To: Exarchate Clergy, Faithful, and Friends
From: Archbishop Chrysostomos
Evlogia Kyriou. May God bless you.
The attached translation is from a long article by His Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos of Naupaktos, a very popular Churchman and theologian in the Orthodox Church of Greece. Though a Hierarch of the State Church, he is extremely traditional in his stand, an excellent Patristic scholar, and a severe critic of the superficies of modernist Orthodoxy and the ecumenical movement.
What Metropolitan Hierotheos describes in the sections of his long essay that I have translated is a clear statement of where modernism, the calendar innovation, compromise, ecumenism, and the western fascination with Orthodox "officialdom" (a product of ecumenism and neo-papism in the Orthodox Church) are taking Orthodox. He identifies the emerging heresies of contemporary Orthodoxy, which are leading to a denial of the foundations of our Faith in the name of some vile "post-Patristic" theology and contrived pseudo-church in the guise of "world Orthodoxy."
I have often argued that the loss of Orthodox traditions, combined with the incorporation into Orthodoxy of Protestant and Roman Catholic ideas through ecumenism, partially converted individuals seeking to use Orthodoxy as a path to claiming some special status among the "saved" within a Christianity that knows no such tradition, and a rejection of the observance of Orthodox (fasting, monasticism, emphasis on the inner life) would lead to heresy. Metropolitan Hierotheos from within a Church that is being assailed by such forces, here expresses just what I have also argued, and in my same words.
This is an extremely important statement that should be read by all Orthodox. Anyone who doubts where innovation, modernism, and ecumenism are taking the Orthodox Church cannot emerge from this clear statement without great and enduring pangs of conscience!
* Nota Bene: Metropolitan Hierotheos is an erudite man. The article which I translated here nonetheless was obviously quickly written and published (on an Internet website: romfea.gr) without its having been polished for publication. The article contains certain problems in syntax, unclear vocabulary, and some missing transitions. I have sight-translated it and have not bothered to do anything more than make His Eminence's points as comprehensible as possible. I have thus added, in places, clarifications not in the original text, though without changing His Eminence's vocabulary. I do not believe that I have detracted, thereby, from the depth of his insight or the strength of his arguments.
I should also note that the article appeared without any notes or explanations with regard to the source of quotations (even if a perceptive reader, familiar with the degenerate course of world Orthodoxy, and especially in America, will have no difficulty identifying the sources of many of the quotations). I have also not supplied citations for the several Patristic citations, which the author did not provide, though all are well known.
Finally, I would ask that you not circulate this translation, since it is also not polished and is not meant for distribution or publication. It is simply meant to illustrate my point about the dangerous course of Orthodoxy as Metropolitan Hierotheos so boldly describes it.
P.S. I am not, by sending out this article, asking for comments, critiques, reactions, redactions, corrections, or rebuttals, which I have no time, quite honestly, to read or answer. The article is, as I said in the subject line above, for serious Orthodox who wish to know where the Church is being led today.
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[Site translation, not for distribution]
A Gravid Heresy in the Orthodox Church
By Metropolitan Hierochloe of Naupaktos
The word “heresy" comes from the [Greek] verb “αἱρέομαι-οῦμαι” and signifies the choice and preference of an individual part of a teaching taken as something complete at the cost of its catholicity—of the whole truth.
From the standpoint of Orthodoxy, heresy is a deviation from the established teaching of the Church, as promulgated by the Apostles, the Fathers of the Church, and particularly in the local and Oecumenical Synods. For example, we may refer to the doctrine of the union of the two natures in Christ put forth by the Fourth Ecumenical Synod, in accordance with which the Divine and human nature were united “without confusion, unchanged, indivisibly, inseparably” in the Hypostasis of the Word.
When a person overstates the Divine nature of Christ at the expense of His human nature, he falls into the heresy of Monophysitism. When one another overstates the human nature of Christ over and against his Divine nature, and especially at the expense of the unity of the two natures, then he is falling into the heresy of Nestorianism.
The aforementioned demonstrates that we must accept the dogmas of the Church, which have been set forth in the Sacred Scripture and in Holy Tradition—that is, the writings of the Prophets, Apostles and Fathers, the latter, indeed, having been expressed by the local and Ecumenical Synods—for otherwise the hidden truth of the Faith is distorted; and it is precisely this alteration that calls for pious reflections and thoughts on the doctrinal truths of the Church.
1. Two supposed two kinds of ecclesiology in the Orthodox Church.
Recent times have seen the appearance and emergence of a heretical teaching that undermines the entire edifice of Orthodox teaching. I would show it no special interest or attention, if I did not see that this false teaching is spreading like a plague that one encounters in the books and texts of theologians and those who philosophize, in articles, and in oral presentations that are heard on radio stations.
This false teaching has not assaulted directly the dogmatic teachings of Holy Scripture and the Oecumenical Synods, but primarily has treacherously assailed the presuppositions of Orthodox theology. It is written and said that, from the third century and after, the Fathers of the Church altered the primitive tradition of the Church.
The ancient Church, it is alleged, experienced the mystery of the Church in the Divine Eucharist, which in the Divine Liturgy “constituted an icon of the anticipated eschatological [future] glory of the Kingdom of God,” such that the Divine Eucharist is equated with the local Christian communities, to the greatest possible extent, as the “authentic expression of the eschatological glory of the Kingdom of God.”
These views may seem credible; however, in essence they create a problem, if what is said about the Divine Eucharist as a manifestation of the Kingdom of God and what is said about participation in the eschatological glory of the Kingdom are not interpreted in an Orthodox manner.
I say this since those who use such expressions are often ignorant of, or ignore, the teachings of the Church Fathers—and especially St. Gregory Palamas—for whom the Kingdom of God is the revelation of God as Light, as on the Mount of Transfiguration.
Also, those who use such expressions do not interpret the glory of God as Uncreated Light and the experience of eschatological glory as participation in Uncreated Light, at the moment of the [mystical] vision of God, as experienced by three Disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration and the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, and who received the Holy Spirit and became members of the resurrected Body of Christ.
This vision of God and this participation in the glory of God are the experience of the eschatological glory of the Kingdom by those who, at the Divine Liturgy, are worthy of this experience: the deified.
However, the aforementioned, when using such expressions as “Church,”“Eucharist,” and the “Kingdom of God,” interpret them in too external a way, emotionally, or simply with an abstract, arbitrary theological word.
In the Divine Eucharist, those who experience the eschatological glory of the Kingdom are those who have acquired Divine vision, and not simply those who think that they mechanically participate therein, despite their passions and their weaknesses.
Knowledge of the eschatological glory of the Kingdom does not occur merely by way of beautiful vestments and psalmody, nor simply by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ [without] indispensable prerequisites, but by the experience of theosis (deification) in the Divine Eucharist and in Holy Communion.
The experience of the glory of the Kingdom that St. John the Evangelist had one Sunday, and which he describes in the Book of Revelation [in the Apocalypse], testifies to this. In essence, he is describing the heavenly Divine Liturgy.
My disquietude and intense perplexity is specifically aimed at the fact that those who speak in such an abstract, emotional, and arbitrary way fail to consider rightly, on the one hand, the Orthodox presuppositions for participation in “eschatological glory,” and, on the other hand, go even beyond just misinterpreting them.
That is, they assert that the life of the early Church, which is presented as the “eschatological glory of the Kingdom,” was distorted by the Fathers of the Church themselves in the ensuing centuries!
That is, the very Church that is expressed by way of the Holy Fathers, whom She honors and venerates and wholly incorporates into Her teaching, supposedly distorted this “basic Biblical and primitive Christian ecclesiology and spirituality.”
This came about because of the application, such persons assert, of “intense ideological pressure from Christian Gnosticism and especially from (neo-)Platonism, which began in the third century, when the Church’s primitive ecclesiology subsided.” In the best of circumstances, the Church’s ancient ecclesiology just “coexists with an alien spirituality (and ecclesiology).”
Thus, The Fathers contributed to the decline of the Church’s primitive ecclesiology, and the Church tacitly accepted this (i.e., by turning one ecclesiology against the other ecclesiology): accepting the coexistence of two parallel ecclesiologies.
This later “spirituality” and “ecclesiology,” indeed, “have their roots in neo-Platonic Evagrian and Messallian-Makarian mystical theology, and are based on the theological methodology of the Catechetical School of Alexandria."
And this later “ecclesiology” is characterized not only as “a veering away, but the overturning” of the ecclesiology of the early Church!
By references to “neo-Platonic Evagrianism” and “Makarian mystical theology” are meant the works of Evagrios of Pontos and the works of Makarios of Egypt. It is agreed that these two individuals, at least with regard to the subjects of asceticism and prayer, influenced the whole of later Patristic tradition, reaching up to St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite, and are included in the well-known work The Philokalia of the Holy Neptic Fathers, which was compiled by Saints Makarios (Notaras), former Bishop of Corinth, and Nicodemos the Hagiorite from various collections that had already been gathered. This compilation, with added and deleted works, was translated into Slavonic by St. Paisios Velichkovsky and created a marvelous [monastic and spiritual] renewal in the Northern (Orthodox) countries, manifesting itself in a plethora of saintly strugglers and ascetics and, ultimately, Saints of the Church.
For this reason, those who hold to the foregoing views strike out harshly at the book of the Holy Neptic Fathers, the Philokalia, the subtitle of which is: Writings of Holy Mystic Fathers, in which is Explained how the Mind is Purified, Illumined, and Perfected through Practical and Contemplative Ethical Philosophy. However, this collected work of Sts. Nicodemos the Hagiorite and Makarios Notaras (whom the Church includes in the list of Her Saints), which proves that the Neptic tradition found in the Philokalia, in indispensable combination with the Mysteries of the Church, is an acknowledged presupposition for the salvation and deification of man, is of great importance.
Those who are of the opinion noted above characterize the Philokalia as the “nihilistic dead-end of the anti-modernist program of Nicodemos and Makarios’ Philokalia."
So, according to this modern and Protestantized perspective, primitive “ecclesiology” yielded, so that another “ecclesiology” might come forth; or, in the best of scenarios, so that two parallel ecclesiologies might operate in the Orthodox Church.
Such a view, however, creates confusion among the faithful.And the most amazing thing is that this confusion, from what is said by these doubters, came about through the Church Herself, by way of the Church Fathers. That is, according to them, the Church refutes herself.
I firmly believe that this Protestant theory truly constitutes a heresy and dynamite at the foundations of the Church itself.
Furthermore, according to this theory, from the third century and after, a change took place in the theology and ecclesiology of the Church, and this Evagrios of Pontus with Makarios the Egyptian contributed thereto. Evagrios separates the mind from the senses and the intellect, and this is reckoned “intellectual mysticism.”
By contrast, Makarios the Egyptian referred the mind back to the heart, thus putting forth a “spiritual materialism.” So it is that the “Evagrio-Maximian problematic,” “the (neo)-Platonic pedestal of the Evagrian stand,” becomes “the pedestal for Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa.”
The theology of prayer, as formulated by Evagrios, but also Makarios the Egyptian, “has transversed the centuries because of the weight of the important personalities who applied it, such as Maximos the Confessor, John of Sinai, Hesychios the Presbyter, Philotheos of Sinai, Isaac the Syrian, and a great many others, so as to achieve almost dogmatic status in the fourteenth century through Gregory Palamas and the Athonite Hesychasts.” “Pseudo-Dionysius put forth an Evagrian scheme, purification, illumination, theosis,” and influenced St. Maximos, the commentator on “Pseudo-Dionysios.”
It is clear that, according to this theory, the two expressions of Hesychastic life, namely the “intellectual mysticism” of Evagrios and the “spiritual materialism” of Makarios the Egyptian were passed on by St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Saint Maximos the Confessor, and Saint Symeon the New Theologian, within the Church, concluding with St. Gregory Palamas. Thus, according to those holding to such a theory, Hesychasm and contemporary monasticism took form from these two spiritual lines.
This new theory, which attempts to subvert the traditional ascetic life of the Church, argues that the marks of spiritual life—purification, illumination, theosis—are the result of Origenist influence.
According to this view, Evagrios was influenced by Origen, and this influence affected later Fathers (Makarios the Egyptian, the Cappadocians, Maximos the Confessor, Simeon the New Theologian, St. Gregory Palamas, and others), reaching up to St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and, assuredly, the Fathers of the Philokalia.
Some holding to this theory have gone so far as to maintain that the visions of God by the holy Hesychasts are “demonic phantasms,” demonic fantasies,” “inspired by demons,” “fickle,” “bizarre,” “tragically comical,” “freakish,” etc., and that sacred Hesychasm and the lives of modern Hesychasts entail magical states and are the products of Hinduism. Others attribute those things attendant to sacred Hesychasm and the vision of Uncreated Light to emotional states, nervous disorders, fantasticism, etc.
2. A brief rebuttal.
The appearance of this portentous heresy some time ago within the Orthodox Church shows the seriousness of the matter, and it should not remain unanswered; otherwise it can create a malignant tumor within the body of the Church, with unpredictable consequences. Thus, there will follow a brief refutation of this heretical doctrine....
First we must underscore the fact that there can be no double “ecclesiology” and double “spirituality” within the Church. The Church is the Body of Christ, and what is characterized as spirituality is the life in Christ and the Holy Spirit, which the Christian lives through the Holy Mysteries and in the ascetic tradition.
True ecclesiology is closely connected with the Incarnation of Christ and Pentecost. Moreover, Hesychasm does not constitute a particular ecclesiology, but is the Evangelical life, the maintenance of the commandments of Christ, and is an indispensable prerequisite for participation in the uncreated, purifying, illuminating, and deifying energy of God.
The worship of the Church and the prayers of the Mysteries manifest the whole of this Hesychastic tradition, which was established synodically by the Synod of 1351, which is considered the ninth Oecumenical Synod.
Thereafter, by the entirety of the Church’s teaching, we have come to know that the teaching and experience of the Prophets, the Apostles and the Fathers are identical.
The Apostles did not differ from the Prophets, or the Fathers from the Apostles and Prophets, and, moreover, their experience and belief are the same. The difference is that the Old Testament Prophets saw the fleshless Word, while in the New Testament and in the life of the Church we see and commune from the Incarnate Logos. Everything else is held in common. A statement of Saint Gregory Palamas illustrates this: "What else, indeed, than this is salvific perfection in both knowledge and dogmas, that we are of the same mind as the Prophets, Apostles, and Fathers, and in general through whom the Holy Spirit is testified as having spoken of God and His creations.”
Moreover, from the theology of the Church we know that the experience of the vision of God that comes with inutterable words is one thing, while the record of this experience as formed by words, ideas, and images is another.
The difference between the Prophets,Apostles and Fathers in terms of terminology does not constitute a difference in experience. Assuredly, in the third and fourth centuries, the Fathers and teachers used a special terminology, which they took from the language of their time to refute the Hellenizing heretics; but this does not mean that they changed the content of that to which they applied this terminology.
Father John Romanides has remarked: “In confronting heretical teachings, it is necessary to supplement our terminology. In confronting heretics, we use symbols, this expanded terminology, that is, to strike heresy at its heart.”
Thus it is a curious thing that issues touching on purification, illumination, and deification (theosis) should be considered Origenist or Neo-Platonic teaching, since the Fathers adopted these terms, which anyway are also in the Bible both as words and as actualities.
St. Cyril of Alexandria, because he was accused of using phrases from Nestorius, in a letter in one of his Epistles, which was included in the Acts of the Third Oecumenical Synod, writes that we need not avoid all that the heretics write, since there are things on which they agree with our teaching. He writes precisely: “It is not necessary to flee from all that the heretics say and to reject it; they also confess much that we confess.”
He then cites relevant examples. This means that it is of no matter if some terminology came from Origen, Evagrios of Pontos, or Makarios the Egyptian; what is important is that it was adopted by St. Basil, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa and subsequent Fathers, and was synodically approved because it is in the domain of Orthodox tradition.
Therefore, to characterize the approved teaching of the Church, which was experienced by the Fathers of the Church, as Origenist, Evagrian, Makarian, and so on, reflects a heretical mind set.
Moreover, there is a great difference between theology and philosophy; it is not a matter merely of differences in the use of terminology. Theology is the fruit of the revelation of God in those who have been deified, while philosophy is the fruit of rational thought and what is found through human logic.
To characterize the Hesychastic tradition as Origenist, Evagrian, Makarian, and even Neo-Platonic, on account of some external similarity in vocabulary, is superficial speculation, if not expressive of something deeper; that is, an effort to undermine the Hesychastic Orthodox tradition.
The extent of the superficiality of the conclusions of non-tradtional thinkers is obvious from the fact that in the same way that they make the foregoing charges, they could accuse the Fathers of the Church of employing the terminology and other external cultural elements of the idolaters and heretics (person,hypostasis, essence, energy, etc.) and thus describe Patristic theology regarding the Triune God and the whole of Patristic ecclesiology as pagan.
Harnack and other Protestants arrived these conclusions, and it is not out of the question that these Orthodox critics—who think superficially and outside traditional Orthodoxy, since they are ignorant of its deep and ethereal content—will arrive at the same point (as some already have).
Finally, the view that in the Church there reigns a double ecclesiology—an ancient and a later one—is called “post-Patristic .” This is a notion put forth by Protestants and some Orthodox, who seek thereby to deny the teaching of Fathers, the worship of the Church, the Hesychastic tradition, and, of course, monasticism.
What is, indeed, amazing is that the protestantizing of Orthodox theology is used as a means, by the aforementioned theologians and philosophizers, to exalt this Protestant notion, setting aside Hesychastic, ecclesiastical, and Patristic tradition for a “primordial ecclesiology,” which makes reference to the Divine Eucharist and the Kingdom of God, but merely on the basis of the texts of the New Testament.
By all that is said by these new Protestantizing and philosophizing theologians, it seems clear that they are trying to erode the whole ascetic tradition and life of the Church, as they are put forth by the great Fathers: namely, the Cappadocian Fathers, that is, St. Basil, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. Gregory of Nyssa, and Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Maximus the Confessor, Saint John Damascene, Saint Symeon the New Theologian, Saint Gregory of Sinai, St. Gregory Palamas, and all of the Neptic Fathers of the Philokalia, including the Fathers of more recent times, as well as all of the holy ascetics whom we have known in recent years (Elders Joseph the Cave-Dweller, Ephraim of Katounakia, Paisios the Hagiorite, Porphyrios of Kapsokalyvites, Ephraim of Philotheou, etc.), who speak of the ascetic life, repentance, noetic prayer, and generally speak of the path of man towards God through purification, illumination and deification.
This creates yet another serious problem that undermines the whole ecclesiology of the Church. That is, the doctrines of the Church are interpreted outside what they basically presuppose, which is an experience that clearly makes them understandable—the experience of purification, illumination, and theosis—and these new theologians undermine the mysteriological life of the Church, namely Baptism, Chrism, the Divine Eucharist, and all of the other Mysteries, and disassociate the Mysteries from the ascetic life as it is expressed in purification, illumination, and deification.
We know, however, that the Mysteries cannot be disassociated from the Hesychastic tradition, for this would entail a magical way of life; nor can the Hesychastic tradition be lived without the Mysteries of the Church, for this leads to the Eastern philosophy and Messallianism.
3. A wider analysis.
The brief defense of this gravid heresy in the Orthodox Church that we have just undertaken enables us to move to larger issues, so that we can more essentially expand on those things that we have addressed and confront this dangerous situation that can harm the members of the Church.
Because, as it is abundantly clear, we are dealing with a malignant Protestant heresy, which has entered into the body of some members of the Church, we must not allow it to become a malignant ecclesiastical tumor that could assail the body of the Church.
I can, in refutation of all these theories, refer to the two-volume book that I published under the title Practical Dogmatics, in which there appears the authentic and genuine dogmatic teaching of Father John Romanides, who came to know all of these ideas in America, by way of the Roman Catholic Scholastic and Protestant theology that he studied, and who presents us Patristic thought and life in genuine form.
All of these views that have been expressed by various modern theologians were very well confronted by Father John Romanides in texts to be published in the future (for which reason he has been very much slandered).
However, the truth will shine brightly, for God will not allow what is disgraceful to prevail within the holy and blessed realm of the Orthodox Church, as the history of the Church confirms. What is authentic will abide over time and against every pressure, while what is false will disappear.
