucidation of that content into a perfect
form remains incomplete – and God calls on us to complete it. Without that development
and completion man is a still-born embryo. But man as an artist works on this
unfinished material and brings it to perfection, to a true likeness of God,
“unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”
(Ephesians 4.13). Thus man as artist works on himself as work of art in
order to reveal the harmony latent in God’s original design.
The Motives of the Artist
Why do artists create? There are broadly three answers to this question:
the classical, the romantic and the pornographic. The classical answer is: “to
create a thing of beauty” – and, if the artist is religious, he may add: “to
the glory of God”. The romantic answer is: “to express myself”. It is highly
unlikely that he will add: “to the glory of God”, because it is not at all
obvious, whether he is religious or not, how expressing himself will contribute
to the glory of God. The pornographic “artist” works for commercial gain, and
nothing else. His aim is neither to create a work of beauty, nor to express himself,
but to elicit certain reactions in his clientèle – reactions for which
they are prepared to pay him.
The classical artist is the least self-centred, the least influenced by
fallen emotions and purposes, and the most open to the workings of grace; which
is why the works of classical artists such as Bach and Handel are recommended
by spiritual fathers for people living in the world. It is a different matter
with what we may loosely call “the romantic artist”. The question arises: is
the romantic artist condemned to express either his own fallen self or even the
demonic forces that express themselves in his fallen nature? Regrettably, the
answer must be: yes, to the extent that he subscribes to the romantic ideology
of self-expression. Some romantic artists, such as Beethoven and Bruckner, were
nevertheless able to “classicise” their work, making it capable of being to the
glory of God and not of the artist himself; but they were the exceptions.
For if the artist is honestly expressing his own nature, since that
nature is fallen, he will undoubtedly be expressing its fallenness. As Metropolitan
Anastasy (Gribanovsky) of New York writes: “If you want to look deeper into the
soul of this or that writer, read his works more attentively. In them, as in a
mirror, is clearly reflected his own spiritual character. He almost always
creates his heroes according to his own image and likeness, often putting into
their mouths the confession of his heart.”[187]
But since even the best impulses of the fallen man are more or less corrupted,
such corruption cannot fail to be perceived by the sensitive listener, viewer
or reader.
That is why romantic art is so much better at expressing evil in all its
forms than good. “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh” – and
the heart is corrupt in man from his youth, being “deceitful above all things”.
As Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov wrote, speaking of the romantic artists of his
day: “People who are endowed with talent by nature do not understand why they
have been given this gift, and there is nobody who can explain this to them.
Evil in nature, and especially in man, is so masked that the morbid enjoyment
of it entices the young man, and with the whole warmth of his heart he gives
himself to lies hidden by a mask of truth… Most talents have striven to
represent human passions extravagantly. Evil in every possible variation is
represented by singers, by painters, by music. Human talent in all its power
and unfortunate beauty has developed in the representation of evil; in the
representation of good it is generally weak, pale, strained…”[188]
Nevertheless, writes Metropolitan
Anastasy, “the word has its ethics: the latter demands that it be pure,
honourable and chaste. Where this rule is not observed, where language is the
plaything of passions or chance moods, where it is bought or sold or people
simply lightmindedly take their pleasure in it, there begins the adultery of
the word, that is, the betrayal of its direct and lofty purpose.”[189]
But where the rule is observed, it follows that the verbal expression even of
one’s fallen emotions has value if it is done precisely and honestly, without
any attempt to embellish or glorify them.
Exact expression has a moral value in itself, because it is
telling the truth about oneself. Moreover, the process of expressing an
emotion in art changes it, “objectivising” and in a sense transfiguring it. For
example: if I feel angry, and then write a poem about my anger, the process of
trying to analyze and express my anger in words actually changes the nature of
that anger, masters or controls it in a certain sense. As Shakespeare put it in
Sonnet 77:
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt
find
Those children nurs'd, deliver'd from thy
brain,
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
In
this sense the process of artistic creation is a little like the confession of
sins. Only in confession we do not simply express or control our sins;
confession is not just psychotherapy. We also sorrow over them and judge
them in the sight of God, so that He may destroy them and therefore change
the content of our souls.
Thus one can create good, if not great art from base materials. By
objectifying that baseness and conveying it exactly to his audience, the artist
to a certain degree “takes the sting” out of the baseness. It is in this
context that we can see how the imaginative faculty, which in the ascetic life
is invariably associated with deception, can be used in the service of truth.
Shakespeare described this process in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as
follows:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from
earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's
pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy
nothing
A local
habitation and a name.
Before the imagination has produced its work, the
content of the artist’s mind is “unknown”. But as his work comes into being, so
does the content of his mind become known to him, for now it has “shape” and “a
local habitation and a name”. Thus by giving an
objective, sensual correlate to his emotions, the artist is enabled to know
them and judge them.
This is the paradox of good art, that in
creating images that do not exist in nature it puts up “a mirror to nature”, in
Hamlet’s words. But such good, truthful art can become great only if the fallen
content of the art is not only accurately expressed but also correct judged,
so that a revulsion from it and a striving for something higher is also
conveyed to the listener. If that is achieved, then the material is no longer
base and the work is like David’s 50th Psalm, being not merely the
expression of emotion, and not even psychotherapy, but confession and
repentance.
An example of art that is striving towards confession and repentance,
but does not quite reach it, is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 144:
Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
Which like two angels do suggest me still;
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend,
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each
friend,
I guess one angel in another's hell.
Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in
doubt,
Till my
bad angel fire my good one out.
The artist is here struggling to evaluate his feelings
for two people – and theirs for each other. He recognizes the fallenness of his
emotions, and theirs, which is why he describes in terms of angels and demons,
purity and pride. And yet he fails to evaluate precisely what is going on, and
so the sonnet suffers from a certain obscurity. It is obscure to him, and
therefore also to us. Fallen passion has not yet been mastered sufficiently to
produce great art.
As St. Nectarius of Optina says, in
addition to ordinary art, "there is also greater art - the word of life
and death (the Psalms of David, for example). But the way to this art
lies in the personal struggle of the artist. This is the path of sacrifice, and
only one out of many thousands reach the goal.”[190]
The true
artist seeks the truth about himself. He is like Sophocles’ Oedipus:
Born as I am, I shall be none other than
I am,
and I shall know me who I am.
However, in seeking the truth about himself,
the true artist will inevitably, again like Oedipus, come up against the truth
about the higher powers that rule his nature and his destiny. In other words,
artistic truth, consistently pursued, leads to religious truth.
And so “in the soul of the artist,” says St. Barsanuphius of Optina, “there
is always a streak of monasticism, and the more lofty the artist, the more
brightly that fire of religious mysticism burns in him”.[191]
We see this progression in several of the greatest artists. Thus
Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest, is also his most religious, in
which he seeks to “drown” his “so potent art”, in the far subtler, deeper and
more lawful art of the Creator:
But this rough magic
I here abjure; and, when I have required
Some heavenly music (which even now I do),
To work mine end upon their senses, that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And, deeper than did ever plummet sound,
I’ll drown the book.
And the
very last words he wrote before his voluntary retirement were words on the
ultimate impotence of “pure” art, and the need for God’s mercy:
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so, that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
The
Case of Gogol
This trend is most marked, as we would expect, in Orthodox Christian
writers – in Pushkin, for example, in Gogol, and in Dostoyevsky.
In his later years, under the influence of such men as Metropolitan
Philaret of Moscow, Pushkin came closer to the Orthodox Faith. And both his
poetry and his ideal of art became deeper as a result. Ivan Andreev writes:
“The essence of the ‘theory’ of Pushkin and Zhukovsky (it was not formally
clothed into a system, but but practically and unerringly carried forward in
life and creativity) consisted in the following. The poet had to be completely
free in the process of his creativity. No social or moral or even religious
‘orders’ could be presented to him. But the poet as a person had spiritually to
grow without ceasing, that is, become perfect in a religio-moral sense,
remembering the ideal of Christian morality: ‘Be ye perfect, even as your
Heavenly Father is perfect’. And if he were to grow himself, his creativity
would grow with him.”[192]
The case of Gogol is particularly interesting. The last part of
his life, which was carried out under the influence of the Rzhev Protopriest
Fr. Matthew and then Elder Macarius of Optina[193], saw
him gradually turn away from writing altogether. He came to believe that his
work would be harmful because of the imperfection of its creator; as he put it,
“One should not write about a holy shrine without first having consecrated
one’s soul”; and in 1845 he burned the second half of his masterpiece, Dead
Souls.
But he could not keep away from writing,
which was his life, and in 1851 he began again the second part of Dead Souls,
which was highly praised by those friends to whom he read it… Then, at the end
of 1851, he wrote his Reflections on the Divine Liturgy. However, on the
night of 11th to 12th February, 1852, he burned the manuscript of the second
part of Dead Souls for the second time. Then he made the sign of the
cross, lay down on the sofa and wept…
The next day he wrote to Count A.N.
Tolstoy: “Imagine, how powerful the evil spirit is! I wanted to burn some
papers which had already long ago been marked out for that, but I burned the
chapters of Dead Souls which I wanted to leave to my friends as a
keepsake after my death.”
“What were the true motives,” asks
Andreev, “for the burning of the completed work which Gogol had carefully kept,
accurately putting together the written notebooks and lovingly rebinding them
with ribbon? Why did Gogol burn this work, with which he was himself satisfied,
and which received an objective and very high evaluation from very competent
people who had great artistic taste? Let us try to answer this complex and
difficult question.
“In his fourth letter with regard to Dead
Souls, which was dated ‘1846’ and published in his Correspondence,
Gogol gives an explanation why he for the first time (in 1845) burned the
chapters of the second part of his poem that he had written.
“’The second volume of Dead Souls was
burned because it was necessary. ‘That will not come alive again which does not
die’, says the Apostle. It is necessary first of all to die in order to rise
again. It was not easy to burn the work of five years, which had been produced
with some painful tension, in which every line was obtained only with a
shudder, in which there was much that constituted my best thoughts and occupied
my soul. But all this was burned, and moreover at that moment when, seeing
death before me, I very much wanted to leave at any rate something after me
which would remind people of me. I thank God that He gave me strength to do
this. Immediately the flame bore away the last pages of my book, its
content was suddenly resurrected in a purified and radiant form, like a phoenix
from the ashes, and I suddenly saw in what a mess was everything that I had
previously considered to be in good order. The appearance of the second volume
in that form in which it was would have been harmful rather than useful.’… ‘I
was not born in order to create an epoch in the sphere of literature. My work
is simpler and closer: my work is that about which every person must think
first of all, and not only I. My work is my soul and the firm work of life.’…
“Such was the motivation for the first
burning of Dead Souls in 1845.
“But this motivation also lay at the root
of the second burning of the already completed work – but now much deeper,
depending on the spiritual growth of Gogol.
“In his Confession of an Author
written after Correspondence, Gogol for the first time seriously began
to speak about the possibility of rejecting his writer’s path in the name of a
higher exploit. With striking sincerity he writes (how much it would have cost
him!): ‘It was probably harder for me than for anybody else to reject writing,
for this constituted the single object of all my thoughts, I had abandoned
everything else, all the best enticements of life, and, like a monk, had broken
my ties with everything that is dear to man on earth, in order to think of
nothing except my work. It was not easy for me to renounce writing: some of the
best minutes in my life were those when I finally put on paper that which had
been flying around for a long time in my thoughts; when I am certain to this
day that almost the highest of all pleasures is the pleasure of creation. But,
I repeat again, as an honourable man, I would have to lay down my pen even
then, if I felt the impulse to do so.
“I don’t know whether I have had enough
honour to do it, if I were not deprived of the ability to write: because – I
say this sincerely – life would then have lost for me all value, and not to
write for me would have meant precisely the same as not to live. But there are
no deprivations that are not followed by the sending of a substitute to us, as
a witness to the fact that the Creator does not leave man even for the smallest
moment.’…
“From the last thought, as from a small
seed, during the years of Gogol’s unswerving spiritual growth, there grew the
decision to burn his last finish work and fall silent.
“The burning before his death of the
second part of Dead Souls was Gogol’s greatest exploit, which he wanted
to hide not only from men, but also from himself.
“Three weeks before his death Gogol wrote
to his friend Zhukovsky: ‘Pray for me, that my work may be truly virtuous and
that I may be counted worthy, albeit to some degree, to sing a hymn to the
heavenly Beauty’. The heavenly Beauty cannot be compared with earthly beauty
and is inexpressible in earthly words. That is why ‘silence is the mystery of
the age to come’.
“Before his death Gogol understood this to
the end: he burned what he had written and fell silent, and then died.
“Gogol died on 21 February, 1852.”[194]
Shortly before he died, Gogol expressed the attitude of the truly godly
writer to his work in a letter to Optina: “For Christ’s sake, pray for me. Ask
your respected Abbot and all the brothers, and ask all who pray more diligently
there, to pray for me. My path is hard. My work is of such a kind that without
the obvious help of God each minute and in each hour, my pen cannot move. My
power is not only minimal but it does not even exist without refreshment from
Above…”[195]
The
Inspiration of the Artist: (1) The Demonic
So
is an artist unable to depict any but dead souls, until his own soul has come
to life under the influence of grace? And does the artist, if he is fully
consistent in the pursuit of his calling, inevitably end up in a monastery?
Before answering these questions, it is necessary to inquire more deeply into
the inspiration of the artist.
It has been the conviction of artists since earliest times that in
creating their works they are not merely expressing the contents of their own
souls, but are under the influence of some super-human “muse”. “People often
try,” writes Metropolitan Anastasy, “to approximate genius to holiness as ‘two
phenomena’ which, in the words of one thinker, ‘go beyond the bounds of the
canonical norms of culture’. The kinship between them is based on the fact that
the genius is usually given wings by inspiration that Plato called ‘divine’:
this is the true breathing of the Divinity in man, which distributes its gifts
to each, where and to the degree that it wants. The ancient pagan philosophers,
poets and artists, beginning with Socrates and Phidias, vividly felt within
themselves the presence of this or that higher power overshadowing them during
the time of their creativity. Not in vain did the latter fall face down before
one of his best compositions in reverent emotion. The same feeling was given
also to other highly gifted people in recent times.”[196]
At the same time it must not be forgotten that the “divinity” involved
may be evil as well as good. Therefore the following words of the Moscow
Patriarchal theologian Igumen Ioann (Ekonomtsev) must be taken with a great
deal of caution: “Creativity in essence… is our likeness… to God”. He calls on
us to reject our superstitious fear of the possibly demonic nature of
creativity, for “true creation is always from God, even if the author himself
does not recognize this and even if we are times find it seductive and
dishonourable… The condition of creative ecstasy is a condition of deification,
and in this state it is no longer man who creates, but the God-man”.[197]
Ekonomtsev is here reiterating the false “dogma” of the Romantic era –
the moral and spiritual superiority of the artist. Imagination for the
Romantics was much more than the ability to fantasise, as Jacques Barzun writes:
“Out of the known or knowable, Imagination connects the remote, interprets the
familiar, or discovers hidden realities. Being a means of discovery, it must be
called ‘Imagination of the real’. Scientific hypotheses perform that same
office; they are products of imagination.
“This view of the matter explains why to the Romanticists the arts no
longer figured as a refined pleasure of the senses, an ornament of civilized
existence, but as one form of the deepest possible reflection on life. Shelley,
defending his art, declares poets to be the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the
world’. The arts convey truths; they are imagination crystallized; and as they
transport the soul they reshape the perceptions and possibly the life of the
beholder. To perform this feat requires genius, because it is not a mechanical
act. To be sure, all art makes use of conventions, but to obey traditional
rules and follow set patterns will not achieve that fusion of idea and form
which is properly creation. It was Romanticist discussion that made the word creation
regularly apply to works of art…
“Those Romanticist words, recharged with meaning, helped to establish
the religion of art. That faith served those who could and those could not
partake of the revived creeds. To call the passion for art a religion is not a
figure of speech or a way of praise. Since the beginning of the 19C, art has
been defined again and again by its devotees as ‘the highest spiritual
expression of man’. The dictum leaves no room for anything higher and this
highest level is that which, for other human beings, is occupied by religion.
To 19C worshippers the arts form a treasury of revelations, a body of
scriptures, the makers of this spiritual testament are prophets and seers. And
to this day the fortunate among them are treated as demigods…”[198]
The word “creation” was understood by the Romantics almost literally, as
the activity of God creating ex nihilo. This meant, however, that
Romantic art was not only a path to truth: it created truth. Thus, as
Sir Isaiah Berlin writes, “whatever the differences between the leading
romantic thinkers – the early Schiller and the later Fichte, Schelling and
Jacobi, Tieck and the Schlegels when they were young, Chateaubriand and Byron,
Coleridge and Carlyle, Kierkegaard, Stirner, Nietzsche, Baudelaire – there runs
through their writings a common notion, held with varying degrees of
consciousness and depth, that truth is not an objective structure, independent
of those who seek it, the hidden treasure waiting to be found, but is itself in
all its guises created by the seeker. It is not to be brought into being
necessarily by the finite individual: according to some it is created by a
greater power, a universal spirit, personal or impersonal, in which the individual
is an element, or of which he is an aspect, an emanation, an imperfect
reflection. But the common assumption of the romantics runs counter to the philosophia
perennis in that the answers to the great questions are not to be
discovered so much as to be invented. They are not something found, they are
something literally made. In its extreme Idealistic form it is a vision of the
entire world. In its more familiar conduct – aesthetics, religious, social,
moral, political – a realm seen not as a natural or supernatural order capable
of being investigated, described and explained by the appropriate method –
rational examination or some more mysterious procedure – but as something that
man creates, as he creates works of art; not by imitating, or even obtaining
illumination from, pre-existent models or truths, or by applying pre-existent
truths that are objective universal, eternal unalterable; but by an act of
creation, the introduction into the world of something literally novel – the
unique expression of an individual and therefore unique creative activity,
natural or supernatural, human or in part divine, owing nothing to anything
outside it (in some versions because nothing can be conceived as being outside
it), self-subsistent, self-justified, self-fulfilling. Hence that new emphasis
on the subjective and ideal rather than the objective and the real, on the
process of creation rather than its effects, on motives rather than
consequences; and, as a necessary corollary of this, on the quality of the
vision, the state of mind or soul of the acting agent – purity of heart,
innocence of intention, sincerity of purpose rather than getting the answer
right, that is, accurate correspondence to the ‘given’. Hence the emphasis on
activity, movement that cannot be reduced to static segments, the flow that
cannot be arrested, frozen, analysed without being thereby fatally distorted;
hence the constant protest against the reduction of ‘life’ to dead fragments,
of organism to ‘mere’ mechanical or uniform units; and the corresponding
tendency towards similes and metaphors drawn from ‘dynamic’ sciences – biology,
physiology, introspective psychology – and the worship of music, which, of all
the arts, appears to have the least relation to universally observable, uniform
natural order. Hence, too, celebration of all forms of defiance directed
against the ‘given’ – the impersonal, the ‘brute fact’ in morals or in politics
– or against the static and the accepted, and the value placed on minorities
and martyrs as such, no matter what the ideal for which they suffer.”[199]
By virtue of this common desire to defy the “given”, the identification
of the revolution with romantic art, as Adam Zamoyski notes, was almost
complete. This was especially obvious during the “July Days” revolution in
France in 1830. “’People and poets are marching together,’ wrote the French
critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve in 1830. ‘Art is henceforth on a popular
footing, in the arena with the masses.’ There was something in this. Never
before or since had poetry been so widely and so urgently read, so taken to
heart and so closely studied for hidden meaning. And it was not only in search
of aesthetic or emotional uplift that people did so, for the poet had assumed a
new role over the past two decades. Art was no longer an amenity but a great
truth that had to be revealed to mankind, and the artist was one who had been
called to interpret this truth, a kind of seer. In Russia, Pushkin solemnly
declared the poet’s status as a prophet uttering the burning words of truth.
The American Ralph Waldo Emerson saw poets as ‘liberating gods’ because they
had achieved freedom themselves, and could therefore free others. The pianist
and composer Franz Liszt wanted to recapture the ‘political, philosophical and
religious power’ that he believed music had in ancient times. William Blake
claimed that Jesus and his disciples were all artists, and that he himself was
following Jesus through his art. ‘God was, perhaps only the first poet of the
universe,’ Théophile Gauthier reflected. By the 1820s artists regularly
referred to their craft as a religion, and Victor Hugo represented himself
alternately as Zoroaster, Moses and Christ, somewhere between prophet and God.”[200]
The close affinity of romantic art with the revolution permits us to
speculate whether some of the more famous and powerful works of romantic art
were actually inspired by the devil.
For example, let us take the operas of Wagner, or Stravinsky's The
Rite of Spring. Very fine music, the products of real genius, of that there
can be no doubt. But extremely dangerous spiritually. Speaking very
schematically, we could say that Wagner’s Ring cycle is Nazism in music
(which is why Hitler loved it so), just as The Rite of Spring is
Bolshevism in music (Lenin's favourite music was Beethoven's Appassionata
sonata, but he thought it was not useful, because it made one want to stroke
people's heads!).
Much of modern pop music is satanic in origin. Fortunately, however, it
is also bad art, so it has less influence on those who love good art - which is
one very good reason for educating people in good art. However, bad art of this
kind can still influence people at a subconscious level, because it introduces
the demons. We are seeing terrifying examples of this in the West today.
The children of an American missionary in Africa were once playing pop
music with the window open. Soon the local witch doctor visited the missionary
and asked him: "I did not know that you had renounced your God,
Christ." "But I haven't." "But the music you are playing is
the music we use to call up our gods..." The missionary immediately went
and destroyed the records his children were playing…
Sometimes even the most "spiritual" and classical of music can
be corrupting. For example, Mozart's Requiem. Everyone agrees that this
is beautiful, profound music. But the emotion it conveys is that of a soul in
despair, a soul facing death and hell - and Mozart died while composing it. We
know that Mozart did not live a good life, and that his last opera, The
Magic Flute, which was composed just before his Requiem, was
actually a Masonic opera. So he had good reason to fear death and what awaited
him after death. So the emotion is deep, and the expression of it perfect, as
we would expect from such a master. But is it good for our souls to experience
feelings of despair, even if they are artistically controlled and mastered?
Sometimes even “Orthodox” music may fall short insofar as it elicits
fallen emotions in the listener. Thus St. Barsanuphius of Optina said of one
setting of the Paschal Canon of St. John of Damascus, “that kind of melody can
evoke only tears of despair, rather than a joyful state. No, sing it the
ancient way.”[201]
As we have seen, art is good as art (if not in any other way) if it is the exact, truthful expression of the emotional contents of the artist's mind, whether the content itself is good or bad, profound or superficial. It is great if the expression, or form, is accurate, and the content is good rather than bad, profound rather than superficial. But there is also art that is bad as art in that it fails to express its content clearly. And there is art that is good as art but evil in every other way because its content is evil, and its inspiration – from the devil.
The Inspiration of the Artist:
(2) The Divine
The Holy Scriptures tell us that David was able to drive away the evil
spirit from Saul by playing his harp (I Kings (I Samuel) 16.23).
Again, when King Joaram of Israel, King Joasaphat of Judah and the king of Edom
were undertaking a common expedition against the Moabites, they asked the
Prophet Elisha to reveal to them the will of God concerning the outcome of the
war. “Bring me a minstrel,” said the prophet. “And it came to pass that when
the minstrel played, the hand of the Lord came upon him” (IV Kings (II
Kings) 3.15).[202] Again,
“one of the greatest contemplative minds of Christianity, St. Gregory the
Theologian, was at the same time a religious poet. His verses are mainly filled
with a lyrical mood. ‘Exhausted by illness,’ he writes, ‘I found in poetry joy,
like an old swan talking to himself in the sounds of his wings.’ At the same
time he wanted through his poetic compositions to give ‘young people’ and all
those who most of all love ‘the art of words as it were a pleasant remedy,
something attractive and useful in persuasion’.”[203]
These examples show art can be mixed with grace; it expresses not simply
the contents of a fallen soul, but a soul striving for God and placing everything
“under God’s gaze”. For, as St. Nectarius of Optina said: "One can
practise art like anything else, but everything must be done as under God's
gaze.”[204]
Now this would seem to contradict the word of St. Barsanuphius of
Optina: “Some say that science and art, especially music, regenerate a man,
granting him lofty aesthetic delight, but this is not true. Under the influence
of art, music, singing, etc., a man does indeed experience delight, but it is
powerless to regenerate him.”[205] Again,
replying to the composer Paschalov who said that music tore him away from
everything earthly and he experienced great sweetness listening to the great
classical composers, the elder said: “Nevertheless, this aesthetic sweetness
cannot take the place of religion.”[206]
But there is no real contradiction here. Art in
and of itself, as simply the expression in words or colours or sounds of a
mental content that produces aesthetic delight, cannot regenerate the soul, and
cannot take the place of religion. But if that art is the expression of confession
and praise, of prayer and thanksgiving, then it is no longer merely
art, but religious art, and partakes of the regenerative grace of God.
Even in the writings of secular poets we find inspired works
whose inspiration is godly.
Consider, for example, Shakespeare’s famous Sonnet
116:
Let
me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit
impediments. Love is not love
Which
alters when it alteration finds,
Or
bends with the remover to remove:
O,
no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That
looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It
is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose
worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s
not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within
his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love
alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But
bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If
this be error, and upon me proved,
I
never writ, nor no man ever loved.
It is not certain whether Shakespeare is writing here
from a personal experience of the true, undying love he describes, or his
imagination of it. In any case, his sympathy for this ideal is clearly
unfeigned, and gives to the whole sonnet a note of clarity, profundity and
truth.
Or consider
Fyodor Tiutchev’s “Our Age”, in which he describes the unbelief of the
intelligentsia contemporary to him from the point of view of a true believer:
Not flesh, but spirit is today corrupt,
And man just pines away despairingly.
He strives for light, while sitting in the
dark,
And having found it, moans rebelliously.
From lack of faith dried up, in fire tossed,
The unendurable he suffers now.
He knows right well his soul is lost, and
thirsts
For faith – but ask for it he knows not how.
Ne’er will he say, with prayers and tears
combined,
However deep before the closed door his
grief:
“O let me in, my God, O hear my cry!
Lord, I believe! Help Thou mine unbelief!”
A famous example of secular artistic inspiration bordering on the sacred
and Divine is Dostoyevky’s “Pushkin Speech”, which took place exactly fifty
years after the “July Days” and represented the Divine opposite of that demonic
manifestation. Metropolitan Anastasy writes: “However accustomed people are to
crawling in the dust, they will be grateful to every one who tears them away
from the world below and bears them up on his powerful wings to the heavens. A
man is ready to give up everything for a moment of pure spiritual joy and bless
the name of him who is able to strike on the best strings of his heart. Here it
is necessary to search out the secret of the amazing success which the famous
speech of Dostoyevsky at the Pushkin festival in Moscow one had. The genius
writer himself later described the impression produced by him upon his
listeners in a letter to his wife: ‘I read,’ he writes, ‘loudly, with fire. Everything
that I wrote about Tatiana was received with enthusiasm. But when I gave forth
at the end about the universal union of men, the hall was as it were in
hysterics. When I had finished, I will not tell you about the roars and sobs of
joy: people who did not know each other wept, sobbed, embraced each other and
swore to be better, not to hate each other from then on, but to love each
other. The order of the session was broken: grandes dames, students, state
secretaries – they all embraced and kissed me.’ How is one to call this mood in
the auditorium, which included in itself the best flower of the whole of
educated society, if not as a condition of spiritual ecstasy, to which, as it
seemed, our cold intelligentsia was least of all capable? By what power did the
great writer and knower of hearts accomplish this miracle, forcing all his
listeners without distinction of age or social position to feel themselves
brothers and pour together in one sacred and great upsurge? He attained it, of
course, not by the formal beauty of his speech, which Dostoyevsky usually did
not attain, but the greatness of the proclaimed idea of the universal
brotherhood, instilled by the fire of great inspiration. This truly prophetic
word regenerated the hearts of people, forcing them to recognize the true
meaning of life; the truth made them if only for one second not only free, but
also happy in their freedom.”[207]
Here we see the transition from aesthetic to religious emotion. The
difference between the two is similar to the difference between a concert-hall
and a church. Religious emotion unites one man with everyone else in the church
in a way that never happens in the concert-hall. In the concert-hall, you may
be deeply moved, and your neighbour may be moved, too, so that you both
communicate in a certain sense with the soul of the composer. But the
communication with the composer is one-way; you do not communicate with other
listeners; and, of course, God may or may not be in the emotion communicated.
Orthodox art, however, - and we may call Dostoyevsky’s “Pushkin Speech” a
special kind of Orthodox art - is much more than one-way communication; it is living
communion, making the hearts of the listeners one both with each other and
with the Divine Composer.
The word “culture” comes from “cult”, reminding us that the original
context of cultural productions was religious worship.[208] And it
is in religious worship that art, music, architecture, poetry all find their
true home and most potent expression. And most of all, of course, in the
worship of the true religion, Orthodox Christianity. Thus “when the holy
Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir is likened to ‘a merchant seeking the
good pearl’, this comparison in relation to him acquires an especially deep
meaning. Like a wise inventor, he searched for a long time for the true and
pure and valuable pearl, trying out various religions until he found it in
Eastern Orthodoxy. He determined the value of this pearl by the sign of its
beauty. In the latter was revealed for him and for his ambassadors the
superiority of the Orthodox Faith, and this, of course, was not only the
perception of external aesthetics, in which Byzantium was so rich, giving in
its art a synthesis of the best artistic achievements of East and West, but above
all of the spiritual beauty which shone from under the external forms of the
majestic ecclesiastical art of Byzantium. Both in the church singing, and in
the iconography, and in the architecture of the Orthodox Church there is a
special rhythm which serves to reflect the eternal heavenly harmony. The Church
masters not only had to sharpen their work, but also their very spirit, in
order rise to the heights, to hear there the heavenly music and bring it down
to earth. Impressed upon all of our ecclesiastical splendour, to this day it
serves as an immediate revelation of the truth of Orthodoxy. Its language is
much more understandable for everyone than the language of abstract theological
concepts, and through it first of all the Orthodox Church realizes her mission
in the world.”[209]
Conclusion:
The Music of the Soul
Only God is a true Creator, in that only
He can create out of nothing. Man is a creator only derivatively, in that he
creates out of something already there, rearranging and reforming elements that
have already been created by God. And yet in that rearranging and reforming of
his nature, a nature distorted and disturbed by sin, lies the whole meaning of
his existence. For to the extent that he succeeds in reforming his created
nature in accordance with the Divine Archetype, man allows the Uncreated Light
of God Himself to shine through his nature. Man the artist becomes man the
supreme work of art, man the likeness of God.
The purpose of art in its original, true context and designation is to help man in the work of harmonising the warring elements of his soul, to find “the music of the soul”. For “rest for the soul,” says St. Barsanuphius of Optina, “equals blessedness, which equals music, the harmony of all the powers of the soul.” “The instrument [of the soul] is there, the piano is open and ready, a row of white keys is before us, but there is no piano player. Who is the Player? God. We must labor ascetically, and the Lord will act according to His promise: ‘We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him’ (John 14.23). He will come unto us and play our instrument (Batiushka tapped me lightly on the chest).”[210]
Since the Renaissance, and especially since the Romantic movement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, art has been abstracted from its original function and context in religion. This has allowed a new, often demonic content to enter into it. Nevertheless, insofar as secular art strives towards harmony (which, unfortunately, cannot be said of much modern art), it can help the soul that is sunk in disharmony and spiritual warfare to a limited extent.
However, at a certain point, when the soul is already beginning to hear the sounds of the Divine Harmony consistently, it will lose its need and taste for the harmonies of secular art. Thus St. Brendan the Navigator was once seen putting cotton into his ears at a concert of the Irish bards. When asked why he did this, he said: “If you had heard the music of the angels, you would not delight in this music.” Again, St. Barsanuphius said of himself: “When I was in the world, I loved opera. Good, serious music gave me pleasure and I always had a subscription – a seat in the orchestra. Later on, when I learned of different, spiritual consolations, the opera ceased to interest me. When a valve of the heart closes the receptivity of worldly enjoyments, another valve opens for the reception of spiritual joys...”[211]
For the man for whom this other valve has opened, only the art of the
Orthodox Church, and the music of prayer, will be delightful. “This music [of
prayer],” says St. Barsanuphius of Optina, “is often spoken of in the Psalms:
‘The Lord is my strength and my song…’ (Ps. 117.14); I will sing and I
will chant unto the Lord’ (Ps. 26.7); ‘I will chant to my God as long as
I have my being’ (Ps. 103.35). This singing is inexpressible. In order
to receive it people go to monasteries, and they do receive it: one after five
years, another after ten, a third after fifteen, and a fourth after forty. May
God grant you, too, to receive it; at least you’re on the road to it.” [212]
However, on the path to this consistent dwelling in the music of the
soul, there will be days when even the music and words of the Orthodox Church
fail to move us. For, as Shakespeare put it in The Merchant of
Venice:
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
And so
we have to work ascetically on ourselves in order to feel the grace of the
words or music in our souls deeply and constantly.
The Lord said to the Pharisees: "Why do ye not understand my
speech? Because ye cannot hear My word... He that is of God heareth God's
words" (John 8.43, 47). God's artistic word works on the soul only
if the soul itself has been made receptive to it, refashioned in accordance
with His likeness, the likeness of Him Who is the Maker-"Poet" of
heaven and earth. We have to have the word in us if we are to hear the Word
coming from outside us; we have to have harmony in our souls if we are to hear
the Harmony of the heavens.
(August 1/14, 2004; adapted and expanded
from "Letter to a Nun on Music", published in Orthodox America,
November-December, 1996)
16. A REPLY TO DAVID BERCOT ON THE HOLY ICONS
David Bercot is a continuing
Anglican who has produced a number of cassettes on spiritual themes. In several
of these, he criticizes the position of the Orthodox Church from the point of
view of what he considers to be the classical Anglican via media – that
is, a position halfway between Protestantism, on the one hand, and Orthodoxy
and Catholicism, on the other. Bercot claims that he was very sympathetic to
Orthodoxy, and was even preparing to join the Orthodox Church, but was put off
by the attitude of the Orthodox to the Mother of God and the holy icons, which
he considers to be clearly contrary to the teaching of the Pre-Nicene Church.
The following is a reply to Bercot in defence of the Orthodox teaching on
icons.
My reaction to Bercot’s fourth tape, on icons, is similar to my reaction
to his lecture on the Mother of God. He fails to understand that in the first
three centuries of the Church’s life, paganism was still the dominant religion,
so that certain doctrines which were part of the apostolic tradition, but which
the pagans would almost inevitably misinterpret if presented to them before
they had acquired a firm faith in Christ, had to be “played down” or “kept
under wraps” in the public teaching of the Church until paganism was finally
defeated in the fourth century. One such doctrine was the Orthodox veneration
of the Mother of God; another was the Orthodox veneration of icons, which
pagans clearly were likely to confuse with their own worship of idols.
Let me begin with Bercot’s argument that since the distinction between proskynesis
(veneration, obeisance, bowing) and latreia (worship) is not found in
the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint, and since
the prohibition of idol-worship in the Second Commandment uses the word proskynesis
rather than latreia, the distinction cannot be used to justify the
veneration, as opposed to the worship, of icons.
It is true that the verbal distinction between proskynesis
and latreia is not clearly made in either the Old or the New Testaments.
But this in no way proves that the real distinction between the honour
and veneration shown to holy people and objects, on the one hand, and the
absolute worship given to God alone, on the other, does not exist and is not
implicit in the sacred text. Thus in the last book of the Bible, Revelation,
while the words latreia and prokynesis are used, as always,
indiscriminately to refer to the worship of God and the veneration of holy
people, the angel is careful to admonish John not to treat him, the angel, as
he would God, Whom alone he is commanded to worship (22.9).
Holy Apostles Convent writes: “The proskynesis given by a
Christian to an icon is ontologically the same reverence he ought to give his
fellow Christians, who are images of Christ; but it is ontologically different
from the latreia which is due to God alone. It was St. John of Damascus
who developed the word latreia to indicate the absolute worship of which
only God is worthy. He describes the relative veneration given to the Theotokos,
saints, or sacred objects (the Cross, relics, icons, books) by the word proskynesis.
At the writing of the Septuagint such distinctions were not strictly observed. Latreia
was seldom used and proskynesis was used to describe everything from
worship of God to paying respect to a friend. Although modern usage of these
terms (worship and veneration, etc.) are often interchanged as synonyms, it has
been critical to maintain their exact Orthodox use, consistent with the
explanation of St. John of Damascus, since the iconoclast controversy. Although
St. John the Theologian freely uses both ‘worship’ (latreia) and ‘make
obeisance’ (proskynesis) with relation to God, he never speaks of
offering ‘worship’ (latreia) for anyone or anything outside of the Deity
(cf. Rev. 7.15, 22.3). Note that the KJV translates the Greek word prokynesis
with ‘worship’ and latreia with ‘serve’. (Cf. St. John of Damascus, On
the Divine Images, 9-11).”[213]
It quite often takes time for real theological distinctions to acquire
precise verbal equivalents. Thus the early Fathers made little distinction
between ousia (essence) and hypostasis (person); but from the
later fourth century such a distinction became essential to the development of
precision in Trinitarian and Christological theology. In the same way, the
Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council made use of the clear distinction
made by St. John of Damascus between proskynesis and latreia in
order to expose the falsehood of the iconoclast heresy. As Bercot rightly says,
we must not become prisoners of words, but penetrate to the realities behind
the words. And the fact is that, whatever imprecisions of terminology may have
existed at that time, the Old Testament Jews most certainly did make a
practical distinction between veneration and worship. They venerated and bowed
down to certain physical objects and people, while worshipping God alone. And
they neither venerated nor worshipped the idols of the pagans.
The Jews’ veneration of certain holy objects was central to their spiritual
life, and was never at any time confused with idolatry. Was not the ark
considered to be holy and the dwelling-place of God? And did not God confirm
the veneration in which it was held by striking dead Uzzah, who had handled it
without sufficient reverence? Again, did not Abraham and David bow down to men
and angels? And did not God command Solomon to build a temple with images in
it, so that “he overlaid the cherubim with gold and carved all the walls of the
house round about with carved figures of cherubim and palm trees and open
flowers, in the inner and outer rooms” (I Kings 6.28-29)? And yet, if
Bercot is right, and we cannot make any distinction between worship and
veneration, this must be counted as impious idol-worship!
God not only blessed sacred art – that is, art whose products were
deemed to be sacred – in the Old Testament. He clearly attached great
importance to it by sending down grace upon the artist. Thus of Belzalel He
said: “I have filled him with the Spirit of God with ability and intelligence,
with knowledge and all craftsmanship to devise artistic designs, to work in
gold, silver and bronze, in cutting stones for setting and in carving wood, for
work in every craft” (Exodus 31.2-4). According to tradition, Christ
Himself sent an image of Himself to King Abgar of Edessa, who treated it with
great reverence. In the early Church, grace was given to specially commissioned
artists, such as the Evangelist Luke, who painted several icons that have
survived to the present day. According to British tradition, St. Joseph of
Arimathaea brought an icon of the Mother of God to Glastonbury, where it
remained until it was destroyed by Protestant iconoclasts in the 1520s. We know
from Eusebius’ History of the Church that the woman with an issue of
blood whom Christ healed built a statue of Him which worked miracles for many
years and was never condemned as idolatry by the Church. Archaeological
excavations have unearthed Christian iconography from very early times. And of
course the Roman catacombs are full of icons.
This evidence shows that in the early Church the tradition of
iconography was present in embryo. What prevented the embryo from growing
quickly into the fully mature adult of later Byzantine iconography was not any
theological objection to sacred art as such, but, as we have said, the still
living tradition of pagan idolatry. If we read the Wisdom of Solomon,
chapters 12 to 15, we see that pagan idolatry involved: (i) the worship of
inanimate objects as gods; (ii) the rejection of the true and living God; and
(iii) various kinds of immorality (child sacrifice, temple prostitution)
associated with the cult of the false gods. On all three counts, the veneration
of icons must be sharply distinguished from pagan idolatry: (i) icons are
neither gods, nor worshipped. (ii) they lead us closer to, rather than away
from, the true God; and (iii) they have no connection with immoral practices,
but rather stimulate purity and chastity. And yet there is no doubt that if the
iconoclasts of the 8th and 9th centuries, and the
Protestants of the 16th century, failed to understand the
distinction between icon-veneration and idol-worship, there must have been a
similar temptation for pagan converts to the Faith in the early centuries.
“Just because the pagans used [images] in a foul way,” writes St. John
of Damascus, “that is no reason to object to our pious practices. Sorcerers and
magicians use incantations and the Church prays over catechumens, the former
conjure up demons while the Church calls upon God to exorcise the demons.
Pagans make images of demons which they address as gods, but we make images of
God incarnate, and of His servants and friends, and with them we drive away the
demonic hosts.”[214]
On one point, however, the Orthodox Christians and the pagans are,
paradoxically, closer to each other than either are to the iconoclasts and
Protestants. For both agree, contrary to the latter, that matter can become
spirit-bearing. An image can become a channel of the Holy Spirit, as in
Christian iconography, or a channel of the evil spirit, as in witchcraft. The
spittle of Christ, the shadow of Peter and the handkerchief of Paul all worked
miracles because the Holy Spirit was in them; and all the sacraments involve
material objects – water, oil, bread and wine. Similarly, the objects used by
Satanists and witches also work “miracles” through the evil spirit that is in
them; and their “sacraments”, too, always have a material element. The
Protestants, on the other hand, while not rejecting sacraments altogether,
diminish their significance and the material element in them. Thus whereas the
Lord clearly decrees that baptism is “through water and the spirit”, “born
again Christians” usually dispense with the “water” part altogether, thinking
they can receive the Spirit without it.
Since we are made of soul and body, the Word took on a soul and a body
in order to save the whole of us – soul and body. Therefore the flesh and
matter are no barrier to worship in the Spirit: rather, flesh and matter must
become spiritualized, filled with the Spirit, in order to commune with the
immaterial. And to this end the Flesh of the incarnate of God is given to us in
the Eucharist.
It follows that it is not the materiality of icons as such that is
critical, but the use to which they are put. The pagans, as St. John of
Damascus said, use material images for evil uses, to commune with evil spirits.
The Orthodox, however, use them for good uses, to commune with the One True
God.
Bercot is guilty of serious distortion in his discussion of the Seventh
Ecumenical Council. He says, for example, that almost all the Christians in the
eighth century were Christians in name only. What an astonishingly sweeping and
unjust judgement! Since he is an Anglican, let me point out that the seventh
and eighth centuries were the golden age of the English Church, an age of the
most abundant sanctity which has not been equaled English history since then.
And as the Venerable Bede witnesses, icons were definitely used her worship.
Thus when St. Augustine and his fellow missionaries set foot for the first time
on English soil, they were preceded by an icon of Christ; and St. Benedict
Biscop imported icons from Rome to Northumbria.
Again, Bercot claims that the Church at that time was completely
dominated by the emperors – a false cliché which is proved by the simple
fact that vast numbers of Christians, bishops, priests, monks and laypeople,
were driven into exile or tortured precisely because they refused to accept the
emperor’s iconoclasm. Let him read the bold language St. Theodore the Studite
used to the emperor of his time – a boldness not, sadly, employed by the
Anglicans against that other iconoclast “emperor” and founder of the Anglican
church, Henry VIII.
Again, he claims that the icon-venerators were just as cruel to their
opponents as the iconoclasts to them. In fact, an unprejudiced reading of the
history of the time makes it clear that the persecutions were directed
exclusively against the icon-venerators, and were every bit as cruel as those
of the pagan Roman emperors. This shows that an evil spirit possessed the
iconoclasts, just as an evil spirit possessed the Protestant Anglicans who
destroyed the monasteries and images and relics of the saints in
sixteenth-century England.
The veneration of icons was the common practice of the whole Church in
both East and West for the first millennium of Christian history at least.
Consider, for example, the thoroughly Orthodox reasoning of the English Abbot
Aelfric, who lived in about 1000: “Truly Christians should bow down to the holy
cross in the Saviour’s name, because we do not possess the cross on which He
suffered. However, its likeness is holy, and we always bow down to it when we
pray, to the mighty Lord Who suffered for men. And that cross is a memorial of
His great Passion, holy through Him, even though it grew in a forest. We always
honour it, to honour Christ, Who freed us by it with His love. We always thank
Him for that in this life.”[215]]
Iconoclasm is a recurrent temptation in the
history of the Church. Since the devil hates God, he hates all those who are
filled with the grace of God, and all those holy things which are channels of
His grace. That is why he inspired the Muslims and the iconoclasts, the
Bogomils and the Albigensians, the Protestants and the Masons and the Soviets,
to destroy icons and crosses and relics and churches. And that is why the
Church anathematizes the iconoclasts and iconoclasm as a most dangerous heresy.
For let us not think that we do God service while destroying those things in
which God dwells and through which He helps us to come close to Him. If we
think that God cannot dwell in material things, or work miracles through
holy icons and relics, then by implication we are denying the reality of the
Incarnation, in which God not only worked through matter, but became
flesh. That is why the main argument in defence of icons is based on the
reality of the Incarnation. If the immaterial Word was made flesh, and seen and
touched, why cannot we make images of His human body, and touch and kiss them?
And if the burning of the national flag is considered treason by those who love
their country, why should not the destroying or dishonouring of the holy icons
be considered blasphemy by those who love their Lord?
As St. Basil the Great says, “the honour accorded to the image passes to
its prototype”, so that the icon is a kind of door (St. Stephen the Younger)
opening up into the world of the Spirit. This is not a pagan principle, as
Bercot claims; and if the pagans have something analogous, it only goes to show
that in this, as in many other ways, false religion simply apes the true. To
put it in a more philosophical way, we may say that this is the principle of the
symbolical or analogical nature of reality, whereby lower-order
realities reflect and participate in higher-order realities, as the light of
the moon reflects and participates in the light of the sun. The Catholic West
began to lose this symbolical understanding of reality when Charlemagne
rejected the veneration of icons at the council of Frankfurt in 794; and the
Protestant West lost it entirely when it replaced symbolic truth with
scientific truth, the appreciation of qualities with the analysis of quantities.
In this respect, the Protestant-scientific revolution represents not so much
the triumph of reason over superstition as the beginning of a descent into
something even lower than paganism, as Dostoyevsky pointed out - the descent into atheism, the complete
loss of faith in spiritual reality. Correspondingly, the return to
icon-veneration in the West would represent the beginning of a return to true
faith, the faith that ascends in and through material things to the immaterial
God.
I
end with a quotation from a holy Father of the Pre-Nicene Church, Hieromartyr
Methodius, Bishop of Patara: “Even though the images of the emperor are not all
made from gold or silver or precious metals, they are always honoured by
everyone. Men are not honouring the materials from which they are made; they do
not choose to honour one image more than another because it is made from a more
valuable substance; they honour the image whether it is made of cement or
bronze. If you should mock any of them, you will not be judged differently for
mocking plaster or gold, but for showing contempt to your king and lord. We
make golden images of God’s angels, principalities and powers, to give glory
and honour to Him.”[216]
June 20 / July 3, 2004.
St. Methodius of Patara.
17. THE
ICON OF THE HOLY TRINITY
In recent years, the icon of the Holy Trinity in which the Father is
portrayed as an old man with white hair, the Son as a young man, and the Holy
Spirit in the form of a dove, has been characterized as "deception"
and "cacodoxy" by some Orthodox writers, especially the
Greek-American George Gabriel.
The arguments Gabriel brings forward are essentially three:-
1. It is impossible to see or
portray the Divine nature. Only the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy
Trinity, can be portrayed on icons, for He took on visible, tangible flesh in
His Incarnation. Therefore the portrayal of the Father, Who has not become
incarnate, is forbidden and speedily leads to the heresy of the
circumscribability of the Divinity.
2. The icon of the Holy Trinity in
question is supposed to portray the Prophet Daniel's vision of "The
Ancient of Days", the old man with white hair being a depiction of the
figure called "The Ancient of Days" (Daniel 7). However, the
Ancient of Days, according to the Tradition and hymnology of the Church, is
Christ, not the Father. Therefore the icon is based on a false interpretation
of the prophetic text.
3. The icon of the Holy Trinity in
question is a western invention, and has been forbidden by the Councils of
Moscow in 1666 and Constantinople in 1780. These councils are authentic
witnesses of Holy Tradition. Therefore their decisions should be respected and
the icon condemned.
In this article I propose to show that these arguments are false and
should be rejected. In doing so I shall rely largely on the excellent work, The
Holy Trinity in Orthodox Iconography, produced (in Greek) by Holy Nativity
skete, Katounakia, Mount Athos. The present article is essentially a synopsis
of the main arguments of this work together with a few observations of my own.
*
Let us take each of Gabriel's arguments in turn.
1. Both Gabriel and his Orthodox opponents are agreed, in accordance
with the unanimous Tradition of the Orthodox Church, that the Divine Nature
cannot be portrayed in icons. Gabriel then proceeds to assume, without any good
reason, that the portrayal of "the Ancient of Days" in the icon of
the Holy Trinity is an attempt to portray the Divine Nature. This is false.
The icon is a portrayal, not of the Divine Nature of the Father, but of
His Divine Person. Moreover, it depicts Him, not realistically, but
symbolically, not as He really is, in His Divine Nature, which is forever
unattainable and undepictable, but only as He appeared to the prophet in a
symbolic form or image for the sake of our understanding. The Son really became
a man, so the depiction of the Son as a man in icons is a realistic depiction.
The Father never became a man, so the depiction of Him as a man in icons is a symbolic,
not a realistic depiction. In exactly the same way, the Holy Spirit never
became a dove, so the depiction of Him as a dove in icons is not a realistic,
but a symbolic depiction of Him, being a depiction of Him as He appeared in a
symbolic form or image to St. John the Forerunner in the Baptism of Christ in
the Jordan.
Two critical distinctions are implicit here: (a) between nature and
person, and (b) between the Divine Nature (or Essence) and Energies.
(a) Icons, as St. Theodore the Studite teaches are representations, not
of natures, but of persons existing in natures. Act 6 of the Seventh Ecumenical
Council states: "An icon is not like the original with respect to essence,
but with respect to hypostasis". St. Theodore put it as follows: The image
is always dissimilar to the prototype with regard to essence (kat’ ousian), but it is similar to it with
regard to essence (kaq’ upostasin) and name (kat’ onoma).[217]
Thus an icon of Christ is an image of a Divine Person in His human
nature, which is visible to the bodily eye; and the icons of the angels are
images of the persons of the angels in their angelic nature, which is invisible
to the bodily eye. Nevertheless, God has condescended to allow the prophets and
the saints to see the angels in bodily form, and it is these visions that we
depict in the icons of the angels. For, as Vladimir Lossky writes, “it is not
nature which sees nature, but person who sees person”.[218]
(b) The distinction between the Divine Nature (or Essence) and Energies
was clearly worked out by St. Gregory Palamas. Both the Nature and the Energies
of God are common to all Three Persons. Only the Divine Nature is forever
inaccessible to man (like the centre of the sun), while the Energies are God
coming out of Himself, as it were, and making Himself communicable to men (like
the rays of the sun).
The visions of God by the Old Testament Prophets are visions of the
Divine Energies of God, not of His Essence. Thus St. Gregory Palamas,
commenting on the Patriarch Jacob's words: "I have seen God face to face
[or person to person], and my soul has been saved", writes: "Let [the
cacodox] hear that Jacob saw the face of God, and not only was his life not
taken away, but as he himself says, it was saved, in spite of the fact that God
says: 'None shall see My face and live'. Are there then two Gods, one having
His face accessible to the vision of the saints, and the other having His face
beyond all vision? Perish the impiety! The face of God which is seen is the
Energy and Grace of God condescending to appear to those who are worthy; while
the face of God that is never seen, which is beyond all appearance and vision
let us call the Nature of God."
Abraham's vision at the oak of Mamre was likewise a vision of God, not
in His Essence, but in His Energies. One or two Western Fathers (for example,
St. Justin the Martyr) say that Abraham saw Christ and two angels. But the
Greek Fathers and St. Augustine say that he saw the Holy Trinity in the form of
three young men or angels. They all agree that Abraham saw God. Thus St.
Gregory the Theologian says that "the great Patriarch saw God not as God
but as a man". Again St. John Chrysostom writes that God appeared to
Abraham, but not with "the nature of a man or an angel", but "in
the form of a man". And St. John of Damascus, the great defender of the
icons, writes: "Abraham did not see the Nature of God, for no one has seen
God at any time, but an icon of God, and falling down he venerated it."
As the True Orthodox Fathers of Katounakia aptly put it: "There is
no icon representing the Nature or Essence of God, but there is an icon of the
'icon' of God." (p. 30).
2. The term "Ancient of Days", like "God", is
applicable to all Three Persons of the Holy Trinity. Therefore there is no
contradiction between allowing that Christ can be called "the Ancient of
Days", as in the hymnology for the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord, and
believing that "the Ancient of Days" in the vision of Daniel is God
the Father. Hieromartyr Hippolytus of Rome (P.G. 10, 37), St. Athanasius
the Great (V.E.P. 35, 121), St. John Chrysostom (P.G. 57, 133; E.P.E.
8, 640-2), St. Gregory Palamas (Homilies 14, E.P.E. 9, 390), St. Cyril
of Alexandria (P.G. 70, 1461), St. Symeon of Thessalonica (Interpretation
of the Sacred Symbol, p. 412), and St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite (The
Rudder, Zakynthos, 1864, p. 320; Chicago, 1957, p. 420) all agree in
identifying “the Ancient of Days” in the vision of Daniel with God the Father.
They interpret the vision as portraying the Ascension of Christ ("the Son
of Man") to God the Father ("the Ancient of Days"), from Whom He
receives the Kingdom and the Glory, together with the power to judge the living
and the dead. Thus St. Cyril of Alexandria writes: “Behold, again Emmanuel is
manifestly and clearly seen ascending to God the Father in heaven… The Son of
Man has appeared in the flesh and reached the Ancient of Days, that is, He has
ascended to the throne of His eternal Father and has been given honor and
worship…” (Letter 55, in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 77, Washington:
CUA Press, 1987, pp. 28, 29). There are some Holy Fathers speak in favour of
the Ancient of Days being Christ in this vision (see The Lives of the Holy
Prophets, Holy Apostles Convent, Buena Vista, 1998, pp. 407-408).
Nevertheless, Gabriel's interpretation of this vision as a prophecy of the
Incarnation, "the Son of Man" being the human nature of Christ and
"the Ancient of Days" His Divine Nature, is difficult to support in
that the two figures in the vision clearly represent Persons, not Natures, and
the attempt to represent the two natures of Christ in separation, as if they
each had an independent enhypostatic existence, smacks of Nestorianism. That is
why we prefer the interpretation that the Ancient of Days in this vision is the
Father.
The fact that in Revelation 1 Christ is portrayed with white hair
does not undermine this interpretation. Christ as an old man symbolically
signifies His antiquity, the fact that He has existed from the beginning. Christ
as a young man is a realistic image of His Incarnation as a man and a symbolic
image of His agelessness as God. These images together teach us that Christ God
passes unchanging through all ages from the beginning to the end. Revelation
also portrays Christ as a lamb, which signifies that He was slain for the sins
of the world. The Father and the Spirit also have different symbolical
representations. The Father is represented visually as a man (in Isaiah,
Daniel, Stephen's vision in Acts and in Revelation) and aurally as a voice from
heaven (at the Baptism of Christ and in John 12.28). Similarly the
Spirit is represented as a bird (in Genesis 1 and at the Baptism of
Christ) and as a wind and tongues of fire (at Pentecost).
3.
Most of these scriptural icons of God passed into the artistic iconographical
tradition of the Church from the beginning; only the iconographic
representation of Christ as a lamb has been forbidden. Thus the appearance of
the Trinity to Abraham is represented in the Via Latina catacombs in Rome (4th
century), and the Father as an old man - in the Roman church of St. Maria
Maggiore in Rome (c. 432). This constant tradition of the Church was confirmed
by the Seventh Ecumenical Council and the Synodicon of Orthodoxy.
Thus the Seventh Ecumenical Council declares: "Eternal be the
memory of those who know and accept and believe the visions of the prophets as
the Divinity Himself shaped and impressed them, whatever the chorus of the
prophets saw and narrated, and who hold to the written and unwritten tradition
of the Apostles which was passed on to the Fathers, and on account of this make
icons of the Holy things and honour them." And again: "Anathema to
those who do not accept the visions of the prophets and who reject the iconographies
which have been seen by them (O wonder!) even before the Incarnation of the
Word, but either speak empty words about having seen the unattainable and
unseen Essence, or on the one hand pay heed to those who have seen these
appearances of icons, types and forms of the truth, while on the other hand
they cannot bear to have icons made of the Word become man and His sufferings
on our behalf."
St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite, in his prolegomena to the Seventh
Ecumenical Council (The Rudder, Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational
Society, 1957, p. 420), sums up the Council's decrees on this subject as
follows: "The present Council, in the letter which it sent to the Church
of Alexandria, on the one hand blesses those who know and accept, and therefore
make icons of and honour, the visions and theophanies of the Prophets, as God
Himself shaped and impressed them on their minds. And on the other hand it
anathematizes those who do not accept the iconographies of such visions before
the incarnation of God the Word. It follows that the Beginningless Father must
be represented in icons as He appeared to the Prophet Daniel, as the Ancient of
Days. Even though it be admitted as a fact that Pope Gregory in his letter to
Leo the Isaurian (p. 712 of the second volume of the Conciliar Records) says
that we do not blazon the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, yet it must be noted
that he said this not simply, but in the sense that we do not paint Him in
accordance with the divine nature; since it is impossible, he says, to blazon
or paint God’s nature. That is what the present Council is doing, and the
entire Catholic Church; and not that we do not paint Him as He appeared to the
Prophet. For if we did not paint Him at all or portray Him in any manner at all
to the eye, why should we be painting the Father as well as the Holy Spirit in
the shape of Angels, of young men, just as they appeared to Abraham.”
As
regards the councils of 1666 and 1780, even if they were without reproach in
every other respect, they cannot be accepted as expressing the Tradition of the
Church if they contradict the decrees of the Seventh Ecumenical Council as well
as the constant practice of the Church since Roman times.
However, there are other strong reasons for not accepting these councils.
The Moscow council of 1666 was convened by the Tsar in order to defrock the
righteous Patriarch Nikon; but only 16 years later, in 1682, this decision of
the Moscow council was annulled by the Eastern Patriarchs. In any case, the
prime force at the council, "Metropolitan" Paisios Ligarides, had
already been defrocked by the Patriarch of Jerusalem for his crypto-papism.
Thus far from expressing the Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church against
westernizing influences, the "Pan-Orthodox" council of Moscow
actually represented a victory for westernism! Which is probably why Russia was
flooded with the supposedly illegal icons of the Holy Trinity precisely after
this council!
As for the Constantinopolitan council of 1780, it was convened by the
same Patriarch, Sophronios II, who four years earlier had unjustly condemned
Athanasios of Paros for following the laws of the Church in refusing to carry
out memorials for the dead on Sunday instead of Saturday.
Another important historical point is the fact that the famous
"Reigning" icon of the Mother of God, which went before the Russian
armies fighting against Napoleon in 1812, and was miraculously discovered and
renewed in Moscow at the precise moment that Tsar Nicolas II abdicated, on March
2, 1917, clearly portrays the Father as an old man at the top of the icon. Is
it possible that God should have worked miracles through an icon that is
heretical and blasphemous? Nor is this the only icon portraying the Father that
has worked miracles. Another wonderworking icon of the Holy Trinity has been
found in recent times in the possession of True Orthodox Christians in the
region of Thessaloniki. This timing and location is significant, because
perhaps the first opponent of the icon in the recent controversy, Dr. Alexander
Kalomiros, was once in the True Orthodox Church in Thessaloniki, but left it
and died while speaking against the holy icon.
*
In conclusion, let us consider an icon which everyone accepts to be
canonical and in accordance with Orthodox Tradition - the icon of the
Transfiguration of Christ. Who or what is represented in this icon?
Clearly, the icon represents the Divine Person of Christ, Who exists
inseparably in His Divine and human natures.
Now the particular significance of this icon of Christ is that we see in
it not only the visible part of His human nature - His body, but also the
Divine Energies that flow from His Divine Essence - the Divine Light.
And yet, as St. Gregory Palamas writes, "the Light of the Transfiguration
of the Lord has no beginning and no end; it remains uncircumscribed (in time
and space) and imperceptible to the senses, although it was contemplated... But
the disciples of the Lord passed here from the flesh into the spirit by a
transmutation of their senses." And again he writes: "The Divine
Light is not material, there was nothing perceptible about the Light which
illuminated the apostles on Mount Tabor."
Now if we follow Gabriel's argument through to its logical conclusion,
iconographers who depict the Divine Light of the Transfiguration are falling
into the heresy of circumscribing the uncircumscribable. For unlike the body of
Christ, the Divine Light that flowed from His body is uncircumscribable and
imperceptible to the senses. But this conclusion is obviously absurd and
against Tradition.
The correct conclusion which needs to be drawn is that iconographers are
permitted to depict, not only realities that are accessible to our bodily
senses, such as the bodies of Christ and the saints, but also those invisible
realities, both created and uncreated, circumscribable and uncircumscribable,
that God makes visible to holy men by a mystical transmutation of their senses.
These invisible realities which God has made visible include angels and the
souls of men, and the Divine Light of God Himself. This is the Tradition of the
Holy Church of Christ.
Also depictable are those symbolic manifestations of spiritual realities
which were revealed in visions to the Prophets and Apostles by a cataphatic
outpouring of the Energies of God, such as Daniel's vision of the Ancient of
Days, or the Holy Scriptures taken as a whole. For, as St. Nicodemos writes:
"There is a third kind of picture (or icon), which is called a figurative
or symbolic picture. Thus, for example, the mysteries of the grace of the
Gospel and of the truth of the Gospel were originals, while the pictures
thereof are the symbols consisting of the old Law and the Prophets."
It remains forever true that the Divine Essence is absolutely unknowable
and undepictable. But our zeal to guard this truth should not blind us to the
reality of what holy men have seen and which the Holy Church therefore allows
to be depicted in icons. For as the Lord says through the Prophet Hosea: "I
will speak to the prophets, and I have multiplied visions, and in the hands of
the prophets I was likened" (12.11).
(June 6/19, 1993; revised March 5/18, 2002
and July 9/22, 2004)
18.
ON CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE
Marriage as described in Holy Scripture represents a paradoxical,
seemingly impossible union of opposites. On the one hand, it is seen as a great
mystery, an image of, and participation in, the highest, purest, most
self-sacrificial love - that of Christ and the Church (Eph. 5.32). On
the other hand, it is little more than a safety-valve for unclean desire -
"it is better to marry than to burn" (I Cor. 7.9). On the one
hand, it is the scene of the Lord's first and one of His most radiant miracles,
whereby He "manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him"
(John 2.11). But on the other hand, it is that which those who follow
the Lamb wherever He goes must avoid at all costs; "for these are they
which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins" (Rev.
14.4).
The failure to reconcile these apparent opposites has produced some
strange perversions of theory and practice, especially in the West. Thus
whereas in the East sexual pleasure in marriage is generally regarded as
"lawful"[219],
Blessed Augustine states that
"intercourse... for the sake of satisfying lust.. is a venial sin"
even in marriage, though "it is pardoned" insofar if it leads to the
sacred end of procreation.[220] This
uneasy compromise in a great Orthodox thinker was followed, after the falling
away of the West, by some definitely heretical innovations: the false dogma of
the "immaculate conception" of the Virgin, the adulterous
"chastity" of the medieval troubadors, the sensual
"mysticism" of Teresa of Avila, the ban on marriage by the Shakers,
the sexual hypocrisy of the Victorians, and our own century's general
debauchery.
Now as Orthodox Christians we know that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for
doctrine.." (II Tim. 3.16). Therefore when difficulties in
interpretation and apparent contradictions between texts are found, we are not
at liberty to pick and choose those texts that we like and reject that those
that we do not like. Rather we must humbly admit that the reason for our
perplexity lies in ourselves, in the passionateness which prevents us from
understanding the mysteries of God - and continue to "search the
Scriptures". For "none of the mysteries," writes Metropolitan
Philaret of Moscow, "of the most secret wisdom of God ought to appear
alien or altogether transcendent to us, but in all humility we must apply our
spirit to the contemplation of divine things."[221] We
must turn to the Giver of wisdom for enlightenment, in accordance with the
apostle's words: "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, Who
gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him"
(James 1.5).
Marriage in Paradise.
Therefore, having invoked God's help, let us turn again to the Holy Scriptures.
And let us pose the question: what was the original purpose of marriage as
instituted by God in Paradise?
Two answers are suggested in Genesis: (a) the procreation of
children, and (b) the inability of man alone, without woman, to fulfil the task
appointed to him by God.
(a) "And God blessed them, saying, Increase and multiply, and fill
the earth and subdue it..." (1.28). Coming immediately after the first
mention of the differentiation of the sexes (1.27), this clearly implies that
the purpose of this differentiation is the procreation of children. But the
question then arises: why, then, is there no mention of children or procreation
in Paradise, the first reported birth, that of Cain, taking place only after
the expulsion from Eden (4.1)?
Some of the Holy Fathers suggest that the reason is that God's command
to increase and multiply was given in prevision of the Fall, and that if there
had been no Fall there would have been no sexual relations, and the
multiplication of the species would have taken place in a different way. Thus
St. John of the Ladder writes that if Adam had not been overcome by gluttony,
he would not have known what a wife was - that is, he would have lived with her
as with a sister.[222] And
certainly, since all that we know of sexuality and procreation comes from life
after the Fall, and has been corrupted by the Fall, there can be no doubt that
marriage as we know it was not part
of the life of the first couple in Paradise.
At the same time, the institution of "one-flesh" marriage is
based on the nature of man and woman as they were originally created, on the
fact that Eve was created from the flesh of Adam. Thus God placed Adam in a
deep sleep (the Greek word in the Septuagint is: "ecstasy"), and
created Eve (the literal translation from the Greek is: "built") out
of his rib - an operation, incidentally, that makes very good surgical sense.[223] Adam's
first words on seeing the newly-created Eve clearly base marriage on this
original "one-flesh" creation, defining it unambiguously as a
physical union: "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she
shall be called woman, because she was taken out of her man. Therefore shall a man leave his father
and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one
flesh" (2.23).
The Lord Himself quoted these words in the context of His discussion of
divorce (Matt. 19.4-5), so their authority is great. Divorce is wrong,
because marriage was constituted from the beginning, in Paradise, as an
unbreakable bond creating a single new unit. A unit, moreover, not only of
spirit, but also of flesh.
The holy new Russian confessor Bishop Gregory (Lebedev) has commented on
these words in an illuminating way: "'And they two shall be one flesh, so
that they are no longer two, but one flesh', that is, the people have ceased to
exist separately even in the physical sense. They have become one physical
body, 'one flesh'. That is what the fulfilment of the will of God has done...
It has not only completed and broadened their souls in a mutual intermingling,
it has changed their physical nature and out of two physical existences it has
made one whole existence. That is the mystery of marriage. Having explained it,
the Lord concludes with a mild reproach to the Pharisees: 'Well, what do you
want? What are you asking about? How after this can a man leave his wife? That
would be unnatural! In marriage we have a mutual completion of life! But you
want Me to approve the destruction of this completion?! And in marriage we have
a creative act, an act of God, Who creates one life... How can you want Me to destroy
life created by God? This is unnatural... Don't think of encroaching on
marriage! What God has joined together, let man not put asunder'."[224]
It follows that it is not enough to define the purpose of marriage as
procreation alone. Marriage is not procreation, but creation, the creation of one new life out of two; and this new
life has value in itself, quite apart from the fact that it is the means
towards the procreation of further life. Otherwise the union of childless
couples would be without value.
That the marriage of childless couples can be blessed by God is clearly
seen, for example, in the lives of Saints Joachim and Anna. Although society
condemned them for their childlessness, they were righteous in the eyes of God.
And eventually they were rewarded by the birth of the Mother of God, who
appeared, not as the justification of their marriage, but as the natural fruit
of its manifest righteousness.
(b) "It is not good for man
to be alone, let Us make for him a help suitable to him" (2.18 - the
Septuagint text literally translated is: "according to him", just as
man was made "according to the image of God"). In Tobit this
passage is paraphrased as: "Thou madest Adam, and gavest him Eve his wife
for an helper and support" (8.6). What kind of support is meant here?
St. Augustine, followed by most of the Western Fathers, replies:
"for the sake of the procreation of sons, just as a support to the seed in
the earth is that a thicket should grow on either side".[225]
However, St. Basil the Great takes a more spiritual view in his
treatise, On Virginity; the support which is meant here, he says, is the
general support that a woman gives to her husband in passing through life.
And Blessed Theodoret of Cyrus writes: "He bade her satisfy the
man's desire, not a passion for pleasure, but by showing him the rational need
of her society".[226]
Again, the holy new Martyr-Patriarch Tikhon writes: "Without a
helpmate the very bliss of paradise was not perfect for Adam: endowed with the
gift of thought, speech, and love, the first man seeks with his thought another
thinking being; his speech sounds lonely and the dead echo alone answers him;
his heart, full of love, seeks another heart that would be close and equal to
him; all his being longs for another being analogous to him, but there is none;
the creatures of the visible world around him are below him and are not fit to
be his mates; and as to the beings of the invisible spiritual world they are
above. Then the bountiful God, anxious for the happiness of man, satisfies his
wants and creates a mate for him - a wife. But if a mate was necessary for man
in paradise, in the region of bliss, the mate became much more necessary for
him after the fall, in the vale of tears and sorrow. The wise man of antiquity
spoke justly: 'two are better than one, for if they fall, the one will lift up
his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not
another to help him up' (Sirach 4.9-10). But few people are capable of
enduring the strain of moral loneliness, it can be accomplished only by effort,
and truly 'all men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given' (Matt.
19.11), and as for the rest - 'it is not good for a man to be alone', without a
mate."[227]
Marriage in the Fall. Like everything else that was created
good by God in the beginning, marriage has been corrupted by the Fall. Unbelief
("ye shall not surely die" (3.15)), pride ("ye shall be as
gods" (3.6)) and sensuality ("the tree was good for food, and
pleasant to the eyes to look upon, and beautiful to contemplate" (3.7))
invaded the nature, first of the woman, and then of the man. The Fall did not
completely destroy the joyful, paradisiac image of marriage; but, as Vladimir
Lossky points out, "this paradisiac 'eros' would have been as different
from our fallen and devouring sexuality as the sacerdotal royalty of man over
created being is from their actual devouring of each other. For.. the Fall has
changed the very meaning of the words. Sexuality, this 'multiplication' which
God ordains and blesses, appears in our universe as irremediably bound to
separation and death. The human condition has experienced a catastrophic
mutation right down to its biological reality. But human love would not be
pregnant with such a paradisiac nostalgia if there did not remain in it the sad
memory of an original condition in which the other and the world was
experienced from within, when death
did not exist..."[228]
Both Adam and Eve failed to fulfil the law of marriage as God had
ordained it. Thus Eve failed in her task of spiritually supporting Adam by
offering him the forbidden fruit. But Adam, too, failed in his responsibility
towards her. Instead of enlightening her about the devil's deception, and
leading her back to obedience to God, he weakly followed her example. And
instead of taking the blame for the whole affair upon himself, as befitted the
head of the family, he bitterly put the blame on his wife - and indirectly on
God Who had created her for him (3.13).
Thus they both felt guilty, and their shame
took on a specifically physical form: "And the eyes of both were opened,
and they perceived that they were naked" (3.8).
Blessed Augustine sees in this consciousness of nakedness the first
stirrings of lust. For "the rational soul blushed at the bestial movements
in the members of the flesh and inspired it with shame, not only because it
felt this there where it had never sensed anything similar, but also because
that shameful movement came from the transgression of the commandment".[229]Thus
the passionless delight in the other
became the passionate desire for the
other; "flesh of my flesh"
was now "flesh for my
flesh".
Against this new, devouring force in human nature, protection was
needed; and a first protection was provided by God in the "coats of
skin" - modesty is the first step towards chastity. There is another, more
spiritual interpretation of the "coats of skin", according to which
they signify the fallen passions in which man was now clothed.
However, modesty alone cannot control this passion in fallen man. A
stronger restraint is required - and marriage provides that restraint.
"For marriage," says St. John Chrysostom, "was not instituted
for debauchery and fornication, but to prevent the one and the other: 'on
account of fornications,' says St. Paul, 'let each man have his wife, and each
woman her husband' (I Cor. 7.2). There are two reasons for which
marriage was instituted: to regulate our lust and to give us children: but the
first is the principal one. The day on which lust was introduced was the day on
which marriage was introduced to regulate it by leading the man to be content
with one woman.
"As for the procreation of children, marriage does not absolutely
enjoin it. That responds rather to this word of God in Genesis:
'Increase and multiply and fill the earth' (1.28). The proof of this is the
large number of marriages which cannot have children.
"That is why the first reason for marriage is to regulate lust, and
especially now that the human race has filled the whole earth".[230]
An important consequence of this view is that sexual pleasure in
marriage, far from being an evil or inessential by-product of marriage, is
necessary to it - and this not for hedonistic, but for moral reasons. For if
the man does not obtain sexual pleasure in marriage, he is likely to seek it
elsewhere, thus destroying the one-flesh relationship and endangering both his
and his wife's salvation. Hence the forthright exhortation of St. Ignatius the
God-bearer: "Speak to my sisters that they love the Lord, and be satisfied
with their husbands in flesh and in spirit".[231]
The doctrine of the majority of the Eastern Fathers on this point may be
summed up in words from a poem by St. Gregory the Theologian:
For man and wife
the union of wedlock is a bolted door securing chastity and restraining desire,
And it is a seal of
natural affection,
They possess the
loving colt which cheers the heart by gamboling,
And a single drink
from their private fountain untasted by strangers,
Which neither flows
outwards, nor gathers its waters from without.
Wholly united in
the flesh, concordant in spirit, by love
They sharpen in one
another a like spur to piety.[232]
But marriage in the Fall restrains more than lust alone. The pride and
pleasure-seeking that led to the Fall are also corrected, and God achieves this
through their opposites - pain and humiliation. Thus "to the woman He
said, I will greatly multiply thy pains and thy groanings; in pain thou shalt bring
forth children, and thy turning shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over
thee" (Gen. 3.17). Having turned to the devil in disobedience to
God, the woman must learn obedience to God in turning to her husband. And
having spoken to him to his ruin, she must now listen to him to her gain.
St. Paul develops the theme: "Let the woman learn in silence with
all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over
the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam
was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith
and charity and holiness with sobriety" (I Tim. 2.11-15). Wives are
to be "discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own
husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed" (Titus 2.5). Nor
is this obedience only for their own sake: "Likewise, ye wives, be in
subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may
without the word be won by the conduct of the wives; while they behold your
chaste conduct coupled with fear" (I Pet. 3.1-2).
"And to Adam He said, Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of
thy wife, and eaten of the tree concerning which I charged thee of it only not
to eat - of that thou hast eaten, cursed is the ground in thy labours, in pain
thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it
bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of
thy face shalt thou eat thy bread until thou shalt return" (Gen.
3.18-20). Thus for his weakness of will and lack of true love for his wife, the
man is condemned to work to support her and his family for the rest of his
life, groaning not only under the physical burden but also in anxiety of
spirit. For "if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of
his own house, he hath denied the Faith, and is worse than an infidel" (I
Tim. 5.8). But in thus having to care for her, he will learn more truly to
love her, subduing his anger and bitterness: "Husbands, love your wives,
and be not bitter against them" (Col. 3.19). "Likewise, ye
husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife,
as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life;
that your prayers be not hindered" (I Pet. 3.7).
Whereas obedience in marriage is one-way, exhortation must be mutual.
Thus St. Tikhon of Zadonsk writes: "The husband and wife must lay virtue,
and not passion, as the foundation of their love, that is, when the husband
sees any fault in his wife, he must nudge her meekly, and the wife must submit
to her husband in this. Likewise when a wife sees some fault in her husband,
she must exhort him, and he is obliged to hear her."[233]
Marriage in Christ.
Marriage in the Fall restrains sin and lust, but it cannot extirpate them
entirely. But Christ, writes Clement of Alexandria "condemns more than
just imagining having sex with a woman. For to fantasize is already to commit
an act of lust. Rather, Jesus goes further. He condemns any man who looks on
the beauty of a woman with carnal and sinful admiration. It is a different
matter, however, to look on beauty with chaste love. Chaste love does not
admire the beauty of the flesh. It admires the beauty of the spirit. With such
love, a person sees the body only as an image. His admiration carries him
through to the Artist himself - to true beauty."[234]
However, a completely chaste love of beauty is unattainable to fallen
man. The spirit is willing - for "I loved Her, and sought Her out from my
youth; I desired to make Her my spouse, and I was a lover of Her beauty" (Wisdom
8.2; Proverbs 4.6). But the flesh is weak - for "the corruptible
body presses down on the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weighs down the mind
that muses upon many things" (Wisdom 9.15). That is why God became
man and united His Spirit to our flesh, so as to purify our flesh and make it
in all things conformed to His Spirit. "For what the law could not do, in
that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness
of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after
the Spirit" (Rom. 8.3-4).
Through the grace communicated to our flesh in the mystery of the Body
and Blood of Christ, the disordered passions of our fallen nature are first
crucified and then resurrected to new life. Sexuality is not destroyed
completely; for it was there, as we have seen, in the beginning, before the
Fall. Rather, it is resurrected in a new form.
Thus St. John of the Ladder writes: "Someone told me of an
extraordinarily high degree of purity. He said: 'A certain man, on seeing a
beautiful woman, thereupon glorified the Creator; and from that one look, he
was moved to the love of God and a fountain of tears. And it was wonderful to
see how what would have been a cause of destruction for one was for another the
supernatural cause of a crown.' If such a person always feels and behaves in
the same way on similar occasions, then he has risen immortal before the
general resurrection."[235]
For fallen man, marriage is a virtual necessity; and even in Christ it
is the best path to chastity for most. However, Christ by His Coming and
Example has opened up another path to the same end - that of virginity or
monasticism. For He is the New Adam, just as His Mother is the New Eve - and
both, of course, are Virgins.
Monasticism is the more direct, more arduous way to the summit; and to
reach it by this path brings a special reward. True monastics attain in this
life to the condition of the life to come, in which "they neither marry
nor are given in marriage... for they are equal to the angels" (Luke
20.35, 36). Marriage is the less direct route, with many stops on the way and
with the consequent danger of becoming distracted by the scenery along the way
(I Cor. 7.31-33). That is why St. Paul says: "I would that all men
were even as myself [i.e. virgins]... But every man hath his proper charisma,
one after this manner, and another after that" (I Cor. 7.7).
Marriage in Christ recreates the image of Adam and Eve in Paradise, when
there was no pride or lust or jealousy. Thus, as Alexis Khomiakov says,
"for the husband, his companion is not just one of many women, but the woman;
and her mate is not one of many men,
but the man. For both of them the
rest of the race has no sex."[236]
Monasticism, on the other hand, recreates the image of Adam not only before the
Fall, but also before the creation of Eve, when he had eyes for God alone. In
this sense, as St. Ambrose of Milan points out, monasticism, the state of being
a "monad", alone with God, is even more primordially natural than
marriage.[237]
However, there is no contradiction between the perfection of the
monastic monad and the perfection of the marital dyad, just as there is no
contradiction between the commandment to love God with all one's heart and the
commandment to love one's neighbour as oneself. Just as the first commandment
is greater than the second, so is the virginal state greater than the marital.
But they are both holy, both pure.
Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava sums up the question well: "It is
necessary, first of all, to establish a correct understanding of marriage in
principle, and then to examine the question from a practical point of view.
There are two extreme viewpoints with regard to this question which are in
principle incorrect: both that which considers marriage to be an evil and that
which completely abolishes the difference in inner merit between marriage and
virginity. The first extreme is seen in many mystical sects, the second is a
generally accepted opinion in the Protestant West, from where it has succeeded
in penetrating Orthodox literature also. According to the latter viewpoint,
both the married and the virginal ways of life are simply defined as individual
characteristics of a man, and nothing special or exalted is seen in the
virginal way by comparison with the married state. In his time Blessed Jerome
thoroughly refuted this viewpoint in his work: 'Two Books against Jovinian'.
While the positive teaching of the Church was beautifully expressed by St.
Seraphim in the words: 'Marriage is a good, but virginity is a better than good
good!' True Christian marriage is the union of the souls of those being married
that is sanctified by the grace of God. It gives them happiness and serves as
the foundation of the Christian family, that 'house church'. That is what it is
in principle; but unfortunately it is not like that in our time for the most
part. The general decline in Christian life has wounded marriage, too.
Generally speaking, people in recent times have forgotten that the grace of God
is communicated in the sacrament of marriage. One must always remember this
grace, stir it up and live in its spirit. Then the love of the man for the
woman and of the woman for the man will be pure, deep and a source of happiness
for them. For this love, too, is a blessed gift of God. Only people do not know
how to make use of this gift in a fitting manner! And it is for this simple
reason that they forget the grace of God! 'The first thing in the spiritual
life,' says St. Macarius the Great, 'is love for God, and the second - love for
one's neighbour. When we apply ourselves to the first and great task, then the
second, being lesser, follows after the first with very little labour. But
without the first the second cannot be pure. For can he who does not love God
with all his soul and all his heart apply himself correctly and without
flattery to love for his brothers?' That which has been said about love
generally applies also to married love. Of all the kinds of earthly love it is
the strongest and for that reason it is represented in Holy Scripture as an
image of the ideal love of the human soul for God: 'The Song of Songs,'
says Blessed Jerome, 'is a nuptial song of spiritual wedlock,' that is, of the
union of the human soul with God. However, with the blessedness of the virgins nothing
can be compared, neither in heaven nor on earth..."[238]
Virginity is not only higher than marriage, but the only viewpoint from
which marriage can be correctly evaluated, and the apparently contradictory
scriptural texts on marriage understood. For whereas a perfect marriage is the
end of most men's dreams, "paradise on earth", the ideal of virginity
points to a still higher end - not paradise on earth, but the Kingdom of
heaven, an end which can be attained only by rejecting all thought of earthly
delights, however lawful, an end in which marriage will exist neither as an
arena in which to struggle with the fallen passions, nor as a passionless
contemplation of each other's beauty, like Adam and Eve in Paradise. Rather,
both the virgins and those who have been married will be "like the angels,
who always behold the face of the Father in heaven" (Matt. 18.11).
For when the Supreme Object of desire is present, lesser objects are
necessarily eclipsed, not because they are lacking in true beauty, but simply
because they are lesser. Which is why the holy Apostle Simon the Zealot, the
bridegroom at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, abandoned not only the water of
a fallen marriage, but even the wine of a marriage transformed and sanctified
by Christ, for love of the Divine Bridegroom Himself...
(Published in Living Orthodoxy, vol.
XVIII, no. 1, January-February, 1997, pp. 6-14)
19.
THE MARRIAGE IN CANA OF GALILEE
It is of the greatest significance that the first miracle accomplished
by Christ, according to St. John, was the miracle at the marriage in Cana of
Galilee; for just as the first effect of the Fall, after the loss of communion
with God, was the loss of communion between man and woman, so the first fruit
of the Incarnation, after the reunion of God with man, was the reunion of man
and woman.
Of course, communion between man and woman was not entirely lost after
the Fall. And the joy of marital union remained as a kind of nostalgic reminder
of the joys of Paradise. As Vladimir Lossky writes: "Human love would not
be pregnant with such a paradisiacal nostalgia if there did not remain
painfully within it the memory of a first condition where the other and the
world were known from the inside,
where, accordingly, death did not exist..."[239]
But earthly joys, however innocent, can only be a shadow of those of
Paradise and Heaven; and Christ, Who came "that they might have life, and
have it more abundantly" (John 10.10), now approached an ordinary
human couple so as to transform the water of their fallen love into "the
new wine of the birth of Divine joy of the Kingdom of Christ".[240]
"And the Mother of Jesus was there" (John 2.1). Of no
other miracle of Christ is it recorded that "the Mother of Jesus was
there", and in no other miracle of Christ is such an important
intercessory role ascribed to another human agent. The reason is plain. The
miracle accomplished here is the restoration of the relationship between Adam
and Eve: but how can that be done without the participation of both the new
Adam and the new Eve? And if the original rupture was caused by the sinful
petition of the first Eve, how can that be reversed if not by a sinless
petition of the new Eve?
And so "the Mother of Jesus saith unto Him, They have no wine"
(John 2.3). She who has received the new wine of the love of God now
wishes, in her love for her fellow creatures, that they, too, should partake of
it. Having fulfilled her first and greatest role as Mother of God, she now
wishes to pass on to her second, as intercessor for the human race.
But Christ replies in an unexpected manner: "Woman, what have I to
do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come" (John 2.4). Many Fathers
have interpreted this as a rebuke to the Virgin, as if it had been wrong for
her to put herself forward and intercede at this time. However, the Virgin does
not act as if she had been rebuked: on the contrary, she acts as if she has
received some kind of assurance from Him, and tells the servants:
"Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it" (John 2.5). Moreover,
Christ does not refuse her request, but performs the miracle.
One possibility is that Christ was recalling the fact that it was
through giving in to his wife's petition that the first Adam fell, so that just
like the Virgin herself at the approach of the Archangel Gabriel, He, the new
Adam, was going to act with cautious reserve. So: "What have I to do with
thee?" means "What is my relationship with you: tempted and tempter,
as in the Garden, or something new and holy?" But if new and holy, then
she must understand that the full restoration, when He can truly say, "It
is finished" (John 19.30) and "Behold, I make all things
new" (Rev. 21.5), must await "Mine hour" - the hour of
His Crucifixion and Death on the Cross (John 7.30, 8.20, 12.23, 12.27,
13.1, 16.32, 17.1). Then, and only then, can the Holy Spirit be poured out on
all flesh as it was first poured out upon her.
That the Lord is obliquely referring to Adam and Eve in the Garden is
confirmed by His use of the word "Woman". For this recalls the
prophecy that was given to first Eve in the Garden concerning the Woman Whose
Seed, it was promised, would crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3.15).
Now Mary is indeed the Woman of that prophecy, as Christ is the Seed Who will
crush the power of Satan - only the time for that victory has not yet come.
According to St. Gaudentius, bishop of Breschia in the fourth century,
the Lord was not rebuking the Virgin, but looking forward to the Crucifixion:
"This answer of His does not seem to me to accord with Mary's suggestion,
if we take it literally in its first apparent sense, and do not suppose our
Lord to have spoken in mystery, meaning thereby that the wine of the Holy
Spirit could not be given to the Gentiles before His Passion and Resurrection,
as the Evangelist attests: 'As yet the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus
was not yet glorified' (John 7.39). With reason, then, at the beginning
of His miracles, did He thus answer His Mother; as though He said: 'Why this thy
so hasty suggestion, O Woman? Since the hour of My Passion is not yet come
when, - all powers whether of teaching or of divine operations being then
completed - I have determined to die for the life of believers. After My
Passion and Resurrection, when I shall return to the Father, there shall be
given to them the wine of the Holy Spirit.' Whereupon she too, that most
blessed one, knowing the profound mystery of this answer, understood that the
suggestion she had just made was not slighted or spurned, but, in accordance
with that spiritual reason, was for a time delayed. Otherwise, she would never
have said to the waiters, 'Whatsoever He shall say to you, do ye'."[241]
"For He Who before, by way of image, from water made wine, when He said to
the most blessed Mary, 'What is it to Me and thee, Woman? Mine hour is not yet
come', the Same, after the hour of His Passion, so far consummated the reality
of the mystery which had gone before, that the water of the Incarnation became
in truth the wine of the Divinity."[242]
Just as at Cana the Lord and His Mother look forward to the Crucifixion,
so at the Crucifixion, according to the Church's liturgy, His Mother looks back
to the marriage at Cana - or rather, forward to the heavenly marriage-feast of
the Resurrection, which also took place "on the third day" (John
2.1): "Seeing her own Lamb led to the slaughter, May His Mother followed
Him with the other women, and in her grief she cried: 'Where dost Thou go, my
Child? Why dost Thou run so swiftly? Is there another wedding in Cana, and art
Thou hastening there to turn the water into wine?"[243]
"And there were set six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the
purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto
them, Fill the waterpots with water" (John 2.6-7). Some
commentators suggest that these waterpots were used for the washing of hands
before meals. Considering their size - 18 to 27 gallons each - they might well
have been used to wash, not the hands only, but the whole body. If so, then
they become a fitting symbol of the fallen nature of man. For man was created
on the sixth day from water and clay and the breath of the Holy Spirit, but the
whole mixture had become stony and dry through the loss of the Spirit. Now the
Creator of man, having Himself taken flesh from the virgin earth of Mary,
recasts the bodies and souls of men through Baptism, so that they can become
fitting vessels, "new bottles" into which to pour the "new
wine" of the Spirit (Mark 2.22).
As St. Gaudentius says: "'They had no wine' because the wedding
wine was consumed, which means that the Gentiles had not the wine of the Holy
Spirit. So what is here referred to is not the wine of these nuptials, but the
wine of the preceding nuptials; for the nuptial wine of the Holy Spirit had
ceased, since the prophets had ceased to speak, who before had ministered unto
the people of Israel. For all the prophets and the Law had prophesied until the
coming of John; nor was there any one to give spiritual drink to the Gentiles
who thirsted; but the Lord Jesus was awaited, Who would fill the new bottles
with new wine by His baptism; 'for the old things have passed away: behold all
things are made new' (II Cor. 5.17)."[244]
Alternatively, we may take the waterpots to be human marriages, each
containing two or three people (childless and fertile marriages respectively).
Now marriage is, as it were, a "natural" sacrament inherent in the
original creation.[245] Since
the Fall, however, it has become stony and empty through the passions. So the
Lord first purifies it, washing away every defilement of sin and fallen
passion. Then He pours into it the grace of the Holy Spirit, thereby raising it
to a higher level than it was even in Paradise.
"And He saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor
of the feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the
water that was made wine, and knew whence it was: (but the servants which drew
the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, and saith
unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when they
have well drunk, then that which is worse; but thou hast kept the good wine
until now" (John 2.8-10).
In the beginning, the Governor of the feast of life, God the Father, set
forth the good wine of the paradisiacal Eros. But this wine was turned into
water by the Fall, and even dried up completely in places. Now God the Son, the
Divine Bridegroom of the human race, has turned that water into a wine better
than the original; for it has been mixed with, and transformed by an infusion
from "the true Vine" (John 15.1). And this wine, squeezed out
by the winepress of the Cross and distributed in abundance on the Day of
Pentecost, has inebriated those who follow Him with the "sober
intoxication" of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2.13).
"This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and
manifested forth His glory; and His disciples believed on Him" (John
2.11). The grace of the Holy Spirit is called "glory" in the Gospel.
It was first manifested at the Incarnation, when "we beheld His glory, the
glory as of the only begotten of the Father" (John 1.14). Between
the Incarnation and the Crucifixion, when Jesus was glorified and the Spirit
could be given for the first time "without measure" and to all
peoples, the glory of God is said to be manifested only once - at the marriage
in Cana. This shows that the marriage in Cana marks a special stage in the
economy of salvation. If the Incarnation is suffused with glory because then,
for the first time, the grace of God is restored to human nature in the person
of the Virgin, then the marriage in Cana is suffused with glory because then,
for the first time, grace is restored to the relationship between man and
woman. And if at Nazareth man became once more "the image and glory of
God", then at Cana woman became once more "the glory of the man"
(I Cor. 11.7)...
(Orthodox America, vol. XVI, ¹¹ 7-8
(147-148), March-April, May-June, 1997, pp. 13-15)
20.
DIALOGUE BETWEEN AN ORTHODOX AND A MANICHAEAN ON MARRIAGE
1. Love and Lust
Orthodox. Father, I want you to be the first to know!
I’m getting married!
Manichaean. Really? May God save and protect you!
Orthodox. Thank you… But aren’t you going to
congratulate me?
Manichaean. Why?
Orthodox. Well… because it’s usual to congratulate
people when they get married, to wish them joy.
Manichaean. What is “usual” is not always what is
right.
Orthodox. But the Church also rejoices and prays for
the joy of the couple that is to be married. “Let that joy come upon them,”
says the priest in the marriage service, “such as the blessed Helena received
when she found the precious Cross”. As a priest, do you not wish me that joy?
Manichaean. As a priest I wish you the joy of the
cross, just as the prayer says. The joy of the cross is the joy of the Holy
Spirit that comes through abstinence, through self-denial, through crucifying
the passions and lusts of the flesh.
Orthodox. And do you not see the possibility of that
joy and that self-denial in marriage? After all, “Holy Martyrs” is chanted
during the service.
Manichaean. Not if marriage is simply a condition in
which to indulge the lusts of the flesh.
Orthodox. Is that all you see in it? Do you see
nothing good in marriage?
Manichaean. I see good in the begetting of children,
“if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty” (I Tim.
2.15), as the apostle says. And I see good in the prevention of fornication (I
Cor. 7.2). However, these are essentially Old Testament criteria. The earth
is already overflowing with people; the Messiah is already born, so the Jewish
hope of being His ancestor has now been superseded; our attention should be
directed towards converting the present population to the faith rather than
begetting more people. And in the New Testament Church we have a new ideal,
that of virginity: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman” (I Cor.
7.1). And a new grace to live by that ideal.
Orthodox. Are you saying that married Christians do
not live in the grace of the New Testament?
Manichaean. Yes.
Orthodox. You do surprise me, Father! Tell me: do you
believe that the Apostle Peter was a Christian?
Manichaean. I know what you’re going to say: that he
was married. But after becoming an apostle he lived with his wife as brother
and sister.
Orthodox. Yes, but he did not have to. The Apostle
Paul wrote with some irony: “We do not have authority to lead about a wife who
is a sister in the Lord, as also the rest of the apostles, and the brethren of
the Lord, and Cephas, do we?” (I Cor. 9.5). The irony in his words
indicated that he, though an apostle carrying out the highest ministry in the
Church of Christ, was of course not forbidden to have a wife; it was not
incompatible with his grace-filled ministry of the New Testament. True, he did
not in fact take a wife; for “all things are lawful to me, but all things are
not expedient” (I Cor. 6.12; cf. 10.23). But he could have – and there
is no indication whatsoever that for St. Paul, who polemicised more than any
apostle with those who would confuse the grace of the New Testament with the
law of the Old, the married state was incompatible with the life of grace.
Manichaean. There are many things which were good in
Old Testament times, but which have been superseded in the New: circumcision,
sabbaths…
Orthodox. And marriage?
Manichaeian. Marriage has not been superseded, of
course, but it is an Old Testament sacrament, as it were, and appropriate only for
those living under the law. For those living in the grace of the New Testament
it is sinful.
Orthodox. But this is the heresy of Manichaeism. And
Manichaeism is specifically declared by St. John Chrysostom to have been the
target of St. Paul’s prophecy: “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the
latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits,
and doctrines of demons; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience
seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain
from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them
which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and
nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving” (I Tim.
4.1-4).
Manichaeism and its related teachings are demonic, explains St. John,
because they condemn as evil those things, such as marriage and certain foods,
which are not evil in themselves, but only if taken in excess. For “good things
are created to be received… But if it is good, why is it ‘sanctified by the
word of God and prayers’? For it must be unclean, if it is to be sanctified?
Not so, here he is speaking to those who thought that some of these things were
common; therefore he lays down two positions: first, that no creature of God is
unclean; and secondly, that if it has become so, you have a remedy: seal it
[with the sign of the cross], give thanks, and glorify God, and all the
uncleanness passes away.”[246]
Manichaean. I hope you are not accusing me of heresy!
Orthodox. Not if you accept the Orthodox teaching on
marriage …But let me ask: what, according to you, is the purpose of marriage?
Manichaean. The aim of Ñhristian marriage is to cure us of the desire to live the
married life.
Orthodox. A most paradoxical aim! Please explain.
Manichaean. With pleasure, and you mark my words
carefully… I have said, following the apostle, that the ideal is virginity,
abstinence. But if (for the time being) a Christian cannot (or will not)
abstain, then he must necessarily, as a kind of penance, bear the burden of
bearing and bringing up many children. But if he does not want to have
children, he must abstain from marital relations. There is simply no
other way. If a man does not want children, but does want to have marital
relations, then this is simply fornication, albeit in marriage – “fornication
under a crown”, as my much-esteemed friend, the patrologist Fr. G., has put it.
Such a position has simply no relation whatsoever to Christian marriage. Then
various devices arise with the aim of preventing the birth of children, “a
planned family”, and similar things which God hates.
Orthodox. Well, I can assure you that I do want
children, and will do nothing to prevent them appearing.
Manichaean. I am very glad to hear it.
Orthodox. So do I qualify as a New Testament
Christian?
Manichaean. If you live with your wife as brother and
sister.
Orthodox. But how can I do that and still have
children?!
Manichaean. [laughs] Yes, that is a problem…
Orthodox. You may laugh, but I can assure you it is
no joking matter for me! You make it sound as if normal married life is
incompatible with the grace of the New Testament and therefore with salvation
itself!
Manichaean. The problem, my dear friend, is that while
your desire to have children is quite unobjectionable, there is no way in which
you can fulfil that desire without indulging the lusts of the flesh. And that
is sinful.
Orthodox. Tell me, Father: do you think that God
would ever command us to do something sinful?
Manichaean. No.
Orthodox. Well, then, please explain to me the
following story. In the Life of the English Orthodox saint, Wulfhilda of
Barking (+c. 1000), we read that for eighteen years before the conception of
Wulfhilda, her pious parents, who had already had several children, had been
living as brother and sister so as to give themselves up more completely to
prayer and fasting. “One night, however, an angel appeared to each of them
separately three times, and told them that they should come together so as to
beget a daughter who would become a bride of Christ. The next morning they told
each other the vision, and discovered that it had been identical for the two of
them. So they accepted it as having come from God. Thus was the saint conceived
and born…”[247]
Here, according to your schema, it turns out that two people living the New
Testament life of grace return to the Old Testament life of the law. Although
the aim of the spouses was the begetting of a child, they returned to “marital
satisfaction”, that is, according to you, to the sinful satisfaction of the
passion of lust, albeit to a limited degree. But would God ever call anyone to
satisfy a sinful lust? Or to return from the life of grace to the life of the
law? Of course not! The only conclusion must be, therefore, that sexual
relations in a Christian marriage in no way impede the life of grace.
Manichaean. I believe that in this case God practised
“economy” for the sake of the birth of a holy soul.
Orthodox. What do you mean by “economy” here?…
Manichaean. [pause] Permission to sin for the sake of
the greater good.
Orthodox. So something like the Jesuit precept so
beloved of the Marxists that “the end justifies the means”?
Manichaean. [pause] Er…
Orthodox. Well, while you’re thinking about the
answer to that question, let us consider an episode from the Life of
perhaps the greatest woman saint of the West, the fifth-century St. Brigit of
Ireland: “A certain man of Kells… whom his wife hated, came to Brigit for help.
Brigit blessed some water. He took it with him and, his wife having been
sprinkled [therewith], she straightway loved him passionately.”[248]
Again, from the Life of St. Columba, Apostle of Scotland
(+597): “Another time, when the saint was living on the Rechrena island, a
certain man of humble birth came to him and complained of his wife, who, as he
said, so hated him, that she would on no account allow him to come near her for
marriage rights. The saint on hearing this, sent for the wife, and, so far as
he could, began to reprove her on that account, saying: ‘Why, O woman, dost
thou endeavour to withdraw thy flesh from thyself, while the Lord says, ‘They
shall be two in one flesh’? Wherefore the flesh of thy husband is they flesh.’
She answered and said, ‘Whatever thou shalt require of me I am ready to do,
however hard it may be, with this single exception, that thou dost not urge me
in any way to sleep in one bed with Lugne. I do not refuse to perform every
duty at home, or, if thou dost command me, even to pass over the seas, or to
live in some monastery for women.’ The saint then said, ‘What thou dost propose
cannot lawfully be done, for thou art bound by the law of the husband as long
as thy husband liveth, for it would be impious to separate those whom God has
lawfully joined together.’ Immediately after these words he added: ‘This day
let us three, namely, the husband and his wife and myself, join in prayer to
the Lord and in fasting.’ But the woman replied: ‘I know it is not impossible
for thee to obtain from God, when thou askest them, those things that seem to
us either difficult, or even impossible.’ It is unnecessary to say more. The
husband and wife agreed to fast with the saint that day, and the following
night the saint spent sleepless in prayer for them. Next day he thus addressed
the wife in presence of her husband, and said to her: ‘O woman, art thou still
ready today, as thou saidst yesterday, to go away to a convent of women?’ ‘I
know now,’ she answered, ‘that thy prayer to God for me hath been heard; for
that man whom I hated yesterday, I love today; for my heart hath been changed
last night in some unknown way – from hatred to love.’ Why need we linger over
it? From that day to the hour of death, the soul of the wife was firmly
cemented in affection to her husband, so that she no longer refused those
mutual matrimonial rights which she was formerly unwilling to allow.”[249]
Manichaean. You make the saints sound like
sex-therapists!
Orthodox. Love-therapists, perhaps, not
sex-therapists.
Manichaean. I am very suspicious of your examples from
the lives of little-known British and Irish saints. I insist on a return to the
Holy Scriptures and the Eastern Fathers of the Holy Orthodox Church!
Orthodox. Well, I do not object, so long as you
accept that the lives of the Western Fathers of the Orthodox Church, who died
many centuries before the West fell into heresy, are also part of Holy
Tradition… So let us return to the Holy Scriptures. For example: “If you marry
you do not sin” (I Cor. 7.28), and “marriage is honourable in all, and
the bed undefiled” (Heb. 13.4).
Manichaean. I think that the apostle meant only that
the marriage bed is not adultery or fornication.
Orthodox. The Fathers are more positive than you. In
his commentary on this passage, St. John Chrysostom writes: “Marriage is pure”.[250] Again,
Blessed Theophylact comments on the same verse: “By ‘in all’ he means ‘in every
way’ and ‘in every season’”.[251]
Manichaean. The apostle knew that the majority of
people would not be able to accept the ideal of virginity. And since marriage
is better than fornication, he wanted to encourage marriage in the weaker
brethren.
Orthodox. I see… So marriage is the legal permission
to sin in a small way in order to avoid sinning in a big way!
Manichaean. Yes, though I wouldn’t have put it so
crudely…
Orthodox. Crude or not, that is what you believe. And
if you are right, then the Orthodox Church is wrong to treat marriage as a holy
sacrament, and hypocritical in its prayers for the married couple, since there
is no trace in them of the idea that they are in any way sinning.
Manichaean. Fr. G. says that marriage is a sacrament in
the way that the sacrament of confession is a sacrament. The Church in the
sacrament of confession does not bless further sin, but by means of this
sacrament helps the restoration of the unity of the person with the Body of
Christ that has been violated by sin. The meaning of crowning is analogous: it
forgives the sin of sensual pleasure that is inevitably incurred in marriage.
Orthodox. Fr. G. is a very original theologian! Too
original, I’m afraid. The sacrament of confession absolves sin after it
has been committed, not before, and only on condition that a firm resolve is
made not to repeat the sin. The sacrament of marriage, on the other hand,
neither speaks of any sin in marriage, nor, a fortiori, absolves one
from it. If Fr. Gregory were right, then it would be necessary for the married
couple to seek forgiveness from God every time they made love, and every such
act would have to be considered, not as an expression of the bond created in
marriage, but as a violation of it!
Manichaean. You know, several of the Fathers – for
example, Blessed Augustine in The Good of Marriage, - indicated that the
pleasure of intimate relations in marriage is sinful, but is “covered”, as it
were, by the good intention of bearing children.
Orthodox. [smiles] I thought you didn’t want to
return to the Western Fathers…
Manichaean. Blessed Augustine is a Father well-known in
the East.
Orthodox. And one who, as St. Photius the Great
testified, did not in all respects reflect the Tradition of the Eastern Church.
Much as I respect Blessed Augustine, I do not believe that he was expressing
the consensus of the Fathers on this point. He was, after all, a Manichaean in
his youth, and traces of that doctrine may have persisted in him, tempting him
not to accept the words of the apostle on the purity of the marriage bed in
their full simplicity. St. John Chrysostom, as we have seen, had a different
point of view.
Manichaean. Alright then, leaving aside the question of
the sinfulness or otherwise of the sexual act, can you deny that it has no
value except in the producing of children?
Orthodox. I do deny that, and consider it to be a
typically Latin idea. The Latins, - not the Celtic saints whose lives I quoted
earlier, but those who fell into the heresy of Papism - followed Augustine’s
thought to its logical conclusion and ceased to treat marriage as a sacrament.
According to Roman Catholic theology, marriage is a contract performed, not by
God through the priest, but by the couple themselves. The fruits of this
sombre, non-sacramental view of marriage have been unequivocably bad. Thus the
idea that a married couple can achieve sexual stability while believing that
the very means to this end, marital relations, is inherently sinful, has led,
directly or indirectly, to a large proportion of the heresies and perversions
that have bedevilled the history of Western Christianity: the enforced celibacy
of Catholic priests, the "immaculate conception" of the Virgin by her
parents Joachim and Anna, the profoundly adulterous "chastity" of the
troubadors, the definitely sensual "mysticism" of Teresa of Avila and
other Latin "saints", the ban on all marriage by the Shakers and
other Protestant sects, the sexual hypocrisy of the Victorians, and, as a
long-delayed and therefore enormously exaggerated reaction to all this
blasphemy against the goodness of God’s original creation, the general
permissiveness towards almost all kinds of truly sinful acts in the twentieth
century.
Manichaean. So what, according to you, is the positive
value of sexual relations in marriage apart from the procreation of children?
Orthodox. Its value, apart from the procreation of
children and the gradual quenching of the passion of lust, lies in the fact
that it is the natural expression of the love between the husband and wife. A
certain Orthodox Christian put it rather well: “Physical relations may be
elicited by lust, but they may [also] be elicited by love. The spouses enter
into physical relations not with the aim of removing over-excitement and
quenching the ragings of the flesh, but because they love each other, because
they are striving for unity. The unity which marital relations gives to the
spouses is not comparable with unity in the Body of Christ, but it is an image
of it and is accepted into the Church. The aim of marriage is to lessen the
element of lust in physical relations and increase the element of love.”[252] And again: “The unity of
spouses, on being accepted into the Church is liberated in the Church from its
limitedness. Love for one’s spouse becomes a school of love for all.”
Manichaean. Are you saying that it is possible for
there to be no lust in the sexual act?
Orthodox. In practice, because of our fallen state,
it is almost impossible to clearly separate the elements of love and lust in
the sexual act, just as it is almost impossible to separate greed from
restoration of the organism in the act of eating, or sinful anger from
righteous anger in the disciplining of children and subordinates. Absolute purity
is unattainable in our fallen state in any significant action, and not
only in marital relations. The important thing is that the dominant motive
in any particular act should be pure.
Manichaean. If love were the dominant motive in
marriage, then the spouses would not enter into sexual relations.
Orthodox. So if I understand you rightly, you believe
that love cannot be the motive for entering into sexual relations, but only
lust?
Manichaean. That’s
right.
Orthodox. That’s
what I was afraid of… I, however, believe, with the Orthodox Christian quoted above, that
“the motive for entering into sexual relations may be both lust, that is, the
egocentric desire to satisfy the whim of one’s flesh with the help of a
partner, and love for one’s spouse, the desire for both spiritual and bodily
union with him or her”[253]
In fact, I believe that love must be the main motive for
entering into sexual relations. I do not exclude the desire for children or the
desire to avoid fornication as secondary motives. But neither of these
secondary motives can or should be pursued without love or outside the context
of the sexual act as an expression of love. Without love, the other person in
sexual relations is not an end in him or herself, but purely an instrument for
attaining some other goal. And that, in my view, is immoral.
Manichaean. Alright, as regards high-sounding abstract
principles and general contexts I agree. However, when we come down to concrete
actions, and in particular to the sexual act itself, then you must admit: here
we are simply talking about animality. It is not love, but naked, fallen
passion, pure lust.
Orthodox. Just that? Are you sure? All lust
and no love?
Manichaean. If there is any love, then it is
overwhelmed by lust at the climax of the act.
Orthodox. I think you are wrong about that. I think
that the quality of sexual relations between couples is as varied as the
quality of the couples themselves. In the one couple, lust can indeed dominate
to such an extent that each is simply using the other as a vehicle for sensual
indulgence – or some other passion (most rapes, as is well-known, are in fact
expressions of hatred, not love or lust). But in others, sexual feeling is
transmuted into tenderness, in which the lover strives above all to give, and
not to take, to show love, not to receive pleasure. Thus Tobias on his
wedding-night specifically denied that his feeling for his wife was lust:
"Thou madest Adam, and gavest him Eve as his wife for an helper and stay
of them came mankind: Thou hast said, It is not good that man should be alone;
let us make unto him an aid like unto himself. And now, O Lord, I take not this
my sister for lust, but uprightly: therefore mercifully ordain that we may
become aged together..." (Tobit 8.6-7).
Sex can be animality – when human beings choose to live like
animals. But sex can also – in very closely defined circumstances (lawful,
Christian marriage between spouses who truly love each other) – be the
expression of love. Sexuality within the one-flesh relationship of marriage is
not simply a means to another end, procreation (although it is that), and not
simply a concession to weakness (although it is that, too), but the completely
natural and lawful expression of that relationship of unity as such.
Manichaean. You
speak about love and unity. And yet is not love and unity attainable without
physical relations? Is not the love and unity of the Church a non-physical
unity? And is not this, as you have just admitted, higher than the love and
unity of a married couple?
Orthodox. Of
course. But there is a physical element in the love and unity of the Church –
the participation of all members of the Church in the Body and Blood of Christ.
Manichaean. But
there is no physical pleasure in the relations between members of the Church
(outside marriage), nor, of course, in the reception of the sacraments.
Orthodox. I
think that the presence of absence of pleasure is irrelevant to our discussion.
Love is good, and lust is evil. But pleasure is neither good nor evil as such.
Everything depends on the context in which it is experienced, on the motives
and aims of the individual. There is spiritual pleasure, intellectual pleasure,
aesthetic pleasure, physical pleasure....
Manichaean. I could accept that there was no sin in
sexual relations if there was no pleasure in them either.
Orthodox. So pleasure is sin, and even the essence of
sin, according to you! And the only truly happy – i.e. sinless – marriage is
that in which there is no pleasure at all!
Manichaean. Well, you must remember that, according to
St. Maximus the Confessor, pleasure and pain were introduced into the world as
a result of the fall.
Orthodox. But that is not the same as to say that
pleasure - or pain, of course - is necessarily sinful. Thus St. Photius the
Great explicitly states that sexual pleasure in marriage is “lawful”, while at
the same time explaining why there could be no pleasure (or pain) at the
conception and nativity of Christ: "It was needful that a mother should be
prepared down below for the Creator, for the recreation of shattered humanity,
and she a virgin, in order that, just as the first man had been formed of
virgin earth, so the re-creation, too, should be carried out through a virgin
womb, and that no transitory pleasure, even lawful, should be so much as
imagined in the Creator's birth: since a captive of pleasure was he, for whose
deliverance the Lord suffered to be born."[254]
Again, St. John of Damascus
divides pleasures into three categories: (1) natural and necessary, (2) natural
and unnecessary, and (3) unnatural and unnecessary. “Some pleasures are true,
others false. And the exclusively intellectual pleasures consist in knowledge
and contemplation, while the pleasures of the body depend upon sensation.
Further, of bodily pleasures, some are both natural and necessary, in the
absence of which life is impossible, for example the pleasures of food which
replenishes waste, and the pleasures of necessary clothing. Others are natural
but not necessary, as the pleasures of natural and lawful intercourse (Greek: ai kata fusin kai kata nomon mixeiV). For though the function that
these perform is to secure the permanence of the race as a whole, it is still
possible to live a virgin life apart from them. Others, however, are neither
natural nor necessary, such as drunkenness, lust (lagneia) and surfeiting to excess. For
these contribute neither to the maintenance of our own lives nor to the
succession of the race, but on the contrary, are rather even a hindrance. He
therefore that would live a life acceptable to God must follow after those
pleasures which are both natural and necessary: and must give a secondary place
to those which are natural but not necessary, and enjoy them only in fitting
season, and manner, and measure; while the others must be altogether renounced.
Those then are to be considered good (kaleV) pleasures which are not bound
up with pain, and bring no cause for repentance, and result in no other harm
and keep within the bounds of moderation, and do not draw us far away from
serious occupations, nor make slaves of us.”[255]
Important here is the last phrase: “making slaves of us”. Almost all the Holy
Fathers agree that pleasure in itself is not sinful, although the vicious cycle
of human enslavement to pleasure, leading to pain and death, is
undoubtedly sinful. Sin consists rather in the enslavement to
pleasure than in pleasure itself. As the apostle says: “All things are lawful
for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything” (I Cor. 6.12).
Manichaean. Alright, I agree. But you have to
agree: the less you indulge in pleasure the less you are enslaved to it.
Orthodox. In general, yes; for our faith is an
ascetic faith in which self-denial is the norm. Nevertheless, we must never
confuse ends with means: the end is spiritual freedom, and one of the means to
that end is self-denial. But absence of pleasure is neither good nor evil in
itself, and cannot be considered to be a criterion of spirituality. For, as
Bishop Theophan the Recluse writes: “No matter how spiritual someone is, he
cannot help but give the intellectual and carnal their rightful sphere; he
maintains just a little of them, in subordination to the spirit. Let intellectuality
be not too broad (in scientific knowledge, arts and other subjects), and let
carnality be firmly restrained – then he is a real, whole person.”[256]
For, as New Hieromartyr John (Steblin-Kamensky) writes, “the Christian is not a stranger to earthly joys. On the contrary, he
appreciates them to a much higher degree than the unbeliever, because he
believes that they have been given to him not by chance, and the joy of this or
that experience of event in life is united in him with the spiritual experience
of boundless gratitude to the One Who knows all our needs. The Christian is not a stranger to earthly joys, but does not make them the aim of his life; he does not fight
against his neighbour for their sake, and does not seek them. Therefore he receives
them ‘pure’, and they do not darken his spirit.”[257]
Also, much depends on the individual here: a
measure of indulgence that is harmful for one person may cause no harm to
another. It is right sometimes to indulge in some innocent pleasure, for example,
on church feast-days, when fasting is forbidden and a measure of pleasure for
the body contributes to the joy in the soul, in accordance with the word: “wine
maketh glad the heart of man” (Psalm 103.16).
Manichaean. But this is just a concession to weakness.
Some of the hermits fasted all year round.
Orthodox. St. Antony the Great said that even
ascetics have to relax at times.
Manichaean. But relaxation for the hermits did not go
as far as marrying.
Orthodox. Of course not! But neither do the Orthodox
hermits abhor marriage in the way you do. Indeed, the canons of the Council of Gangra anathematise those who abhor marriage.
Manichaean. I have my private opinion about the Council
of Gangra. The conciliar canons are a juridical document, and so it is always
dangerous to allow too much leeway for their interpretation. From the literal
meaning of the canons one could form the impression that marriage and virginity
were equal in honour.
Orthodox. Private opinions which contradict the mind
of the Church should not be expressed in public. The Church accepts the Canons
of the Council of Gangra; evidently you do not. In any case, we do not need the
witness of hermits and councils when we have the unambiguous witness of the
highest authority of all. The Lord Jesus Christ, Who is perfect man and perfect
God, came to the marriage in Cana of Galilee and turned the water into wine. He
actually increased the pleasure and the joy of the wedding-feast. Was He wrong?
Manichaean. No, of course not, but….
Orthodox. Not only was He not wrong, but He
demonstrated thereby a most important truth about marriage: that He came, not
to deny the pleasures and joys of marriage, but to infuse them with the “sober
intoxication” of the Holy Spirit, as St. Gaudentius of Brescia points out.[258] For
the gift of the Holy Spirit that is given in the sacrament of Christian
marriage both purifies the pleasure and elevates the joy of the married couple.
Thus the priest in the marriage service prays that they should have “concord of
soul and of body. Exalt them like the cedars of Lebanon, exalt them like a
luxurious vine. Give them seed in number like unto the full ears of grain; that
having sufficiency in all things, they may abound in every good work which is
well-pleasing unto thee. And let them behold their children’s children, like a
newly-planted olive-orchard round about their table…”
So I repeat: Love is good, and lust is evil. But pleasure is neither
good nor evil as such. Do you agree?
Manichaean. Yes, I agree.
Orthodox. So with your permission I would like to
return to what I consider to be the more important theme, the theme of love and
unity, and to the analogy between the love and unity that reigns in the Church
and the love and unity that reigns in the “little church”, as St. John
Chrysostom calls it, of the Christian marriage.[259]
A married couple form one unit through
their spiritual and physical relationship sanctified by the grace of God. This
unit then enters into the wider and deeper unity of the Church, which wider
unity is both the foundation and the seal of their married unity. It is the
foundation, because true unity in marriage is impossible without unity in
Christ, which is why the canon law of the Church allows only Orthodox spouses
to be married in the Orthodox Church. And it is the seal, because without the
grace of constant participation in Christ their own union would fall apart,
which is why marriage in the early Church formed part of the Divine Liturgy, at
which both spouses communicated of the Body and Blood of Christ.
Manichaean. I need
to see patristic authority for this view of yours.
Orthodox. And
you shall have it. St.
Cyril of Alexandria writes: "Christ, having taken as an example and image
of that indivisible love, accord and unity which is conceivable only in
unanimity, the unity of essence which the Father has with Him and which He, in
turn, has with the Father, desires that we too should unite with each other;
evidently in the same way as the Consubstantial, Holy Trinity is united so that
the whole body of the Church is conceived as one, ascending in Christ through
the fusion and union of two peoples into the composition of the new perfect
whole. The image of Divine unity and the consubstantial nature of the Holy
Trinity as a most perfect interpenetration must be reflected in the unity of
the believers who are of one heart and mind" - and body, he adds, for this
"natural unity" is "perhaps not without bodily unity".[260]
Manichaean. Still,
it seems to me that you exaggerate the element of physical union in marriage,
as if it was that, and not spiritual union, that constituted marriage.
Orthodox. But it
is precisely the physical union that constitutes marriage. Did not the Lord
Himself define marriage in this way, saying that “they are no longer two, but
one flesh” (Matt. 19.6)? And that is why the only reason He
allows for divorce is adultery (Matt. 5.32); for it is precisely
adultery which destroys the “one-flesh” relationship through the joining of the
flesh of one of the spouses to a third person. Very apt in this connection are the words of
holy New Hieromartyr Gregory (Lebedev), Bishop of Schlusselburg: “'And they two
shall be one flesh, so that they are no longer two, but one flesh' (Matt.
19.6), that is, the people have ceased to exist separately even in the physical
sense. They have become one physical body, 'one flesh'. That is what the
fulfilment of the will of God has done... It has not only completed and
broadened their souls in a mutual intermingling, it has changed their physical
nature and out of two physical existences it has made one whole existence. That is the mystery of marriage”[261] Thus marriage is not primarily
procreation, but creation; it creates an ontological change in the
persons being married: they are no longer two, but one flesh. And this change
has “completed and broadened their souls”.
Manichaean. I don’t find anything about “completing and
broadening their souls” in the Holy Scriptures. This is sentimental rubbish.
The Fathers talk only about the procreation of children and the prevention of
fornication.
Orthodox. That is not true. Read Ephesians 5, the
reading from the apostle appointed by the Church for the marriage service, in
which the main emphasis is precisely on love - which love is the
essential condition for the fulfilling and broadening of our souls. And please
be careful about dismissing the words of a bishop-martyr as “sentimental
rubbish”…
Manichaean. Alright. The only thing I insist on is that
an element of lust is inescapable in sexual relations.
Orthodox. And the only thing I insist on is that when
we speak about the love between a husband and wife this is not a euphemism for
lust, but is indeed love, and not something else. As the love-stories of
every nation testify, for the sake of his beloved a genuine lover is prepared
to suffer any privation. This love is genuinely self-sacrificial and therefore
it is genuinely love, not lust, even if it contains a physical element.
In the Holy Scriptures God very often compares himself to a bridegroom (Hosea
2.19-20; Song of Songs; Isaiah 54.5, 61.10, 62.5; Ezekiel
16.8; Matthew 22.1-14, 25.1-13; John 3.29; Eph. 5.32; II
Cor. 11.2; Rev. 19.7, 21.2). For, far from sexual love sanctified by the grace of
Christian marriage being the opposite of true love, it is in fact the
closest image on earth of God’s love for man and of man’s love for God.
2. Adam and Eve
Manichaean. Alright. But I think we can approach this
question from a different point of view, the point of view of the original
creation. Now if I can prove to you that Adam and Eve had no sexual relations
in Paradise, will you agree that sexual relations belong exclusively to the
fall?
Orthodox. Let me see your proof first.
Manichaean. The Holy Fathers make it clear that sexual
relations came only after the fall, and were a product of the fall. Thus St.
Gregory of Nyssa writes that the differences between man and woman were created
by God in prevision of the fall. And St. John of the Ladder writes: “If he
[Adam] had not been overcome by his stomach, he would not have known what a wife was”.[262]
Orthodox. There
are two questions here. First, the nature and purpose of the differentiation of
the sexes. And secondly, the nature of our first parents’ sexual relationship,
if any such existed, before the fall.
I would agree that there were no sexual relations as we know
them in Paradise. But I do not accept that there was no sexuality of any
kind there. Men and women were created from the beginning, before the fall,
with a natural, unfallen need for each other.
Manichaean. What is your evidence for that statement?
Orthodox. The Holy Scriptures. God said: “it is not
good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper like unto him” (Gen.
2.18). In other words, Adam, though sinless and unfallen, was nevertheless
incomplete on his own. Nor was this incompleteness due simply to a lack of
rational (non-animal) company, otherwise God could simply have sent him an
angel, or another man, to supply his lack. No: Adam needed a companion who
would help him, and who would be like him without being too
similar to him.
Manichaean. It is obvious that Eve was created in order
to help Adam in the procreation of children.
Orthodox. I don’t think that was the only reason. And
there is no hint of that at this stage in the Biblical discourse. In any case,
procreation could have been through a process of sexless cloning, or, as St.
Gregory of Nyssa suggests, in the same manner as the angels multiplied[263],
rather than sexual reproduction. No: Adam needed a deeper kind of help, a help
linked, not to his incapacity to reproduce on his own, but to some
incompleteness in his inner nature. He needed not a physical mate, but a soulmate.
This is confirmed by St. John Chrysostom, who writes: “How
great the power of God, the master craftsman, making a likeness of those limbs
from that tiny part [the rib of Adam], creating such wonderful senses and
preparing a creature complete, entire and perfect, capable both of speaking and
of providing much comfort to man by a sharing of her being. For it was for the consolation
of this man that this woman was created. Hence Paul also said, ‘Man was not
created for the woman, but woman for the man’ (I Cor. 11.9).”[264]
Again, the holy new Martyr-Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow writes:
"Without a helpmate the very bliss of paradise was not perfect for Adam:
endowed with the gift of thought, speech, and love, the first man seeks with
his thought another thinking being; his speech sounds lonely and the dead echo
alone answers him; his heart, full of love, seeks another heart that would be
close and equal to him; all his being longs for another being analogous to him,
but there is none; the creatures of the visible world around him are below him
and are not fit to be his mates; and as to the beings of the invisible
spiritual world they are above. Then the bountiful God, anxious for the
happiness of man, satisfies his wants and creates a mate for him - a wife. But
if a mate was necessary for man in paradise, in the region of bliss, the mate
became much more necessary for him after the fall, in the vale of tears and
sorrow. The wise man of antiquity spoke justly: 'two are better than one, for
if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone
when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up' (Eccl. 4.9-10).
But few people are capable of enduring the strain of moral loneliness, it can
be accomplished only by effort, and truly 'all men cannot receive this saying,
save they to whom it is given' (Matt. 19.11), and as for the rest - 'it
is not good for a man to be alone', without a mate."[265]
Manichaean. But
monks and nuns live as monads even while contending with a fallen nature that
Adam did not have.
Orthodox. This is indeed a paradox: that Adam, though
unfallen, needed a mate, whereas fallen monks and nuns can do without one. But
this indicates, not the illusoriness of Adam’s need (for the Word of God is
quite specific about it), but rather the supernatural, charismatic
quality of virginity. For virginity is a gift of God that carries human nature,
not only above the fallen state, but even higher than the original, unfallen
state of Adam in Paradise. So great is this gift that it is revealed only in
very few of the righteous of the Old Testament (the Prophets Elijah and
Jeremiah, St. John the Baptist), and is revealed in its full glory only in the
New Testament.
Manichaean. Alright. But I want you to specify more
clearly what you mean by this “need” that Adam had for Eve. Surely you don’t
mean a sexual need?! The need for sex is fallen.
Orthodox. There is a difference between fallen need
and unfallen need. Fallen need tyrannises; unfallen need does not tyrannise,
and should therefore properly not be called “need” (for that implies a certain
compulsion), but “attraction” or “appetite”. Thus St. Cyril of Alexandria
writes of Adam's body before the fall: "It had indeed innate
appetites, appetites for food and procreation, but his mind was not tyrannised
by these tendencies."[266]
Manichaean. This is a new idea to me! And I need more
than one patristic testimony to believe it! You make it sound as if Adam was
fallen before the fall!
Orthodox. Perhaps you have a wrong idea about what is
fallen… Here’s another patristic testimony. St. Gregory Palamas writes that
“the natural motions related to the begetting of children can be detected in
infants that are still at the breast… The passions to which it [carnal desire]
give birth belong to us by nature; and natural things are not indictable; for
they were created by God Who is good, so that through them we can act in ways that
are also good. Hence in themselves they do not indicate sickness of soul, but
they become evidence of such sickness when we misuse them.”[267] Are
you satisfied?
Manichaean. Conditionally. Go on.
Orthodox. There can be no doubt that the closeness of
Adam and Eve in Paradise had certain forms of expression more perfect than what
we now recognise as the sexual act. It was expressed primarily on the
psychological level, but there is no reason to suppose that there was not also
a physical element in it.
Manichaean. I hope you are not talking about sexual
union!
Orthodox. No. I have already agreed that there were
no sexual relations as we know them between Adam and Eve in Paradise. However,
they were of one flesh. Thus "the Lord God brought a deep sleep
(Greek: ekstasiV,
literally “ecstasy”) on Adam; and while he was asleep, he took one of his ribs,
and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib which the Lord God had taken
from the man He made into a woman and brought her to the man" (Gen. 2.21-22). The great Serbian
Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich writes about this event: “This is the foundation
of, and the reason for, the mysterious and attraction and union between man and
woman”[268]
– a foundation laid, it should be noted once more, already in Paradise.
Manichaean. I don’t see how Velimirovich can draw this
conclusion.
Orthodox. The conclusion is justified because the
account of the creation of Eve from the flesh of Adam is linked directly, by
the word “therefore”, with the following passage, which is the “foundation
charter”, as it were, for the sacrament of marriage: “Therefore shall a
man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they
shall be one” (2.24). These words, whose authority was confirmed by Christ
Himself (Matt.
19.6), as well as by the Apostle Paul (Eph. 5.31), make clear that the
physical union of man and woman was in the original plan of God for mankind;
for there can be no other interpretation of the word “cleave” (or “cling”).[269] And yet this law of physical attraction and union is described by St. Paul as “a great mystery” (Eph. 5.31).
Manichaean. I think it is a mistake to consider that
the law of the physical and attraction of man and woman is “a great mystery”.
St. Paul was talking about the union between Christ and the Church, which is a
virginal union.
Orthodox. The union between Christ and the Church,
like the union between Adam and Eve in Paradise, is both virginal and
one-flesh, the flesh being that of Christ Himself, which He took from the
Virgin and then gives to all believers in the sacrament of the Eucharist.
Moreover, it is clear that St. Paul was identifying the two mysteries – that of
human marriage, and that of the union between Christ and the Church.
Or perhaps we can put it another way: the mystery of human marriage is
an icon of the mystery of the marriage between Christ and the Church. And the
lower mystery derives its holiness from the higher mystery, just as an icon
derives its holiness from its archetype. Thus the marriage of male and female
is a great mystery because it was created to symbolise a still greater mystery,
the mystery of the union of Christ and the Church. And this is the explanation
for the phenomenon of sexual differentiation, attraction and union (which, by the way, is a major
problem for evolutionary biology). God planted sexuality in the midst of His
creation so that men, by pondering on this lower mystery, should by analogy
come to a deeper understanding of the higher mystery of God’s love for mankind
and His union with man in the Incarnation.
But even in its own terms sexual love leading to marriage is a
great mystery. For, as St. John Chrysostom writes, “the girl who has always
been kept at home and has never seen the bridegroom, from the first day loves
and cherishes him as her own body. Again, the husband, who has never seen her,
never shared even the fellowship of speech with her, from the first day prefers
her to everyone, to his friends, his relatives, even his parents. The parents
in turn, if they are deprived of their money for another reason, will complain,
grieve, and take the perpetrators to court. Yet they entrust to a man, whom
often they have never even seen before…, both their own daughter and a large
sum as dowry. They rejoice as they do this and they do not consider it a loss.
As they see their daughter led away, they do not bring to mind their closeness,
they do not grieve or complain, but instead they give thanks. They consider it
an answer to their prayers when they see their daughter led away from their home
taking a large sum of money with her. Paul had all this in mind: how the couple
leave their parents and bind themselves to each other, and how the new
relationship becomes more powerful than the long-established familiarity. He
saw that this was not a human accomplishment.
It is God Who sows these loves in men and women. He caused both those who give
in marriage and those who are married to do this with joy. Therefore Paul said,
‘This is a great mystery’.”[270]
Manichaean. I think you should be more careful about
comparing heavenly things with earthly things. It is only by the greatest
economy that God allows sinful human relationships to be images of heavenly
mysteries.
Orthodox. Call it “economy” if you like. But the fact remains, and the
Holy Fathers confirm the fact. Thus another aspect of this mystery is that from
the union of the two a third is brought into being. One divides into two, then
the two reunite to form, not one only, and not three only, but three-in-one! As
St. John Chrysostom writes: “A man leaves his parents, who gave him life, and
is joined to his wife, and one flesh – father, mother, and child – results from
the commingling of the two. The child is born from the union of their seed, so
the three become one flesh.”[271] And
again, still more clearly: “They come to be made into one body. See the mystery
of love! If the two do not become one, they cannot increase; they can increase
only by decreasing! How great is the strength of unity! God’s ingenuity in the
beginning divided one flesh into two; but he wanted to show that it remained
one even after its division, so He made it impossible for either half to
procreate without the other. Now do you see how great a mystery marriage is!
From one man, Adam, He made Eve, then He reunited these two into one, so that
their children would be produced from a single source. Likewise, husband and
wife are not two, but one; if he is the head and she is the body, how can they
be two? She was made from his side; so they are two halves of one organism. God
calls her a ‘helper’ to demonstrate their unity, and He honors the unity of
husband and wife above that of child and parents. A father rejoices to see his
son or daughter marry; it is as if his child’s body is becoming complete. Even
though he spends so much money for his daughter’s wedding, he would rather do
that than see her remain unmarried, since then she would seem to be deprived of
her own flesh. We are not sufficient unto ourselves in this life. How do they
become one flesh? As if she were gold receiving the purest of gold, the woman
receives the man’s seed with rich pleasure, and within her it is nourished,
cherished, and refined. It is mingled with her own substance and she then
returns it as a child! The child is a bridge connecting mother to father, so the
three become one flesh… That is why the Scripture does not say, ‘They shall be
one flesh’, but that they shall be joined together ‘into one flesh’, namely the
child. But supposing there is no child, do they then remain two and not one?
No, their intercourse effects the joining of their bodies and they are made
one, just as when perfume is mixed with ointment.”[272] Thus
the mystery of the union of man and woman in marriage, which reflects the union
of God and man in the God-man, gives birth to the mystery of the union of
father, mother and child in the family, which in turn reflects the Holy
Trinity-in-Unity of God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Both mysteries may be
said to be aspects of the image of God in man. For the image is imprinted not
only on man and woman as individuals, but also on their union with each other,
and on the whole family of men they were called to create through this union.
Thus St. Gregory of Nyssa writes: “Adam, not having a created cause and being
unbegotten, is an example and image of the uncaused God the Father, the
Almighty and Cause of all things; while Eve, who proceeded from Adam (but is
not born from him) signifies the Hypostasis of the Holy Spirit proceeding.”[273] And
St. Anastasius of Sinai writes: "Adam is the type and image of the
Unoriginate Almighty God, the Cause of all; the son born of him manifests the
image of the Begotten Son and Word of God; and Eve, who proceeded from Adam,
signifies the proceeding Hypostasis of the Holy Spirit. This is why God did not
breathe in her the breath of life: she was already the type of the breathing
and life of the Holy Spirit."[274]
Manichaean. There you go again! Exalting earthly “love”
far beyond its true worth!
Orthodox. The theology of the icon entails both a
great distance between the icon and the archetype, and a great closeness. On
the one hand, just as a wooden icon and its archetype are of different natures,
so the love between a husband and his wife and its archetype in the love
between Christ and the Church are different in nature – as different as heaven
is from the earth. On the other hand, just as the grace of the archetype is
communicated to the icon because of the likeness between the two, according to
the Seventh Council, so the grace of the love between Christ and the Church is
communicated to those who are truly married in Christ, and who have been made
partakers of His Divine nature (II Peter 1.4) in Baptism and
Chrismation, and in His deified human nature in the Eucharist.
Thus the holiness of marriage between two believers in Christ follows,
in a sense, from the holiness of the marriage between each believer with
Christ. Of course, the “vertical” marriage of each believer with Christ is
higher and infinitely more important. However, the “horizontal” marriage fits
into the structure with no fissure or schism.
In this vision, while due preference is given to the supreme glory of
virginity, no dishonour is given to the lesser glory of marriage, but both
virgins and married people, both monads and dyads, are harmoniously integrated
as shining and perfectly sculpted stones into the building of the Church, so
that as one body they may be presented “as a bride prepared for her husband” (Rev.
21.2).
Manichaean. Nevertheless, I think we should have less
mysticism and more realism. Instead of speculating about the relationship
between Adam and Eve, and building vast, insubstantial clouds of “sexual
metaphysics” on that basis, we should concentrate on the realities of our
fallen condition.
Orthodox. In my opinion, it is impossible accurately
to define the nature of our fall unless we first understand what we have fallen
from. However, I am quite happy to turn to our fallen condition if you
want. Where shall we start?
3. Fall and
Resurrection
Manichaean. From the Holy Scriptures, and in particular
from the verse: “In sins did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 50.7). This
shows that even in lawful sexual relations there is an element of sin.
Orthodox. The Scriptures should always be interpreted
in the light of the whole body of the Holy Scriptures, and of the Holy Fathers.
Thus the best interpretation on this verse is provided by Job: “Who can bring a
clean thing out of an unclean?” (Job 14.4). And by St. John Chrysostom,
who interprets this verse to refer to original sin, adding: “therefore he
[David] does not condemn marriage, as some have thoughtlessly supposed”.[275] Thus
it is not a question of the sexual act being sinful in itself, but of it being
the vehicle for the transmission of sinful human nature from generation to
generation.
Manichaean. As a result of original sin, all our
faculties are diseased and have become passionate. To submit to passion is sin.
Therefore to submit to fallen sexual passion inside marriage, while less sinful
than outside marriage, is still sin.
Orthodox. First, we have to be clear
about the passions. There are two kinds of passion, according to the Holy
Fathers: innocent and sinful. The Eastern Fathers make a distinction between
“lawful” or “natural” and “unlawful” or “unnatural” pleasures and desires or passions.
A natural passion is an impulse that is in accordance with nature as God
originally created it; while a culpable passion is, in St. Maximus' words,
"an impulse of the soul that is contrary to nature."[276]
Culpable passions feed on natural ones like parasites: the culpable passion of
gluttony - on the natural passion to satisfy hunger, the culpable passion of
indolence - on the natural desire to rest weary limbs, the culpable passion of
lust - on the natural passion of sexual desire. Some culpable passions have no
natural counterpart, like avarice, which St. John Chrysostom contrasts with
sexual passion in this respect.[277]
Manichaean. That is all very well, but the fact remains
that since the fall all our faculties are fallen and passionate.
Orthodox. So we must never use any of our faculties?
Manichaean. I didn’t say that.
Orthodox. No, but it follows logically from
what you are saying. I accept that our faculties are fallen, but I do not
accept that every expression of our faculties is necessarily sinful. If that
were so, then in order to avoid sin, we would have to stop thinking altogether,
since the thinking faculty of our soul is fallen, and we would have to stop
being angry in all circumstances, even against sin and heresy, since the
incensive faculty of our soul is fallen, and we would have to abstain from all
sexual activity, even in marriage, since our desiring faculty is fallen. But
that would mean that we would have to become like logs, neither thinking nor
feeling in any way. That is not Christianity, but Buddhism. Our faculties are
not bad in themselves; they were created “very good”. It is the use we make of
them which is bad. Thus St. Dionysius the Areopagite writes: “The depraved
sinner, though bereft of the Good by his brutish desire, is in this respect
unreal and desires unrealities; but still he has a share in the Good insofar as
there is in him a distorted reflection of true love and communion. And anger
has a share in the Good insofar as it is a movement which seeks to remedy
apparent evils, converting them to that which appears to be fair. And even he
that desires the basest life, yet insofar as he feels desire at all and feels
desire for life, and intends what he think the best kind of life, to that
extent he participates in the Good. And if you wholly destroy the good, there
will be neither being, life, desire, nor motion, or any other thing”.[278]
Manichaean. But how can a fallen faculty bring forth
unfallen fruits?
Orthodox. By being brought out from under
the dominion of the devil, and being placed under the dominion of the Holy
Spirit, Who can transform the fallen impulses of the soul, resurrecting them to
their former, unfallen state. And this is done through prayer, fasting and good
works, and especially by the reception of the sacraments, whereby we receive a
transfusion of grace, as it were. We must always remember, as Archbishop
Theophan reminds us, that marriage is a sacrament which communicates grace.
Manichaean. But the Christian destroys his
fallen impulses. He does not resurrect them.
Orthodox. Fallen impulses must be crucified in
order to rise again in a new and incorrupt form. By “crucifixion” here I do not
mean complete “destruction”; for the source in our human nature from which
these fallen impulses come cannot be destroyed, precisely because it is part of
human nature. In any case, to destroy human nature is a kind of mutilation or
castration, which is forbidden by the Church. Our human nature must not be
destroyed, but transformed, redirected, resurrected. And then it can be used
for the good, since then we are talking, not about fallen impulses, but about
natural ones.
Manichaean. Nevertheless, the Fathers speak about a
complete extirpation of the passions. This is what, for example, St. Maximus
the Confessor says with regard to the eight principal passions. Only through
extirpating the passions is passionlessness possible.
Orthodox. However, the same Holy Father uses the word
“passion” in a different sense in other passages. Thus he speaks about the
eight evil or unnatural passions as being a sickness of the two natural
passions – desire and anger. Like the unnatural passions, the natural passions
are “alogical”. But they are not “paralogical”, and can be “logicised” when
they are led by the spirit towards the Logos, Christ, giving ardour and
strength to man’s striving for God. Thus he writes: “Let our intelligence,
then, be moved to seek God, let our desire be roused in longing for Him, and
let our incensive power struggle to keep guard over our attachment to Him. Or,
more precisely, let our whole intellect be directed towards God, tensed by our
incensive power as if by some nerve, and fired with longing by our desire at
its most ardent”.[279]
Manichaean. Can you adduce any further patristic
testimonies in your support?
Orthodox. I can. For example, St. Gregory the
Theologian writes: “I am united to God in an indivisible identity of will, and
that through making reasonable in a fitting manner the irrational powers of the
soul by leading them through reason to a familiar commerce with the mind: I
mean anger and desire. I have changed the one into charity, and the other into
joy.”[280]
And St. Theodore the Great Ascetic, commenting on the same Father, writes:
“Every deiform soul is tripartite, according to Gregory the Theologian. Virtue,
when established in the intelligence, he calls discretion, understanding and
wisdom; and when in the incensive power, he calls it courage and patience; and
when in the faculty of desire, he calls it love, self-restraint and
self-control. Justice or right judgement penetrates all three aspects of the
soul, enabling them to function in harmony.”[281]Again,
St. Gregory of Nyssa writes that “if we use our reason aright and master our
emotions, everything can be transformed into virtue; for anger produces
courage, hatred - aversion from vice, the power of love - the desire for what
is truly beautiful…”[282]
Manichaean. I don’t see how anger is transformed into
courage.
Orthodox. St. Isaiah the Solitary explains:
"There is among the passions an anger of the intellect, and this anger is
in accordance with nature. Without anger a man cannot attain purity; he has to
feel angry with all that is sown in him by the enemy."[283] So
anger is necessary in order to hate evil - “Be angry, and sin not”, says David
(Ps. 4.5).
Manichaean. And how is desire transformed into the love
of the beautiful – I mean the spiritually beautiful?
Orthodox. Solomon says of Wisdom: “I loved her from
my youth, and I desired to take her for my bride, and I became a lover (Gk: erasthV) of her beauty” (Wisdom
8.2). Thus, purified of all unnatural, sinful elements, sexual passion can aid
the love of the good, the good being perceived as beauty.
Again, St. John of the Ladder writes: “I have seen impure souls raving
madly about physical love; but making their experience of such love a reason
for repentance, they transferred the same love to the Lord; and overcoming all
fear, they spurred themselves insatiably on to the love of God. That is why the
Lord does not say of that chaste harlot: ‘Because she feared,’ but: ‘Because
she loved much,’ and could easily expel love by love.”[284] And
again: “Someone told me of an extraordinarily high degree of purity. He said:
‘A certain man, on seeing a beautiful body, thereupon glorified the Creator,
and from that one look he was moved to the love of God and to a fountain of
tears. And it was wonderful to see how what would have been a cause of
destruction for one was for another the supernatural cause of a crown. If such
a person always feels and behaves in the same way on similar occasions, then he
has rise immortal before the general resurrection.”[285]
Do you see how the fallen faculty is not destroyed in its essence (for
it is impossible to destroy human nature), but is resurrected by a redirection
of its innate energy in a different, God-pleasing direction, and that these
faculties are the very means “by which we may be raised towards union with the
heavenly”, in St. Gregory of Nyssa’s words?[286]
Manichaean. This sounds dangerously like the Freudian
idea of sublimation to me. Or rather, it’s worse than that: you seem to regard
sexual relations as a path to the knowledge of God! As if sex has anything to
do with the Holy Trinity! This is Gnosticism! This is Tantrism!
Orthodox. But Father, I’ve been quoting from the Holy
Fathers!
Manichaean. This is not patristics, but sexopatrology!
It’s disgusting! It
reminds me of the Parisian school of “lyrical Orthodoxy”!
Orthodox. You have misunderstood me. It is not sexual
relations, but chastity, which is the essential prerequisite for the knowledge
of God, for it is the pure in heart who will see God. However, the point I have
been making is that chastity is not a negative virtue, simply the absence of
sex, but rather the redirection and resurrection of sexual desire. This
redirection is first away from all forbidden objects and towards one’s wife,
and then, in its highest form, away from all material things and towards God
alone.
Manichaean. I still need more patristic evidence for
this most surprising doctrine.
Orthodox. And you shall have it. Consider, for
example, this passage from St. Gregory Palamas: "Not only hast Thou made
the passionate part of my soul entirely Thine, but if there is a spark of
desire in my body, it has returned to its source, and has thereby become elevated
and united to Thee."[287] And
again the same Holy Father writes: "Impassibility does not consist in
mortifying the passionate part of the soul, but in removing it from evil to
good, and directing its energies towards divine things... Through the
passionate part of the soul which has been orientated towards the end for which
God created it, one will practise the corresponding virtues: with the
concupiscent appetite, one will embrace charity, and with the irascible, one
will practise patience. It is thus not the man who has killed the passionate
part of the soul who has the pre-eminence, for such a one would have no
momentum or activity to acquire a divine state and right disposition and
relationship with God; but rather, the prize goes to him who has put that part of
his soul under subjection, so that by its obedience to the mind, which is by
nature appointed to rule, it may ever tend towards God, as is right, by the
uninterrupted remembrance of Him... Thus one must offer to God the passionate
part of the soul, alive and active, that it may be a living sacrifice. As the
Apostle said of our bodies, 'I exhort you, by the mercy of God, to offer your
bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God' (Rom.
12.1)."[288]
And again: “Therefore those who love the
Good (oi erastai twn kalwn) carry out a transposition (metaqesin) of this faculty and do not make
it die; they do not suck it into themselves without letting it move, but they
show it to be active in love towards God and neighbour”.[289]
4. Marriage and Monasticism
Manichaean. Alright, you have a point. Nevertheless,
marriage remains an earthly institution. Monasticism calls us to a higher
mystery which is above and beyond all the good things of this life.
Orthodox. Undoubtedly. But we are talking about the
good of marriage here, not the still higher good of monasticism. Remember:
monasticism is not made higher through the denigration of marriage. Rather it
is the opposite: monasticism is exalted because it is an even better good than
the good of marriage. For, as St. Seraphim of Sarov said: “Marriage is good,
and virginity is very, very good”.
Manichaean. Marriage is less good because it has an
admixture of sin.
Orthodox. No! Otherwise, the marriage service would
be an occasion for sorrow rather than joy! For how can a sacrament be
celebrated over that which is inherently sinful? “There is one glory of the
sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star
differs from star in glory” (I Cor. 15.41). And yet they all shine with
the same light, which is pure and undefiled in each. It is the same with
marriage and monasticism. Undoubtedly monasticism is the greater light. But
marriage is also a light, in which there is no darkness at all.
Manichaean. Still, I can’t help feeling sad that you
have renounced the virginal state in which you lived before, and so you have
fallen – or have decided to fall in the future. If virginity is higher than
marriage, the transition from virginity to marriage must be a transition from
the higher to the lower, which is sad.
Orthodox. So, according to you, the marriage service
should really be an occasion for mourning in that the couple to be married are
renouncing the virginal state! But lifelong virginity is a gift of God which is
not given to all. If a man feels that he does not have this gift, it is as well
that he enters into marriage earlier rather than later. And it is a cause for
joy that he has found the right person with whom he can carry out the calling
given to him by God.
Manichaean. But the gift of virginity can be given to
anyone who asks for it with sufficient determination.
Orthodox. No. The Lord Himself said: “Not all men can
receive this precept, but only those to whom it is given” (Matt. 19.11).
And St. Paul says: “I wish that all men were as I myself am. But each has his
own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another” (I Cor.
7.7). “The distribution of the charismata,” says St. John Chrysostom, “does not
lie in the will of the receiver, but in the judgement of the provider.”[290] God
gives one gift (virginity) to one, and another (marriage) to another, knowing
which gift is suited to the character and circumstances of each, which gift
will bring forth the greater fruit in each. God calls some to monasticism and
others to marriage, knowing that some in each category will prove worthy of
their calling and gift, and others unworthy. He knows that there are some wise
virgins, and some foolish – and that some non-virgins will be higher in the
Kingdom than either. If all Christians were called to be virgins, and it simply
depended on the determination of each individual, then St. Seraphim would not
have told one woman who wanted to marry that she must become a nun, and to
another who wanted to become a nun that she must marry.
Manichaean. God gives the gift of virginity to those
who, in the Lord’s words, “can receive it”, that is, whom He foresees will not
fall into fornication; whereas the weaker vessels He leads towards marriage,
since the purpose of marriage is to prevent fornication (I Cor. 7.2).
Orthodox. I have already agreed that one of the
purposes of marriage is to avoid fornication. But it is only one purpose. And I
think that God’s gifts are distributed for much deeper and more mysterious
reasons than simply the greater or lesser sexual temperance of this or that
person. What of those monks who fell into fornication, but repented and later
became saints? Are we to conclude that they should really have married first?
Manichaean. Not necessarily. Perhaps all the
temptations of married life – the everyday cares, the looking after children –
would have quenched their zeal for God. St. Paul gives this as one of the main
reasons for the superiority of monasticism over marriage (I Cor. 7.34).
Orthodox. Yes indeed, that is just my point! In fact,
I believe it is the main reason. The main reason why monasticism is
superior to marriage is that it creates better conditions for the struggle
against the passions, less distractions of every kind. It is not a question of
sexuality in the first place, still less of avoiding the supposed “sinfulness”
of sexual relations in marriage.
Manichaean. And yet even the married are called to
abstain from sexual relations if possible. For the apostle writes: “The time is
short; so let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those
involved in worldly affairs as though they were not involved” (I Cor.
7.29,31).
Orthodox. The apostle is talking about non-attachment
to material things here, not total sexual abstinence. For St. Gregory Palamas,
immediately after citing this verse, writes: “This, I think, is harder to
accomplish than the keeping of one’s virginity. For experience shows that total
abstinence is easier than self-control in food and drink”.[291]
Manichaean. My friend Fr. G. says that a man can
separate from his wife for the sake of abstinence, even without his wife’s
permission. One of Justinian’s novellas permits it.
Orthodox. There is another of Justinian’s novellas
which says that any legislation of the Church which contradicts the Canons of
the Church is ipso facto illegal. The canons specifically forbid clergy
to put away their wives “under pretext of religion” (Apostolic Canon 5), “lest
we should affect injuriously marriage constituted by God and blessed by His
presence, as the Gospel saith: ‘What God hath joined together, let no man put
asunder’; and the Apostle saith, ‘Marriage is honourable and the bed
undefiled’; and again, ‘Art thou bound to a wife? Seek not to be loosed’”
(Sixth Ecumenical Council, Canon 13).
Manichaean. But I know of cases from the lives of the
saints in which the saint has left his wife without her permission.
Orthodox. There are exceptions to every rule. But the
rule must still be maintained as the norm, and nobody is permitted to deny the
norm set by God. This point is well illustrated by the Life of the
British saint, Monk-Martyr Nectan of Hartland (+c. 500). St. Nectan’s father,
Brychan, was a local prince who left his wife to practise the ascetic life in
Ireland. After several years of asceticism, he returned to his native land, and
there, finding his wife still alive, “although he had not proposed any such
thing himself”, he had relations with her and begat several sons and daughters
– one for each year of his unlawful abstinence. Brychan recognised his fault,
saying: “Now has God punished me for vainly intending to act contrary to His
will.”[292]
Brychan and his children, all of whom became monastic missionaries in
south-west England, are counted among the saints of the British Church – a
happy ending which would not have come to pass if he had continued his unlawful
asceticism to the end of his life…
Manichaean. You promised not to quote from any more
lives of the Celtic saints!
Orthodox. Yes, forgive me…
Manichaean. So let us return to the real Tradition…
The Lord Himself says: “If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and
mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own
life also, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14.26).
Orthodox. However, Blessed Theophylact interprets
this verse as follows: “The Lover of man does not teach hatred for man, nor
does He counsel us to take our own lives. But He desires His true disciples to hate
his own kin when they prevent him from giving reverence to God and when he
is hindered from doing good by his relationship to them. If they do not hinder
us in these things, then He teaches us to honor them until our last breath”.[293]
Manichaean. Still, you have to admit: the highest level
of sanctity is unattainable for married people.
Orthodox. I would agree that a married person cannot
hope to achieve all the crowns, because there is a special crown for
virginity. The Church teaches that a special reward is reserved for
the great feat of monasticism. And Archbishop Theophan of Poltava writes: “With
the blessedness of virginity there is no comparison, neither in heaven, nor on
earth.”[294]
Manichaean. So you agree with me…
Orthodox. Not completely. St. John Chrysostom writes: “Use
marriage temperately, and you will be the first in the Kingdom of heaven and be
counted worthy of all its blessings”.[295] And again: “If any marry thus, with these views, he will be but little inferior to monks; the married are only a little below the unmarried.”[296]
Manichaean. The question here is: what is the
meaning of “temperately”? My friend Fr.
G. argues that “temperately” means “virginally”, insofar as the meaning and aim
of Christian marriage does not differ in any way from the celibate life.
Orthodox. I think you should pay more attention to
the actual words of the Holy Fathers, and less to Fr. G.’s interpretation of
them! What does the saint actually say? “It is possible, very possible, also
for those who have wives to be virtuous, if they wish. How? If they, while
having wives, shall be as though they had them not, if they will not rejoice in
acquisitions, if they will use the world as if not using it (I Cor.
7.29-31). But if some have found marriage an obstacle, let them know that it is
not marriage that serves as an obstacle, but self-indulgence ill-using
marriage, just as wine does not produce drunkenness, but evil self-indulgence
and its intemperate use. Use marriage in a temperate way, and you will be the
first in the Heavenly Kingdom and will taste all its blessings, which may we
all be worthy of through the grace and love for man of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The critical comparison here is between wine and sexual relations. Just
as it is possible to drink wine sparingly without getting drunk, so it is
possible to have sexual relations in marriage “in a temperate manner”, without
it serving as an impediment to the spiritual life. Complete abstinence from
sexual relations is definitely not indicated. If it were, then the saint
would have said that one must not drink wine even in small quantities because
even the smallest consumption leads to drunkenness. But the whole point of the
comparison is that in wine-drinking, as in marital relations, small, “measured”
use is not harmful. For, as St. John Chrysostom writes, commenting on St.
Paul's phrase "sold under sin": "Desire is not sin; but when it
becomes extravagant, and breaks the bonds of lawful marriage, and springs even
upon other men's wives, it becomes thereafter adultery - not, however, because
of the desire, but because of the lack of moderation."[297] So
there is no evidence that St. Chrysostom meant by “temperance” “complete
abstinence”.
Manichaean. Alright. But the majority of the saints
were monastics.
Orthodox. If you count all the martyrs, then I am not
at all sure that the majority are monastics. However, I would agree that the
majority of the most famous saints, including the very greatest such as the
Mother of God and St. John the Baptist, were virgins or monastics. And this is
a clear witness to the general superiority of monasticism over marriage as a
Christian path in life. But that is a point I have never disputed. What I
dispute is your contention that marriage necessarily involves sin because of
the element of sexual relations. And that marriage in itself prevents men from
reaching the highest levels of sanctity.
Manichaean. I think you will find that the married
saints were saints, not because of their marriage, but in spite of it. They
either ceased from marital relations, and were therefore purified of sexual
stain, or they suffered martyrdom, which removes all stains.
Orthodox. The Martyr Thomais of Alexandria was
martyred for her faithfulness to her husband, with whom, as far as we know, she
led a normal married life. St. Daniel of Skete recommended that monks suffering
from sexual temptations should pray to her for relief, which would appear to
indicate that her virtue lay precisely in her refusal to succumb to sexual sin.
Her martyrdom did not “remove sexual sin”, but was the culmination of her
successful struggle against sexual sin.
Again, take a still more illuminating example: Tsar-Martyr Nicholas and
Tsaritsa-Martyr Alexandra. Anyone who has read the diaries of these saints will
know that their love was far from platonic. And yet nobody has suggested that
this love of theirs, being supposedly “fallen”, was an impediment to their
holiness. On the contrary, as Fr. Sergius Furmanov has said, “The family of the
Tsar was an icon of the family… The holy royal couple, who constructed their
family happiness on a love that was in no way darkened in the course of
24 years of marriage, shows the path to young people, that they may with prayer
to God for help seek for partners in life.”[298]
Manichaean. I think what is meant here is that the
Tsar-Martyr’s marriage was not darkened by any shadow of infidelity. I accept
that married fidelity is a virtue, albeit of a negative kind.
Orthodox. Not that negative. Alexis Khomyakov said: “For the husband his wife is not one of many women, but the woman; and her spouse is for her not
one of many men,but the man. For both all other people have no sex."[299] In my view, that is a high ideal.
Manichaean. Nevertheless, fidelity is not the same as
chastity, for chastity necessarily implies complete abstinence. Married
chastity is possible only for married couples who live as brother and sister,
like Adam and Eve in the garden. For they were “married”, and yet had no sexual
relations.
Orthodox. It seems to me that you concentrate too
much on the sexual act itself. I have already indicated that Adam and Eve’s
relationship in Paradise was sexual even if it did not involve the sexual act.
Manichaean. Chastity in the strict sense is not
possible where certain sexual reactions are deliberately stimulated. And when a
couple decide to make love they are deliberately stimulating certain sexual
reactions. That is why I believe Fr. G. is justified in his use of the term
“fornication under a crown” (áëóä ïîä âåíöîì).
Orthodox. Within the one-flesh of the marriage
relationship there can be no such thing as fornication; and the very idea of
“fornication under a crown” must be categorically rejected as a contradiction
in terms. For the Russian word for fornication, blud, suggests the idea
of wandering, “the wandering of concupiscence” (Wisdom 4.12), whereas it
is impossible to “wander” in relation to one’s own flesh.
Manichaean. Alright, let us not use the word “fornication”. Let us talk instead about lust. Can you
deny that lust is stimulated in marriage?
Orthodox. As I
have said earlier, lust is present in all fallen men, whether married or
monastics. From one point of view, there is more lust in monasticism than in
marriage because the monastic does not have the sexual release provided in
marriage, and while abstaining from sexual acts may be still more tormented by
sexual thoughts and desires. The Lord Himself said: “Everyone who looks at a
woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt.
5.28) – a command which applies, of course, to both monastics and married
people. In that sense lust is more stimulated in monasticism than in marriage.
Hence the words of the apostle: “It is better to marry than to burn” (I Cor.
7.9). In fact, as we have seen, St. Paul recommends monasticism over marriage,
not because it stimulates lust less, but because it contains fewer worldly
cares (I Cor. 7.32-33). Thus monasticism does not eliminate lust
immediately, any more than marriage does. But both states, properly used, serve
to moderate lust and increase chastity and true love. The aim of both is
chastity, and chastity can be attained by both. I would compare chastity to the
summit of a mountain. Monasticism is the shorter, but more difficult way to the
summit, with a real danger of falling over a precipice. It offers a greater
struggle with sexual temptation, but a quicker victory over it – and a greater
reward in proportion to the greater struggle. Marriage is a longer, and
intrinsically easier way to the top. However, the danger of getting distracted
along the way, of becoming absorbed in the cares of life and therefore
abandoning the journey altogether, is also greater.
Manichaean. Still,
abstinence is always better than indulgence.
Orthodox. Not
necessarily. Marriage is a one-flesh relationship, and therefore total
abstinence is contrary to its nature and purpose. That is why the Apostle Paul says: “Do not
deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give
yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan may not
tempt you because of your lack of self-control” (I Cor. 7.5)
Manichaean. But Fr. G. says that, according to St. John
Chrysostom, St. Paul’s “Deprive not” is only a form of “Deprive” for tender
ears”
Orthodox. Your Fr. G. again! Is not the meaning of
the apostle’s words clear enough? Why should the apostle say “deprive not” if
he meant “deprive”?! We must remember that the grace of marriage works within
the one-flesh relationship to purify and transfigure the passions. For marriage
is not simply a permit to sin in a small way so as to avoid sinning in a large
way. No: marriage is a sacrament which communicates grace; and as
such it changes that which it touches - so long as it is received in the
proper manner, as part of the Christian life as a whole. It changes two bodies
into one, and lust into chastity – not immediately, of course, but gradually.
In this connection, the words of Archbishop Theophan of Poltava are especially
relevant: “People in recent times have forgotten that the grace of God is
communicated in the sacrament of marriage. One must always remember this grace,
stir it up and live in its spirit. Then the love of the man for the woman and
of the woman for the man will be pure, deep and a source of happiness for
them.”[300]
Manichaean. You know, this sounds all very well. But
Christianity is not romanticism. And there still seems to me to be a streak of
romanticism in you, a tendency to glorify sexual passion in the romantic
manner, which is so prevalent in our civilisation.
Orthodox. I am as much against romanticism as you
are. Except for that “romanticism” which is to be found in the Holy Scriptures
themselves.
Manichaean. What do you mean? I don’t find it in the
Scriptures. Which is why I suspect your quotations from the Holy Fathers. I
hope you are not going to make the very crude mistake of interpreting The Song
of Songs in a literal manner! You know, the Holy Fathers interpreted it as an
allegory of the soul’s purely spiritual love for God.
Orthodox. I know. I was thinking of another passage
from Solomon: “Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your
youth, a lovely hind, a graceful doe. Let her affection fill you at all times
with delight, be infatuated always with her love…” (Prov. 5.18-19)
Manichaean. I think the Holy Fathers would also
interpret this passage in an allegorical manner.
Orthodox. I
don’t think so. This is what St. Gregory the Theologian wrote, obviously
referring to this passage:
“For man and wife the union of wedlock is a bolted door securing chastity and
restraining desire. And it is a seal of natural affection. They possess the
loving colt which cheers the heart by gamboling, and a single drink from their
private fountain untasted by strangers, which neither flows outwards, nor
gathers its waters from without. Wholly united in the flesh, concordant in
spirit, by love, they sharpen in one another a like spur to piety…”[301]
Manichaean. According to your logic, marriage should be
as sensual as possible!
Orthodox. I never said that. But I do believe that
the married couple should not be prevented from having joy in each other. St.
Ignatius the Godbearer writes: "Speak to my sisters that they love the
Lord, and be satisfied with their husbands in flesh and in spirit. In the same
way enjoin on my brothers in the name of Jesus Christ 'to love their wives as
the Lord loved the Church'… It is right for men and women who marry to be
united with the consent of the bishop, that the marriage may be according to the
Lord and not according to lust."[302] Here
there is a frank admission that marriage is designed to satisfy certain natural
needs, both fleshly and spiritual. But the satisfaction of these needs is “not
according to lust [Gk. epiqumia]”, but “according to the Lord”
if it is done with the blessing of the bishop – that is, with the grace of God
imparted through the sacrament of marriage. Thus there is no prudery, no
attempt to deny the satisfactions of marriage; for the result of that, among
fallen men and women, would be that they would seek satisfaction outside
marriage, and the first purpose of marriage, to avoid fornication, would be
frustrated. This is not hedonism, but realism.
Manichaean. Alright, I am beginning to come round to
your point of view. But I still have one difficulty: how do you interpret the
Scripture: “These are they who have not defiled themselves with women; for they
are virgins” (Rev. 14.4)? Does this not mean that those who are not
virgins are defiled?
Orthodox. No, it does not. The Scriptures cannot
contradict each other. We have already seen that Hebrews 13.4, as
interpreted by the Holy Fathers, clearly indicates that marriage and sexual
relations in marriage are pure. So the passage from Revelation that you
quote cannot have a meaning contradictory to that. I think the resolution of
the problem is simple. For those who have made a vow of virginity relations
with women are a defilement, which also explains why so many monastic
texts speak about marriage as if it were a defilement. In the context of the
monastic struggle, this is perfectly understandable and right. For, as Origen
says, “to think that marital life leads to destruction is useful, since it
elicits a striving for perfection”.[303] But in
the broader context of Christian theology as a whole, and for those who have
not made a vow of virginity, there is no defilement in entering into lawful
marriage. Thus St. Gregory the Theologian says to those preparing to be
baptised: “Are you not yet married to the flesh? Fear not this consecration;
you are pure even after marriage. I will take the risk of that. I will join you
in marriage. I will dress the bride. We do not dishonour marriage because we
give a higher honour to virginity. I will imitate Christ, the pure Bridegroom
and Leader of the Bride, as He both worked a miracle at a wedding, and honours
marriage with His Presence.”[304]
Former Manichaean. Alright. I am convinced…
Orthodox. Glory to God!… So, Father, will you marry
us?
Former Manichaean. With the greatest pleasure!
Orthodox. [smiles] You’re not against pleasure any
more, then?
Former Manichaean. Not this kind of pleasure! And I
must thank you for enabling me now for the first time to utter the prayer of
the marriage service with conviction: “O Holy God, Who didst create man out of
dust, and didst fashion his wife out of his rib, and didst unite her unto him
as a helpmeet; for it seemed good to Thy majesty that man should not be alone
upon the earth: Do thou even now, O Master, stretch out Thy hand from Thy holy
dwelling-place and unite this Thy servant, and this Thy handmaid; for by Thee
is the husband united unto the wife. Join them in one mind; crown them into one
flesh, granting unto them the fruit of the womb, and the enjoyment of fair
children…”
Dedicated to the servants of God Alexei and
Olga, on their marriage.
March 1/14, 2002.
21.
CULTISM WITHIN: A REJOINDER
The author of the Response to Fr. Alexey Young's article,
"Cults Within and Without"[305] chides
Fr. Alexey for talking about monasticism at all, since it is, he observes,
"an estate which, in general, cannot be adequately studied outside its
confines, and especially by non-monastics." However, the phenomenon of
false eldership, which is so rampant in our days, does not affect only
monastics; nor are the principles of eldership an esoteric secret which is
comprehensible and relevant only to monastics (although, as in all matters of
Faith, the more virtuous the life, the deeper the understanding). Many lay
parishioners are given monastic-style obediences by parish priests who arrogate
to themselves authority over them that is appropriate only to a true, Spirit
bearing elder; and Father Alexey is surely right to say that you should be wary
"if you are a layman in a parish situation [and] are expected to get
permission ("a blessing") from the priest before you change jobs, buy
a new car, etc. Under normal circumstances these are not the proper purview of
a parish priest, however wise and pious he may otherwise be. One may -- and
should -- ask for prayers and advice about these and other non-controversial
aspects of practical life, but asking for permission is quite a different
thing." Since such demands for monastic-style obedience are often
encountered by laymen, Fr. Alexey, as a pastor of laymen, has every right to express
an opinion on the subject, basing himself, of course, on the Tradition of the
Orthodox Church as revealed in the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the Holy
Fathers.
One of the Fathers who
spoke most urgently about the dangers of false elders was Bishop Ignatius
Brianchaninov, who wrote: "What has been said of solitude and seclusion
must also be said of obedience to elders in the form in which it was practiced
in ancient monasticism -- such obedience is not given in our time.”[306] Fr.
Alexey does not mention Bishop Ignatius, but he follows in the same tradition
when he asserts: "... in this country, at least, there are NO true elders
today whose voice can he the voice of heaven for a disciple or spiritual
child" (emphasis his).
The Response disputes this opinion, pointing out that the Optina
elders flourished during the time of Bishop Ignatius, and that "in this
century, many Holy Elders in Russia, Romania Bulgaria, Greece, Mt Athos, Mt.
Sinai and elsewhere have led countless souls to salvation."
However, disputes about the number of elders in Russia or America in the
19th or 20th century are beside the point. The point is that the grace of true
eldership has +grown exceedingly scarce (how could it be otherwise in the era
of the Antichrist?), and that great care must therefore be exercised before
entering into a relationship of strict obedience to a supposed elder, insofar
as obedience to a false elder, according to the Holy Fathers, can lead to the
loss of one's soul.
Let us consider some examples. In the sixth century, when monasticism
was at its height and truly Spirit-bearing elders could be found in many
places, Saint John of the Ladder still found it necessary to warn: “When
motives of humility and real longing for salvation decide us to bend our neck
and entrust ourselves to another in the Lord, before entering upon this life,
if there is any vice and pride in us, we ought first to question and examine,
and even, so to speak, test our helmsman, so as not to mistake the sailor for the
pilot, a sick man for a doctor, a passionate for a dispassionate man, the sea
for a harbor, and so bring about the speedy shipwreck of our soul.”[307]
Again, in the
eleventh century Saint Symeon the New Theologian wrote: “If you wish to
renounce the world and learn the life of the Gospel, do not surrender (entrust)
yourself to an inexperienced or passionate master, lest instead of the life of
the Gospel you learn a diabolic life. For the teaching of good teachers is
good, while the teaching of bad teachers is bad. Bad seeds invariably produce
bad fruits...
“Every blind man who undertakes to guide others is a deceiver or quack,
and those who follow him are cast into the pit of destruction, according to the
word of the Lord, If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a hole
(Matt. 15:14).”[308]
In the eighteenth century, the
situation had become so serious that, in spite of having an ardent desire to
find a true elder to whom he could bow his neck in complete obedience, Saint
Paisius Velichkovsky was unable to find such a man, although he scoured all the
lands between Russia and Mount Athos. Eventually he and a like-minded brother
from the Holy Mountain entered into mutual obedience to each other,
"having instead of a father and instructor the teaching of our Holy
Fathers."[309]
The author of the Response writes: "We must also understand
what true Eldership is. True Elders do not, of course, ask us to do what is
immoral or wrong. Nor do they claim to speak with the authority of Heaven or to
possess infallibility. We Orthodox are not Papists."
So far so good. But
then he continues: "To the extent that we entrust our souls to our Elders,
make them images of Christ, and let God work through them, their human errors
become inconsequential. In short, our obedience within monasticism, covered as
we are by the Grace of the sacred tonsure, produces eldership. Eldership is not
personal. Wherever there is sincere monastic obedience, there is
Eldership."
The obedience of disciples produces elders, makes them images of
Christ?! Perhaps this is just careless language, but the prima facie
sense of the words implies that the grace of eldership comes, not from above,
but from below, not from God but from the subjective and quite possibly
misplaced faith of the disciple. Perhaps what is meant is that God bestows the
grace of eldership on a man in response to the eager faith of his disciple. But
this is still unacceptable from an Orthodox point of view. A disciple can no
more make an elder than a layman can ordain a priest.
Bishop Ignatius puts
the point in typically trenchant fashion: “Perhaps you retort: A novice's
faith can take the place of an incompetent elder. It is untrue. Faith in the
truth saves. Faith in a lie and in a diabolic delusion is ruinous, according to
the teaching of the Apostle. They refused to love the truth that would save
them, he says of those who are voluntarily perishing. Therefore, God will send
them (will permit them to suffer) a strong delusion, so that they will believe
a lie, that all may be condemned who do not believe the truth but delight in
falsehood (II Thess. 2:10-12).[310]
How, then, are we to
distinguish between true and false elders? I. M.
Kontzevich provides the answer in his book on the Optina elders: “Those
who have given themselves over to the direction of a true elder experience a
special feeling of joy and freedom in the Lord. He who writes these lines has
personally experienced this in himself. The elder is the immediate channel of
the will of God. Communion with God is always accompanied by a 'feeling of
spiritual freedom, joy, and indescribable peace in the soul. Contrary to this,
the false elder pushes God into the background, putting his own will in the
place of God, which is accompanied by a feeling of enslavement, depression and,
almost always, despondency. Besides, the complete submission of the disciples
before the false elder exterminates his personality, buries his will, perverts
the feeling of righteousness and truth, and, in this way, weans his conscience
from responsibility for his actions.
“Concerning false eldership his Reverence Ignatius Brianchaninov says
this: ‘It is a terrible business, out of self-opinion and on one's own
authority, to take upon oneself duties which can be carried out only by the
order of the Holy Spirit and by the action of the Spirit. It is a terrible
thing to pretend to be a vessel of the Holy Spirit when all the while relations
with satan have not been broken and the vessel is still being defiled by the
action of satan! It is disastrous both from oneself and one's neighbor; it is
criminal, blasphemous.’
“False eldership produces hypnosis of thought. And since at the root of
it there lies a false idea, this idea produces spiritual blindness. When the
false idea covers up reality, then no arguments will be accepted any longer,
since they stumble upon an idée fixe, which is considered to be
an unshakeable axiom.”[311]
True eldership, according to Kontzevich, is nothing other than the gift of
prophecy, the second of the gifts of the Spirit listed by the Apostle Paul (I
Cor. 12:28). This is confirmed by Hieroconfessor Barnabas (Belyaev), Bishop
of Pechersk, himself a clairvoyant elder, who wrote: "Elders in Russian
ecclesiastical consciousness are ascetics who have passed through a long
probation and have come to know the spiritual warfare from experience, who by
many exploits have acquired the gift of discernment, and who, finally, are
capable by prayer of attaining to the will of God for man. That is, to a
greater or lesser extent they have received the gift of clairvoyance and are
therefore capable of giving spiritual direction to those who turn to
them."[312]
Bishop Ignatius' warnings against false eldership should not be taken as
a renunciation of all forms of monastic obedience. If they were, his works
would hardly have been given as required reading for monastics by the Optina
elders and Bishop Theophan the Recluse. Hieromonk Nicon of Optina, in his
commentary on Bishop Ignatius' writings[313]
explains that Bishop Ignatius' warnings apply only to the strictest kind of
elder-disciple relationship: less strict forms of obedience still retain all
their spiritual usefulness, even necessity; for no Christian can be saved
without obedience and the cutting off of his will in some way. But in our
apocalyptic age, when the love of many bas grown cold and there is a general
spiritual impoverishment, it is as dangerous to demand the strictest forms of
obedience as it would be to demand the strictest forms of fasting or prayer or
other kinds of ascetic endeavour. We must discern the signs of the times, and
adapt our strategies for survival accordingly.
When we see, on the one
hand, how difficult it is to be a Christian in the maze of modern life, and, on
the other, with what swiftness and apparent ease the monks and pious laymen of
past ages attained salvation through strict obedience to a God-bearing elder,
it is tempting to find such an elder even when he does not exist. But when we
surrender our will to a false elder, we become slaves of a man, a man who is
suffering a very grave spiritual sickness; whereas Apostle Paul says, You were
bought with a price; do not become the slaves of men (I Cor. 7:23). And
having become slaves of men, we lose that most quintessential attribute of man
made in the image of God - independent judgment, and the ability to turn to God
directly for enlightenment and help.
Many converts are tempted to submit to a false elder for another reason
- that he led them to Orthodoxy and may well be the only Orthodox leader in the
vicinity. Then a mixture of gratitude and the fear of becoming completely
isolated may lead the convert to conclude that Divine Providence must have led
him to submit his whole life to this man for the salvation of his soul. The
false elder, who is often a cunning psychologist, can exploit this situation to
gain complete control over his disciples, adding, in the case of disobedience,
the threat of fearsome sanctions, including very strict penances, curses and
even anathematization and expulsion (supposedly) from the Orthodox Church! - a
tragic situation which may lead to the convert's abandoning the Orthodox Church
altogether, and which the present writer has personally observed in True
Orthodox communities in England, Russia, Bulgaria and Greece.
Many who have fallen
into the trap of false eldership and begin to see their real situation, are
deterred from breaking free by false feelings of guilt, as if there were no
circumstances in which a disciple can disobey an elder. But, even apart from
heresy, there are certain conditions in which it is right to disobey and leave
one's elder, as we read in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers:
A
brother questioned Abba Poemen, saying, "I am losing my soul through
living near my abba; should I go on living with him?" The old man knew
that he was finding this harmful and he was surprised that he even asked if he
should stay there. So he said to him, "Stay if you want to." The
brother left him and stayed there. He came back again and said, 'I am losing my
soul." But the old man did not tell him to leave. He came a third time and
said, "I really cannot stay there any longer." Then Abba Poemen said,
"Now you are saving yourself; go away and do not stay with him any longer.
And he added, "When someone sees that he is in danger of losing his soul,
he does not need to ask advice."[314]
Perhaps the most
characteristic mark of the last times is the spiritual isolation of the
individual believer. As David says: “I am alone until I pass by… Flight hath
failed me, and there is none that watcheth out for my soul” (Psalm
140.12, 141.6).[315] Of
course, no true Christian is ever really alone: he always has with him God and
the Mother of God and all the saints and angels of the Heavenly Church. But in
the last times the support of the Heavenly Church may be the only real support
that the conscientious believer has, as the Earthly Church grows weak and
small, and even such leaders as are left become ensnared in uncanonical situations
or suspect in some other way.
This has been the experience of many thousands of believers of the
Russian Catacomb Church, and it is therefore from the Catacomb Church that we
hear the most urgent admonitions to preserve our spiritual freedom, "lest
imperceptibly and little by little we lose the freedom which our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Liberator of all men, has 'given us as a free gift by His Own
Blood".[316]
Thus Hieromartyr Bishop Damascene, Bishop of Glukhov, said,
"Perhaps the time has come when the Lord does not wish that the Church
should stand as an intermediary between Himself and the believers, but that
everyone is called to stand directly before the Lord and himself answer as it
was with the forefathers!"[317] Again,
Hieromartyr Joseph, Metropolitan of Petrograd, emphasized the possibility that
the true Christians of the last times will have to leave all the recognized
spiritual guides; for "perhaps the last 'rebels' against the betrayers of
the Church and the accomplices of Her ruin will be not only bishops and not
protopriests, but the simplest mortals, just as at the Cross of Christ His last
gasp of suffering was heard by a few simple souls who were close to
Him..."[318]
Thus we may be moving into the
last period of the Church's history, when the wheel has come round full circle
and the Church has returned to the molecular structure of Abraham's Family
Church, when true bishops are few and far between, when charismatic spiritual
guides have more or less disappeared, and when the individual believer has to
seek the answers to his spiritual problems from God and God's word alone,
remembering David's words: It is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in
man. It is better to hope in the Lord than to hope in princes (Psalm
118:8-9).
If even the Apostle
Peter was rebuked for making damaging concessions to the Jews (Gal.
2:11-12), how can we expect never to be in conflict with our spiritual leaders?
And if even the Apostle Paul feared lest after preaching to others he himself
should be disqualified (I Cor. 9:27), how can we deny the possibility
that our spiritual guides may also lose grace, necessitating our departure from
them? Those who point out these facts are not inciting to rebellion -far from
it! They are calling men to a sober understanding of the nature of the times we
live in, They are warning that those who, unlike the true apostles and holy
fathers and God-bearing elders of all ages, attempt to lord it over our faith (II
Cor. 1:24) must be rejected for the sake of that same faith, out of
obedience to the one and only infallible authority, God Himself.
(Orthodox America, vol. XVI , ¹ 1 (141), July, 1996; revised June 22
/ July 5, 2004)
22. THE
DIANA MYTH AND THE ANTICHRIST
“Are we united in grief or collectively nuts?” asked a British columnist
the day after Princess Diana’s funeral. He posed a false dichotomy. The
majority of the British nation (and many millions abroad) is both united
in grief and collectively “nuts” – and it is important to understand how
and why.
A
priest of the Russian Church Abroad who happened to be visiting England at the
time of Diana’s death expressed a seemingly cruel, but in fact sober and saving truth. Although we cannot
know God’s final judgement on her, he said, and whatever personal qualities she
may have had, the natural reaction of the Orthodox Christian to her death must
be that this was the judgement of God upon her and a warning sent from God for
all of us. For what else can we say about a person who was not a Christian (she
believed in reincarnation and visited fortune-tellers), who lived an openly
sinful and extravagant life-style in spite of her royal status, and who was cut
down suddenly and without repentance in the middle of her sins?
So why this sudden outpouring of grief on an unparalleled scale, by
millions of people who did not even know her? Why was this obviously deeply
flawed woman, whose flaws were well known and had been severely criticized,
suddenly promoted to the status of an “icon”, the “goddess of good”, “the
Cinderella of the twentieth century”?
The journalist Ann Leslie, a fierce critic of Diana in the past, says
she has now been humbled in the face of the “awesome power” of the Diana myth.
“Myths may not be based on truth – in fact, few are. But we need myths to tell
us that we can rise above our pettiness, our banality, our ordinariness, that
through some person, or some object, we can connect with the nobler part of
ourselves.”
“Myth is not about the head,” she continues, “it is – like Diana – about
the heart. It is about longing to feel we belong to something greater, more
beautiful than ourselves. Diana, whether she liked it or not, deserved it or
not, has become the vehicle for that collective longing.
“This Diana worship, the insistence that this dead, highly privileged if
often unhappy millionaires was a saint is, of course, totally irrational. But
as the 17th-century French theologian Pascal put it: ‘The heart has
its reasons, which reason knows nothing of.’”
Leslie goes on: “Those who felt marginalized by illness, by disease, by
disablement, by poverty, found that by believing in the Diana myth – rather
than her reality which none of us can truly know – they felt less isolated.
“Because of the way she publicised the stigmata of her eating disorder,
her self-laceration, her semi-suicide attempts, she had somehow ‘cured’ them of
their sense of estrangement.
“Like apparently miraculous statues, marble Pietas, holy pictures, her
image seemed to tell them: ‘I have suffered and I will redeem you.’
“In a country with the highest divorce rate in Europe, Diana’s broken
marriage made those whose relationships had collapsed in bitterness and pain
feel that perhaps they were not such failures after all.
“If even Diana, with her beauty and wealth, couldn’t make her husband
love her, then countless of others couldn’t be blamed for failing in exactly
the same way.
“And those whose ethnicity and religion made them feel excluded felt –
through the power of the Diana myth – included at last.
“As one Moslem said: ‘She fell in love with a Moslem, a man from the
Middle East. If someone like Diana could love a Moslem, perhaps ordinary people
in Britain won’t look at us as if we were enemies any more.’
“That is the role of myth. A powerful myth
tells us more about our needs than the reality upon which it is founded; it not
only rises above reality, but transforms it.”[319]
There is much perceptive psychology in these words; but from an Orthodox
Christian perspective they are morally and spiritually misleading.
First, the people may have needs which express themselves in the
creation of myths, but if the needs are fallen, their expression needs to be
suppressed – or rather, confessed. This may not accord with the tenets
of modern psychology (although Freud, for one, was by no means in favour of the
completely free expression of passion), but it agrees completely with Orthodox
Christian psychology, which favours self-knowledge but not uncontrolled self-expression.
In any case, if a myth is false, there is no way it can heal us; for “we can
rise above our pettiness, our banality, our ordinariness” only through the
truth, which alone, as the Lord said, can make us free (John 8.32).
Secondly, it is misleading to oppose the head and the heart in such a
stark and categorical manner, still more to infer (as Leslie appears to do)
that where they are in conflict one must follow one’s heart, even if this seems
“totally irrational” to the head. The wise Solomon says: “He that trusteth in
his own heart is a fool” (Proverbs 28.26), and the Prophet Jeremiah
says: “The heart is deceitful above all things” (17.9). Both the head and the
heart are fallen. They can be healed only by a fervent pursuit of truth in all
spheres – dogmatic truth, moral truth, psychological truth, scientific truth,
artistic truth. And truth can be attained only by the head and the heart
working together under the guidance of the Spirit of truth.
Diana said that she wanted to be a “Queen of hearts”; she lad claim to
the virtues of love and sincerity combined with royal charisma – and the world
has taken her at her word. But love of the poor sits badly with great wealth
and luxurious living, and “sincerity” – with public humiliation of one’s
husband and family and betrayal of his marriage bed. For just as “love” can so
often be a cover for sentimentality at best, and self-indulgence at worst, so
“sincerity” can be a mask for unconscious hypocrisy and cruelty.
Diana may well be an “icon”, in the sense of a likeness and exemplar, of
many elements of popular culture, from her love of pop music and psychotherapy
to her eating disorders and religious ecumenism. People identify with her in
the faults they share with her, while vicariously enjoying the things they do
not share with her – her beauty, her glamour, he popularity. But the saints
depicted in Orthodox icons are “God-like” rather than “man-like”; they
depict the unfallen image of God in man rather than the image of the beast to
which we have fallen. We venerate them precisely because they are not like
us in our fallenness, but like God in His holiness.
If Diana is made into an icon in the sense of an object of veneration,
then there is a real danger of idolatry. Such an “icon” will not heal our
infirmities, because it will in fact confirm us in them, justify them, make
them look good. It will tell us that we do not have to change, to repent. Like
the gods and goddesses of the pagans, against whom the apostles fought, the veneration
of the new goddess Diana – the hunted goddess rather than the hunter goddess,
as her brother said at her funeral service (although in fact she was both
hunter and hunted) – will become a form of national self-worship and
self-justification, the deification of the nation’s fallen passions.
One “constitutional expert” has said of the Diana myth: “Man invented
God, and man invented Diana”. It would be truer to say: “Man, having lost faith
in the true God, has invented a false goddess.” Diana acquired this ascendancy
over the hearts of many millions of people without having any formal political
or ecclesiastical power, and without having provided any great service to
mankind. By a combination of Hollywood glamour, media hype and an “iconic” likeness
to everyman’s image of himself, she invented the world’s longest-running and
most popular soap-opera – a show that is destined to continue running long
after her death, and whose popularity democratic politicians will have to take
into account for many years to come.
And yet the myth of Diana could never have come into being without her
being a real princess. For, for all Diana’s personal gifts, and, as one
American commentator has written, “for all the opprobrium heaped last week by
Diana’s admirers on the chilly Windsors, she would have been invisible without
them.”[320]
It is not simply that her royal marriage made her well-known. Without the
charisma attaching to her marriage “in the purple”, she would have been just
another high-born socialite.
This raises interesting questions
concerning the enduring appeal of the monarchy in our ultra-democratic society.
Even such a convinced democrat as C.S. Lewis could write of the monarchy as
“the channel through which all the vital
elements of citizenship - loyalty, the consecration of secular life, the
hierarchical principle, splendour, ceremony, continuity - still trickle down to
irrigate the dustbowl of modern economic Statecraft".[321] Even
in republican America, whose whole national myth is built on its cult of
individual freedom and anti-monarchism, Diana-mania has reached extraordinary
proportions, as if she represented the queen the Americans never had and would
so like to have had…
Thus to take just one example from many, a 51-year-old professor from
Chicago made a 8000-mile round trip just to lay lowers at Diana’s grave,
saying: “I absolutely had to come. You don’t have to ask yourself why. If I
didn’t, I just wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself for the rest of my
life.”[322]
And yet, how can this be so, when the whole of western education teaches
people to believe that monarchy is an outdated institution, when the monarchies
that survive have been deprived of all real power, when the royals themselves
often behave in an exceedingly unroyal manner, and when Diana herself never
ruled in reality, and by her death was an ex-royal, having been divorced from
her prince and deprived of her royal title?
Being made in the image of the Heavenly King, men instinctively venerate
the image of the Heavenly King in the earthly monarchies, even if some of those
images bear very little likeness to the Archetype. Just as those who do not
know the true God will nevertheless construct images of false gods, so those
who have never known a true king, and have been taught to despise the true
kings of the past, are still not protected from falling in love with
pseudo-kings and queens. For even in democratic society the urge to love and
sacrifice oneself for someone higher that oneself can never be discounted. In
Orthodox monarchies such an urge can be directed to sustain Orthodoxy, the true
worship of God in Christ. In heterodox democracies it could be directed to
enthrone – the Antichrist…
For, on the one hand, as Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow writes: “The
Tsar lives for his subjects and the subjects for the Tsar… Obviously here the
law of love and self-sacrifice for others rules and not the struggle for
survival.”[323]
On the other hand, in the time of the Antichrist, both the struggle for
survival – for a world ruler will be need to deliver the world from anarchy –
and the law of love and self-sacrifice – manipulated, as the prophecies say, by
a magician-false prophet – will propel to the fore a king whose “myth” the
whole non-Orthodox world will fall for, and who will then use the power he has
attained (perhaps through a quasi-Orthodox ceremony of sacred anointing beamed
throughout the world by television) to charm the whole world into worshipping
him as king and as god.
Of course, the twentieth century has already been distinguished by
several evil cults of personality, such as those of Hitler and Stalin. But
these, we thought, were exceptional phenomena occasioned by war, revolution,
personal powerlessness and national humiliation. But the Diana phenomenon has
taken place in a peaceful and prosperous nation, in which no despot rules or
necessity compels. It represents the collective madness of a nation famed for
its eccentric individualism and sober sanity. As such, it is an important “sign
of the times”, showing how easily the Antichrist could take control even in an
anti-monarchical society.
St. Paul said of people in the last times: “Because they received not
the love of the truth, that they might be saved, for this cause God will send
them a strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be
damned who believed not in the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (II
Thess. 2.10-12). In the wake of the Diana phenomenon, it becomes less
difficult to believe how these words could come true on a world-wide scale. We
know now that the world is materially, psychologically and spiritually one
major step closer to that most evil apotheosis, from which may the Lord deliver
us in His great mercy…
(August 28/ September 10, 1997; revised
June 26 / July 9, 2004)
23. THE
SEAL OF THE ANTICHRIST IN SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA
The judgement of God is being carried out on
the Church and the people of Russia…
A selection is being made of those true
warriors of Christ who alone will be able…
to
resist the Beast himself.
Hieromartyr Damascene, Bishop of Glukhov.
He causes all… to receive a mark on their
right hand or on their foreheads,
And that no one may buy or sell except one
who has the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name…
Revelation 13.16-17.
The year 1917 marked the beginning of the time of the end, the time of
the Antichrist, in accordance with the prophecies of such luminaries of the
Church as St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. Ambrose of Optina, Bishop Theophanes the
Recluse, St. John of Kronstadt and the holy new martyrs and confessors of
Russia. On November 9, 1917, Divine Providence drew the attention of all those
with eyes to see the signs of the times to an extraordinary “coincidence”: in
one column of newsprint in the London Times, there appeared, one above
the other, two articles, the one announcing the outbreak of revolution in
Petrograd, and the other – the promise of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine
(the Balfour declaration). Thus at precisely the same time the two horns of the
beast of the last times, the power of apostate Jewry, appeared above the vast
sea of the formerly Christian world: the anti-theist, materialist horn of
Soviet power, and the theist, Judaistic horn of Zionist Israel.
The fall of Russia, the last Orthodox Christian empire, was followed by further blows to the monarchical, God-established principle of political government. In 1918 the Catholic empire of Austro-Hungary and the Protestant empire of Germany collapsed. In 1924 the Orthodox kingdom of Greece fell; and in 1941 and 1944 the last Orthodox monarchies of Yugoslavia and Bulgaria also fell. By the end of the Second World War there were no real monarchies left in Europe or America, and the world was dominated by two powers based on the anti-monarchical, democratic principle: the United States of America, representing the more individualist, tolerant variety of democratism, and the Soviet Union, representing the more collectivist, intolerant variety.
50 years later, the situation had changed again. The Soviet Union was no more, and its rival for leadership of the communist world, China, was well on the way to transforming itself into a capitalist democracy. With the fall of the anti-theist, materialist horn of the beast, the attention of many Orthodox was turned to the other, theist horn – Israel, founded in 1948 under the sponsorship of Britain and the Soviet Union, and to Israel’s allies (or “colonies”, as some asserted) in the West, especially America, the only remaining superpower. In particular, alarm was aroused by the spread throughout the West, and thence into the East, of new forms of identification and money exchange – credit cards, bar-codes, 18-figure identity cards, etc. – which appeared to contain the number of the beast, 666. The question raised in many minds, and addressed in the present article, is: could this be the seal of the Antichrist?
1.
Authorities and anti-authorities
According to the holy apostles and fathers of the Church, the reign of
the Antichrist will be characterised by an extreme form of anarchy –
that is, the absence of law and order. Now the origin of all law and order is
God, so all law and order, all true authority, is established by God. That is
the meaning of the apostle’s famous saying: “There is no power that is not of
God; the powers that be are established by God” (Romans 13.1).
Christians honour the king and pray for the powers that be precisely in order
to avoid the great evil of anarchy, “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable
life in all godliness and reverence” (I Timothy 2.2). Since anarchy is
opposed to God-established authority, it is opposed to God, and must therefore
itself be opposed by all those who fear God and obey His holy will.
A
ruler may be unjust and cruel at times, or even very often, but as long as he
prevents anarchy Christians must obey him. Thus St. Irenaeus of Lyons writes:
“Some rulers are given by God with a view to the improvement and benefit of
their subjects and the preservation of justice; others are given with a view to
producing fear, punishment and reproof; yet others are given with a view to
displaying mockery, insult and pride – in each case in accordance with the
deserts of the subjects. Thus… God’s judgement falls equally on all men.”[324] Again,
St. Isidore of Pelusium writes that the evil ruler “has been allowed to spew
out this evil, like Pharaoh, and, in such an instance, to carry out extreme
punishment or to chastise those for whom great cruelty is required, as when the
king of Babylon chastised the Jews.”[325]
But there is line beyond which an evil ruler ceases to be a ruler and
becomes an anti-ruler, an unlawful tyrant, who is not to be obeyed. Thus the
Jews were commanded by God through the Prophet Jeremiah to submit to the king
of Babylon, evil though he was; whereas they were commanded through another
prophet, Moses, to resist and flee from the Egyptian Pharaoh, and rebelled
again, with God’s blessing, under Antiochus Epiphanes. For in the one case the
authority, though evil, was still an authority, which it was beneficial to obey;
whereas in the other cases the authority was in fact an anti-authority,
obedience to which would have taken the people further away from God.
Anarchy, the absence of true authority, can be of two kinds: organised and disorganised. When a true authority collapses, there usually follows a period of disorganised anarchy, which is characterised by individual crimes of all kinds – murder, robbery, rape, sacrilege, - that go unchecked and unpunished because of the absence of a true power. Such was the period of Russian history that followed the collapse of the Orthodox empire in February, 1917. The Provisional government, having itself contributed to the collapse of the empire, and having received its authority neither (through holy anointing) from God nor (by means of a popular vote) from men, was unable to check the rising tide of anarchy and collapsed ignominiously. The disorganised anarchy of the Provisional government was followed by the organised anarchy of the Bolshevik “government”…
Now Christians are obliged to recognise every power that is in fact a
power in the apostolic meaning of the word – that is, which at least tries to
prevent anarchy by rewarding the good and punishing the bad (Romans
13.3; I Peter 2.14). Such a power does not have to be Christian:
although only the Orthodox anointed kings, working together with the Orthodox
hierarchs, are able to establish God’s order in anything approaching fullness,
even pagan, heretical and Muslim states punish those crimes that are recognised
as such by the vast majority of mankind, and are therefore recognised as
legitimate by the Church. However, such recognition can only be relative –
relative, that is, to the degree to which the government does in fact establish
order, - and in extreme cases can be refused altogether.
Thus in the fourth century, the Persian King Sapor proposed to
Hieromartyr Simeon, Bishop of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, that he worship the sun,
in exchange for which he would receive every possible honour and gift. But if
he refused, this would bring about the complete destruction of Christianity in
Persia. Now already before he had made this proposal to Simeon, King Sapor had
started to kill the clergy, confiscate church property and raze the churches to
the ground. So when he was brought before the king for his reply, St. Simeon
not only refused to worship the sun but also, upon entering, refused to
recognise the king by bowing. This omission of his previous respect for the
king’s authority was noticed and questioned by the King. St. Simeon replied:
"Before I bowed down to you, giving you honour as a king, but now I come
being brought to deny my God and Faith. It is not good for me to bow before an
enemy of my God!"[326]
Again, when Julian the Apostate (361-363) came to the throne, the Church
refused to recognize him. Thus St. Basil the Great prayed for the defeat of
Julian in his wars against the Persians; and it was through his prayers that
the apostate was in fact killed, as was revealed by God to the holy hermit
Julian of Mesopotamia.[327] At
this, St. Basil’s friend, St. Gregory the Theologian wrote: “I call to
spiritual rejoicing all those who constantly remained in fasting, in mourning
and prayer, and by day and by night besought deliverance from the sorrows that
surrounded us and found a reliable healing from the evils in unshakeable hope…
What hoards of weapons, what myriads of men could have produced what our
prayers and the will of God produced?” Gregory called Julian not only an
“apostate”, but also “universal enemy” and “general murderer”, a traitor to
Romanity (rwmeiosunh)–
that is, the religio-political ethos of the Christian Roman empire - as well as
to Christianity.[328]
Again, when the Norman Duke William invaded England in 1066 with the blessing of the Pope, and was crowned as the first Catholic king of England in the following year, the brother-bishops and hieromartyrs Ethelric and Ethelwine solemnly anathematized both him and the Pope, and called on the people to rise up against the false authority (they did, and 20% of the English population was killed by the papists). Again, in 1611 St. Hermogen, patriarch of Moscow, called on the Russian people to rise up against the crypto-Catholic false Demetrius, although the latter had been anointed by a supposedly Orthodox patriarch.
The state that is refused recognition by the Church is the state of
organized anarchy – that is, the state in which crime is not only not punished,
as in disorganized anarchy, but is confirmed and recognized as lawful. Thus the
essence of antichristian power is not simply the doing of evil – all states,
even the most Orthodox, at times do evil – but the systematic recognition of
evil as good, of lawlessness as the law, of the abnormal as the norm and even
the aim of society. Such a state is “the mystery of lawlessness” (II
Thessalonians 2.7).
Such a state was the Bolshevik regime, which, taking advantage of the disorganized anarchy prevailing under the Provisional government, not only did not restore order, but consolidated, intensified and organized the chaos, made it the norm, made it “lawful”. Church tradition calls unlawful councils, councils that preach heresy instead of truth, “robber councils”. In the same way, unlawful states such as the Bolshevik regime can be called “robber states”, insofar as murder, robbery and sacrilege become the norm under them – indeed, are committed primarily by the state itself. Robber states cannot command the obedience of God-fearing Christians, for they are not authorities in the apostolic sense of the word, but “anti-authorities”. Rather, such states must be rebuked and rejected by them.
That is why, on November 11, 1917, the Local Council of the Russian
Orthodox Church addressed a letter to the faithful calling the revolution
“descended from the Antichrist” and declaring: “Open combat is fought against
the Christian Faith, in opposition to all that is sacred, arrogantly abasing
all that bears the name of God (II Thessalonians 2.4)… But no earthly
kingdom founded on ungodliness can ever survive: it will perish from internal
strife and party dissension. Thus, because of its frenzy of atheism, the State
of Russia will fall… For those who use the sole foundation of their power in
the coercion of the whole people by one class, no motherland or holy place
exists. They have become traitors to the motherland and instigated an appalling
betrayal of Russia and her true allies. But, to our grief, as yet no government
has arisen which is sufficiently one with the people to deserve the blessing of
the Orthodox Church. And such will not appear on Russian soil until we turn
with agonizing prayer and tears of repentance to Him, without Whom we labour in
vain to lay foundations…”
In January, 1918, Patriarch Tikhon and the Local Council meeting in
Moscow anathematized the Bolsheviks. The significance of this anathema lies not
so much in its casting out of the Bolsheviks themselves (all those who deny God
are subject to anathema, for that very denial), as in the command to the
faithful: “I adjure all of you who are faithful children of the Orthodox Church
of Christ not to commune with such outcasts of the human race in any matter
whatsoever; ‘cast out the wicked from among you’ (I Corinthians 5.13).”
In other words, the Bolsheviks were to be regarded, not only as apostates from
Christ (that was obvious), but also as having no moral authority, no claim to obedience whatsoever.[329]
It has been argued that the Patriarch’s decree did not anathematise
Soviet power as such, but only those who were committing acts of violence and
sacrilege against the Church in various parts of the country. However, this
argument fails to take into account several facts. First, the patriarch
himself, in his declarations of June 16 and July 1, 1923, repented precisely of
his “anathematisation of Soviet power”.[330]
Secondly, even if the decree did not formally anathematise Soviet power as
such, since Soviet power sanctioned and initiated the acts of violence, the
faithful were in effect being exhorted to having nothing to do with it. And thirdly,
in his Epistle to the Council of People’s Commissars on the first anniversary
of the revolution, November 7, 1918, the Patriarch obliquely but clearly
confirmed his non-recognition of Soviet power, saying: “It is not our business
to make judgments about earthly authorities. Every power allowed by God would
attract to itself Our blessing if it were
truly ‘the servant of God’, for the good of those subject to it, and were
‘terrible not for good works, but for evil’ (Romans 13.3,4). But
now to you, who have used authority for the persecution of the innocent, We
extend this Our word of exhortation… “[331]
Most important of all, when the Patriarch’s decree came to be read out
to the Council on January 22 / February 4, it was enthusiastically endorsed by
it in terms which make it clear that the Council understood the Patriarch to
have anathematised precisely Soviet power: “The Patriarch of Moscow and all
Russia in his epistle to the beloved in the Lord archpastors, pastors and all
faithful children of the Orthodox Church of Christ has drawn the spiritual
sword against the outcasts of the human race – the Bolsheviks, and
anathematised them. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church adjures all her
faithful children not to enter into any communion with these outcasts. For
their satanic deeds they are cursed in this life and in the life to come.
Orthodox! His Holiness the Patriarch has been given the right to bind and to
loose according to the word of the Saviour… Do not destroy your souls, cease
communion with the servants of Satan – the Bolsheviks. Parents, if your
children are Bolsheviks, demand authoritatively that they renounce their
errors, that they bring forth repentance for their eternal sin, and if they do
not obey you, renounce them. Wives, if your husbands are Bolsheviks and
stubbornly continue to serve Satan, leave your husbands, save yourselves and
your children from the soul-destroying infection. An Orthodox Christian cannot
have communion with the servants of the devil… Repent, and with burning prayer
call for help from the Lord of Hosts and thrust away from yourselves ‘the hand
of strangers’ – the age-old enemies of the Christian faith, who have declared
themselves in self-appointed fashion ‘the people’s power’… If you do not obey
the Church, you will not be her sons, but participants in the cruel and satanic
deeds wrought by the open and secret enemies of Christian truth… Dare! Do not
delay! Do not destroy your soul and hand it over to the devil and his stooges.”[332]
This first instinct of the Russian Church in the face of Soviet power
has never been extinguished among Russian Christians. It continued to manifest
itself both at home and abroad - for example, in the First All-Emigration
Council of the Russian Church Abroad in 1921, and both in the early and the
later decades of Soviet power - for example, among the "passportless"
Christians of the Catacomb Church in the 1960s and 70s. However, it was very
soon tempered by the realisation that such outright rejection of Soviet power
on a large scale could be sustained only by war - and after the defeat
of the White Armies in the Civil War there were no armies left to carry on the
fight against the Bolsheviks. Therefore from the early 1920s a new attitude
towards Soviet power began to evolve among the Tikhonite Christians: loyalty
towards it as a political institution ("for all power is from God"),
and acceptance of such of its laws as could be interpreted in favour of the
Church (for example, the law on the separation of Church and State), combined with
rejection of its atheistic world-view (large parts of which the renovationists,
by contrast, accepted). In essence, this new attitude involved accepting that
the Soviet State was not the Antichrist, as the Local Council of 1917-18 and
the Russian Church Abroad had in effect declared, but Caesar, no worse in
principle than the Caesars of Ancient Rome, to whom the things belonging to
Caesar were due.
This attitude presupposed that it was possible, in the Soviet Union as
in Ancient Rome, to draw a clear line between politics and religion. But in
practice, even more than in theory, this line proved very hard to draw. For the
early Bolsheviks, at any rate, there was no such dividing line; for them, everything
was ideological, everything had to be in accordance with their ideology, there
could be no room for disagreement, no private spheres into which the state and
its ideology did not pry. Unlike most of the Roman emperors, who allowed the
Christians to order their own lives in their own way so long as they showed
loyalty to the state (which, as we have seen, the Christians were very eager to
do), the Bolsheviks insisted in imposing their own ways upon the Christians in
every sphere: in family life (civil marriage only, divorce on demand, children
spying on parents), in education (compulsory Marxism), in economics
(dekulakization, collectivization), in military service (the oath of allegiance
to Lenin), in science (Darwinism, Lysenkoism), in art (socialist realism), and
in religion (the requisitioning of valuables, registration, commemoration of
the authorities at the Liturgy, reporting of confessions by the priests).
Resistance to any one of these demands was counted as "anti-Soviet
behaviour", i.e. political disloyalty. Therefore it was no use
protesting one's political loyalty to the regime if one refused to accept just
one of these demands. According to the Soviet interpretation of the word:
"Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one has become guilty of all of
it" (James 2.10), such a person was an enemy of the people.
In view of this, it is not surprising that many Christians came to the
conclusion that it was less morally debilitating to reject the whole regime
that made such impossible demands, since the penalty would be the same whether
one asserted one's loyalty to it or not. And if this meant living as an outlaw,
so be it. Such a rejection of, or flight from the state had precedents in
Russian history; and we find some priests, such as Hieromartyr Timothy Strelkov
of Mikhailovka (+1930) and even some bishops, such as Hieroconfessor
Amphilochius of Yeniseisk (+1946), adopting this course.[333]
Nevertheless, the path of total rejection of the Soviet state required
enormous courage, strength and self-sacrifice, not only for oneself but also (which
was more difficult) for one's family or flock. It is therefore not surprising
that, already during the Civil War, the Church began to soften her anti-Soviet
rhetoric and try once more to draw the line between politics and religion. This
is what Patriarch Tikhon tried to do in the later years of his patriarchate –
with the best of motives (to save Christian lives), but, it must be said, only
mixed results. Thus his decision to allow some, but not all of the Church's
valuables to be requisitioned by the Bolsheviks in 1922 not only did not bring
help to the starving of the Volga, as was the intention, but led to many
clashes between believers and the authorities and many deaths of believers.
For, as the holy Elder Nectarius of Optina said: "You see now, the
patriarch gave the order to give up all valuables from the churches, but they
belonged to the Church!"[334]
The decision to negotiate and compromise with the Bolsheviks - in
transgression of the decrees of the 1917-18 Council - only brought confusion
and division to the Church. Thus on the right wing of the Church there were
those who thought that the patriarch had already gone too far; while on the
left wing there were those who wanted to go further. However, neither Patriarch
Tikhon nor his successor, Metropolitan Peter, crossed the line which would have
involved surrendering the spiritual freedom of the Church into the hands of the
authorities.
That line was crossed only with the coming to power, in 1927, of Metropolitan Peter’s deputy, Metropolitan Sergius. He sought and obtained legalization for his church organization, the present-day Moscow Patriarchate. And then introduced the commemoration of the God-hating anti-authorities at the Divine Liturgy.
This was a fateful step, because to seek legalisation from a state
inescapably implies recognition of that state to a greater or lesser degree; at
a minimum, it implies recognition of that state as God-established and the
majority of its laws as binding on Christians. But how can a state that openly
and systematically wars against God be God-established? And how can a state
that legalizes all manner of crimes be considered to be legal in itself and the
fount of legality?! Rather, such a state is not an authority at all, but the
beast of the Apocalypse, of whom it is written that it receives its authority,
not from God, but from the devil (Revelation 13.2).
Moreover, by declaring, in his famous “Declaration”, that the Soviet
regime's joys were the Church's joys, and its sorrows the Church's sorrows,
Sergius in effect declared an identity of aims between the Church and
the State. And this was not just a lie, but a lie against the faith, a
concession to the communist ideology. For it implied that communism as
such was good, and its victory to be welcomed.
Thus Sergius Nilus quoted Izvestia, which said that Metropolitan
Sergius’ “Declaration” was an attempt “to construct a cross in such a way that
it would look like a hammer to a worker, and like a sickle to a peasant”. “In
other words,” said Nilus, “to exchange the cross for the Soviet seal, the seal of the beast (Rev.
13.16).”[335]
In order to protect the flock of Christ from Sergius' apostasy, the
leaders of the True Church had to draw once more the line between politics and
religion. One approach was to distinguish between physical opposition to
the regime and spiritual opposition to it. Thus Hieromartyr Archbishop
Barlaam of Perm wrote that physical opposition was not permitted, but spiritual
opposition was obligatory.[336] Again,
Hieromartyr Bishop Mark (Novoselov) wrote: “I am an enemy of Soviet power – and
what is more, by dint of my religious convictions, insofar as Soviet power is
an atheist power and even anti-theist. I believe that as a true Christian I
cannot strengthen this power by any means… [There is] a petition which the
Church has commanded to be used everyday in certain well-known conditions… The
purpose of this formula is to request the overthrow of the infidel power by
God… But this formula does not amount to a summons to believers to take active
measures, but only calls them to pray for the overthrow of the power that has
fallen away from God.”[337] This
criterion allowed Christians quite sincerely to reject the charge of
"counter-revolution" - if "counter-revolution" were
understood to mean physical rebellion. The problem was, as we have seen,
that the Bolsheviks understood "counter-revolution" in a much wider
sense…
Another, still more basic problem was that it still left the question
whether Soviet power was from God or not unresolved. If Soviet power was from
God, it should be counted as Caesar and should be given what was Caesar's. But
bitter experience had shown that this "Caesar" wanted to seat himself
in the temple as if he were God (II Thessalonians 2.4). So was he not in
fact Antichrist, whose power is not from God, but from Satan (Revelation
13.2), being allowed by God for the punishment of sinners, but by no
means established by Him? If so, then there was no alternative but to
flee into the catacombs, rejecting totally the government of Satan on earth.
In the early years after Metropolitan Sergius' declaration, many
Catacomb Christians, while in practice not surrendering what was God's
to the Soviets, in theory could not make up their minds whether the
Soviet regime was Caesar or Antichrist. Thus Hieromartyr Joseph (Gavrilov),
superior of Raithu Desert (+1930), confessed at his interrogation: "I have
never, and do not now, belong to any political parties. I consider Soviet power
to be given from God, but a power that is from God must fulfill the will of
God, and Soviet power does not fulfill the will of God. Therefore it is not
from God, but from Satan. It closes churches, mocks the holy icons, teaches
children atheism, etc. That is, it fulfills the will of Satan... It is better
to die with faith than without faith. I am a real believer, faith has saved me
in battles, and I hope that in the future faith will save me from death. I
firmly believe in the Resurrection of Christ and His Second Coming. I have not
gone against the taxes, since it says in Scripture: 'To Caesar what is
Caesar's, and to God what is God's.'"[338]
From this confession, impressive though it is, it is not clear whether
Hieromartyr Joseph recognised the Soviet regime as Caesar, and therefore from
God, or as Antichrist, and therefore from Satan. In the end the Bolsheviks
resolved his dilemma for him. They shot him, and therefore showed that they
were - Antichrist.
In the Russian Church in Exile, meanwhile, a consensus had emerged that
the Soviet regime was not Caesar, but Antichrist. This was the position of, for
example, Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava, Metropolitan Innocent of Peking and
Archbishop Averky of Jordanville.[339]
As Bishop Gregory (Grabbe), the foremost canonist of the Russian Church
Abroad, wrote: “With regard to the question of the commemoration of
authorities, we must bear in mind that now we are having dealings not simply
with a pagan government like Nero’s, but with the apostasy of the last times.
Not with a so far unenlightened authority, but with apostasy. The Holy Fathers
did not relate to Julian the Apostate in the same way as they did to the other
pagan Emperors. And we cannot relate to the antichristian authorities in the
same way as to any other, for its nature is purely satanic…”[340]
2. The Seal of the Soviet Antichrist
If the Soviet state was the
collective Antichrist, the beast of the Apocalypse, what was its seal? In the
case of the Church, this question has already been answered: the seal was “legalisation”
by “the mystery of lawlessness”, on the one hand, and the commemoration of the
Antichrist by name at the liturgy, on the other. This was the
“abomination of desolation” set up in the Holy of holies.
In the case of individual
Christians, the answer is analogous: the seal of the Antichrist was any
activity that presupposed participation in, and recognition of, the Soviet
state. For the main lesson of the 1920s and 30s was that it is vain to see a
modus vivendi with the Antichrist: he takes everything and gives nothing in
return, as Metropolitan Peter once bitterly complained to the Soviet
“over-procurator” Tuchkov. So the Christians began to avoid everything that
tied them in any way to the state: Soviet passports (which, at least in some periods,
involved definite obligations to the state); service in the Red Army (how can a
Christian fight for “the conquests of October”?); Soviet educational
institutions (which involved compulsory study of, and examinations in,
Marxism-Leninism); and any and every kind of electoral or political activity
(which was monopolised by the communist party).
There was no consensus among
Catacomb Christians about what activities were to be considered as “Soviet”;
some groups and branches of the Church were stricter, others less strict. Thus
some “non-commemorators” took jobs in Soviet institutions and restricted their
abstinence from Soviet life to non-membership of the communist party and the
Soviet church. Others, however, not only refused to work for the Antichrist in
any way, but even refused to have electricity in their homes, since this, too,
came to them from the Antichrist. As Soviet power weakened, some Catacomb
Christians felt able to practise “economy” and temper the strictness of their
rule, Thus the Catacomb hieromonk Gury (Pavlov) was a “passportless”, but took
a Soviet passport in 1990 in order to receive consecration to the episcopate in
the U.S.A.
The question of Soviet passports needs to be examined in a little more
detail. Passportisation had been introduced into the Soviet Union only in 1932,
and only for the most urbanized areas. Already then it was used as a means of
winkling out Catacomb Christians. Thus M.V. Shkvarovsky writes: “Completing
their liquidation of the Josephites, there was a meeting of regional inspectors
for cultic matters on March 16, 1933, at a time when passportisation was being
introduced. The meeting decided, on the orders of the OGPU, ‘not to give
passports to servants of the cult of the Josephite confession of faith’, which
meant automatic expulsion from Leningrad. Similar things happened in other
major cities of the USSR.”[341]
Catacomb hierarchs did not bless their spiritual children to take passports because in filling in the forms the social origins and record of Christians was revealed, making them liable to persecution. Also Catacomb Christians did not want to receive what they considered to be the seal of the Antichrist, or to declare themselves citizens of the antichristian kingdom.
In the 1930s the peasants had not been given passports but were chained to the land which they worked. They were herded into the collective farms and forced to do various things against their conscience, such as vote for the communist officials who had destroyed their way of life and their churches. Those who refused to do this – refusals were particularly common in the Lipetsk, Tambov and Voronezh areas – were rigorously persecuted, and often left to die of hunger.
On May 4, 1961, however, the
Soviet government issued its decree on “parasitism” and introduced its campaign
for general passportisation. In local papers throughout the country it was
announced that, in order to receive a Soviet passport, a citizen of the USSR
would have to recognize all the laws of Soviet power, past and present,
beginning from Lenin’s decrees. Since this involved, in effect, a recognition
of all the crimes of Soviet power, a movement arose to reject Soviet passports,
a movement which was centred mainly in the country areas among those peasants
and their families who had rejected collectivization in the 1930s.
E.A. Petrova writes: “Protests against general passportisation arose
among Christians throughout the vast country. A huge number of secret
Christians who had passports began to reject them, destroy them, burn them and
loudly, for all to hear, renounce Soviet citizenship. Many Christians from the
patriarchal church also gave in their passports. There were cases in which as
many as 200 people at one time went up to the local soviet and gave in their
passports. In one day the whole of a Christian community near Tashkent gave in
100 passports at once. Communities in Kemerovo and Novosibirsk provinces gave
in their passports, and Christians in the Altai area burned their passports…
Protests against general passportisation broke out in Belorussia, in the
Ukraine, and in the Voronezh, Tambov and Ryazan provinces… Christians who
renounced their Soviet passports began to be seized and, imprisoned and exiled.
But in spite of these repressions the movement of the passportless Christians
grew and became stronger. It was precisely in these years that the Catacomb
Church received a major influx from Christians of the patriarchal church who
renounced Soviet passports and returned into the bosom of the True Orthodox
Church.”[342]
In the 1970s the detailed
questionnaires required in order to receive passports were abandoned, but in
1974 it was made obligatory for all Soviet citizens to have a passport, and a
new, red passport differing quite significantly from the old, green one.
However, it contained a cover with the words: “Passport of a citizen of the
Soviet Socialist Republics” together with a hammer and sickle, which was still
unacceptable to the Passportless, who therefore continued to be subject to
prison, exile and hunger. Those who joined the Catacomb Church at this time
often erased the word “citizen”, replacing it with the word “Christian”, so
that they had a “Passport of a Christian of the Soviet Socialist Republics”.
In recent years the great
podvig of the Passportless Catacomb Christians has been criticised by some, and
not only, as we would expect, by members of the Soviet and other heterodox
churches. Thus Metropolitan Vitaly, first-hierarch of the ROCA, in a dialogue
with representatives of the Passportless, compared the Soviet Union to the
Roman empire. St Paul had been proud of his Roman citizenship, he wrote, so
what was wrong with having a Soviet passport and being called a Soviet citizen?[343]
Passportless Christians were appalled by the comparison – as if Rome, the state
in which Christ Himself was born and was registered in a census, and which
later grew into the great Orthodox Christian empires of Byzantium, the New
Rome, and Russia, the Third Rome, could be compared to the anti-state, the
collective Antichrist, that destroyed the Russian empire! [344] Rome,
even in its pagan phase, had protected the Christians from the fury of the
Jews: the Soviet Union was, in its early phase, the instrument of the Jews against
the Christians. Rome, even in its pagan phase, guaranteed a framework of law
and order within which the apostles could rapidly spread the faith from one end
of the world to the other: the Soviet Union forced a population that was
already Orthodox in its great majority to renounce their faith or hide it “in
deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth” (Hebrews 11.38).
Still more recently, an anonymous publication has accused the Catacomb
Christians of “premature flight” from the world, analogous to the flight of the
Old Believers from Russian society. On this path of premature flight from the
world, writes the anonymous author, “set out the schismatic Old Believers under
Peter. In our century, the Catacomb Christians decisively refused to accept any
state documents, seeing in them the seal of the Antichrist. Of course, in
Peter’s reign, and still more in Stalin’s regime, elements of an antichristian
kingdom were evident. But such terrible rebellions against the God-established
order were not yet the end, ‘this is only the beginning of sorrows’, as the
Gospel says (Luke 21.9).”[345]
So what is the anonymous author asserting? That the Catacomb Christians are schismatics on a par with the Old Believers?! This not only constitutes a serious slander against the Catacomb Church, but also betrays a blindness with regard to the eschatological significance of the Russian-Jewish revolution, which, if only the “beginning” of sorrows, was nevertheless also the beginning of the reign of the Antichrist, when the relationship between the Church and the State changed from one of cooperation and mutual recognition to one of mutual non-recognition and the most fundamental incompatibility.
There can be no doubt that Peter the Great inflicted great damage on the
Church (and thereby indirectly also on the State, for which it paid in 1917)
through his westernizing reforms. However, the conscience of the Church, while
rejecting his errors, has always recognized that he died as a Christian and
God-anointed tsar (see the Life of St. Metrophanes of Voronezh, who
appeared to one of his venerators after his death and told him: “If you want to
be pleasing to me, pray for the repose of the soul of Emperor Peter the Great”[346]). No
saint of the Church ever counselled rebellion against Peter or his successors,
as opposed to resistance to certain of their decrees.[347]
As for the Old Believers, their rebellion was not in the first place
against Peter and his reforms, but against Patriarch Nicon and his reforms,
which was quickly followed by rebellion against Peter’s father, Tsar Alexis
Mikhailovich also. Later, they seized on Peter’s reforms as an excuse for
widening and deepening their rebellion against the God-established order,
making them the forerunners, not of the True Orthodox Christians of the Soviet
catacombs, who always recognized that which the Old Believers rejected, but of
the revolutionaries of 1905 and 1917.
As Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky) wrote in 1912,in his encyclical to
the Old Believers: “The spirit of this world… winks at real revolutionaries and
sent the money of your rich men to create the Moscow rebellion of 1905.”[348]
Another, more moderate objection is sometimes raised: that the exploit (podvig)
of the Catacomb Christians, while admirable and justified in view of the
ferocity of the Soviet regime, was nevertheless not necessary, for one could be
saved without resorting to such extreme measures.
The present writer is not aware of any decision by any competent Church authority that would clarify the question whether the rejection of Soviet passports was necessary for the salvation of Christians in the Soviet period. It may be that such a question cannot be answered in a clear and categorical manner in view of the great complexity and diversity of the relations between individual believers and the Soviet state. Only God knows whether any particular degree of involvement in Soviet life constituted apostasy or an acceptable level of accommodation to circumstances.
However, the question whether the podvig of the Catacomb
Christians was “necessary” is much easier to answer. It is as easy to answer as
the question: Is it necessary to keep as far away from sin as possible, or: Is
it necessary to take every possible precaution against sin? The answer, of course,
is: yes, it is absolutely necessary!
The English have a parable: when you have supper with the devil, take a very long spoon. The Catacomb Christians took not even very long spoons to the marriage feast of the devil and the citizens of the Soviet state. In their completely laudable zeal to keep their bridal garments spotless for the marriage feast of Christ and His Church, they chose not even to step over the threshold of the Soviet madhouse. They chose rather to go hungry than eat of the devil’s food, the communion of heretics and apostates.
And not only did they save their own souls thereby: they also provided an absolutely necessary warning to those Christians who, thinking that they could take coals into their breast and not be burned, were being tempted into closer relations with the Antichrist. For as the beast’s ferocity gradually lessened from the 1956 amnesty onwards, and the Soviet state began to acquire some (but never all) of the external characteristics of the “normal” state, it was indeed tempting to think that the leopard was changing its spots, that the lion was becoming a vegetarian, that Pharaoh was becoming Caesar – so that it was now time to give to Caesar what was Caesar’s…
Against this terribly dangerous temptation, the movement of the
Passportless, which exploded at precisely this time, came as a powerful
warning. “No,” they said, “the beast has not changed its nature. If its
persecution is less widespread now than before, this is because the opposition
to him has been largely destroyed. The persecution now is no less fierce than
before, only it is more subtle, for it now mixes rewards – the comforts of the
Soviet “paradise” – with punishments. But ‘here we have no continuing city’;
and if this was true even under the God-loving tsars, how can it not be even
more so now, under the God-hating Antichrist? If Christ suffered outside
the walls of the city in order to sanctify us by His Blood, then we, too, must
go out to Him outside the walls of the antichristian state (Hebrews
13.12-14).”
Now, having said all this, it must be admitted that the seal of the
Antichrist in Soviet Russia could not have been the same seal that is mentioned
in Revelation 13, if only because it was not a mark placed on the right
hand and forehead.[349]
However, we are fully justified in calling it a seal (of the collective
Antichrist), if not the seal (of the personal Antichrist); for its
acceptance, at least in certain contexts (for example, the context of the 1961
law), entailed acceptance of the whole lawless legislation and ideology of the
Soviet state. To that extent it was not just a neutral act of registration; it
was an act of registration in Satan’s kingdom, the kingdom of the Antichrist,
and as such was not only the forerunner of the seal, but in a sense the
beginning of that seal, in that it had the same apocalyptic significance for
the life of Christians.
3.
The Enigmatic 1990s
If we do not understand the period of Church history immediately preceding our own, then we shall not be able to understand or perceive the signs of our own times. Thus a correct understanding of the seal of the Antichrist in the Soviet period is a necessary prerequisite to understanding the seal in the post-Soviet period.
The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 posed a difficult problem of interpretation. Was the Antichrist really dead? If so, then had the end times, paradoxically, come to an end? Or was this only a temporary “breathing space” in which the Antichrist was preparing a new, more subtle, more universal and more deadly onslaught?
The signs were mixed. On the one hand, there can be no doubt that perestroika and the fall of communism came not a moment too soon for the beleaguered Catacomb Church, which was scattered and divided, and desperately short of bishops and priests of unquestioned Orthodoxy and apostolic succession. The fall of the iron curtain enabled the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad to enter Russia and regenerate the hierarchy of the True Church, while the introduction of freedom of speech and the press enabled millions of Soviet citizens to learn the truth about their state and church for the first time. On the basis of this knowledge, they could now seek entrance into the True Church without the fear of being sent to prison or the camps. In the wave of disillusion with post-Soviet democracy that followed in the mid-1990s, it was pointed out – rightly – that freedom is a two-edged weapon, which can destroy as well as give life, and that “freedom” had brought Russia poverty and crime as well as interesting newspapers. However, for the soul thirsting for truth there is no more precious gift than the freedom to seek and find; and that opportunity was now, at last, presented to the masses.
On the other hand, only a minority of Russians used this freedom to seek
the truth that makes one truly, spiritually free. And so if the fall of
communism in 1989-91 was a liberation, it was a liberation strangely lacking in
joy. Orthodoxy was restored neither to the state nor to the official church,
and the masses of the people remained unconverted. Ten years later, a priest of
the Moscow Patriarchate could claim that “the regeneration of ecclesiastical
life has become a clear manifestation of the miraculous transfiguration of
Russia”.[350]
But behind the newly gilded cupolas reigned heresy and corruption on a
frightening scale. It was as Bishop Theophan the Recluse had prophesied over a
century before: “Although the Christian name will be heard everywhere, and
everywhere will be visible churches and ecclesiastical ceremonies, all this
will be just appearances, and within there will be true apostasy. On this soil
the Antichrist will be born...”
None of the communist persecutors of the previous seventy years,
throughout the whole vast territory of eastern Europe and Russia, was brought
to trial for his crimes. The consequences have been all too evident. Thus one
group of “repentant” communists, sensing the signs of the political times,
seized power in 1991 in a “democratic” coup and immediately formed such close
and dependent ties on its western allies that the formerly advanced (if
inefficient) economy of Russia was transformed into a scrap-heap of obsolescent
factories, on the one hand, and a source of cheap raw materials for the West, on
the other.[351]
Another group, playing on the sense of betrayal felt by many, formed a
nationalist opposition – but an opposition characterized by hatred, envy and
negativism rather than a constructive understanding of the nation’s real
spiritual needs and identity. Still others, using the contacts and dollars
acquired in their communist days, went into “business” – that is, a mixture of
crime, extortion and the worst practices of capitalism.
It is little wonder that in many churches the prayer to be delivered “from the bitter torment of atheist rule” continues to be chanted…
In the midst of this disorganized anarchy, many have begun to long nostalgically for the organized anarchy of the Soviet period, considering that the cheapness of Soviet sausages somehow outweighed the destruction of tens of millions of souls through Soviet violence and propaganda. Like the children of Israel who became disillusioned with the rigorous freedom of the desert, they have begun to long once more for the fleshpots of Egypt. But unlike the Israelites, the wanderers in the desert of post-Soviet Russia have had no Moses to urge them ever onwards to the Promised Land. True, they feel the need for such a leader; and if many still long for the return of a Stalin, there are many who prefer the image of Tsar Nicholas II, whose ever-increasing veneration must be considered one of the most encouraging phenomena of the 1990s. But veneration for the pre-revolutionary tsars will not bring forward the appearance of a post-revolutionary tsar unless that veneration is combined with repentance. Few understand that the people must become worthy of such a tsar by a return to the True Church and a life based on the commandments of God. Otherwise, if they continue to worship the golden calf, the new Moses, if such a one appears, will break the tablets of the new law before their eyes. And if they continue to follow the new Dathans and Abirams of the heretical Moscow Patriarchate, then under their feet, too, the earth will open – or they will be condemned to wander another forty years in the desert, dying before they reach the promised land of a cleansed and Holy Russia.
It is in the context of this general mood of confusion, disillusion and
apocalyptic expectation that the new forms of identification and money
exchange, containing, if the experts are to be believed, the number 666, have
aroused such alarm in the Orthodox countries of Eastern Europe and Russia – and
indeed, throughout the world. That these forms of identification came from the
West rather than the East only increased the sense of apocalyptic foreboding;
for in the view of many the capitalist West was no less antichristian than the
post-communist East, having many of the same characteristics of lawlessness.
Thus the American hieromonk Fr. Seraphim Rose wrote: “If we look around at our
20th-century civilization, lawlessness or anarchy is perhaps the
chief characteristic which identifies it… In the realm of moral teaching, it is
quite noticeable, especially in the last twenty years or so, how lawlessness
has become the norm, how even people in high positions and the clergy in
liberal denominations are quite willing to justify all kinds of things which
before were considered immoral… All this is a sign of what St. Paul calls ‘the mystery
of lawlessness’.”[352]
Some have mocked the idea that these new forms of identification could
be the seal of the Antichrist.[353] Thus
the anonymous author cited above writes, quoting Luke 2.1-4: “The Most Pure
Virgin Mary, and even the Saviour Himself borne in her cradle, took part in a
census. And this took place during the reign of the pagan Emperor
Augustus. This act – census-taking – is the essence of all contemporary
registration cards, individual numbers, etc. In antiquity officials registered the
names of people and gave them a number. The registration was undertaken with
the aid of the technical means of that time: with a quill on parchment. Even
the Mother of God, who was beyond all corruption and filled with the Holy
Spirit, received some kind of number in these lists. Now officials make
similar registers with the aid of other means. The essence remains the same:
the state receives information on its citizens which is necessary for the
execution of government.”[354]
But is the essence really the same then and now? We have already seen that the pagan Roman empire can by no means be considered to be the same kind of state as the kingdom of the Antichrist. There is no evidence that the census information obtained by the Roman emperors was used for any evil purpose. But already in the Soviet period, as we have seen, registration (passportisation) was most definitely used for evil, antichristian purposes, and was therefore avoided by the Catacomb Christians. The question to be asked about the modern forms of identification is: are they now being used, or could they be used in the future, for antichristian purposes?
The anonymous author considers that the modern forms of identification
could not be the seal of the Antichrist, in the first place because “they do
not symbolize love for any particular person”[355] – and
the seal, according to St. Nilus the Myrrhgusher, contains an inscription
expressing voluntary acceptance of, and love for, the Antichrist. According to
this author, external imprinting, “pieces of paper and plastic and
electronic gadgets”, divert the attention of believers from the real, internal
imprinting with the seal – apostasy from Christ through participation in the
heresy of ecumenism. Moreover, this internal imprinting with heresy has an
external aspect in the form of external rituals and sacraments. “’Orthodox’
bishops together with representatives of every possible religion raised a pagan
idol in Vancouver, passed through ‘purifying smoke’ in Canberra, etc. There are
many examples… The essence of these abominations is renunciation of Christ the
God-man. All these actions receive the approbation of the [Moscow Patriarchal]
Synod. And not one of the bishops has declared his protest. This means that
the whole fullness of the episcopate is ‘sealed’ - by direct participation or
silent non-resistance – with the seal of apostasy from Christ. And this is the
essence of the number of the beast…”[356]
And yet where is the number here? As far as the present writer knows, the number 666 is not imprinted on any of the participants in ecumenical worship. Of course, we can completely agree with the anonymous author that participation in the ecumenical movement is indeed a sin unto death, and that receiving the “sacraments” of the ecumenists is analogous to imprinting with the seal of the Antichrist. But this is an analogy, a type – no more. It is obvious that the seal of the Antichrist, as described in the Apocalypse, is something different. It is a mark placed on the forehead and right hand without which people will not be able to buy or sell; and this it is difficult in this connection not to be struck by the fact that a very similar, electronic or bio-electronic implant under the skin of the forehead and right hand has been proposed as the basis for a worldwide food distribution system!
Thus P. Budzilovich writes: “In the U.S.A., which is the leader of the
builders of the ‘New World Order’, all technical preparations have now been
made for the attainment of global control. The National Security Agency already
has a super-powerful computer created specially for this aim (Texe Marr
‘Project LUCID - the Beast Universal Human Control System’, Austin, TX, 1996).
Work on the creation of this computer and the required mathematical software has
been conducted as part of a project with the code-name ‘Project LUCID’ (the
abbreviation LUCID means bright, radiant; whence ‘Lucifer’, Satan -
light-bearing). They have also worked out means of ‘placing the seal’ of the
beast - biological microcircuits, which are planned to be incorporated into the
right hand or the head (at the moment, as reported in ‘Phoenix Letter’ for
March, 1997, the governments of Denmark, the Philippines and Trinidad are
taking steps to introduce such microcircuits to check the identities of their
citizens, referring to the success of this programme in the U.S.A. Although
this work is being carried out in secret in the U.S.A.). The microcircuits will
contain all-encompassing information about their bearers, including
photographs, fingerprints, feet, snaps of the irises, information about their
financial situation, health, etc. It goes without saying that every individual
in the whole world will be given a unique registration number. At the moment it
is suggested that such a number should consist of 18 digits, in three groups,
which means... six digits in each group, forming the image of the number 666.”[357]
Now a number or equivalent
mark imprinted in some such way into the body (and scanned, perhaps, by
satellites in space) could indeed be interpreted as a mark given by the beast.
Again, Tim Willard, editor of
the “Futurist” magazine, writes of the biochip: ‘The technology behind such a
biochip implant is fairly uncomplicated and with a little refinement could be
used in a variety of human applications. Conceivably a number could be assigned
at birth and follow that person throughout life. Most likely it would be
implanted on the back of the right or the left hand so that it would be easy to
scan at stores. Then you would simply scan your hand to automatically debit
your bank account’”[358]
In this context, the following observation by George Spruksts is
important: “Usually, when you want to contact someone on the internet, you type
the three letters ‘www’ [for ‘worldwide web’]... It is fascinating that in the
international alphabet, ‘w’… is used to translate the Hebrew letter vav into
the standard Roman alphabet. Vav, the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet,
represents the number 6. So, in a sense, when you type the three letters ‘www’,
you are entering the Hebrew equivalent of ‘666’. We have all known for a long
time that the Antichrist will need a global communications system to carry out
his evil schemes. Now, we have one with his initials on it.”[359]
It should be remembered that in technologically advanced countries the internet is already widely used for buying and selling various things… At the same time, no means of communication is in itself evil. It is the message, rather than the medium, which may be evil.
Also important in this context is the observation by the confessor Sergius Nilus that the Star of David, the symbol of Jewish state power, has a structure which can be described in terms of six sixes.
"The symbol or seal of the
mystery of iniquity - of the God-fighting devil, as well as its
significance and power (albeit illusory), must be known to every Jew - to the
whole of the Jewish people and through it to Masonry, as the ally of Jewry.
Their seal will also be the seal of their king and antichrist-god, who is not yet, but who will be in the nearest future.
"But does such a symbol, such a seal, really exist among the Jews
and Masons?...
"The six-pointed star,
composed of two interlocking, equal-sided similar triangles... Each of the
triangles has three sides, three corners and three apexes. Consequently, in the
two triangles there will be 6 sides, 6 corners and 6 apexes...
"In the seal of the Antichrist, therefore, the number 6 is repeated
three times, that is: 666, which for
fear of the Jews (John 19.38), for the reader who understands (Matthew 24.15) the symbolism of
the mystery, could also be represented by the seer of mysteries in writing, as six hundred and sixty-six...
"... This star is truly just as sacred a symbol for the Jew (and
therefore for the Mason) as the sign of the life-giving Cross is for the
Christian…
"This seal which is sacred for Jewry bears the name in the ritual
of the Jewish services of 'Mochin-Dovid', which means 'Shield of David'. They
put it into the grave of every right-believing Jews, as an earnest of his
communion with his 'god' beyond the grave...
"The Masons and the offshoots of the Masonic tree - the
theosophists, the occultists, the spiritualists, the gnostic, etc. - attach
just as sacred a significance to this seal, but it has another name. It is
called: "The Seal of Solomon" or the Cabbalistic
"Tetragramma".
"And so the symbol or seal of Judaeo-Masonry, the "synagogue
of Satan" of the apostates from Christ and Jewish kahal is the
"tetragramma" of the Cabbala.
"If the seal of those who… are preparing a kingdom for the
antichrist is the "tetragramma of Solomon" or "Mochin
Dovid", then is it not clear that it will also be the seal of the Antichrist
himself?
"Will any of those who believe in Christ renounce the Cross of the
Lord? Will he agree to replace it with another symbol?
"No way.
"Nor will the Jews and the Masons renounce their seal, until Israel
is converted and they shall look on Him
Whom they have pierced..."[360]
So the combination of “666” on biochips inserted into our foreheads and
right hands, with “666” (“www”) on the internet, with “666” as the symbol of
Jewish political power (the Star of David), constitutes undoubtedly the closest
apparent analogy – if it is only an analogy - to the seal of the Antichrist
that has yet appeared in human history. Whether it is in fact the seal
itself remains to be proved. But only a great insensitivity to “the signs of
the times” would fail to be impressed – and alarmed – by this sign.
Now the anonymous author expresses the fear that a premature flight from the world containing these “playthings of civilization” will create schism in the Church, with those who reject them condemning those who do not reject them as schismatics and apostates. While this remains a possibility, we may note that in Greece, where alarm at the new identity cards has provoked mass demonstrations and protests in front of government offices, and some Synods have made an official decisions to reject the cards while others have not, no ecclesiastical schism on this soil has yet arisen. The experience of the Catacomb Church is relevant here again. Although some catacombniks accepted Soviet passports and others did not, no formal schism arose on this soil. The Passportless were (and are) to be found in several catacomb jurisdictions, and some Christians without passports did not refuse to be under the omophorion of bishops with passports. In any case, even if schisms do arise on this soil, that is no reason to sweep the question under the carpet. In this, as in all ecclesiastical controversies, the only rational option is to study the question carefully on the basis of Holy Tradition and come to a corresponding conclusion, whether that leaves one in the majority or in the minority, with the so-called “extremists” or with the “moderates”, with the “zealots” or with the “compromisers”.
Of course, it cannot be denied that it is possible to “jump the gun” and
abandon the world too soon. St. Paul wrote to warn the Thessalonian Christians
who had already abandoned their jobs in anticipation of the Second Coming of
Christ that this would not happen before the removal of “him who restrains”
(lawful monarchical power, according to the holy Fathers) and the great
apostasy (II Thessalonians 2.1-7). Again, the 19th century
Romanian saint, Callinicus of Cernica, stopped building a church because he
thought that the end of the world was near – until an angel appeared to him and
told him that there was still time to build churches. Again, in 1962 St. John
Maximovich is reported as having declared that the Antichrist had just been
born…
These were mistakes, but they were mistakes engendered by highly
sensitive consciences acutely aware of the increase of corruption in the world.
Such a mistake is less dangerous than the opposite one of underestimating the
growth of apocalyptic evil. Indeed, there are far more scriptural passages
warning against false optimism in this respect than against excessive pessimism
(cf. I Thessalonians 5.3-4). And it goes without saying that as time
passes and we come closer to the end, the signs of the times come to match the
signs given in the Scriptures more and more closely, making the possibility
that such-and-such a phenomenon is in fact the seal of the Antichrist that much
greater. As Fr. Seraphim Rose used to say: it is later than we think…
The Jordanville Monk Vsevolod, in an article quoted at length by our
anonymous author, considers that while the new identity cards are probably not
the seal of the Antichrist, they may well be a preparation for it. This
conclusion is less comforting than it sounds; in fact, it implies that we have
every reason to approach these identity cards and similar objects with great
caution. For who knows at what time the preparation for the seal will turn into
the seal itself, especially since the “trial” seal will be very close to the
final, “real” seal in form?
The question is: how will we know when a certain technology has ceased
to be a mere preparation for the seal, and is the seal itself? At this point it
must be emphasized, as St. Gregory Palamas reminds us, that no number of itself is evil, for the whole
creation, and therefore all numbers, were created good by God.[361] An external
mark or number only becomes evil – in this we can fully agree with our
anonymous author - when its reception is bound up with inner apostasy from
Christ. In other words, it is not the number 666 as such which destroys the soul, but the apostasy from Christ which
is the condition of receiving the seal of that number and the material benefits
that go with it. Thus, as Monk Sergius writes, “as long as we do not deny
Christ with knowledge, we should not be afraid of various technologies, not
even if they should inject ‘666’ into our blood system!”[362]
At some point, therefore, the use of this technology will be bound up
with certain conditions, conditions which it will be impossible for an
Orthodox Christian to accept. As far as the present writer knows, no such
conditions are attached – yet – to the use of any of the technologies in
question; and it is idle to speculate precisely what these conditions will be.
Of one thing, however, we can be certain in advance: that the revelation that
the conditions attached to the use of this technology are unacceptable will be
more likely to be given to those who have always treated it with the greatest
suspicion and have kept away from it even when it was not strictly necessary
(because no conditions were attached to its use) than to those who have looked
down on their more cautious brothers with scarcely concealed disdain, and who
may therefore have ceased to notice that, little by little and in the most
clever and insidious way, an originally neutral, even beneficial technology has
become the instrument of their damnation.
In 1917 the world entered the era of the Antichrist. “He who restrains”,
Orthodox monarchical power, was removed, the great apostasy began and Jewish
antichristian power emerged from the underground into the foreground of world
history. Since then, the possibility has been ever present that, together with
the Antichrist, his seal, too, would appear – not tomorrow, not in generations
to come, but today. This fact does not exclude the further possibility that the
onslaught of the Antichrist may be temporarily weakened, even turned back, for
a period before the end, and that, as some prophecies indicate, there will be a
resurrection of the Orthodox empire “for a short time”. But in general
the spiritual condition of mankind in the era of the Antichrist will sharply
deteriorate, according to the holy fathers, which must make us especially
vigilant with regard to the fulfillment of the prophecies contained in the
Apocalypse.
The Soviet era was the first era in history in which the majority of
Orthodox Christians have had to live for an extended period in a state not
established by God and not recognized, but rather anathematized, by the Church
– that is, in a state of anarchy which the Apocalypse calls the beast.
As such, it is called the era of the collective Antichrist, in contrast to the
era of the personal Antichrist, which is yet to come and which will spread over
the whole earth. Being the Antichrist, Soviet power had its seal – those forms
of legalization and commemoration which entailed the individual Christian’s or
church organization’s recognition of the state as God-established and lawful.
The decade since the fall of Soviet power has been an enigmatic period full of conflicting signs whose overall interpretation is not yet clear. On the one hand, an opportunity has been presented to the broad masses of the Russian people to learn the truth and join the True Church. On the other hand, this opportunity has been seized so far by only a small minority, there has been no return to Orthodox forms of official ecclesiastical and political life, and the indications are that the advent of the personal Antichrist, the false king of the Jews, is being prepared. These indications include: the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948; the spread of American-Western-Jewish civilization throughout the world; and the rise in influence of Talmudic Judaism and the bowing before it of most of the world’s religions. Now again, as in the generation before the First Coming of Christ, the land of Israel is at the centre of world history, and the world as a whole is filled with the tense expectation of a coming saviour – only that saviour will be the Antichrist rather than Christ.
In view of this, it is only natural that the appearance of the
apocalyptic number 666 in a series of technologies spread and controlled by the
dominant American-Western-Jewish civilization should have led many God-fearing
Christians to conclude that “the end is near, even at the doors” (Matthew
24.23), and that “those who are in Judaea” – that is, within the sphere of
influence of the New World Order and its “seals” – should “flee to the
mountains” (Matthew 24.16) – that is, have nothing to do with these
technologies or with the mysterious international powers that issue them.
Nevertheless, in the very tentative and humble opinion of the present
writer, these technologies are not the seal of the Antichrist itself, but
a preparation for it.
This conclusion is based on the following considerations (which it is
beyond the scope of this article to argue for in detail): (1) so far no
conditions unacceptable to the Christian conscience have been attached to the
use of these technologies; (2) the American-Western-Jewish civilization that
issues them is in fact much weaker than may appear and is on the point of
collapse (cf. the prophecy of Elder Aristocles of Moscow and Mount Athos:
“America will feed the world, but will finally collapse”); (3) in consequence,
the possibility of a recovery of a truly Orthodox empire and civilization, as
indicated by many prophecies, is in fact much stronger than may appear; which
(4) accords with the possibility, indicated by certain other prophecies, that
the Antichrist, though a Jew, will in fact come, not from a pagan, heretical or
Jewish background, but from an Orthodox Christian environment (Russia)
and will try to imitate Orthodoxy in both his religion and his statehood.
However,
in view of the uncertainty of the above conclusion, and of the terrible price
to be paid if it is shown to be wrong, and of the abundant exhortations to
caution and watchfulness contained in the writings of the holy apostles and
fathers of the Church, it is safer to draw the following, somewhat different
conclusion: that whether or not we believe that the modern forms of
identification are the seal of the Antichrist, the opinion of those zealots of
Orthodoxy who believe that they are should be respected and in no way rejected
or ignored. After all, it was these same zealots who refused to take
Soviet passports as being the seal of the collective Antichrist, who kept the
flame of the true understanding of the Soviet beast alive in the last years of
Soviet power, who were that “salt” which kept the last remnants of True
Orthodoxy in Russia from being corrupted. And if their watchfulness was so
vital in the past, it may well be so again in the future. For “blessed is the
man that hath not walked in the counsel [Russian: soviet] of the
ungodly” (Psalm 1.1). And thrice blessed is he “who reads and those who
hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it;
for the time is near…” (Revelation 1.3).
Suzdal.
September 14/27, 2000.
(This is a revised and slightly expanded
version of the original article published in Russian in Suzdal’skie
Eparkhial’nie Vedomosti (Suzdal Diocesan News), ¹ 10, April-November, 2000, pp.
22-30)
24.
ON DEATH, THE TOLL-HOUSES AND THE JUDGEMENT OF SOULS
The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring for
ever and ever.
Psalm 18.9.
Introduction
“It is decreed,” says the Apostle, “that men should die once, and after
that a judgement” (Hebrews 9.27). The remembrance of death, and the
judgement that comes after death, was always before the eyes of the Saints and
Fathers of the Church. Thus St. Gregory the Theologian writes: “For the future,
instead of the present, make your life here a meditation on death.”[363] And of
the great Arsenius of the Egyptian desert it is written: “When the blessed
Arsenius was about to deliver up his spirit, the brethren saw him weeping, and
they said unto him, ‘Art thou also afraid, O father?’ And he said unto them,
‘The dread of this hour has been with me in very truth from the time when I
became a monk, and was afraid.’ And so he died.”[364]
This attitude of continual watchfulness, of spiritual sobriety in the
fear of God and His just judgements, is completely contrary to the spirit of
the age. It is not simply that men do not believe in the judgement or life
after death – we shall examine one contemporary attempt to overthrow the
Orthodox teaching on this subject in this essay. Even when they believe, they
often do not consider such an attitude worthy of a Christian. They are fond of
quoting the words of St. John the Theologian: “Perfect love casts our fear” (I
John 4.18). But who among us has perfect love? And therefore who among us
can afford to be without that saving fear which propels us to love by keeping
us away from all evil?
It is this latter fear that is meant when reference is made to the fear
of God in this essay, that fear of which we read in the Life of St.
Pachomius the Great, who “maintained himself constantly in the fear of God with
the remembrance of the eternal torments and pains which have no end – that is,
with the remembrance of the unquenchable fire and the undying worm. By this
means Pachomius kept himself from evil and roused to the better.”[365]
If even the greatest saints exercised themselves in this fear, how much
more we who are sinners and beginners on the path to salvation? “For as
merchants on a voyage, though they find a wind to suit them and the sea calm,
but have not yet reached the haven, are always subject to fear, lest suddenly a
contrary wind should stir and the sea rise into billows, and the ship be in
peril, so Christians, even if they have in themselves a favourable wind of the
Holy Spirit blowing, are nevertheless yet subject to fear, lest the wind of the
adverse power should rise and blow on them, and stir up disturbance and billows
for their souls. There is need therefore of great diligence, that we may arrive
at the have of rest, at the perfect world, at the eternal life and pleasure, at
the city of the saints, at the heavenly Jerusalem, at ‘the church of the
firstborn’ (Hebrews 12.23).”[366]
The Orthodox tradition on the judgement of the soul after death, which
is known in the West as “the particular judgement” and is often now called “the
toll-house teaching”, was summarised by St. Macarius the Great as follows:
“When the soul of man departs out of the body, a great mystery is there
accomplished. If it is under the guilt of sins, there come bands of demons, and
angels of the left hand, and powers of darkness take over that soul, and hold
it fast on their side. No one ought to be surprised at this. If, while alive
and in this world, the man was subject and compliant to them, and made himself
their bondsman, how much more, when he departs out of this world, is he kept
down and held fast by them. That this is the case, you ought to understand from
what happens on the good side. God’s holy servants even now have angels
continually beside them, and holy spirits encompassing and protecting them; and
when they depart out of the body, the bands of angels take over their souls to
their own side, into the pure world, and so they bring them to the Lord…
“Like tax-collectors sitting in the narrow ways, and laying hold upon
the passers-by, so do the demons spy upon souls and lay hold of them; and when
they pass out of the body, if they are not perfectly cleansed, they do not
suffer them to mount up to the mansions of heaven and to meet their Lord, and
they are driven down by the demons of the air. But if whilst they are yet in
the flesh, they shall with much labour and effort obtain from the Lord the
grace from on high, assuredly these, together with those who through virtuous
living are at rest, shall go to the Lord…”[367]
The first major exposition of this tradition in modern times was Bishop
Ignatius Brianchaninov’s Essay on Death in the third volume of his Collected
Works. Later, he added a “Reply” to the objections of a certain priest
called Matveevsky.[368] St.
Barsanuphius of Optina called Bishop Ignatius’ Essay “indispensable in
its genre”.[369]
In recent years this teaching was again challenged by the Orthodox
deacon Lev Puhalo (now OCA Bishop Lazar).[370]
Although Puhalo’s thesis was successfully challenged by Hieromonk Seraphim Rose[371], who
was in turn supported by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad,
it continues to be influential in certain Orthodox jurisdictions (for example,
HOCNA, the “Holy Orthodox Church in North America”) and elicit passionate
support on Orthodox list-forums. It may be useful, therefore, to review some of
the major arguments.
The
Witness of the Ecumenical Teachers
According to Puhalo, the scriptural and patristic evidence for the
“toll-house” teaching is meagre. Many of the texts produced in its favour are
either apocryphal (e.g. St. Cyril of Alexandria’s Homily on the
departure of the soul from the body) or influenced by Egyptians Gnostic ideas
(e.g. the Homilies of St. Macarius the Great, quoted above) or the
products of western heretical concepts concerning Divine vengeance, purgatory,
etc. (e.g. the stories in the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the
English Church and People). Since the present writer is not competent to
discuss questions of textual authenticity, the authorities quoted in the
following discussion will be, as far as possible, the most unimpeachable (e.g.
the three universal teachers SS. Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and
John Chrysostom) in writings whose authenticity has never been questioned.
A
very large mass of evidence in favour of the toll-houses from scriptural,
patristic, hagiographical and liturgical sources has been amassed by Rose in
the book alluded to above. We may supplement these with writings gathered
together by the Greek theologian Nikolaos P. Vasileiades, who writes: “After
his death poor man Lazarus ‘was received up by the angels’ (Luke 16.22).
Angels, however, accompany not only the souls of the just, but also those of
evil men, as the divine Chrysostom comments, basing his words on what God said
to the foolish rich man: ‘Fool, this night will they require thy soul from
thee’ (Luke 12.20). So while good angels accompanied the soul of
Lazarus, the soul of the foolish rich man ‘was required by certain terrible
powers who had probably been sent for this reason. And the one (the rich man)
they led away ‘as a prisoner’ from the present life, but Lazarus ‘they escorted
as one who had been crowned’. St. Justin the philosopher and martyr,
interpreting the word of the psalm, ‘Rescue my soul from the sword, and this
only-begotten one of mine from the hand of the dog; save me from the mouth of
the lion’ (Ps. 21.21-22), comments: By this we are taught how we also
should seek the same from God when we approach our departure from this life.
For God alone can turn away every ‘evil angel’ so that he may not seize our
soul.
“Basil the Great relates that the holy martyr Gordius (whose memory is
celebrated on January 3rd) went to martyrdom not as if he was about
to meet the public, but as if he was about to hand himself over into the hands
of angels who immediately, since they received him as ‘newly slaughtered’,
would convey him to ‘the blessed life’ like the poor man Lazarus. In another
place, the holy Father, with the aim of turning to holy Baptism as many as
procrastinated for the wrong reasons (at that time men used to be baptized at a
great age), said: Let no one deceive himself with lying and empty words (Ephesians
5.6); for the catastrophe will come suddenly upon him (I Thessalonians
5.3); it will come like a tempest. There will come ‘a sullen angel’ who will
lead away your soul which will have been bound by its sins; and your soul will
then turn within itself and groan silently, for the further reason, moreover,
that the organ of lamentation (the body) will have been cut off from it. O how
you will wail for yourself at that hour of death! How you will groan!…
“The Lord’s words: ‘The ruler of the world cometh, and has nothing in
Me’ (John 14.30) are interpreted by St. Basil as follows: Satan comes,
who has power over men who live far from God. But in Me he will find nothing of
his own that might give him power or any right over Me. And the luminary of
Caesarea adds: The sinless Lord said that the devil would not find anything in
Him which would give him power over Him; for man, however, it is sufficient if
he can be so bold as to say at the hour of his death that the ruler of this
world comes and will find in me only a few and small sins. The same Father says
in another place that the evil spirits watch the departure of the soul more
vigilantly and attentively than ever enemies have watched a besieged city or
thieves a treasury. St. Chrysostom calls ‘customs-officers’ those ‘threatening
angels and abusive powers’ of terrible appearance, meeting whom the soul is
seized with trembling; and in another place he says that these ‘persecutors are
called customs-officials and tax-collectors by the Divine Scripture’.
“In that temporary state [between the death of the body and the Last
Judgement] the just live under different conditions from the sinners. According
to St. Gregory the Theologian, every ‘beautiful and God-loving’ soul has
scarcely been parted from the body when it experiences a ‘wonderful’ inner
happiness because of all the good things that await it in endless eternity. For
this reason ‘it rejoices’ and goes forward redeemed, forgiven and purified ‘to
its Master’ since it has left the present life which was like an unbearable
prison. On the other hand, the souls of the sinners are drawn ‘to the left by
avenging angels by force in a bound state until they are near gehenna’. From there,
as they face ‘the terrible sight of the fire’ of punishment, they tremble in
expectation ‘of the coming judgement’ and are already being punished ‘in
effect’ (St. Hippolytus). For the whole time that they are separated from their
bodies they are not separated from the passions which had dominion over them on
earth, but they bear with them their tendency to sin. For that reason their
suffering is the more painful (St. Gregory of Nyssa).”[372]
Is the
Toll-House Teaching Gnostic?
As regards the argument that the toll-houses teaching is “Gnostic”, this
would appear to be extremely foolish in view of the fact that not only the
Ecumenical Teachers quoted above, but also such a distinguished Father as St.
Athanasius the Great espouses it. For in his Life of St. Anthony the
Great he writes of the saint, evidently with no disapproval: “He had this
favour from God. When he sat alone on the mountain, if ever in his reflections
he failed to find a solution, it was revealed to him by Providence in answer to
his prayer: the happy man was, in the words of Scripture, ‘taught of God’. Thus
favoured, he once had a discussion with some visitors about the life of the
soul and the kind of place it will have after this life. The following night
there came a call from on high, saying, ‘Anthony! Rise, go out and look!’ He
went out therefore – he knew which calls to heed – and, looking up, saw a
towering figure, unsightly and frightening, standing and reaching to the
clouds; further, certain beings ascending as though on wings. The former was
stretching out his hands: some of the latter were stopped by him, while others
flew over him and, having come through, rose without further trouble. At such
as these the monster gnashed with his teeth, but exulted over those who fell.
Forthwith a voice addressed itself to Anthony, ‘Understand the vision!’ His
understanding opened up, and he realized that it was the passing of souls and
that the monster standing there was the enemy, the envier of the faithful.
Those answerable to him he lays hold of and keeps them from passing through,
but those whom he failed to win over he cannot master as they pass out of his
range. Here again, having seen this and taking it as a reminder, he struggled
the more to advance from day to day in the things that lay before him.”[373]
St. Anthony’s disciple, Abba Ammonas, speaks of the power of the Holy
Spirit enabling us to pass all “the powers of the air” (Ephesians 2.2)
after death: “For this is the power which He gives to men here; it is this,
again, which guides men into that rest, until he shall have passed all the
‘powers of the air’. For there are forces at work in the air which hinder men,
preventing them from coming to God.”[374]
Such visions are common also in the Lives of the Celtic saints.
Thus we read about St. Columba of Iona that “one day he suddenly looked up
towards heaven and said: ‘Happy woman, happy and virtuous, whose soul the
angels of God now take to paradise!’ One of the brothers was a devout man
called Genereus the Englishman, who was the baker. He was at work in the bakery
where he heard St. Columba say this. A year later, on the same day, the saint
again spoke to Genereus the Englishman, saying: ‘I see a marvellous thing. The
woman of whom I spoke in your presence a year ago today – look! – she is now
meeting in the air the soul of a devout layman, her husband, and is fighting
for him together with holy angels against the powers of the enemy. With their
help and because the man himself was always righteous, his soul is rescued from
the devils’ assaults and is brought to the place of eternal refreshment.’”[375]
In fact, descriptions of the passage of souls through the toll-houses
are to be found in Orthodox literature of all ages and cultures. Such
universality is in itself a witness against the idea that the toll-house
tradition is Gnostic or heretical.
To
Whom Belongs the Judgement?
Puhalo also argues that the toll-house tradition is in fact heterodox
because it implies that the judgement of souls is not God’s but the demons’. Moreover,
it is very close, he claims, to the papist doctrine of purgatory. For “the
difference between the purgatory myth and that of the aerial toll-houses is
that the one gives God satisfaction by means of physical torment, while the
other gives Him His needed satisfaction by means of mental torture.”[376]
In answer to this objection, it is necessary to point out that while all
judgement of souls is in the hands of God, He often uses created beings as the
instruments of His justice, just as a judge might use lawyers for the
prosecution and defence, or a king might use an executioner. Thus we think of
the avenging Angel who slew all the first-born of Egypt but passed over the
house of the Israelites; and of the Archangel Michael’s destruction of the 185,000
warriors of Sennacherib. And it is not only good angels who carry out His will
in this way: the other plagues of Egypt were “a mission performed by evil
angels” (Psalm 77.53). We are not tempted to think, in these cases, that
God has lost control: He is simply executing His will through created
instruments.
Similarly, we should not think that God is not carrying out His own
judgement when a soul passes through the toll-houses. Here God is revealing His
judgement of a soul through the agency, on the one hand, of demons, who, like
counsel for the prosecution, bring up all the evil things that the soul has
thought or done, and, on the other hand, of the good angels, who, like counsel
for the defence, bring up its good deeds. Moreover, insofar as it is the good
angels who encourage men to good deeds, and the demons who incite them to the
evil, this procedure actually reveals to the soul the hidden springs of his
actions on earth.
Thus there is no contradiction, as Puhalo asserts, between the idea of
the toll-houses and the teaching that the real judgement of sinners is that “at
death they are cut off from the Holy Spirit”. Of course, God has no need for a
detailed examination of our thoughts and deeds: it is we who are required to
come to a full consciousness of them, in accordance with the Lord’s word:
“Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account of in the day
of judgement” (Matthew 12.36). Sinners who fail the searching test of
their conscience are indeed cut off from the Holy Spirit, and their souls are
“cast into prison” (Matthew 5.25), the prison of Hades, of spiritual
darkness and excommunication from God, until the final judgement of soul and
body together on the last day.
Thus if angels accuse and excuse, it is God alone Who judges in the
sense of delivers the final verdict; He alone decides the soul’s destiny, and
often, in His great mercy, decisively “tips the balance” in its favour. Thus in
the Life of St. Niphon Bishop of Constantia in Cyprus we read: “With his
clairvoyant eyes the Saint saw also the souls of men after their departure from
the body. Once, standing at prayer in the church of St. Anastasia, he raised
his eyes to heaven and saw the heavens opened and many angels, of whom some
were descending to earth, and others were ascending, bearing heaven human
souls. And he saw two angels ascending, carrying someone’s soul. And when they
came near the toll-house of fornication, the demonic tax-collectors came out
and said with anger: ‘This is our soul; how do you dare to carry him past us?’
The angels replied: ‘What kind of sign do you have on this soul, that you
consider it yours?’ The demons said: ‘It defiled itself before death with sins,
not only natural ones but even unnatural ones; besides that, it judged its
neighbour and died without repentance. What do you say to that?’
“’We will not believe,’ said the angels, ‘either you or your father the
devil, until we ask the guardian angel of this soul.’ And when they asked him,
he said: ‘It is true that this soul sinned much, but when it got sick it began
to weep and confess its sin before God; and if God has forgiven it, He knows
why: He has the authority. Glory be to His righteous judgement!’ Then the
angels, having put the demons to shame, entered the heavenly gates with that
soul.
“Then the blessed on saw the angels carrying yet another soul, and the
demons ran out to them and cried out: ‘Why are you carrying souls without
knowing them? For example, you are carrying this one, who is a lover of money, a
bearer of malice, and an outlaw.’ The angels replied: ‘We well know that it did
all these things, but it wept and lamented, confessed its sins, and gave alms;
for this God has forgiven it.’ But the demons began to say: ‘ If even this soul
is worthy of God’s mercy, then take and carry away the sinners from the whole
world. Why should we be labouring?’ To this the angels replied: ‘All sinners
who confess their sins with humility and tears receive forgiveness by God’s
mercy; but he who dies without repentance is judged by God.”[377]
This shows, on the one hand, that the demons are essentially powerless,
and on the other, that such authority as they possess over human souls is ceded
to them by these souls themselves insofar as they willingly follow their enticements.
For the Lord said: “He who sins is the servant of sin” (John 8.34), and
therefore of him who is the origin and instigator of sin, the devil. If the
demons have power even in this life over those who willingly follow their
suggestions, and the Lord allows even the baptized to be possessed by demons,
what reason have we for believing that these souls do not continue in bondage
after their departure from the body? However, if we resist sin and the devil in
this life, they will have no power over us in the next. For, as St. Anthony
says in his Life, “if the demons had no power even over the swine, much
less have they any over men formed in the image of God. So then we ought to
fear God only, and despise the demons, and be in no fear of them.”[378]
The Toll-houses and Purgatory
But if the judgement of souls after death is not in any real sense a
judgement by the devil on souls, much less is it a purging of souls in the
papist sense. At most, the experience of fear can to some extent purify the
soul as it passes through the toll-houses and before it comes to worship at the
Throne of God. That this is admitted by the Orthodox Church is shown by the
following reply of St. Mark of Ephesus to the Roman cardinals on purgatory: “At
the beginning of your report you speak thus: ‘If those who truly repent have
departed this life in love (towards God) before they were able to give
satisfaction by means of worthy fruits for their transgressions or offences,
their souls are cleansed after death by means of purgatorial sufferings; but
for the easing (or ‘deliverance’) of them from these sufferings they are aided
by the help which is shown them on the part of the faithful who are alive, as
for example: prayers, Liturgies, almsgiving, and other works of piety.’
“To this we answer the following: of the fact
that those reposed in faith are without doubt helped by the Liturgies and
prayers and almsgiving performed for them, and that this custom has been in
force since antiquity, there is the testimony of many and various utterances of
the Teachers, both Latin and Greek, spoken and written at various times and in
various places. But that souls are delivered thanks to a certain purgatorial
suffering and temporal fire which possesses such (a purgatorial) power and has the
character of a help – this we do not find either in the Scriptures or in the
prayers and hymns for the dead, or in the words of the Teachers. But we have
received that even the souls which are held in hell and are already given over
to eternal torments, whether in actual fact and experience or in hopeless
expectation of such, can be aided and given a certain small help, although not
in the sense of completely loosing them from torment or giving hope for a final
deliverance. And this is shown from the words of the great Macarius the
Egyptian ascetic who, finding a skull in the desert, was instructed by it
concerning this by the action of Divine power. And Basil the Great, in the
prayers read at Pentecost writes literally the following: ‘Who also, on this all-perfect
and saving feast, art graciously pleased to accept propitiatory prayers for
those who are imprisoned in hell, granting us a great hope of improvement for
those who are imprisoned from the defilements which have imprisoned them, and
that Thou wilt send down Thy consolation’ (Third Kneeling Prayer at Vespers).
“But if souls have departed this life in faith and love, while
nevertheless carrying away with themselves certain faults, whether small ones
over which they have not repented at all, or great ones for which – even though
they have repented over them – they did not undertake to show fruits of
repentance: such souls, we believe, must be cleansed from this kind of sins,
but not by means of some purgatorial fire or a definite punishment in some
place (for this, as we have said, has not at all been handed down to us). But
some must be cleansed in the very departure from the body, thanks only to fear,
as St. Gregory the Dialogist literally shows; while others must be cleansed
after the departure from the body, either while remaining in the same earthly
place, before they come to worship God and are honoured with the lot of the
blessed, or – if their sins were more serious and bind them for a longer
duration – they are kept in hell, but not in order to remain forever in fire
and torment, but as it were in prison and confinement under guard.
“All such ones, we affirm, are helped by the prayers and Liturgies
performed for them, with the cooperation of the Divine goodness and love for
mankind. This Divine cooperation immediately disdains and remits some sins,
those committed out of human weakness, as Dionysius the Great (the Areopagite)
says in Reflections on the Mystery of those Reposed in the Faith (in The
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, VII, 7); while other sins, after a certain time,
by righteous judgements it either likewise releases and forgives – and that
completely – or lightens the responsibility for them until that final
Judgement. And therefore we see no necessity whatever for any other punishment
or for a cleansing fire; for some are cleansed by fear, while others are
devouted by the gnawings of conscience with more torment than any fire, and
still others are cleansed only by the very terror before the Divine glory and
the uncertainty as to what the future will be. And that this is much more
tormenting and punishing than anything else, experience itself shows…”[379]
Thus while St. Mark reject the idea of a purging by fire as the papists
understand it, he definitely accepts the notion of a purging (of at any rate
certain sins) by fear and the gnawings of conscience. Now the experience of the
soul after death which Orthodox writers describe by means of the toll-house
metaphor is certain an experience which includes fear and the pangs of conscience;
and there is nothing in St. Mark’s words to suggest that he is speaking about
some different experience. We may therefore conclude that there is nothing
inherently heterodox in the notion of the toll-houses – provided we remember
that this is a metaphor and not a literal description of events.
Soul-Sleep?
A
third set of objections raised by Puhalo is based on the teaching that the soul
when separated from the body cannot, by its nature, have such experiences as
are attributed to it by the Orthodox doctrine. For “the notion that the soul
can exit the body, move about, have experiences, receive visions, revelations,
wander from place to place, make progress or be examined and judged without the
body, or, indeed, function in any sensual manner without the body, is
essentially Origenistic, and is derived from the philosophies of the pagan
religions of Greece and elsewhere… Old Testament anthropology, like that of the
New Testament, never conceived of an immortal soul inhabiting a mortal
body from which it might be liberated, but always conceived a simple,
non-dualistic anthropology of a single, psychophysical organism. And active,
intellectual life or functioning of the soul alone could never be conceived in
either Old or New Testament thought. For the soul to function, its restoration
with the body as the ‘whole person’ would be absolutely necessary.”[380] At the
same time, Puhalo accepts that the soul has “some consciousness of future
destiny, some hope”, and is “neither dead nor devoid of spiritual sensations.”[381]
The question arises: why should not the experiences that the Orthodox
doctrine attributes to the soul after death be accounted as “spiritual
sensations”? We have seen, for example, that according to St. Basil the
indolent soul after death “groans silently” because “the organ of lamentation
(the body) will have been cut off from it”. It would be consistent with this
manner of speaking to say that the soul “sees unseeingly” and “hears
unhearingly”. In such cases we are trying to describe in the only language that
available or comprehensible to us – the language of incarnate, bodily
experience, - experiences that are disincarnate and spiritual – but none the
less real and vivid for all that.
The difference between the sensual and the spiritual senses is well
illustrated by the following: “They used to tell a story of a certain great old
man, and say that when he was travelling along a road two angels cleaved to him
and journeyed with him, one on his right hand and the other on his left. And as
they were going along they found lying on the road a dead body which stank, and
the old man closed his nostrils because of the evil smell, and the angels did
the same. Now after they had gone on a little farther, the old man said unto
them, ‘Do ye also smell as we do?’ And they said unto him, ‘No, but because of
thee we closed our nostrils. For it is not for us to smell the rottenness of
this world, but we do smell the souls which stink of sin, because the breath of
such is night unto us.”[382]
Spiritual beings not only smell souls: they also see them
– and the sight of them varies depending on their spiritual state. Thus when
St. John the Baptist appeared to St. Diadochus of Photike, while admitting that
“neither the angels nor the soul can be seen” insofar as they are “being which
do not have a shape”, nevertheless “one must know that they have a visible
aspect, a beauty and a spiritual limitation, so that the splendour of their
thoughts is their form and their beauty. That is why, when the soul has
beautiful thoughts, it is all illuminated and visible in all its parts, but if
bad ones, then it has no lustre and nothing to be admired…”[383]
When the soul is separated from the body, it loses the use of its
sensual senses, but by no means loses the use of his spiritual senses. On the
contrary, they revive, as it were. Thus St. John Chrysostom says: “Do not say
to me, ‘He who has died does not hear, does not speak, does not see, does not
feel, since neither does a man who sleeps.’ If it is necessary to say something
wondrous, the soul of a sleeping man somehow sleeps, but not so with him who
has died, for [his soul] has awakened.”[384] And,
as St. Chrysostom’s disciple, St. John Cassian, writes, “the souls of the dead
not only do not lose consciousness, they do not even lose their dispositions –
that is, hope and fear, joy and grief, and something of that which they expect
for themselves at the Universal Judgement they begin already to foretaste… They
become yet more alive and more zealously cling to the glorification of God. And
truly, if we were to reason on the basis of the testimony of the Sacred
Scripture concerning the nature of the soul, in the measure of our
understanding, would it not be, I will not say extreme stupidity, but at least
folly, to suspect even in the least that the most precious part of man (that
is, the soul), in which, according to the blessed Apostle, the image and
likeness of God is contained, after putting off this fleshly coarseness in
which it finds itself in this present life, should become unconscious – that
part which, containing in itself the power of reason, makes sensitive by its
presence even the dumb and unconscious matter of the flesh?”[385]
Not only is the soul the opposite of unconscious and unfeeling when it
departs from the body: its sinful passions reveal themselves in all their
hidden strength. “For the soul, writes St. Dorotheus of Gaza, “wars against
this body with the passions and is comforted, eats, drinks, sleeps, talks to
and meets up with friends. But when it leaves the body it is left alone with
the passions. It is tormented by them, at odds with them, incensed at being
troubled by them and savaged by them… Do you want an example of what I am
saying to you? Let one of you come and let me lock him up in a dark cell, and
for no more than three days let him not eat nor drink, nor sleep, not meeting
anyone, not singing hymns nor praying, not even desiring God, and you will see
what the passions make of him. And that while he is still in this life. How
much more so when the soul has left the body and is delivered to the passions
and will remain all alone with them…”[386]
It follows that the ancient heresy of “soul sleep”, which is here
revived by Puhalo in his polemic against the doctrine of the toll-houses, is false:
the soul in its disincarnate form can indeed spiritual perceive angels and
demons and feel “hope and fear, joy and grief” in their presence.
The
Faculties of Demons
Puhalo also asserts that the demons can see neither the grace of God
(St. Diadochus of Photike) nor angels (St. Isaac the Syrian) nor human souls
(St. Isaac the Syrian, St. John the Solitary) nor thoughts coming from deep
within the soul (St. John Cassian).[387]
However, we may admit this without rejecting the toll-houses. For a careful
study of the accounts of passages through the toll-houses in the Lives of
the Saints reveals that the demons’ accusations relate to what they have deduced
from a careful study of the external behaviour of men; so their apparent
ability to know the inner thoughts and feelings of men is actually the result
simply of good psychological analysis acquired over centuries of observation.
In any case, it cannot be true that the demons cannot perceive the grace
of God in any sense whatsoever. For when the Lord approached the
demon-possessed, and when His pure soul entered Hades, did not the demons
tremble, sensing the approach of Divine grace as a blind man senses the
nearness of fire? And does not the grace residing in the relics of the saints
even now cause demons to flee?
But it is best not to peer too closely into these difficult and subtle
matters. Suffice it to say that there is no contradiction between what the
Fathers say on the nature of souls and angels and the doctrine of the
toll-houses. Above all, it is necessary to heed the words of Metropolitan
Macarius of Moscow: “One must note that, just as in general in the depictions
of the objects of the spiritual world for us who are clothed in flesh, certain
features that are more or less sensuous and anthropomorphic are unavoidable –
so in particular these features are unavoidably present also in the detailed
teaching of the toll-houses which the human soul passes through after the
separation from the body. And therefore one must firmly remember the instruction
which the angel made to St. Macarius of Alexandria when he had just begun
telling him of the toll-houses: ‘Accept earthly things here as the weakest kind
of depiction of heavenly things.’ One must picture the toll-houses not in a
sense that is crude and sensuous, but – as far as possible for us – in a
spiritual sense, and not be tied down to details which, in the various writers
and various accounts of the Church herself, are presented in various ways, even
though the basic idea of the toll-houses is one and the same.”[388]
The doctrine of the toll-houses, of the particular judgement of souls
after death, is indeed a fearful doctrine. But it is a true and salutary and
Orthodox one. Let us therefore gather this saving fear into our souls, in accordance
with the word: “Whatsoever thou takest in hand, remember thine end, and thou
shalt never sin” (Sirach 7.36).
(February 8/21, 1981; revised July 9/22,
2004)
25.
IS HELL JUST?
Of all the Christian dogmas, none has
elicited more perplexity over the centuries than the doctrine of eternal
punishment. Thinkers from Origen to the contemporary ecumenists have tried
somehow to get round the unequivocal statements of the Gospel that those who
will stand condemned at the Last Judgement will be cast into the eternal fire,
from which there will be no deliverance unto the ages of ages. In attempting in
this way to deny the eternity of the torments of hell, these thinkers have
employed a number of arguments, of which the most commonly encountered are the following:
-
1.
The Argument from God’s Compassion. According to this
argument, it is contrary to God’s nature to consign anyone to hell for ever.
After all, what human father would ever divide his children into sheep and
goats? What human bridegroom, even the most insanely jealous, would wish
eternal torments on his bride? And even if some such could be found, what has
this to do with God? Is He not perfect love, infinite mercy, unbounded
compassion?
The commonest answer to this very common perplexity is to say: God is
not only perfect love, He is also perfect justice; and while in His love for
mankind He wishes that all men should be saved and come to a knowledge of the
truth (I Tim. 2.4), the fact remains that very many "resist the
truth" (II Tim. 3.8), and so cannot be saved, becoming subject to
the full severity of His justice. The satisfaction of justice is an absolute
demand of the Divine Nature, not because God is a bloodthirsty tyrant seeking
revenge in a human, fallen manner, - God is not subject to any human passion, -
but because evil and injustice are utterly alien to His Nature. As St. John of
Damascus puts it: "A judge justly punishes one who is guilty of
wrongdoing; and if he does not punish him he is himself a wrongdoer. In punishing
him the judge is not the cause either of the wrongdoing or of the vengeance
taken against the wrongdoer, the cause being the wrongdoer's freely chosen
actions. Thus too God, Who saw what was going to happen as if it had already
happened, judged it as if it had taken place; and if it was evil, that was the
cause of its being punished. It was God Who created man, so of course he
created him in goodness; but man did evil of his own free choice, and is
himself the cause of the vengeance that overtakes him."[389]
Now such an answer was quite sufficient for
generations of Christians brought up in the fear of God, and believing in the
goodness of His judgements without presuming to understand them. For them the
fact of impenitence, and its link with Divine judgement, was as self-evident as
the link between penitence and Divine mercy. And if there were still many
things they did not understand, this was only to be expected. After all, how
can the pot be expected to understand the potter (Rom. 9.20-21)? The
judgements of God are a great abyss, and it is not for sinful mortals to plumb
their depth.
If we question God’s judgements, then we are implicitly placing
ourselves in judgement over Him, as if we could be more just than He. What
folly could be greater than this? “Shall mortal man be more just than God?
Shall a man be more pure than his Maker? Behold, He put no trust in His
servants; and His angels He charged with folly. How much less in them that
dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust? (Job 4.17-19).
“For who shall say, What hast Thou done? Or who shall withstand His judgement?
Or who shall accuse Thee for the nations that perish, whom Thou hast made? Or
who shall come to stand against Thee, to be revenged for the unrighteous men? (Wisdom
of Solomon 12.12).
It was by meditating on such passages of Holy Scripture that our
forefathers guarded themselves from highmindedness. We are not so humble today.
In proportion as our pride in ourselves and our capacities has increased, so
has our trust in, and reverence for, the judgements of God decreased. Our
attitude is: if I cannot understand this, or if it offends my moral sense, then
even if God has declared it to be so, it cannot be so; there must be a mistake.
Hell offends not only our sense of justice, but also our self-esteem
(the two are closely connected). Whereas the holy Apostles, though innocent of
betraying their Master, still had the humility and awareness of their profound
weakness to ask: "Lord, is it I?" (Matthew 26.22), we both
absolve ourselves of any really serious sin, and, like the Popes of old, give
indulgences to the whole of the rest of humanity. Although the holy Apostle
Peter says that even the righteous will scarcely be saved (I Peter
4.18), we consider that even unbelievers will be saved. Perhaps a few of the
worst sinners, we concede, might be worthy of hell - the Hitlers and Stalins of
this world. But is it possible to believe that the nice, caring, enlightened
men of late twentieth-century civilisation are worthy of hell? Away with the
thought!
Speaking of hell and its eternity, St. John Chrysostom writes: -
"Do not say to me, 'How is the balance of justice preserved if the
punishment has no end?' When God does something, obey His demand and do not
submit what has been said to human reasoning. In any case, is it not in fact
just that one who has received countless good things from the beginning, has
then done things worthy of punishment, and has not reformed in response either
to threats or to kindness, should be punished? If it is justice you are after,
we ought all on the score of justice to have perished at the very outset.
Indeed even that would have fallen short of the measure of mere justice. For if
a man insults someone who never did him any wrong, it is a matter of justice
that he be punished. But what if he insults his Benefactor, Who without having
received any favour from him in the first place, has done countless things for
him - in this case the One Who was the sole source of his existence, Who is
God, Who endowed him with a soul, Who gave him countless other gifts and
purposed to bring him to heaven? If after so many favours, he not only insults
Him but insults Him daily by his conduct, can there be any question of
deserving pardon?
"Do you not see how He punished Adam for a single sin? 'Yes', you
will say, 'but He had given him paradise and made him the recipient of very
great kindness.' And I reply that it is not at all the same thing for a man in
the tranquil possession of security to commit a sin and for a man in the midst
of affliction to do so. The really terrible thing is that you sin when you are
not in paradise but set amidst the countless evils of this present life, and
that all this misery has not made you any more sensible. It is like a man who
continues his criminal behaviour in prison. Moreover you have the promise of
something even greater than paradise. He has not given it to you yet, so as not
to make you soft at a time when there is a struggle to be fought, but neither has
He been silent about it, lest you be cast down by all your labours.
"Adam committed one sin, and brought on total death. We commit a
thousand sins every day. If by committing a single sin he brought such terrible
evil on himself and introduced death into the world, what should we, who live
continually in sin, expect to suffer - we who in place of paradise have the
expectation of heaven? This is a burdensome message; it does upset the man who
hears it. I know, because I feel it myself. I am disturbed by it; it makes me
quake. The clearer the proofs I find of this message of hell, the more I
tremble and melt with fear. But I have to proclaim it so that we may not fall
into hell. What you received was not paradise or trees and plants, but heaven
and the good things in the heavens. He who had received the lesser gift was
punished and no consideration exempted him; we have been given a greater
calling and we sin more. Are we not bound to suffer things beyond all remedy?
"Consider how long our race has been subject to death on account of
a single sin. More than five thousand years have passed and the death due to a
single sin has not yet been ended. In Adam's case we cannot say that he had
heard prophets or that he had seen others being punished for their sins so that
he might reasonably have been afraid and learnt prudence if only from the
example of others. He was the first and at that time the only one; yet he was
still punished. But you cannot claim any of these things. You have had numerous
examples, but you only grow worse; you have been granted the great gift of the
Spirit, but you go on producing not one or two or three but countless sins. Do
not think that because the sins are committed in one brief moment the
punishment therefore will also be a matter of a moment. You can see how it is
often the case that men who have committed a single theft or a single act of
adultery which has been done in a brief moment of time have had to spend all
their lives in prison or in the mines, continually battling with hunger and
every kind of death. No one lets them off, or says that since the crime was
committed in a brief moment the punishment should match the crime in the length
of time it takes.
"'People do act like that,' you may say, 'but they are men, whereas
God is loving towards mankind.' Yes, but even the men who act in this way do
not do so out of cruelty but out of love for mankind. So since God is loving to
mankind He too will deal with sin in this way. 'As great as is His mercy, so
great also is His reproof' (Sirach 16.12). So when you speak of God as
loving towards mankind, you are actually supplying me with a further reason for
punishment, in the fact that the One against Whom we sin is such as this. That
is the point of Paul's words: 'It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of
the living God' (Heb. 10.31). I ask you to bear with these words of
fire. Perhaps, yes, perhaps they may bring you some consolation. What man can
punish as God has been known to punish? He caused a flood and the total
destruction of the human race; a little later He rained down fire from on high
and utterly destroyed them all. What human retribution can compare with that?
Do you not recognise that even this case of punishment is virtually endless?
Four thousand years have passed and the punishment of the Sodomites is still in
full force. As His loving kindness is great, so also is His punishment..."[390]
St. Barsanuphius of Optina said: “We think too abstractly about the
torments of hell, as a result of which we forget about them. In the world they
have totally forgotten about them. The devil convinces everyone there that
neither he himself nor the torments of hell exist. But the Holy Fathers teach
that one’s betrothal to Gehenna, just as to blessedness, begins while one is
still on earth – that is, sinners while still on earth begin to experience the
torments of hell, while the righteous experience blessedness, only with this
difference – that in the future age both the one and the other will be
incomparably more powerful…
“At the present time, not only among lay people, but even among the
young clergy the following conviction is beginning to spread: eternal torment
is incompatible with the boundless mercy of God; consequently, the torments are
not eternal. Such a misconception proceeds from a lack of understanding of the
matter. Eternal torments, and eternal blessedness, are not things which proceed
from without, but exist first and foremost within a man himself. ‘The Kingdom
of God is within you’ (luke 17.21). With whatever feelings a man
instills within himself during his life, he departs into eternal life. A
diseased body torments one on earth, and the more severe the disease is, the
greater the torment is. So also a soul infected with various diseases begins to
be cruelly tormented at its passage into eternal life. An incurable physical
ailment ends with death, but how can a sickness of the soul end, when there is
no death for the soul? Malice, anger, irritability, lust, and other infirmities
of the soul are vermin which will creep after a man even into eternal life.
Hence, it follows that the aim of life consists in crushing these vermin here
on earth, so as to purify one’s soul entirely, and before death to say with our
Savior, ‘The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me’ (John
14.30). A sinful soul, not purified by repentance, cannot be in the company of
the saints. Even if it were placed in Paradise, it would itself find it
unbearable to remain there, and would try to get out.”[391]
“Even the bodies of sinners will experience torment. The fire will be
material; there will not only be pangs of conscience, and so forth. No, this
will really be perceptible fire. Both the one and the other will be real. Only,
just like the body, the fire will be far more subtle, and everything will bear
only a certain resemblance to earthly things.”[392]
2. The Argument from the Saints’
Compassion.
According to this argument, heaven would not be heaven for the righteous as
long as they knew that the sinners were being tortured in hell. Being filled
with compassion, their bliss would be spoiled as long as there was even one
sinner still suffering torment. So God in His compassion, and so as to give His
chosen ones a perfect and unspoiled reward, will forgive all men eventually.
However, the Fathers teach that that feeling of compassion which is so
necessary while there is still life and hope will be taken away by God when
there is no more use for it. For if, as St. John of Damascus says, "in
hades [i.e. after death but before the Last Judgement] there is no confession
or repentance"[393], then
much less will there be confession and repentance after the Last Judgement in
gehenna. And if there is no repentance how can there be forgiveness?
Thus St. Gregory the Great writes, in his commentary on the parable of
Lazarus and the Rich Man: "We must ponder these words: 'They who would
pass from hence to you cannot' (Luke 16.26). For there is no doubt that
those who are in hell long to enjoy the lot of the blessed. But since the
latter have been received into eternal happiness, how can it be said that they
desire to pass over to those in hell? It must be that, as the damned desire to
go to the dwelling of the elect, to escape from that place of suffering, so the
just wish to cross over in mercy to that place of torments, to bring them the
freedom they desire. But those who wish to cross from heaven to hell can never
do so; for although the souls of the just are aflame with mercy, nevertheless
they are so united to the divine justice and guided always by rectitude, that
they are not moved by any compassion towards the reprobate. They are in
complete conformity with that judge to whom they are united, and so they cannot
have compassion for those whom they cannot free from hell. They consider them
as strangers, remote from themselves, since they have seen them repelled by
their Maker who is the object of their love. So neither the wicked can cross
over to the felicity of the blessed: because they are shackled by an irrevocable
condemnation, nor the just go to the unjust: because they cannot feel
compassion for those whom the divine justice has rejected..."[394]
3. The Argument from Ignorance.
This argument can be summarised as follows: "Neither are the works of
faith necessary for salvation, nor even faith. For most men have never had the
Gospel preached to them, and so belong to other faiths simply out of ignorance,
because they were born into non-Christian societies or families. The All-loving
and All-just God will certainly not judge them for that. Indeed (continues the
argument in some of its forms), all that is necessary for salvation is good
faith, by which we do not mean the one true faith (for there is no such thing),
but sincerity, even if that sincerity
is manifested in non-Christian beliefs and actions: blessed are the sincere,
for they shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven."
However, Divine Revelation attaches little value to sincerity per se:
"The way of a fool is right in his own eyes" (Proverbs 12.15),
says Solomon, and: "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the
end thereof is the ways of death" (Proverbs 14.12). In any case, if
true faith in Christ were not absolutely necessary for salvation, and one could
be saved without knowing Him, then it would not have been necessary for the
Martyrs to confess Him, for the Apostles to preach Him, or for Christ Himself
to become incarnate for our sakes.
"Are you saying, then” retort the ecumenists, “that all the Hindus
and Buddhists will be damned?!"
We neither assert this nor deny it, preferring to "judge nothing
before the time" (I Cor. 4.5), and to follow St. Paul's rule:
"what have I to do to judge them that are without?… Them that are without
God judgeth" (I Cor. 5.12-13). We know with complete certainly
about the perdition of only a few men (Judas, Arius, etc.), just as we have
complete certainty about the salvation of only a few men (those whom the Church
has glorified as saints). As Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava wrote, when asked
about the salvation of the Jews: "When St. Anthony the Great was thinking
about questions of this kind, nothing concerning the essence of these questions
was revealed to him, but it was only told him from on high: 'Anthony, pay
attention to yourself!', that is, worry about your own salvation, but leave the
salvation of others to the Providence of God, for it is not useful for you to
know this at the present time. We must restrict ourselves to this revelation in
the limits of our earthly life."[395]
Nevertheless, when compassion for unbelievers is taken as a cloak from
under which to overthrow the foundations of the Christian Faith, it is
necessary to say something more, not as if we could say anything about the
salvation or otherwise of specific people (for that, as Archbishop Theophanes
says, has been hidden from us), but in order to re-establish those basic
principles of the Faith, ignorance of which will undoubtedly place us in danger
of damnation.
Ignorance - real, involuntary ignorance - is certainly grounds for
clemency according to God's justice, as it is according to man's. The Lord
cried out on the Cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do" (Luke 23.24); and one of those who were forgiven declared:
"I obtained mercy because I acted in ignorance” (I Tim. 1.13; cf. Acts
3.17, 17.30). For our Great High Priest is truly One "Who can have
compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way" (Heb.
5.2).
However, there is also such a thing as wilful, voluntary ignorance. Thus
St. Paul says of those who do not believe in the one God, the Creator of heaven
and earth, that "they are without excuse" (Rom. 1.20), for
they deny the evidence from creation which is accessible to everyone. Again,
St. Peter says: "This they are willingly
ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth
standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was,
being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are
now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of
judgement and perdition of ungodly men" (II Peter 3.5-7). Again,
claiming knowledge when one has none counts as wilful ignorance. For, as Christ
said to the Pharisees: "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now
ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth" (John 9.41).
Wilful ignorance is very close to conscious resistance to the truth,
which receives the greatest condemnation according to the Word of God. Thus
those who accept the Antichrist will do so "because they received not the
love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send
them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be
damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (II
Thess. 2.10-12). And if it seems improbable that God should send anyone a
strong delusion, let us remember the lying spirits who, with God's permission,
deceived the prophets of King Ahab because they only prophesied what he wanted
to hear (I Kings 22.19-24).
Conscious, willing resistance to the truth is the same as that
"blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" which, in the words of the Lord,
"shall not be forgiven unto men" (Matt. 12.31). As
Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) explains: "Blasphemy against the Holy
Spirit, or 'sin unto death', according to the explanation of the Seventh
Ecumenical Council (VIII, 75), is a conscious, hardened opposition to the
truth, 'because the Spirit is truth' (I John 5.6).”[396] It is
not that God does not want to forgive all sins, even the most heinous: it is
simply that he who bars the way to the Spirit of truth is thereby blocking the
way to the truth about himself and God, and therefore to the forgiveness of his
sins. As St. Augustine says: "The first gift is that which is concerned
with the remission of sins... Against this gratuitous gift, against this grace
of God, does the impenitent heart speak. This impenitence, then, is the
blasphemy against the Holy Spirit."[397]
Wilful ignorance can be of various degrees. There is the wilful
ignorance that refuses to believe even when the truth is staring you in the
face – this is the most serious kind, the kind practised by the Pharisees and
the heresiarchs. But a man can also be said to be wilfully ignorant if he does
not take the steps that are necessary in order to discover the truth – this is
less serious, but still blameworthy, and is characteristic of many of those who
followed the Pharisees and the heresiarchs.
Thus we read: "That servant who knew his master's will, and
prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with
many stripes. But he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be
beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much
be required; and he to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the
more" (Luke 12.47-48). To which the words of St. Theophylactus of
Bulgaria are a fitting commentary: "Here some will object, saying: 'He who
knows the will of his Lord, but does not do it, is deservedly punished. But why
is the ignorant punished?' Because when he might have known he did not wish to
do so, but was the cause of his own ignorance through sloth."[398]
Or, as St. Cyril of Alexandria puts it: "How can he who did not
know it be guilty? The reason is, because he did not want to know it, although
it was in his power to learn."[399] To
whom does this distinction apply? St. Cyril applies it to false teachers and
parents, on the one hand, and those who follow them, on the other. In other
words, the blind leaders will receive a greater condemnation than the blind
followers - which is not to say, however, that they will not both fall into the pit (Matt.
15.14). For, as Bishop Nicholas Velimirovich writes: "Are the people at
fault if godless elders and false prophets lead them onto foreign paths? The
people are not at fault to as great an extent as their elders and the false
prophets, but they are at fault to some extent. For God gave to the people also
to know the right path, both through their conscience and through the preaching
of the word of God, so that people should not blindly have followed their blind
guides, who led them by false paths that alienated them from God and His
Laws."[400]
Are Hindus and Buddhists who have lived their whole lives in
non-Christian communities wilfully ignorant of the truth? Of course, only God
knows the degree of ignorance in any particular case. However, even if the
heathen have more excuse than the Christians who deny Christ, they cannot be
said to be completely innocent; for no one is completely deprived of the
knowledge of the One God. Thus St. Jerome writes: "Ours and every other
race of men knows God naturally. There are no peoples who do not recognise
their Creator naturally."[401] And
St. John Chrysostom writes: "From the beginning God placed the knowledge
of Himself in men, but the pagans awarded this knowledge to sticks and stones,
doing wrong to the truth to the extent that they were able."[402] And
the same Father writes: "One way of coming to the knowledge of God is that
which is provided by the whole of creation; and another, no less significant,
is that which is offered by conscience, the whole of which we have expounded
upon at greater length, showing how you have a self-taught knowledge of what is
good and what is not so good, and how conscience urges all this upon you from
within. Two teachers, then, are given you from the beginning: creation and
conscience. Neither of them has a voice to speak out; yet they teach men in
silence."[403]
Many have abandoned the darkness of idolatry by following the voices of
creation and conscience alone. Such, for example, was St. Barbara, who even
before she had heard of Christ rejected her father's idols and believed in the
One Creator of heaven and earth. For she heeded the voice of creation:
"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaimeth the
work of His hands" (Psalm 18.1). And she heeded the voice of her
conscience, which recoiled from those "most odious works of witchcrafts,
and wicked sacrifices; and also those merciless murderers of children and
devourers of man's flesh, and the feasts of blood, with their priests out of
the midst of their idolatrous crew, and the parents, that killed with their own
hands souls destitute of help" (Wisdom of Solomon 12.4-6). But her
father, who had the same witnesses to the truth as she, rejected it - to the
extent of killing his own daughter.[404]
Thus there is a light that "enlightens every man who comes into the
world" (John 1.9). And if there are some who reject that light,
abusing that freewill which God will never deprive them of, this is not His
fault, but theirs. As St. John Chrysostom says, "If there are some who
choose to close the eyes of their mind and do not want to receive the rays of
that light, their darkness comes not from the nature of the light, but from
their own darkness in voluntarily depriving themselves of that gift."[405]
This mystery of the voluntary rejection of the light was revealed in a
vision to a nun, the sister of the famous novelist Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy,
who rejected the teaching of the Orthodox Church and died under anathema:
"When I returned from the burial of my brother Sergius to my home in the
monastery, I had some kind of dream or vision which shook me to the depths of
my soul. After I had completed my usual cell rule, I began to doze off, or fell
into some kind of special condition between sleep and waking, which we
monastics call a light sleep. I dropped off, and beheld... It was night. There
was the study of Lev Nikolayevich. On the writing desk stood a lamp with a dark
lampshade. Behind the desk, and leaning with his elbows on it, sat Lev
Nikolayevich, and on his face there was the mark of such serious thought, and
such despair, as I had never seen in him before... The room was filled with a
thick, impenetrable darkness; the only illumination was of that place on the
table and on the face of Lev Nikolayevich on which the light of the lamp was
falling. The darkness in the room was so thick, so impenetrable, that it even
seemed as if it were filled, saturated with some materialisation... And
suddenly I saw the ceiling of the study open, and from somewhere in the heights
there began to pour such a blindingly wonderful light, the like of which cannot
be seen on earth; and in this light there appeared the Lord Jesus Christ, in
that form in which He is portrayed in Rome, in the picture of the holy Martyr
and Archdeacon Laurence: the all-pure hands of the Saviour were spread out in
the air above Lev Nikolayevich, as if removing from invisible executioners the
instruments of torture. It looks just like that in the picture. And this
ineffable light poured and poured onto Lev Nikolayevich. But it was as if he
didn't see it... And I wanted to shout to my brother: Levushka, look, look
up!... And suddenly, behind Lev Nikolayevich, - I saw it with terror, - from
the very thickness of the darkness I began to make out another figure, a
terrifying, cruel figure that made me tremble: and this figure, placing both
its hands from behind over the eyes of Lev Nikolayevich, shut out that
wonderful light from him. And I saw that my Levushka was making despairing
efforts to push away those cruel, merciless hands... At this point I came to,
and, as I came to, I heard a voice speaking as it were inside me: 'The Light of
Christ enlightens everyone!"[406]
If the Light of Christ enlightens everyone, then there is no one who
cannot come to the True Faith, however unpromising his situation. If a man
follows the teachers that are given to everyone, creation and conscience, then
the Providence of God, with Whom "all things are possible" (Matt.
19.26), will lead him to the teacher that is given at the beginning only to a
few - "the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the
Truth" (I Tim. 3.15). For "it is not possible," writes
St. John Chrysostom, "that one who is living rightly and freed from the
passions should ever be overlooked. But even if he happens to be in error, God
will quickly draw him over to the truth."[407] Again,
as Chrysostom's disciple, St. John Cassian, says: "When God sees in us
some beginnings of good will, He at once enlightens it, urging it on towards
salvation."[408]
This point was developed in an illuminating manner by Cassian's French
contemporary, Prosper of Aquitaine: "The very armies that exhaust the
world help on the work of Christian grace. How many indeed who in the quiet of
peacetime delayed to receive the sacrament of baptism, were compelled by fear
of close danger to hasten to the water of regeneration, and were suddenly
forced by threatening terror to fulfil a duty which a peaceful exhortation
failed to bring home to their slow and tepid souls? Some sons of the Church,
made prisoners by the enemy, changed their masters into servants of the Gospel,
and by teaching them the faith they became the superiors of their own wartime
lords. Again, some foreign pagans, whilst serving in the Roman armies, were
able to learn the faith in our country, when in their own lands they could not
have known it; they returned to their homes instructed in the Christian
religion. Thus nothing can prevent God's grace from accomplishing His will...
For all who at any time will be called and will enter into the Kingdom of God,
have been marked out in the adoption which preceded all times. And just as none
of the infidels is counted among the elect, so none of the God-fearing is
excluded from the blessed. For in fact God's prescience, which is infallible,
cannot lose any of the members that make up the fullness of the Body of
Christ."[409]
However, there are few today who have a living faith in God's ability to
bring anyone to the faith, whatever his situation. It may therefore be useful
to cite the famous example of God's favour to the Aleuts of Alaska, to whom He sent angels to teach them the
Orthodox Faith in the absence of any human instructor. Fr. John Veniaminov
(later St. Innocent, metropolitan of Moscow (+1879)) relates how, on his first
missionary journey to Akun island, he found all the islanders lined up on the
shore waiting for him. It turned out that they had been warned by their former
shaman, John Smirennikov, who in turn had been warned by two "white
men", who looked like the angels on icons. Smirennikov told his story to
Fr. John, who wrote: "Soon after he was baptised by Hieromonk Macarius,
first one and later two spirits appeared to him but were visible to no one
else... They told him that they were sent by God to edify, teach and guard him.
For the next thirty years they appeared to him almost every day, either during
daylight hours or early in the evening - but never at night. On these
occasions: (1) They taught him in its totality Christian theology and the
mysteries of the faith... (2) In time of sickness and famine they brought help
to him and - though more rarely - to others at his request. (When agreeing to
his requests that they help others, they always responded by saying that they
would first have to ask God, and if it was His will, then they would do it.)
(3) Occasionally they told him of thing occurring in another place or (very
rarely) at some time in the future - but then only if God willed such a
revelation; in such cases they would persuade him that they did so not by their
own power, but by the power of Almighty God.
"Their doctrine is that of the Orthodox Church. I, however, knowing
that even demons believe - and tremble with fear [James 3.19], wondered
whether or not this might be the crafty and subtle snare of him who from time
immemorial has been Evil. 'How do they teach you to pray, to themselves or to
God? And how do they teach you to live with others?' He answered that they
taught him to pray not to them but to the Creator of all, and to pray in
spirit, with the heart; occasionally they would even pray along with him for
long periods of time.
"They taught him to exercise all pure Christian virtues (which he
related to me in detail), and recommended, furthermore, that he remain faithful
and pure, both within and outside of marriage (this perhaps because the locals
are quite given to such impurity). Furthermore, they taught him all the outward
virtues..."[410]
Very apt was the comment of one of the first who read this story:
"It is comforting to read about such miraculous Divine Providence towards
savages, sons of Adam who, though
forgotten by the world, were not forgotten by Providence."[411]
These cases lead us to draw the following conclusions: (1) The
Providence of God is able to save anyone
in any situation, providing he loves
the truth. Therefore (2), although we cannot declare with categorical certainty
that those who die in unbelief or heresy will be damned, neither can we declare
that they will be saved because of their ignorance; for they may be alienated
from God "through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart" (Eph. 4.18),
and not simply through the ignorance that is caused by external circumstances.
And (3) if we, who know the truth, say that such people do not need to become
Christians in order to be saved, then we shall be guilty of indifference to the
truth; for which we shall certainly merit damnation. For while we cannot
presume to know the eternal destinies of individual men, we do know this, that
the Word of God is true that declares: "He that believeth and is baptised
shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mark
16.16). And again: "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he
cannot enter into the Kingdom of God" (John 3.5). And again:
"Whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father
Who is in heaven" (Matt. 10.33).
Moreover, to the unlying Word of God we may add the witness of Holy
Tradition, in the form of the experience of Theodora, the spiritual daughter of
St. Basil the New, who, after passing through the toll-houses and being
returned to her body, was told by the angels: "Those who believe in the
Holy Trinity and take as frequently as possible the Holy Communion of the Holy
Mysteries of Christ, our Saviour's body and Blood - such people can rise to heaven
directly, with no hindrances, and the holy angels defend them, and the holy
saints of God pray for their salvation, since they have lived righteously. No
one, however, takes care of wicked and depraved heretics, who do nothing useful
during their lives, and live in disbelief and heresy. The angels can say
nothing in their defence... [Only those] enlightened by the faith and holy
baptism can rise and be tested in the stations of torment [that is, the
toll-houses]. The unbelievers do not come here. Their souls belong to hell even
before they part from their bodies. When they die, the devils take their souls
with no need to test them. Such souls are their proper prey, and they take them
down to the abyss."[412]
Some believe that even those condemned to hell after their death, may
yet get a “second chance” at the Last Judgement, through the prayers of the
saints and the Mother of God. The present writer knows no patristic witness
that would clearly confirm or refute such an idea. However, we know from St.
Simeon the Theologian that if a man is
making progress towards the truth in this life he will not be deprived of
further progress in the life to come: "It is a great good thing to
believe in Christ, because without faith in Christ it is impossible to be
saved; but one must also be instructed in the word of truth and understand it.
It is a good thing to be instructed in the word of truth, and to understand it
is essential; but one must also receive Baptism in the name of the Holy and
Life-giving Trinity, for the bringing to life of the soul. It is a good thing
to receive Baptism and through it a new spiritual life; but it is necessary
that this mystical life, or this mental enlightenment in the spirit, also
should be consciously felt. It is a good thing to receive with feeling the
mental enlightenment in the spirit; but one must manifest also the works of
light. It is a good thing to do the works of light; but one must also be
clothed in the humility and meekness of Christ for a perfect likeness to
Christ. He who attains this and becomes meek and humble of heart, as if these
were his natural dispositions, will unfailingly enter into the Kingdom of
Heaven and into the joy of the Lord. Moreover, regarding all those who are
running on the path of God according to the order I have indicated, if it
happens that natural death should cut off their course in the midst of this,
they will not be banished from the doors of the Kingdom of God, and these doors
will not be closed before them, according to the limitless mercy of God. But
regarding those who do not run in such a way, their faith also in Christ the
Lord is vain, if they have such..."[413]
4. The Argument from the Supremacy of
Love over Justice. Another argument goes as follows. "Let us
suppose that most men are not worthy to enter the Kingdom of heaven, if only
because they will find nothing akin to their own corrupted nature there.
Nevertheless, God is love, and he would never cast the creatures He has created
and still continues to love into the unimaginably terrible torments of hell,
whose purpose, since they are unending, cannot be the rehabilitation of the
sinner, nor deterrence of future evil. We do not deny that the Scriptures speak
in many places of the existence of just such a hell, and of a great multitude entering
into it. But we cannot but hope and believe (for 'love believeth all things,
hopeth all things' (I Cor. 13.7) that these images are placed before us
simply as a deterrent, and that in the end hell will be an empty place, not
only spiritually but also physically. God has shown, by His Death on the Cross,
that His love for us is greater than His love for the abstract principle of
justice. Is it possible that he would finally deny that, admit that His
Sacrifice had been in vain (for the great majority of people, at any rate), and
allow cold justice to triumph over love?"
In attempting to answer this objection, we must first arm ourselves with
the most basic weapon of the Christian life: the fear of God. The fear of God is not an abject trembling before
a despotic tyrant. It is a rational, heartfelt awareness that we all, and every
part of our lives, are in the hands of a Being Who infinitely transcends
everything that we can say about Him, and even the very categories of our
discourse. This applies not only to clearly inexplicable and unimaginable acts
of His such as the creation of the world out of nothing. It also applies to
those definitions of His nature which seem to correspond to something in our
experience, such as: "God is love".
If human love can sometimes seem to be incompatible with justice, this
is not so with Divine love. For what is the whole economy of God’s incarnation,
life on earth and death on the Cross if not perfect
love in pursuit of perfect justice - an extraordinary, humanly speaking
paradoxical justice, it is true, but for that very reason characteristically
Divine justice? For He, the Just One, Who committed no sin and had done
everything to deter us from it, out of love for man died to blot out all the
sins and injustices of the whole world. When we could not pay the price, He
paid it for us; when we were dead in sin, He died to give us life; "for
Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust" (I Peter
3.18).
The Church has expressed the paradoxicality of God’s justice with great
eloquence: "Come, all ye peoples, and let us venerate the blessed Wood,
through which the eternal justice has been brought to pass. For he who by a
tree deceived our forefather Adam, is by the Cross himself deceived; and he who
by tyranny gained possession of the creature endowed by God with royal dignity,
is overthrown in headlong fall. By the Blood of God the poison of the serpent
is washed away; and the curse of a just condemnation is loosed by the just
punishment inflicted on the Just. For it was fitting that wood should be healed
by wood, and that through the Passion of One Who knew not passion should be
remitted all the sufferings of him who was condemned because of wood. But glory
to Thee, O Christ our King, for Thy dread dispensation towards us, whereby Thou
hast saved us all, for Thou art good and lovest mankind."[414]
Here there is no contradiction between love and justice. And if there is
no contradiction between them in the Redeeming Passion of Christ on the Cross,
then there is likewise no contradiction between them in His Coming again to
judge men in accordance with their response to His Passion. But in order to
understand this it is necessary, first, to rid ourselves of the idea that God’s
just wrath against impenitent sinners is comparable to the sinful human passion
of vengefulness. Such vengefulness is condemned by the Word of God (Rom.
12.17-21), and cannot possibly be attributed to the Divine Nature, which is
alien to all fallen human passion. We must at all times hate the sin and not
the sinner; we must wish for the destruction of sin and not of sinners. If we
wish to identify our will with the Will of God, then our first desire must be
for the salvation of all sinners, including our enemies, paying special attention
(lest we become hypocrites) to those sinners we know best and for whom we are
primarily responsible - ourselves.
"The wrath of God,”
writes Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava, “is
one of the manifestations of the love of God, but of the love of God in its
relationship to the moral evil in the heart of rational creatures in general,
and of man in particular."[415] That
is why the martyrs under the heavenly altar, filled as they are with the love
of God to the highest degree, are at the same time filled with a holy wrath:
“How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on
them that dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6.10). And yet, as the
Venerable Bede writes, "the souls of the righteous cry out these words,
not out of hatred for enemies, but out of love for justice".[416]
This love of justice is natural to man, for it is made in the image of
God’s own love of justice. The love of justice proceeds naturally from the
Nature of God, like heat from the sun. Thus to say that God should be loving
but not just is like saying that the sun should give light but not heat. It is
simply not in the nature of things. What is in accordance with the nature of
God is that He should divide the light of His grace from its fiery heat at the
Last Judgement, giving the light only to the blessed and the heat only to the
damned.
As St. Basil the Great writes, commenting on the verse: “The voice of
the Lord divideth the flame of fire” (Psalm 28.6), writes: “The fire
prepared in punishment for the devil and his angels is divided by the voice of
the Lord. Thus, since there are two capacities in fire, one of burning and the
other of illuminating, the fierce and punitive property of the fire may await
those who deserve to burn, while its illuminating and radiant part may be
reserved for the enjoyment of those who are rejoicing.”[417]
The Lord placed justice on a par with mercy and faith (Matt.
23.23), and it was the Ephesian Church’s hatred of injustice that redeemed it
in His eyes; for “this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the
Nicolaitans, which I also hate” (Rev. 2.6). This lesson is particularly
important for our century, when the Orthodox Church has been persecuted by the
ecumenists with their indifference to the truth, on the one hand, and the
sergianists with their indifference to justice, on the other. We have to kindle
in ourselves a holy and dispassionate zeal for the truth and hatred of
injustice.
Thus, as Archbishop Theophanes writes in reply to the question “Can one
have a negative feeling in relation to the enemies of the Russian people and
the Orthodox Church or must one suppress in oneself this feeling, repeating the
words: ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay’?”: “To have a negative feeling towards
the enemies of God and of the Russian people is natural. And on the contrary
not to have a negative feeling is unnatural. Only this feeling must be correct.
And it will be correct when it has a principled, not personal character, that
is, when we 'hate' the enemies of God and of the Russian people not for their
personal offences against us, but for their hostile attitude towards God and
the Church and for their inhuman attitude towards Russian people. Therefore it
is also necessary to fight with these enemies. Whereas if we do not fight, we
will be punished by God for our lukewarmness. He will then take His vengeance
not only on them, but also on us..."[418]
The whole burden of the Old Testament Prophets was an impassioned, yet
holy lament against the injustice of man
against God and against his fellow man. And if anything to the Prophets was
proof of the corruption of Israel, it was that, instead of repenting of their
own injustice, they accused the Just One of injustice. Thus the holy Prophet
Ezekiel laments: “The house of Israel saith, The way of the Lord is not equal.
O house of Israel, are not My ways equal? Are not your ways unequal? Therefore
I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the
Lord God.” (Ezekiel 18.29-30). And the holy Prophet Malachi laments: “Ye
have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied Him?
When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He
delighteth in them; or, Where is the God of judgement?” (Malachi 2.17).
The God of judgement is within us, manifest
in that extraordinarily powerful love of justice that is created in the image
of God’s love of justice. Faith teaches, and human nature cries out for, a last
and most glorious Judgement in which all tears will wiped away from every
innocent face (Rev. 21.4), and every apparently meaningless suffering
will find its meaning and reward. Again, faith teaches, and human nature cries
out for, a last and most terrible Judgement in which those who laughed over the
sufferings of others will weep (Luke 6.25), and those who feasted on
human flesh will gnash their teeth in eternal frustration. "Be not
deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but
he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." (Gal.
6.7,8)
Thus the Last, Most Terrible Judgement is a mystery proclaimed by the
Word of God and grounded in the deepest reality of things. It both proceeds
from the nature of God Himself, and is an innate demand of our human nature
created in the image of God. It is the essential foundation for the practice of
virtue and the abhorrence of vice, and the ultimate goal to which the whole of
created nature strives, willingly or unwillingly, as to its natural fulfilment.
Without it all particular judgements would have a partial and unsatisfactory
character, and the reproaches of Job against God, and of all unbelievers
against faith, would be justified. And if the Last Judgement is different from
all preceding ones in that in it love seems to be separated from justice, love
being distributed exclusively to the righteous and justice to the sinners, then
this is because human nature itself will have divided itself in two, one part
having responded to love with love, to justice with justice, while the other,
having rejected both the love and the justice of God, will merit to experience
His justice alone...
And if, like Ivan in Dostoyevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov,
we still cannot come to terms with the tears of an innocent child, this is not
because our love is too great, but because our faith in God's justice is too
small. God’s ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His justice,
we must humbly accept, is not our justice. At some times we cannot understand
why the innocent suffer; at others – why the guilty get away with it. At some
times we cannot understand why great sinners are forgiven in a moment; at
others – why those who seem to us to be less guilty appear destined for the
eternal fire. The only right way to respond to this is to recognise humbly that
the creature cannot and must not argue with his Creator, and to say with the
Psalmist: “Righteous art Thou, O Lord, and upright are Thy judgements” (Psalm
118.137)…
(January 20 /
February 2, 1999; revised July 8/21, 2004)
26. GOD
AND TSUNAMIS
“There were some present at that very time who told Him of the
Galilaeans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And He
answered then, ‘Do you think that these Galilaeans were worse sinners than all
the other Galilaeans, because they suffered thus? I tell you, No; but unless
you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower
of Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders
than all the others who dwell in Jerusalem? I tell you, No; but unless you
repent you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13.1-5).
This Gospel tells us three things. First, those who suffer in disasters
such as the recent South Asian tsunami are not necessarily worse people than
those who escape them. Secondly, however, such disasters do come upon those who
do not repent of their sins; they are the instruments of God’s wrath against
sinners. And so, thirdly, we who remain among the living must fear lest we
perish like they did because of our sins.
The western press, both atheist and Christian, will have none of this.
God does not cause disasters like this, says the atheist: rather, the very
presence of such disasters is proof that God does not exist. For if He did
exist, and was able to stop them but did not, this proves that He is immoral.
And if He was not able to stop them, this proves that He is impotent, or at any
rate not omnipotent. But since religion says that God is both moral and
omnipotent, this proves that God does not exist.
The arguments of Christian leaders to defend their faith against such
attacks have been feeble in the extreme. Or rather, they have joined the
atheists in attacking it. Thus the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan
Williams, shocked British listeners by declaring: “Every
single random, accidental death is something that should upset a faith bound up
with comfort and ready answers. Faced with the paralysing magnitude of a
disaster like this, we naturally feel more deeply outraged.”
But there are no “random, accidental”
deaths, and Orthodox Christian piety most definitely does not feel “outrage”
before the judgements of God, but only reverence: “The judgements of God are a
great abyss…”
The archbishop’s statement is on a par with the remark made by
the Bishop of Durham, Dr. David Jenkins, some years ago that if God allowed
Auschwitz, He is the devil! Presuming that the Bishop of Durham is not joking,
and that he does believe in the devil, we must conclude either that he believes
that the devil rules the universe and allowed Auschwitz or that he does not
believe in the omnipotence of God. The latter opinion appears to be much more
likely…
A
similar, if less crudely expressed, argument has been made by Professor Keith
Ward of Oxford University in his recently published debate with the atheist
A.C. Grayling.[419] God,
he says, is not as omnipotent as some traditional concepts of the deity
presume: although God is the Creator of the universe, the laws of nature
produce some unpleasant consequences, such as tsunamis, over which He has no
control. And so He is not responsible for them.
Grayling replies: “If he is the creator, he is not like the builder of
an aeroplane, which everyone hopes will never crash; he is rather like the
builder of an aeroplane which is actually designed to crash – this being the
necessity of a world with moving tectonic plates, viruses, and all the other
vectors of disaster; and for this, therefore, he is responsible”.
Not so, responds Ward. “There is a big difference between the statements
‘The universe is designed to inflict pain’ and ‘The universe is designed to
produce intelligent life, but a foreseen, regretted yet inevitable consequence
is the existence of pain’; also between ‘suffering for some good purpose’ and
‘suffering as an unwelcome consequence of the pursuit of a good purpose’. A
personal cause might have to accept the latter pair, but never the former.”
To which Grayling retorts: “When believers recite their version of the
creed – every version of which bar the Chalcedonian places ‘almighty God’ at
the head – they literally mean a God capable of anything, and therefore capable
of preventing innocent suffering if he chose; which, if he exists and is
omnipotent in the literal sense, he does not do, and that impugns his morals.
Your vaguely drawn alternative deity is not to blame for humanity’s sufferings
because he is powerless to prevent them, but since this is far from what the
body of the faithful believe of him, and furthermore, since diminished potency
entails diminished wisdom, benevolence, and the rest of the traditional
attributes, it is hard to see why anyone should be impressed by the residue you
offer.”
It is hard to disagree with Grayling’s objection to the professor of
theology – but without, of course, accepting his atheist conclusions.
Diminishing the omnipotence of God in order to free Him from responsibility for
human suffering is a false solution, which only plays into the atheists’ hands.
God is almighty, but at the same time perfectly good and just: that is
the belief of the Orthodox Church.
How, then, do we answer the atheists, and those “Christians” who concede
far more to the atheists than is compatible with the Christian Faith?
Let us begin by pointing out that God is not only capable of creating a
world without suffering – He did so, right at the beginning, in Paradise.
Suffering and death came into the world, not by the will of God, but through
the envy of the devil, who caused Adam and Eve to fall away from God, and
therefore from Life itself. If man had not sinned, there is no reason why this
blissful life in Paradise, free of all suffering and death, should not have
continued forever, both for Adam and Eve and for their descendants.
But why, somebody may object, should sin result in death? Could not God
have devised a better way of correcting the sinner? Could He not simply have
explained to Adam and Eve the error of their ways, and then, upon their
repentance, allowed them to continue their former blissful life?
But God did call Adam and Eve to repentance – and they did not repent.
Moreover, it must be remembered that sin, being the opposite of holiness, drove
away that holiness that was integral to man at the beginning, who was made
“after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians
4.24). And having lost holiness, or the Holy Spirit, man began to disintegrate,
like an organism out of which the central, controlling organ has been removed.
When the Spirit departed from the soul, it began to fall apart into warring
passions. And then the body, too, began to break up, resulting in death.
There could therefore be no question of restoring man to his former
beauty and holiness just like that – he was dying, and destined for the grave,
the moment he stubbornly refused to repent. Only a thorough recreation of
man could restore him. And that recreation was effected in Christ, the New
Adam.
In any case, for sinners like ourselves, as St. Ambrose of Milan points
out, death is a good. Suffering helps to correct sin by humbling
the soul, preparing it to receive the forgiveness and new life that is in
Christ. And death cuts off sin together with the sinner. Moreover, death is the
necessary precondition of resurrection; for just as a statue that is flawed can
be corrected only by melting it down and starting again, so is it with man.
Through death he is “melted down”, as it were, making it possible for him to be
rebuilt, without the flaws introduced by sin, at the general resurrection from
the dead…
“Faith”, writes St. Macarius of Optina, “does not consist of merely
believing in the existence of God, but also in His all-wise Providence which
guides His creatures and arranges everything for the good; the times and the
seasons are put in His power (Acts 1.7), and for each of us the limits
of our life were determined before our existence, and without His will a bird
does not fall nor does a hair of our head perish! (Matthew 10.29; Luke
21.28)… The works of God are wondrous and unfathomable for our darkened minds,
but as much as possible, we see from Scripture and our personal experiences
that the Lord sends sicknesses, sorrows, deprivation, droughts, wars, and
revolutions, either as punishment for our sins, or in anticipation, so that we
do not fall into sins, or sometimes to test our faith. And so, we must bow in
reverence before His all-wise Providence and give thanks for His ineffable
mercy towards us.”[420]
“But this is all nonsense”, say the atheists and our modern theologians.
Being Darwinists to a man, they do not believe in Paradise or in Adam and Eve;
they believe that death was there from the beginning, as the engine of
evolution. God just couldn’t help it, they say: the world He created came into
being through death and destruction – mutation and natural selection.
It is a paradox, of course, that life should come into being through
death – but science has proved it! God wasn’t capable of getting it right first
time: He had gradually to perfect the species through an incredibly costly
process of trial and error involving the suffering and deaths of millions and
millions of creatures over millions and millions of years. And even now He
hasn’t got it right: “foreseen, regretted yet inevitable” disasters keep
interfering with the world He supposedly created. God is really in the dock
before our contemporary theistic evolutionists. However, they are generously
prepared to acquit Him - on the grounds of “diminished responsibility”…
According to this “enlightened” thinking,
man is in the privileged position of being able, through science and reason, to
correct the mistakes God made in creation. God gets things wrong, sending
thousands of innocent creatures to their deaths, but man puts things right -
through earth science (how clever we are!) and tsunami appeals (how generous we
are!), through the American Fleet and the United Nations and the Kyoto
Protocols, etc., etc., etc. Eventually, perhaps, man will even be able to help
God out in recreating man himself – through stem cell research and gene
therapy, through social engineering, free trade and democracy. No need, then,
for a New Adam: the old Adam can put himself right, thank you! In truth, then,
the real god of creation is not God – but man!
All this rests on the premise that God is as limited by the laws of
nature as we are. At best, the picture that the modern theologians present us
with is the Deist-Masonic one of the eighteenth-century philosophers. The
Deists’ “god” may have created the universe in the beginning, but he certainly
has no control over it now; he is like the child who winds up a toy and then
cannot keep up with it as it jumps all over the room. He is allowed to perform
a miracle occasionally, but only as a special exception – for those who believe
in such things. But there can be no question of God having any real control
over nature as a whole or in detail – after all, that would leave
no room for the creativity of man, whose “calling” is to alter the workings of
the bouncing toy and return it, like a benevolent father, to the distraught
child!
The Orthodox Christian philosophy argues quite differently. He who
believes in chance, says St. Basil the Great, is an atheist – he does
not really believe in God at all. There is no such thing as chance, says St.
Ignatius Brianchaninov. Nothing is impossible for God, because He controls the
workings of the universe down to the last detail, down to the tiniest
wave-function. When we say that A causes B, what we mean is that God causes A
and then causes B. As David Hume pointed out already in the eighteenth century,
nobody has actually seen a cause: the only thing we ever see is events
of class A being followed by events of class B, a regular sequence; we never
see a third entity, C, causing A to be followed by B. The only true
Cause of every single event in the history of the universe – except, as we
shall see, the free decisions of men and angels – is God.
The only limitations God allows to be placed on his sovereign will are
the workings of the wills of men and angels – and that only for a time, and
only within severe limits. Everything that is not willed by men or angels is
willed by God. And so the South Asian tsunami, if it was not caused by men, was
caused by God or the devil. Actually, it could have been caused by God and the
devil, in that God sometimes uses the evil will of demons as an instrument to
the fulfilling of His own good and perfect will. And so all things are either
actively willed by God, or, if it not actively willed, are allowed by
Him.
Who is Innocent?
The arrogance of the “Christian theologians” is most clearly revealed in
their attitude to the victims of the tsunami: all of them, they agree, are
“innocent”. This “truth” is reeled out by almost every commentator as if it
were a dogma. As if they could see and weigh up the thoughts of all of the
150,000 victims, and declare them all: “not guilty!”
But on what basis can they acquit the pagans and Muslims who died? And
on what basis can they acquit the Christian victims, most of whom were sunning
themselves on the day after Western Christmas far from a Christian church? It
was left to some Muslims who know the region better than the Christian
theologians, and who also appear to believe more in the justice of God than
they, to point out that immoral practices such as child kidnapping and
paedophilia are rife in the region…
“Are you then saying that all the victims were killed as God’s
punishment for their sins?” No, we are not. We do not know the victims, and
would not have the right to judge them, even if we knew them. Only God can
judge, because only He knows the hearts and the reins of every man. We know
neither the heart of each man, nor the reason why God sends this or that man
this or that form of suffering.
For there are many possible reasons why a man should die or be injured in a disaster such as the South Asian tsunami. It may be the final punishment of a sinner who will not repent. Or the timely chastisement of a sinner who will repent. It may be the deliverance of a good but vulnerable soul from mortal sin in the future (“while living among sinners he was taken up, lest evil should change his understanding or guile deceive his soul” (Wisdom 4.10-11)). Or the crown, paradoxically, of a just life (St. Athanasius of Mount Athos was killed by a falling bell).
Herod and Ahab and Judas died as a punishment of their sins, of which
they did not repent; and their punishment continued after their deaths. But
David and Peter and Paul suffered as a chastisement for their sins, repented
and were forgiven. The children who mocked the Prophet Elisha died because of
their mockery. But Job did not suffer because of his sins, but in order to
serve as an example of long-suffering, and even as a type of Christ. And the
14,000 innocents of Bethlehem suffered in order to receive a crown of glory in
the heavens…
It is important to realize that when speaking of fallen human beings, -
that is, all human beings except Christ the Lord, - we use the term “innocent”
only relatively speaking. The sentence of death falls on all the sons of Adam.
“For all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans
3.23).
Nor are children and even new-born babies exempt from this rule; for
“even from the womb, sinners are estranged” (Psalm 57.3). As Job says:
“Who shall be pure from uncleanness? Not even one, even if his life should be
but one day upon the earth” (Job 14.4 (LXX)). That is why we baptise
children “unto the remission of sins”.
Modern theologians try to “absolve” God of responsibility for the
suffering and deaths of millions whom they – the theologians – in their
infinite wisdom declare to be “innocent”. And yet God does not deny that He
sends death upon these millions – and says that we are to blame!
Consider His verdict on the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar: “The
Lord, the God of their fathers, constantly sent to them by His messengers,
because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place. But they
kept mocking the messengers of God, despising His words, and scoffing at His
prophets, until the wrath of the Lord rose against His people, until there was
no remedy. Therefore He brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who
slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no
compassion on young man or virgin, old man or aged: He gave them all into his
hand” (II Chronicles 36.15-16).
There is no question about it: the disaster was willed by God, as a just
punishment for sin. And even if the instruments of His wrath, the Chaldeans,
were themselves evil, God used the evil as an instrument for His good ends. In
the same way, the ten plagues of Egypt – which killed many “innocent” babes –
were willed by the good God, but carried out by evil demons: “And He sent forth
against them the wrath of His anger, anger and wrath and affliction, a mission
performed by evil angels” (Psalm 77.53). Not that the evil executioners
of God’s wrath are justified for that; “for shall the axe vaunt itself over him
who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it?” (Isaiah
10.15).
Of course, God’s primary or active will is that we should
do good, and should be rewarded for it. But if we frustrate his primary will,
then He allows evil to be punished: this is His secondary will, as it
were. For He is just as well as merciful; He is the God of justice as well as
the God of love.
Metropolitan Anastasy (Gribanovsky) of New
York writes: “The Lord sometimes waits for evil to reveal itself utterly, so
that, having exposed its real nature, it might by itself be rejected by the
hearts of men; and He subjects the righteous man to a sevenfold trial, so as to
reveal his spiritual beauty before the whole world and increase his reward.
Thus, for a time, He allows things to remain as they are: ‘He that is filthy,
let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still’
(Revelation 22.11).
“If, with a righteous man, the least
sinful obstacles characteristic of fallen human nature are burned up in the
fire of trials, so also does God allow the ungodly one to enjoy prosperity for
a time, so that he might receive his ‘reward’ for those crumbs of good which he
might at any time do during his life. The just Judge does not wish to remain in
debt either to the righteous or to the sinful. The latter, of course, do not
realize that He is dealing with them in this instance as a physician does with
the hopelessly ill, deciding at the last moment to let them have anything they
want, only because they have no hope for a future. With great eloquence and
persuasiveness the blessed Augustine reveals this latter idea in his famous
work On the City of God, which is, as is well known, the first attempt
at a philosophy of history, when he speaks of the fall of Rome. The very
prosperity of those condemned to destruction is no more than a phantom, like
smoke, and therefore it should elicit no sense of envy in anyone, but only a
sad pity for their lot, for the divine Word is immutable: ‘Vengeance is Mine; I
will repay’ (Romans 9.13; Deuteronomy 32.35). ‘When I am given
the appointed time, I will judge uprightly’ (Psalm 74.3); ‘I will begin,
and I will make an end’ (I Kings 3.12).
“’Fret not thyself because of evil-doers,’
King David the prophet urges us, ‘nor envy them that work iniquity. For like
grass quickly shall they be withered, and like green herbs quickly shall they
fall away’ (Psalm 36.1-2).
“’Weep for the sinner who succeeds at
everything’, one of the Fathers of the Church teaches us, ‘for the sword of
divine justice is hanging over him’.
“When the Lord deems it necessary, He
reveals His judgement over ungodliness even here on earth, answering, as it
were, the entreaty of mankind: ‘Let me see Thy vengeance taken upon them, for
to Thee I have declared my cause’ (Jeremiah 11.2).”[421]
Conclusion
The Apostle Paul writes: “All things happen for the best for those who
love God, and who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8.28). So
even the most terrible disasters are for the best – for those who love God, and
for those who, though they do not love God now, are called to love Him in the
future and enjoy His eternal good things. For those who do not love God,
however, they express the righteous wrath of God in punishing evil.
The love and justice of Divine Providence is based on the omnipotence of
God: if God were not the pantocrator, the almighty, the words of the
apostle would make no sense. It is therefore the height of impiety, exhibiting
clear disbelief in the truth of the Holy Scriptures, to attempt to limit His
omnipotence. For as the Lord said to Abraham: “Is anything too hard for the
Lord?” (Genesis 18.14). For “I form light and create darkness, I make
prosperity and create woe. I am the Lord, Who does all these things” (Isaiah
45.7).
And if it is the height of impiety – equivalent, as St. Basil says, to
atheism – to attempt to limit the omnipotence of God, and make Him helpless
before chance or the supposed iron laws of nature, what are we to say of those
who impugn His justice, and who take it upon themselves to declare all the
victims of His judgements innocent?
God is justified in His words and
prevails when He is judged by those evil men who accuse Him of injustice. As He
says through the Prophet Ezekiel: “Yet saith the house of Israel, The way of
the Lord is not equal. O house of Israel, are not My ways equal? Are not your
ways unequal? Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one
according to his ways” (Ezekiel 18.29-30.). Again, the Prophet Malachi
says: “Ye have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we
wearied Him? When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the
Lord, and He delighteth in them; or, Where is the God of judgement?” (Malachi
2.17). But God is not unequal in His ways, and He is always the God of
judgement.
“For who will say, ‘What hast Thou done? Or who will resist Thy
judgement? Who will accuse Thee for the destruction of the nations which Thou
didst make? Or who will come before Thee to plead as an advocate for unrighteous
men? For neither is there any god besides Thee, Whose care is for all men, to
whom Thou shouldest prove that Thou hast not judged unjustly; nor can any king
or monarch confront Thee about those whom Thou hast punished.” (Wisdom
12.12-14).
January 21 / February 3, 2005.
St. Maximus the Confessor.
[1] The Massoretic text says: “Who
can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.”
[2] St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the
Beatitudes, 6, PG. 44, 1273.
[3] St. Cyprian of Carthage, On
the Unity of the Church.
[4] St. Gregory of Nyssa, Letter
XVII to Eustathia, Ambrosia and Basilissa.
[5]
St. John of the Ladder, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 24.23.
[6] St. Bede, On Genesis 4.10.
[7] Lourié, “Ekklesiologia
otstupaiuschej armii (The Ecclesiology of a Retreating Army)”, Vertograd-Inform,
¹ 3, January,
1999, p. 24 (English edition).
[8] Gundiaev, interview conducted by
Alexis Venediktov, March 22, 2001.
[9] It was for this reason that the
Orthodox Pope Gregory I (known as “the Dialogist” in the East, and “the Great”
in the West) refused the title of “universal” or “ecumenical”. See his Epistle
33.
[10] And sometimes they have not only
not allowed them, but have expelled them. Thus in 1975 a group of Sardinian
parishes, who had been received into the Moscow Patriarchate from Roman
Catholicism, were ordered by their archpastor, Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
(who was himself ordered to do this by Metropolitan Juvenaly of Tula), to leave
his Church. The reason, as the present writer was able to ascertain from
Anthony himself, was: the Pope had laid it down as a condition of the success
of his negotiations with the MP on the Ukrainian uniate question that these
parishes return to him. After various adventures, these parishes were later
admitted into communion with the Greek Old Calendar Church.
[11] Liudmilla Pereiolkina, Ecumenism
– A Path to Perdition, St. Petersburg, 1999, p. 214.
[12] Perepiolkina, op. cit.,
p. 122.
[13] Metropolitan Anthony, “The
Church’s Teaching about the Holy Spirit”, Orthodox Life, vol. 27, ¹ 4, July-August, 1977, pp. 38-39.
[14] St. Augustine, Homily 21 on the New Testament, 19, 20.
[15] Blessed Theophylact, Explanation
of the Gospel of Luke, 12.47-48.
[16] St. Cyril of Alexandria, Homily
93 on Luke.
[17] Keston News Service, ¹ 369, February 21, 1991, p. 6.
[18] Letter in Liternaturnaia
Rossia, June 14, 1991 ®; Oxana Antic, "Patriarch Aleksii II: A
Political Portrait", Report on the USSR, vol. 3, ¹ 45, November 8, 1991, p. 17.
[19] “Patriarch Alexis II: I take on
myself responsibility for all that happened”, Izvestia, ¹ 137, June 10, 1991; Bishop
Gregory Grabbe, "The Dogmatization of Sergianism (Dogmatizatsia
Sergianstva)", Pravoslavnaia Rus (Orthodox Rus’), ¹ 17 (1446), September 1/14, 1991,
p. 5 ®.
[20] Grabbe, "Dogmatizatsia
Sergianstva", op. cit., p. 5.
[21] Hieromonk Tikhon (Kazushin),
personal communication; Natalya Babisyan, "Sviashchenniki na barrikadakh
(Priests on the Barricades)", Khristianskie Novosti (Christian News),
¹ 38, August
22, 1991, p. 21 ®.
[22] Ellis, "The Russian Church:
hopes and fears", Church Times, September 13, 1991.
[23] Sokolov, op. cit.
[24] He said that the Church had not
supported the coup (although there is clear evidence that Metropolitans
Philaret of Kiev and Pitirim of Volokolamsk supported it), but had "taken
the side of law and liberty" (Report on the USSR, vol. 3, ¹ 36, September 6, 1991, p. 82).
[25] 30 Dias, Rome/Sao Paolo,
August-September, 1991, p. 23.
[26] Kozyrev, “[orthodox-synod] Re:
The Orthodox Episcopate of the Russian persecuted Church”, orthodox-synod@yahoogroups.com.
28 November, 2002.
[27] Kharchev, Argumenty i Fakty, 1992,
¹ 8, p. 5 ®.
[28] Sheimov, Tower of Secrets, Maryland:
Naval Institute Press, 1993, p. 418.
[29] Shushpanov, Moskovskie
Novosti, 12 July, 1992, p. 20 ®.
[30]
For more details of the parliamentary commission's revelations, see Praymoj
Put' (Straight Path), ¹¹
1-2, January, 1992, p. 1; ¹
3, February, 1992, p. 1; Spetsialnij vypusk, February, 1992; Alexander Nezhny,
"Tret’e Imia (The Third Name)", Ogonek, ¹ 4 (3366), January 25 -
February 1, 1992; Iain Walker and Chester Stern, "Holy Agents of the
KGB", The Mail on Sunday, March 29, 1992; John Dunlop, "KGB
Subversion of Russian Orthodox Church", RFE/RL Research Report,
vol. 1, ¹
12, March 20, 1992, pp. 51-53; Protodeacon Herman Ivanov-Trinadtsaty, "A ne
nachalo li eto kontsa? (Is this not the beginning of the end?)", Pravoslavnaia
Rus (Orthodox Rus’)', ¹
9 (1462), May 1/14, 1992, pp. 609; "Ne bo vragom Tvoim povem...", Vestnik
Germanskoj Eparkhii Russkoj Pravoslavnoj Tservki za Granitsei (Herald of the
German Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad), ¹ 1, 1992, pp. 16-22; Fr.
Victor Potapov, "Molchaniem predaåtsa Bog" (“God is Betrayed by
Silence”), Moscow: Isikhia, 1992, pp. 36-39; Joseph
Harriss, "The Gospel according to Marx", Reader's Digest, February,
1993, pp. 59-63.
[31] Estonian State Archive, record
group 131, file 393, pp. 125-126; James Meek, “File links church leader to
KGB”, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 13, 1999; Seamus Martin,
“Russian Patriarch was (is?) a KGB agent, files say Patriarch Alexeij II
received KGB ‘Certificate of Honour’”, Irish Times, September 23, 2000;
Arnold Beichman, “Patriarch with a KGB Past”, The Washington Times,
September 29, 2000.
[32] Andrew and Mitrokhin, op.
cit., pp. 639-640.
[33] Andrew and Mitrokhin, op.
cit., p. 650.
[34] The Philadelphia Inquirer
on May 3, 1992; quoted in "The Church of the KGB", Living
Orthodoxy, vol. XIV, ¹
2, March-April, 1992, pp. 22-23.
[35] Andrew and Mitrokhin, op.
cit., p. 661.
[36] Felix Corbey, “The Patriarch and
the KGB”, Keston News Service, September 21, 2000.
[37] Dunlop, “The Moscow Patriarchate
as an Empire-Saving Institution”, in Michael Bourdeaux, M.E. Sharp (eds.), The
Politics of Religion in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, 1995, Armonk,
NY, p. 29.
[38] M. Pozdnyaev and Archbishop
Chrysostom, "Ya sotrudnichal s KGB... no ne byl stukachem (I cooperated
with the KGB, … but I wasn’t a stool-pigeon)", Russkaia Mysl' (Russian
Thought), ¹
3926, 24 April, 1992, translated in Religion, State & Society, vol.
21, ¹¹ 3 and 4,
1993, pp. 345-350; “Letter of Priest George Edelstein to President Putin, in Church
News, June, 2003, vol. 14, ¹ 65 (#119), p. 2.
[39] Quoted by Anatoly Krasikov,
"'Tretij Rim' i bolsheviki (The Third Rome and the Bolsheviks)", in
Filatov, S.B. (ed.), Religia i prava cheloveka (Religion and the Rights of
Man), Moscow: Nauka, 1996, p. 198 ®.
[40]
http://www.ripnet.org/besieged/rparocora.htm?
[41] "In
the Catacombs", Sovershenno Sekretno (Completely Secret), ¹ 7, 1991; quoted by Fr. Peter
Perekrestov, "Why Now?" Orthodox Life, vol. 44, ¹ 6, November-December, 1994, p.
44.
[42] Quoted by Fr. Peter Perekrestov,
“The Schism in the Heart of Russia (Concerning Sergianism)”, Canadian
Orthodox Herald, 1999, ¹
4.
[43] “Equally uncanonical[that is, equally with the Russian Church Outside Russia] is the so-called ‘Catacomb’ Church.” (Nedelia (The Week), ¹ 2, 1, 1992; quoted by Fr. Peter Perekrestov, "Why Now?" Orthodox Life, vol. 44, ¹ 6, November-December, 1994, p. 44).
[44] Ridiger, in A. Soldatov, “Sergij
premudrij nam put’ ozaril (Sergius the all-wise has illumined our path”, Vertograd,
¹ 461, 21 May, 2004, p. 4 ®.
[45] Fomin, Strazh Doma Gospodnia
(Guard over the House of the Lord), Moscow, 2003, p. 262 ®.
[46] Applebaum, Gulag: A History, London:
Penguin Books, 2003, pp. 506-509.
[47] Vasilios
Stavrides, Istoria tou Oikoumenikou Patriarkheiou (1453 – simeron) (History
of the Ecumenical Patriarchate from 1453 to the present day), Thessalonica,
1987, pp. 248-249 (in Greek).
[48] Bishop Photius, "The 70th
Anniversary of the Pan-Orthodox Congress in Constantinople", Orthodox
Life, ¹ 1, 1994, p.
41-42.
[49] “To imerologiakon skhism apo
istorikis kai kanonikis apopseos exetazomenon (The calendar schism examined
from an historical and canonical point of view)", Agios Agathangelos
Esphigmenites (St. Agathangelos of Esphigmenou), ¹ 131, May-June, 1992, p. 17 (G);
Bishop Photius, op. cit., p. 41.
[50] A History of the Russian
Church Abroad, Seattle: St. Nectarios Press, 1972, p. 51.
[51] See Monk Gorazd, "Quo
Vadis, Konstantinopol'skaia Patriarkhia? (Where are you going,
Constantinopolitan Patriarchate?)", Pravoslavnaia Rus' (Orthodox Rus’),
¹ 2 (1455),
January 15/28, 1992, p. 9 (in Russian).
[52] M.E. Gubonin, Akty
Sviateishago Patriarkha Tikhona, Moscow, 1994, p. 304 (in Russian).
[53] M.B. Danilushkin (ed.), Istoria
Russkoj Pravoslavnoj Tserkvi (A History of the Russian Orthodox Church), vol.
I, St. Petersburg, 1997, p. 197 (in Russian).
[54] For example, on October 22, 1919
the Poles ordered 497 Orthodox churches and chapels, which had supposedly been
seized from the Catholics in the past, to be returned to the Catholic Church.
See Danilushkin, op. cit., p. 586.
[55] Koeller, "Kommentarii k
pis'mu Arkhiepiskopa Rizhskago i Latvijskago Ioanna Arkhiepiskopu Vilyenskomu i
Litovskomu Elevferiu ot 2 noiabria 1927 g. (Commentary on the letter of
Archbishop John of Riga and Latvia to Archbishop Eleutherius of Vilnius and
Latvia)", Tserkovnaia Zhizn’ (Church Life), ¹¹ 3-4,
May-June-July-August, 1992, pp. 56-57 (in Russian).
[56] Gubonin, op. cit., pp.
320-321.
[57] Monk Gorazd, op. cit.. At the beginning of the Second
World War, Metropolitan Dositheus was imprisoned and tortured in Zagreb, and
died on January 13, 1945 without returning to consciousness. See “Novij
sviashchenno-ispovyednik Dosifej mitropolit Zagrebskij (New Hieroconfessor
Dositheus, Metropolitan of Zagreb)”, Pravoslavnaia Rus’ (Orthodox Rus’),
¹ 7 (1628), April 1/14, 1999, p. 3 (in Russian).
[58] Archbishop John, "The
Decline of the Patriarchate of Constantinople", The Orthodox Word,
vol. 8, no. 4 (45), July-August, 1972, p. 175.
[59] Cited in Bishop Photius, op.
cit., p. 42.
[60] See Monk Gorazd, op. cit.
[61] Quoted in Archbishop Nikon
(Rklitsky), Zhizneopisanie Blazhennejshago Antonia, Mitropolita Kievskago
i Galitskago (Life of his Beatitude
Anthony, Metropolitan of Kiev and Galich), Eastern American and Canadian
diocese, 1960, vol. VI, pp. 161-163 (in Russian).
[62] Sokurova, O.B. Nekolyebimij
Kamen’ Tserkvi (The Unshakeable Rock of the Church), St. Petersburg:
“Nauka”, 1998, p. 32 (in Russian).
[63] Goutzidis, op.
cit., p. 76.
[64] Cited in Bishop Photius, op.
cit., p. 40.
[65] Goutzidis, op.
cit., pp. 74-78.
[66] However, an Anglican hierarch,
Charles Gore of Oxford, was allowed to attend one of the sessions and was
treated with great honour.
[67] “Oecumenical Patriarch Meletios
(Metaxakis)”, Orthodox Tradition, vol. XVII, 2 & 3,
2000, p. 9.
[68] Monk Paul, Neoimerologitismos-Oikoumenismos
(Newcalendarism-Ecumenism), Athens, 1982, pp. 72-73.
[69] Dionysius
Batistes, Praktika-Apophaseis tou en Kon/polei Panorthodoxou Synedriou 1923
(The Decisions of the Pan-Orthodox Congress of 1923 in Constantinople),
1982, p. 57 (G).
[70] Soldatov, "Pravoslavie i
Ekumenizm (Orthodoxy and Ecumenism)”, Mirianin (The Layman),
July-August, 1992, p. 8 (in Russian).
[71] Pravoslavie
ili Smert', ¹ 1, 1997, p. 6 (in Russian).
[72] The newspapers Khronos
(20 March, 1949) and Orthodoxos Typos (December, 1968), cited in
Hieromonk Theodoretus (Mavros), Palaion kai Neon (The Old and the New),
p. 21.
[73] "The Russian Orthodox
Church in the System of Contemporary Christianity", in A. Preobrazhensky
(ed.), The Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow: Progress, 1988, p. 387.
[74] Ulrich Duckrow, Conflict over
the Ecumenical Movement, Geneva: The World Council of Churches, 1981, pp.
31, 310.
[75] Vitaly, "Ekumenizm
(Ecumenism)", Pravoslavnij Vestnik (The Orthodox Herald), June,
1969, pp. 14-30; Moskva (Moscow), 1991, ¹ 9, p. 149 (in Russian).
[76] Full text in Eastern Churches
Review, vol. I, ¹
1, Spring, 1966, pp. 49-50.
[77] Eastern Churches Review,
vol. I, ¹ 1, Spring,
1966, p. 50.
[78] Full text in Ivan Ostroumoff, The
History of the Council of Florence, pp. 193-199.
[79] Athenagoras (Kokkinakis), The
Thyateira Confession, London, 1975, p. 61.
[80] “Orthodoxy and the Ecumenical
Movement”, Orthodox Christian Witness, October 27 / November 9, 1997, p.
2.
[81] Newsletter of the
Foreign Relations Department of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, January-March, 1981, p. 2.
[82] See Archbishop Vitaly, "The
1983 Sobor of Bishops", Orthodox Christian Witness, August 20 /
September 2, 1984, p. 4.
[83] See "A Contemporary
Patristic Document", Orthodox Christian Witness, November 14/27,
1983, p. 3; "Encyclical Letter of the Council of Bishops of the Russian
Orthodox Church Outside Russia", Orthodox Life, vol. 33, ¹ 6, November-December, 1983, p.
13; Bishop Hilarion of Manhattan, "Answers to Questions Posed by the
Faithful of the Orthodox Parish in Somerville, South Carolina", Sunday of
the Myrrhbearers, 1992.
[84] “Iskazhenie dogmata 'O edinstve
Tserkvi' v ispovedaniakh very Sinodom i Soborom Russkoj Pravoslavnoj Tserkvi
Zagranitesj (The Distortion of the dogma ‘on the Unity of the Church’ in the confessions
of faith by the Synod and Council of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad)” (in
Russian).
[85] Perepiolkina, Ecumenism – A
Path to Perdition, St. Petersburg, 1999, p. 251.
[86] Perepiolkina, op. cit.,
p. 252.
[87] Metropolitan Calliopius of
Pentapolis, Prodosia tis Orthodoxias (Betrayal of Orthodoxy), Piraeus,
1991 (in Greek); O Pharos tis Orthodoxias (The Lighthouse of Orthodoxy),
October, 1991, ¹ 66, p. 120 (in Greek); Monk Isaac, "Commentary on the
latest recommendations of the Joint Commission for theological dialogue between
the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches", Orthodox Life, vol.
42, ¹ 3, May-June, 1991; "Dossier sur les Accords de Chambésy entre
Monophysites et Orthodoxes (Dossier on the Agreements of Chambésy
between the Monophysites and the Orthodox)", La Lumière du
Thabor (The Light of Tabor), ¹ 31, 1991 (in French).
[88] Patriarch Bartholomew, Address
at Emory University at the Presidential Medal award ceremony, October 31, 1997.
[89] Russell, A History of Western
Philosophy, London: Allen Unwin, 1959, p. 512.
[90] Polanyi, “The Two Cultures”, Encounter,
1959, ¹ 13, p. 61.
[91] Dostoyevsky, The Devils, London:
Penguin Books, 1971, p. 257.
[92] Rose, “The Orthodox Patristic
Understanding of Genesis”, ch. 5, The Orthodox Word, ¹ 171,
1993.
[93] Bishop Ignatius, Sochinenia
(Works), volume 4, letter ¹ 45 (in Russian).
[94] Bishop Ignatius, Sochinenia (Works), volume 4, letter ¹ 61 (in Russian).
[95]
St. Basil, Homily 1 on the Hexaemeron.
[96] The transition from the early to
the later empiricism is marked by David Hume’s Dialogues concerning Natural
Religion (1747), in which he writes: “While we argue from the course of
nature and infer a particular intelligent cause which first bestowed and still
preserves order in the universe, we embrace a principle which is still uncertain
and useless. It is uncertain because the subject lies entirely beyond the reach
of human experience. It is useless because… we can never on that basis
establish any principles of conduct and behaviour.”
[97] Bacon, New Atlantis; see
Porter, op. cit., p. 17.
[98] Bacon, The Advancement of
Learning, Book I, 1, 3.
[99] Bacon, The Interpretation of
Nature, proemium.
[100] Bacon, The Great
Instauration, “The Plan of the Work”.
[101] Roberts, The Triumph of the
West, London: Phoenix Press, 1985, p. 160.
[102] Erasmus, The Praise of Folly,
in Charles H. George, 500 Years of Revolution: European Radicals from
Hus to Lenin, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Co., 1998, p. 38.
[103] Lewis, quoted in Fr. Seraphim Johnson, “A Sane Family in an Insane World”.
[104] Rose, in Monk Damascene
Christensen, Not of this World: The Life and Teachings of Fr. Seraphim Rose,
Forestville, CA: Fr. Seraphim Rose Foundation, 1993, p. 594.
[105] Donne, The First Anniversarie
(1611), quoted in Roy Porter, The Enlightenment, London: Macmillan,
1990, p. 130.
[106] Trostnikov, “The Role and Place
of the Baptism of Rus in the European Spiritual Process of the Second Millenium
of Christian History”, Orthodox Life, volume 39, ¹ 3, May-June, 1989, p. 29.
[107] Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, London: Abacus, 1999, p. 179.
[108] Richards, in Lee Strobel, The
Case for a Creator, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004, pp. 162-163.
[109] Strobel, op. cit., p.
163.
[110] Richards, in Strobel, op. cit.,
p. 163.
[111] Cf. Isaiah 40.22: “It is
He Who sits above the circle of the earth”.
[112] St. Gregory of Nyssa calls the
earth “spherical” in his On the Soul and the Resurrection, chapter 4.
[113] Lindberg, in Strobel, op. cit., p. 164. On this controversy, see Peter De Rosa, Vicars of Christ, London: Bantam Press, 1988, pp. 221-231.
[114] Everett, in Coveney, P. &
Highfield, R., The Arrow of Time, London: Flamingo, 1991, p. 133.
[115] Zhitia prepodobnykh Startsev
Optinoj Pustyni (The Lives of the Holy Elders of Optina Desert), Holy
Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, 1992 (in Russian). According to another
version, the elder said: "God not only allows, He demands that a man grow
in knowledge. There is no stopping place in God's creation, everything moves,
and even the angels do not remain in one rank, but ascend from step to step,
receiving new revelations. And even if a man has studied for a hundred years,
he must still go on to ever new knowledge... You must work - years pass
unnoticed while you work." And as he spoke these words, "his face
became unusually bright, so that it was difficult to look at it." (Zhitia,
op. cit., p. 337 (in Russian)).
[116] Victor Afanasyev, Elder
Barsanuphius of Optina, Platina: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2000, p.
488.
[117] St. Basil the Great, Homily
on Avarice.
[118] St. Nectarios, Sketch
concerning Man, Athens, 1885.
[119] Thus Pope John Paul II believes
in Darwinism, making an exception only for the soul of man, which he believes
was created directly by God.
[120] J.D. Buck, The Genius of
Freemasonry, p. 43; quoted in Vicomte Léon de Poncins,
Freemasonry and the Vatican, London and Chumleigh: Britons Publishing
Company. Buck goes on: “The theologians who have made such a caricature or
fetish of Jesus were ignorant of this normal, progressive, higher evolution of
man” (p. 29).
[121] Field, The Evolution Hoax
Exposed, Hawthorne, Ca.: The Christian Book Club of America, 1971, p. 12.
[122] St. Basil the Great, Homily 5
on the Hexaemeron.
[123] The transition between the old and the new concept of man may perhaps be seen best in Hamlet, where the superiority of man to the natural world is indeed extolled, and man himself is called a “quintessence”, but a quintessence – “of dust”: What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason” how infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?…
[124] Searle, J., Intentionality:
An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge University Press, 1983.
[125] Polanyi, M., Personal
Knowledge, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958, p. 262.
[126] Penrose, R., The Emperor’s
New Mind, London: Vintage, 1989.
[127] Frank, Dusha Cheloveka (The
Soul of Man), Paris: YMCA Press, 1917.
[128] Frank, op. cit., pp.
43-44.
[129] Heron, J., “The Phenomenology of
the Social Encounter: The Gaze”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1970-71,
XXXI, pp. 243-264.
[130] Basin, E.Y., “Tvorchestvo i
Empatia” (“Creativity and Empathy”), Voprosy Filosofii (Questions of
Philosophy), 1987, ¹ 2,
p. 55 (in Russian).
[131] Frank, op. cit.
[132] Frank, S.L., Reality and Man,
London: Faber & Faber, 1965, p. 61.
[133] John Macmurray, Interpreting
the Universe, London: Faber, 1933; Reason and Emotion, London:
Faber, 1935; Persons in Relation, London: Faber, 1965.
[134] St. Basil the Great, Homily 9
on the Hexaemeron.
[135] Kohn, “Joyfully back to
Church?”, New Statesman and Society, May 1, 1992, p. 32.
[136] Thus Professor I.M. Andreyev
writes: "Only with a superficial knowledge do there arise false contradictions between faith and
knowledge, between religion and science. With a deeper knowledge these false
contradictions disappear without a trace... A broad, scientific and
philosophical education not only does not hinder faith in God, but makes it
easier, because the whole arsenal of scientific-philosophical thought is
natural apologetic material for religious faith. Moreover, honest knowledge
often has a methodical opportunity to uncover corruptions of faith and exposing
superstitions, whether religious or scientific-philosophical."
("Christian Truth and Scientific Knowledge", The Orthodox Word,
March-April, 1977)
[137] Medawar, in John Tailor, When
the Clock struck Zero, London: Picador, 1993, p. 5.
[138] Rose, in Hieromonk Damascene
(Christensen), Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works, Platina, Ca.:
St. Herman of Alaska Press, 2003, pp. 542-543.
[139] Pravoslavnaia Rus’ (Orthodox
Rus’), ¹ 7, 1993, p. 16 (in Russian); Orthodoxie, ¹ 60, September,
1994, pp. 33-34 (in French).
[140] C.S. Lewis, “’Bulverism’ or the Foundation of 20th Century Thought”, in God in the Dock, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997, pp. 271-275, 276. Alvin Plantinga has recently produced a similar argument to refute Darwinism. See Jim Holt, “Divine Evolution”, Prospect, May, 2002, p. 13.
[141] Elder Barsanuphius of Optina, Kelejnye
Zapiski (Cell Notes), Moscow, 1991, p. 16 (in Russian).
[142] St. Ambrose of Milan, On
Paradise, 11.
[143] Nicetas Stethatos, Century 3,
10; P.G. 120, 957D-980A; quoted in P. Nellas, Deification
in Christ, Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987, p. 85.
[144] St. Basil, Homily 8 on the
Hexaemeron.
[145] "Now the giants were upon
the earth in those days; and after that when the sons of God were wont to go in
to the daughters of men, they bore children to them, those were the giants of
old, the men of renown" (Gen. 6.2-5). The Fathers of the Church interpreted this
passage in two ways. According to Lopukhin, the majority of the Jewish and
Christian interpreters of antiquity, including Justin the Philosopher,
Irenaeus, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Ambrose and others
understood the term "sons of God" to mean "angels" - that
is, the fallen angels or demons. But an equally impressive array of Fathers,
including John Chrysostom, Ephraim the Syrian, Blessed Theodoret, Cyril of Jerusalem,
Blessed Jerome and Blessed Augustine understood the term to denote the men of
the line of Seth, while the "daughters of men" referred to the women
of the line of Cain; so that the event described involved an unlawful mixing
between the pious and the impious human generations (Tolkovaia Biblia,
St. Petersburg, 1904-1907 / Stockholm, 1987, volume 1, pp. 44-45).
For a good discussion of this passage, see Henry Morris, The Genesis
Record, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1978,
[146] “Son’ Otsa Ioann Kronshtadstskago”
(“The Vision of John of Kronstadt”), Pravoslavnaia Rus’ (Orthodox Rus’), ¹ 20, October 15/28,
1952; translated in
V. Moss, The Imperishable Word, Old Woking: Gresham Press, 1980.
[147] St. Ephraim, III, col 188;
sermon 2; translated by M.F. Toal, The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers,
London: Longmans, 1963, vol. 4, p. 357.
[148] Cf. Dorothy Kimura, "Sex
Differences in the Brain", Scientific American, vol. 267,
September, 1992, pp. 80-87.
[149] St. Epiphanius, Panarion,
LXXIX, i, 7; cited in Archimandrite (now Bishop) Kallistos Ware, "Man,
Woman and the Priesthood of Christ", in Peter Moore (ed.), Man, Woman,
Priesthood, London: SPCK, 1976.
[150] Ware, op. cit., pp. 83,
84-85, 80.
[151] Fr. Seraphim, quoted by Monk
Damascene, op. cit., p. 133.
[152] Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic
Theology,
Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1984, p. 129.
[153] The full quotation from St.
Cyril is as follows: “This mystery of
the incarnate Word has some similarity with human birth. For mothers of
ordinary men, in obedience to the natural laws of generation, carry in the womb
the flesh which gradually takes shape, and develops through the secret
operations of God until it reaches perfection and attains the form of a human
being; and God endows this living creature with spirit, in a manner known only
to Himself. As the prophet says, ‘He forms a man’s spirit within him’ (Zachariah
12.1).” (Epistle
One to the Monks of Egypt)
[154] Pomazansky, op.
cit., pp. 128-129.
[155] Thomas Spidlik, La Doctrine Spirituelle
de Théophane le Reclus (The Spiritual Doctrine of Theophan the Recluse),
Rome: Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 1965, p. 6 (in French).
[156] St. Nectarios, Sketch
Concerning Man, Athens, 1885, pp. 216-217.
[157] Brockman, “Abortion: The Continuing Holocaust”, The
True Vine, volume 10, summer, 1991, p. 51.
[158] Jones, “The Human Embryo:
Between Oblivion and Meaningful Life,” Science and Christian Belief, vol.
6, April, 1994, p. 15.
[159] St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the
Making of Man, 16. Cf. St. Epiphanius of Cyprus: “Church doctrine believes
that man was created according to the image of God, but does not define
precisely in what part of his essence the image of God exists… There is no need
at all to define or affirm in what part of us that which is in the divine image
is effectuated” (Against
Heresies, 70, 2;
P.G. 42:341).
[160] Lossky, In the Image and
Likeness of God, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary, 1989,
pp. 71-72. Cf. Vasily Zenkovsky, “Printsipy Pravoslavnoj Antropologii” (“The
Principles of Orthodox Anthropology”), Vestnik Russkogo Khristianskogo
Dvizhenia (Messenger of the Russian Christian Movement), 1988, II-III (in
Russian).
[161] Brockman, op. cit., p.
25.
[162] St. Basil, On the Origin of
Man, VII, 9-16; Paris: Sources Chrétiennes, ¹ 160, 1970, p. 182
(in French).
[163] St. John of Damascus, An
Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, II, 12.
[164] St. Maximus, Letter
15, P.G. 91:552D6-13; translated from the French in M.-H. Congourdeau,
“L’animation de l’embryon humain chez Maxime le Confesseur” (« The
animation of the human embryo in Maximus the Confessor), Nouvelle Revue de
Théologie (New Review of Theology), 1989, pp. 693-709 (in French).
[165] St. Maximus, Ambigua, II,
7, P.G. 91:1100C6-D2; quoted by Congourdeau, op. cit., p. 697.
[166] St. Maximus, Ambigua, II,
7, P.G. 91:1101A10-C7.
[167] St. John of Damascus, An
Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, II, 12.
[168] St. Ignatius, Epistle to the
Ephesisans, 19, 1.
[169] St. John of Damascus, First
Homily on the Dormition, 12.
[170] St. Photius the Great, Homily
on the Nativity of the Virgin.
[171] St. Gregory Palamas, Homily
18, on the Sunday of the Myrrhbearers.
[172] St. Gaudentius, Sermon 9;
P.L. 20, p. 900; in Thomas Livius, The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers
of the First Six Centuries, London: Burns & Oates, 1893, p. 173. And in
another place the same saint says that Christ, “after the hour of His Passion,
so far consummated the reality of the mystery which had gone before that the
water of the Incarnation became the wine of the Divinity.” (Sermon 19; P.L.
20, p. 990; Livius, op. cit., p. 174).
[173] St. Gregory Palamas, Homily
14, on the Annunciation, 15.
[174] St. Gregory the Wonderworker, Homily
3, On the Annunciation.
[175] St. John Chrysostom, Homily
47 on John, 2.
[176] St. John of Damascus, First
Apology against those who Attack the Divine Images, 16.
[177]
St. John of the Ladder, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 23.20.
[178] St. John of Damascus, Exact
Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, IV, 13.
[179] St. John Chrysostom, Homily
46 on John, 3.
[180] St. Gregory of Nyssa, The
Great Catechism, 37.
[181] Blessed Theophylact, On
Matthew, 26.26.
[182] St. John Chrysostom, Homily
24 on I Corinthians.
[183] St. John Maximovich, "The
Church as the Body of Christ", Orthodox Life, vol. 31, ¹ 5, September-October, 1981, pp.
16-17.
[184] St. Gregory of Nyssa, On
the Making of Man, 5.
[185] T. Colliander, The Way of the
Ascetics, London: Harvill, 1961, p. 73.
[186] Frank, Reality and Man, London:
Faber & Faber, 1965, pp. 219-220.
[187] Gribanovsky, Besedy s
sobstvennym serdtsem (Discussions with my own heart), in Troitskij
Pravoslavnij Russkij Kalendar’ na 1998 g. (Trinity Russian Orthodox Calendar
for 1998), Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1998, p. 77 (in Russian).
[188] Brianchaninov, “Khristianskij
Pastyr’ i Khristianin Khudozhnik” (The Christian Pastor and the Christian
Artist), Moscow, 1993, ¹ 9, p. 169; quoted in A.M. Liubomudrov, “Sviatitel’
Ignatij (Brianchaninov) i Problema Tvorchestva” (The Holy Hierarch Ignatius
Brianchaninov and the Problem of Creativity), in Kotel’nikov, V.A. (ed). Khristianstvo
i Russkaia Literatura (Christianity and Russian Literature), St.
Petersburg, 1996, p. 27 (in Russian).
[189] Metropolitan Anastasy, op.
cit., p. 30.
[190] Zhitia
Prepodobnykh Startsev Optinoj Pustyni (The Lives of the Holy Elders of Optina
Desert), Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1992 (in Russian).
[191] Victor Afanasyev, Elder
Barsanuphius of Optina, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood,
2000, p. 500.
[192] Andreev, “Religioznoe litso
Gogolia” (The Religious Face of Gogol), Pravoslavnij Put’ (The Orthodox Way),
1952, p. 164 (in Russian).
[193] Fr. Matthew “unhesitatingly directed Gogol to Elder Macarius of Optina, stating that this was what his heart was searching for. Elder Macarius made a profound impression on Gogol, who under the Elder’s influence drastically changed his liberal thinking and was converted to age-old, traditional Orthodoxy. When he wrote his famous Correspondence with Friends, Gogol so stirred up liberal society against himself that the leading literary salons totally disgraced and dismissed him. Elder Macarius, however, continued to have a close relationship with the great writer, and even wrote a whole critique of his last work (found later among his books).” (Fr. Leonid Kavelin, Elder Macarius of Optina, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1995, pp. 285-286).
[194]
Andreev, op. cit., pp. 180-182. St. Barsanuphius of Optina expressed a
similar view. “Gogol,”
he said, “wanted to depict Russian life in all of its multifaceted fullness.
With this goal he began his poem, Dead Souls, and wrote the first part.
We know in what light Russian life was reflected: the Plyushkins, the
Sobakevitches, the Nosdrevs and the Chichikovs; the whole book constitutes a
stifling and dark cellar of commonness and baseness of interests. Gogol himself
was frightened at what he had written, but consoled himself that this was only
scum, only foam, which he had taken from the waves of the sea of life. He hoped
that in the second volume he would succeed in portraying a Russian Orthodox man
in all his beauty and all his purity.
“How was he to do this? Gogol did not
know. It was at about this time that his acquaintance with Elder Macarius [of
Optina] took place. Gogol left Optina with a renewed soul, but he did not
abandon the thought of writing the second volume of Dead Souls, and he
worked on it.
“Later, feeling that it was beyond his
power to embody in images that Christian ideal which lived in his soul in all
its fullness, he became disappointed with his work. And this is the reason for
his burning of the second volume of Dead Souls…” (Victor Afanasyev, Elder
Barsanuphius of Optina, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood,
2000, pp. 483-484).
[195] Kavelin, op. cit., p.
286.
[196] Metropolitan Anastasy, op. cit., p. 31.
[197] Ekonomtsev, “Pravoslavie,
Vizantia, Rossia” (Orthodoxy, Byzantium, Russia); quoted in Liubomudrov, op.
cit., p. 25.
[198] Barzun, From Dawn to
Decadence, New York: Perennial, 2001, pp. 473-474.
[199] Berlin, “The Essence of European
Romanticism”, in The Power of Ideas, London: Chatto & Windus, 2000,
pp. 202-203.
[200] Zamoyski, Holy Madness:
Romantics, Patriots and Revolutionaries, 1776-1871, London: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1999, p. 255.
[201] Afanasyev, op. cit., p.
453.
[202] Metropolitan Anastasy, op.
cit., p. 106.
[203] Metropolitan Anastasy, op.
cit., p. 104.
[204] Zhitia Prepodobnykh Startsev Optinoj Pustyni, op. cit..
[205] Afanasyev, op. cit., p.
651.
[206] Afanasyev, op. cit.
[207]
Metropolitan Anastasy, op. cit., pp. 9-10.
[208] Metropolitan Anastasy, op. cit., p. 101.
[209] Metropolitan Anastasy, op.
cit., p. 107.
[210] Afanasyev, op. cit., pp. 716, 712.
[211] Afanasyev, op. cit., pp.
440-441.
[212] Afanasyev, op. cit., p.
712. Cf. “The Six Psalms is a spiritual symphony, the life of the soul, which
embraces the whole soul and grants it the most sublime delight. People don’t
understand this. Their hearts are stony. But music helps them feel all the
beauty of the Six Psalms.” (p. 110).
[213] Holy Apostles Convent, Buena
Vista, Colorado, The Orthodox New Testament, vol. 2, 1999, p. 557.
[214] St. John of Damascus, First
Discourse on the Divine Images, 24.
[215] Abbot Aelfric, Catholic Homilies,
II, 18, On the Finding of the Cross; quoted by Fr. Andrew Phillips, Orthodox
Christianity and the English Tradition, English Orthodox Trust, 1995, pp.
180-181.
[216] St. Methodius of Patara, Second
Sermon on the Resurrection.
[217] St. Theodore the Studite, Antirrheticus,
P.G. 99:405B; in V. Lossky, The Vision of God, Leighton Buzzard:
Faith Press, 1963, p. 112.
[218] Lossky, op. cit., p. 111.
[219] See, for example, St. Photius
the Great's Homily on the Nativity of the Virgin.
[220] Blessed Augustine, On
Marriage as a Good, 6.
[221] Sermons and Addresses of the
Metropolitan Philaret, Moscow, 1844, part II, p. 87; quoted in Vladimir
Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, London: James
Clarke, 1957, p. 8.
[222] St. John of the Ladder, The
Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 15, Foreword.
[223] Thus Dr. J.E. Shelley writes:
"The account in Genesis 2.18-25 is as factual as words can make it.
It reads like the account which a surgeon writes for the records of the
operating theatre! God performs a surgical operation under general anaesthesia,
a rib re-section in this case. Note the detail: 'He closed up the flesh instead
thereof'. In just such a manner would a surgeon describe his closing up of an
incision. Remarkably enough, provided that the surgeon is careful to leave the
periosteum (the membrance which envelops the bones) of the removed rib, the
ribe will reform in a non-septic case, and the operation performed upon Adam
was truly aseptic. So far as I remember, the rib is the only bone in the body
of man which will do this. God gave it this property, which is why He chose it.
With the vast reservoir of living cells contained in the rib, 'He built up
Eve'." (How God Created Man, a Bible Christian Unity Fellowship
Study, p. 6).
[224] Hieromartyr Gregory (Lebedev) Tolkovnaie
Evangelia ot Marka (Interpretation of the Gospel of Mark,) Moscow, 1991, p.
106 (in Russian).
[225] Blessed Augustine, On
Marriage as a Good, 6.
[226] Blessed Theodoret, Commentary
on Deuteronomy 21.13.
[227] "An Address of the Right
Reverend Tikhon", Orthodox Life, vol. 37, ¹ 4, July-August, 1987, pp. 3-4.
[228] Lossky,
"Theologie Dogmatique (1)" (Dogmatic Theology (1), Messager de
l'Exarchat du Patriarchat Russe en Europe Occidentale (Messenger of the
Exarchate of the Patriarchate of Russia in Western Europe), ¹ 48,
October-December, 1964, pp. 224-225 (in French).
[229] Blessed Augustine, On Genesis
according to the Letter, XI, xxxxii.
[230] St. John Chrysostom, First
Discourse on Marriage
[231] St. Ignatius, To Polycarp, 5.
[232] St. Gregory the Theologian, In
Praise of Virginity, 11.263-75, translated in Orthodox Life,
November-December, 1981.
[233] St. Tikhon, Journey to Heaven,
Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, 1991. p. 117
[234] Clement of Alexandria, The
One Who Knows God, Tyler, Texas: Scroll Publishing, 1990, pp. 90-91.
[235] St. John of the Ladder, The
Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 15:60.
[236] Khomiakov, in Orthodox Life,
November-December, 1983, p. 22.
[237] St. Ambrose, On Paradise
4.25. St. Ephraim the Syrian expresses the tradition that Adam was androgynous
before the creation of Eve when he writes: "Adam was both one and two; one
in that he was man [adam], two in that he was created male and
female" (Commentary on Genesis 2.12; quoted in Robert Murray, Symbols
of Church and Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 1975, p. 302).
[238] Pis’ma Arkhiepiskopa Feofana
Poltavskago i Pereyaslavskago (The Letters of Archbishop Theophan of Poltava
and Pereyaslavl), Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, 1976, pp. 35-37 (in
Russian).
[239] Lossky, "Creation: Cosmic
Order", in Orthodox Theology, Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's
Seminary Press, 1978, p. 67.
[240] Pentecostarion, Paschal
Mattins, canon, canticle eight, troparion.
[241] St. Gaudentius, Sermon 9;
P.L. 20, p. 900. Translated by Livius, op. cit., p. 173.
[242] St. Gaudentius, Sermon
19, P.L. 20, p. 990. Translated by Livius, op. cit., p.
174.
[243] Triodion, Holy Friday,
Compline, canon, ikos.
[244] St. Gaudentius, Sermon 8,
P.L. 20. Translated by M.F. Toal, Patristic Homilies on the Gospels,
Cork: The Mercier Press, 1955, volume 1, p. 313.
[245] S. Troitsky, "Brak i
Tserkov" (“Marriage and the Church”), Russkoe Vozrozhdenie (Russian
Regeneration), 1986, pp. 7-33 (in Russian).
[246] St. John Chrysostom, Homily
12 on I Timothy.
[247] V. Moss, The Saints of
Anglo-Saxon England, volume III, Seattle: St. Nectarios Press, 1997, p. 7.
[248] Bethu Brigte, edited by
Donncha O hAodha, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1978, 45, p. 32.
[249] St. Adamnan, Life of St.
Columba, II, 42.
[250] St. John Chrysostom, Homily
30 on Hebrews, P.G. 63:281 (col. 210).
[251] Blessed Theophylact, P.G.
125:756B (col. 389).
[252] Oleg VM, “O lyubvi. Kak govoril
ministr-administrator”, http://webforum.land.ru/mes.php?
Id=2297293&fs=0&ord=1&1st=&board=12871&arhv=
[253] Oleg VM, “Protokol raznoglasij”,
http://webforum.land.ru/mes.php?
Id=2308343&fs=0&ord=1&1&board=12871&1st=&arhv=
[254] St. Photius, Homily on the
Birth of the Virgin, 9. Translated by Cyril Mango in The Homilies of
Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, Harvard University Press, 1958.
[255] St. John of Damascus, Exposition
of the Orthodox Faith, II, 13.
[256] Bishop Theophan, The
Spiritual Life, pp. 61-62.
[257] Hieromartyr John, in Igumen
Damaskin (Orlovsky), Mucheniki, ispovedniki podvizhniki blagochestia Russkoj
Pravoslavnoj Tserkvi XX stoletia (Martyrs, Confessors and Ascetics of Piety of
the Russian Orthodox Church in the 20th Century), Tver: “Bulat”,
2000, vol. 4, p. 247 (in Russian).
[258] See St. Gaudentius of Brescia, Sermon
8, P.L. 20. Translated in M.F. Toal, Patristic Homilies on the Gospels,
Cork: The Mercier Press, 1955, vol. I, p. 313.
[259] St. John Chrysostom, Homily
20 on Ephesians.
[260]
St. Cyril of Alexandria, On John 17.21; quoted in Archbishop Ilarion
Troitsky, Christianity or the Church? Holy Trinity Monastery,
Jordanville, 1971, p. 9. Italics
mine (V.M.).
[261]
Hieromartyr Gregory, Interpretation
of the Gospel of Mark, Moscow, 1991, p. 106 (in Russian).
[262] St. John, The Ladder, 15:
foreword.
[263] St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the
Making of Man, XVII, 2.
[264] St. John Chrysostom, Homily
15 on Genesis, 11.
[265] "An Address of the Right
Reverend Tikhon", Orthodox Life, vol. 37, ¹ 4, July-August, 1987, pp. 3-4.
[266] St. Cyril, Against Julian,
3, P.G. 76, 637.
[267] St. Gregory Palamas, To
Xenia, 41; The Philokalia, vol. IV, p. 309.
[268] Velimirovich, The Prologue
from Ochrid, Birmingham: Lazarica Press, 1986, volume IV, p. 241, November
25.
[269] St. John Chrysostom, Homily
20 on Ephesians.
[270] St. Chrysostom, Third
Discourse on Marriage; translated in Roth, C.P. and Anderson, D., St.
John Chrysostom: On Marriage and Family Life, Crestwood, N.Y.: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986, p. 95.
[271] St. Chrysostom, Homily 20 on
Ephesians; translated in Roth & Anderson, op. cit., p. 51.
[272] St. John Chrysostom, Homily
12 on Colossians; translated in Roth & Anderson, op. cit., pp.
75-76.
[273] St. Gregory of Nyssa, quoted in
Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern), Antropologia sv. Grigoria Palamy (The
Anthropology of St. Gregory Palamas), Paris, 1950, p. 157 (in Russian).
[274] St. Anastasius, On the image
and likeness, P.G. 89, 1145BC; in John Meyendorff, Catholicity
and the Church, Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1983, pp.
24-25.
[275] St. John Chrysostom, On Psalm
50, M.P.G. 55:583.
[276] St. Maximus, First Century on
Love, 35; The Philokalia, translated by Palmer, Sherrard & Ware,
London: Faber, 1979, vol. II, p. 56.
[277] St. John Chrysostom, Homilies
on Titus, V, 2.
[278] St. Dionysius, On the Divine
Names, IV, 20.
[279] St. Maximus the Confessor, On
the Lord’s Prayer; The Philokalia, vol. II, p. 298.
[280] St. Gregory the Theologian,
quoted by St. Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua, P.G. 91, 1665D.
[281] St. Theodore the Great Ascetic, A
Century of Spiritual Texts, no. 24.
[282] St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the
Making of Man, XVIII, 5.
[283] St. Isaiah, On Guarding the
Intellect: Twenty-Seven Texts, 1.
[284] St. John, The Ladder,
5:26.
[285] St. John, The Ladder,
15:60.
[286] St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the
Soul and the Resurrection, P.G. 46:61.
[287] St. Gregory Palamas, Triads, I,
ii, 1.
[288] St. Gregory Palamas, Triads,
II, ii, 5.
[289] St. Gregory Palamas, Triads, III,
iii, 15.
[290] St. John Chrysostom, On
Virginity, P.G. 48:558.
[291] St. Gregory Palamas, To Xenia;
The Philokalia, vol. IV, p. 302.
[292] Gilbert Noble, The Saints of
Cornwall, Oxford: Holywell Press, volume V, 1970, pp. 65-66.
[293] Blessed Theophylact, The
Explanation of the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke, 14.26.
[294] Archbishop Theophan, Letters,
op. cit., p. 37.
[295] St. John Chrysostom, Homily 7
on Hebrews, 4.
[296] St. John Chrysostom, Homily
20 on Ephesians.
[297] St. John Chrysostom, Homily
13 on Romans, 1.
[298] Furmanov, Russkij
Pastyr’ (Russian Pastor), 36, ¹ 1, 2000,
p. 34. Italics mine (V.M.).
[299] Khomyakov, quoted in Orthodox
Life (Jordanville), November-December, 1983, p. 22.
[300] Archbishop Theophanes, Pis’ma,
op. cit., pp. 35-37.
[301] St. Gregory the Theologian, In
Praise of Virginity, 11.263-75, translated in Orthodox Life,
November-December, 1981.
[302] St. Ignatius, To Polycarp,
5.
[303] Origen, Interpretation of
Jeremiah, 14.4, P.G. 16:508-509; quoted in S.V. Troitsky, Khristianskaia
Philosophia Braka (The Christian Philosophy of Marriage), Paris: YMCA
Press, p. 94, note.
[304] St. Gregory the Theologian, Oration
on Holy Baptism, 18.
[305] Young, “Cultism Within”, Orthodox
America, March-April, 1996.
[306] Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, The
Arena, Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1991, chapter 12, p. 43,
emphasis mine
[307] St. John Climacus, The Ladder
of Divine Ascent; Willits, CA: Eastern Orthodox Books, 1973, p. 67, Step
4:6.
[308] St. Symeon, Practical and
Theological Texts, 32, 34, in The Philokalia, vol. 3.
[309] Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky,
Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1976, pp. 68, 147-148.
[310] Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, The
Arena, p. 45, emphasis his.
[311] Kontzevich, Optina Pustyn’ i
ee Vremia (Optina Desert and its Time), Jordanville: Holy Trinity
Monastery, 1970, pp. 12-13, emphasis his (in Russian).
[312] Bishop Barnabas Belyaev, Pravoslavie
(Orthdooxy), Kolomna: New Golutvin Convent, 1995, p. 149, emphasis mine (in
Russian)
[313] Hieromonk Nicon, Pis'ma k
Dukhovnym Chadam (Letters to Spiritual Children), Kuibyshev, 1990 (in
Russian).
[314] Abba Poemen, The Alphabetical
Series, Pi, Poemen, 189, London: Mowbrays, 1975.
[315] In the Septuagint, the phrase
“watcheth out” could also be translated “superviseth” or “acts as a bishop”
(επισκοπει).
[316] 8th Canon of the Third
Ecumenical Council.
[317] Bishop Damascene, in E.L., Episkopy-ispovedniki
(Bishop-Confessors), San Francisco, 1971, p. 92 (in Russian).
[318] Metropolitan Joseph, in I.M.
Andreyev, Russia's Catacomb Saints, Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska
Brotherhood, 1982, p. 128.
[319] The Daily Mail (London),
September 8, 1997, p. 13.
[320] Time, September 15, 1997,
p. 38.
[321] Lewis, "Myth became
Fact", God in the Dock: Essays on Theology, Fount Paperbacks, 1979,
p. 64.
[322] The Daily Mail, September
10, 1997, p. 2.
[323] Metropolitan Macarius, “Love:
the Foundation of Existence in our World”, Orthodox Life, vol. 47, ¹ 3, May-June, 1997, p. 3.
[324] St. Irenaeus, Against
Heresies, v, 24, 3; translated in Maurice Wiles & Mark Santer, Documents
in Early Christian Thought, Cambridge University Press, 1977, p. 226.
[325] St. Isidore, Letter 6,
quoted in Selected Letters of Archbishop Theophan of Poltava, Liberty,
TN: St. John of Kronstadt Press, 1989, p. 36.
[326] St. Demetrius of Rostov, Lives
of the Saints, April 17; S.V. Bulgakov, Nastolnaia Kniga
Tserkovnosluzhitelej (Reference Book of Church Servers), Kharkov, 1900, p.
140 (in Russian).
[327] Theodoret, Ecclesiastical
History, III, 19; V.A. Konovalov, Otnoshenie Khristianstva k sovietskoj
vlasti (The Relationship of Christianity to Soviet Power), Montreal, 1936,
p. 35 (in Russian).
[328] St. Gregory, First Word
against Julian, 35; Second Word against Julian, 26. In the Life of
St. Artemius the Great Martyr (St. Demetrius of Rostov, Lives of the Saints,
October 20), we read that Julian refused to recognise the legitimacy even of
the reign of St. Constantine the Great. In this sense he, like the Bolsheviks
after him, renounced Christian Romanity and thereby became anti-Roman as well
as anti-Christian.
[329] M.E. Gubonin, Akty
Sviatejshago Patriarkha Tikhona (The Acts of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon),
Moscow: St. Tikhon's Theological Institute, 1994, pp. 82-85.
[330] Gubonin, op. cit., pp.
280, 296.
[331] Gubonin, op. cit., p.
151.
[332] "Is sobraniya Tsentral'nogo
gosudarstvennogo arkhiva Oktyabr'skoj revolyutsii: listovka pod ¹ 1011 (From the collection of the
Central State Archinve of the October revolution: leaflet without indications, ¹ 1011", Nauka i Religia
(Science and Religion), 1989, no. 4 (in Russian).
[333] See Schema-Monk Epiphanius
(Chernov), Tserkov’ Katakombnaia na Zemlye Rossijskoj (The Catacomb Church
on the Russian Land), 1980 (Woking, England, 1980, typescript, in Russian).
[334] Matushka Evgenia Grigorievna
Rymarenko, "Remembrances of Optina Staretz Hieroschemamonk Nektary", Orthodox
Life, vol. 36, ¹
3, May-June, 1986, p. 39.
[335] Nilus, “Pis’mo o Sergianstve
(Letter on Sergianism)”, Russkij Pastyr’ (Russian Pastor), 28-29,
II/III, 1997, p. 180 (in Russian).
[336] Cited in William Fletcher, The
Russian Orthodox Church Underground, 1917-1970, Oxford University Press,
1971, p. 64.
[337] Novoselov, quoted in I.I.
Osipova, “Istoria Istinno Pravoslavnoj Tserkvi po Materialam Sledstvennago Dela
(The History of the True Orthodox Church from Investigative Case Material)”, Pravoslavnaia
Rus’ (Orthodox Rus’), ¹
14 (1587), July 15/28, 1997, p. 3 (in Russian).
[338] Novie Prepodobnomucheniki
Raifskie (The New Monk-Martyrs of Raithu), publication of the Kazan
diocese, Moscow, 1997, p. 17 (in Russian).
[339]
Cf. The Letters of Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava and Pereyaslavl,
Jordanville, 1976; Archbishop Averky, "Nevidimij Mir – sily besplotnie
(The invisible world – the bodiless angels)", Slova i Rechi (Sermons
and Speeches), Jordanville, 1975, vol. 2, pp. 593-95; Metropolitan
Innocent, "On Soviet Power", in Archbishop Nikon (Rklitsky), Zhizneopisanie
Blazhennejshago Antonia, mitropolita Kievskago i Galitskago (Life of his
Beatitude Anthony, Metropolitan of Kiev and Galich), Montreal, 1960, volume
6, pp. 168-172 (in Russian).
[340] Grabbe, Letters, Moscow,
1998, p. 85 (in Russian).
[341] Shkvarovsky, Iosiflianstvo
(Josephitism), St. Petersburg, 1999, p. 171 (in Russian).
[342] Petrova, “Perestroika
Vavilonskoj Bashni (The Reconstruction of the Tower of Babylon)”, Moscow, 1991,
pp. 5-6 (samizdat MS) (in Russian). Cf. Mervyn Matthews, The Passport
Society, Oxford: Westview Press, 1993, chapter 3.
[343] Metropolitan Vitaly, “Otvet
bespassportnomu (Reply to a passportless)”, Pravoslavnij Vestnik (Orthodox
Herald), February-March, 1990 (in Russian).
[344] Petrova, op. cit.
[345] Kreditnie kartochki ili
pechat’ antikhrista? (Credit cards or the seal of the antichrist?), St.
Petersburg: Tsentr Pravoslavnogo prosveshcheniya, 2000, pp. 8-9 (in Russian).
[346] Zhitia Sviatykh (The Lives of
the Saints0, Moscow, 1908; first supplementary book. Quoted in Svecha
Pokaiania (Candle of Repentance), ¹ 1, March, 1998, p. 7 (in Russian).
[347] As Hieromonk
Dionysius points out, “the service of ‘him that restraineth’, although
undermined, was preserved by Russian monarchical power even after Peter – and
it is necessary to emphasize this. It was preserved because neither the people
nor the Church renounced the very ideal of the Orthodox kingdom, and, as even
V. Klyuchevsky noted, continued to consider as law that which corresponded to
this ideal, and not Peter’s decrees.” (Priest Timothy and Hieromonk Dionysius
Alferov, O Tserkvi, pravoslavnom Tsarstve i poslednem vremeni (On the
Church, the Orthodox Kingdom and the Last Times), Moscow: “Russkaia Idea”,
1998, p. 66 (in Russian)).
[348] Quoted in “Otnoshenia s
Staroobriadchestvom (Relations with Old Believerism)”, Vozdvizhenie, (Exaltation),
Winter, 2000, p. 76 (in Russian).
[349] Only in this sense could the
Soviet seal be said to be on the forehead and right hand: in that it prevented
people, “from fear of the Jews”, from making the sign of the cross with their
right hand on their forehead.
[350] Fr. Andrej Rumyantsev, “Kesariu
Kesarevo (To Caesar what is Caesar’s)”, Vecherniaia Moskva (Evening Moscow),
21 September, 2000, p. 1 (in Russian).
[351] See Mikhail Nazarov, Tajna
Rossii (The Mystery of Russia), Moscow: “Russkaia Idea”, 1999 (in Russian).
[352] Rose, in Monk Damascene, Not
of this World, Forestville, Ca.: Fr. Seraphim Rose Foundation, 1995, pp.
996-997.
[353] The Old Believer Priest Gennady
Chunin has written intelligently against identifying the bar-code in Russian
tax declaration forms with the apocalyptic number: “The tax number and the seal
of the Antichrist”, Dukhovnie Otvety (Spiritual Replies), ¹ 14, 2000, pp. 67-80 (in
Russian).
[354] Kreditnie kartochki…, op.
cit., p. 35.
[355] Kreditnie kartochki…, op.
cit., p. 11.
[356] Kreditnie kartochki…, op.
cit., p. 14.
[357] “Novij Mirovoj Poriadok v
2000-em godu? (The New World Order in the year 2000?)” Pravoslavnaia Rus’
(Orthodox Rus’), ¹
9 (1582), May 1/14, 1997, p. 5 (in Russian).
[358] Light for the Last Days,
January-March, 1997, pp. 4-5.
[359] Spruksts, “666 & the World
Wide Web”, Orthodox@listserv.indiana.edu, 15 September, 1997.
[360] Nilus, It is Near, at the
Very Door, Sergiev Posad, 1917, pp. 262-263, 248-250 (in Russian).
[361] St. Gregory Palamas, Migne,
P.G. 151, 224; E.P.E. 9, 492. Quoted in Archimandrite
Emmanuel Kalyva, The Seal of the Antichrist, Athens, 1989, p. 86 (in
Greek).
[362] Monk Sergius of Holy
Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, to Subdeacon Paul Inglesby, July 28 / August
10, 2000.
[363] St. Gregory the Theologian, Letter
to Philagrius, P.G. 37: 68C.
[364] Palladius, The Paradise of
the Fathers, Seattle: St. Nectarios Press, vol. 2, p. 34.
[365] St. Pachomius, in Bishop Ignatius
Brianchaninov, The Arena, Madras, 1970, p. 93.
[366] St. Macarius the Great, Homilies,
XLIII, 4, Eastern Orthodox Books, 1974, p. 271.
[367] St. Macarius the Great, Homilies,
XXII, XLIII, 9.
[368] See Polnoe Zhizneopisanie
Sviatitelia Ignatia Kavkazskogo, Moscow, 2002, pp. 450-488 (in Russian).
[369] Victor Afanasiev, Elder
Barsanuphius of Optina, Platina: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2000, p.
736.
[370] Puhalo, “The Soul, the Body and
Death”, Orthodoxy Canada, vols. 6-7 (1979-80).
[371] Rose, The Soul after Death, Platina:
St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1980, 2004.
[372]
Vasileiades, The Mystery of Death, Athens: Sotir, 1980, pp. 368,
371-372, 389 in the Greek edition, 382-383, 386, 404-405 in the English
edition. St. John Chrysostom, Homily 2 on the Rich Man and Lazarus, 2, P.G.
48:984; St. Justin the Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 105, 3-5; St. Basil
the Great, Homily on Gordius the Martyr, 8, P.G. 321:505C; Exhortation
to Holy Baptism, 8, P.G. 31:444D-444A; On Psalm 7.2, P.G. 29:232C-233A;
St. John Chrysostom, Homily 53 on Matthew, 5, P.G.58:532; On
Patience, P.G. 60:727; St. Gregory the Theologian, Homily 7, to
Caesarius, 21, P.G. 35:781; St. Hippolytus, To the Greeks, 1;
St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and Resurrection, P.G. 46:88.
[373] St. Athanasius, The Life of Saint
Anthony, London: Longmans, Green and Co., pp. 75-76.
[374] The Letters of Amnonas, Oxford:
SLG Press, 1979, p. 3.
[375] Adomnan, Life of St. Columba,
III, 10. When St. Brendan the Navigator was dying, his sister said to him:
“Father, what dost thou fear?” “I fear,” said he, “my lonely passing: I fear
the darkness of the way: I fear the untravelled road, the presence of the King,
the sentence of the Judge” (Rev. Francis Browne, Saints and Shrines of Lough
Corrib, pp. 4-5). And when St. Ciaran of Clonmacnoise came to die, and
said, “Dreadful is the way upwards”, his disciples said: “But surely not for
you?” “Och,” said St. Ciaran, “indeed my conscience is clear of offence, but
yet, even David and Paul dreaded this road” (D.D.C. Pochin Mould, Ireland of
the Saints, London: Batsford, 1953, p. 79).
[376] Puhalo, Orthodoxy Canada, vol.
6, ¹ 12, 1979,
p. 23.
[377] The Orthodox Word, May-June,
1980, pp. 139-140.
[378] St. Athanasius, The Life of
Saint Anthony.
[379] St. Mark of Ephesus, First
Homily on Purgatorial Fire, in The Orthodox Word, March-April, 1978.
[380] Puhalo, op. cit., pp. 31,
33.
[381] Puhalo, op. cit., p. 33.
[382] Palladius, The Paradise of
the Fathers, vol. 2, p. 200. It
is not only angels who have these senses; to the degree that a man is purified
he may also see, hear and smell spiritually even while in the body: “It came to
pass that when the old man [St. Pachomius the Great] had said these things to
the brethren, the door-keeper came to him and said: ‘Certain travellers, who
are men of importance, have come hither, and they wish to meet thee’. And he
said: ‘Call them hither’. And when they had entered into the monastery, he
saluted them with the brethren. And after they had seen all the brotherhood,
and had gone round all the cells of the brethren they wanted to hold converse
with him by themselves. Now when they had taken their seats in a secluded
chamber, there came unto the old man a strong smell of uncleanness, though he
thought that it must arise from them because he was speaking with them face to
face; and he was not able to learn the cause of the same by the supplication
which [he made] to God, for he perceived that their speech was fruitful [of
thought], and that their minds were familiar with the Scriptures, but he was
not acquainted with their intellectual uncleanness. Then, after he had spoken
unto them many things out of the Divine Books, and the season of the ninth hour
had drawn nigh meanwhile, they rose up that they might come to their own place,
and Rabba entreated them to partake of some food there, but they did not accept
[his petition, saying] that they were in duty bound to arrive home before
sunset; so they prayed, and they saluted us, and then they departed.
“And Abba, in order to learn the cause of the uncleanness of these men,
went into his cell, and prayed to God, and he knew straightway that it was the
doctrine of wickedness which arose from their souls that sent forth such an
unclean smell. Thereupon he went forth from his cell immediately and pursued
those men, and having overtaken them, he said unto them, ‘Do ye call that which
is written in the works of Origen heresy?’ And when they had heard the question
they denied and said that they did not. Then the holy man said unto them,
‘Behold, I take you to witness before God, that every man who readeth and
accepteth the work of Origen, shall certainly arrive in the fire of Sheol, and
his inheritance shall be everlasting darkness. That which I know from God I
have made you to be witnesses of, and I am therefore not to be condemned by God
on this account, and ye yourselves know about it. Behold, I have made you hear
the truth. And if ye believe me, and if ye wish truly to gratify God, take all
the writings of Origen and cast them into the fire; and never seek to read them
again.’ And when Abba Pachomius had said these things he left them.” (The
Paradise of the Fathers, vol. 1, pp. 292-293).
[383] St. Diadochus,
in Orthodoxie: Bulletin des Vrais Chrétiens Orthodoxes des pays
francophones (Orthodox Bulletin of the True Orthodox Christians of the
French-speaking Countries), ¹ 13, January, 1981, p. 5 (in French).
[384] St. John Chrysostom, Homily
on Lazarus and the Rich Man.
[385] St. John Cassian, First
Conference of Abba Moses, in The Orthodox Word, November-December,
1978.
[386] St. Dorotheus, Kataniktikoi
Logoi, in Archimandrite Vasilios Bakogiannis, After Death, Katerini:
Tertios, 2001, p. 123.
[387] Puhalo, Orthodoxy Canada, vol.
7, ¹ 4, 1980, p.
29.
[388] Metropolitan Macarius, quoted in
The Orthodox Word, November-December, 1978, pp. 247-248.
[389] St.
John of Damascus, Dialogue against the Manichaeans, 37.
[390] St.
Chrysostom, Homily IX on Corinthians, 1-3.
Translated in Maurice Wiles & Mark Santer (eds.) Documents
in Early Christian Thought, Cambridge University Press, 1977.
[391] Victor Afanasiev, Elder
Barsanuphius of Optina, Platina: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2000,
pp. 283, 309.
[392] Afanasiev, op. cit., pp.
735-736.
[393] St.
John of Damascus, P.G. 96, 1084B. Cf. Psalm
6.4.
[394] St.
Gregory, translated by Nora Burke, Parables of the Gospel,
Dublin: Scepter Publishers, pp. 155-56.
[395]
Archbishop Theophanes, Pis’ma Arkhiepiskopa Feofana
Poltavskogo (The Letters of Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava and Pereyaslavl),
Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1976, p. 31 (in Russian).
[396]
Metropolitan Anthony, "The Church's Teaching about the Holy Spirit", Orthodox
Life, vol. 27, ¹ 3, May-June, 1977, p. 23.
[397] St.
Augustine, Homily 21 on the New Testament, 19,
20. See also St. Symeon the New Theologian, Discourse XXIII, 1.
There are other interpretations of the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which
complement and follow from this one. Thus St. Ambrose (On
Repentance, II, 24), followed by St. Augustine (Homily
21 on the New Testament, 28), regards heretics and schismatics as
blasphemers against the Holy Spirit insofar as they deny the Spirit and Truth
that is in the True Church.
[398] St.
Theophylactus, Explanation of the Gospel according to St.
Luke 12.47-48.
[399] St.
Cyril, Homily 93 on Luke.
Translated by Payne Smith, Studion Publishers, 1983, p. 376.
[400]
Bishop Nicholas, The Prologue from Ochrid,
Birmingham: Lazarica Press, 1986, vol. II, p. 149.
[401] St.
Jerome, Treatise on Psalm 95.
[402] St.
Chrysostom, Homily 3 on Romans, 2.
[403] St.
Chrysostom, First Homily on Hannah, 3.
[404] The
Lives of the Women Martyrs, Buena Vista: Holy Apostles Convent, 1991, pp.
528-542.
[405] St.
Chrysostom, Homily 8 on John.
[406] I.M.
Kontzevich, Optina Pustyn' i ee Vremia (Optina Desert
and its Time), Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1970, pp.
372-73 (in Russian).
[407] St.
Chrysostom, Homily 24 on Matthew, 1.
[408] St.
Cassian, Conferences, XIII, 8.
[409]
Prosper, The Call of the Nations, II,
33.
[410] Paul
Garrett, St. Innocent, Apostle to America,
Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1979, pp. 80-81.
[411]
Garrett, op. cit., p. 85, footnote.
[412]
Quoted by David Ritchie, "The 'Near-Death Experience'", Orthodox
Life, vol. 45, ¹ 4, July-August, 1995, pp. 22-23.
[413] St.
Symeon, The Sin of Adam and our Redemption,
Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of Alaska Press, 1979, pp. 57-8.
[414] Menaion,
September 14, Great Vespers of the Exaltation of the Cross, "Lord,
I have cried", "Glory... Both now..."
[415] Archbishop
Theophanes, "On the Redemption"; quoted in Fr. Anthony Chernov, Archevêque
Theophane de Poltave (Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava),
Lavardac: Monastère de St. Michel, 1988, p. 146 (in French).
[416] St.
Bede, On Genesis 4.10.
[417] St.
Basil, On Psalm 28.6; translated in
Jurgens, op. cit., vol. II, p. 21.
[418]
Archbishop Theophanes, Pis'ma, op.
cit., p. 40.
[419] “Is God to Blame?: Keith Ward
vs. A.C. Grayling”, Prospect, February, 2004, pp. 17-19.
[420] St. Macarius of Optina, in
“Spiritual Teachings of the Optina Elders, Part IX”, Orthodox Life, vol.
53, ¹ 5, September-October, 2004, pp. 25, 26.
[421] Metropolitan Anastasy,
“Conversations with my own Heart”, translated in Living Orthodoxy, 101,
vol. XVII, ¹
5, September-October, 1996, pp. 19-21.