What's Going on in Ukraine? Part 2: The Canonical Issues

The Schismatics the Ecumenical Patriarch has Joined With

In order to fully understand the seriousness of the Ecumenical Patriarch's actions in Ukraine, and why they are so reckless, you have to understand who the people are that the EP has decided to join himself to.

Filaret Denisenko, the founder and real leader of this schism, was the former Metropolitan of Kiev who was justly deposed by the Russian Church in the early 90's. He attempted to appeal to the Ecumenical Patriarch at that time, and was rebuffed. Patriarch Bartholomew wrote to Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow:

"In response to the corresponding telegram and letter of Your greatly beloved and honorable Beatitude on the problem that has arisen in Your Holy Russian sister Church that led her Holy Synod, for reasons known to her, to the deposition of the until-recently leading member of her Synod, Metropolitan Philaret of Kiev, we desire to fraternally inform Your love, that our Holy Great Church of Christ, recognizing the fullness of the Russian Orthodox Church’s exclusive competence on this issue, synodally accepts the decisions regarding the one in question, not desiring to bring any trouble to Your Church. It is precisely in this spirit that we sent two brothers, His Eminence Metropolitan John of Pergamon and His Grace Bishop Vsevolod of Skopelos, after a visit to us by the one in question who has been deprived of his office, that we could be directly notified firsthand of what had occurred and avoid a misinterpretation in the given case. Consequently, we should note that we were grieved when we learned that there was not a full understanding of the purpose of their mission" (Letter of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to His Holiness Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow and All Russia, August 26, 1992, emphasis added).

For an example of how far Filaret is from being worthy of being admitted into the Church, even as a layman in good standing, watch the following video, in which he allows a Psychic kook, by the name of "Gagik Sarkisovich Avakyan," to "bless" him:

And for more, watch this documentary about Filaret and the schism that he established in Ukraine:

See also: The Official History of the Defrocking and Anathematization of Philaret Denisenko: Documents of the June 1992, 1994, and 1997 Bishops’ Councils of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Canons the Ecumenical Patriarch has Violated

The Canons of the Holy Apostles are among the most ancient Canons of the Church, and were specifically endorsed by the Sixth and Seventh Ecumenical Councils. Canon 11 of  the Holy Apostles says:

"If anyone who is a clergyman pray in company with a deposed clergyman, he shall be deposed too" (D. Cummings, trans., The Rudder of the Orthodox Catholic Church: The Compilation of the Holy Canons Saints Nicodemus and Agapius (West Brookfield, MA: The Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1983), p. 23).

Canon 16, says that if a clergyman is suspended or deposed, and goes to another bishop, and "the Bishop with whom they are associating, admits them as clergymen in defiance of the deprivation prescribed against them, he shall be excommunicated as a teacher of disorder." (Ibid., p. 27).

Canon 28, says: "If any Bishop, or Presbyter, or Deacon, who has been justly deposed from office for proven crimes, should dare to touch the liturgy which had once been put in his hands, let him be cut off from the Church altogether" (Ibid, p. 40). Which is a canon clearly violated by Filaret, which is why he was also anathematized. And when he was anathematized, Patriarch Bartholomew again stated his agreement with the decision:

“Having received notification of the mentioned decision, we informed the hierarchy of our Ecumenical Throne of it and implored them to henceforth have no ecclesial communion with the persons mentioned” (Letter of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to His Holiness Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow and All Russia, April 7, 1997).

And this means very clearly that the EP has knowingly joined himself to a justly deposed and anathematized bishop, along with the schism that he established.

The Canons of the Council of Antioch were also specifically affirmed by the Sixth and Seventh Ecumenical Councils. The second canon of that council states:

"As for all those persons who enter the church and listen to the sacred Scriptures, but who fail to commune in prayer together and at the same time with the laity, or who shun the participation of the Eucharist, in accordance with some irregularity, we decree that these persons be outcasts from the Church until, after going to confession and exhibiting fruits of repentance and begging forgiveness, they succeed in obtaining a pardon. Furthermore, we decree that communion with those excluded from communion is not allowed, nor in another church is it to be allowed to admit those who have no admittance to another church. If anyone among the Bishops, or Presbyters, or Deacons, or anyone of the Canon, should appear to be communing with those who have been excluded from communion, he too is to be excluded from communion, on the ground of seemingly confusing the Canon of the Church" [Ibid., p 535, emphasis added].

And Canon 4 states:

"If any Bishop, deposed by a Synod, or any Presbyter, or Deacon, deposed by his own Bishop, should dare to perform any act of the liturgy—whether it be the Bishop in accordance with the advancing custom, or the Presbyter, or the Deacon, let it no longer be possible for him to have any hope of reinstatement even in another Synod (or Council), nor let him be allowed to present an apology in his own defense, but, on the contrary, let all of those who even commune with him be cast out of the Church, and especially if after learning about the decision pronounced against the aforesaid, he should dare to commune with them" (Ibid., p 536, emphasis added).

This canon makes it clear that Filaret, by continuing to serve after he was deposed, placed himself beyond the possibility of being reinstated by any subsequent Council. Furthermore, by entering into communion with Filaret, the Ecumenical Patriarch has committed an offense, for which he should be not only deposed, but cast out of the Church entirely.

The Ecumenical Patriarch's Flimsy Canonical Defense

We have already covered the EP's bogus claims to have jurisdiction over Ukraine (see What's Going on in Ukraine? Part 1: The Historical Background), a claim one of his own bishops has dismissed as contrary to history (See: Met. Kallistos (Ware): "I am not at all happy about the position taken by Patriarch Bartholomew"). But the EP claims to have some prerogatives that give him rights to intervene in Ukraine, by virtue of the fact that he is the first bishop in the diptychs of the Orthodox Church, so let's consider whether these claims hold up any better.

Archpriest Andrei Novikov, has made the case, in great detail, as to why the Neo-Papal claims of the EP are without basis, in his essay: The Apotheosis of Eastern Papism, but let me highlight the most important points he makes.

For one, the EP is making claims that closely mirror the claims of the Pope, and if these claims were consistent with Orthodox ecclesiology, one would have to wonder why were weren't still under the Pope of Rome.

The canonical claims that the EP makes based on Canon 9 and 17 of the Fourth Ecumenical Council do not hold up to scrutiny. Canon 9 (Canon 17 has similar wording) of Chalcedon reads:

"If any Clergyman has a dispute with another, let him not leave his own Bishop and resort to secular courts, but let him first submit his case to his own Bishop, or let it be tried by referees chosen by both parties and approved by the Bishop. Let anyone who acts contrary hereto be liable to Canonical penalties. If, on the other hand, a Clergyman has a dispute with his own Bishop, or with some other Bishop, let it be tried by the Synod of the province. But if any Bishop or Clergyman has a dispute with the Metropolitan of the same province, let him apply either to the Exarch of the diocese or to the throne of the imperial capital Constantinople, and let it be tried before him" (Ibid., p 253).

St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain comments on the meaning of this canon:

"So it is evident that the Canon means that if any bishop or clergyman has a dispute or difference with the Metropolitan of an exarchy, let him apply to the Exarch of the diocese; which is the same thing as saying that clergymen and metropolitans subject to the throne of Constantinople must have their case tried either before the Exarch of the diocese in which they are situated, or before the Bishop of Constantinople, as before a Patriarch of their own. It did not say that if any clergyman has a dispute or difference with the Metropolitan of any diocese or parish whatever, they must be tried before the Bishop of Constantinople... That is why Zonaras too says that the Bishop of Constantinople is not necessarily entitled to sit as judge over all Metropolitans, but (only) over those who are judicially subject to him (interpretation of c. XVII of the present 4th C.). And in his interpretation of c. V of Sardica the same authority says: "The Bishop of Constantinople must hear the appeals only of those who are subject to the Bishop of Constantinople, precisely as the Bishop of Rome must hear the appeals only of those who are subject to the Bishop of Rome" (Ibid, p. 253).

If one does not read these canons as St. Nicodemos suggests, it is possible to conclude that Constantinople could have even overruled Rome, something that the pre-Schism Roman church would never have accepted, nor is it likely that any other patriarchate of that time would have either. Within the context of the principle that Constantinople should have "equal prerogatives" to Old Rome, however, this has been interpreted to mean that Constantinople may be the highest court of appeal in the East (in those provinces belonging to his patriarchate) as Rome was in the West.

But even if one were to take this right as being universal, the EP's actions are not supported by the relevant canons. As Petrus Antiochenus points out, since the canons in question are based on the analogous rights that Rome itself had, we should look to how appeals were to be handled by Rome to better understand how they were to be handled by Constantinople, and Canon 5 of the Council of Sardica states:

"It has pleased this Council to decree that if any Bishop be indicted, and the Bishops of the same diocese remove him from his rank, and by way of appeal, he has recourse to the most blessed Bishop of the Church of the Romans, and the latter expresses a desire to hear the matter through and deems that it is right and just for the trial of the case to he reopened, let him write to these Bishops and request those who are close to the province in question to make a searching investigation of the points in the case with due diligence and accuracy, and in accordance with faith in the truth pronounce a decision regarding it. But if any person demands again to have his case heard and sees fit to request that it be tried by the Bishop of the Romans, let the latter send Presbyters from his own flank, in order that he may be in the authority of the Bishop himself. If he rules that it is right and decides that judges ought to be sent to try the case together with the Bishops and to exercise authority derived from the one who sent them, then let this too be done. But if he deems the verdict and decision in regard to the Bishop’s case to be sufficient, let him do whatsoever may seem best to his most prudent sense of discretion" (Ibid., 586).

As can plainly be seen, the right of appeal did not entail Rome arbitrarily overturning the decision of a local Synod, without hearing out all of the parties, and allowing them to participate in the hearings. At no point were any of these steps laid out by this canon followed by Constantinople. No opportunity to testify or present evidence was given to the canonical Church in Ukraine, or to the Russian Church as a whole. Furthermore, Constantinople already had twice rejected the appeal of Filaret.

Only if we grant the Ecumenical Patriarch powers that even the Pope was too ashamed to have claimed, would we be able to say that he has acted justly here. There are no canons which would support the course he has taken in Ukraine.

See also: What's Going on in Ukraine? Part 1: The Historical Background

For more information, See:

Experts on the Constantinople Patriarchate's Scandalous Decisions

The Apotheosis of Eastern Papism, by Archpriest Andrei Novikov

Primacy and Identity (A Response to "First Without Equals" and the Tragedy of Deficient Eccleisiology, by Bishop Irenei (Steenberg)

Can Orthodoxy exist with the Ecumenical Patriarchate? by Petrus Antiochenus

The Decision of the Ecumenical Patriarch is Uncanonical (an Interview with Metropolitan Amfilohija (Radovich) of Montenegro)

The Ecumenical Patriarchate Violated Canon 5 of Sardica in the Filaret Appeal, by Petrus Antiochenus

The Ecumenical Monarch

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What's Going on in Ukraine? Part 1: The Historical Background

The Baptism of Rus, 988

This is the first in what will be a series of articles, for those of you who may be confused by the complexities involved in the schism over the Ecumenical Patriarch's move to unilaterally establish an autocephalous Church in Ukraine.

Ukraine is not a side story to the history of the Russian Church. The Russian Church began in what is now Ukraine. The Rus' were a Slavic people who were ruled by Vikings, and the result was a Slavic nation with some Nordic elements thrown into the mix. The roots of Christianity go back much further, but the Rus' became a Christian nation in the year 988 after St. Vladimir was first baptized, and then the people were baptized as a group, in the Dnieper River. At that time, the bishops and priests that came to Russia were all Greek, and were under the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Why did Russia become independent of Constantinople? It was not because the Russians were fueled by nationalism, but because Constantinople fell into heresy, and then the Byzantine Empire itself ceased to exist. Surrounded by the Turks, Constantinople appealed for aid from the Latin West. The price of that aid was submission to the Pope, and at the false Council of Florence (1439), the Orthodox delegates, with the exception of St. Mark of Ephesus, were finally bullied into accepting Rome's terms. When Metropolitan Isidore returned to Kiev with the news, both he and the false union were rejected. And so the Russian Church became independent for the simple reason that the Patriarch of Constantinople had become a heretic.

After the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, right believing Orthodox bishops were restored to the Church there. The Russian Church remained independent, and in 1588, the four ancient Patriarchs recognized that independence, and raised the Metropolitan of Moscow to the rank of Patriarch, and listed him as fifth in rank, after themselves.

Gramota of the Synod of Constantinople on the founding of the Moscow Patriarchate, May 8, 1590

What complicates this a bit is that this time, Kiev was not under the control of Russia. There had been a series of foreign invasions, and changes of power in the region, and at that time, Ukraine was under Polish rule, and so Constantinople retained its authority over that region. However, Russia was eventually able to reclaim this territory, and ecclesiastical control was ceded by Constantinople to Moscow in 1686. In a Letter sent by Patriarch Dionysius to the Tsar, he agreed to the submission of all the Metropolitans of Kiev to Patriarch of Moscow, saying: “From henceforth and forever more they shall recognize as most senior and first in rank the current Patriarch of Moscow as having received the office of bishop from him...”

The claim that Constantinople retained control over Kiev, and that this was just a temporary "loan" is complete nonsense. In legal theory, there is a concept called "the course of performance." In short, if there is a contract between two entities, and later on, one party claims the other party is not abiding by the contract, one of the ways a judge determines the meaning of a contract is to look at how that agreement has worked out in practice since it went into effect. Prior to the 20th century, the EP never made any mention of having any continuing claim on Kiev or Ukraine. So for nearly three centuries, no one ever seemed to be aware of this notion. Only when opportunities for poaching territory from the Russian Church after the Bolshevik Revolution does this claim first emerge.

We will discuss the more recent history in subsequent articles, but for a detailed series of articles on the history of the Ukrainian Church, see the following by Mother Cornelia (Rees):

An Overview of Orthodoxy in Ukraine: Part 1

An Overview of Orthodoxy in Ukraine: Part 2

An Overview of Orthodoxy in Ukraine: Part 3

The following video also provides a good summary of what is at issue:

What's Going on in Ukraine? Part 2: The Canonical Issues

See also:

Experts on the Constantinople Patriarchate's Scandalous Decisions

Orthodox Encyclopedia Center Publishing Historical Documents on Return of Kiev Metropolis to the Russian Church

An article on the details of the letters of 1686

Statement of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Concerning the Uncanonical Intervention of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Canonical Territory of the Russian Orthodox Church, September 14, 2018

Statement of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Regarding the Encroachment of the Patriarch of Constantinople on the Canonical Territory of the Russian Church, October 15th, 2018

Sermon: The Schism over Ukraine

Sermon: The Schism over Ukraine

Senator John McCain, with the Fake "Patriarch of Kiev" Filaret Denisenko

This sermon was preached on Sunday, October 21st, 2018, and was given to explain to my parishioners why a break in communion has happened between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

It will not be posted on Ancient Faith Radio because they do not want to be perceived as taking a side in this dispute.

Click here to listen.

Here is the text of the sermon (courtesy of Fr. Aidan (Keller), who transcribed it, though I have made some corrections to make the written text a bit easier to read):

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

History is not just something that we read about in textbooks, but it’s something that we are living in. It’s just that we don’t realize it, because we don’t often see huge events happen. But in terms of the history of the Church, we may be in the middle of a very big shift. I hope that in retrospect we look back at this as just a little blip on the radar screen, because the problem is solved very quickly. But as most of you probably know, the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew, has announced that he’s going to establish an autocephalous church in the Ukraine and he lifted anathemas against schismatic bishops, restored them to their ranks from which they were deposed… and he has absolutely no authority to do that under the canons of the Church.

Now, one bit of solace from history I think that we can take, is that these kinds of things are not new to the Church. We’ve had controversies, we’ve had heresies, we’ve had schisms in the history of the Church, and as long as the Church exists in this fallen world, and as long as it’s inhabited by sinners who live in that fallen world, there are going to be people who will cause such divisions in the Church, and the Church has weathered many storms a lot worse than this one is likely to be.

We just yesterday celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the founding of our parish, and I would much rather be talking to you about where we’ve been as a parish, and where we are going, to mark that great event. But instead I feel like I have to talk about this, because I know many of you have had questions about it, and I want you to understand that when our bishops announced that we will no longer be in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch until this matter is resolved, they did not take this matter lightly.

We have in our parish many people who are from the Ukraine, and I know from talking to you about the politics of the Ukraine that not all of you agree. I don’t know if you’ve talked among yourselves and figured that out, but I certainly have figured it out from talking to you. There are people on various points of the spectrum in terms of how they view what has happened in the Ukraine, particularly in the last several years. But politics is one thing and ecclesiology is another. We’re all entitled to our own political opinions, but we’re not entitled to our own ecclesiology. There’s only one Orthodox ecclesiology. We have a canonical tradition where there is church order that we have to go by. The Russian Church has actually, despite all the accusations that it’s taken political positions in the Ukraine, has tried to refrain from taking any kind of political positions. Some people try to say that Ukraine is a cash cow for the Russian Church. Not one penny of the money that is raised in Ukraine goes to the Church in Russia; it’s just absolutely not true. But Ukraine is not just a part of the Russian Church, Ukraine is the heart of the Russian Church. Ukraine is where the Russian Church began. And I can tell you that the Russian Church Abroad, just to give you an example, is not just a bunch of "Great Russians," to use a phrase, for lack of a better term… it’s not just a bunch of people from the Russian Federation or from backgrounds that connect there, that are picking on poor Ukrainians. Our Church.. the very first primate we had, was Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky, who had been the Metropolitan of Kiev. Holy Trinity monastery was founded by monks who came from the Pochaev Lavra. Our own bishop is descended from Don Cossacks, and our current metropolitan is a Ukrainian. I’ve not bothered asking about which bishop has a Ukrainian background, but over the years I’ve learned that many of our bishops have Ukrainian backgrounds that I just assumed were Russians. And, of course, Ukraine is a very diverse country. There are people who speak Russian and really consider themselves Russians, and then there are people who speak Ukrainian and consider themselves Ukrainian. And that’s all fine, and in the Church we can have these kinds of differences. And one other thing that I would say is the day may come when the Church of Ukraine becomes an Autocephalous Church when it’s done the right way, and that may very well be what is God’s will ultimately for the Ukrainian Church. I can’t say; that’s above my pay grade. But it can’t happen this way. This is not how things happen in the Church with any kind of good order.

I could spend a lot of time talking about the history of the Ukrainian Church and its connection with the Russian Church. There are a number of articles online that you can read about that, and I will actually be writing some articles myself on the subject with links to a lot of these texts, so those of you that are interested in the history, will certainly be able to read as much as you want to find that, for more than 300 years – longer than the United States has been an independent nation – the Ukrainian Church has been undeniably and fully part of the Russian Orthodox Church. But I’m not going to spend my time today talking about that, because it would take too long, but what I will talk about, just briefly, is that Patriarch Bartholomew himself knows full well that this is true, and has said so on a number of occasions. When the head of this schismatic group, Philaret Denisenko, was deposed by the Russian Church, for (among other things) having a wife and three children, which is obviously contrary to the canons, but also doing a number of other things that were causing huge problems in the Ukrainian Church, in a letter that Patriarch Bartholomew wrote to then-Patriarch Alexei II, he stated,

"We desire to make known to Your Love, as your brother, that our Holy and Great Church of Christ fully recognizes your Holy Church of Russia has the exclusive jurisdiction in the matter and accepts the Synodical decisions made with respect to [Philaret]" [Letter of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to His Holiness Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow and All Russia, August 26, 1992].

Patriarch Irinej of Serbia recently wrote a letter, an open letter, in which he was objecting to what the Ecumenical Patriarch was proposing to do at that point, and in that letter he made a very important point. He said,

"Your All-Holiness, in no way does the desire and intent to offend or to grieve you at all come into our mind, not even indeed briefly. However, we are obliged to remind you both of your promise which was given in Chambesy, Geneva, in the presence of the primates of the Orthodox Churches, in the presence consequently also of our own mediocrity, that you would not intervene in the affairs of the Church of Ukraine" [August 2018 Letter from Serbian Patrairch Irinej to Ecumenical Patriarch Batholomew]. 

And this happened in 2016, at a meeting of all the heads of all the Autocephalous Churches.

As a matter of fact, in a letter that the Russian Holy Synod wrote on September 14, when the patriarch announced his intentions, they made a similar point. They said,

"Meanwhile, earlier, during the Synaxis of the Local Orthodox Churches in Chambésy in January 2016, Patriarch Bartholomew publicly called Metropolitan Onufry the only canonical Primate of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. On the same occasion the Primate of the Church of Constantinople gave a promise that neither during the Council in Crete nor afterwards he would make any attempts to legalize the schism or to grant autocephaly to anybody on a unilateral basis" [Statement of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Concerning the Uncanonical Intervention of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Canonical Territory of the Russian Orthodox Church, September 14, 2018].

Even if the Ecumenical Patriarch himself sincerely believed that he had a legitimate claim on Ukraine – which obviously from his past statements we know is not the case… but even if he did, the way he’s dealing with it is not the way to do it. Even if he thought, for example, that the Russian Church was just mismanaging the situation in Ukraine, and that the people in the schismatic, so-called "Autocephalous Church of Ukraine" had some legitimate grievance that needed to be aired, the canonical way for him to deal with it would be to call for a Pan-Orthodox Synod. And some people might say, "Well, how do we know that the Russians would show up?" Well, after he announced what he was going to do, the Russian Church called for such a Pan-Orthodox Synod, as have the heads of several other Autocephalous Churches, so clearly the Russian Church would participate in such a council. But the reason why he doesn’t call such a council is because to date not a single Autocephalous Church outside of the Ecumenical Patriarchate has expressed any support whatsoever for what he’s doing. And several of them have in fact expressed just the opposite – they’ve made it very clear that they condemn what he’s doing.

I’d like to talk a little bit about a few canons that are of relevance here. The Church is built upon the canons of the Ecumenical Councils but there are some very ancient canons that even come before the Ecumenical Councils; among them are the Canons of the Holy Apostles. Canon 11 says,

"If anyone who is a clergyman pray in company with a deposed clergyman, he shall be deposed too" (D. Cummings, trans., The Rudder of the Orthodox Catholic Church: The Compilation of the Holy Canons Saints Nicodemus and Agapius (West Brookfield, MA: The Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1983), p. 23).

Canon 16 says that if a bishop admits as a clergyman "in defiance of the deprivation prescribed against [him]" …in other words, if you take a clergyman who’s been deposed, and you accept him as a clergyman, that you’re going to be "excommunicated as a teacher of disorder" [Ibid., p. 27].

And then Canon 35 says:

"A Bishop shall not dare to confer ordinations outside of his own boundaries, in cities and territories not subject to him. If he be proved to have done so against the wishes of those having possession of those cities or territories, let him be deposed, as well as those whom he ordained" [Ibid., p. 52].

And then Canon 2 of the Council of Antioch, which was specifically endorsed by later Ecumenical Councils and so has ecumenical weight, says,

"As for all those persons who enter the church and listen to the sacred Scriptures, but who fail to commune in prayer together and at the same time with the laity, or who shun the participation of the Eucharist, in accordance with some irregularity, we decree that these persons be outcasts from the Church until, after going to confession and exhibiting fruits of repentance and begging forgiveness, they succeed in obtaining a pardon. Furthermore, we decree that communion with those excluded from communion is not allowed, nor in another church is it to be allowed to admit those who have no admittance to another church. If anyone among the Bishops, or Presbyters, or Deacons, or anyone of the Canon, should appear to be communing with those who have been excluded from communion, he too is to be excluded from communion, on the ground of seemingly confusing the Canon of the Church" [Ibid., p 535, emphasis added].

The canons are exceedingly clear that what the Ecumenical Patriarch is doing is wrong, that he has no business doing it. So this is the reason why our bishops have said that they will no longer, until this matter is resolved, concelebrate with clergy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. We’ve also been instructed that we are not, even as laymen, to commune in their parishes. Now if there are some extraordinary circumstances, then you’d want to talk with me about that, and we can see. Because we don’t believe that the canons are like land mines. We don’t believe that because the patriarch has violated the canons, that he is therefore already deposed, and that everyone connected with him is already outside of the Church. We don’t believe that. But what we are saying is that that’s where things are headed, if they continue down that path and there is no reconciliation, and no attempt to address the situation and correct it.

Now I, and I’m sure many of you, have many friends among the clergy and the laity that are under the Ecumenical Patriarch, and it really saddens me that we have come to this point, and it’s been a very surreal feeling to be in this situation. And, up until very recently, I was the president of the Orthodox Clergy Association in Houston – that happened to just change (unrelated to this whole thing) in September, and as a consequence of this, as things stand right now, I won’t be able to participate in Clergy Association meetings or on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, if this continues to be a problem, to concelebrate with my brother clergy in the Houston area, and I’m very sad that it’s come to this point. But it’s come to this point because of the actions of people who have chosen to disregard truth, and who have chosen to disregard the canons. And there has to be order in the Church. We have canons for a reason. We don’t have a Pope, for the very simple reason that we don’t believe that Christ ever gave any person any infallibility, or any special powers, to rule the whole Church. Lord Acton famously said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Church has divisions, and it has checks and balances, much like our government (constitutionally at least) has, for a reason. That’s because as long as there are sinners we will have bishops that go astray – and even very prominent bishops. And we have to have the means to correct them, and we can’t have a bishop who doesn’t answer to anybody, who just does whatever he wants, and nobody can question it. We are not in that church. If we were going to be in that church, we would be Roman Catholics… and we’re not, because we don’t believe that that’s true. We don’t find that in church history. And so what we need to do is we need to earnestly pray that this matter will be resolved. I spoke with Vladyka Peter about this and he expressed some hopes that maybe it would be resolved in the not-too-distant future. He may know something about the situation that I don’t know, and I hope that he turns out to be correct. My own more skeptical opinion is that this may not be resolved anytime soon. But we need to pray. We need to pray for a miracle that people will repent and that unity and peace in the Church will be restored. Amen.

Confused about the Orthodox Church in Ukraine? Learn to tell the difference!

For more, see the statement of the Russian Orthodox Church, which lays out the facts:

http://orthochristian.com/115776.html

Stump the Priest: Was James, the Brother of the Lord, Among the Twelve Apostles?

Question: "I read recently that James, the “brother of the Lord," was not one of the 12 Apostles.  Are there not two James’ among the twelve? Please elaborate and clarify the identity of these 3 (or 2?) individuals?"

Among the the twelve Apostles, there are two with the name of James. "James" is the English form of the name "Iakovos," in the Greek New Testament, which is the Greek form of the Hebrew name "Yakov", or "Jacob". This being the name of the Father of the Israelites, it was a very common name among Jews during the the time of Christ's earthly ministry.

In the lists of the twelve Apostles, we find "James, the son of Zebedee"; and "James, the son of Alphaeus." We also find references to a "James, the less," and of course "James, the Lord's Brother."

We know that St. James the brother of the Lord could not be identified with James, the son of Zebedee, because he (the son of Zebedee) was the first Apostle to be martyred, and St. James, the brother of the Lord was Martyred not long before the destruction of Jerusalem, according to Josephus. As we have discussed previously, there is a good case that the brothers of the Lord were the sons of Cleopas, St. Joseph's brother. And James the less is likely the son of Mary, the wife of Cleopas. Roman Catholic scholars have tended to identify James the son of Alphaeus with the brother of the Lord, and many have argued that "Alphaeus" and "Cleopas" are two variations in Greek of the Aramaic name "Kalphi" -- and so if this is true, St. James the Brother of the Lord would be numbered among the twelve Apostles, and would be the same as James the less.

Many object to this possibility based on the fact that the Gospels speak of the brothers of the Lord being in opposition to Christ's ministry. However, the fact that many of the Lord's kinsmen may have opposed Him prior to the Resurrection, does not prove that all of them did. The Tradition of the Church holds that St. James, the brother of the Lord, always supported Christ.

It is also true, however, that the most common tradition in the Orthodox Church would not identify the brother of the Lord with James, the son of Alphaeus, nor would it count him among the twelve Apostles, though he is counted among the 70 Apostles. But there is no doubt at all that St. James, the brother of the Lord, was a central figure in the early Church. He was the first of the Apostles that the Lord appeared to after His Resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:7); he presided over the Council of Jerusalem, in Acts 15; and he was spoken of as being among the chief apostles (Galatians 1:19; Galatians 2:9). So whether he was one of the twelve or not, he occupied a very unique place in the early Church, and was more prominent than most of those who certainly were numbered among the twelve.

For more on this, see:

Stump the Priest: Brethren of the Lord, Sons of Cleopas?

Stump the Priest: The Virgin Mary's "Sister," Mary the Wife of Cleopas

Stump the Priest: Brethren of the Lord, Sons of Cleopas?

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid

Question: "In the Explanation of Matthew by Theophylact,  He describes Jesus’ “brothers”  as the sons of Cleopas whom Joseph took in after his brother Cleopas died. I never understood that, because I thought Cleopas was still alive after the Resurrection, whereas Joseph died well before Jesus began his ministry. Could you please clarify this apparent contradiction?"

In the Gospels, there are references to a "Cleopas" and a "Clopas":

"Then the one whose name was Cleopas answered and said to Him, “Are You the only stranger in Jerusalem, and have You not known the things which happened there in these days?” (Luke 24:18).

"Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene" (John 19:25),

It is usually assumed that Cleopas and Clopas are two forms of the same name. However, while these probably are variant spellings of the same name, whether or not they are the same person is another question. The "Clopas" mention in the Gospel of John is believed to be a brother of St. Joseph, which makes sense, because it is not likely that two sisters from the same parents would both have been named "Mary" and so Mary, the wife of Clopas was the sister-in-law of the Virgin Mary.

There is a tradition that identifies these two men, and so holds that St. Joseph's brother was still living at the time of the crucifixion and resurrection, and was one of the two men who walked with Christ on the road to Emmaus. But a different tradition says that Cleopas, the brother of St. Joseph, had died before St. Joseph, and that his wife and children were taken into the home of St. Joseph. These children are the ones the Gospels speak of as the brothers of the Lord. We find this view laid out by St. Jerome, in his treatise "The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary," which is also supported by the 2nd century Palestinian Christian writer St. Hegesippus.  A different tradition, found in the writings of St. Epiphanius of Cyprus, teaches that the brothers of the Lord were the children of St. Joseph from a previous marriage, and so were step-brothers of the Lord. Blessed Theophylact seems to reconcile these two traditions:

"The Lord had brothers and sisters, the children of Joseph which he begat by the wife of his brother Cleopas, for when Cleopas died childless, Joseph took his wife in accordance with the law and had six children by her, four boys and two girls" (The Explanation of the Holy Gospel According to Matthew. Fr. Christopher Stade, Trans. (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom  Press, 1992), p. 120).

Blessed Theophylact is alluding to the law of Levirate Marriages, found in Deuteronomy 25:5-10. And so he takes a position very similar to that of St. Jerome, but instead of these children being the natural children of Cleopas, he suggests that they were children that St. Joseph fathered on behalf of his dead brother, according to this law. But in any case, what all the traditions of the Church on this matter have in common, in a completely unambiguous way, is that these children were not the children of the Virgin Mary.

For more on this, see: Stump the Priest: The Virgin Mary's "Sister," Mary the Wife of Cleopas

Stump the Priest: What does the inscription on my Cross say?

Question: "What does the inscription on the back of my Cross say?"

There are two common inscriptions on the backs of Russian baptismal Crosses:

1. Probably the most common is "Спаси и сохрани" (Spasi i sokhrani), which means "Save and protect."

2. The next most common inscription is "Да воскреснет Бог, и разыдутся врази Его, и да бежат от лица Его ненавидящей Его..." (Da voskresnet Bog, i razidutsya brazi ego, i da bezhat ot litsa Ego nenavidyashchei Ego...). This is sometimes called an "Old Believer Cross", and the text is the pre-nikonian Slavonic text of the prayer said just before we go to bed, which is based on Psalm 67[68]: "Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered, and let them that hate Him flee from before his face." The prayer in the prayer book goes on to say: "As smoke vanisheth, so let them vanish; as wax melteth before the fire, so let the demons perish at the presence of them that love God, and who sign themselves with the Sign of the Cross, and who say in gladness: Rejoice, O Cross of the Lord, for thou drivest away the demons by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who was crucified on thee, Who descended into Hades and trampled on the power of the devil, and gave us His precious Cross for the driving away of all enemies. O most precious and life-giving Cross of the Lord, help me together with the most holy Lady Mother of God, and with all the holy heavenly powers, always, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen" (Old Orthodox Prayer Book, trans. Priest Pimen Simon, Priest Theodore Jurewicz, Hieromonk German Ciuba (Erie, PA: Russian Orthodox Church of the Nativity of Christ (Old Rite), 1996), p. 45f).

For more on the meaning of this prayer, and the Psalm it is based on, you can listen to this sermon:

Let God Arise and Let His Enemies Be Scattered

See Also:

What does this inscription mean?

Orthodox Biblical Interpretation and Protestant Biblical Scholarship

The question of what Orthodox Christians should make of Protestant biblical scholarship is a complicated question. First off, what do I mean by "Protestant biblical scholarship"? I don't mean to limit this to the work of scholars who are actually Protestants -- I include any scholar who takes the approach to Scripture that Protestant scholars developed, whether they be Roman Catholics, Jews, or Atheists. Should we embrace it fully, reject it completely, or should we make use it to some extent -- but critically, and cautiously?

The Problems with Embracing it Fully

A key question to consider at the beginning here is whether Protestants discovered an approach to Scripture, beginning in the 17th century, which is essential to properly understanding the Scriptures? If this were true, that would mean that for most of Church history, people were not really able to to properly understand the Scriptures. And that is an assumption which no right-believing Orthodox Christian could possibly accept.

When speaking about Protestants in general, it is necessary to make generalizations that are not going to be true to the same extent in every case, but generally modern Protestant biblical scholarship attempts to do the same thing with interpreting Scripture that Protestants attempt to do with Church history. They assume the Church became corrupt over the course of its history, and so it is necessary to leapfrog over the centuries and reestablish (more or less) the early Church. When it it comes to interpreting the Bible, they argue that have have to make that same leap, and get back to the understanding that prevailed when the Scriptures were written, in order to properly understand them. But the problem is, absent a time machine, we can only go back to the first century, in a sense, via the living Tradition that connects us with that time and with the apostles and saints of that time.

How do we know what St. John meant in his Gospel? We of course start with the text, but we then look to those whom he taught, and then to the Church as whole which received his teachings, and preserved them. We do not believe that the connection we have with St. John and the preservation of his teachings is either tenuous, or only partially reliable -- we believe the Church to be an infallible guide to what St. John meant.

Protestant scholars approach the Gospel of John like a crime scene investigation, or an archaeological dig, where they have to piece together fragmentary evidence, and then try to put together some sort of a plausible hypothesis about what to make of it. This, however, would only be true, if the Scriptures were not really the inspired word of God, and if the Church was not really the pillar and ground of the Truth. The Church understands the Scriptures because it knows the authors, and it is guided by the ultimate author of the Scriptures -- the Holy Spirit.

We also have to understand that Protestant methods are not neutral "technologies." They are methods that come with theological assumptions... assumptions which we generally do not share. If they were neutral technologies we should expect to see consistent results from their use, but in fact what we see is that they are used to produce speculative and subjective scholarship that is all over the map -- the likes of which would make the most speculative Freudian psychoanalysts blush, and shame the worst Gnostics the Church has ever encountered in its history.

But some might suggest that surely no Orthodox Christian would just accept this kind of scholarship, whole-hog, but such people would be wrong. Fr. Paul Tarazi is a case in point. If you look, for example, at the first volume of his three part introduction to the Old Testament, you will find that his entire text is based upon the assumption that the JEDP theory is a fact. Part one of the text is entitled "The Yahwist Epic" (the "J" source, which ends with an excursus entitled "The Case of the Elohist" (the "E" source); part 2 is entitled "The Deuteronomistic Tradition (the "D" source); part 3 is entitled "The Priestly Writings (the "P" source); and part 4 is entitled "The Post-Exilic Historical Traditions (which discusses the final redaction of the four sources into the Pentateuch as we know it). Fr. Paul does not present the JEDP theory as a theory, or discuss its merits. You would never know that any serious scholars questioned it. He simply assumes it to be true, and analyzes the separate histories and theological perspectives of the four sources. A good protestant introduction to the Old Testament generally does a better job of laying out the various theories, and they do discuss their merits and demerits. In fact, Brevard Childs (a Yale Old Testament Scholar, who was a Protestant) comes closer to an Orthodox presentation of the question, because in the end, he argues that we should interpret the Pentateuch as a whole, in its canonical form, not as separated sources (see his Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (1979).

Is it possible that the Pentateuch was comprised of more than one source? It is possible. Is there any way that we could confidently know which source was which in the Pentateuch, given the information available to us today? No. But even if we knew for sure that the Pentateuch was composed of four sources, and even if we could confidently identify which source any particular portions of the Pentateuch came from, if we believe in God, and believe that the Scriptures are inspired by Him, and have confidence that the form that we have received is the form that God intended for us to receive, then the form we have receive is what we should concern ourselves with.

But as a matter of fact, as is often the case, Protestant scholars selectively choose the "facts" and "evidence" that suit their agenda and then proceed, with their conclusions essentially predetermined by their basic assumptions, to apply their methods to the Scriptures. And so if you assume, for example, that any mentions of liturgical worship would be later than the time of Moses (because you're a Protestant, and see that as a later corruption), and obviously, the work of later priests, your starting assumption is how you identify the "P" source, and then you know the "P" source, because it matches your assumptions. The reasoning is circular, but because it is presented with confidence, by people who sound like they know what they are talking about, people too often assume there is something objective and compelling about it, when in fact, it is completely subjective.

The Problems with Rejecting it Completely

Having said that Protestants did not discover anything new that is essential to properly understanding the Scriptures, the fact remains, we live in a world in which the fruits of Protestant biblical scholarship are everywhere. If we could establish an isolated community on an island somewhere, completely disconnected from the rest of the world, such a community could afford to ignore this scholarship... but that is not the world we live in.

One fairly obvious reason we should want to understand this field is that if we want to reach Protestants, we have to be able to communicate with them in ways that will be meaningful to them. We have to understand where they are coming from, and be able to answer their questions. We should not only be able to identify where they deviate from the Orthodox Faith, but also to acknowledge where they do not.

What is not usually obvious, however, is that even Orthodox people who live in the west have been heavily influenced by this kind of scholarship, and they more often than not do not realize it, or recognize where so many of their assumptions about Scripture come from. Even though we live in a culture that is becoming increasingly anti-Christian, it is nonetheless a culture that is immersed in Protestantism. Our people watch documentaries, read articles, or have teachers or professors who make appeals to biblical scholarship, and often what is presented in the name of biblical scholarship is in fact a fairly radical set of conclusions that are not even in the mainstream, but because someone with a Ph.D. is quoted, the assumption is that this is what people who are educated on the subject ought to think. And so if you have a parish priest who has not critically studied Protestant biblical scholarship, he may not recognize how his flock has been influenced by it, much less recognize its influence upon himself, nor will he be equipped to give convincing answers when people ask him if it is really true that the Gospel of Judas is a reliable text, or why we should accept the testimony of the canonical Gospels, or even how we know that Christ was even an historical person.

And as a matter of fact, the enemies of the Church are not unaware of this scholarship. For example, we have a letter Maxim Gorky wrote to Joseph Stalin, in which he discussed his strategies for eliminating religious faith in Russia, and among many other things, he said:

"We cannot do without an edition of the "Bible" with critical commentaries from the Tubingen school and books on criticism of biblical texts, which could bring a very useful "confusion into the minds" of believers" (Letter of Gorky to Stalin).

The liberal German biblical scholarship Gorky refers to may very well have played a role in his own atheism. If it did not cause him to become an atheist, it certainly did nothing but confirm him in that atheism.

Making Medicines from Poisonous Snakes

The Church Fathers obviously didn't have to contend with liberal German biblical scholars, but they did have to contend with an issue that has some analogies to this question -- and that is the question of what use, if any, Christians should make of pagan Greek learning. In the wider culture, pagan Greek philosophy, rhetoric, and literature was the intellectual gold standard, and to educated people of the time, you either were conversant in these things, or you were not to be taken seriously.

On the one hand, you had those like Tertullian, who dismissed Greek philosophy by asking: "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?" (Prescription against Heretics, Chapter 7). And on the other hand, you had those, those who adopted Greek philosophy in such a way that they ended up with a pagan faith with only a thin Christian veneer. Tertullian's extremism lead him out of the Church; and most of those who fully embraced pagan philosophy belonged to heretical groups that never were in the Church to begin with.

The Church Fathers, however, took a balanced approach. For example, St. Gregory the Theologian wrote:

"...as we have compounded healthful drugs from certain of the reptiles; so from secular literature we have received principles of enquiry and speculation, while we have rejected their idolatry, terror, and pit of destruction.  Nay, even these have aided us in our religion, by our perception of the contrast between what is worse and what is better, and by gaining strength for our doctrine from the weakness of theirs" (Oration 43, Panegyric on Saint Basil," A Selected Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, series 2, vol. vii, eds. Henry Wace and Philip Schaff (New York: Christian, 18871900), p. 398f).

Likewise, St. Basil the Great said:

"Now, then, altogether after the manner of bees must we use these writings, for the bees do not visit all the flowers without discrimination, nor indeed do they seek to carry away entire those upon which they light, but rather, having taken so much as is adapted to their needs, they let the rest go. So we, if wise, shall take from heathen books whatever befits us and is allied to the truth, and shall pass over the rest. And just as in culling roses we avoid the thorns, from such writings as these we will gather everything useful, and guard against the noxious. So, from the very beginning, we must examine each of their teachings, to harmonize it with our ultimate purpose, according to the Doric proverb, 'testing each stone by the measuring-line''" (Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature, IV).

Simply put, we eat the meat, but spit out the bones. Use what is useful to us and to our purposes, and reject what is not. The appropriation of terminology and useful elements of Greek philosophy is already evident in the writings of the Apostles in the New Testament, and so what the Fathers did was entirely in keeping with the Faith that they had received from the Apostles. But the criterion of where to draw the lines here has always remained the Faith once delivered unto the Saints (Jude 3).

We should approach Protestant biblical scholarship in precisely the same way.

Taking a Critical Approach to Biblical Criticism

The key to approaching this scholarship in order to make good use of it, without falling prey to its pretensions, is to apply the same  "hermeneutic of suspicion" to Protestant biblical scholarship, which its practitioners so love to apply to Scripture. As, Thomas Oden observed

"Scripture criticism is more firmly captive today to its modern (naturalistic, narcissistic, individualistic) Zeitgeist than Augustinianism ever was to Platonism or Thomism to Aristotelianism. Trapped in modern prejudices against pre-modern forms of consciousness, reductionistic exegesis has proved to be just as prone to speculation as were the extremist forms of Gnosticism and as uncritical of its own presuppositions as supralapsarian Protestant scholasticism" (Agenda for Theology: After Modernity What? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990) p. 111).

 “We violate a primary ethical demand upon historical study if we impose upon a set of documents presuppositions congenial to us and then borrow from the canonical prestige of the documents by claiming that it corresponds with our favored predisposition. That lacks honesty. The modern attempt to study Christ has done this repeatedly. The text has often become a mirror of ideological interest: Kant’s Christ becomes a strained exposition of the categorical imperative; Hegel’s Christ looks like a shadow-image of the Hegelian dialectic. Schleiermacher’s Christ is a reflection of the awkward mating of pietism and romanticism; Strauss’s Christ is neatly weeded of all supernatural referents. Harnack’s portrait of Christ looks exactly like that of a late nineteenth-century German liberal idealist; and Tillich’s Christ is a dehistorical existential idea of being that participates in estrangement without being estranged…. The historical biblical critic was “not nearly so interested in being changed by his reading of the Bible, as in changing the way that the Bible was read in order to confirm it to the modern spirit”” (The Word of Life: Systematic Theology Volume Two, (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 224f).

"Historical biblical criticism has been allied with polemical concerns since its eighteenth century inception as an ideological agent of "Enlightenment." It has expressed a determined interest from the beginning in discrediting not merely the authority of Scripture, but authority in general -- all authority as such. Just read the biographies of Reimarus, Rousseau, Lessing, Strauss, Feuerbach, and of course Nietzsche (cf. Jacques Derrida, The Ear of the Other). It has operated especially as a partisan "ideology for the demystification of religious tradition"... It is astutely described as the strike force of modernity, "the Wehrmacht of the liberal Church"... The hermeneutic of suspicion has been safely applied to the history of Jesus but not to the history of the historians. It is now time for the tables to turn. The hermeneutic of suspicion must be fairly and prudently applied to the critical movement itself... One obvious neglected arena is the social location of the quasi-Marxist critics of the social location of classic Christianity, who hold comfortable chairs in rutted, tenured tracks. These writers have focused upon the analysis of the social location of the writers and interpreters of Scripture. Yet that principle awaits now to be turned upon the social prejudices of the "knowledge elite" -- a guild of scholars asserting their interest in the privileged setting of the modern university" (Ibid., p. 225f).

Whenever you read a claim by a modern biblical scholar that seems questionable -- question it. Ask how he knows what he claims to know? What actual hard evidence does he have? Usually, you will find the actual evidence is very slender, and the rest is filled in with speculation and wishful thinking. And it is often the case that you will find that bad scholarship of that sort is refuted by better, more conservative Protestant scholars. Even with those scholars, you have to be discerning, but it should be understood that not all of these scholars are equally wrong-headed, or equally hostile to the Traditional understanding of the Scriptures which we hold to.

I would also add that it is not just for apologetic purposes that we need to be familiar with this kind of scholarship -- there are some good and useful things that these scholars have produced over the centuries. For example, until there is a good Orthodox Bible dictionary that is available in English, there is no reason we should not make use of such handy resources that helps a reader figure out who is who, and what is what as they read through the Bible. Why should we not make use of a good Greek or Hebrew Lexicon, even if those who compiled it were not Orthodox? As a matter of fact, there is no translation of the Bible in English that is not either entirely the work of non-Orthodox scholars, or at least dependent upon their work to some extent. It would be foolish, and practically impossible to make no use of heterodox scholarship when studying the Scriptures.

As Clement of Alexandria put it, we can take the spoils of Egypt and turn them into the furniture of the Tabernacle. That requires that we do not simply import pagan furniture into the Church, but whatever is true and good can be put to good use in the Church, and this is true of Protestant scholarship as well. We simply have to be discerning, and to remain faithful to the Tradition of the Church in the process.

For more information:

"Sola Scriptura," particularly the section on Historical-Critical Exegesis

Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300-1700, Scott W. Hahn and Benjamin Wiker

The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) 1st Edition, by Michael C. Legaspi 

For an Orthodox critique of Fr. Paul Tarazi's approach to Scripture, see "Fr. Paul Tarazi: From Study to Heresy! A Critique of his Book Introduction to the New Testament: Paul and Mark," by Archimandrite Touma (Bitar)

A Guide to Biblical Reference Texts

Beginning to Read and Understand the Bible

Skeptical Biblical Scholarship: Part 1

Skeptical Biblical Scholarship: Part 2

Unitarian Morality With a Little "Theosis" Sprinkled on Top

Back in the 70's,  there was a song that expressed the ethic of the sexual revolution: "Love the one you're with," by Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills, & Nash), which was based on a saying coined by Billy Preston: "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." The logic being that you can't expect a man to remain faithful to his wife (or "main squeeze," as the case may be), if she isn't around. It's "unrealistic" to expect such a man to be celibate, when circumstances separate him from her. Take this logic into the contemporary period of homosexual advocacy, and you also have to conclude that if someone wants to have homosexual sex, it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain from it, simply because the Scriptures and 2000 years of Christian Tradition say that they should. But who would expect that similar logic might be advanced by an "Orthodox Theologian"? Well if you can't imagine that being possible, you probably are not familiar with the folks at the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University.

In his essay, "Sex, Marriage, & Theosis," which is part of the latest issue of The Wheel (which deals with issues related to homosexuality in several of its articles), Aristotle Papanikolaou makes various observations regarding the Church's understanding of marriage and sex, and uses lots of contemporary buzzwords before he gets to his real point in his last two paragraphs:

"Forced celibacy can actually unleash the potentially objectifying force of sexual desire, albeit in a repressed form. In other words, forced celibacy is a recipe for an anti-theotic state of being, especially since it may incite fear, anger, and hatred. If that is the case, then long-term committed relationships, or marriages, are also spaces for working through the objectifying potential of sexual desire ascetically, such that it contributes toward and does not mitigate against sacramentality. A Christian tradition with theosis at its core, and, as a result, with attention to the dynamics of the various constitutive aspects of the human condition, recognizes that when it comes to sexual desire, simply to say “struggle” can be spiritually harmful and, thus, not ascetically discerning. Sexual desire just does not stop when we struggle; in fact, the struggle may even incite it more intensely.

It is unrealistic, as Saint Paul I think insightfully recognized, to expect someone simply to deny or turn off such desire; it is spiritually discerning to allow such a desire to be expressed rather than “to be aflame with passion” (1 Cor. 7:9), in long-term committed relationships or marriages, whose aim is presencing God through the virtues, which, in the end, are manifest when the various constitutive parts of the human condition are configured so that one can be agapeic toward the other, and one can increase in eros for the divine" (The Wheel 13/14, Spring/Summer 2018, p. 97)

Note the use of the phrase "long-term committed relationships, or marriages..." The Fordham folks are not yet ready to argue that the Church should give a sacramental blessing to gay marriages, but they are arguing that we should accept "long term committed relationships" that are homosexual as being compatible with the Christian life.

And if we accept that "forced celibacy" is "unrealistic" and "unhealthy," what should the Church say to a husband who is separated from his wife for years at a time, by circumstances beyond his control? This is not some unusual circumstance in the history of the world. In World War II, for example, many husbands did not see their wives for years at a time. Many a married couple in the Soviet Union were separated by the war, and in some cases never knew the fate of their spouse. Even in our current circumstances, military deployments still separate spouses for very long periods of time. Even non-military employment can require lengthy separations. Should the Church tell the husband and wife in such cases, "If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with"? If not, we are telling them that they should be celibate, which Aristotle Papanikolaou takes to be "forced celibacy."

And if we can't expect celibacy from adults, when they are either not married, or separated from their spouses, on what basis would we expect it from 15 year olds? It's not even legal in most states for 15 year olds to get married, even with their parents' permission, and so either we are asking them to remain celibate -- which is "unrealistic," and "unhealthy," (we have been told), or we are left to let them have sex outside of marriage in some form or another.

Aristotle Papanikolaou is espousing a position on sex and celibacy that you will find expressed in precisely 0% of the Fathers and Saints of the Church, and nowhere in all of Scripture. Nowhere in the Christian Tradition do you find the idea that sex of any kind outside of marriage (between a man and a woman) is acceptable. The only remotely historical connection such views would have in Church history would be found among certain gnostic groups in the early Church period, which were absolutely condemned by the Church. And yet this is apparently where these folks want to take the Church. How is it possible that the bishops of the Greek Archdiocese tolerate this nonsense?

You can use Trinitarian language, and you can talk about theosis all you want, but when you end up with a morality that is identical to that of the Unitarian Universalist Church, you are not Orthodox, no matter what you might call yourself. And from a purely practical standpoint the Greek Archdiocese might want to study up on the rapid decline the Unitarian Universalists have experienced since they threw out any semblance of adherence to Christian morality. In fact, the same pattern has been repeated in most of the mainline Protestant denominations, and there is no reason to think the pattern won't be repeated in the Greek Archdiocese as well.

Now some will probably suggest that I am reading too much into this essay, but I don't think so, for three reasons: 1) I asked the author directly to explain his use of "long-term committed relationships, or marriages...", and he declined; 2) this is the same person who stated that while dogma was not up for debate, morality was ( see The Living Church 2.0); and 3) I was told by a former student of his that the promotion of gay marriage was a frequent topic pushed by both Aristotle Papanikolaou and George Demacopoulos at Fordham. If they want to deny that I am reading their intentions accurately, they should say what they really do mean, and say so clearly.

Response to Giacomo Sanfilippo

Giacomo Sanfilippo

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

Giacomo Sanfilippo, of Orthodoxy in Dialogue, began by focusing on an erroneous statement I made in the original version of the article "The Living Church 2.0":

"My response begins by exposing an outright lie by Father Whiteford when he writes, “The most recent issue of ‘The Wheel,’ a journal whose general editor is a lesbian….”*"

The asterisk is there to note that when it was pointed out that I was mistaken, I corrected the article, and added an apology to it. So on the point of whether or not my original statement was correct, I concede that it was not, and I sincerely apologize to Inga Leonova for the error -- I have done so privately, and publicly -- I have no desire to misrepresent anyone.

Making an erroneous statement, and telling a lie are not exactly identical things. For something to be a lie, it has to be not only false, but it has to be intentionally false. This is not the case. In his note at the end, he chides me for  "seem[ing] to have no hesitation to broadcast others’ sins such as he imagines them and potentially to ruin reputations in the process." To begin with, lying is also a sin, and were I indeed guilty of it, Giacomo would now be guilty of hypocrisy, because he would be broadcasting my sins. However, I think there are occasions in which calling people out in public is very appropriate, and if someone publicly posts a lie, I think calling them on it is  justified... just like I believe that a person should be called out in public if they publicly deny that the moral tradition of the Church is true and should be followed, and yet claims to be an Orthodox Christian.

First let me explain where my I got the mistaken idea in the first place. Inga Leonova has been pushing the LGBT agenda in the Orthodox Church for a very long time. Back in 2011, there was an irenic article by an Orthodox priest  on the subject of those struggling with homosexuality, which nevertheless did not give any ground on the principle that homosexual sex is a sin that needs to be repented of, and that an Orthodox Christian is obliged to not indulge in that sin. Inga had a pro-homosexual Orthodox Facebook group (which I believe she started) that discussed this article, and most of the posters thought it was positive, but she took issue with it, and wrote:

"I think the point of the article is crystal clear even though the author is very careful in actually NOT spelling it out. He addresses the perception that gay people are "persecuted" by the Church in being required to live celibate lives by saying that everyone is called to transform their lives by the ascetic ordeal of Christian life. This is yet again a very clever way of dismissing the question of gay companionship." 

Then a poster asked her to clarify what she really meant:

"?"gay companionship"? What is that, may I humbly ask? Like David and Jonathan? Not sexual? Why call it "gay"? I get so confused on what people are saying in these groups. Forgive me." 

Inga never responded, because to clarify would be to state something that apparently she was not yet prepared to say in public, in no uncertain terms (the latest issue of the Wheel crosses that line, however, if she has not crossed it previously).

I wrote about this in an article entitled  "The bottom line in the current debate," which pointed this out, and ended by referencing an article that suggested the problem of "gay companionship" could be dealt with by men and women who are struggling with homosexuality, but who desire to overcome it, marrying someone of the opposite sex, who is likewise struggling. My recollection is that Inga responded to that post by saying "Watch out folks! They are trying to marry us off".  Unfortunately, I did not save that post, and so cannot cite it verbatim. In any case, these comments combined with her relentless advocacy of the homosexual agenda led me to my conclusion, but I have been assured by several people that it is not true, and so I accept that must have misread her at some point.

Now Giacomo is free to believe that I intentionally made this statement, knowing it to be false, but I think a reasonable person would know that you don't have to be a genius to realize it is a bad strategy  to make a point that is easily refuted, and allows your opponents to focus on that one error, and ignore most of what you actually did say.

Furthermore, the point I was making is not really changed by this correction. My point is that the Wheel's general editor has a clear pro-homosexual bias, and she clearly does. That is easily documented. Also, I don't think anyone who is familiar with her position on homosexuality is likely to have a better or worse opinion of her based on her either being or not being a lesbian. In fact, were she a lesbian who accepted the teachings of the Church as they were, that would be far better. Personal sins are still sins, but sins that involve other people in your sin are worse -- but heresy by far, is much worse than either of those kinds of sins. Teaching that a sin is not really a sin is a heresy, and it is a heresy that closes off the possibility of repentance for those who believe it. You can't repent of a sin that you don't believe to be a sin. And Inga does not believe that homosexual sex is inherently sinful, and she is spreading that view now through the Wheel.

The Benedict Arnold Option

Giacomo then goes off on a weird tangent:

"Speaking of lies, Father Whiteford, are you aware that Rod Dreher’s unrepented lies about an African-American professor have endangered the man’s life to the point where he needs police protection? Have a look at the addendum at the top of this article. In fact, as the husband in an interracial marriage, you might want to read the whole article. I mention this because your blog post seems to suggest that you admire or at least make common cause with Mr. Dreher. We should choose our bedfellows a little more carefully."

I am not sure where this comes from. Prior to my most recent article, I find only two posts since 2004 that mention him. I certainly have no personal animosity towards Rod Dreher, and I am sure we agree on most matters of the Orthodox Faith. When it comes to his political commentary, I probably disagree with him as often as I agree with him. I do not regularly read his articles (which I am not criticizing, I just have only so much time). I have not read any of his books. Most of his opinions I only see in snippets on Twitter. What perhaps sparked this comment is that in my recent article, his name came up, only because I quoted a comment that mentioned him by Aristotle Papanikolaou. Apparently Rod Dreher made the comment that the moral teachings of the Church are not up for debate, and Aristotle Papanikolaou denied that this was so. On that point, I agree with Rod Dreher without any hesitation. It is a betrayal of the Orthodox Faith to suggest that our moral tradition is on a different footing than the dogmatic tradition of the Church.

If Giacomo wants to dispute that, he needs to make an argument, and provide something like evidence to back it up.

Context

Giacomo made the following assertion, which either means he only quickly scanned my article, or he is willing to misrepresent his opponents:

"In response to Metropolitan Kallistos’ Foreword in The Wheel you suggest that “his comments are due to the weakness of old age.” Shame on you, Father Whiteford."

I actually made no such assertion. He might as well have quoted me as saying I hoped the Metropolitan was kidnapped. In fact, I mentioned several possible mitigating circumstances that might excuse the text of the article in question, but then said that only God knows the truth of that, and only God can judge his heart -- but that we have an obligation to judge whether what he wrote was right or wrong.

Appealing to Homophobia

Giacomo closed with a suggestion of what he thinks is my real motivation:

"...you may be dealing with unresolved, perhaps unacknowledged inner conflicts of your own."

This is a common tactic of homosexual apologists. They suggest that anyone who stands for traditional morality in the face of the push for the acceptance of the homosexual agenda is probably a closeted homosexual himself. This, they hope will cause someone who does not want be thought of as a homosexual to shut up. It has been tried by others on me, and sorry, but it's a ploy that I am not going to be intimidated by.

You might just as well argue that those who oppose pedophilia are motivated by their own pedophile tendencies. If the day comes when pedophilia is being promoted by some in the Church, I will speak out against that too, and if someone makes a similar suggestion then, it won't work then either.

As an Orthodox Christian and as priest, I have an obligation to stand for the teachings of the Church. If I were making up a religion of my own, it would look very different, but if we want to be part of the Church that Christ founded, we don't get to make things up according to our own wishes. We have to take what the Church teaches as it is, and on this issue, the Scriptures, the Canons, the Fathers, and the Saints are all perfectly clear. If you want a Church that says homosexual sex is OK, you need to look elsewhere.

The Living Church 2.0

Alexandr Ivanovich Vvedensky, head of  the "Living Church" 1923-1946

When St. Paul met with the presbyters in Ephesus for the last time, he left them with a warning:

"For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them" (Acts 20:29-30).

The truth of this warning has been demonstrated throughout Church history. The most devastating heresies in the history of the Church have been those which have arisen from within the Church. The reason why this is so was well summed up by Cicero:

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague."

Of course the Church not only can, but always will, survive such traitors, because Christ has promised us this, but the damage done to souls by traitors from within is far greater than that done by foes from without for the reasons Cicero gives.

When the Bolsheviks were seeking to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church, they found a group of willing accomplices among its clergy, who supported communism, wanted to allow widowed priest to remarry, married priests to become bishops, the adoption of the new calendar, innovations in the services, and the acceptance of other novel teachings. This group formed the so called "Living Church." The Bolsheviks did not create the Living Church out of thin air, they simply allowed renovationists from within the Church to establish their own version of "Orthodoxy," as a means to undermine the real thing. For a time, it was even recognized as the legitimate ecclesiastical authority in Russia by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. However, the "Living Church" failed, because it was rejected by the faithful of the Russian Church, and when it became clear that it was no longer useful to the Soviets (since they had no real support), they were allowed to wither away, and finally disappear. But the damage done by the "Living Church" was very real and extensive.

Today, we see the beginnings of a new renovationist movement, and this group is so radical that it makes the "Living Church" look quite traditional by comparison. Among the ideas that they promote are the ordination of women as priests, ecumenism, modernism, liturgical innovations, and universalism. However, the most base part of their agenda is their promotion of relativism when it comes to Christian morality, and in particular, their promotion of the acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism.

There are three online journals now which incessantly promote their renovationist agenda. "Public Orthodoxy," "The Wheel," and "Orthodoxy in Dialogue." These journals have hardly attempted to camouflage their agenda, but they usually have tried to use enough weasel words to allow for some implausible deniability. Lately, however, they have become even more brazen.

The most recent issue of "The Wheel," a journal whose general editor is openly pro-homosexual  and has argued that homosexuals do not need to remain celibate)* featured an introduction by no less than Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware). Since there are now several very thorough refutations of what he says, I won't focus on it myself. I will only echo the disappointment expressed by many, as well as the appreciation for the many good things he has done in the past for the English speaking Orthodox world. I hope we discover that the real Metropolitan Kallistos has been kidnapped, and someone else is writing under his name, but the Metropolitan Kallistos of 10 years ago did not agree with the mealy-mouthed approach he takes now to homosexuality. The Orthodox Faith has not changed in the last 10 years, the only thing that has changed is that western culture has tipped on this question in favor of homosexuality. Whether his comments are due to the weakness of old age, or some other mitigating factor, God knows, and only God can judge his heart. However, we can and must discern whether his words are sound or not.

For the best articles answering Metropolitan Kallistos, see:

"Metropolitan Kallistos and The Wheel," Fr. Lawrence Farley

"Ambiguity Serves No One: A Review of the Foreword by Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) to the latest issue of The Wheel," by Dr. Edith M. Humphrey

"Anatomy of a Foreword: Metr. Kallistos on Sexual Morality," by Fr. John Cox.

What I would like to focus on in this article is the response of Sister Vassa to these articles, and then recent comments from Aristotle Papanikolaou of Fordham University, who has let the mask slip a bit more than most of these people have, thus far.

Sister Vassa Strikes Again

Sister Vassa herself has been the subject of controversy on the issue of homosexuality, but in a recent video, she defended at some length Metropolitan Kallistos' recent article.

She argues that he is "just asking questions." The problem is, he is just asking questions about matters that are not questionable. The Serpent just asked a question of Eve when he said: "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" (Genesis 3:1). Entertaining that question didn't work out so well.

She asks why we can't just give people like Metropolitan Kallistos the benefit of the doubt. The problem is, you can't give someone the benefit of the doubt where no doubt is left. If someone had suggested that they heard tell that Metropolitan Kallistos was arguing that a gay couple that was in a committed relationship ought to be given communion, and that their spiritual father should take a "don't ask, don't tell" approach to their relationship, I would have given His Eminence the benefit of the doubt that he actually would have said such a thing. However, I think it is rather unlikely that "The Wheel" published a forgery written under his name, and so we have to deal with what he said, and we have to judge whether what he said was right or wrong.

Sister Vassa repeatedly questioned the qualifications of those who have responded to Metropolitan Kallistos, by saying that they are "not the peers" of this great man. This of course all depends on what you mean by "peers." As a scholar, Dr. Edith Humphrey is certainly a peer. But as a bishop, the bishops of the rest of the Church are certainly his peers, and every time they have spoken on this issue, they have spoken with clarity that directly contradicts the mealy-mouthed approach taken by the article in question. But even the laity have the right and obligation to challenge a bishop who is in error. I am sure few of the faithful in Constantinople were the intellectual peers of the bishops who returned from the false council of Florence, having made a shameful and heretical union with Rome, but they felt like peers enough, as members of the Body of Christ, to not only disapprove of their union, but to greet them with a shower of debris of various sorts, in order to make their opinions unmistakably known. The people of God are the guardians of piety, as the Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs of 1848 (in reply to Pope Pius the IX) states. It is therefore not only permissible, but obligatory for all of the faithful, and even more so for the clergy, to oppose these attempts to infect our Church with the same heresies that have wreaked such havoc in mainline Protestant Churches, and are in the process of doing the same in the Roman Catholic Church.

Sister Vassa suggests that those criticizing this article are guilty of the sin of Ham. Ham's sin was to reveal his father's nakedness when he was drunk (Genesis 9:18-23). Had Noah run around naked for all to see, Ham would not have been wrong to have suggested his father ought not to have done so. The nakedness here is the error of this article. The article was not made public by those criticizing it. If anyone is guilty of the sin of Ham, it is perhaps the editors of "The Wheel" who published the article in the first place, and I am sure that all of the critics of this article would have been far happier had someone committed the article to the shred bin, and thus actually covered the nakedness of His Eminence.

And to defend the article in question, Sister Vassa had to equivocate on what is in dispute here. She said:

"Some people want to pretend that there aren't questions... we have all the answers... Is that true? Is that true, that we are finished perfect works as human beings? Or do we still need a little bit of work? Do we still need to be developed? Of course we do. We are all God's precious works in progress. And we grow in our faith. We grow not only as individuals, but hopefully as Church... right? Can we imagine that we as the Church in this world have nothing else left to learn? Can that be possible?"

The question is not whether any of us are perfect, nor is the question whether any of us as individuals have all the answers. The question here is whether the indisputably consistent teachings of the Church on this issue, found in both Scripture and Tradition, are correct or not, or whether we might today be in a position to revise such clear and consistent teachings -- teaching that even heretics have not generally disputed in Church history.

Metropolitan Kallistos suggests that somehow if a gay couple is in a committed relationship, this is a mitigating factor. However, the man in Corinth who was in a sexual relationship with his step mother was also in a committed relationship... and yet this does not seem to be a mitigating factor for St. Paul, who said that this man was to be barred from the fellowship of the Church until he repented (1 Corinthians 5-6). Likewise, Herod was in a committed relationship with Herodias, his brother Philip's ex-wife, and yet St. John the Baptists did not suggest that this was a mitigating factor in his sin either (Mark 6:14-29). And in both cases, the sin was far less of a violation of the natural order than that of homosexuality.

Aristotle Papanikolaou Let's the Mask Slip Further

For those of you who might be confused by the abbreviations and the Twitterisms here, let me put his statements into clearer English:

"One more thing: the heart of the debate is on what can be talked about in Orthodoxy.  [Public Orthodoxy, the online Journal he helps run] simply asserts that everything except the dogmas (statements of faith, not morality--contra[ry to Rod Dreher], whose 'Orthodox morality' is ironically a modern neologism) is up for discussion."

Is there any basis for separating Orthodox dogma and Christian morality? No. Let's go back to the very first Council of the Church, the Council of the Apostles in Jerusalem, recorded in Acts 15. The question was to what extent ought gentiles be held to obey the Mosaic Law. On one side, there were those who argued that gentiles had to become Jews, and live according to all of the ceremonial and moral laws of Moses. However, the Apostles said that gentiles were to be held instead to the basic laws God gave to Noah for all of mankind (see Genesis 9:1-17), and to the Moral Law of God, particularly with regard to sexual morality. They wrote to the gentile converts:

"...it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well" (Acts 15:.28-29).

Some will object that Christians do not observe what the Apostles wrote with regard to eating the blood of animals, but while this is generally true of the heterodox, it is not true of the Orthodox (See "Stump the Priest: The Council of Jerusalem on the Blood of Animals").

And when the text speaks of "fornication," the word is porneia (πορνεία), which refers to any sex which is unlawful, and in the Jewish and Christian context, this means any sexual relations forbidden by the moral law of God, as expressed in the Scriptures, including homosexual sex (see The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Volume 6, ed. Gerhard Kittel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1964-1976), p. 587-595) .

So is this decree of the Apostles, that all Christians must refrain from sexual immorality, dogma? Well the Scriptures say that this is exactly what it is. The Apostles obviously did not post their epistle to their website. The way this epistle was disseminated to gentile converts was by people like St. Paul himself. We are told in the chapter immediately following the record of the Council of Jerusalem that St. Paul and his companions delivered this epistle as they went on their next missionary journey:

"And as they went through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decrees, that were ordained by the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem" (Acts 16:4).

And what is the Greek text for "the decrees"?  "τα δογματα" ta dogmata (i.e. the dogmas).

How far does Aristotle Papanikolaou think anyone would have gotten with St. Paul or any of the other apostles, if they had suggested that the dogma forbidding sexual immorality was up for debate? I would think that they would have had little patience with such an argument.

We seem to be heading into a period of Church history in which we will be increasingly confronted by renovationists of this kind. We must stand firm, and we must, as the People of God, reject what they are trying to sell.

*In the original version of this article I wrote that the general editor was a lesbian, based on things I had read from her. I have been informed that my reading was incorrect, and I apologize for making the error, and ask for her forgiveness.

See Also: 

Response to Giacomo Sanfilippo

Unitarian Morality With a Little "Theosis" Sprinkled on Top