It should not surprise us that in our time a search for paths to unification has awakened within fragmented Christianity. Before our eyes is an open and direct campaign against Christianity in communist countries; but in a more outwardly mild form, this campaign against Christianity has also engulfed the countries of the so-called free world. A struggle lies ahead, and it demands the unity of people faithful to Christ and a firm stand in the truth. Enemies are already ready to bury Christianity. In vain! The Lord's words have been spoken: " Be of good cheer! I have overcome the world ." They must be inscribed in our hearts in letters of fire. But the struggle ahead will be long and severe. And who—a believer—will not regret that in these terrible historical hours such masses of Christians remain behind the walls of the Church created by the Lord? Who—a believer—would not rejoice at the unification of all Christianity, scattered and dispersed, in one holy, catholic, apostolic Church?
But terrible temptations lurk if the loudest, most outwardly strong unification process goes down a deceptive path, and especially if it, going in the wrong direction itself, even partially affects our holy Orthodoxy.
And Protestantism has declared itself the initiator of the unification movement in our days.
What caused this movement there? The motives were not of the same kind, but different in different people.
It is natural to think that one of the reasons, good and justified by life, is already indicated, namely: the demand of the time to prepare for the self-defense of Christianity.
Another motive can also be discerned. At the heart of many Protestants' aspirations lies a search for the long-lost, one, one, apostolic Church of Christ. After four hundred years of fragmentation, Protestantism has reached a dead end. In America alone, there are more than two hundred and fifty sects; the time has come for a reverse flow, not away from the center, but toward the sought-after center.
But there is another reason, not stated directly, but making itself felt: the extreme weakening of faith in modern Protestantism. While the Protestant lower classes still live partly by simple faith, theological faculties have become the purveyors of positivism in biblical and church-historical science, a method alien to talk of miracles and the supernatural element in history, and have made religion the subject of "objective science." The leaders and leaders of Protestantism, alumni of these faculties, waver between faith and unbelief in the fundamental truths of the Gospel, which they sometimes openly declare: in the Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, in His Resurrection, and others; Faith in the immortality of the soul is fading, and interest in questions of eternal life is fading in Protestantism. And among the impulses for unification, there is a subconscious search for a healing source for the renewal of faith, similar to the renewal of physical organisms through blood transfusion.
However , if you look from the outside, you can’t help but immediately see a number of false premises in these searches.
One of the biggest misconceptions is the idea that in the modern world there is no true guardian of intact Christian truth, that all divisions within Christianity are defective. This is the main fallacy of the unifying aspirations in Protestantism. Meanwhile, this false principle is accepted as the foundation of the ecumenical movement, which will be discussed later.
Another false assumption, an obvious paradox, is that if defective parts are combined into a whole, then possession of the complete truth will be achieved.
The third similar error: if we combine weak faith, weak spirit, and weak influence on public life of the Christian confession, then in our age of religious skepticism a force will be created that is strong in faith, capable of resisting the world's anti-Christian forces.
Энкоменизмъ. Энкоменизмъ.
One way or another, the desire for unity in Protestantism has been awakened. But how can it be realized? How can people's will to action be raised? How can the driving force of faith be replaced when faith itself ceases to move hearts? A new idea was needed to invigorate minds and hearts. And it has been found and proclaimed by the Ecumenical Movement , and Christianity is called to its realization. This is a revived old idea, which Catholic Rome tried to implement in a monarchical way through the papacy, and which Protestantism is now trying to implement in a democratic way through ecumenism: “the creation of the kingdom of God on earth.”
What does "building the Kingdom of God" mean in ecumenical language? It means the social construction of that future peace on earth, which must replace the previous, old, decrepit social order on the globe, destined—as it were—for destruction. Today, all the attention, all the efforts of Christianity must be directed toward the thought not of each person's own salvation, not of their soul, not of future eternal life, but of building society on new foundations. Hence: the church of our time is a "serving church," a "dinende Kirche," that is, serving social goals.
Even before the organization of the Ecumenical Council, these ideas were brought to the minds of Protestant leaders. In order to present the ecumenical movement in its origins, we will present the thoughts of two major figures of Protestantism, ideologists of the kingdom of God on earth: a) the German pastor, called among Protestants "the great prophet of our time", Christoph Blumhardt, who called for unification on this basis, although he did not live to see its implementation; and b) a summary of the speech of the current leader of the ecumenical movement, the general secretary of the Council of the Ecumenical Movement, Visser 't Hooft, delivered in Bad Boll (Germany) in 1946 at the Evangelical Academy in front of representatives of the press.
Christoph Blumhardt died in 1919, before the formation of the ecumenical movement, but his appeals very clearly express the ideas carried out in ecumenism, and Blumhardt is repeatedly referred to by Visser 't Hooft in his speech in Bad Boll.
“ We need not tremble and be afraid that the old is ending,” Blumhardt proclaimed during the First World War. “Yes, it is dying! Everything dear, beautiful, to which we were attached, with which we were in love—passed away! For all time, forever—passed away! The old world has collapsed, and a new one is rising on its ruins. Christianity must take a lively part in its construction” (Easter sermon of 1915). Blumhardt posed three problems to Christianity: the implementation of a better social order; then, overcoming confessional and religious contradictions and, finally, cooperation in the formation of complete peaceful coexistence of peoples, with the complete elimination of wars between peoples.
The existence of the first problem, a just social order, appears to him in the form of socialism, carried out peacefully, with the help of Christianity.
Regarding the second problem, the destruction of confessional barriers, Blumhardt wrote back in 1895: “We must finally abandon the idea that the Lord Jesus Christ would allow Himself to be enclosed in any one of the many churches or sects that have appeared over time and would like to make the world happy with this alone... For the Almighty God in Jesus, we must clear much more free space than any church can give... Christ will not interfere in the disputes of churches. His kingdom is much higher... Now, in our century, the question of creeds and churches should not be raised: that time has passed, it made sense forty years ago. “It’s all far from me, it’s already ruins!” Blumhardt exclaims with pathos.
The third problem is the creation of peaceful coexistence among peoples. According to Blumhardt, the first step toward this must be mutual repentance among peoples, and for church unity, the repentance of churches. Away with antichristian fatalism—the view that wars are inevitable and that they constitute the history of humanity. And for this, the nation-people must be prepared to sacrifice their fatherland, just as Abraham was prepared to give up his son Isaac and offer him as a sacrifice. As it is said of the apostles: "They left everything and followed Him." Of course, do not expect the fulfillment of this hope from our time: it is only a threshold. "We," says Blumhardt, "must receive a new Spirit, enter a new era. There is no other help than help from God, who rules the world, and His victory will come in Jesus Christ." [1].
The current Secretary General of the Ecumenical Movement Council, Visser t'Hooft, confirms the ideological connection of the Movement with the sentiments expressed by the evangelical pastor.
In a speech given in 1946 in Bad Boll, Blumgardt's homeland, he formulated the tasks of ecumenism in the same three points, although in more modest words, since the results of the Second War were too far from optimistic expectations. He calls the “church,” firstly, to social service in the world. He defines the task of the “servant church,” that is, the church that has become dedicated to serving social goals. “The world says to the church: your business is private life; religion is an individual matter; Even more acutely: religion is an otherworldly thing, and there is nothing for it to seek on this earth. No, the church must be the soul of humanity; its task is to serve in the decisive events of the world." Visser 't Hooft recalls Blomhardt's call for Christianity to enter the world as a creative principle in the construction of the Kingdom of God on earth. But for this, he says, the church itself must be renewed: it must undergo repentance. And this repentance must have practical consequences. Renewed, it has the opportunity, for example, to prepare the way for socialism. Unfortunately, after the war, the churches again show weariness, a spirit of restoration, social and political reaction, adaptation to the post-war situation; in many countries, the churches have become too bourgeois. That is why they need metanoia ( metanoi means: change of mindset, repentance). He points to Holland, where during the war there was a rapprochement between the "church people" and the socialist parties. A serving church must preach that Jesus Christ is the Lord not only of the church, but is the Lord of the world. The Bible must become a cosmic book, that is, serve all humanity; And that kind of piety which places all the weight on the salvation of individual souls and on the inner world of man represents a misunderstanding of the breadth of the Bible. Christ must penetrate the lives of all people; we need Christian doctors, ministers of art, journalists... Thus, serving social tasks is the first task of the church.
Secondly , the serving church must overcome denominationalism and become one church. Service to one's neighbor is service that must be common. The Ecumenical Council is a fellowship of churches that differ in many respects, but in the final sense are united by one Lord.
Thirdly , and finally, a church that serves is a church that, calling a spade a spade, declares: We have chosen the wrong path; we have taken directions that offer us no promises, no future, simply because we have followed them; and now there is nothing else to do but make a complete about-face, a 180-degree turn. Repentance is required to change our way of thinking and come to our senses. Have we not yet learned to understand that we are on the wrong path? The Church must draw conclusions from the experience of recent centuries and say: Turn around, for the kingdom of God is at hand! What does this mean? That the Kingdom of God desires to enter the world and that Jesus Christ still today desires to be our King." In these rather vague, enigmatic words, one senses the idea of the creation of a single world state, as the Kingdom of God on earth. (W. A. Visser t'Hooft: "The Kingdom of God in the Great Entscheidungen der Welt" - in "Zeitwende", March 1947, Munich).
We might view these plans, expressed by two prominent representatives of Protestantism, as mere dreams, a utopia, not the first in the history of social thought. But individuals like the current leaders of the Ecumenical Council can hardly be called dreamers: they are apparently pursuing realistic goals. There can be no doubt that the ecumenical movement is joined and supported—if not led—by secret and overt world organizations, themselves alien to religious goals, and perhaps even hostile to them. Finally, while the hope is being expressed to counter the advance of atheism and anti-Christian forces in the global struggle with the help of ecumenism, the USSR is sending its people to the Ecumenical Council and the World Union of Churches, ostensibly in the name of the Soviet Russian Church. A permanent representative from this church has already been sent to Geneva, Switzerland, as a member of the secretariat of the World Union of Churches (now Archpriest Borovoy), and thus the Councils will control all the actions of the IUCC. It is well known that the participation of representatives from the Soviet Church was reflected at the ecumenical congress in New Delhi, as well as at the Orthodox conference on the island of Rhodes, in the fact that no one had the right to raise their voice about the fight against atheism. Red Moscow, in accordance with Lenin's legacy, makes use of dubious alliances as long as it sees benefit in them, confident that it will easily discredit, discard, and destroy such a dubious ally when it deems it opportune.
And so, at first individual Orthodox persons entered the world organization of the Ecumenical Council, as if only in the form of representatives of Orthodox theological science, and then clergy and hierarchs, as representatives of one after another local Orthodox churches, and these churches themselves were already included in the World Union of Churches associated with ecumenism.
The Orthodox Church, of course, is considered the most conservative member of ecumenism; however, its entry into this organization was very emphatically and even noisily welcomed. Why? On the one hand, because it possesses apostolic succession, and by this property it brings to the world organization—to this conglomerate of Protestant sects—a missing element, apostolic succession. According to the ecumenical view, the inadequacy of some parts of a given whole is covered or supplemented by the presence of the missing element in the member of the organization that possesses this element, in this case, the entry of the Orthodox Church. On the other hand, the entry of the Orthodox Church into the Church prevents its possible opposition to ecumenism.
But for local Orthodox churches, their entry into this confessional organization, which presents itself as the Church of Christ, has no justification.
This step is not justified in the practical sense of preaching Orthodoxy, since in the current situation it would be an absolute utopia to hope for the conversion of Protestants to the Orthodox faith and a rapprochement with the genuine Orthodox Church. Ecumenism has a ready-made, previously developed credo, and Orthodox representatives find themselves within a ready-made framework within which they are permitted to operate.
But what is even more important is that the recognition of all Christian confessions and sects as parts of a single church, and even as equal, is a distortion of the dogma of the church: then neither the dogmas, nor the canons of the councils, nor the succession from the apostles are obligatory; such recognition is tantamount to the self-abolition of the Church.
And here is the result before our eyes: we do not see Orthodoxy being witnessed in ecumenism; but, on the contrary, an unprecedented in Orthodoxy, ecumenical, new teaching about the Church has already invaded us and is being energetically carried out among us by Orthodox ecumenists.
Can we recognize the idea of building the kingdom of God on the earth?
Is the teaching about the earthly kingdom of Christ acceptable in Orthodoxy? What does the Gospel say about the Kingdom of God?
In the Evangelist Matthew it is directly called everywhere “the Kingdom of Heaven.”
У евэнгельист Іоанна Богослова наградіи все Еваніелія как «вѣечножний жизни».
In the evangelists Mark and Luke it is called the Kingdom of God, but with the same meaning: “do not seek what you shall eat or what you shall drink... for all these things do the people of this world seek”; “prepare for yourselves... an inexhaustible treasure in heaven”; “do not be weighed down with the cares of this life”; “let the dead bury their dead” (Luke 12:29-30, 33; 21:34; 9:60). “As it was in the days of Noah: they ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage... - the flood came and destroyed them all; “As it was in the days of Lot: they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built... - it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. So it will be on that day when the Son of Man is revealed” (Luke 17:27-29). These are the words of the Savior.
At Pilate's trial, "Jesus answered, 'My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight for me'" (John 18:36). This is the answer to the question about the structure of earthly well-being. Christ's Kingdom is not of this world, although the blessedness of life in Christ, not only the personal happiness of an individual Christian, but also the life of Christian communities, church life, begins here on earth, and this has been tested and verified by countless examples of holy people. Father John of Kronstadt often speaks of himself, of his feeling during the divine service: "Where am I? I am in heaven." This is the feeling of many pure souls. Here is the descent of heaven to earth; but for this to happen, we ourselves must rise to heaven, and not turn away from it to earthly interests, earthly plans. The Gospel calls us to build our lives so that the earth becomes part of heaven in the moral sense, just as it is a particle in heaven in the physical sense. Our Russian saint, Tikhon of Zadonsk, sums up only the general summary of all Christian Orthodox thought over the centuries about the Kingdom of God when he writes:
" Our life is in heaven, from where we await our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior. A Christian's life in this world is nothing other than wandering and a constant march and haste to his homeland, as the Apostle says: 'We have no lasting city here, but we seek the one to come.'" From where are strangers and pilgrims in this world called and are, as it is written about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth... The Christian homeland is heaven, where is the glory of the Heavenly Father, to Whom they pray: "Our Father, who art in heaven," where is His glorious house, in which "there are many mansions," where is "the great holy city Jerusalem, which hath the glory of God..."; we look with our eyes and sigh, desiring to be clothed in our heavenly dwelling."
К акое разное понимаміе Кристинія Божія ездѣсь и тамъ, въ комнатистскомъ Христіанствоѣ!
"There , there!" they stop us: "to give the earth over to blind and evil forces, and think only about the salvation of your soul! That is what you continue to call for..." "No," we answer. We continue only to point to the words of Christ: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." Seek the heavenly, and the earthly will be added. The Kingdom of God, bright and joyful, a pledge of future eternal life, begins for Christians already here on earth. It illuminates earthly life, not only personal life but also the life of Christian communities. It organizes it, makes it easier, makes it, as they say, happy, introduces fraternal relations into society, and transforms the most difficult conditions of life into ease, as has been verified by numerous examples in the history of Christianity. This earthly reflection of heaven can truly assume broader dimensions, extending to social and governmental life. But for this to happen, faith and prayer must come first. None of this will be achieved if we turn our gaze from heaven to earth. Without faith and prayer, even if life is carefree and joyful, it will not be the Kingdom of God.
Why , for the sake of the idea of building the Kingdom of God on earth, does ecumenism push aside the Christian teaching on the salvation of the soul? Because faith in life has completely weakened, if not been lost, because the outlook is limited to earthly life. But isn't the Christian Orthodox teaching on the salvation of the soul united with the thought of all humanity ? The teaching on the soul is the teaching on the moral perfection of humanity, on the good of all humanity, achieved through the work of each individual on oneself . And this perfection has not only eternity as its goal: it is also necessary for the improvement of relations within human society on earth. But how can the Kingdom of God be built under the conditions of contemporary decadent morality, in an atmosphere of faithless, materialistic moral laxity? And can one seriously say that if people begin to think less about heaven, they will become better Christians?
Unfortunately , the theological articles of Orthodox ecumenists decisively promote the idea that it is time to renounce the teaching about the “salvation of the soul beyond the grave” and turn to concerns about the construction of the kingdom of Christ on earth.
Orthodox dogma about the Church.
However , the most dangerous thing for us at the present time is that the entry of Orthodox churches into the ecumenical movement signifies their acceptance of the Protestant-ecumenical concept of the Church. This concept is indeed being advanced in oral statements and in print by Orthodox ecumenists. Meanwhile, with the destruction of the genuine Orthodox concept of the Church, the significance of the ecumenical councils is undermined, and this means the firmness of the Christian dogmas they established is undermined, and thus Orthodoxy is undermined and destroyed at its foundations.
With great care, the apostles laid the foundation of the Church of Christ on earth and clearly defined who belonged to it and who did not. They likened the Church to an ordinary building. "We are builders, you are God's building," teaches the apostle. The foundation of the building is Christ. "Whether anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each person's work will become clear" (1 Cor. 3:9-13). Obviously, there may be more than one building, but the true Church is one. The last day will come, and the truth of this Church "will be declared," as the apostle teaches, "for it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test each person's work of what kind it is," whether it will stand or be burned (1 Cor. 3:13-14). Therefore, we must firmly believe in the one apostolic structure, in the one apostolic Church .
A believer enters the Church through baptism with water. However, the correctness and validity of baptism must be recognized and confirmed. After all, it may happen that the one who baptized, who performed the baptism, was a heretic or schismatic and was not himself in the Church. This was also the case with the apostles. When the Apostle Paul first arrived in Ephesus, there were about 12 people there who considered themselves disciples of the Christian faith and baptized. But upon questioning, it turned out that they had been baptized only into the baptism of John. Apostle Paul explained to them the insufficiency of this baptism and, having baptized them, laid his hands on them for the descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 19:1-7). The laying on of hands for the descent of the Holy Spirit, being a sacrament, was at the same time a confirmation of the correct performance of baptism and joining the Church; being a sacrament, it also had the formal significance of a seal of reception into the Church. This is what the apostles called it: "seal" or "sealing." The sacrament of laying on of hands, which soon took the form of anointing, was always performed by the apostles themselves: by imparting the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the apostles simultaneously confirmed the reception of a given person into the Church. The book of Acts tells us that the apostles Peter and John had to undertake a journey from Jerusalem to Samaria in order to personally perform the sacrament of laying on of hands on people who had already been baptized there.
The concept of this sacrament as a "seal" obviously explains why, in the post-apostolic age, the right to perform this sacrament passed to bishops, as the heads and administrators of the Church. When it became impossible to bring every baptized person to the apostles and their successors—the bishops—then the sign of the episcopal blessing in this sacrament became the entrustment to the presbyters of the chrism, consecrated by the bishops themselves—perhaps also by the apostles themselves—for the anointing of the baptized. In the "Apostolic Constitutions," one of the written monuments of the ancient Church, we read: "water is a symbol of death, anointing is the seal of the covenant." This is how expressively and clearly the composition and size of the Church were defined in the ancient Church, and how the membership of individuals in it was demonstrated. " And of the rest, no one dared to join them ," emphasizes the writer of the book of Acts (Acts 5:13).
Furthermore , Christians who joined the Church were always required to be unanimous in faith and unanimous in doctrine. The Apostles exhort them to "contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints," to "stand firm in the faith," and to accept nothing new except what was proclaimed by the Apostles, even if the herald of the newness were an angel from heaven. Naturally, individuals who separated themselves from the unity of faith appeared in the Church. They brought discord and forced the Apostles to excommunicate them from church assemblies or even to completely expel them from the Church. Even such persons, alien to the general spirit, were forced to withdraw from communion with the Church. " They went out from us, but they were not of us: if they had been of us, they would certainly have continued with us: but that they might be manifested, for they are not all of us " (1 John 2:19). The apostle again compares this spiritual unity, this harmony in everything, and especially the unity of faith, with the strictness of the execution of a plan in the construction of a building, mentally admiring the harmony of the spiritual temple being erected: " The whole building, fitly framed together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord ," we read in the Epistle to the Ephesians.
This understanding of the Church as a spiritual, harmonious temple remains forever in the consciousness of the Orthodox Church. A written monument of the second centuryShepherd"Erma gives the following living image of the structure of the Church. On the waters, that is, through baptism, a great tower is built—the Church. It is constructed of stones. Some stones, smooth and hewn, all as one, are used in the building; others, uneven, are rolled away or set aside. The square and white stones are the apostles, teachers, bishops, deacons, who walked blamelessly in the holy teachings of God. Those set aside are those who have sinned but desire to repent. This is how Christian antiquity understood the unity of the Church: not the unity of differences of opinion, but strict consistency, similar to the laying of bricks of the same shape in a building.
The strength and correctness of subsequent church building, after the apostles, is based on the apostolic succession of the hierarchy. Apostolic succession of the hierarchy is the primary characteristic of the Church . It creates the organic identity of the Church throughout the ages; it demonstrates, as we might say figuratively, the "heredity of blood," the heredity of nature, similar to that which passes from ancestors to descendants. It further maintains the unity of tradition in doctrine, in church customs, in canons, and in the liturgical order. But, most importantly, this path preserves the continuity of the grace of the Holy Spirit received by the apostles on the day of Pentecost. "Neglect not thy gift that dwelleth in thee , which was given thee by prophecy with the laying on of hands of the priesthood"; "I remind thee to kindle anew the gift of God that dwelleth in thee , with the laying on of my hands," the Apostle Paul instructs his disciple, Bishop Timothy. The grace of God abides , lives, and is imparted in the apostolic Church of Christ. Here, in this universal, catholic, externally and internally united Temple, “by His (Christ’s) divine power has been given to us all things necessary for life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3), and from us, brought into the temple of the Church being built, it is required “to keep the grace” given to the Church and “to serve it acceptably before God with reverence and fear” (Hebrews 12:28).
It is also extremely important to remember that, by transmitting hierarchical succession through successive ordination, the apostles did not abandon the Church. Having entered the heavenly Church, they did not simultaneously cease to be participants in the Church on earth. Between the Church on earth and the heavenly Church there is a close, constant, and living connection. "You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, who are enrolled in heaven" (Heb. 12:22-23). For the Orthodox Church, these are not dead words, but genuine life, life in unity with the heavenly Church. Apostles, saints, martyrs, and righteous men who have departed to eternal life do not cease to be participants in the Church on earth. "Like the greatest stars, you always enlighten the honorable firmament of the Church and illuminate the faithful, O divine martyrs, warriors of Christ." In Orthodox worship (in troparia, stichera, canons, and kontakia), the apostles are glorified as the foundation of the Church, always remaining such; The saints are called with the pillars of the Church, "pirgoves", i.e. towers, fortifications of its walls; the martyrs are called with the wings, shining in the dome of the church fortress, the church vault, extending to the heavens; and the righteous, ascetics, and saints are called with the saints and within the Church. And therefore, when the Church is called Apostolic, it is not only in the sense that the Apostles founded it, or were its first builders, not only because they left within it the Gospel teaching, gave it structure, or even (what is more important than organization) transmitted to it the uninterrupted succession of the hierarchy: but, we repeat, also because they themselves continue to abide within it, although they have entered Christ's heavenly habitations. The same is true of all the saints. When we stand before the icon of the Mother of God, is it only Her icon that is with us on earth, and not She Herself in the Church on earth? When we sing: "Now the heavenly powers serve with us invisibly...," are these only words? Doesn't a guardian angel accompany us in our earthly life?
These are all the characteristics of the Church: its uniqueness; the unity of its teaching; the succession of its hierarchy from the apostles; the recognition of the grace of the Holy Spirit as abiding in the Church, living in it; its connection with the heavenly Church—how far all this is from the Protestant concept of the Church! And how can one neglect such a sharp divergence for the sake of plans for “spiritual unity”? And even more so: Can one neglect these characteristics of the Church for the sake of ecumenical unity?
And it is noteworthy that Protestantism, having broken with the successively apostolic Church, one might say, does not lay claim to what should belong to the hereditary organism of the apostolic Church in the truest sense of the word: in this regard, it is honest with itself. Protestantism—at least in new sects such as Adventism and Baptism—does not lay claim to the grace of baptism: baptism there is only a "promise to God of a good conscience," and immersion in water is a simple symbol. Anointing, the seal of joining the Church and the impartation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit dwelling in the Church, is deemed unnecessary: and this is logical, since there is no joining to the Church, which has descended in succession from the apostles. For them, in the later large sects, communion is, according to their own understanding, a simple commemoration of the actions of the Last Supper; they understand it as a simple partaking of bread and wine: such a commemoration can occur outside the Church. Protestantism is content with the teaching ministry of the laity, because it lacks successive ordination as a gift of grace residing in the Church. They have no communion with the heavenly Church; moreover, they refuse to venerate the Most Holy Theotokos and deliberately humiliate Her, even going so far as to distort Holy Scripture (thus, in the German Protestant translation of the Gospel, the words of the Lord: "What have I to do with thee, woman? My hour is not yet come" received the following meaning: "What have I in common with thee?"). The feat of bearing the spiritual cross in fulfillment of the Savior's commandment is nonexistent. The idea of achieving holiness as the goal of a Christian's earthly life (according to Apostle Paul: "holiness, without which no one will see the Lord") is nonexistent. And the Church, as the guide and keeper of God's grace, becomes unnecessary. If there is a fanciful belief in revelation to this or that person or in the illumination of the Holy Spirit, then it is an individual contact with heaven independent of the Church. Christianity becomes extra-ecclesiastical, and the very name "Church" turns out to be a simple symbol and, ultimately, even an empty sound. If you want to be a Christian in the Protestant sense, call yourself one, have the Gospel, and that's all that's required: you're a Christian, you're already in the invisible spiritual Church, and if you accept baptism, it's only so that others will recognize you as such. Hence the ease of the Protestant mission in pagan countries; the ease of transition from sect to sect: but it does not lead to joining the Church of Christ.
But Cumenism, as a product of Protestantism, bears all of its features to the fullest extent.
But the Church of Christ—" the firm foundation of God—stands, having this seal: The Lord knows those who are His " (2 Tim. 2:19). The Church is the fortress of Christianity in the world. She is the Kremlin, around which the free settlements of the Christian and non-Christian orientations are spread out. She is a bastion designed to withstand all the attacks of hell on the Church, as the Savior foretold and as depicted in the Revelation of the Apostle. John the Theologian: Hades in the form of a dragon, spewing a river from his mouth to draw away and drown the Woman-Church (Rev. 12:15). But an angel saved the Church, and the earth swallowed up the river.
Each person's personal salvation is in the Church. And the salvation of the world is through the Church . This first truth must be reconciled with the second: with the apostolic consolation for those outside the Church, that "Christ is the Savior of all men, especially of the faithful"; that He shed His Blood for the sins of the whole world; that "in every nation he who does good is acceptable to Him," acceptable to God. And likewise, we must remember the words of the Lord that "many are called, but few are chosen" and that "the sons of the Kingdom" can be cast into utter darkness.
What should be our attitude to the unification movement in Christianity?
We Orthodox, we repeat, should not flatter ourselves with the idea that we will be able to direct the unifying movement of ecumenism into the mainstream of Orthodoxy. Rather, one might think that when the ecumenical movement runs out of steam, then the more sincere groups of Protestantism will be drawn to those depths from which Protestantism emerged, to which it is closer in spirit, from which it also derived the idea of building the kingdom of God on earth—that is, to Latinism.
However , if we are addressed, it is our duty to "give an answer for our hope." Protestantism is still prejudiced against the Orthodox Church and does not understand its essence; yet it seems ready to listen about Orthodoxy. But, speaking in an open, broad forum, the Orthodox Church must be completely free from the shackles, boundaries, and regulations in which ecumenism places its members, allowing them to move only in the prescribed direction. The Church must act independently, standing outside ecumenism, perhaps communicating with it as a fellow questioner, as a participant in the discussion, but not subordinating itself to it.
The late Blessed Metropolitan Anthony, when he was invited to London for the celebrations marking the 1600th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council and when he was asked to speak on the question of the "unification of Christianity," formulated his views in the following way. "To fulfill such a task," he said, "is incomparably easier for me than if I were asked to speak about the unification of churches. We have been accustomed since childhood to believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church... It is a different matter if we are talking about the unification of Christ... Such a union must be expressed, first of all, in the liberation of our souls not only from every shadow of hostile feeling towards dissenters, but also from the desire to refute them that prevails in our minds." Having in mind the Anglican Church, Bishop Anthony advises making an effort to clarify everything that unites us mutually (Blessed Metropolitan Anthony's Life, Vol. VII, p. 85).
If , indeed, disunited Christianity were to meet our Church halfway in a friendly manner, then what other attitude could our attitude toward it be than to help it unite in one holy, catholic, and apostolic Orthodox Church? This means: to unite it not with "us," not with the Russians, not with the Greeks, Syrians, or Serbs; but to help unite with the Catholic Church of all times, with the Church where the holy martyrs such as Itnatiy the God-bearer and the saints Athanasius the Great, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom officiated, where the hosts of martyrs are, where the great ascetics are: Anthony, Euthymius Macarius, John of the Ladder and others; in a word, to help enter into this kingdom of holiness, the kingdom of grace, the kingdom of prayer, the kingdom of asceticism, into the Church, which, in addition to its holiness, is also " the pillar and ground of truth ."
Our ardent efforts would consist in 1) pointing out to disunited Christianity that without communion with the Church in Heaven there can be no fullness of the body of Christ, no true catholicity—universality; without this communion there is no true Church. 2) The calling of the Orthodox churches would be to help obtain a successive church hierarchy and thus 3) help begin a life of grace, united with 4) confession of the conciliar teaching of the Church. This is how it should be.
How do those Orthodox persons act who, from the very beginning, declared themselves friends of the ecumenical movement, as well as those who have already entered this movement allegedly in the name of the Orthodox Church?
These persons, carried away by the idea of ecumenism, adapting to the situation, wanting to please the fashionable movement, quickly change the teaching of the Church, reject the Orthodox dogma about the Church, for the sake of the dreamy goal of uniting all of Christianity, and not only falsely inform the non-Orthodox side, but strive to instill in all of us, the Orthodox, a distorted teaching about the Church , to introduce, as a new revelation, as a revelation of the Holy Spirit, as the breath of a new Pentecost, the ecumenical view of the essence of the Church and its scope, replacing the truth of the unity of the body of the Church with the concept of some spiritual Church, embracing all differences of opinion, contradictory teachings and all divisions in modern and historical Christianity. On behalf of the Orthodox Church, persons of the modernist persuasion or persons who have completed Protestant theological faculties and have adopted their spirit speak out and are accepted as its representatives.
Between the first and second wars, a book was published by the YMCA under the title: "Christian Reunification: The Ecumenical Problem in Orthodox Consciousness." In it we find a number of articles in Russian by Orthodox authors of various nationalities. The most liberal point of view is expressed by Russian theologians. Archpriest S. Bulgakov argues for the ecumenical concept of the Church by the fact that, as he puts it, "we speak of churches often in the sense of various Christian confessions" ("we" is obviously himself and his associates), and concludes: "the testimony of the genius of language cannot be reduced to simple politeness or hypocrisy for the sake of decency and courtesy before the non-Orthodox." - But a weak argument - a reference to the genius of a modernized language!
Professor A. Kartashev in his article provides historical information that supposedly "all unions in the Church, after mutual anathematizations and prohibitions, were carried out on the basis of equality, without any hint of accession, without "union", and always without mentioning excommunications and without lifting anathematizations, which proves that anathemas are conditional in nature." No matter how knowledgeable the late Parisian Professor Kartashev was in church history, this assertion is incorrect. Of course, if an Orthodox bishop replaced a heretic or schismatic bishop in a local church, it became Orthodox: why then lift the anathema from the church? After all, heretics and heresies were anathematized, not churches. But no heretic bishop could escape without joining, that is, without renouncing his heresy or schism. In the acts of the Ecumenical Councils, we constantly read about joining, for example, in the following form: "I, such and such, having repented, approach the holy catholic and orthodox Church of God" or: "we have joined the holy catholic, apostolic, and orthodox Church" (see Acts 3 of the Ecumenical Council). And that is precisely why one should apply the words of Fr. Bulgakov to Professor Kartashev, that in such a historical stretch of the author one senses either politeness or hypocrisy in relation to ecumenists. Kartashev affectionately and kindly asserts that belonging to the Church is preserved “even in the face of defects and distortions in dogmatic teaching and in canonical and cultic practice... Even Protestant communities,” Kartashev continues, “having mercilessly broken with the apostolic hierarchical succession and the living sacred tradition of the Church, but having preserved the sacrament of baptism in the name of the Holy Trinity, continue through this mystagogic door to introduce their members into the bosom of the one invisible Church of Christ and to introduce them to the same grace of the Holy Spirit. "All this provides grounds," he says, "for raising the question of the unification of churches on the basis of their equality in their mystical realism, and not on the basis of uniatism, which adds heretics to Orthodoxy. The reunification of churches must be the revelation and concrete embodiment in appearance of the already existing invisibly unity of the Church." - When you read these arguments of Professor Kartashev, you involuntarily want to ask: if all Protestantism is in the Church, if unity already exists, then why the "REUNIFICATION"? Why are these decades of persistent efforts necessary for reunification? Kartashev here goes beyond the expectations of Protestants; and his statements cross out all Orthodox dogma.
The Bulgarian Archpriest Stefan Tsankov also argues along the same lines, albeit vaguely. Archpriest V. Zenkovsky takes the viewpoint of the doctrine of the spiritual Church. He writes: "In its entire historicity, the visible historical Church naturally tends to fragmentation into various 'confessions'... this fragmentation does not affect the unity of the Heavenly Church, but," he adds, "is not healed by it."
In his dialogues "At the Feast of the Gods" of 1921, Fr. Bulgakov says: "with some new freshness and captivatingness the old question of the unification of the churches arises before us, to which the terrible historical hour approaching for all of Christianity calls and compels us," "having an analogy in the era of persecution and the catacomb period of the Church..."
So isn’t Fr. calling? Bulgakov, before this terrible hour, to the destruction of the fortress and stronghold of Christianity - the Apostolic Church, to the opening of its walls, to its abolition?
At the initial meetings of the Ecumenical Council, its Orthodox members apparently attempted to defend the view that for them the Orthodox Church is "Una Sancta"; but later they yielded to the general trend. In Edinburgh in 1950, at the ecumenical congress, the Orthodox delegates gave, as the report of the ICC congress in Toronto of that same year puts it, "a clear answer": "Despite all our differences, we have a common Teacher and Lord, Jesus Christ, who will lead us to ever closer common work in the building up of the body of Christ." Regarding this “clear” answer, it remains to be said that, unfortunately, the ecumenical understanding of the creation of the body of Christ differs too much from the understanding of his Orthodox Church.
In the same ecumenical direction and on the same principles, individual senior representatives of the Greek Church are pursuing the idea of reuniting churches—insofar as this can be judged from press reports. Thus, Archbishop Jacob (U.S.A.) sees in the disunited multitude of churches one Church, one organism, one body of Christ, and considers the cause of disunity to be solely human vanity. He finds a way out in "living together and praying together, without erecting any walls of division determined by racial or religious prejudices." The Orthodox Church, according to him, must stop proclaiming its “ecumenical teaching” (“Church Life”, May-July 1961).
Thus , there occurs a clear distortion of the dogma about the Church and, at the same time, the drawing of local Orthodox churches into a completely alien channel, subordinating them to Protestantism, and, moreover, into a movement directed not only by the idea of reunification, but also by other social ideas and plans that are completely alien to us.
And at this time, Moscow is preparing to declare itself the sole defender of the inviolability of the dogmas of Christianity, and people will willingly listen to it, accepting it as the voice of the historical Russian Church...
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At this difficult historical moment, much is required of those who remain faithful to Orthodoxy: courage, steadfastness, conscientiousness, and a readiness to sacrifice. A strong faith in the Savior's words about the steadfastness of the Church is required. There is no doubt that deep within every local Orthodox Church there is a true understanding of Orthodoxy and a willingness to stand for it, and these voices will be raised and heard. There is no need to be dismayed by the apparent current weakness or paucity of these voices.
In his time, St. Gregory the Theologian characterized the state of Orthodoxy in the Church of Constantinople as follows: “This field was once small and poor... It was not a field at all, it was not worth, perhaps, a granary, a threshing floor, or a sickle, but perhaps only small and immature handles...”
This is how it was when St. Gregory began his preaching in Constantinople in the house church of St. Anastasia; but this period ended during his time with the triumph of Orthodoxy throughout Constantinople (see his Farewell Address).
On another occasion the same saint asks: “Where are those who reproach us for poverty and pride themselves on wealth; who make a multitude the mark of the Church and despise a small flock; who measure divinity (about the Arians, who said that the Son is less than the Father) and weigh people; who highly value grains of sand and belittle the luminaries; who collect common stones in their treasuries and disdain pearls?” (Homily 33, against the Arians). So, our support is not the Protestant theologians, but the luminaries of the Universal and Russian Church, her holy pastors and teachers.
Even if we are not destined to attract non-Orthodox confessions to the one Church of Christ, catholic, apostolic, Orthodox, then in any case we need to preserve ourselves and protect our brothers in Christ and in the Church from false paths, from being carried away by broad goals bought at the price of betraying the teachings of the Church. It is with sadness that we have to admit that we do not have the opportunity for a sufficient exchange of opinions - due to the difference in language and for other reasons - with the Orthodox world of non-Russian nationality, located in countries that are still free from communist oppression, and, in particular, there is no sufficient exchange of ideas with the Greek Orthodox world - and that we have to silently observe with bitterness how easily forces unfavorable to Orthodoxy operate in its midst.
We believe, however, that in the clash of true ideas with false ideas, living forces will awaken both there and among us and will resist temptations; and faith itself, tested in temptations, will become unshakable ; and for many, many in our Orthodox circles, perhaps now still cold-blooded and almost indifferent to the questions of the Church and its dogmas, this faith, strengthened in trials, will become, as the chief apostle says, more precious than corruptible gold, though purified by fire (1 Peter 1:7), that is, more precious than material earthly goods.
Source: https://russportal.ru/index.php?id=church_writing.pomazanskii_michael1962_00_001