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Orthodoxy is true knowledge of God and worship of God; Orthodoxy is the worship of God in spirit and truth; Orthodoxy is the glorification of God through true knowledge of Him and worship of Him; Orthodoxy is the glorification by God of man, the true servant of God, by the gift of the grace of the All-Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the glory of Christians ( John 7:39 ). Where there is no Spirit, there is no Orthodoxy.
There is no Orthodoxy in human teachings and reasoning: they are dominated by a falsely so-called reason—the fruit of the Fall. Orthodoxy is the teaching of the Holy Spirit, given by God to mankind for salvation. Where there is no Orthodoxy, there is no salvation. "Whoever desires to be saved must, above all else, hold fast to the Catholic Faith, which whoever does not hold whole and blameless will perish forever, apart from all perplexity . "
The teaching of the Holy Spirit is a precious treasure! It is taught in Holy Scripture and in the Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church. The teaching of the Holy Spirit is a precious treasure! It is the guarantee of our salvation. Precious, irreplaceable, and incomparable for each of us is our blessed lot in eternity. Just as precious, just as priceless is the guarantee of our blessedness—the teaching of the Holy Spirit.
To preserve this pledge for us, the Holy Church today publicly lists those teachings engendered and published by Satan, which are an expression of enmity toward God, which slander our salvation and steal it from us. The Church denounces these teachings as ravenous wolves, deadly serpents, thieves and murderers; protecting us from them and calling back from destruction those seduced by them, she anathematizes these teachings and those who stubbornly adhere to them.
The word "anathema" means excommunication or rejection. When the Church anathematizes a teaching, it means that it contains blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and, for salvation, must be rejected and eliminated, just as poison is eliminated from food. When a person is anathematized, it means that they have irrevocably assimilated the blasphemous teaching, depriving themselves and those neighbors to whom they impart their way of thinking of salvation. When a person intends to abandon the blasphemous teaching and accept the teaching of the Orthodox Church, they are obligated, according to the canons of the Orthodox Church, to anathematize the false teaching they have previously held and which has destroyed them, alienating them from God, keeping them in enmity toward God, in blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and in communion with Satan.
The meaning of anathema is the meaning of a spiritual, ecclesiastical remedy against the illness of the human spirit, which causes eternal death. All human teachings that introduce their own speculations, drawn from false reason, from carnal wisdom—the common heritage of fallen spirits and humans—into the divinely revealed teaching about God, cause eternal death. Human speculation introduced into the teaching of the Christian faith is called heresy, and adherence to this teaching is called evil belief .
The Apostle also includes heresies among the works of the flesh ( Gal. 5:20 ). They are considered works of the flesh by their source, the carnal mind, which is "death , which is enmity against God , which is not subject to the law of God, nor can it be" ( Rom. 8:6-7 ). They are considered works of the flesh by their consequences. Having alienated the human spirit from God, uniting it with the spirit of Satan through his chief sin—blasphemy—they subject it to the enslavement of the passions as one abandoned by God, as one given over to his own fallen nature. "Their foolish heart was darkened ," says the apostle about the wise men who had strayed from the true knowledge of God, " saying to be wise, they became fools... changing the truth of God into a lie:... therefore God delivered them over to the passions of dishonor" ( Rom. 1:21-26 ). The passions of dishonor are a variety of lustful passions. The behavior of the heresiarchs was depraved: Apollinaris had an adulterous relationship , 47 Eutychius was especially enslaved to the passion of avarice , 48 Arius was depraved to the point of incredulity. When his hymn, Thalia, began to be read at the First Council of Nicaea, the fathers of the Council stopped their ears, refusing to hear obscenity that could never enter the mind of a pious person. Thalia was burned. Fortunately for Christianity, all copies of it have been destroyed: the only historical record left to us is that this work breathed out frantic depravity . 49 Many of the writings of the newest heresiarchs are similar to Thalia: in them, terrible blasphemy is combined and mixed with expressions of terrible, inhuman depravity and blasphemy. Blessed are those who have never heard or read these eruptions of hell. When reading them, the union of the spirit of the heresiarchs with the spirit of Satan becomes obvious. Heresies, being a carnal matter, the fruit of carnal wisdom, are invented by fallen spirits. “Flee godless heresies,” says Saint Ignatius the God-Bearer , “for they are the diabolical invention of that evil serpent.” 50This should not be surprising: fallen spirits have descended from the heights of spiritual dignity; they have fallen into carnal reasoning to a greater extent than humans. Humans have the ability to transition from carnal to spiritual reasoning; fallen spirits are deprived of this ability. Humans are not subject to such a strong influence of carnal reasoning because in them, natural goodness has not been destroyed, as in spirits, by the fall. In humans, good is mixed with evil, and therefore unseemly; in fallen spirits, evil alone reigns and operates. Carnal reasoning in the realm of spirits has attained the broadest, fullest development it can attain. Their greatest sin is a frenzied hatred of God, expressed through terrible, incessant blasphemy. They have become proud of God Himself; they have transformed the submission to God that is natural to creatures into incessant resistance, into irreconcilable hostility. Therefore their fall is deep, and the wound of eternal death with which they are stricken is incurable. Their essential passion is pride; they are dominated by a monstrous and stupid vanity; they find pleasure in all forms of sin, revolve constantly in them, passing from one sin to another. They grovel in the love of money, and in gluttony, and in adultery 51 . Unable to commit carnal sins bodily, they commit them in fantasy and sensation; they have assimilated to their incorporeal nature the vices proper to the flesh; they have developed in themselves these vices, unnatural to them, incomparably more than they can be developed among men 52 . “He has fallen from heaven ,” says the prophet about the fallen cherub, “ the morning star that riseth: "Be crushed upon the earth... You said in your mind: I will ascend to heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of God, ... I will be like the Most High. But now you will descend to hell and to the foundations of the earth; you will be thrown down upon the mountains like a dead man" ( Is. 14:12-15, 19 ).
Fallen spirits, containing within themselves the source of all sin, strive to draw people into all sins with the goal and thirst for their destruction. They entice us into various indulgences of the flesh, into greed, into love of glory, painting before us the objects of these passions in the most seductive imagery. They especially strive to draw us into pride, from which, like plants from seeds, enmity toward God and blasphemy sprout. The sin of blasphemy, which constitutes the essence of every heresy, is the most grievous sin, as a sin belonging specifically to reprobate spirits and constituting their most distinctive quality. Fallen spirits strive to cover all sins with a plausible guise, called "justifications" in the ascetic writings of the Fathers .
They do this so that people are more easily seduced, more readily willing to accept sin. They do the same with blasphemy: they try to disguise it with a magnificent name, pompous eloquence, and lofty philosophy. Heresy is a terrible weapon in the hands of spirits! They have destroyed entire nations through heresy, stealing Christianity from them without their noticing , replacing it with blasphemous teachings, and adorning this deadly doctrine with the name of purified, true, restored Christianity. Heresy is a sin committed primarily in the mind. This sin, accepted by the mind, is communicated to the spirit, spills over into the body, and defiles our very body, which has the capacity to receive sanctification from communion with Divine grace and the capacity to be defiled and contaminated by communion with fallen spirits. This sin is subtle and difficult to understand for those who lack a clear understanding of Christianity, and therefore easily ensnares simplicity, ignorance, and an indifferent and superficial confession of Christianity. Saints Joannicius the Great, Gerasimus of the Jordan, and several other saints of God were temporarily ensnared by heresy. If holy men, who spent their lives solely concerned with salvation, could not suddenly comprehend blasphemy cloaked in a guise, what can we say of those who spend their lives in worldly cares and have an insufficient, even the most insufficient, understanding of faith? How can they recognize deadly heresy when it appears to them adorned in the guise of wisdom, righteousness, and holiness? This is why entire human societies and entire nations have easily succumbed to the yoke of heresy. For this same reason, conversion from heresy to Orthodoxy is extremely difficult; far more difficult than from unbelief and idolatry. Heresies that border on atheism are more easily recognized and abandoned than those less removed from the Orthodox faith and therefore more concealed. The Roman Emperor, Equal-to-the-Apostles, the great Constantine, wrote a letter to Saint Alexander, Patriarch of Alexandria, the denouncer of the heresiarch Arius, exhorting him to cease the debates that were disturbing the peace with "empty" words. These words, called "empty," denied the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ and destroyed Christianity . Thus, ignorance in this holy man, a zealot for piety, was deceived by the incomprehensible machinations of heresy. Heresy, being a grave sin, a mortal sin, is quickly and decisively healed as a sin of the mind by a sincere, heartfelt anathematization. Saint John Climacus said: “The Holy Catholic Church accepts heretics when they sincerely anathematize their heresy 55 and immediately honors them with the Holy Mysteries, but those who have fallen into fornication, even if they confess and abandon their sin, are ordered, according to the apostolic rules, to be excommunicated from the Holy Mysteries for many years.” 56The impression made by carnal sin remains in a person even after confession of the sin and after its abandonment; the impression made by heresy is immediately destroyed upon its rejection. Sincere and decisive anathematization of heresy is a cure that finally and completely frees the soul from heresy. Without this cure, the poison of blasphemy remains in the human spirit and will not cease to shake it with perplexities and doubts produced by uneradicated sympathy for heresy; thoughts remain, "assuming themselves upon the mind" of Christ ( 2 Cor. 10:5 ), making salvation difficult for those possessed by them, those possessed by disobedience and resistance to Christ, those in communion with Satan. The cure of anathema has always been recognized by the Holy Church as necessary for the terrible disease of heresy. When Blessed Theodoret , Bishop of Cyrrhus, appeared before the Fathers of the Council at the Fourth Ecumenical Council, seeking to justify the accusations leveled against him, the Fathers demanded of him first of all that he anathematize the heresiarch Nestorius. Theodoret, who rejected Nestorius, but not as decisively as the Church rejected him, wanted to explain himself. The Fathers again demanded that he decisively, without reservation, anathematize Nestorius and his teachings. Theodoret again expressed a desire to explain himself, but the Fathers again demanded that he anathematize Nestorius, threatening otherwise to declare Theodoret himself a heretic. Theodoret pronounced anathema on Nestorius and all the heretical teachings of that time. Then the fathers glorified God, proclaimed Theodoret an Orthodox pastor, and Theodoret no longer demanded an explanation, having cast out from his soul the reasons that aroused the need for an explanation 57. Such is the attitude of the human spirit to the terrible illness of heresy.
Having heard today the threatening proclamation of spiritual healing, let us accept it with a true understanding and, applying it to our souls, let us sincerely and decisively reject those destructive teachings which the Church will anathema for our salvation. Even if we have always rejected them, let us be confirmed by the voice of the Church in our rejection of them. The spiritual freedom, ease, and strength which we will certainly feel within ourselves will testify to the correctness of the Church's actions and the truth of the teachings it proclaims.
The Church proclaims: “We bless and praise those who have captivated their minds in obedience to Divine revelation and have struggled for it; we excommunicate and anathematize those who oppose the truth, if they have not repented before the Lord, who awaited their conversion and repentance, if they did not wish to follow Holy Scripture and the Tradition of the early Church.”
“To those who deny the existence of God and assert that this world is self-existent, that everything happens in it without God’s providence, by chance: anathema.”
“To those who say that God is not a spirit, but a substance, and also to those who do not recognize Him as righteous, merciful, all-wise, omniscient, and who utter similar blasphemies: anathema.”
“To those who dare to assert that the Son of God is not consubstantial and not equal in honor with the Father, nor the Holy Spirit, who do not confess that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God: anathema.”
“Those who allow themselves to say that the coming into the world of the Son of God in the flesh, His voluntary suffering, death and resurrection are not necessary for our salvation and cleansing from sins: anathema.”
“To those who do not accept the grace of redemption preached by the Gospel as the only means of our justification before God: anathema.”
“To those who dare to say that the most pure Virgin Mary was not a Virgin before the birth, during the birth, and after the birth: anathema.”
“To those who do not believe that the Holy Spirit made the prophets and apostles wise, and through them proclaimed to us the true path to salvation, having testified to it by miracles, that He now dwells in the hearts of faithful and true Christians, guiding them into all truth: anathema.”
"To those who reject the immortality of the soul, the end of the age, the future judgment and eternal reward for virtues in heaven, and condemnation for sins: anathema."
"To those who reject the sacraments of the Holy Church of Christ: anathema."
“To those who reject the Councils of the Holy Fathers and their Traditions, which are in accordance with Divine revelation and piously preserved by the Orthodox Catholic Church: anathema” 58 .
Divine Truth became human to save us, who have perished from accepting and assimilating deadly lies. "If you continue in my word ," she proclaims, "if you receive my teaching and remain faithful to it, you will truly be my disciples; and you will understand the truth, and the truth will set you free" ( John 8:31–32 ). Only those who resolutely reject, and continually reject, all teachings invented and devised by reprobate spirits and men that are hostile to the teaching of Christ, the teaching of God, and that slander its integrity and inviolability, can remain faithful to the teaching of Christ. The revealed teaching of God is preserved in its inviolable integrity solely and exclusively within the bosom of the Orthodox Eastern Church. Amen.
Source: https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Ignatij_Brjanchaninov/asketicheskaya_propoved/15