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Conference on “The Underground Church in the USSR”

2011-12-08T12:14:00.000-08:00

VERTOGRAD
Orthodox Journal
Newsletter No. 81, Thursday, December 08, 2011. 21:54 P.M.

Representatives of Various True Orthodox Churches Attend Conference on “The Underground Church in the USSR”

Representatives of the Russian True Orthodox Church (RTOC), the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church (ROAC) (under both Metropolitan Valentine of Suzdal and Bishop Gregory of Petrograd), and the Holy Orthodox Church in North America (HOCNA) as well as many well-known historians and scholars gathered to attend an international conference on “The Underground Church in the USSR,” which took place in Chernigov on November 18-19, 2011, reports Portal-Credo.Ru. The conference was organized by the Chernihiv State T.G. Shevchenko Pedagogical University and the Keston Institute (Oxford) with the support of the Chernihiv Oblast State Administration of Ukraine. The conference assembled on the eve of the memory of the Fathers and Confessors of the Catacomb Church associated with the day in 1937 on which two of the greatest luminaries of the Russian True Orthodox Church were shot: Metropolitan Joseph (Petrov) of Petrograd and Metropolitan Kirill (Smirnov) of Kazan.

Nowhere and never before, let alone in an academic atmosphere, had dozens of scholars from various countries who study the underground Church in the USSR gathered together alongside the “remnants” of this Church itself.

Nun Evphrosinia (Molchanova) (Provemont, France) from the Lesna Convent lectured on the theme of “The Catacomb Church in the Perception of the Russian Church Abroad.” Alexander Ogorodnikov, a prisoner of conscience from the Soviet period, noted that the catacomb period has been all but expunged from official church history, and even in textbooks for theological schools it is mentioned in passing and dismissively. Alexander Soldatov, editor in chief of Vertograd and Portal-Credo.Ru, related the history and ideology of the canonical structures of the Russian Church Abroad in Ukraine in the 1970s to the beginning of the 1990s.

Lev Regelson, the well-known scholar and author of the book The Tragedy of the Russian Church, in his speech entitled “The Question of the Nature of Ecclesiastical Authority in Connection with the Non-Commemorating Movement,” lamented that Russia and the official Church “have not learned a lesson from the history of the underground Church.” Mikhail Shkarovsky, a scholar of the Catacomb Church, related that the St. Petersburg Diocese of the Moscow Patriarchate suggested canonizing Metropolitan Joseph and his “Josephite” followers who suffered for the faith, but the Synodal commission rejected these candidates. Talks were delivered by Archpriest Alexei Paro (RTOC), Archpriest Alexei Lebedev (ROAC), Irina Osipova ("Memorial" society), and many others.

At the conference an exhibition of photographs, books, manuscripts, and liturgical objects collected in various catacomb communities was on display. Following the meetings the participants of the conference enjoyed many and fruitful discussions in an informal setting. Photographs of the conference can be seen at Portal-Credo.Ru: http://www.portal-credo.ru/site/?act=news&id=87952&topic=773

Archimandrite Alexis on the Western Rite

2011-10-18T20:53:00.001-07:00

Parent post:

http://remnantrocor.blogspot.com/2011/10/problems-with-western-rites.html

http://www.saintedwardbrotherhood.org/OCTOBER%2011.pdf

“Please enlighten me father about the Western Rite Orthodoxy. A relative of mine from southern Philippines who I am catechizing asked me about the Western Rite. He told me about the presence of the Western Rite monastery missions of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in southern Philippines. (If I understand it correctly, the ROCOR have Western Rite parishes and missions even before it unites with the Moscow Patriarchate. That is even during the time that our Synod has a canonical communion with ROCOR.) Please counsel me father about who are the Western Rite and what are their significance to our Holy Church. Is their a particular canon of the Ecumenical Councils that mandates exclusive use of the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom? Are the Orthodox faithful of the Western Rite parish allowed to receive communion with us and vice-versa? Indeed, I need much learning from you.” (copied as sent) - A.Q., Philippines, by email.

Regarding the Western Rite, I must start by saying that what I am

going to say is only my opinion, and I may well be wrong. I only offer

it, because you asked for my opinion.

It is true that the ROCOR which has united with Moscow, ROCA-

MP, has in the last couple of years taken in a number of Western

Rite clergymen and parishes, and appears to be promoting them.

Although, rather strangely, on their official website, little or no mention

has been made of this fact. There the emphasis seems to be on Russianness.

Perhaps they fear that the two things do not quite marry and are

keeping them in separate compartments. His Eminence Metropolitan

Hilarion appears to have taken all the Western Rite groups under his

own omophorion, whatever geographical diocese they happen to fall in.

He is assisted by His Grace Bishop Jerome of Manhatten. The ROCA,

under His Eminence Metropolitan Agafangel, which is our sister Traditional Synod, does not have any Western Rite clergy or parishes to the best of my knowledge.

Regarding the Rite itself, I believe that there should be great

concerns about its implementation, and I believe the fact that it is being

sponsored is something that should be of great concern to Orthodox

Traditionalists. I will try and explain why I feel this.

First of all, there seem to be two types of Western Rite. There are

those who use a modified form of relatively modern Roman Catholic or

Anglican rites, from which things, which are ostensibly not Orthodox,

have been excised, and into which some Orthodox features have been

added. Let us call these TYPE A. And there are those who have tried

to return to rites which were current in the West, before the Schism of

Rome from Orthodoxy. Let us call them TYPE B. I believe that there

are dangers in adopting either of these approaches.

TYPE A: In this instance, they are using rites, which although

they might be able to trace a history back to something authentic, have

essentially been shaped and formed by people outside the Church. The

modifications, excisions and additions, do not seem to have been long

and hard thought over. It seems to me as if they have taken a Ford Escort,

added in a couple of features, improved the upholstery and taken off

the Escort insignia, and pretend it is a Lexus. Just recently, I saw a clip of

one of these Western Rite services, and they had statues in their church.

If such a “conversion” of these rites was to be undertaken, then I would think that it should be done not by one or two hierarchs and not in a short space of time, but by the whole Church acting together - a thing which, given the situation that Orthodoxy finds itself in today, is completely impossible.

TYPE B: Here we have the problem of trying to revive something

which has been unused in the Church for a thousand years. If I am not

mistaken, none of the rites used in the pre-schism West still exist in their

entirety, and so those who have adopted this approach, of necessity, have

to feed in certain elements from Byzantine usage. I once, many years

ago, attended such a Mass, celebrated by Bishop Germain de Saint-Denis,

who struck me as a very affable man (I gave him a lift in my car), but,

although I am no expert in liturgics, it was obvious that the rite he performed could not have been that of the pre-schism West. If my memory serves me right, he even used the dikiri and trikiri candles, which I am sure were not used in pre-schism France!

Furthermore, with TYPE B, we have the problem of providing

for those feasts which are celebrated by the Orthodox today, but were not observed in the pre-schism West. Do services, fitting the Western usage, have to be composed for them, or are these feasts simply to be ignored?

I think, too, that there is a “chicken and egg,” problem. The West

fell away from Orthodoxy, and since that time has added heresy to heresy.

One has to ask: were the Rites that they were using in some sense

deficient, and unable to contain the fullness of Orthodox teaching? If

such is the case, there is extreme folly in returning to those Rites, especially as we do not possess them in their fulness. But maybe the West fell away from Orthodoxy despite the adequacy of their Rites at that time;

then there is folly in the TYPE A approach. We are in a twilight zone here,

and we need fathers of clear spiritual insight, or, better still, the consensus of the whole Church to guide us before we venture on a path which may be perilous.

I am bold enough, and stupid enough, to believe that the adoption

of the Western Rite is a path which is extremely perilous, and I will try to

explain, in addition to the above, why.

First of all, in the Byzantine Rite, we have an immense wealth of

liturgical materials, which have been used by the whole Church for centuries.

We have a banquet spread before us. Why turn away from it and

pick at crumbs which are stale and may be contaminated?

Second, the vast majority of people involved in the Western Rite

movement, if one can call it that, are quite understandably converts to

Orthodoxy. They are, perhaps, the people who most need to drink from

the living sources, to be nurtured on Orthodox teaching and understanding through the services of the Church.

Thirdly, those in the TYPE A situation, who are excising and

amending to bring their rites into an Orthodox frame, are often the very

people who should not be doing this! They are not, by and large, people

who have been formed by Orthodoxy, who have reached spiritual heights,

but are the converts themselves, very often converts who, because of

their adherence to these rites, have lived, as it were, on the very outskirts

of the Orthodox world, have not integrated with it. How different their

approach to that of that beautiful example of a convert, our foremother

Ruth - see her confession (chapter 1:15-18) and see her extraordinary

obedience (chapter 3:2-5). Can you think for a moment how difficult

that obedience must have been for a modest, Eastern woman of that period?

And yet her answer was: “All that thou sayest unto me, I will do.”

Maybe I judge them, and if I do may I be forgiven, but it seems to me that

these people are instead making that most horrible of professions, “I will

do it my way.”

Lastly, at least for now, from the clip that I saw the other day, my

attending Bishop Germain’s Mass, and other things I have seen, it seems

to me that the Rite itself fosters an un-Orthodox spirit. There appears

to be a strong element of posing (for want of a better word), of striking

“pious” poses, which is alien to Orthodoxy. It appears also that the

order somehow takes precedence over the spirit. The thing appears to

be an elaborate ritual. In a sense, we do not have ritual in Orthodoxy. I

remember years ago seeing Fr Vladimir serve at Jordanville. One could

not say he was performing a ritual (although of course there is an outward ritual form to our services), rather it was clear that he was entering into a dialogue with our Saviour. Perhaps I exaggerate - I was young and impressionable at the time, but it does seem to me that the Western Rite (what I have seen of it) promotes a contrary spirit, - to put it very crudely, a “look at me, see how well I am doing this” ethos. Again, forgive me if I am wrong. This may in any case be a defect of the celebrants I have seen, and not of the rite itself, but it is these same celebrants who are furthering its use.

I believe that before ROCA-MP went under Moscow, there was

only one Western Rite community, and that was countenanced more as a

pastoral condescension to its priest, with whom I had a brief correspondence, than anything else. There was an earlier venture into Western Ritism with the consecration of Bishop Jean-Nectaire of Saint-Denis, but that did not last long.

As far as I know there is no canon of the OEcumenical Councils

regarding the Western Rite - what rites were being used in the West at

that time would have been Orthodox, and the question of assessing them

would not have arisen.

Regarding whether Western Riters can receive the Holy Mysteries

in Eastern Rite churches: I presume, and only that, that in the present

ROCA-MP they can, because surely as they are under the same Bishops

they are of one mind and one heart with each other, and with their Bishops.

I have probably said more than enough. As you are in correspondence

with Archbishop Chrysostomos and the fathers at Etna, I will copy

this screed to them, in case I have said anything outrageously wrong, and

I hope they will correct me. But, in short, my advice would be, if you

want to become Orthodox, or grow in Orthodoxy, avoid the Western Rite.

God grant that some of this be profitable for you, and please forgive

its shortcomings.

Excerpt from St. Basil's Hexæmeron

2011-10-08T09:48:00.001-07:00

Parent post

http://remnantrocor.blogspot.com/2011/10/no-one-creature-was-made-before-another.html

words of truth

destined to produce the salvation

of those who are instructed by them

1. It is right that any one beginning to narrate the formation of the world should begin with the good order which reigns in visible things. I am about to speak of the creation of heaven and earth, which was not spontaneous, as some have imagined, but drew its origin from God. What ear is worthy to hear such a tale? How earnestly the soul should prepare itself to receive such high lessons! How pure it should be from carnal affections, how unclouded by worldly disquietudes, how active and ardent in its researches, how eager to find in its surroundings an idea of God which may be worthy of Him!

But before weighing the justice of these remarks, before examining all the sense contained in these few words, let us see who addresses them to us. Because, if the weakness of our intelligence does not allow us to penetrate the depth of the thoughts of the writer, yet we shall be involuntarily drawn to give faith to his words by the force of his authority.

Now it is Moses who has composed this history; Moses, who, when still at the breast, is described as exceeding fair; A.V. Moses, whom the daughter of Pharaoh adopted; who received from her a royal education, and who had for his teachers the wise men of Egypt; cf. Joseph. ii. x. 2. So Justin M., Cohort. ad gent., Philio, Vit. Moys, and Clem. Al., Strom. i. Vide Fialon, Et. Hist. 302. Moses, who disdained the pomp of royalty, and, to share the humble condition of his compatriots, preferred to be persecuted with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting delights of sin; Moses, who received from nature such a love of justice that, even before the leadership of the people of God was committed to him, he was impelled, by a natural horror of evil, to pursue malefactors even to the point of punishing them by death; Moses, who, banished by those whose benefactor he had been, hastened to escape from the tumults of Egypt and took refuge in Ethiopia, living there far from former pursuits, and passing forty years in the contemplation of nature; Moses, finally, who, at the age of eighty, saw God, as far as it is possible for man to see Him; or rather as it had not previously been granted to man to see Him, according to the testimony of God Himself, “If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house, with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently and not in dark speeches.” It is this man, whom God judged worthy to behold Him, face to face, like the angels, who imparts to us what he has learnt from God. Let us listen then to these words of truth written without the help of the “enticing words of man’s wisdom” by the dictation of the Holy Spirit; words destined to produce not the applause of those who hear them, but the salvation of those who are instructed by them.

The Moral Idea of the Dogma about the Church

2011-10-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

Parent post:
http://remnantrocor.blogspot.com/2011/10/from-vladyka-agafangels-livejournal.html

The Moral Idea of the Dogma about the Church.

When the readers are suggested a more or less new explanation of Christian dogmas, the believing Orthodox author does not suppose to introduce into the Church mentality any new truth. On the contrary, he is convinced that the fullness of truth is the property of the church mentality of all times. If, for example, till the 5^th century the notions of nature and personality remained untouched, or if till the 7^th Ecumenical council the dogma about the revering of icons was not distinctly formulated, then this does not mean that earlier the Church had not known the correct doctrine about the Trinity, or was torn between idolatry and the struggle against icons. In the mentioned cases it was not that the content of faith was enriched, but there happened the enrichment of human thought, because some notions were substantiated and became more profound. Even before the 4^th century the church knew from the Gospel and Tradition that the Father and the Son are One, that we are saved by the belief in the Holy Trinity, but how to coordinate these truths with human philosophical notions of personality and nature, or in the other way— what kind of place receive these notions in respect of the Divine creature, — these things people learnt only from the fathers of the First and the following councils.

The same way, if now any simple, resigned Christian, like, for example, Homyakov, starts discussing the truths of faith (in contemporary terms), but without building an opposition to the church tradition, then such an author, remaining in the accord with Orthodox theology, does not discover any new mysteries of faith, but from the point of view of faith satisfies the new demands of contemporary human thought. A modern reader, seeing in his words a long-waited-for answer for the doubts, concerning his beliefs, is ready to proclaim such an interpretation to be "a new revelation", and another reader, without such demands, being an admirer of school authorities, full of distrust and ill-will, does not hurry to agree with the author and is persistently trying to find the presence of heresy, rejecting the fact that the subject is explained much better than in the existing teaching aids. By the way, same Homyakov did not say anything against the teaching aids, so the attitude to the comparative worth of his interpretations and teaching aids in general mostly depends not on how the eternal content of faith, identical for both the variants, is analyzed, but on the substantiation of changing demands of the contemporary thought.

One of the most persistent, most definite demands of contemporary life in respect of our faith has to do with the moral content of its dogmatic truths. The church consciousness always possessed this content. The Creed is always an enthusiastic hymn for the obedient and enlightened sons of the Church. Almost every prayer of the Church ends with the recollection of the Holy Trinity, especially as of the source of all moral treasures. But modern theology, as a science, lacks the clear definition of the moral notions of the truths of faith and the explication how the first are defined by the second ones. Therefore, it is natural enough, that those researchers, who are acquainted with Christianity only from its educational side, but do not have any practical view upon the church truth, these, so to say, external contemplators of Christianity, are bewildered about the fact, why our faith, which made its Founder pronounce the words: if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments — demands from its followers the acceptance of multiple, and as it seems, purely theoretical, dogmas with such persistence. We have said "are bewildered," but, unfortunately, our haughty contemporaries least of all agree to be bewildered, but prefer, like the rooster from the parable of Krylov, the sure and persistent denial and defaming of what they do not understand. This mood is especially strongly manifested in the works of Leo Tolstoy, who, unfortunately, in this case is only one more daring representative of the mood of the great number of educated Europeans and Russians. We are trying to respond to this bewilderment, both in the present article about the Church, and in the former ones: about the Holy Trinity, the atonement and the Holy Spirit.

The Meaning of the Dogma about the Church.

From all dogmas, the dogma about the Church is subjected to the strongest attacks of sectarianism and pseudo-rationalism. Our liberals with special diligence spread the translated publications about inquisition, the fight of culture with the Papacy, within the reading circles, hoping that the quick-witted Russian reader will be able to shift the ill-intended statements, concerning the Papacy, onto the Russian church. Together with that, Russians in the West will underline that circumstance that the attractive grandeur, arrangement and convictions of the Papacy system — with one word, all that the Papacy can boast with — are not typical of our church management, with which similar people meet via secular executives, who usually cause various limitations, (i.e. censorious, disciplinary, ritual, etc.) And if the church management in the face of its hierarchic representatives creates obstacles for our liberals, then in this case it is usually treated like passive, ineffective, ineloquent, and therefore it is not strange that the renegades see it as the old boring grumbler.

So miserable seems to our contemporaneity that greatest sacred part of Christian teaching, without which the latter would really remain abstract, lifeless dogmatism, without which there would be no essential change in life performed by our faith in the universe. And if nowadays the false liberals think the teaching of the Church to be an obstacle in the path of their faith, then why do not they want, at least, to think over that phenomenon, that precisely this truth about the Church was the main power for attracting people and nations to Christ? Though, even without this dogma of the Church, Christianity is rich in elevated ideas, touching images, but all these ideas and images, including the events of the Evangelical history, would have remained powerless in the aspect of moral rebirth of people, if they would not have been fulfilled in the present life of Christians again and again, if the latter would not be the constant manifestation of that spiritual unity, that tender mutual love and mutual care, which could be instilled on Christians neither by belief in future life, nor by love for the Savior, and the recollection about His sufferings, but only by the words of His and His apostles about the Church, — about the fact that Christ gave His truth and grace not to each believing person separately, but to their unity in the Church, which as if forms the body, that is revived by the Spirit of God, gathering its members into one living unity of love, who live in this unity and die spiritually, as soon as they leave it.

Ancient Christians understood this condition to be the most important for their spiritual life and in it they found the force for fulfilling this most difficult task of life — to love each other. Our contemporaries have lost this understanding and need theoretical explanations, concerning the question about the significance of this dogma of the Church for spiritual perfection of the personality. We would like to offer such an explanation.

The given theological point of view about the interpretation of the dogma of the Church is not accidental and has place only in the contemporary conditions of thinking. The most authoritative dogmatist of Orthodoxy, venerable John Damascene, says that from His features and His providential destinies God, having revealed to us everything necessary for our salvation, hid that, what does not have a direct connection with this goal. In particular, not only the truth about the Church is revealed to us, as far as this goal is concerned, but the very Church is established only for that. Who does not know the words of the apostle that from Christ "the whole body [of the Church] fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love" (Eph. 4:16).

So, the designation of the Church is defined clearly and concretely: it is in the spiritual perfection of Christians. Meanwhile, as a consequence of some sad misunderstanding exactly this aspect is omitted in the definition of the Church, made by the contemporary dogmatists, who do not note at all, as it seems, that the given by them definitions suffer from logical incompleteness, which is obvious to a conscious reader.

The majority of the educational definitions of the Church start like this: the Church is a society, established, united, etc. But the main definition of a society is in its designation, its goal, and about this almost nothing is said in the educational formulation of the dogma. Recently in literature appeared another definition of the Church, as of the body of Christ, which caused great polemics, but the arguing said almost the same, though they fiery rebuked each other. The main basis for such a definition was in the given above words of the apostle, but on some reason no one considered it necessary to read the phrase up to the end, and the holy utterance was discussed, being harped on the same string, without going over to its main thought.

If to look at the truth of the Church from the mentioned by us point of view, then we would need to make the following thesis main in our reasoning: for salvation, or, which is the same, for spiritual perfection of man the three conditions are needed: very man, God and the Church. Usually, the third condition is not thought to be the basic for our salvation, because this subject was mostly highlighted by the Protestants in European theology; but we know that the Divine Kingdom, Which our Savior had brought to earth, is reached not only through the sanctification of personal life of man through the direct influence of the Divine Creature, but through the establishment on earth of new existence, new element, only through which the Lord comes into communication with human personality. This existence, this element is the Church. It is great that in that exceptional case, when after establishing the Church the Lord called persecutor Saul to Him directly from His Heavenly Throne, He did not leave him without the most direct guidance of the Church, did not show His will directly to him, as once He had done to Elijah and other prophets, but sent him to Ananias for to be taught, sanctified in the sacrament and healed from blindness.

But even before the time when He was only explaining the principles of His doctrine, in the majority of His parables He showed new spiritual life as the opposite not only to that sinful, split into two, personal life of a single man, but as well to the isolated way of life in human society. In His new Kingdom people gather not only to create a friendly brotherhood, but they arrange some new council existence, which has to grow as the leavened bread, as that tree that hides all in its shadow, as the grape vine, where the stem is Christ and the branches are the Apostles.

The Main Thought in the Dogma about the Church.

Preparing Himself for leaving this world, the Lord Jesus Christ looked at the skies and appealed to His Father in a prayer about the fulfillment of that act, for the sake of which He had come to earth. This prayer was about nothing but the arrangement of new, council existence — the Church on earth — the existence, which till that time parted by sin mankind did not possess. This existence is typical not of earth, where there is no unity, but pure partition, but of heaven, where the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit gathers the three Persons into One Creature, so that there are no more three, but one God, living council life. Alike, the council new existence, new man is brought forth by Christ onto earth, into the hostile society of Jews and pagans (Eph. 2:14-15). Surely the goal of this new existence on earth lies not in itself, as in a process, but in the relations between its compound parts, i.e. human personalities. "Father, I will, —says the Lord, — that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me…that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:24-26). This is the final goal of the established by Christ Church, in respect to its members; and the first task, without which it is impossible to reach the final goal of our existence, is in unceasing spiritual perfection of the personality in the Church.

Therefore the Church is absolutely new, special and unique existence on earth, which cannot be defined with precision by any notion, taken from mundane life. And if in the mentioned by us theological argument those thinkers, who told about the superiority of their definition of the Church, as of the society (comparing it with the definition of the Church, as of the body of Christ), were sure that they were giving the correct definition of the Church, while their opponents only proposed a comparison, — then let us note that the claims of the first were absolutely unfounded. Any terrestrial society has so many aspects, absolutely different from the life of the Church, and so few common with it traits, that one could prefer the comparison, which is authorized by the Holy Scripture to the visibly formal definition, if only, as we have said above, the referring to this matter words of apostle Paul were analyzed in all their fullness, without shortening its main thought. And this main thought (unto the edifying of itself in love) already stands in the opposition to the image of the body, knowing no love, and through that again this thought leads us to the understanding that the definition of the Church is about the exclusive, opposite to everything terrestrial existence.

Now let us focus on the description of this existence in detail, and then again we shall point at its real displays and by that shall try solving the more difficult question of the mutual argument of European confessions: where should be the real Church searched for?

From the quoted words of Christ the Savior we saw that the Church is the similarity of the Trinitarian existence, in which many personalities become one creature. Why is this existence (as the existence of the Holy Trinity) new and unperceivable for the Old Testament man? — It happens on the reason that in its natural self-consciousness a personality is a limited in itself type of existence, drastically opposite to the others. Let us set aside the language of abstract definitions, necessarily dry and compressed, and discuss the practical influence of this law upon our will. First of all, we see that this law of our natural existence, which can be found in our direct self-consciousness, radically differs from the moral law of the Gospel, which demands from its followers self-denying love for the neighbor. Though, this law of love can be found within human nature, which is disposed to love, but at the same time it is inclined to defend its "ego," and bears the feeling of self-love and vengeance. And till the time man sympathizes with the Christian law only being led by his natural inclinations, he will never accept the fullness of Christian love, will not become a true Christian: he will love some, and maybe ardently, and will hate the others: love and self-love will still remain in him, as two irreconcilable enemies.

"But this will be a constant contradiction in the soul of man!" —an objector will state triumphantly. Sure, we shall reply. Natural man is the incarnated contradiction, and this inner contradiction of his nature is hardly revealed with such force elsewhere than in the feeling of natural love. Like that, for example, in the sexual sphere love and hatred are combined in one strange, ugly process, where sometimes reproduction is followed by a murder. Or take the highest manifestation of natural life — the love of a mother among the animals or simple people: here the affects of tenderness towards children are constantly changed by the affects of anger against their supposed enemies, and against children themselves, if they do not understand the wishes of the mother. A hen, when her chickens are born, not for a minute stops to threaten everyone around, and a usually meek cow is more terrifying than any predator, while the newly born calf is near her. From the constant observations of life, and from the artistic image of the latter in literature we know about the fact, how this inner contradiction of love and hatred is intensified within people (for example, "The Egyptian Nights" of Pushkin, "The Meek" of Dostoyevsky, "The Mother" of Nekrasov and many others).

Human thought did not bring together these two points, but rather intensified the contradiction. When people used the notion of a free personality, this unique notion, upon which the elevated demands of strict morals can be based, then together with the teaching about justice, chastity, honesty, they preached the proudly cold, legal and formal attitude towards the neighbors. Such is the teaching of the stoics and Kant, who totally denied the importance of virtue and suggested to substitute it with the principle of respect for the neighbors. The morals of the scholastic theologians were based on the notions of formal duty and, having no opportunity to deny love for the neighbors, which was preached in the Scripture, were limited by them with the invented doctrine about love for oneself, and with many legal, but artificially created norms, which were taken from the Roman and feudal law and were introduced not only into the teaching about the relations between people, but into the doctrine about God the Redeemer.

Absence of this Thought in Contemporary Philosophy.

The latest humanistic moral, and with it the Protestant moral of the rationalistic direction came to mutual agreement that for the strengthening of the principle of love it is necessary to renounce "the scholastic" notions about the personality, free will, retribution, and instead of these notions, protecting egoism, to establish the opposite view onto existence, as onto council Divine life, which is distributed between creatures, who long to be the parts of one gracious unity. Here, spiritualism is changed into pantheism, the main leading principle of the modern philosophy and rationalistic theology. Let us add that not mainly humanism, but the Protestant predestination, (which denies the significance of the exploits of will) and the common drop of morals that was concealed behind the shield of humanism serve as the main basis for the development of such a world-view.

But let us discuss only the positive aspect of the latter, without penetrating into its concealed meaning. The connection between personalities is destroyed here, the opposition between "I" and "not me" is exterminated; there is no place for haughty self-praise of nonentity, which bears the name of a human. But everyone knows that with the extermination of the freedom of will the difference between the good and the evil and any moral responsibility of man fades, and the same happens to the moral attraction of the exploit of love and its moral necessity.

That is why the contradiction between haughty sensuous egoism and known to our heart element of love cannot be solved within the philosophic thought, till it originates from this or that principle of natural life — the principle of a free personality or of natural humanism: in the first case there rules legal formalism, in the second — pantheism. Obviously, both the thought and real life are based on the initial notion, due to which there will happen the reconciliation between the free self-esteem of personality and the principle of self-denial and life for the sake of others. Here, these others, this "not me," would not be anything opposite to me, to my "ego," and the freedom of each personality would be combined with the metaphysical council of their existence, not like it is in pantheism.

This is the initial notion of the Church according to the definitions, which we have given to It before, on the basis of the Divine Word. And really, we see that the personality, developing itself in the Church, combines the fullness of self-denying love and high degree of individual will. The most typical representatives of such a combination are our saints — martyrs, ascetics and holy fathers. In these three types of holiness (martyrs, ascetics and holy fathers), different from one another because of conditions of life, we find the identical harmony of those two opposite qualities, which would be permitted neither in natural life, nor in the Western philosophy. All these three types, the giants of will with the extremely intense realization of their moral responsibility, at the same time do not have any natural every-day egoism, any fine self-praise, any demands, concerning personal rights, — they are the types, among which the two first dedicate their whole life to and die for the church community and glory of God, and the third denies the own will for the sake of God and the representatives of the church authorities, making that the most important goal of life.

So, Christian truth about the Church not only within the thought, but within very life, frees man from the natural contradiction between self-consciousness of the personality and self-denying love, as the principle of life. Why exactly this contradiction should be analyzed? We said that the definition of the Church should be derived not from the concept of the terrestrial way of life, but from the teaching about the trinity-united Divine Creature, as the Lord had taught us in His Farewell prayer. God is one in His essence and life, but triple in Persons: the same way the Church is one in its essence, but multiple in persons, which form It. What is the united creature of the Church and how does it relate to natural mankind?

[By the way, let us say beforehand, that the moral strength of the Orthodox teaching about the Church is not limited by the definition of its common significance: the Church is, moreover, the irreplaceable guide for the Christian in his further exploit of life, who again and again needs to re-substantiate the truth, explained in this teaching, — he needs it both for the strengthening of faith, and for the act of moral perfection. In order to understand this need clearly and indisputably, one needs to remember about one certain quality, typical of any moral and moral-informative activity of man on the whole, and of any Christian in particular. What we mean is the forgotten by the Western theologians law of life, owing to which Christian perfection should be treated not like free, unlimited development of the most complicated phenomena among the less complicated, but as the constant intense struggle, full of sufferings.]

The Church and Personality.

In the Holy Scripture and church legend it is said for many times that the Lord came to earth in order to revive man, as he had been before the downfall, and to restore His image, obscured by passions, in man and mankind. This image was the image of the trinity-united Divine Persons and exactly this image is revived by Christ in mankind through the establishment of the Church, i.e. the image of one essence in the multitude of persons, as it is said in the Archpriest prayer.

Let us explain the thought about the church common existence, which is in the restoration of the unity of human nature, with the help of the following reasons. Concerning the Divine Creature, under the notion of the united Divine nature theology means the Divine spiritual nature, those spiritual forces and qualities of Divine life, which are brought into action by the free will of the Divine Persons. The same is meant under the nature of mankind and the nature of each separate personality.

This division of personality and nature in us is not something abstract, but is the truth, directly proved through self-observation and experience. Feeling in oneself the presence of an independent personality, freedom of will and of actions, every man understands perfectly well that this independence, this freedom is only in the specific directing of forces and qualities of his, common to all humans, nature, in the development of some natural inclinations and elimination of others — in choosing between the struggling inclinations. But we all realize well that no man can think differently than according to the laws of thinking; man passes through certain stages replacing one habit by the opposite one, he cannot walk upon the air, stop breathing, etc. With one word, we feel ourselves already endowed by certain physical and psychical nature, partly known psychical content, the change of which is subjected to our will, but on a certain basis and with significant limitations (for instance, is it easy for a mother not to love her children?) This psychical nature of ours, this subconscious common human will, which we all inevitably posses, is our human nature.

Till now we have not said anything new about the accepted in contemporary theology definitions. But if we pause on the said above, then under common human nature we shall understand not the actual (real) essence, but some abstract notion, which can suggest neither any basis for understanding of the problem of the first-born sin (which is inherited by all human personalities), nor redeeming grace, thanks to which exactly human nature (and not each separate human personality) is sanctified. Having lost the notion of human nature, as of the existing essence, the Middle Age theologians had to explain the nature of the first-born sin through the hereditary right or even to transfer the unworthy of people concept of vendetta onto the Creator and make this concept basic for the explanation of the process of our salvation.

Meanwhile, the Middle Age theologians and even Plato in earlier times vaguely felt that there exist such common or general notions, which are not a pure abstract idea about the common features of some objects, but which do exist independently and truly. About that was the argument of the nominalists and realists. To the number of such notions belongs the notion of common human nature. Does it possess any actual and real existence? In God this existence is so real, as the existence of each Divine personality; it is even more real, for we do not speak about the existence of three Gods, but one God, though we profess the existence of the Father, the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We know that these three Divine persons live common life of Divine character — which is holy, blessed, ever-righteous, though they have Their personal Freedom, as the Lord said: "I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love" (John 15:10).

If the people had not fallen, if they had not been filled with the spirit of opposition and partition, if they had not weakened the unity of their nature through all that, then in their hearts with the same fortitude would have been existing the life of common human nature, which was good enough, for God created it in His image, for immortality (Wisd.2:23). In that case, each single human personality would have been given the option to agree with the existing in him source of love, virtue, reason and joy. Unanimously studying the beautiful Divine Creation and the Very Creator, and being pleased with mutual love and joy, people would have been filled with the idea of their unity more and more. And it would have been hard to talk about the acts and thoughts of Peter, Paul and John, but we would have to talk about the actions of man in totality. But such a merging of all into one unity would seem infinitely strange, compared with that pantheistic nirvana, which is being preached by modern philosophers. In ideal, exactly this unity, this unanimity of human thoughts, feelings and actions would be constantly established and built by the free will of each single personality and by that would protect the moral value of its existence. That would make it different from the synchronic movements of various parts of a well-arranged apparatus, or from the unanimity of speechless ants or bees, led by the blind and having no freedom instinct in their tireless labors.

But such blessed life of mankind was distorted by self-loving disobedience of our forefather, and his descendants were destroying it more and more it with new sins, so that human consciousness almost absolutely lost it, reaching such isolation that the opposition between "I" and "not me" became basic for human reason; and the Divine Trinity, the image of Which is in our nature, became an incomprehensible mystery for natural reason, and for those, having taken root in their self-love philosophers — they see it even as logical absurdity.

But then the Redeemer restores the lost by the forefather council-like character of human nature, similar to that, which all people would have possessed, if they had not fallen. This life is the established by Him Church. It is alike the life of first forefathers, but differs a little from it, for now it is based not on the easily fulfilled free accord of each personality with its uncorrupt nature, but on the agreement, characterized by the struggle with that decrepit nature, which we are to crucify.

First, before to analyze this life, or, what is the same, the dogma of the Church, more profoundly, let us recall the utterance of St. Basil the Great, who tells about the unanimity, resignation, love and obedience of the monastic brotherhood in the 18^th chapter of the Ascetic Regulations:

"Those living in community, i.e. monks, efface in themselves the sin of forefather Adam, renew the prehistoric goodness [beauty], for if the sin had not split the nature, the people would have had neither partition, nor discords, nor wars. They are the exact imitators of the Savior and His life in flesh. For, as the Savior, having gathered the disciples, made Himself belong to the apostles, the same way do these ones… They compete with angels in life, similarly preserving the unity, like the latter do. They anticipate the blessings of the promised kingdom through their good-willed community and communication, representing precise similarity to the angelic way of life and state. They have clearly shown to humans, how many blessings brought the incarnation of the Savior, because they bring the split into the thousands of parts human nature into the unity with itself and God again. For it is the main thing in the leading to salvation house-building and way of earthly life — to bring human nature into the unity with itself and the Savior, and exterminating sly division, to restore the pre-historic unity, similar to how the best doctor, using curative means, binds the body, broken in many parts, into one again."

As you see, in the above mentioned reasoning St Basil the Great says, that at first, human nature was council-like before the downfall; secondly, that it was split by the downfall or sin; thirdly, that the angels, which had not yield into the sin of self-love and disobedience, preserved this unity of their nature unharmed; fourthly, that the Savior came to restore this unity in fallen mankind; fifthly, that this restoration is in freeing people from self-love, discords and stubbornness and in renewing Christian love and obedience in their hearts, and sixthly that the divine atonement is mainly in the restoration of this newly-blessed unity of love and obedience among people and as well between them, God, and the Lord — and it is opposite to how school theological systems see it. Now we shall continue our reasoning.

Other definitions of the Church.

We have said that this restored by Christ unity of nature of believing mankind is in the Church. And alike the first given by God unity of nature was not an abstract notion, but a real living power, which was constantly living within the human heart, and as well within the multitude of saints, the same way the Church is not simply the multitude of separate people, but a legal and governmental institution. Though, first of all, it is the established by Christ life, blessed and holy, which unbreakably and stably will exist on earth till the second coming of Christ, protected from without, and manifested, first of all, in the holy and touching feelings of faith, repentance, spiritual joy, purity and love, which any blessed person finds in his heart, not as the fruits, cultivated by the efforts of his will in his personal life, but as the characteristics of another, given to him from without, nature — the nature of that New Man, whom any person becomes after the baptism. His further task will be to protect and to nourish these holy elements of salvation, given to him by God, this life of the restored nature, and the life of the Church, through the exploit of his personal freedom; and to crucify and do away with the opposite to this life human decrepit nature.

Sure, this exploit is more difficult than that what mankind had to face if it had not have fallen, but anyway, due to the above mentioned understanding of the matter, it becomes rather clear to us, why the mentioned by us types of martyrs, venerable and saints were the invincible giants of will, and at the same time constantly suppressed the desire of self-establishment, self-love, or cultivation of the personal "I" within themselves. This lets us understand, why Paul, who had, on his personal statement, more exploit than any of the disciples of Christ, says that he does not live any more, for he had crucified himself, and Christ abides in him; and that not him, but the grace that abides in him, is working for the Church.[ The grace in the Biblical and church language is called sometimes the very essence of the church life, sometimes the fruits of this life in the soul of a Christian, sometimes as the blissful influence, through which this power of new life is reported to the soul of man].

Still, our explanation about the true Church is not yet finished. We have mentioned its characteristics, which make the notion of the Church close to the notion of originally created by God human nature, but we did not explain the difference between these two notions: this difference is in the fact that human nature would have been revealed directly and without obstacles in each man (if there would have been no downfall).

But the life of Christ, which He had given to the Church and which He shares with every single person is not like that: this introduction of new nature (grace) into the soul of each Christian is a more complex phenomenon: it does not happen so directly, like the development of the human personality of innocent Adam on the basis of human nature, but first of all it goes through conscious acceptance of the life of Christ or Christianity, and then through the mysterious introduction of the newly-blessed church nature into our personality.

The Lord and the Apostles point at both the methods of sanctifying Christians, as at the equally necessary. When they say about the revival or about the purification of our nature through the word of teaching, they recognize the conscious penetration of new life, described in the Divine teaching (John 15:3; Pet. 1:23; Hebr. 10:22). And on the other hand, — who does not know the parables of the Lord about the unconscious and mystical growing of the blessed seed of new nature in the soul of a believer? It is similar to that, how a man would sow a seed in the field, and then easily spend his days, and the sun and water without his efforts would grow the plant and make the ear form (Math.13:31); it is like leaven, which raises in a dark stove (Math.13:33). It is subtle, like the place where the wind comes from, on the word of the Lord to Nicodemus (John 3:8).

Therefore the Church is not simply that school of Christian law, not only pure unconscious blissful energy, mystically transmitted by Christ into human hearts, but that very energy, which is kept and spread by the conscious element, i.e. the Church community. Hence, it is possible to fill in the gap in defining the Church as community, or body, — that gap about the designation of the Church, which we have mentioned above. Analyzing any definition of the Church one has to point at the fact that the Church, first, is meant to keep untouched the conscious content of newly-blessed life, i.e. the Divine teaching, and then to pass it over to separate people, preserving both quantity and quality; secondly, what is the same, to spread the Divine teaching among people, and thirdly, to fill the believers with this life and to make them reach spiritual perfection. The given by Apostle Paul comparison of the Church with a living body (Eph. 4:16) fully coincides with this designation of the Church.

The Militant Church.

But I see here neither the presence of teaching about the Church as about the organized society, — some reader will say, — nor the reference to the fact, in what sense both the heavenly and terrestrial church is called holy and infallible. If under the Church you mean the reproduced by Christ unanimous nature of newly-blessed mankind, — the objector will continue, — then where is that infallible authority of the terrestrial, militant Church? Do not you indulge the Protestants, who lay their inspirations upon the heavenly Church and are deprived of the terrestrial One?

— We started to discuss these questions in our prior reasoning. But that blessed life, which inspires a zealous Christian, is the life of new Adam; and the more the Christian is worthy of his title, the more clear and joyful is his understanding of constant communication with saints in heaven and the more inspired he becomes by the given to us Creed, by the expectation of the final judgment and the life of the next age, as St. John taught us in the Revelation (chap.21). Here is the first failure of Protestantism, for it omitted the prayers to saints and the commemoration of departed.

But we have said about the fact that the life of the Church is the struggle against this sinful world, and in every generation of people this world acts as a certain, partly conscious and partly subconscious force. Every generation of people is to feel its moral-historic task, bring to God its talent and put its victory into the treasury of the Church. That is why the newly-created, blessed nature of the Church, this new Adam, led by Christ, must have its certain, adequate manifestation in every époque of terrestrial struggle. [In the Holy Scripture and History Christ himself and the Church, led by Him, are called new Adam or New Man, Eph. 2:15; 1 Cor. 2:12; St. Gregory the Theologian. The Word on the Theophany of God; venerable Isaac the Syrian. About the Merciful Spirit].

Here, on earth, within the struggle of Christianity and the world, in the new church nature, which is being developed together with the decrepit one, there must live and act, first, the qualitative fullness of the gifts of Christ to the Church, i.e. the untouched content of the Church (or the pure Christian teaching), and secondly, the mysterious blessed energy (the holiness of the Church), which is reported to the Christian soul indirectly, in the form of blissful gifts. And as the life of the Divine Persons is the council life of one Divine Nature, the same way the acting on earth power of blissful life of Christ proceeds from church fullness. Therefore the entire church community on earth, but not its separate branches or some local authorities, as the Roman Catholics explain, turns out to be holy and infallible.

The detailed substantiation of this latter thought, based on Divine revelation, is not included into our task, because school theology describes well the authority of the militant Church, using the revelation. But still let us remind the reader that the majority of the Lord’s parables about the Divine Kingdom relate to the militant Church, —the fullness of blessed gifts is promised to It, and His words, said at the time of His Ascension, are addressed to It as well: "And, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." The same way the Revelation draws the fight of the blissful Kingdom of Christ with the terrestrial world, and depicts Christ as the Leader and Direct Head of the militant Church, both in the first vision, where He is among "seven candlesticks", and in that revelation, which narrates about the future lot of the Church.

The Theses.

So, to believe in the Church means:

First, to believe that Jesus Christ through Himself restored the unity of human nature in the flock of His disciples, which was lost by people through the downfall of Adam and because of the sins, committed by his descendants.

Secondly, that this unity is not an abstract notion, but an active moral force, which gets into the hearts of His disciples and acts in them, like the source of blissful intentions and feelings, especially in their mutual love for God and one another.

Thirdly, this force, this church life, on the word of Christ, will exist on earth forever, and it is the unique means, through which the Lord leads people to salvation, i.e. to holiness and unity.

Fourthly, the people, leading church life, form one spiritual creature together with Christ, Who leads it as the Leader. To the extent of their perfection on earth — and to the utmost extent — in heaven, — they strengthen this unity so that it starts resembling the unity of Divine nature in three Divine Persons and by that fills every human personality with bliss and holiness, and the elements of this state are reported since people first enter the Church.

Fifthly, because the people of each generation start their spiritual perfection on earth in their struggle with the world, then the fullness of Divine gifts on earth is constantly preserved within the struggling for salvation community of people.

Sixthly, this community or the militant Church has a designation, first, to protect the source of Divine life, i.e. the Divine teaching and blissful energy of newly blessed life, and secondly, to report both of them to the own children by the means of teaching and prayer, so that they could reach perfection in their graceful church life, and to those not knowing Christ, so that they could become a part of this life.

The seventh point is in the statement that the task of each man, who wants to be saved, is first of all in the agreement with these truths of faith, reported from without to his personality, as well as with these sacred predispositions of the heart, and with the life of the Church.

The eighth point is in the idea that one’s personal life meets with the Church life not like free of any qualities, but like life, already filled with sin, that is why we call this free agreement with newly-blessed life of the Church as voluntary obedience.

The ninth point is that if it is so, if the life of the Church meets with the life of each personality, being the superior element, and a guide in voluntary inner struggle of man, then the life of the Church needs to have certain conditional outward forms, so that it can give way to manifestation of the church life or church administration and discipline. The common features, which define this external arrangement of the Church, are mentioned by the Savior in the Gospel and by the apostles in the Acts, Epistles and Revelation, and the most detailed explanations are given by Christ to the church pastors and form the subject of Church Tradition, mostly of canons.

The tenth point is that all external conditions, which define the appearance of blissful (church) life on earth, and the Church guidance of Its children, are filled with the same spirit of blissful Divine life, in which is found the meaning of this life, i.e. the spirit of love and holiness, and therefore, if they are called by us external, then it is not in the literal sense, but means that they guide the inner life of our souls with the help of some external means.

This is the content of the dogma of the Church. — Is it necessary to say that such beliefs are the part of irreplaceable moral force, general for the Christians undertaking exploit; that without such beliefs their life is aimless, and exploit has no basis?

http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/mitrop_antonij_hrapovitski_1_e.htm#_Toc90374202

Christ the Savior and the Jewish Revolution

2011-09-02T20:58:00.001-07:00

Christ the Savior and the Jewish Revolution

By Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky

26 April 1921

It is well-known that the Gospel accounts of the earthly life of the Lord Jesus are almost identical in the first three Gospels, but that they differ in content from the fourth; not in the sense that the former contradict the latter, but in the sense that the Apostle John recounts sayings and events which are passed over in silence in the first three Gospels, while failing to make mention of the majority of those events recounted in the first three Gospels. Yet not only are there no contradictions between the first three and the last, but the attentive examiner of the Gospels readily notes that St. John presumes his reader to be familiar with the accounts of Matthew, Mark and Luke and supplements them, or provides elucidating remarks for his own account of the few events which he and the other evangelists describe, as, for example, the Lord's entry into Jerusalem, the Mystical Supper, Peter's visit to the Lord's tomb, et al. In general, one must say that, beginning with the description of the entry into Jerusalem and the betrayal by Judas, the accounts of all four Gospels blend more thoroughly than in the description of preceding events. But then, of the miraculous actions performed by Christ previously, only one - the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand with five loaves and the Savior's walking on the water - is recorded by all four evangelists. It is precisely this event which provides us with the key to open the subject posed in the title, and which, furthermore, clarifies for us the relationship between the Gospel according to John and the first three Gospels.

Indeed, in the first three Gospels, the miracle of Christ's walking on the water is the only miracle performed, as it were, without a definite purpose. One senses something unsaid, something deliberately unspoken. This suggests itself to the reader of the Gospels especially in view of one expression issuing from the pen of Matthew and Mark: "And straightway [after the miraculous feeding of the people] Jesus constrained His disciples to get into a boat, and to go to the other side..." (Mt. 14: 22; Mk. 6: 45). Why the haste and urgency? There is no mention; there is also no mention by the three evangelists of the impression produced upon the people by the miraculous feeding, although in recounting other miraculous events - e.g., the deaf mute, as well as the raising up of the son of the widow of Nain from the dead, and others - the first three evangelists continually make reference to this. In this case it is John alone who speaks of the impression made by the miracle on those who witnessed it, and from his words it is clear that this miracle, more than all the rest, moved the people to rapture and faith in the Savior, although, as we shall see, not for long.

But wherein lies John's explanation of the miracle of walking upon the water? It is very short - two words in all - but from it it is easy to understand why the miracle took place, Jesus Christ's urgent haste in sending the disciples over the lake, and why the other evangelists let all of this remain without explanation.

"Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world. When Jesus, therefore, perceived that they would take Him by force, to make Him a king, He departed then into the mountain Himself alone" (Jn. 6: 14-15).

Of course, the Jews postponed their decision to proclaim Christ a king until the morning; they would not have allowed the Savior to depart from them by boat, but were probably satisfied that He sent His disciples away and remained alone with the Jews, expecting that He would be less able to oppose their intention.

Why did the three evangelists pass over in silence the reason for Christ's miraculous walking upon the water, which as we see from John, lay in the Lord's desire to escape from their hands being forcibly proclaimed king? They kept silence for the same reason that they did concerning the resurrection of Lazarus, the Savior's subsequent sentencing to death, the people's rage which was kindled against Him when He permitted pagans to mock, in His Person, the nation's beloved dream of a national king, i. e., Pilate's announcement: "Behold your King!" They had to keep silent about such things because a Jewish kingdom was still in existence; for an explanation of this aspect of the events of Christ's life would have been tantamount to a denunciation of the popular uprising then in preparation, of the nation-wide revolutionary mood inspired and fueled by the Sanhedrin and the scribes. The sacred authors, disciples of Christ, quite wisely protected themselves against the hostile Jews' suspicion that they would betray them, would denounce the great rebellion being prepared by the Jews against Roman domination and which broke out in force in A. D. 67. They acted in this way when recounting the earthly life of Christ, and later, when recording their own activities. When the Apostle Paul, for example, arrived in Rome, he considered it his duty, at his first encounter with his compatriots, to explain that he was appearing before Caesar's tribunal, "not that (he) had ought to accuse [his] people of" (Acts 28: 19), but in order to acquit himself.

Such circumspection was totally unnecessary by the time the fourth Gospel was written, i. e., after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish kingdom by Vespasian and Titus. It was not necessary for St. John to pass over in silence those aspects of the Gospel events, the description of which could have resulted in retribution on the part of the Jewish government, e.g. who it was exactly who cut off the ear of Malchus, the servant of the high priest, while not one of the first three evangelists decided to name Simon Peter as the one who had wielded the sword, but all three contented themselves with the expression: "one of those who were with Jesus," not even calling him His apostle or disciple (only John calls by name the one who drew his sword and the one who was wounded by the sword). For this same reason the Synoptics keep silence concerning the resurrection of Lazarus, since he had been condemned to death by the Sanhedrin as an alleged criminal who, as is known from the most ancient accounts, was forced to flee to Cyprus, and moreover was exceedingly weighed down by the remembrance of his death and resurrection; for the Jews who were there in great numbers followed the Christians everywhere and incited the pagans against them, and sometimes even those who were the dregs of society, as we can also see from the Book of Acts (14: 1; 17: 5; et al.).

Regarding Lazarus, his name is not mentioned at all in the first three Gospels, unless one counts the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (which doubtless is also connected with what was to take place at his resurrection), although Mary and Martha are mentioned; so that John, in giving an account of Lazarus, puts forth the names of his sisters as well-known to the reader: "Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha" (Jn. 11: 1). John senses that readers of the first three Gospels were perplexed as to how the triumphal honoring of Christ by the people could have taken place in view of the Lord's last entry into Jerusalem, when those surrounding Him expected the capital to react to Him in a completely different way, and "were amazed and, as they followed Him, they were afraid" (Mk. 10: 32); the Apostle John, in his turn, confirms that the disciples of Christ tried to dissuade the Savior from going anywhere near Jerusalem when He prepared to announce that He was going to resurrect Lazarus. "Master, the Jews of late sought to stone Thee; and goest Thou there again?", yet they nonetheless heeded the call of the brave Thomas: "Let us all go, that we may die with Him" (in. 11: 8, 16).

And suddenly, instead of the expected persecution - a triumphal greeting with palm branches! The perplexity of one who has read the first three Gospels is dispelled by reading the fourth, from which he learns that the greeting was preceded by the raising of Lazarus from the dead, which brought many Jews to believe in Christ (Jn. 11: 15); and the evangelist confirms for him precisely this connection between the events: "For this cause the people also met Him; for they heard that He had done this miracle" (Jn. 12: 18). Of the other evangelists, only Luke gives a hint of the special impetus the believing people had to glorify the arriving Savior: "The whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, Blessed be the King Who cometh in the name of the Lord" (Lk. 19: 37-38). For reasons already indicated, Luke was unable to explain that it was not so much the miracles of Christ in general which is to be understood in this passage, as the raising from the dead of one who had lain four days in the tomb, which had taken place only a short while before. Renan, who rejects this event, was unable to explain in his book either the event of the triumphal entry or the sentence passed upon the Savior immediately afterwards.

Thus, the silence of certain of the evangelists concerning what the fourth makes clear depends upon the Jewish revolution which was coming to ripeness in the Savior's time, and which was directed by the Sanhedrin. From the Gospel episodes cited above, another truth, unremarked by biblical science, also becomes clear - that the Jewish revolution came into extremely close contact with the earthly life of Christ the Savior and in general defined by itself (of course with the particular permission of God) many of the events of the Gospel; further on we shall see that it was the principal reason for the arousing of the hatred of the people against Christ, which brought Him to be crucified.

Have we any other historical data that the uprising of the Jews, which burst into flame with such terrible force in the year 67, had ripened long before and with time erupted chronically throughout the entire first century of our chronology? Of course we have. We will not expatiate on the extreme freedom-loving and mutinous temper of the Jewish people throughout the whole of its history, which began with the era of King David (II Kings [Samuel], chs. 15-18, 20) and reached the highest degree of tension in the era of the Maccabee brethren: we will say only that that most ardent friend of the people, the Prophet Jeremiah, dedicated nearly a quarter of his extensive book to urging his compatriots not to rise up against the invincible might of the king of Babylon, yet was unable to secure the aim of his admonitions even when Jerusalem and its temple were already destroyed, almost all the people led away into captivity, and only a little band of common folk remained, which nevertheless, with mindless courage, launched itself at the representatives of the Babylonian military regime and thereby condemned the entire remnant of the people to death and their country to utter devastation. The Jews of the time of the earthly life of Christ were also of a similar temper. Finding it impossible under the ever-vigilant Roman regime to organize rebellions in the cities, their leaders led their followers out into the wilderness; yet even these attempts were, of course, put down by the military might of the Romans. Here are the words of Gamaliel, a member of the Sanhedrin, uttered shortly after the Lord's ascension: "But before these days rose up Theudas, boasting himself to be somebody, to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves; who was slain, and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered, and brought to nought. After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the registration, and drew away many people after him; he also perished, and all, even as many as obeyed him, were dispersed" (Acts 5: 36-37). It was probably them that the Lord mentioned, calling them "thieves and robbers" (Jn. 10:8).

Similar undertakings on the part of the rebels continued during the time of the apostle's preaching. When the Apostle Paul was arrested in Jerusalem, the chief captain asked him: "Art not thou that Egyptian, who before these days, madest an uproar, and leddest out into the wilderness four thousand men that were murderers?" (Acts 21: 38). We know from the Gospel that the fateful "Barabbas,. . . for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison" (Lk. 23: 1819), and of course by this very fact attracted to his side the people's sympathy expressed in such an insistent form before Pilate and heated up by the high priests and the members of the Sanhedrin (Mk. 5: 11).

Thus having taken note of the revolutionary mood of the Jews which was supported by the Sanhedrin, we shall not only grasp with total clarity the events surrounding the miraculous feeding of the five thousand with five loaves, but we will also understand the fateful significance which these events had in the earthly life of Christ the Savior. "Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world," and they decided to "come and take Him by force, to make Him a king" (Jn. 6: 14-15).

It is now quite understandable exactly why this miracle, and not any other, produced such a reaction in the revolutionary people. They found in Christ what was most necessary to have, but what was more difficult for a rebellion to obtain - a ready source of bread. At that time it was not possible to equip oneself with cannons and armored trains: the outcome was decided by the vital force of the people and by cold steel; but to amass provisions under the watchful observation of the Romans was impossible in the wilderness places, where, as we have seen from the Book of Acts, the insurgents concentrated their forces. In Moses' time, in the wilderness, manna was sent down from heaven directly upon Israel who had risen up against Egypt; and now this new Prophet was able to do the same thing that God had done of old. What was needed, though, was the force to compel Him to place Himself at the head of the popular uprising. The Lord escaped their hands in a manner such as none of the people were capable of foreseeing: He walked away over the water, as though on dry land. Thus the purpose of this miracle becomes quite clear.

Naturally, Christ's secret departure was not at all pleasing to the Jews. The Apostle John devotes several chapters of his Gospel to their further conversations with Christ, in which they remind Him of the heavenly bread in Moses' time and demand that the miracle be continued. Of course, they could not speak directly of the rebellion they desired, but when the Lord began to unfold His teaching concerning another bread, the spiritual bread, and then concerning the Bread of the New Covenant, the eucharistic Bread which is His all-pure Body; when He promised to the Jews who believed in Him a moral freedom instead of a political freedom and spoke of the scant value of the latter, the ecstasy of the people, which had been prompted by the miracle of the five loaves, gradually changed to grumbling, and subsequently these exchanges, resumed in Jerusalem, conclude with the people taking up stones to kill the One they wished to proclaim king but a short while before. Read the Gospel according to John, and you will see that the Savior's refusal of this choice and the discourses which followed after it, which were not in sympathy with the uprising, constitute the turning point in the Jews attitude toward Christ the Savior. It is from this that the people's enmity began; and though it was overcome by the resurrection of Lazarus, this was not for long. But let us turn to the Gospel account.

The people searched for Jesus where He had fed them with the five loaves, and unable to find Him, in perplexity they embarked in boats which had recently arrived from the other shore and, to their astonishment, found Him in Capernaum, to which it was not possible for Him to have gone earlier, in that since evening there had not been a single boat left. "Rabbi, when camest thou here?" (Jn. 6:25).

The Lord did not answer their question, but reproved them: "Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. Labor not for the food which perisheth, but for that food which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you" (Jn. 6: 27-27). This is not an upbraiding because of gluttony: the day before the people, carried away listening to the words of God, even forgot their daily bread, following Jesus into the wilderness. No, the Lord was displeased because they still had in mind what is earthly, temporal - an uprising against the Romans, military preparations, etc., which would nonetheless end in death, just like the triumphal passing of their forefathers through the desert. "Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat of it, and not die" (Jn. 6:49-50). Before these words were spoken, the Jews had not yet lost all hope of persuading Christ to become for them another Moses, a leader, and they asked: "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?" (Jn. 6: 28), referring to the miraculous leadership of Moses; and they added: "Lord, evermore give us this bread!" (v. 38), for then the success of the uprising would be assured. But Christ's subsequent words about spiritual bread and life everlasting disenchanted the hotheaded Jews, and many even of His disciples lost their faith in Him (v. 64), "From that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him" (v. 66). It is apparent that the heart of Judas also departed from Christ at this time, and He said: "Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" (vv. 71-72). The decisive meaning of this event is demonstrated also by the following verse which commentators do not accord the necessary attention. "After these things, Jesus walked in Galilee: for He would not walk in Judea because the Jews sought to kill Him" (Jn. 7: 1). "After these things", i.e. after the discourse which took place in Capernaum in Galilee. It is obvious that a report about this was made to rebel headquarters, i.e. the Sanhedrin, just as one was later made about the resurrection of Lazarus (Jn. 11: 46); and there they resolved to part company with the new Prophet Who was summoning the people to a different way of life, just as they had separated themselves from John the Baptist (Mt. 17: 12; Mk. 9: 13) who, when the people asked: What should we do? answered them with instructions of a purely moral character and did not support their chauvinistic aspirations (Lk. 3: 7-8, 11).

How far the clerical, and even popular, enmity directed against the Savior began then to assume an active character is clearly apparent from the further actions and words of Christ. When His brethren called Him to the approaching feast of tabernacles, He spoke to them of the world's hatred for Him and did not go openly to Jerusalem, but secretly, as it were (Jn. 7: 7, 10); yet when He arrived and excited the people's reverent astonishment by His teaching, without hesitation, and apparently without immediate cause, He said: "Why go ye about to kill Me?" (Jn. 7: 19). These words were so unexpected that "the people answered and said, Thou hast a demon; who goeth about to kill Thee?" (v. 20). However, as though in confirmation of Christ's words, very soon "they sought to take Him," first in the midst of the people (v. 30), and later by the servants of the Pharisees deliberately sent (v. 32); but no one laid a hand on Him (v. 30). The latter expression (Jn. 8:20) has a more important meaning than is apparent at first glance. In another article ("The Kiss of Judas") we made clear, using the words of the Pentateuch, that it was forbidden by the law of God, by which the Jewish nation was governed, to condemn anyone without responsible informers who, when making an accusation against a man for something, had to lay their hands on his head and, after the death sentence, were required to be the first to cast stones at him (Lev. 24:14; Deut. 17:4-7). This no one undertook to do to the Savior, for false accusation was punished severely by the law: it subjected the informer to the fate he prepared for his victim (Deut. 19:19). Read the story of Susanna and the Two Elders (appended to the Book of Daniel), the account of the woman taken in adultery (Jn. 8), the condemnation of the Archdeacon Stephen and, finally, the trial of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and of the Apostle Paul by the Sanhedrin, and you will see that it was no easy matter for the enemies of justice to circumvent this wise law.

What did the enemies of Christ hope to accomplish in attempting to arrest Him, then? Of course, they were unable to lodge accusations against Him for not wanting to take part in an uprising; therefore they apparently returned to an old one - Christ's healing of a paralytic on the Sabbath day, although this healing, which was performed in Jerusalem, preceded the miraculous feeding of the five thousand in Galilee, where the Lord went at that time, departing from the capitol unhindered, having delivered a tirade against the Jews because they murmured against the healing. And if after His return from Galilee the Savior was again compelled to justify a healing on the Sabbath, it was of course because that occurrence, as one not performed before witnesses, was probably interpreted by His lying enemies as an ordinary cure and could serve unscrupulous people as an object of accusation of violating the Sabbath rest, which, according to the law of God given through Moses, was punishable by death (Num. 1:33). The Savior always triumphantly refuted attempts to accuse Him of violating the Sabbath, when He performed healings on that day and shamed His accusers while the people approved His words (Lk. 13:17; cf. also 14:4-6). In the present instance, when it became clear that Jesus Christ was not in sympathy with the planned uprising, the malice of the Sanhedrin and the fanatic revolutionaries of Jerusalem reached such a degree that, incapable of concealing the real reason for their bitterness, they again brought up the case of the healing of the paralytic; but the Lord understood well where the actual reason for their enmity lay, and therefore, having spoken twice again concerning the legality of healing of the suffering on the Sabbath (Jn. 7: 22-24), and having vanquished this new attempt on the part of the Pharisees to accuse Him of violating the law in the case of the woman taken in adultery, on the second day after His arrival in Jerusalem He again directed His discourse toward the people of Judea who thirsted for political freedom and told them of that higher, spiritual freedom which He brought to earth by His teaching. On that day, as on the day before, the people wavered between belief and bitterness of heart (Jn. 7: 31, 8:30). The Savior's sincere speech, His staunch profession of His obedience to the Father Who sent Him: all of this poured the holy faith into the hearts of those who listened to Him, yet they were unable to wrest their hearts from their cherished dream of an uprising against the Romans under the direction of the awaited Messiah, of the extermination of all their enemies and the subjugation of the entire world to themselves, basing such hopes on a faulty interpretation of the seventh chapter of the Book of Daniel and other prophecies. Such, and only such, an understanding of the current mood of those who listened to Christ makes clear for us the pertinence and consistency of the words of comfort which the Lord extended to those who believed in Him. His words were these: "If ye continue in My word, then ye are My disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (Jn. 8:32).

Earlier, there had been no talk at all of freedom: the Lord here responds to the secret thoughts and desires of those who were listening to Him. But this reply did not please the crowd. "They answered Him: We are Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man. How sayest Thou, Ye shall be free?" (Jn. 8:33). Was this response a provocation with the objective of compelling the Savior to mention the Roman yoke, as later were the question of the coin and the slandering of Christ before Pilate in averring that He called Himself king and commanded that tribute not be given to Caesar (Lk. 23:2), when they threatened Pilate himself with denunciation before Caesar (Jn. 19:12), or is what we have here merely an extreme hatred of the Roman yoke, which the people refused to acknowledge as fact? It is possible that it was all of these things. Legally, the Jewish nation, like the majority of the nations absorbed into the Roman Empire, possessed an autonomy, which the Roman government tried to reduce (Jn. 11:48), but which the Jewish revolutionary theocracy strove to expand (Jn. 18:30-31); under such conditions, the mood of the masses of the people became dichotomous: among themselves the people lament their enslavement, but if anyone from the outside points out their subjugation to them, they begin to speak haughtily of their autonomy and their equality by right with the people that holds them in submission. In such a dichotomous temper it is sincerity which is absent, first of all, and therein, it would seem, lies the reason that the Lord, almost without warning, began to denounce those with whom He was speaking for satanic falsity, calling them children of the lying devil and liars (Jn. 8: 55), again (cf. 6:49-50) promising blessed immortality to those who believe in Him, instead of an earthly kingdom (Jn. 8: 51). Then the discourse ended with the people's cooling toward the Savior; but now, when it became definitely clear that He did not value political freedom in any way or all the good things of the transitory life of man and nations in general, His interlocutors, doubly exasperated and more so by His direct reproaches against them, picked up stones with which to shower the Teacher.

In this discourse, one must say, the opposition between the Christian moral freedom and political freedom is proclaimed with particular clarity in speeches which, in the majority of interpretations, remain misunderstood; but they are more than comprehensible in our elucidation of the sense of this discourse. Look at these words: "A slave [such as the Jews were] does not remain forever in a household; the son remaineth forever. Thus, if the son free you, ye are truly freed" (Jn. 8: 3536). True freedom, in the imaginary counterbalance, is a moral, Christian freedom in which the Christian remains everlastingly; and the people, preserving it, will remain eternally in the house of the heavenly Father with His Son, i.e. in the Church with Christ, and even here in the Promised Land, from which slaves of sin, even though they are the seed of Abraham (Jn. 8: 37) can be driven and replaced with another nation or nations, as did in fact happen in accordance with another prediction of the Savior (Mt. 21:43; Lk. 19:43-44) and, moreover, at the very time when they hoped to establish a free Jewish realm in the time of Vespasian and Titus. It is understandable that similar warnings aroused the hatred of the chauvinistic revolutionaries. However, the healing of the man born blind, which followed after this, again elicited faith in Him, and although Christ's later conversations once more resulted in the Jews attempting to cast stones at Him, the number of believers increased (Jn. 10:21, 42) and the quarrel between those who sought the heavenly kingdom and those who sought an earthly one intensified among the people and even among the Pharisees (Jn. 7:12, 9:16, 10:19).

The miracle of the resurrecting of Lazarus intensified the division, as well as the Sanhedrin's fear for the revolutionary solidarity of the nation which was hitherto in submission to them; and there was cause for their fear. As long as the Lord, deprecating the earthly hopes of Israel, had been promising believers everlasting life only orally, His message was unable to captivate many - on the contrary, it alienated many from Him, because it was a promise incapable of fulfillment (Jn. 6:58-60; 8:52).

But the staggering miracle of the raising from the dead of a man four days in the tomb confirmed with such clarity Christ's promises of eternal life to those who believed in Him, and were able to satisfy them with Christ's faith to such an extent, that they were not only filled with that faith, as John bears witness (Jn. 11:45) but even prepared a triumphal greeting for Him in Jerusalem, whereas the apostles tried to persuade Him not to go to Jerusalem, but finally heeded the words of Thomas: "Let us also go, that we may die with Him" (Jn. 11: 16). Yet the people's rapture was the reason for the death-sentence pronounced over the Savior in the Sanhedrin.

Unfortunately, commentators usually understand this sentence in a sense completely at variance with its actual significance. "Then many of the Jews who came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did believed on Him. But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done. Then gathered the chief priests and Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? For this Man doeth many miracles. If we let Him thus alone, all men will believe on Him; and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation" (Jn. 11:45-48).

Short-sighted commentators find here the Sanhedrin's fear of the Romans in the sense that they later could take the nascent Christian religious movement as a revolt and could completely enslave Judea to themselves. But the Romans were not so stupid. On the contrary, in the person of Pilate they tried to save Christ from the enmity of the Jews, knowing "that for envy they had delivered Him" (Mt. 27:18). "Am I a Jew?" Pilate asked Christ in answer to His question; "Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered Thee unto me. What hast Thou done?" (Jn. 18:35). It was not that the Sanhedrin, in passing a death sentence upon the Savior, was reacting to any fear that the Romans would consider the Christians revolutionaries; on the contrary, they were afraid that, under the Savior's influence, the people would cool completely toward the revolutionary direction supported by the Sanhedrin, would cease even to show opposition to Roman usurpations, and that the Romans, unimpeded, would abolish Jewish autonomy and civilization, something Antiochus Epiphanes had not accomplished, thanks to the revolt of the Maccabees. This is why the enemies of Christ, while not in the least doubting the authenticity of the miracle performed over Lazarus and the rest of Christ's miracles, and ready to acknowledge His innocence, agreed with the fatal verdict of Caiaphas and "from that day forth took council together to put Him to death" (Jn. 11: 53). It was they who were alarmed by the growing belief in Christ. "But the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus also to death, because, by reason of him, many of the Jews went away, and believed on Jesus" (Jn. 12:10-11), and when the Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem took place, "the Pharisees ... said among themselves, Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? Behold, the world is gone after Him!" (v. 19). What was it in which they prevailed nothing? Obviously in their attempts to put a stop to the honor shown the entering Savior (Lk. 19: 39) and in preparing a popular uprising. Moreover, the Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem not only caused the Romans no anxiety, even though "all the city was moved" (Mt. 21: 10), but by its very nature was completely anti-revolutionary, peaceful, as the personification of a purely spiritual authority, which is foreign not only to violence and weaponry, but also to every kind of luxury, in fulfillment of the words of the Prophet Zechariah: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter; proclaim it aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, the King is coming to thee, just, and a Savior; He is meek and riding on an ass, and a young foal. And He shall destroy the chariots out of Ephraim, and the horse out of Jerusalem, and the bow of war shall be utterly destroyed; and there shall be abundance and peace out of the nations . . ." (Zech. 9:9-10). This prophecy, so clearly fulfilled in the regal entry of the Lord into Jerusalem (Mt. 21:5; Jn. 12:15), was quite foreign to the militant, revolutionary spirit, as was the very event foretold by it, and it is entirely understandable that the enemies of Christ, who were laying plans for an armed revolt against the Romans, felt that the ground was about to be cut from under them and decided, come what may, to destroy the Savior, although this would not be so easy according to biblical laws, as we have seen above.

According to the literal sense of the law, which we pointed out, it was essential that two or three witnesses lay their hands on the head of the accused and declare definitely what it was of which they were accusing him. Before this day, no one had resolved to do this, despite the attempts of the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin to find such. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of the people were on the side of Christ. Vexed by Christ's parable of the wicked vine-tenders, the priests and elders "sought to lay hold of Him, but feared the people" (Mk. 12:12), the more so when at the time of Christ's disputes with the Pharisees "the common people heard Him gladly" (v. 37). All of this took place after the Lord's entry into Jerusalem. It is hence apparent that the change in the people's mood which was revealed in Pilate's presence did not develop over a period of five days, as is usually stated in sermons, but in a much shorter period of time. Just how it was we shall soon see, but now let us recall that even on Wednesday of Passion Week the enemies of Christ "were afraid" of the people who were well-disposed towards Him, for on that day Judas "promised, and sought opportunity to betray Him unto them in the absence of the multitude" (Lk. 22:2-6). Nevertheless, by this declaration of the traitor the single difficulty in arresting the Savior was finally eliminated: a witness had been found. It is understandable that "they were glad, and covenanted to give him money" (v. 5). Accordingly, their reason for needing the betrayer was not at all to have him point out where Jesus was alone with His disciples: it would have been easier for them to track down twelve men in the city through their own servants; but according to biblical law they had no right to seize Christ without an accuser, and according to Roman law they could not execute Him unless such were approved by the procurator, and consequently without a preliminary arrest. Judas did as he promised, though not exactly: he decided not to place his hand on the Master's head, but replaced this ritual gesture with a kiss, telling the guardsmen and the Pharisees beforehand: "Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is He; take Him, and lead Him away safely" (Mk. 14:4). This is why the Lord said: "Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?" (Lk. 22:48). This kiss was not an indication of which of the group was Jesus, for all or most of those who were with Judas knew Him; no, his kiss was the ritual gesture necessary for the arrest of the accused. But the ritual gesture was not exact, and it is perhaps for this reason that the soldiers decided not to lay hands on the Savior immediately. And He Himself did not help them, casting them to the ground beforehand with the power of His spirit." 'Whom seek ye' ... 'Jesus of Nazareth.' ... 'I am He' ... Then the band and the captain and officers of the Jews took Jesus and bound Him" (Jn. 18:4-12).

The Lord was brought to the high priest for trial at night, in violation of the law, but the informer, tormented by his conscience, hid himself and soon afterwards hanged himself. Again there were difficulties: how could one conduct a trial without the witnesses who had betrayed the accused to the court? The law of God says: "He shall die on the testimony of two or three witnesses; a man who is put to death shall not be put to death for one witness. And the hand of the witnesses shall be upon him to death, and the hand of the people at the last" (Deut. 17:6-7). Moreover, there is a proviso: "Thou shalt enquire and ask, and search diligently" (Deut. 13:14). The enemies of Christ knew that even then the people were on His side, and they understood that they would have to shoulder tremendous responsibility for this terrible deed, and were therefore doubly afraid to violate the requirement of the law. The Book of Acts reinforces our conviction that the chief priests and Pharisees "feared the people, lest they should have been stoned" (Acts 5:26), and they reproached the disciples of Christ, saying: "Ye ... intend to bring this Man's blood upon us!" (v. 28).

However, personal revenge, malice and envy, and even more so concern for their favorite plan of revolution, which they had worked on, won out. According to the law, they should have released Jesus Christ for want of witnesses (Lk. 22:68), but such was far from their intention, and contrary to the law, they themselves began to search for witnesses, i.e. false witnesses, concerning which the evangelists Matthew (26:56-61) and Mark (14:55-59) speak with particular clarity. John mentions the fact that at the first interrogation the High Priest Annas himself began to question Jesus Christ about His teaching and His disciples, and when the Lord reminded him that it was for others to accuse Him, a soldier struck Him in the face, although the Savior had merely pointed out the requirement of the biblical law. [Cf. the illegal interrogation of Christ by Pilate (Jn. 18:34) and that of the Apostle Paul in the Sanhedrin (Acts 23:1-5).] The three remaining evangelists recount that, wearied by the unsuccessful cross-examination of the perjured witnesses, the judges of Christ, contrary to the law, began themselves to demand of Him that He say whether He considered Himself the Christ, the Son of God. The Lord did not reply, until Caiaphas repeated the question with an oath. Then the Savior answered, but first explained His silence: "If I tell you, you will not believe. And if I also ask you, you will not answer Me, nor let Me go" (Lk. 22: 67-68).

Once, the Lord had asked the Jews: " 'What think ye of the Christ? Whose Son is He?' They said to Him, 'The Son of David.' He said unto them, 'How, then, doth David, in the Spirit, call Him Lord ... ?' And no man was able to answer Him a word, neither dared any man from that day forth ask Him any more questions" (Mt. 22:42-44). Here He would probably have liked to ask them of what Son of man going to God on the clouds of heaven does Daniel speak? However, convinced that He would not receive an answer to the question, the Lord speaks of this already in the affirmative sense: "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven" (Mt. 26:64). These are nearly the literal words of Daniel: "I beheld in the night visions, and, lo, One coming with the clouds of heaven as the Son of man, and He came on to the Ancient of Days, and was brought near to Him. And to Him was given the dominion, and the honor, and the kingdom; and all the nations, tribes and tongues, shall serve Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom shall not be destroyed" (Dan. 7:13-14). Who would have dared accuse the Teacher because He cited the words of the Sacred Scriptures? Yet the chief priests pretended not to recognize in Christ's words a quote from the ancient prophet and played out a scene of sacred indignation, like a man who has listened to blasphemy. The Sanhedrin unanimously condemned the Savior to death, permitting the violation of the law both in the manner in which the interrogation was conducted and in the very qualification of the alleged crime, for the Jews applied that prophecy to the Messiah, despite the fact that they expected Him to come as an ordinary Man Who is made worthy of such glorification; that is why the Lord had to convince Nicodemus that man is never accounted worthy of such glory, because "no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven , even the Son of man Who is in heaven" (Jn. 3:13). If the Jews hoped that the Messiah would be vouchsafed such glory, being simply a man, then wherein would lie the blasphemy if Jesus Christ, Who stood before them in the guise of a man, applied these words to Himself? They could refuse to agree with Him, to maintain that this glory is appointed for another man, but to see blasphemy in words taken from the book of sacred prophecy was possible only for those pretending to forget whence these words were borrowed. And this is exactly what Caiaphas and the entire Sanhedrin did. We have dwelt upon this event in Christ's life to show once more in what strict accord with the teaching of the biblical law He acted and taught, and consequently how foolish is the opinion that the Sanhedrin was convinced that the Savior was a popular revolutionary and violator of the law. The Sanhedrin itself was both, as is, made clear from all the foregoing and as will be made clear in a still more definite manner from the following events which accompany the sufferings of Christ.

Let us begin with the question posed earlier, yet which remains still without explanation: when did the final change of the people's feelings, from favorable disposition to opposition with regard to the Savior, take place? The evangelists Mark and John answer this for us. From the former we learn of something which has not attracted the notice of biblical scholarship. Instructed by the latter, people were accustomed to think that the crowd which stood before Pilate had followed the Sanhedrin and its Victim in, and that the conversation with Pilate was about Christ; but later, when Pilate proposed freeing the Savior for the sake of the Passover, the people would not agree to this, and began to insist that the robber Barabbas be released.

Such an unexpected and pointless joining of the people to the malevolent, accusatory procession with Christ to trial by a pagan, while His very betrayal and preliminary interrogation were conducted at night out of fear of a popular riot (Mt. 26:5; Mk. 14:2), with a similar understanding of the events, remains totally unnatural. In actual fact, the people's sympathy for the Savior continued as far as Friday morning, and the people themselves appeared before Pilate in the praetorium not because they had followed Christ in, but because they were there on other, personal business. This follows from the account of Mark, and if in his Gospel, as in all the first three evangelists, the people's demand that Christ be condemned seems nonetheless unexpected, this is so for the same reason that they leave unexplained why the Savior walked on the water. But we will return to this. How does Mark describe the appearance before Pilate of a crowd of people? He writes that when Pilate's interrogation of Jesus Christ had already begun, at that time "the multitude, crying aloud, began to desire [Pilate] to do as he had ever done for them" (Mk. 15:8), because "at [every] feast he released unto them one prisoner, whomsoever they desired" (v. 6). Thus, the cries of the crowd for the fulfillment of this custom were raised without any relation to the legal case of Jesus Christ. One of three things happened: either those who brought the Savior found in the vicinity of the praetorium a crowd of people who had gathered together to petition in behalf of Barabbas, or the crowd arrived and found the enemies of Christ, with their divine Prisoner, assembled at Pilate's, or both crowds happened to arrive at the same time, but from different places and on different business. One can find an indication of this in the Gospel of St. Matthew. There, the evangelist, describing the interrogation of the Savior and the amazement of Pilate continues: "Therefore, when they were gathered together [i.e., the people, not those who accompanied Jesus Christ], Pilate said unto them, 'Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus, Who is called Christ?' " (Mt. 27:17).

Why was Barabbas so well-loved by the people? Why did they ask Pilate to release him with such insistence? Why was Pilate so reluctant to let him go? The Apostle John, adding details to the brief accounts of the other evangelists, speaks, as is his wont, quite briefly of what in their narratives is set forth more fully: he, for example, passes over in silence the thirty pieces of silver, the false witnesses, Jesus Christ's answer taken from the prophecy of Daniel, Herod, the good thief, et. al. He speaks of Barabbas more briefly than the other Gospels: "Now Barabbas was a robber" (Jn. 18:40).

It is strange that under this simple epithet he has remained in the memory of both the believers and the scholarly commentators. Yet the people do not take the part of simple robbers, but demand stricter punishments for them than the judicial authorities are usually inclined to mete out. Read in the other Gospels words concerning Barabbas which you have not noticed heretofore.

This is what Mark writes: "And there was one named Barabbas, who lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the insurrection" (Mk. 15:71). Luke reports that Barabbas, "for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison" (Lk. 23:19).

Only Matthew limits himself to the short expression: "And they had then a notable prisoner, called Barabbas" (Mt. 27:16).

From these excerpts it is clear in each case that Barabbas was not simply a robber, but a revolutionary, the leader of a gang, a person well-known to the people, who was the instigator of urban revolt. This is why he was the darling of the revolutionary party and of its leadership in particular. Read further in Mark: "But the chief priests stirred up the people, that [Pilate] should rather release Barabbas unto them" (Mk. 15:11).

How rich is the content of these few words which are almost completely ignored by scholarship! It must be admitted that I myself arrived at their meaning only in the fifth decade of my life. Apparent from these words, firstly, is what the Sanhedrin said after the Lord raised Lazarus from the dead, i.e., that the chief priests and Pharisees were taking part in the popular uprising which was in preparation, or rather, were directing it, and that the commentators' notions that they were going to have Christ put to death out of fear of a popular revolt are entirely at variance with historical reality. Secondly, it is clear from this that during these fateful moments the people were not yet against Christ, that they wavered when confronted with a choice between Him and Barabbas, of which one may find an indication in the second speech of the Apostle Peter after the Lord's ascension into heaven and the descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 3:13). It is quite possible that evil men suggested to the people that they might be releasing Jesus Christ as someone innocent of any wrongdoing, but that Pilate was proposing that he release Him to the loving crowd only to avoid releasing Barabbas, the hero of the revolution; in any case, the sympathy of the people for the latter was expressed with considerable insistence, and if the chief priests had to resort to persuasion to convince the crowd to prefer him to Jesus Christ (cf. Mt. 27:20), it is clear how far the people still were from that malicious hatred of the Savior which flared up in a very short time with such dreadful force, even impelling them to call down a curse on themselves and their posterity. The reason for the gradual growth of the latter is explained only by John, and in the accounts of the first three evangelists, especially Matthew and Mark, this speedy change from wavering to rabid enmity remains completely incomprehensible; but their silence concerning this rapid alteration is explained, as we mentioned at the beginning of this article, only by the fact that they were unable to write about it because to make the matter plain would have meant exposing the revolutionary mood of the people and hastening the abolition of their autonomy, which happened after the revolt of A.D. 67 and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. The writer of the fourth Gospel did not have to circumvent this aspect of the events in silence, for his Gospel was written after the destruction of the Jewish realm.

True to his custom of avoiding what the other evangelists had already written, the Apostle John does not even mention what Jesus Christ was accused of by His enemies, but probably presumes that the reader is acquainted with the words of the third Gospel: "And they began to accuse Him (before Pilate], saying, We found this Fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that He Himself is Christ, a King" (Lk. 23:2).

The possibility mentioned is based on the fact that, according to John, Pilate immediately asked Jesus Christ: "Art Thou the King of the Jews?" (Jn. 18: 33). The enemies of Christ knew what sort of accusation would be of the most interest to the Roman procurator, and this is why, in accordance with Jewish custom, they did not stop at that most intentional slander concerning tribute and the subversion of authority, whereas the Savior had brought upon Himself the displeasure of the people, who rejected the latter; and we all know what He said about the legality of paying tribute to the Romans. The Savior's answer that His kingdom is not of this world and what He said about the truth convinced Pilate of His innocence, for even earlier the procurator was aware that they were betraying Christ out of envy (Mk. 15:10). Pilate, however, was apparently annoyed with the Jews and, mocking their revolutionary mood, said unto them: "Will ye, therefore, that I release unto you the King of the Jews?" (Jn. 18: 39). The following verse, as also Mark's narrative, gives one reason to think that the intercession for Barabbas had begun prior to Jesus Christ being brought before Pilate, for that verse reads as follows: "Then cried they all again, saying, Not this Man, but Barabbas!" Why does the word "again" appear here? The evangelist has not mentioned any previous outcry of the people. It must be supposed that the argument over Barabbas had begun earlier, and was later interrupted by the appearance of the Savior's enemies and Himself, which Pilate wanted to use so that, instead of a rebel whom the Roman procurator in no wise wished to have around, he could free the innocent Teacher. In the people's cries in response to this their hostile relationship to the Savior has still not become definite, but only their desire to come to the aid of Barabbas. After this, no further mention of Barabbas is made in the fourth Gospel: apparently Pilate had then already decided to meet the demands of the mob which was sympathetic to the rebel Barabbas, but he also decided to avenge himself on the revolutionary people, ridiculing their idea of a national king who would cast off the yoke of Rome. In this Pilate wished to half-satisfy the feelings of malice of the enemies of Christ, and so, when he heard the cries going up for Barabbas, "then Pilate, therefore, took Jesus, and scourged Him. And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on His head, and they put on Him a purple robe [the one in which Herod had arrayed Him], and said, Hail, King of the Jews! And they smote Him on the cheeks. Pilate, therefore, went forth again, and said unto them, Behold, I bring Him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in Him" (Jn. 19:1-4). Of course from a humanitarian point of view it is terrible to beat a man known to be innocent and to subject him to ridicule; but the prideful and arrogant Roman thought that it would be a mercy for Jesus Christ if, instead of the death sentence demanded by His enemies, He be subjected merely to a beating and mockery which, moreover, would not apply so much to Him as to the autocratic plans of the Jews. Besides, Pilate tried to elicit sympathy for the Victim of the Pharisees' hatred, Who had suffered so much already. "Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said unto them, Behold the Man!" (v. 5).

The procurator probably did not stop to think that the mockery of the people's ideal, the people's yearning for freedom, for the possibility of wreaking vengeance upon the cause of their being oppressed, would be transferred to the One in Whose Person the mockery of their concept of revolution was made. But such is usually the case. However, even at this moment love for Christ and the remembrance of His benefactions had not been utterly wrested from the hearts of the people: the people still wavered. But then, "when the chief priests and officers saw Him, they cried out, saying, Crucify Him, crucify Him!" (v. 6). In these hearts there was no sympathy, and to personal hatred was added the enmity because in His own Person the Wonderworker had allowed heathens to ridicule what they held dearest: before, He had expressed no sympathy for their uprising, but now He was prepared to endure torture rather than defend the honor of the nation and its future kings with a new miracle. Hence the further mockery heaped upon the Savior on Golgotha by the chief priests, scribes, elders and Pharisees, who were incensed by the insult to the nation contained in the inscription on the Cross - "He saved others; Himself He cannot save!" (Mt. 27:41; Mk. 15:31; Lk. 33:35). But still, shouting alone was not enough: new arguments were needed to prevail upon Pilate to agree to the crucifixion of the Savior, the more so since the people were still wavering between their former love and sympathy for Christ and disgust over what they saw before them. Thus, the chief priests, their servants, the Pharisees, whom John calls "the Jews," detaching them from the general understanding of "the people," cited their own law, according to which Jesus had to be killed "because He made Himself the Son of God" (Jn. 19:7). There is, of course, no such law, and we know how the Lord deflected such an accusation earlier (Jn. 10: 34-36); furthermore, the Jews in general thought of the Messiah as the Son of God (Jn. 1:34, 49) - although not as God. But as regards Pilate, such an accusation produced the opposite impression: he "was the more afraid" and, secluding himself with Jesus for several minutes, "from then on Pilate sought to release Him" (Jn. 19:8, 12). However, the Jews, experienced manipulators, knew how they could force Pilate to do what they wanted, and began to hint at the possibility of a denunciation: "If thou let this Man go, thou art not Caesar's friend . . ." (v. 12). Pilate had to recognize the case as a legal action, perhaps as a case of lese-majeste, and he went up and sat in the judgment seat in the place called the Lithostroton (The Pavement); but, hoping to set the matter aright, with three words he destroyed Jesus Christ, crying out to the Jews, "Behold, your King!" (Jn. 19:14). T he procurator's first exclamation, "Behold the Man!", elicited sympathy and was not fatal for all the people; but in these words - "Behold, your King!" - they heard a contemptuous ridicule of their dream: See what I am doing and will do with every great king? Do you despicable people really dream of casting down our great power?!

"But they cried out: Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!" (Jn. 19:15). This was already a general outcry, the cry of the people who were transferring the impotent hatred they felt for Pilate to the One Who, alone out of all of them, was able to prevent such a mockery; but inasmuch as He consented to such a thing, He submitted to it. Yet when Pilate, continuing to mock the people, said: "Shall I crucify your King?" (ibid.), it was not all the people, who in their rage were incapable of dissimulation, but only the chief priests, who excelled in it, who answered, We have no king but Caesar!" (ibid.). Here Pilate again detected a hint of a threat of denunciation, and gave the Savior over to be crucified. However, he did not deny himself the pleasure of wreaking his revenge one more time on the seditious Sanhedrin and the people, and composed in three languages an inscription offensive to them, which he had affixed to the instrument of execution; in vain did the chief priests ask him to change the text of the inscription. Pilate replied: "What I have written, I have written" (Jn. 19:22). Pilate probably did not stop to think that this inscription, irritating the national self-love of the Jews, would deprive them of their last impulses to sympathy and would incite them to new mockeries of the crucified Just One (Mk. 15:32).

This is what the centurion called the Lord when he saw His holy end, and all the people were touched, finally by a certain repentance and returned to their homes, "smote their breasts, and returned" (Lk. 23:48); but this already alarmed the enemies of Christ, and they were afraid that faith in Him Who raised up Lazarus from the dead would not cease with His death, and that if there was cause to believe in His resurrection, that that Faith would spread rapidly among the people. They therefore appeared before Pilate on the Sabbath, and asked permission to set a guard on Christ's tomb for three days and to seal the stone with their own seal.

But the Lord catches the wicked in their wickedness. They could not have done more to insure that the event of Christ's resurrection would become as irrefutable as it did after the soldiers spread their lies, alleging that the body of Christ was stolen by the apostles while they were asleep. Can a sleeping man know what is happening around him? And would they have gone unpunished when, several years later, the sixteen soldiers who kept guard in prison over Peter when he was led out at night by the angel, were executed by Herod?

The inhabitants of Jerusalem placed no credence in the calumny of the Pharisees, and some fifty days after the resurrection of Christ thousands of them began to receive holy Baptism. And even those who decided not to go over to the new Faith treated its followers with reverent love, and especially the disciples of Christ. Apparently no one then believed that they could have stolen the body of their Teacher; they retained the love of all the people (Acts 2:48), and the Sanhedrin, fearing the people, decided not to detain Peter and John in prison after the healing of the lame man (Acts 4:21). The people continued to glorify the Apostles (Acts 5:13); but no outsider dared join them after God's retribution fell upon Ananias and Sapphira, yet from the outlying cities they brought the sick, who were healed through the prayer of the Apostles (Acts 5: 16). Their enemies, the members of the Sanhedrin, were afraid, as we have already seen, that the people! would stone them to death (v. 26).

Perhaps the joyous animation which filled the first Christians would have penetrated deeper and deeper into the Jewish milieu and diverted them from their fanatical revolutionary mood, but the perfidious Pharisees managed to incline the inhabitants of the capital to believe that the Christians were enemies of the law of Moses and the temple. This began from the time of the Archdeacon Stephen, when "they suborned men, who said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses, and against God. And they stirred up the people, and the elders" (Acts 6:11-12), which resulted in the stoning of St. Stephen to death.

Enmity toward the Christians began rapidly to gather strength from the time gentiles began to associate with them and receive Baptism; and even more so when the Apostles Paul and Barnabas went to pagan lands to convert the heathen. The Jews even followed them there and waged an intensive war against Christianity; the latter broke out with particularly dreadful force after Paul's return to Jerusalem after his third journey, when forty men vowed not to eat until they had slain him.

But let us return to the earthly life of the Lord Jesus and to the illegal trial to which He was subjected. It seems that everyone who reads this survey agrees that the reason for the hatred of the Jews for Him was first and foremost His lack of sympathy for the revolution they envisioned, and this revolutionary aspiration, which was weakened for a few days as a result of the resurrection of Lazarus, excited the malice of the Jews against Jesus when they saw Him in the robe of ridicule. Hence, the conclusion is inescapable: Jesus Christ was the victim of the Jewish revolution, appearing to be a counter-revolutionary in the eyes of the seditious. Of course, all of this took place as part of God's providential plan. None of it would have happened if the Lord Himself had not wanted, in accordance with the pre-eternal Counsel, to ascend the Cross, as He even said of Himself (Jn. 10:17-18; 12:27, 32; Lk. 22:22; Mt. 26:54).

But to this basic and principal good reason for Christ's sufferings must also be added the evil human means, such as the treachery of Judas, the envy and vengefulness of the chief priests and Pharisees, and finally, the revolutionary venture which they shared with the people, and which alienated the Jewish people from Christ, prompted them to hate and crucify their Savior, and which has even induced their progeny to remain in unbelief and enmity towards Him until our own times.

Orthodox Life 1985 No. 4

Western Orthodoxy Revisited

2011-08-31T16:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.theanglocatholic.com/2010/03/western-orthodoxy-revisited/

posted by Fr. Anthony Chadwick, March 4, 2010,

on The Anglo-Catholic website

http://www.theanglocatholic.com

I have had to comment on a comment coming from a well-known English priest of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia. It is not my intention to raise any polemics against our Eastern Orthodox brethren, I think it is important for you all to know that attempts to create ‘Anglican-friendly’ structures in Orthodoxy are very different to the concept of the Personal Ordinariates in the Catholic Church.

Here is a scholarly article by Dr. Jean-François Mayer, a researcher at Fribourg University in Switzerland I have known personally. Dr. Mayer himself had become Orthodox after having explored a number of so-called ‘independent Catholic’ churches. I know nothing of his present ecclesial affiliation, but his academic speciality is that of new religious movements, sometimes known as cults and sects and he has a website – Religioscope with articles in French and English.

His position on western Orthodoxy is frankly sceptical, but he seems to give a fair appraisal of the Western Orthodox movement. The translation from theoriginal French version is mine.

-Fr. Anthony Chadwick

* * *

ATTEMPTS AT CREATING

A WESTERN ORTHODOX RITE

Historical outline[1]
by Jean-François Mayer

Religioscope – May 2002

N.B.: This article resumes, with a few updates and the addition of a “sitography”, large extracts from a text named "Must Orthodoxy be Byzantine? Attempts at creating a western Orthodox rite”, published five years ago in a collective work called Regards sur l'Orthodoxie. Mélanges offerts à Jacques Goudet(under the direction of Germain Ivanoff-Trinadtzaty), Lausanne, L'Age d'Homme, 1997, pp. 191-213. Religioscope thanks the publisher Ed. L'Age d'Homme for having authorized this article and takes advantage of the occasion to remind its readers about the considerable production of this firm, and especially its major contribution to publishing Slavonic literature.

Westerners who join the Orthodox Church feel that they are the legitimate heirs of western Christianity of the first millennium. This, however, brings up the question about the ways to find attachments to this heritage: Will this simply be a question of incorporating it as a fundamental spiritual element of Orthodox tradition, or can we try to find the specific practices of an Orthodox West, or even “orthodoxise” western liturgical practices? It is not surprising that some individuals or groups have attempted to find a western Orthodox way with its own rites. Historically, this phenomenon has found itself in interaction with several other developments: the emergence of ecumenical concerns, Anglo-Catholicism, Old Catholicism, the liturgical research movement, the Russian emigration and the Orthodox diaspora in general. We will sketch out a summary of the attempts to create a western Orthodox rite, by endeavouring not to simply repeat already existing studies[2].

Orthodoxy and plurality of rites

Over the most recent centuries, the Orthodox Churches have been confronted by the problem of liturgical plurality. This was against th^e reforms of Patriarch Nikon intended to align Russian practices with those of the Greek Church, which in the 17th century caused the resistance of the Old Believers[3]. From 1800, those Old Believers who returned to the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church were allowed to keep their rite (edinovertsy)[4]. In 1845 and the following years, some tens of thousands of Estonians and Latvians massively joined the Orthodox Church and brought some of their Lutheran usages, specially hymns into parishes specially instituted for them[5]. Even the use of the organ would have been introduced into some Baltic Orthodox churches! In May 1897, 9,000 Nestorians of the Uremia region, with their bishop Jonas, asked to enter the communion of the Russian Church, and the union was solemnly celebrated in Saint Petersbourg in March 1898. Though some Russian clerics were favourable for these converts to keep their rites, in a similar way to Roman Catholic practices in this matter, the Russian missionaries sent to Uremia were rapidly known for their efforts of bringing the Syrian Oriental liturgical heritage of the newly received parishes into line with Russian usage[6].

Finally, we cannot forget that the presence of uniate groups brought the Orthodox Church to face the question of the plurality of rites. Also, some authors consider the foundation of western rite Orthodox communities as “uniatism in reverse” and consider that this experience constitutes “does not so much constitute original creations but rather conjectural and limited borrowings from the Roman model”[7].

It can be said in any case that the Oriental Patriarchs were not at the origin of western rite Orthodox communities: the initiative always came from western individuals or small groups of converts (or candidates for conversion).

The Anglican “Non-Juring” bishops of the 18^th century

The first case of the question being asked of western rite Christians entering into communion was that of the Anglican “Non-Juring” bishops, those who refused to deny their allegiance to James II (1633-1701) — who converted to Roman Catholicism and was overthrown in 1688 — and to swear an oath to William III whilst the Sovereign to whom they had sworn loyalty was still living. Some persevered in their separation after the death of James II and some entered into correspondence with the Oriental Patriarchs in view to exploring the possibilities of union (but not all the Non-Jurors approved this step)[8].

This contact was ^established through the presence in England (from 1712) of an emissary of the Patriarch of Alexandria, Archbishop Arsenios of Thebaide, who received several persons into the Orthodox Church during his stay in England. He was not the first Orthodox cleric to come, and a Greek chapel had been running for some time in London during the last quarter of the 17th century. In 1716, a group of Non-Jurors wrote propositions in view to a “concordat between the Orthodox and Catholic remnant of the British Churches and the Oriental Catholic and Apostolic Church”, then entrusted the text to Archbishop Arsenios. He went to Moscow to take it to Czar Peter the Great, who was interested in the project and gave the document to the Oriental Patriarchs.

Reading the exchange between the Non-Jurors and the authorities of the Orthodox Church[9] reveals a fundamental ecclesiological misunderstanding: the English presented themselves on a footing of agility in view to union and made rash proposals, for example the recognition of the Church Jerusalem as the “true mother Church”. They did not intend to adopt the Orthodox Faith without restriction, but imposed their conditions. For the liturgy, to draw near to the Oriental Patriarchs, they proposed the restoration of the old English liturgy “with appropriate additions and alterations”. They refused to invoke the Mother of God and the Saints, and showed great reticence faced with the veneration of icons. The common response of the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem and Alexandria is without any ambiguity, and immediately emphasizes that the Orthodox Church has always remained faithful to the doctrine of the Apostles. It refuses to open the door to any doctrinal compromise with any kind of Protestantism whatsoever. To stay at the level of the liturgical question, the Patriarchs were very careful: if the union is truly wanted, the customs should not be “entirely foreign and diametrically opposed to each other”, which would introduce a cause for breakdown[10].

“(…) the Oriental Orthodox Church recognizes only one liturgy (…), written by the first Bishop of Jerusalem, James the brother of the Lord, and then abridged on account of its length by the great Father Basil, Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, and then abridged again by John, the Patriarch of Constantinople the Golden Mouthed (…). It is therefore fitting that those who are called the remnant of primitive piety should use it when they will be united with us, so that there should be no point of disagreement between us (…). For the English liturgy, we have no knowledge of it, not having seen or read it. However, we feel some suspicion about it, for the reason of the number and variety of heresies, schisms and sects in this area, fearing that the heretics may have introduced some corruption or deviation into right Faith. It is therefore necessary for us to see and read it. We will then approve it as just or reject it as disagreeing with our immaculate Faith. When we will have considered it thus, if it needs corrections, we will correct it. If possible, we will give it the sanction of an authentic form. However, what need of another liturgy have those who possess the true and sincere liturgy of our divine Father Chrysostome (…)? If those who call themselves the remnant of primitive piety are prepared to receive it, they will be more intimately and closely linked with us.”[11]

Later exchanges of correspondence did not allow the resolution of several points of disagreement, not to mention the interventions of the “official” Anglican Church to discourage the Oriental Patriarchs for pursuing talks with a small group of “schismatics”. The Non-Jurors slowly disappeared.

The passage quoted above shows under which angle, as from the first mention of a possibility of a western rite, this problem was tackled, placing the bishops into a dilemma: they could not absolutely exclude the possibility of a non-Byzantine rite, but they felt potential dangers linked with its adoption at the same time.

The 19th century context

It was n^ecessary to wait until the 19th century for the question to return to the agenda. The historical context was more favourable. In the aftermath of the commotion of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, there was a “growing push for spiritual unity”[12], reinforced by awareness that the growth of impiety was a threat for all believers. Thus, in 1857, some German bishops took the initiative of an association to pray for unity between “Greeks” and “Latins”, and the Baron of Haxthausen wrote to Metropolitan Philaret to try to convince him to launch a similar initiative in Russia[13].

There was a growing interest in England for the Church and the Orthodox Liturgy, which later resulted in initiatives in view to drawing together. The “Apostles” of the “Catholic Apostolic” Church (the “Irvingite” movement), which came into being in the England of the 1830’s, took on considerable liturgical work based on a study of different existing traditions, and drew up a Eucharistic rite “of Roman for, English language and Oriental ethos — including a certain number of direct borrowings from oriental liturgies”[14].

The Old Catholic movement, from the reaction against Vatican I, affirmed since the Congress of Munich of 1871 that it aspired to re-establish union with the “Greek Church” the eucharistic rite published in 1880 by Bishop Edward Herzog (Switzerland) incorporated the epiclesis, but placed it before the words of institution[15]. For both national and Christian reasons, General Alexander Kireeff (1832-1910) devoted nearly forty years of reconciliation efforts between the Orthodox Church and the Old Catholics, seeing in the latter a “Western Orthodox Sister Church” with which there was no dogmatic difference and whose hierarchy was considered as valid[16].

There was also a greater openness to the western approaches from the Russian Church, usually the main interlocutor at this time[17]. The reports of the procurator of the Holy Synod show the attention given manifestations of sympathy for the Orthodox liturgical traditions in the Anglican Church (it was noted that, apart from the translations of the liturgical texts, several Anglican parishes began “gradually to introduce our liturgical chant”)[18] and the concern to provide means for non-Orthodox to approach the Church, as much in Russia as in other countries[19]. Finally, w^e should not forget the cases of conversions to the Orthodox Church in the west during the 19th century. That of Father Wladimir Guettée (1816-1892) is one of the best known[20], but there were others.

A pioneer of the western rite: J.J. Overbeck

Among these converts, a figure stands out, who made a golden thread of the western rite in the Orthodox Church throughout his life: Julian Joseph Overbeck (1821-1905), of German origin, ordained a Catholic priest in 1845, went over to Protestantism in 1857 and went to England the same year, where he devoted himself to publishing Syrian manuscripts (especially the texts of Saint Ephraim the Syrian), then officially received into the Orthodox Church in London in 1869[21]. A revealing detail: he would have wanted to take this step from 1865 and himself dates his decisive encounter with Orthodox tradition from this time. However, according to some sources, he would first of all have wanted to obtain the recognition of his Western Orthodox Church plan, and this led him to defer his formal decision[22].

From his conversion until his death, he remained of an indefectible loyalty — despite the disappointments felt in relation to the realization of some projects. His ecclesiology refuses any “branch theory”:

“The Orthodox Church is unquestionably the Church of undivided Christianity, for she rests on the seven Ecumenical Synods (…). It was also true that the Church of undivided Christianity was exclusively the authentic Catholic Church, to the exclusion of any other. The Orthodox Church is also the only and unique Catholic Church, to the exclusion of any other.

“Neither the Roman Church nor the Protestant denominations (to which the Anglican Church belongs) can pretend to be the Catholic Church or parts of it. They are nothing other that heterodox bodies and are outside the Church.”[23]

It is this very logic that justifies the re-establishment of a western rite Orthodox Church in Overbeck’s view: even though the notions of “Oriental Church” and “Orthodox Church” provisionally coincide, they are not identical or synonyms. He refused any idea of “orientalizing” western converts and showed his critical attitude towards another convert, Timothy (Stephen) Hatherly (1827-1905), who tried to set up a Byzantine Rite Orthodox parish for British converts. Overbeck’s plan to restore the Western Orthodox Church was entirely something else:

“ How can we transform the present heterodox Western Church into an Orthodox Church and thus make it like, in essentials, as its was before the schism? – Reject everything that is heterodox in Roman Catholic teaching and book, and you will have, in the essentials, the Western Catholic Orthodox Church of before the schism.”[24]

Overbeck’s idea was therefore to undertake a task of purifying the existing western rites: we will see this idea reappear several times. In his enthusiasm and energy, Overbeck, freshly received into the Orthodox Church, did not consider it necessary first of all to go ahead with completely revising the liturgical texts to begin the foundation of a western rite Orthodox community: he promised the Russians that no more than two months were needed! Indeed, once the OrdoMissae was revised (a task already undertaken by Overbeck), it would have been enough to revise the mobile parts progressively throughout the year. The administration of the Sacraments could be provisionally according to the oriental rite. Overbeck emphasized the pastoral importance of this work: in his opinion, parishes using the local language but the oriental rite would never bring in more than a handful of converts, “whilst thousands would flock to the Western Orthodox Church, because it corresponds more with their being and western nature”[25]. His “Western Catholic-Orthodox Liturgy of the Mass”, published in Latin and English in London towards 1871[26], essentially follows the Roman Rite, but adds a Byzantine-style epiclesis.

Overbeck dreamed of the day when each nationality would have its national Catholic-Orthodox Church, as in the oriental countries, based on a common Catholic doctrine and the holy canons[27]. At one time, he believed Old Catholicism would be the vehicle of these hopes, and thought he could discern a movement of a greater importance that would go beyond the Protestant Reformation in this reaction against Roman abuses[28]. However, he was not unaware of the Old Catholics’ hesitations to take the final step[29]. A few years later, Overbeck had lost all his illusions about the potential offered by the Old Catholic movement, which had fatally delayed the realization of his own plans. He denounced their indifferentism, having underestimated the dogmatic differences[30]. Far from accepting all the dogmas of the Orthodox Church without reserve, the Old Catholics were unfortunately nearer to the Anglican “branch theory”. Rather than follow the advice of Overbeck, who suggested that the Old Catholics should leave the Anglicans out of it, they wanted to include the Anglicans in their discussions with the Orthodox. This brought Old Catholicism increasingly to assimilate itself to Anglicanism[31].

Faced with this failure, Overbeck felt forced to pursue his solitary combat for the creation of a western rite Orthodox Church, based on a petition he wrote in 1867 and sent, bearing several tens of signatures, to the Holy Synod of the Russian Church in September 1869: “We are Westerners and must remain Westerners.”[32] Overbeck emphasized the loyalty of the petitioners, who had never held separate religious services, but always attended those of the Greek and Russian parishes, in the hope that their waiting would be answered. The years went by and the group dispersed little by little[33].

The authorities of the Russian Church were seriously interested in Overbeck’s plan, which enjoyed a real esteem. However, for many reasons, especially the obviously unpromising perspectives and very strong resistance from the Greek Church, the Holy Synod finally decided to abandon the project in 1884. However, as Florovsky underlined, “the question brought up by Overbeck was pertinent »[34]. His position was awkward for those who dreamed of “reconciliation between the Churches”. This element must often be considered to make a correct interpretation of the background of reactions that later accompanied other attempts to establish western rite Orthodox communities.

Russian Theologians and the Episcopalian Rite

A commission of Russian theologians had again to look into the question of the western rite in 1904, following questions asked by the future Patriarch Tikhon (who was then ministering in the United States) to know if he could authorize the use of the Episcopalian rite (American Prayer Book) if a whole American parish went over to the Orthodox Church.

The theologians consulted revealed ambiguity around some fundamental doctrines in these texts. They emphasized that it was not only necessary to be attentive to their content, but also the ecclesial context in which they were written. As they examined the doubtful points in turn, the commission noted that some rites (that of ordination for example) were not expressly non-Orthodox, but could contain “indirect indications” showing that they rested “on a different dogmatic basis”[35]. From now onwards, the “latent inadequacies” of the rite could not be authorized without correction.

“When a rite has been compiled with the special intention of adapting it to Protestant beliefs, it would not be unreasonable, before admitting its use, to subject it to a special revision in the opposite sense.”[36]

“The examination of the Book of Common Prayer leads to the overall conclusion that what it contains presents comparatively little material clearly contradicting Orthodox teaching and would therefore not be admissible in Orthodox worship. This conclusion, however, is not derived from the notion of the book being really Orthodox, but simply that it was compiled in a spirit of compromise and that, cleverly avoiding the doctrinal points to be discussed, it attempts to reconcile truly contradictory tendencies. It would follow that those who professed Protestantism and their opponents could both use it in good conscience.” [37]

To allow their use by ex-Anglican converts, these texts should firstly be revised in the spirit of the Orthodox Church. The commission also recommended that the clergy should be received with a fresh conditional ordination. The question seems at any rate to have remained theoretical and not to have been applied to date.

Western Rite Communities in the United States

During the 20^th century, there were in the United States several cases of attempting to set up western rite Orthodox communities, both in the jurisdiction of traditional Orthodox Churches and in a “wildcat” and non-canonical form. Some of these communities ended up by being received into an Orthodox jurisdiction. One of these cases was the Society of Saint Basil, which came into being indirectly through the action of Bishop Aftimios Ofiesh (1880-1966), who in 1917 became Bishop of Brooklyn and head of the Syrian mission within the jurisdiction of the Russian Church in America. An act signed in 1927 by Metropolitan Plato and several other Russian bishops in America charged Bishop Aftimios to establish the foundations of an autonomous American Church, not linked to ethnic origins, and above all designed for American-born and English-speaking people. However, the time was hardly right, with all the troubles in the Russian Church. Bishop Aftimios ended up by marrying in 1933[38].

He has consecrated several persons, among whom William A. Nichols, who in 1931 was at the origin of the Society of Saint Basil. This was later directed by Alexander Turner, who succeeded in getting the group received into the Antiochian jurisdiction in the United States in 1961 as a western rite community. Indeed, as from 1958, with the approval of Patriarch Alexander III of Antioch, Metropolitan Anthony Bashir authorized the use of the western rite in North America[39].

We cannot say there was a mass movement towards the western rite in the United States, partly because of the reticence of most of the bishops. Towards 1970, if the Syrian Archdiocese firmly continued to support it by explaining that oriental liturgical practice was “foreign to everything known by western Christians”, voices like Father Alexander Schmemann on the contrary feared that spreading the western rite could “dangerous multiply spiritual adventures, examples of which we have seen all too often in the past, and can only hinder the true progress of Orthodoxy in the West”[40].

However, alongside the parishes of the Antiochian jurisdiction, the Russian Synod in Exile, despite misadventures that were still fresh in France (we will come back to this later), had established three western rite parishes in 1968, with Archpriest George Grabbe as their Dean. These parishes had adopted the old calendar, and a commission had been established by the Synod to define guidelines for the use of the western rite. Talking to the faithful of the western rite parish of Greenwich (Connecticut) in November 1968, Father George Grabbe explained in what spirit they should go ahead:

“(…) the West has been separated from Orthodoxy for so many centuries. Life is not static. It is development and growth. This is why it is impossible to return mechanically to forms of Christian life that existed in the West more than a thousand years ago, when it was still Orthodox. To express Orthodoxy again, the western forms must be enriched by the heritage of the centuries of uninterrupted tradition in the life of the Orthodox Church. It experience (…) must become your experience and be incorporated into western liturgical forms.”[41]

As often in the experience of the western rite, it also proved to be short-lived. In 1974, in the whole of America, there remained only two western rite parishes under canonical Orthodox jurisdiction, both with the Antiochians[42].

How is it that the movement today is booming, to the point of counting some thirty parishes in North America in 1996?[43] Paradoxically we need to look for the reasons in the original religious denominations of the converts, mainly coming from the Episcopalian or Roman Catholic ranks, and reacting against the liturgical (and sometimes doctrinal) upheavals in their communities. As Father Paul Schneirla, head of the Western Rite Vicariate in the Antiochian Archdiocese, recognizes, “we are not conducting a proselytism program, but we represent an option for those who have already rejected the changes in their old denomination”[44].

The liturgical practice represents a “theologically corrected form of worship previously used by the Roman Catholic Church or the Anglican Communion”.[45]We remain in the line of Overbeck’s attempts in the 19^th century or the suggestions made by the 1904 commission of theologians. The recent edition of the missal published by the Western Rite Vicariate contains two liturgies: the “Mass according to the Rite of Saint Tikhon” and the “Mass according to the Rite of Saint Gregory”[46]. These are symbolic patronages: the first is a revision of the Anglican rite, and the second is an adapted Tridentine Mass, close to the version proposed by Overbeck. Apart from a few details, a Roman Catholic would find the pre-conciliar liturgy, but celebrated in English[47]. This pure and simple resuming of a western rite with a few adapted elements avoids the arbitrary nature of a liturgical reconstruction, but also implies the de facto incorporation of post-schism elements. It is revealing that the imagery used in the Vicariate’s publications is often borrowed from medieval or neo-gothic engravings.

Father Alexey Young, an American priest who collaborates in several Orthodox periodicals asked in 1989 to be received into the Western Rite Vicariate of the Antiochian Archdiocese after having ministered for years in a parish of the Russian Church in Exile. He was sensitive to the missionary possibilities that seemed be to opening up and a form of “re-appropriation” of his own western heritage”[48]. In June 1996, he resigned from the western rite parish where he served, and asked to return to the jurisdiction of the Russian Church in Exile. He explained:

“I began to like the western rite and understand its authentic pre-schism spirituality and its viable character for our time. (…) However, I am now leaving the western rite movement – not because I don’t like the rite, but because I believe the movement itself within the Antiochian Archdiocese has failed. Of course, it continues to grow numerically (…). However, quantity does not ensure quality, and the direction of this movement has been largely ineffective. In many cases, our western rite clergy and faithful have not been adequately instructed, prepared or guided. They do not understand the spirit of Orthodoxy or even their own pre-schism western heritage. In moist cases, they sought union with the Orthodox Church above all to preserve a rite that had been abolished in the Church to which they formerly belonged. This is not an adequate reason to become Orthodox, and this is not a sufficient justification for a Church to accept them.”[49]

Apart from the thirty American parishes, a few western rite parishes in the Antiochian jurisdiction saw the day in the United Kingdom. They originated in an initiative called Pilgrimage to Orthodoxy. In June 1993, some twenty Anglican clerics met to examine the “Orthodox option”, faced with increasingly clear threats of the ordination of women in the Church of England. Some were drawn to the Byzantine Rite, others to the western rite. They contacted the Patriarchate of Antioch (which had made it known that it would not be opposed to receiving British western rite communities[50]) and, in May 1995, Bishop Gabriel Saliby (vicar of the Patriarch of Antioch in western Europe) went ahead with the diaconal ordination of a first western rite cleric. This initiative seems to have remained without much impact.

Recreating a pre-schism liturgy? The Catholic-Orthodox Church of France

Until now, we have given attention to attempts at purifying a Roman or Anglican rite. The allusion made above in regard to the Celtic rite indicates another possible way, and indeed followed by some partisans of an Orthodox western rite: attempt to find a direct link, going back centuries, to the pre-schism Orthodox heritage. Guettée already worked on a restoration of a Gallican Liturgy, which would have been celebrated in 1875 at the Academy of theology of Saint Petersbourg (without this initiative coming to anything). The most major and known attempt was born in France, within the Catholic Orthodox Church of France (ECOF).

We do not wish to go into its history, which has been told several times[51], but it is necessary to bring a few stages of this liturgical and ecclesial adventure to mind. The birth of the ECOF resulted from the conjunction of two currents: a group of dissident French Catholics looking for their roots and the will of a few Russians to resurrect the Orthodox tradition in the west.

The first current grouped around Irénée (Louis-Charles) Winnaert (1880-1937)[52], a Catholic priest who left the Roman Church in the aftermath of the Modernist crisis and, having served a few other communities, set up a small independent Catholic Church, but suffered from his isolation.

The second was the Confraternity of Saint Photius, founded in 1925 by eight young emigrated Russians who, far from weeping in the exile, wanted to take advantage of it to proclaim the universality of the Orthodox Church and affirm that “each people, each notion has its personal right in the Orthodox Church, its autocephalous canonical constitution, the safeguard of its customs, its rites, its liturgical language”. It this spirit, the Confraternity set up a “commission for France” from its first year of existence, that envisaged the question of the western liturgy in its different forms[53].

Bishop Winnaert and representatives from the Saint Photius Confraternity entered into relations in 1927. This was followed by a series of contacts with Orthodox hierarchs, with the support of the Saint Photius Confraternity. This resulted in the decree of Metropolitan Sergius of Moscow of 16^th June 1936 accepting the little community and allowing it to keep the western rite (a modified Roman Rite). Article 4 of the decree states: “However, the texts of the services must be progressively purged from expressions and thoughts that would be inadmissible for Orthodoxy ». Article 9 says “the parishes united with the Orthodox Church, using the western rite, shall be designated as the Western Orthodox Church”. The clergy shall wear western liturgical vestments, but may use oriental vestments when they take part in oriental rite Orthodox services.

The little community was received into the Orthodox Church in 1937, whilst Bishop Winnaert was already seriously ill. He died shortly afterwards, having asked for the priestly ordination of one of the members of the Saint Photius Confraternity, Eugraph Kovalevsky (1905-1970), to ensure the future of theWestern Orthodox Church (which was later named the Orthodox Church of France). Eugraph Kovalevsky became a bishop in 1964 under the name of Jean de Saint-Denis. In the line of the aspirations already shown in the Saint Photius Confraternity, he undertook liturgical research to try to rediscover pre-schism western rites and celebrated the Liturgy according to the Ancient Rite of the Gauls in Paris in May 1945.

Even before the war, there was a rupture in the budding western rite group. Father Lucien Chambault (1899-1965, who later became a monk under the name of Denis), rector of the parish left by Bishop Winnaert, came into conflict with Father Eugraph Kovalevsky. He wanted to hold onto a revised Roman rite. He then founded a Benedictine-inspired priory in Paris. There were some faithful (even more considering that Father Denis had acquired a reputation as a healer and an exorcist, which brought him many visitors! [54]), but was unable to keep a stable community of the monks who came to live with him. The western rite parish survived for only two years after the death of Father Denis. According to the observations of Archimandrite Barnabas (Burton), who spent two years as a novice in this community (1960-1962), the western eucharistic rite celebrated “apparently resembled a Catholic Mass in French, and many Catholics came to the chapel for that reason[55].

The experience led by Eugraph Kovalevsky went in another direction. It still continues, despite many upheavals that marks its existence: rupture with the Patriarchate of Moscow in 1953, a short time in the Russian Exarchate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1953-1954, followed by a desert pilgrimage for several years out of any canonical obedience and without a bishop, then an attachment to the Russian Church in Exile in 1959. This was followed in 1966 by another period of independent existence, resulting in the reception of the ECOF into the Patriarchate of Romania in 1972 and the consecration of a new bishop, Father Gilles Bertrand-Hardy, under the name of Germain de Saint-Denis, to succeed the first deceased bishop. Finally they broke with Bucharest in 1993, bringing the ECOF again outside any canonical framework at the time of writing. Furthermore, recently and for serious reasons, many ECOF clerics found they had no choice other than to leave their bishop. The question of their future integration, to our knowledge, is not yet resolved at the time of revising this text (May 2002).

We will not go into a discussion of the reasons that led to these successive ruptures, mentioned in literature of a polemical style. It suffices to state that the main cause does not seem to be the choice of the western rite in itself, but rather various disciplinary questions and other problems that do not need to be mentioned here.

The enterprise of re-creating an western rite in France did not only attract western converts, but aroused the interest of the Russian emigration, which felt that their exile should be the occasion of bringing something to the West.

Father Eugraph was not the only one to undertake such enterprises in those years. A bishop of the Patriarchate of Moscow in France, Bishop Alexis van der Mensbrugghe, who had actively collaborated in the liturgical work of the Orthodox Church of France before taking his distance, published his restoration of the western rite — not only the Gallican rite, but also the Pre-Celestinian Italic rite (the western rite tradition including these two fundamental variants: Gallican and Italic), for, “in all its historical probity, the Gallican rite, though it is more archaic in its first ritual foundation and it its type of euchology, cannot be imposed in Italy”[56]. Bishop Alexis van der Mensbrugghe himself celebrated this liturgy in Italian parishes, wearing western vestments, but nothing seems to have remained of his efforts.

His liturgical work concerns all the services, and not only the eucharistic rite[57]. Father Eugraph called the liturgy according to the ancient Gallic rite the Liturgy of Saint Germanus of Paris, for the letters of that bishop of the 6^th century, discovered in the 18^th century, represent a precious document for knowing about the ancient Gallic rite[58]. Of course, “the liturgy of the Gallican rite celebrated in France during the first millennium and replaced by the Roman liturgy after the reform of Charlemagne has not come down to us in the form of a complete text.”[59] In the work of restoration undertaken, the western texts have been enriched by some oriental origin elements[60]. The partisans of the ECOF esteem that this would in no case constitute eclectism (the ECOF has several times been accused of going in for “liturgical creation”), but a legitimate compenetration of rites. It is in poetical language that Father Eugraph described the method used to bring the joy of this day into Easter Matins, so marked in Orthodox celebrations:

“Easter Matins in our churches faithfully follow the sober and restrained structure of the Latin rite with its three nocturnes. However, like three petals of a flower thoughtfully folded in on itself, under the action of the joy of the eternal Spring of the Resurrection and as struck by the rays of the sun, the three Latin nocturnes burst forth, blossom and give hospitality to the divinely inspired bees, to the hyms of Byzantium.”[61]

Apart from the symbolic manifestation of such an initiative, why was there a decision to restore a rite rather than choose the Byzantine Rite or the “orthodoxized” Roman Rite? The members of the ECOF answer that the first “has never been celebrated as an organic local rite in western Europe” and would therefore represent “a foreign introduction without roots”. For the second, it is presented in a form that was fixed by the Council of Trent and modified by the successive reforms of the Sovereign Pontiffs, and adopting it would bring them to fall “into a replica of uniatism”[62]. As for accusations of “archaeological reconstructions”, the ECOF replies that it is rather the “rebirth of a latent tradition of the undivided Church which, from the first bishops of Gaul and through some liturgical currents (monastic and others), was providentially revived by the encounter with Orthodox tradition”.

« Practically, it is a question of a new influx of the wealth of the Byzantine Rite and rediscovered Gallican texts into the liturgical structures originating in France and now perfectly capable of being scientifically re-established (…). This is the indispensable and natural procedure for an native Church.”[63]

Orthodoxy and Celtism

The ECOF does not represent the only contemporary attempt at restoring or (re) creating a western rite, but the others happened in the fringes of the Orthodox world. We can especially mention the Patriarchate of Glastonbury and the Celtic Orthodox Church in France. The lives of these two bodies were linked for years and up to a recent date. Claiming the spiritual heritage of an ex-Dominican, Jules Ferette, who would have been consecrated in 1866 as Bishop of Iona by a Jacobite prelate, the group decided in 1944 to “restore the Gallican liturgical rites of western Europe”, the structure of which was not Roman “ and which had much in common with the oriental liturgies.”

“The Glastonbury rite does not pretend to be a reconstruction of any specific Gallican rite, for this would be impossible seeing the many Gallican formularies exist only in the state of fragments or in a Romanized form. The compilers have therefore delved into all the Gallican rites, and where additions were necessary (mostly from the Byzantine rite), have preserved the Gallican ethos and conserved its customs and structures even though the precise words were from another origin.”[64]

Called the “Liturgy of Saint Joseph of Arimathia”, the Glastonbury rite claims to be a neo-Gallican rite in the same category as the “Liturgy of Saint Germanus of Paris”[65]. In France, the Celtic Orthodox Church, then in the British Patriarchate jurisdiction, also published liturgical texts of the “Celtic” or “neo-Celtic”. The source of this group is in the action of Mar Tugdual, in the world Jean-Pierre Danyel (1917-1968), received into the Orthodox Church of France in 1949, then who went his way in the “independent church” world, from 1955 living an eremitical life in Brittany and cultivating a Celtic spirituality — he was canonized by the Celtic Church in August 1996.

It would be too lengthy here to explain the events of attempts to restore a Celtic Orthodox Church. The Patriarchate of Glastonbury no longer exists, since its Bristish Metropolitan was received with some of his priests and faithful into the Coptic Church in 1994. At this occasion, the diocese abandoned the Glastonbury rite and, bringing projects already begun to a conclusion sooner than expected, adopted the Liturgy of Saint James with the blessing of the Coptic Patriarchate[66]. The group in Brittany and the other communities formerly in the Glastonbury jurisdiction, however, remain independent.

Among the attempts to restore ancient rites, we should briefly mention another attempt to restore the Celtic rite on the basis of the Stowe Missal (considered by specialists as the most important document for the study of this rite), on the initiative of Father Kristopher Dowling, who heads a western rite parish in Akron (Ohio)[67].

The Saint Hilarion Monastery in Austin (Texas) has restored the Use of Sarum, celebrated in England before the schism, and publishes very polished editions of the liturgical texts[68]. It is to be noted that this group, with parishes also in England and Serbia, has adopted the Julian calendar.

Conclusion

Without giving any judgment, since the purpose of this panorama is simply to inform, what conclusion can we draw from all these efforts? As a “mobilizing myth”, the ideal of a western Orthodox rite is not lacking in attractiveness. We will without doubt continue to observe attempts in this way, and we cannot exclude the possibility of one of them really finishing up by taking root and remaining. However, this should not hide another reality, in a greater number, that of a slow but growing development of Byzantine rite parishes, in spite of the extreme affirmations of a few western rite partisans, who adhere to a kind of liturgical nationalism as they say that the establishment of the Byzantine Rite would be “an impossibility, an aberration”[69]: “The oriental rite, foreign to France’s spiritual way, is without profound action and can even give the effect of a narcotic, or a kind of toxin.”[sic!][70] The Byzantine Rite has been marked by the oriental context in which it matured, but that does not seem to present an insurmountable obstacle.

A plurality of rites would also raise the question of the rite to be used in missionary contexts, outside the western world. Local Byzantine Rite communities have emerged in Africa and Bengal, as in other parts of the world. If the western rite became more widely accepted, must it be reserved only for western origin populations, or could its missionary expansion be envisaged? In the context of globalization, the Byzantine Rite seems destined to impose itself increasingly as a universal rite. This does not exclude national inflexions to some practices or the development of particular characteristics in harmony with the spirit of the Orthodox tradition as time goes on and following a natural movement within the local Church.

It is not sure that this would suffice to remove the accumulated dust of a few centuries to find the Orthodox tradition. This indeed supposes more than a confession of Orthodox faith. It does not suffice for High-Church Anglicans or Old Catholics to delete the Filioque in the Creed, recognize only the Ecumenical Councils of the first millennium and hang icons in their churches to become ipso facto Orthodox, as the experience of more than a century shows.

At a theoretical level, most Orthodox bishops would without doubt admit the possible legitimacy of other rites. In practice, so many fundamental questions and experience bring most of them to remain reticent or hostiles to the practice of the western rite in their dioceses[71].

Jean-François Mayer

Various Notes on Rocor History

2011-08-24T15:39:00.001-07:00

Parent Post

http://remnantrocor.blogspot.com/2011/08/st-philaret-opposed-western-rite.html

original Russian

http://www.portal-credo.ru/site/?act=news&id=7758&type=view

Google translation

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.portal-credo.ru%2Fsite%2F%3Fact%3Dnews%26id%3D7758%26type%3Dview

This is a machine translation of the first part of a 2003 Portal Credo interview with Bp. Gregory Grabbe's daughter. The part in red below indicates that St. Philaret was against the western rite experiment in France.

February 18, 2003

INTERVIEW: "With the saints to live - do not let my God." On the history and personalities of the ROCOR - AG Shatilova, daughter of Bishop Gregory Grabbe

Anastasia G. Shatilova - a living witness of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Her father - Archpriest George Grabbe - was an associate of Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitski), the first primate of the ROCOR. For many years he was first in protoiereyskom and then a bishop - as Bishop Gregory - was secretary of the Holy Synod of ROCOR. Our correspondent talked to the AG Shatilova, who told many interesting stories that shed light on the history of the Russian Orthodox emigration, relations with the Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate and other churches.

On the first years of the ROCOR and the "glorification of Hitler"

Portal-Credo.Ru: Tell us about the activities of the Church Abroad in Serbia and Belgrade.

Anastasia Bonner: Metropolitan Anthony of Karlovci lived in the Patriarchate. He was given three rooms. One of them, the huge, and was the dining room and reception area. Another was in secret, the third - the bedroom. To him often visited Patriarch Barnabas, who loved and respected the Metropolitan, was his student. But, unfortunately, many MPs' blood spoiled "is not so much the Metropolitan, as my father. They always put pressure on Patriarch then, that he has neutralized the Metropolitan. Pope had sometimes very serious talk with the Patriarch that they are giving us autonomy greatly interfere in our internal affairs. Serge strongly sought to have not considered with Metropolitan Anthony. When the synod moved to Belgrade, the era of the Metropolitan Anastasia. There was already a little easier. Despite the fact that Metropolitan Anastasius too was very high, he did not have the enormous weight against the whole universal Church, which was at the Metropolitan Anthony. Therefore, in our case is less interfered. But the Patriarch was incredibly attentive to the Lord Antony. And when the Lord died, the patriarch immediately came to him in Belgrade and was there until his death. The funeral service was performed in the Serbian Cathedral, attended by about a hundred priests.

- And on what did he die?

- For a gastric illness, did not know what it represents. But it was quite patristic death. He died in full consciousness. The Patriarch asked him whether he fears death. Replied: "None." And his last words were: "Thank you, Fyodor, for everything." Fyodor had his cell-attendant.

- Probable, then it was believed that in Russia these "riots" not for long, and soon all be over?

- Of course, nobody thought that this revolution can keep their power and eighty years. After the Soviet Union officially recognized only in the 39th year. Prior to that, even the Serbian government did not recognize him.

- Do you remember any talk of Russia in the 30s?

- Of course, we all watched the events. At the Synod of up to 37-year bond was one kegebistom. However, systematic connection, of course, was not. Still, it was a closed country. Something learned in Romania, something in Bulgaria ...

- Tell me a story about supposedly laudatory letter to Hitler.

- I'll tell you what it was. Bishop Tikhon of Berlin bought a building that would be as flat and at the same time, have a church there. The plan was very good, but required a rework of the building and, of course, financial costs, of which he was not. This building became interested in the Ministry of Labour and decided to buy it. At that time, Stalin denounced churches, but Hitler did not want to make it known that he used the church building. Then the government proposed that they will land in Berlin, where the temple would be built partly on the resources of the diocese and in part by Government funds. This temple is very big and majestic stands in a very beautiful place in Berlin. This is the first Russian church in the capital in the history of Germany. What remained for the Synod to do this? The consecration of the temple was so grand that some of the patriarchs have sent delegates, and those who are unable to attend, sent greetings to the Synod. It was a common Orthodox event! Metropolitan came to the consecration. A small Russian colony, who was there, Hitler had already prepared an address where it was painted and painted. Metropolitan read it and was unhappy. But the problem was that the text of this address colony already sent by ministries and government agencies. Something to change was impossible. So Metropolitan is simply placed before the fact.

- Now this address, and charged with the Church Abroad, which she supported Hitler.

- Yes, but this story was so ridiculous that the church life of this address was never published. I wanted to see him at least and so wrote to Berlin two people who I know were related to the office, asking me to get this same address. They told me that they do not. Of course, this address was too "flowery" form, but not to thank you for this gift, it would be improper.

- Yes.

- Especially because he was perceived by the entire Orthodox world at the time. Synod received a lot of congratulations, greetings.

- And how to further develop the event began when the Germans had already began to suffer defeat?

- Even with Metropolitan Seraphim of Berlin, which, incidentally, also criticized the Germans demanded that he would not let so-called "ostarbaytov" (working from the east) to the church. He said: "I have to call people to church, and not to drive. But if you want to put their picket lines - please place. But I deny nothing will." And so the Germans did nothing. But then this temple was quickly captured by the Moscow Patriarchate.

- I wanted to ask you more about the sects of Plato and Eulogy.

- It was also planned, because Plato, on the one hand, it wanted to achieve autocephalous, but on the other hand, all the while deceiving Cathedral. He said that he needed to deal with the laity, which in America is very independent, but really, it just "hammered" autocephalous. Eulogy fell immediately into the hands of the Masons. In fact, this one most evlogiansky Theological Institute - is to create a Eulogy. Metropolitan Anthony is very upset because it was his soul mate Eulogy and even student. They were friends. In the beginning, in the 35th year when it arranged the meeting, Eulogy has signed the document, but, on arrival in Paris forced him to abandon the Masons. All this was aimed at something to win over Orthodox Church Outside of two major parts. The formal reason for refusal was the fact that their report at the Council removed the item from the second to the third or fourth. That is such an occasion was found to leave and slam the door.

The bishops of the ROCOR, anathema to ecumenism, and the life of the Church Abroad

- And His Eminence was here, in Russia?

- No, he did not go to Russia. It was a different story. His whole family was in the ROC for decades.

- In what country?

- In Canada. He was the first who was in the Orthodox Church. Hilarion filed a petition to the Academy of St. Petersburg or Moscow, I do not remember. He was admitted, could only find a place where he will live. But when he arrived, told him to go in Jordanville in seminary. But, as you seem to have little difference between the Academy and Seminary?

- I do not know, I think that in Jordanville, perhaps better taught in the seminary.

- Even when Metropolitan Filaret has been talk that the government will close the seminary, because even a high enough level to college.

While studying at the seminary, he became Bishop Averky cell attendant, who "gave" two languages at once - it's too much, he said. And, since he was a member of the Synod, he has always lay all the protocols of the paper. My father had already started complaining that somewhere is leaking information. Unfortunately, could not determine where. Most likely it was from the Hilarion, because then he made a sack and an archive, and archive in the synodal he worked serving MP. What it can be expected?

- And could you elaborate how to make an anathema to ecumenism?

- Of course, it was discussed at the council, but in the minutes of the discussion there. This anathema has been drafted in Boston monastery, translated the Lord Alipov, then Chicago. But, since he knew enough English, I had to adjust its translation into Slavic. Then, at the councils did not use tape as it is now, and three or four bishops made their records each. And then the lord of this Gregory was one protocol, and then I typed it. In this case, perhaps on purpose, no record of ecumenism was not. Secretaries were then Archbishop Paul, Hilarion, and Mark. And most importantly - my father. It is possible that they simply did not give him the text. Because of their records I had not seen. And yet, so it was all officially, in 1997, they referred to the same ruling council of ecumenism.

- Of course. Their signatures were under anathema?

- Yes, of course there were.

- And how to Metropolitan Filaret himself belonged to the heterodox and ecumenism?

- For non-Orthodox, he is very well regarded. As a human being is very good. It is not necessarily to treat them badly!

- Of course, I think so too. Still, Metropolitan Filaret was able to insist on his own.

- Of course. But with all these riots, which were both before and during his reign, he complained that he had nothing to do with bishops there. He has repeatedly said that he alone is to retire.

- Why did he not go? He still knew that then it will be a different course?

- I think so. They had different views.

- In what sense?

- Even on the question of ecumenism. Anthony of Geneva was a strong ecumenical, at what could be a big boor. He wrote several letters to Metropolitan rather boorish!

- How to react to this metropolitan?

- Very serious. My father tried to calm and reconcile both sides, because Anthony of Geneva was still second only to the Metropolitan by seniority.

- Maybe it would be better to use harsh measures against the ecumenists?

- By ecumenists, in the end, the measures taken. Ecumenism declared heresy, and anathematized. But Anthony of Geneva did not immediately agree. It is, generally, very byliz left the family. Even on the question of the canonization of the royal family the very first protest. Then agreed, but with the proviso that it had been in last place. A papagovoril: "Nothing! If only we put them in last place, and the Russian people to put on first!" And so it happened.

- And on the list are in last place?

- Yes.

- ... "The last shall be first" ... And when the Metropolitan has to be firm?

-“The last shall be first” … and when the Metropolitan also displayed firmness?

- For example, when John of Shanghai received the Dutch and gave them the possibility to serve the western Paschalion. It was a very difficult moment and didn’t last a long time. The Council (of Bishops, transl.) insisted that John of Shanghai demanded from them the old style (calendar, transl.). They left right away to the MP. The second case was when either by fault or mistake of Vladika John, Nectari (Kovalevskii) was consecrated. He ordained him with Theofil - the Rumanian, who, by the way, was in the Church Abroad, but later was discovered that he was a drug addict. The Sovereign said, that “(to be) Rumanian (is not to be) a nation, but an occupation”. The Synod had received the warning that, according to one version, Kovalevskii was a Satanist, and according to other, a big mason. It can be said that his aspect was such, that there is a possibility, he was a Satanist. (What a) sinister appearance! Nonetheless, his consecration was done against the resolution of the Council (of Bishops, transl.). Metropolitan Filaret was so against all this business, that he didn’t take part on it at all. Whenever he traveled to France, he never served there. Overall, these Frenchmen left rather quickly. By the way, also upon recommendation of Vladika John, they also wanted to recreate the Gallican Liturgy. An infinite number of translations were distributed to all the hierarchs. But right at the time of the liturgy it seems to be there was not a sufficient …

- Eucharistic canon?

- Yes!

- And was it cancelled?

- It should have been, but all this business didn’t last more than 2-3 years.

- And Vladika Filaret didn’t approve the idea of the Gallican Liturgy?

- No. But it was not easy for him to resist 15 hierarchs. Not all of them had such an educational level that was possible to take into consideration what they said.

- Have you worked in the archives of the Synod of ...

- Yes, but in no nightmare to anticipate what happened next, we could not. Gregory took the only Lord of the correspondence with the bishops more or less prominent public figures - and all.

- And now, much is lost?

- I think almost everything. For example, from Archbishop Gabriel I just found out that we have kept the originals of the protocols in '21.

- They also lost?

- They do not get lost! They were stolen. Hilarion was to let employees work in the archives of the MP. We had such a system: the keys to the archives were at Lord Gregory, and I still have a priest. Three key just happened. If any bishop or metropolitan of the same like any business to see it brought him a receipt. In our time, to steal something that was impossible! But then later I witnessed egregious cases. I needed a document with a speech by Bishop Gregory of consecration as a bishop. I asked the Bishop Hilarion to order me to give this document. Near a tipchik in cassock and turns suddenly intervenes in our conversation: "I'll get". And ran. I asked him: "O Lord! Who is this guy?" "Oh, you know, like we owe! He works in the archives of the Moscow Patriarchy! He gave us so many documents" - went on to explain Hilarion. I say: "Lord, what do you do? ..." - "In the Synod have no secrets."

- Nightmare.

- And so they plundered the entire archive. In addition, they have designated an employee of a type that has just finished Highscool, a dropout. And, since kindergarten he could handle a computer, it became the entire archive to the computer to translate. I was told that he was more than half of the archive, then, that thought it unnecessary, simply threw away. Two mother told me that the street had two baskets in the archives. I detract them to give me, but they were afraid. Then it all just disappeared ... At one time I formed a book store, which was considered the best on the coast. I had 400 Russian titles and approximately 300 U.S.. And when reporters went to the Soviet Union, they came up to me to buy books and consult, what to read before they enter the Soviet Union. This store is also virtually destroyed. They began selling wooden spoons and stuff like that. In one of my visits, I decided to go to the store to buy tapes, CDs as gifts - we have still very good chorus was. Has not met a single soul in the synod! But I still knew all the ins outs, I see a door ajar. Gone. About 20 minutes walking around the Synod, on three floors and has not met a single person! Archive has been opened, there were books, and if I wanted to, could easily take any of them and leave. When I was about to leave, suddenly a telephone operator in the street with a cup of coffee and sandwiches. I explained to her that I had to get into the book store. The telephone then began to cry the whole synod of some of Andrew. Finally he appeared. It turned out that he was janitor. He had a key with which he opened a warehouse and left. I began to see what they have. Not a single book price was not. I wrote down on paper what had taken. Went back, long and loud call Andrew. Of any "earth" to get it. He closed, and I happily retired and not having an account.

- They may be given to you for many years of work there? But, of course, terrible state in which there is everything!

- Yes, there because everything is open! For example, I knew the code safe. They kept robe Kursk icon. When Bishop Theophanes the left of the Kursk, he took with him two: one for the cheapest garment, that is the most famous, blue enamel, and another gold with precious stones. She always was in the safe. In addition, there have always been jewels, which were given to decorations for the miraculous icon. Bands were kept there for someone of Optina elders. Paraman Metropolitan Anastasia was there.

- Yes, wishing they could find ...

- I am afraid that this is all they played.

ROCOR and the Catacomb Church in Russia

- What do you know about the connection with Metropolitan Filaret catacombniks?

- Main communication occurred through Stephen Krasovitskaia. Then contacted by Archimandrite Lazarus and C14 th clergy. It was decided to ordain anyone to the episcopate. They were not headed, as their bishop died. Barnabas was ordained, but with the proviso that it will never be known. Just to make it ordained Lazarus. I would like to attend the consecration of this, because I know that as a priest he knows very little, especially consecration. All communications were then incredibly secret. My father was afraid to give someone, probably with good reason. Therefore, when there were letters from Russia, I typed them on the Synod's typewriter. And then they showed at the meeting of the bishops synod. And even typewritten we reprinted that it was impossible to trace the author. Gradually, relations grew. Often the letters were transported via diplomatic channels.

- But there were two candidates: o.Mihail (Christmas) and o.Gury?

- The information we have failed. We learned about this postfactum.

- I heard that the Lord did not trust catacombniks Lazarus.

- Yes. Lazarus on the issue with catacombniks very guilty. One man gave my father a list of 12 bishops of the Catacomb addresses. Unfortunately, instead of having to give me a copy, he handed them over to the Metropolitan. Lists bore the meeting of the Synod. My father thought that it is necessary to use max oikonomia, in order to unite them all. Lazar said that they were all totally illegal, except him alone.

- Yes, very sad. I heard that Archbishop Anthony of Geneva organized ordination. And that he put forth Lazarus, instead of those who wanted catacombniks.

- Probably. Resolution of the Otomi, to make this consecration was, but my father was very afraid that they can "let out" our bishops. It was therefore decided that the synod will simply reported that it is done.

- But, because in the end, Lazarus ordained. Dimitri A. (Dudko) knew it.

- Dudko had nothing to do with catacombniks. Metropolitan Filaret wrote him a letter is not an incentive!

- However, he once took part in the ordination of Bishop Lazarus.

- That I do not know. In general, we have ties with Russia until the 37th year has been pretty thorough. There was a group (in particular, prof. Andrew was in it), which went specially to Sergius to Stragorodsky beg on their knees to give up the declaration. And when the prof. St. Andrew's went abroad, he was struck by how much I knew at the Synod of the episcopate in Russia. Until the 37th, was a kegebist who filed the data on all of those killed, tortured, exiled, etc. Then, perhaps, he was caught, because the connection was interrupted. Recovered she was in 40th years, when many were fleeing from the Germans.

Metropolitan Anastasius

- As the election was held Metropolitan Anastasia?

- During the life of Metropolitan Anthony made his authorized deputy. Metropolitan Anthony was already difficult to manage, it was in poor health, and the Metropolitan Anastasius was already so well-known bishop, that at the council, despite his youth, received seventy votes. The whole ceremony was the enthronement of Patriarch compiled them, and also religious celebrations for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Borodino was drawn to them. In Moscow, he was a prominent church and social activist. So for all, without a doubt, it was clear that only Anastasios and may be the next Metropolitan. But he was very modest - when Metropolitan Anthony insisted to give him a white hood, Anastasius refused for over a year. Then the Patriarch Barnabas Metropolitan complained to it. The Patriarch invited the entire synod to dinner, then got up from the table, took off his white hood and put on the back of the head of the Metropolitan. And only after that he started wearing a white hood. That is such a funny, but typical of the Metropolitan Anastasia case. He was surprisingly modest. Come to the dentist and sat in the audience and waited for their turn, until someone realized that here sits Metropolitan Anastasius.

- And then it passed out of turn?

- Well, of course. He was already then Primate.

- A place where worship, connected with his election as Primate?

- In Belgrade, but I was not on it.

- And where you found the war began?

- It so happened that he was not just metropolitan "cut off" because he went to Switzerland at the moment when the war broke out. Literally, the last train through Italy he was in Yugoslavia. When it all ended in failure, was a very funny situation. The Bolsheviks declared that no Synod was no more, nobody knows where Metropolitan ... It links with other countries did not have any, all borders were closed. And so, my uncle (cousin moeybabushki) o.Iov Leontiev, a direct descendant of Kutuzov, the officer Hussars and served French, Metropolitan and played such a combination: o.Iov was presented to patients, accompanied by his "lay brother" Metropolitan Anastasius, which no travel documents. Then all the officials could not grasp why all the fuss about some little old man, who is relatively young, the sick and important. And so he was able to get out of Germany, and the entire free world knew that there Synod and Metropolitan. Before the war, Metropolitan was in Switzerland on church matters. And when the war ended, he was in Germany, which was divided into four parts: the French, Soviet, British and American. It was very difficult to get from one area to another, for it required a very large documents. The Soviet Union gave the whole protest, when the Metropolitan came to Switzerland. Moscow insisted that he was expelled from the country. Held a special meeting of the Swiss government on this issue! But then, oddly, has interfered American Metropolis, and that it failed to stop. The late Metropolitan Theophilus of America wrote these papers, which could impact on Switzerland.

- And how you traveled from Serbia to Germany?

- Metropolitan Anastasius was always too cautious, and sometimes acted on his nerves. Everyone was clear that everything is in failure, and Metropolitan has not wanted to leave. The Pope agreed with the Germans that they will train for the Synod, and Metropolitan and place does not think to move. In the end it turned out that his father literally pushed his knee on the stairs of the Metropolitan train so that he somehow latched on the last train. We were sent to grammar school, and had no idea where my father and left a Metropolitan? That was such a period.

St. John of Shanghai and the Synod of the ROCA

- And could you tell more detail about the riot in San Francisco?

- This riot was so hot that there were suicides.

- Because of what he started?

- In the words of Archbishop Anastasios, "When starting to build a new church

- there are always thousands of temptations." In San Francisco they had the old cathedral, which was very small. We decided to build a new one. We bought a plot - it was formerly the city dump. The first split occurred for this reason: "How can you build a church in the city dump?" The debate began to grow and the parish council. In America, the Parish Council is the owner of the property to interfere in these affairs at the bishops are very limited. As a result, the council split. That was when the Lord ... The mayor Tikhon Khrapov was a construction company. He then began construction. It was later revealed that he robbed the receipts of several hundred thousand dollars. All this resulted in control over the bishops of the Laity and poured into a form that the decision of the cathedral, the Synod is invalid if it has not been approved by the laity. Assigned there Archbishop Anthony of Los Angeles to investigate the case. It caused great resentment. Right group was happy that at least something after all is done, the left - a scandal. This always happens: someone is offended, someone happy, someone ambition "leaped" - religious matters they are not interested. The Devil knows how to work well. Took advantage of the Bolsheviks, who were all playing. Metropolitan realized that he was unable to cope with this case and sent my father there to investigate. Lord John stood on the side of the crooks, and unfortunately this has an aggressive stance: "The Synod has no right to control - the case of the diocese. Diocese is independent of the Synod." It was known that to be very scandalous meeting of the Parish Council. For this reason, he was ordered to postpone the meeting. But he did not read the decree, broke it and said "he does not care about regulations synods and councils." When the bishop says that he has the highest church authorities there, then you will agree, this is something wrong? .. The case went through the civil court, where they stated that there is no synod or council, which can control this diocese. Ie denied higher church administration. My dad had to testify in court that it violates the whole hierarchy of the Church. Metropolitan Anastasius, was then already in a state that morning, took a decision in the evening - another. My father had great difficulty trying to somehow preserve the authority of the Synod. After that, the newspapers wrote that "Grabbe writes" Aesopian "language." told his father: "Enough! resigns, take-coming ..." .- "On the Cross removed from him, do not go" - he replied.

- If he threw the Church would have been worse ... you tell us about the canonization of the martyrs.

- We had a great excitement about how not to fall into martyrs sergiantsy. All martyrs, tortured and 27 of the year, the issue did not constitute. Further were assigned to Jordanville. They were supposed to send the materials, and they develop them. I suspect that they have nothing to do but, nevertheless, has compiled a list of 8 thousand names that will be compiled canonization. Drafting Service Royal New Martyrs Anthony Sandzhulovskomu instructed. It is composed of very competent, but not in a perjury troparion not specified. Despite the fact that my father noticed it, the service approved. Service of all the Russian New Martyrs was Archbishop Anthony of San Francisco. It was very chaotic! During the liturgy, I was running with different amendments to the choir - it changed everything, even during the service!

- But service is approved in advance?

- Of course. Metropolitan Anthony was a very good, but incredibly chaotic! I was his consecration as bishop, which he lost his mantle. And he was always so, I remember it even priest. Incredibly good, very pious, but ... very emotional.

- Anastasia Bonner, please say a few words of Metropolitan Anthony.

- The Metropolitan Anthony was absolutely wonderful trait - he could talk to anyone at any level! Will it be the rural illiterate grandmother, or a small child, or a professor - no one felt that he was somehow looking down on them.

- I know that he loved young people.

- Very loved. The bishops then received a rather big salary, and it contains all the poor students. In fact, he only painted what he receives a salary. When he got to the Pochaev Lavra, was not a single spare room - the students came from all over Russia! We slept side by side and just on the floor because some cells did not suffice. Still, he led three spiritual academy. Students loved it and went around him, where they could. Before he was rector of the Academy - A Difficult personality. A Metropolitan immediately began to use these students, even from a practical point of view. Everyone had or garden, or garden. And the fact is the economy of the Rector?! .. Here it is these students and enjoyed. They always came to him in the evening to drink tea. There have been serious conversations, and sometimes just joking. He had a favorite anecdote: "I love the purity!" - Said the old woman, overturning a nightgown on the "new year".

- Yes, I heard he was a very cheerful person.

- Very. Therefore, after such a joke, the students already talked with him more freely. Metropolitan is an incredibly high raised monk! After all, there was a time when almost no one tonsured.

- This is even before the revolution?

- Yes. And when the Lord Antonia many students became monks.

Saint John of Shanghai Miracle

- Yes. And why so many did not like St. John of Shanghai?

- A friend of my father wrote: "With the saints to live - do not let my God. With the saints give rest - wonderful!" He entire way at Lesna Convent overturned. For example, for its existence, they are a factory in a row have to sew dolls. Lord will take and arrange a lecture, and the contract doll that should be on time! All the time he changed his plans. He was not an administrator, and have been complaints that he never signed any of it do not get one, it is unclear what happens to the money, that somewhere he lost them. Of course, this is not any crime, just to work with him was very difficult. And when he left France, they happily breathed. Of course, it was prayer, and ascetic, and unconditional seer - no doubts there!

- It was the same as one of the ancient saints.

- Yes. Once he dined with us. At the dinner was a trout. I put him on a plate of whole fish. Can you imagine that he ate it all, even with gills! None of the seeds did not leave!

- He ate out of humility. He's all mixed in one bowl, remembers Father Georges (Larin). When he was young, I saw how the Lord has mixed all - pudding, soup, and the second - and ate it.

- Away he did not, but it struck us the other behavior. He basically walked only in sandals. After being shorn, he did not put on shoes. There was such a case, when he came out with an airplane, it flew open robe, and beneath it there is nothing. In Paris, he regularly served as the funeral of the area in which the murdered King Alexander.

- Yes, all too shy to serve with him, only he was persistent.

- Imagine a funeral in Red Square ...

- I would love to!

- ... And when the cars go. After King Alexander was killed when he rode with the royal cortege. And so, John of Shanghai was a memorial service every year on the road. He was an original.

- And what you remember about him?

- There was a funny story with us. He was visiting his parents. My sister was eight years old, and sent us to bed at eight o'clock in the evening without reservation - the sun is shining or not. And when everyone left, my sister ran out, embraced him and kissed him, and Lord laughed and said, "Well, the first female kiss!"

- It has been in Belgrade?

- Yes. In my opinion, he has not finished medical education. Then he switched to theology. Students it is always poor, so he ran through the streets, selling newspapers. Never admit that somewhere on the sidewalk lay the bread is always raised and ate it. Because this is a great sin, throw the bread.

- Is it possible to see bread on the sidewalk in the years since it was a difficult time?

- Yugoslavia was the richest country until the Communists took her no. There was not a mineral, which is not found in Yugoslavia.

- A good attitude to the Russian?

- Yes, but we lived as a state within a state. For example, I spoke in Serbian is very bad, and we were taught in Serbian language school on the same level as French or German. The only thing we had yet to learn the Serbian history and geography to some extent, because if you live in this country, it is necessary to know. And the rest, we lived as a state within a state, we had our male and female high school, primary school, clinic. A great big house was called "The House of Czar Nicholas," donated his king Alexander.

Olga Mitrenina for "Portal-Credo.ru"

An Article All Serious Orthodox Should Read

2011-08-23T20:59:00.000-07:00

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 gise 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 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.

† † †

[Site translation, not for distribution]

A Gravid Heresy in the Orthodox Church

By Metropolitan Hierochloe of Naupaktos

The word “heresy come” 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 ofNestorianism.

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.