ARE THE TERMS "CHRISTIAN"
AND "ORTHODOX" ACCURATE IN OUR TIMES?
by Archbishop Averky (Taushev)
Until recently, the concepts and terms "Christian"
and "Orthodox" were unambiguous and meaningful. Now, however, we are
living through times so terrible, so filled with falsehood and deception, that
such concepts and terms no longer convey what is significant when used without
further clarification. They do not reflect the essence of things, but have become
little more than deceptive labels.
Many societies and organizations now call themselves "Christian,"
although there is nothing Christian in them, insofar as they reject the principal
dogma of Christianity—the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, as do several
of the newest sects, to which the very spirit of true Christianity, which follows
so naturally and logically from the teaching of the Gospels, is generally quite
foreign.
Of late, the term "Orthodox" also has ceased in large
measure to express what it should, for even those who in fact have apostatized
from true Orthodoxy and become traitors to the Orthodox Faith and Church continue
to call themselves "Orthodox."
Such are all the innovators, who reject the true spirit of
Orthodoxy, all those who have started down the path of mutual relations with the
enemies of Orthodoxy, who propagandize for common prayer and even liturgical communion
with those who do not belong to the Holy Orthodox Church. Such are the "renovationists"1
and contemporary "neo-renovationists," the "neo-Orthodox"
(as some of them openly style themselves!), who are clamoring about how essential
it is to "renew the Orthodox Church," about some sort of "reforms
in Orthodoxy," which allegedly has become "set in its ways" and
"moribund." They harp on such things instead of focusing their prayerful
attention on the truly essential renewal of their own souls and the fundamental
reform of their own sinful nature with its passions and desires.
They insistently proclaim union with heretics, with non-Orthodox,
and even with non-Christians. They proclaim "the union of all," but
without the unity of spirit and truth which alone makes such union possible.
Such, for example, in our days are the Ecumenical Patriarchs
of Constantinople, who in the past recognized the "Living Church" in
Soviet Russia as legal and now recognize the Pope of Rome as the "head of
the whole Christian Church," and even admit the papist Latins to Holy Communion
without their first being united to the Holy Orthodox Church.
Such are all those who actively participate in the so-called
Ecumenical Movement, which is striving so blatantly to create some sort of new
pseudo-church out of all the denominations now existing.
Such, too, are those many others who are not completely faithful
to our Lord and Saviour and His Holy Church, but serve His vicious enemies or
please them in one way or another by helping them to realize their anti-Christian
goals in a world which has turned away from God.
Who will dare to deny us our lawful right not to recognize
such people as Orthodox, even though they may persist in using that name and in
bearing various high ranks and titles?
From church history we know that there have been not a few
heretics and even heresiarchs of high rank who were solemnly condemned by the
Universal Church and removed from their offices.
But what do we see today?
This, sadly, is an age of unlimited concessions and sly collaboration,
when even the most scandalous heretical actions or statements disturb hardly anyone.
Very few react to this manifest apostasy from Orthodoxy as they should, and as
for condemning these new heretics and apostates—there is no point in even
thinking about it. Today everything is permitted for everyone and nothing is prohibited
for anyone, except in cases where someone is personally hurt, offended and insulted
when their own folly is pointed out. Oh, in such cases, this is unforgivable!
Then threats make their appearance, based on those forgotten canons, which otherwise
are "obsolete, outdated and unacceptable" in our advanced, progressive
age!
The truth is readily ignored and brazenly flouted, while evil,
just as readily, celebrates its triumphant victory and gloatingly mocks the truth
which it has overthrown and trampled upon.
Is it possible to reconcile one's conscience to this contemporary
situation?
Can one close one's eyes to all these lies and falsehoods and
calmly act as if one saw nothing wrong?
Only individuals whose consciences are burned out or completely
lost can do so! That is why it is more than strange to hear some, imagining themselves
to be Orthodox, call the Russian Church Outside of Russia, "Old Believer,"
"schismatic," "Black Hundredist,"2
"retrograde," "obscurantist," and so on, simply because we
will not walk in step with these times and dare not to apostatize in anything
from Christ's Gospel and the original teaching of the Holy Church, and therefore
consider it an obligation of conscience to condemn this clear and obvious evil
of contemporary life which has already penetrated into the Church.
In fact, it is not we who are schismatic, but all those who
follow the spirit of these times and by that act cut themselves off from the One,
Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, apostatizing from the apostolic faith, from
the faith of the Fathers, from the Orthodox faith, which established the whole
world… These people are obviously hurtling over the precipice of apostasy—into
the abyss of perdition, together with the whole contemporary world, burying themselves
in their apostasy from the life-creating God.
Do you hear the Apostle's divinely inspired words, modernists,
attempting to distort Christ's Gospel and becoming so readily and zealously "conformed
to this world," evil and alluring as it is?
We readily accept your indictment that we are "old believers,"
considering it an honor to our traditionalism; but how does your Christian conscience
get on with your innovating, which overthrows essentially the ancient, true faith
and Christ's unchanging Church?
Was it not the Apostle who warned all Christians:
"Be ye not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed
by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good, and acceptable,
and perfect will of God" (Romans 12:2).
We are "old believers," but not schismatics, for
we have never cut ourselves off from the true Church of Christ.
We are in union with our Head, Christ the Saviour, with His
holy Disciples and Apostles, with the Apostolic Fathers, with the great Fathers
and Teachers of the Church, and with the great luminaries and pillars of the faith
and piety of our Fatherland, Holy Russia. But you are in union with some sort
of innovating, self-appointed teachers, whom you advertise everywhere so unlawfully
and obstinately, disparaging and at times even daring to criticize the genuine
luminaries of our Holy Church, who have pleased God and been glorified in many
ascetic struggles of piety and miracles throughout the course of her two-thousand
year history.
This being the case, which of us is really the schismatic?
Of course it is not those in the spirit of traditional Orthodoxy,
but those who have apostatized from the true faith of Christ and rejected the
genuine spirit of Christian piety; even though all the contemporary patriarchs,
who have altered our age-old, patristic Orthodoxy, may be on the latter's side,
as well as the majority of contemporary, so-called Christians.
Indeed, Christ the Saviour did not promise eternal salvation
to the majority, but quite the contrary, He promised it to His "little flock,"
which will remain faithful to Him to the end, in the day of His Glorious and Terrible
Second Coming, when He will come "to judge the living and the dead."
"Fear not, little flock," He said, painting
the frightening picture of the last times of apostasy from God and persecution
of the Faith before our mind's eye, "For it is your Father's good pleasure
to give you the Kingdom" (St. Luke 12:32).
This is why all we have said above prompts us to re-examine
the terminology that has been accepted up to the present. It is insufficient in
our time to say only "Christian"—now it is necessary to qualify
this by saying "true-Christian." Similarly it is insufficient to say
"Orthodox"—it is essential to emphasize that one is not referring
to an innovating modernist "Orthodox," but to a true Orthodox.
All genuine zealots of the true faith, serving Christ the Saviour
alone, have already begun to do this, both those in our Fatherland, enslaved by
ferocious enemies of God, where zealots depart into the catacombs like the ancient
Christians, as well as in Greece, our brother nation, where the "Old Calendarists"
not only refuse to accept the new calendar, but also reject all innovations of
any kind. They have a special veneration for that champion of Holy Orthodoxy,
St. Mark, Metropolitan of Ephesus, thanks to whose steadfastness the impious Union
of Florence with papal Rome in 1439 failed.3
In our firm stand for the true Faith and Church it is essential
to avoid everything personal—pride and self-exaltation, which inevitably
lead to new errors, and eventually even to a fall; we have already witnessed this
in several cases. It is not ourselves we should praise, but the pure and immaculate
Faith of Christ. No fanaticism is admissible here because it is capable of blinding
the spiritual eyes of such who are "zealous not according to knowledge."
Rather than confirming one in the Faith, this blind fanaticism can sometimes lead
one away from it.
It is important to know and to remember that a true Orthodox
Christian is not someone who just accepts the dogmas of Orthodoxy formally, but
a person who, as our great Russian hierarch St. Tikhon of Zadonsk taught so beautifully,
thinks in an Orthodox way, feels in an Orthodox way, and lives in an Orthodox
way, incarnating the spirit of Orthodoxy in his life. This spirit-ascetic and
world-renouncing, as is clearly set forth in the Word of God and the teachings
of the Holy Fathers—is most sharply and boldly denied by the modernists,
the "neo-Orthodox," who want in everything to keep in step with the
spirit of this world lying in evil, whose prince, in the words of the Lord Himself,
is none other than the devil (St. John 12:31). Thus it is not God Whom they desire
to please, but the "prince of this world," the devil; and thereby they
cease to be true Orthodox Christians, even if they call themselves such.
If we consider all this more seriously and deeply, then we
will see that this is precisely the case and that modernism with its innovations
is leading us away from Christ and His true Church.
Let us be horrified at how rapidly apostasy has proceeded,
although the modernists do not see it or feel it, inasmuch as they themselves
are taking an active part in it.
And so let us not fear to remain in the minority—far from
all their high-sounding titles and ranks. Let us always remember that even Caiaphas
was a high priest of the true God, and to what depths he sank—to the horrible
sin of deicide!
While living in this world which has apostatized from God,
let us strive not for specious human glory and cheap popularity, which will not
save us, but only to be within Christ's "little flock."
Let us be True Orthodox Christians, not modernists!
1 The name of members of the "Living
Church" movement, sponsored by the Bolsheviks in the 1920's (Trans.).
2 Literally, "black hundreders:" the "black hundreds"
were a patriotic, anti-revolutionary organization in pre-revolutionary Russia.
Popular slander equates them with the irresponsible mobs that carried out pogroms.
In fact the black hundreds were Church sponsored and opposed to any sort of brutality.
3 It is noteworthy that both the Catacomb Church in the USSR ("Tikhonites")
and the Greek Old Calendarists, between whom there can hardly be any communication,
have begun to call themselves "True Orthodox Christians."
Reprinted from Orthodox Life, St. Job of Pochaev Press,
Holy Trinity Monastery,
Jordanville, New York., Vol. 25, No. 3, May-June, 1975., pp. 4-8.