Jean Bies
From the book "Journey to the Holy Mountain"
First evening conversation, in a turkish pavilion
"An imitation of the nature of God"
Before recounting this meeting, I would like to transcribe the interesting remarks we had with Father Cyril, since they are from the days that preceded it and, by a final rational reflex, I still find myself respecting a certain chronology.
Am I really, in fact, when our two interviews take place even before our stay in Lavra, and we have to go back down to Philothéou for a while to get back the notes I forgot there? I find them as if by a miracle in the small turkish kiosk located nearby, which overlooks the foliage with its graceful fragility: my notes were lying on a bench, on the floor, mixed up by the wind, and I collected them, trying to lay out the sheets in order.
First there had been a long silence in which the revelations seemed to ripen, which were going to shake our consciences which had been too quiet, and all that had been built up in a peremptory style. There were also those slow minutes of "contemplation of nature", - an important aspect of Orthodox mysticism which has something Japanese about it, - I should say contemplation of the Logooe spermatikooe, those billions of immaterial seeds embedded in the hearts of creatures. The sparkling nature of these Logooe, the virgin nature corresponds to the primordial purity; it is a vegetal reminiscence of the earthly paradise and a prefiguration of the celestial paradise: a sanctuary, a heavenly refraction, the mysterious presence of the invisible in the visible. Contemplating the beauty of Saint Athos, "that tabernacle not made by human hands", says the Palamas, on those evenings, we discovered the identity of essence between the cosmic manifestation and its principle. The fathers say admirably: "God wanted to manifest his Beauty, and He created matter." The Greek text of Genesis similarly says that after each creation, "God saw that it was beautiful" (kalon).
Around our panoramic viewpoint, blue and purple ravines, purple chasms sown with Judean trees, studded with lilacs and mimosas, formed through the mists like a collection of Far Eastern engravings. The pavilion stood among gardens glistening with the glistening light of a sudden summer rain, like a slender basket with Persian curves (the custom here of counting twelve hours in the rising sun was imported from Persia by the Georgians).
Cyril looked less at these things than at their 'flame', - the watermark of the universe - with the 'sweet tenderness', the katanyxis, and the 'awakening', the nêpsis, which inhabited his eyes, and which inhabit all Orthodoxy. His pacified gaze on this nature seemed to pacify it further, returning it to its origin, not the 'first' but 'unique'. (Thus, the first day of creation is not covered, but mia: not first in time, but plenary in order, out of any serial development.) Beneath his eyebrows, the elder seemed to wander motionless through these wild gardens and parks. He himself, concealed in his beard, would soon appear to us as the expression of that evidence which we have lost and which, for that reason, makes us claim that it does not exist.
- What is Christianity, Venerable Father?" we asked him first.
Father Cyril crossed himself and began with these words:
- Christianity, beloved brethren, is an "imitation of the nature of God", as Saint Gregory of Nyssa so beautifully put it.... But you see, brethren in Christ, before even asking ourselves what Christianity is, it is necessary to restore a Christian mentality. Until you have renounced the habits acquired in the University, and reinforced by the thousand conditionings of the secular world, that "abomination of desolation" - permanent criticism, exegesis, dialectic, systematic doubt, philosophical anguish that only leads to suicide - you will not be able to understand the essence of Christianity, which occupies a supra-rational level and uses an analogical and symbolic language. You are pleasant students, but as such, victims of the drug of ratiocinations, of antithetical arguments, interchangeable constructions, which only lead to the negation of God, and then to the negation of man, his image. First look at the eternal beings, contemporaries of the logos; you will comprehend with your heart what the order of reason will never make you comprehend. Get rid of the historicist spirit of the people of Dysis - the West - atheists or believers, which tends to see only "events" and is only sensitive to the man Jesus, forgetting the pre-eternal Christ, denying miracles and Resurrection. Hence the so frequent temptation of your Churches to deal with history, then with politics, and to secularize themselves imperceptibly.
- What is Christianity, Venerable Father?" we asked him first.
Father Cyril crossed himself and began with these words:
- Christianity, beloved brethren, is an "imitation of the nature of God", as Saint Gregory of Nyssa so beautifully put it.... But you see, brethren in Christ, before even asking ourselves what Christianity is, it is necessary to restore a Christian mentality. Until you have renounced the habits acquired in the University, and reinforced by the thousand conditionings of the secular world, that "abomination of desolation" - permanent criticism, exegesis, dialectic, systematic doubt, philosophical anguish that only leads to suicide - you will not be able to understand the essence of Christianity, which occupies a supra-rational level and uses an analogical and symbolic language. You are pleasant students, but as such, victims of the drug of ratiocinations, of antithetical arguments, interchangeable constructions, which only lead to the negation of God, and then to the negation of man, his image. First look at the eternal beings, contemporaries of the logos; you will comprehend with your heart what the order of reason will never make you comprehend. Get rid of the historicist spirit of the people of Dysis - the West - atheists or believers, which tends to see only "events" and is only sensitive to the man Jesus, forgetting the pre-eternal Christ, denying miracles and Resurrection. Hence the so frequent temptation of your Churches to deal with history, then with politics, and to secularize themselves imperceptibly.
This beginning had all the desirable unusualness. Intrigued, curious, sceptical all together, we urged Father Cyril to clarify his thoughts.
- Truth, he continued, has been limited to the simple "fact"; the relative has been given an absolute character, and the Absolute itself has been discarded. As a result, the myth of the "sense of history" was created, of the indefinite progress of the species, which can be demolished by a simple survey of the civilizations of the past and a quick analysis of the human soul. The Blessed and Glorified Fathers were indifferent to the historical aspect of Christ the Savior, preferring to see in Him the Logos that existed before the centuries, the eternal Sophia. His earthly life, his actions, his words, they interpret them allegorically. If you turn your spirit in that sense, beloved brethren, you will begin to understand what it means to imitate the nature of God.
Paradosis - Paradeisos
Then I say this:
- Do you not think, Venerable Elder, that the Church may be led, while remaining faithful to the essence of its message, to modify its modalities according to the changes of the times or to adapt to certain circumstances?
The answer of the Elder did not take long to reply:
- Do you know what makes the Holy Orthodox Church respected?
That is because she doesn't allow herself to be manipulated or influenced. The Church does not have to adapt to "new things" which tomorrow will prove to be outdated and will be replaced by others, nor does she have to reform when in fact it is us who have to be reformed by her, nor does she have to conform to the spirit of the world, nor does she have to consult it, since the spirit of the world is nothing but the emanation of deviant darkness. She does not have to undergo the philosophical, political and scientific conditionings and seductions of this world destined to disappear like the grass of the fields. She, whom the Holy Fathers say is superior to the first creation, does not have to open herself to the world; but whoever enters her must leave this world and its prince at the door, if they refuse to enter by penance and the mortification of impudicity, greed and pride. Take the example of the so-called "social justice" extended to earthly space: it will remain an illusion until man has found God in his heart. Any other attitude is the beginning of decay.
Father Cyril resumed after a few moments:
- We are accused of excessive rigor, a refusal to adapt. But what does the lightening of fasting lead to? To its total disappearance. To what will lead the shortening of prayers? To their replacement by sacrilegious offices. To what will lead conformity to the times? The depopulation of churches and the fall of vocations. The more the Churches of the West come up with inventing new methods to attract young people, the more they lose faith!
- What then is the mission of the Church?
- To transmit the faith of the ancestors and the theophoric Fathers, an integral and pure faith. Even if it must displease the powerful of the day and provoke persecutions such as those of the Roman Empire are nothing in comparison. Orthodoxy is precisely fidelity to Tradition, a Tradition clearer than crystal, holy, sealed by God, not subject to variations; - it has the sense of a perfect continuity, without withdrawal or addition, - of a single word, of a single letter. St. John Damascene the Sublime said: "We do not change the eternal bounds which our fathers set, but we keep the Tradition as we received it." And St. Mark of Ephesus the Divine said, "No concession is permitted with regard to our faith." So we keep in the "clay vessels" of our unworthiness the unspoiled and unaltered deposit.
- But, Venerable Father, what then is this Tradition? Could you tell us a few words about it?
- It is the Transmission - Paradosis - of spiritual realities and marks the continuity of knowledge from the beginnings of the world, from Paradise. This Tradition is the faith given by the God-man, our Lord Jesus Christ, to his apostles, and taught by the Church to the generations. It is also the immense and immemorial heritage of the Bible, the Creed, the conciliar decrees, the writings of the Most Holy Fathers, the golden mouths of the Word, - the doctrinal and canonical treatises, the liturgical books, the holy images, the divine Liturgy.
- Don't you recognize the authority of all the Councils?
- The seven great and holy Ecumenical Councils have laid the definitive foundations of the whole Church; to them we submit with faith and piety. They normatively specified the Christological message of the Church, the mystery of Christ, true God and true man, the absolute unity of God inseparable from no less absolute diversity, the hypostases, the union in Christ of the two natures, the motherhood of Mary, the veneration of icons, the pledge of the Incarnation and the metamorphosis of matter into Spirit. The Councils that followed brought nothing else, or initiated the series of deviations and alterations of the Truth, source of life. The first seven Councils, the first and last of which took place in Ephesus, prove the totality of the Christic cycle. This septenary symbolizes the seven seals of the Spirit, the seven pillars of the faith of the Word on which rests the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. Now, what the Fathers say, we also say.
- Yet not all Orthodox Patriarchs are so resistant to modern influences.
- Despite regrettable exceptions, due to a lack of doctrine and information, Holy Orthodoxy refuses to make a pact with the apostasy of today's world, the reign of the Antichrist.
And Father Cyril emphasized this sentence, which was for him definitive:
- The civilization of the Antichrist is nothing but the dehumanization of man.
The Antichrist and His Majesty the Man of Europe
We didn't intend to leave it at that. My friend asked:
- What, Venerable Father, is the Antichrist?
Father Cyril did not answer immediately, either because he was astonished at our ignorance, or because he hesitated to continue the conversation on this topic. Finally, he said:
- The antichrist, beloved children, is the one in whom the mankind will see its supreme benefactor, but who will be its worst enemy. It is for the sake of his coming that atheists work and many Christians who are unaware of the consequences of their actions, as well as people who happily share materialistic theories and follow the gospel from wolves turned by pastors (lykopoimenes) who are genuine tools of dark powers (hypokeiria ton skoteinon dynameon).
- The Antichrist does not want to abolish religion, he wants to take it into his service. But for this, he must abolish faith in Christ, the faith that the Lord Himself will have so much difficulty in finding when He returns, as He said. The antichristic strategy is to first make man forget all that allows him to ascend to the Infinite Living, God, and to replace it with technocratic conveniences, entertainment, social insurance: rubbish in the Eyes of God. His interest is to make people believe that the bread asked for in the Lord's Prayer is only the "daily bread" that he can distribute at his own discretion. (We can see how dull is the poverty of such a food). In fact, the speech in the prayer is about the super-substantial bread (ton arton ton epiousion), i.e. about the Holy Spirit. His interest is to suppress human persons and replace them with individuals, with an amorphous, anonymous and irresponsible mass, whose immediate instincts he satisfies while seducing them with idealistic slogans. Like a beggar, the Lord Christ was given the last place at the table of this world, while the first seats are reserved for politicians, intellectuals, sportsmen, bankers, to be acclaimed by thousands of newspapers and books that every day blaspheme the divine Majesty. Christ our Lord is ignored and mocked; the temples of a deicide culture have replaced his temples.
- Mount Athos is said to be the bastion against the Antichrist. Is that true, Holy Father?
- Of all Orthodoxy, it is true that the Holy Mountain is the most rigorous guardian of the Christian Tradition, passing through all the vicissitudes of human history with its spur: it survived the fall of the Byzantine Empire, escaped the crescent of Mohammed, refused the tiara of Rome and the sickle of Moscow, fighting tirelessly against all the heresies of the East and the West.
- But, tell us, you are a very small minority among today's Christians who think this way.
- The majority may be just a multitude of people who do not want to be informed and who think they know everything but do not know anything. Only one Person besides God, that is the Church, which has never promised an earthly victory, will exist until the end, even if it is reduced to a small flock. I know, beloved brethren, that it is said everywhere about us that we are nothing but a bunch of rotten, fanatical and ignorant monks, yet we are here, with all our filth and ignorance, only to bear witness to the Glory of the Almighty. Soon it will be said of us that we are only a sect, while the sum of all the heresies accumulated over twenty centuries will pass for the truth! But we accept to be hated by men as long as we are never separated from Theandric Love. Yes, we belong to the "little remnant" spoken of by the divine Paul, who never bent his knee before Baal. We know from Basil the Great that "it is not the multitude that will be saved", and from Nicephorus the Confessor, that "if even a small number remain attached to Orthodox piety, it is they who constitute the Church."
- You make us fully understand, Venerable Father, the unshakeable attachment of Orthodoxy to Tradition. And yet, rather curiously enough, there is in it, in addition to this hieratic and immutable aspect, something very modern, which the West ignores. We think, for example, of the use of vernacular languages in the Liturgy, the choice of the bishop by the people, or the marriage of priests.
- These are not two aspects, one ancient, the other modern, it is Tradition as it has always been. The obligatory use of Latin throughout Western Christianity has made it rigid and uniform, arbitrarily suppressing the diversity of liturgical manifestations. The marriage of priests has always existed in Orthodox Christianity, where the priestly order has not been confused with the monastic order. At the Council of Nicaea, a great Egyptian ascetic, Saint Paphnutius, emphasized the spiritual chastity of conjugal love and the full compatibility of priesthood and marriage. The latter, like the former, is the object of a sacrament. Discreet and devoted, the priest's wife is the mother of all the parishioners; there are generations of priests among us, just as there are generations of musicians. But this is something that the West has forgotten, just as it has forgotten the personal "rumination" of the Scriptures, the vivification of the Name, and many other points.
- You hold a strong grudge against the West, holy elder. Isn't the Roman Church, in spite of errors, "Catholic" - i.e. "Universal" - in the broadest sense of the word?
- It is precisely there that lies the confusion which wrongly equates Catholic in the sense of "universal", and Roman, a term used only to localize Caesar. It is in the same way that we are witnessing either a dissolution of the sacred in external commitments, or the reduction of the Church to hierarchical and authoritarian structures. Hence the pejorative expression "simple faithful"; hence the fact that the species of wine is reserved for clerics only. When those in the West speak of the Church, they mean much less the Mystical Body than a organizational hierarchy.
- You spoke earlier, Venerable Father, of the use of Latin extended to the whole of the Christian West. But this language cemented the Catholic nations together and consecrated Roman unity in the face of a certain orthodox anarchy.
- You take for anarchy, beloved brethren, the Pentecostal diversity. Roman unity is above all juridical, administrative and abstract, tending towards centralism. Orthodox unity, on the other hand, lies in the faith common to all the Autocephalous Churches; it is an interior, doctrinal and sacramental unity, that of the very first Christian communities helping one another while remaining free in relation to each other, with mutual respect for national languages and customs. It is unity in diversity, it is a symphony, not a monologue.
- So you hold the West responsible for the current crisis in Christianity?
- Alas! Yes, totally. His Majesty the Man of Europe built the religion of Man by exiling the God-Man in heaven.
- How did he do that?
- You spoke earlier, Venerable Father, of the use of Latin extended to the whole of the Christian West. But this language cemented the Catholic nations together and consecrated Roman unity in the face of a certain orthodox anarchy.
- You take for anarchy, beloved brethren, the Pentecostal diversity. Roman unity is above all juridical, administrative and abstract, tending towards centralism. Orthodox unity, on the other hand, lies in the faith common to all the Autocephalous Churches; it is an interior, doctrinal and sacramental unity, that of the very first Christian communities helping one another while remaining free in relation to each other, with mutual respect for national languages and customs. It is unity in diversity, it is a symphony, not a monologue.
- So you hold the West responsible for the current crisis in Christianity?
- Alas! Yes, totally. His Majesty the Man of Europe built the religion of Man by exiling the God-Man in heaven.
- How did he do that?
- The humanism that emerged from ancient paganism proclaimed man as the supreme divinity. In his pride, European man claimed to be God, he claimed to be the measure of all things, he denied everything that was above him or that he could not understand in the light of his reason. If he still admits Christ, then it is as a man, not as the supreme God. This is a nail in the eye the Church, a Kakodoxy whose name is Arianism. Christ is true God, consubstantial with God the Father. That is why He is the Saviour, Redeemer and Lord. By denying consubstantiality, Arianism deprives God of divinity. It claims to explain God with the help of the fallen human mind only.
However, "an explicable God would cease to be God," says St. Athanasius, the fiery tongue of the Holy Spirit. Logic is incapable of understanding the incomprehensible, of grasping the ungraspable. And today, modern thought, by reducing everything to man, including the Whole, has resurrected Arianism in its glory! The whole of Western culture is permeated by it, hence the struggle against the Spirit, the pneumatomachy (pneumatomachia) that it vigorously leads with the weapons of relativism and positivism. Hence the contemporary bankruptcy.
- Reason can be used to prove the Existence of God. Saint Anselm, as an example?
- God proves Himself by Himself, by His creation, His revelation and His Incarnation. Anselm begins to want to prove by deductions and ontological arguments: the scholasticism, the daughter of Arabized Aristotelianism, is born, which chooses Reason as its guide, which it prefers instead of the Most Holy Spirit. Rationalism is born in its turn, from which is born Protestantism, individualism and its "freedom of choice" (libre arbirtre), the rejection of metaphysics, the criticism of texts and scientism. Parallel to this dualistic West, the Greek world, born of Plato and Plotinus, will develop, under the biblical breath, a Christianity full of mysticism and poetry; the West will opt first for religious "culture", then profane; Greece will keep the "things that are beyond us", the profound knowledge, the gnosis.
The night had slowly surrounded us with shrouds of stars. It was the image of that divine Gnosis which is concealed in Orthodoxy, which is folded over its hidden treasures. Perhaps Father Cyril wasn't telling us everything. We know that Irenaeus, Basil of Caesareaea, Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius the Areopagite, Evagrius Pontus and others allude in their works to an oral and secret tradition, emanating from Christ and transmitted by the apostles. We remember that Christ forbade casting pearls before the swine; and if several phrases in the celebration of the "dreadful mysteries" take place behind a veil, it must correspond to something. At the same time, however, we understood that by losing these esotericas, the West had lost the very meaning of what it is talking about, and that its downfall was surely more serious than we imagine.
But we stopped at the threshold of this vertigo. Blessed Hesychios dictated our conduct: "The highest conversation is nothing but gossip if it goes on too long."
http://angel.org.ru/1/bies.html (in russian)
However, "an explicable God would cease to be God," says St. Athanasius, the fiery tongue of the Holy Spirit. Logic is incapable of understanding the incomprehensible, of grasping the ungraspable. And today, modern thought, by reducing everything to man, including the Whole, has resurrected Arianism in its glory! The whole of Western culture is permeated by it, hence the struggle against the Spirit, the pneumatomachy (pneumatomachia) that it vigorously leads with the weapons of relativism and positivism. Hence the contemporary bankruptcy.
- Reason can be used to prove the Existence of God. Saint Anselm, as an example?
- God proves Himself by Himself, by His creation, His revelation and His Incarnation. Anselm begins to want to prove by deductions and ontological arguments: the scholasticism, the daughter of Arabized Aristotelianism, is born, which chooses Reason as its guide, which it prefers instead of the Most Holy Spirit. Rationalism is born in its turn, from which is born Protestantism, individualism and its "freedom of choice" (libre arbirtre), the rejection of metaphysics, the criticism of texts and scientism. Parallel to this dualistic West, the Greek world, born of Plato and Plotinus, will develop, under the biblical breath, a Christianity full of mysticism and poetry; the West will opt first for religious "culture", then profane; Greece will keep the "things that are beyond us", the profound knowledge, the gnosis.
The night had slowly surrounded us with shrouds of stars. It was the image of that divine Gnosis which is concealed in Orthodoxy, which is folded over its hidden treasures. Perhaps Father Cyril wasn't telling us everything. We know that Irenaeus, Basil of Caesareaea, Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius the Areopagite, Evagrius Pontus and others allude in their works to an oral and secret tradition, emanating from Christ and transmitted by the apostles. We remember that Christ forbade casting pearls before the swine; and if several phrases in the celebration of the "dreadful mysteries" take place behind a veil, it must correspond to something. At the same time, however, we understood that by losing these esotericas, the West had lost the very meaning of what it is talking about, and that its downfall was surely more serious than we imagine.
But we stopped at the threshold of this vertigo. Blessed Hesychios dictated our conduct: "The highest conversation is nothing but gossip if it goes on too long."
http://angel.org.ru/1/bies.html (in russian)
http://orthodoxievco.net/bul/48.htm (in french)
http://orthodoxievco.net/bul/49.htm
Second evening conversation
Calendar, Filioque, Roman Papacy
The words of Father Cyril certainly disturbed us and shook many false certainties within us. Curious to know more, we hastened to find the Elder, the next evening, in the same place. He stood there as usual, and was as patient and courteous to us as ever.
We began by asking Cyril what most differentiated Orthodoxy from heterodoxy. Father Cyril signed himself and began with these words:
- We Orthodox have not rejected the Epiclesis*; we ignore unleavened bread, indulgences, superrogatory merits, casuistry; we ignore the opposition of nature and grace, the distinction between nature and the supernatural. Also, the disputes between Papists and Lutherans are meaningless to us.
But it turned out that the three sources of fundamental disagreement were to be found elsewhere. First, in the famous question of the calendar.
- Our Julian calendar is thirteen days behind Gregory of Rome's civil calendar. Now, what were the reformers of the sixteenth century, next to the astronomers of the Church of Alexandria? Ignorant people, who simply destroyed Orthodox Paschalia to please the Jesuits, who wanted to definitively break with us by shifting the date of the feasts. In Italy itself, this reform was considered "childishness". - Our calendar may be astronomically inaccurate, but so is the other one, which some scientists would like to correct now. The error of our Paschalia does not exceed three hours in nineteen hundred years, and our calendar will not be wrong for another thousand years. Why do we have to worry about what will be in a thousand years, when we do not even know if we will be alive tomorrow? Our calendar is the lunar calendar of the Bible; according to this calendar the Lord was born, lived and died, and rose again on the 16th of Nizan. Now, says St. John Chrysostom, "neither angels nor archangels should change anything that has been commanded by God". It is this calendar that was kept "always, everywhere and by everyone", and it is this fidelity to the biblical calendar that causes us to be slandered and persecuted by the very people who claim to follow the Bible!
One of us asked:
- Aren't there also considerations relating to the Jewish Passover?
- Orthodox Paschal Law established as a rule that we do not celebrate our Passover before or at the same time as the Passover of ancient Israel, but on the Sunday after the full moon, at the time of the spring equinox. - This does not often happen according to the new calendar!... The new calendar is a diabolical innovation, added Father Cyril after a silence!
- But, tell us, Venerable Father, is not the Gregorian calendar based on scientific data?
- We have no need of the scientific point of view. The Church is above this astronomical time, which will be abolished. It is not a question of considering the revolutions that the earth makes around the sun, but the liturgical cycle of the earthly Church reflecting the celestial Liturgy, marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit. Eternal in nature, the Church is by grace beyond time.
A second point of disagreement: filioquism.
- We often hear about it, I would say, without ever knowing what it is really about.
- "The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father," declares the Nicene Symbol. However, as early as the sixth century, the Spaniards and the Franks added "and of the Son", (Filioque). The Popes resisted for a long time and maintained the first formula, inherited from the Fathers. John VIII still considered that anyone who added to or subtracted from the venerable and great Creed would be expelled from the Christian confession and equated with Judas. Leo III rejected the addition that Charlemagne wanted to impose upon him with theologically uncultured arguments. However, at the end of the tenth century, the Caesaropapism of the German emperors finally prevailed. At his coronation in Rome, Henry II imposed on the Pope a mass mentioning the Filioque. Two centuries later, the Council of Lyon made the heterodox doctrine of Filioquism obligatory, thus officially introducing two principles into the Divinity. Once again, in the West, the spiritual bowed to the temporal. The East, for its part, opposed this arbitrary innovation, this cursed fabrication, from the very beginning, and refused to unilaterally subordinate the Person of the Spirit to that of the Son: the one and the other proceeds together from the Father. Orthodoxy evokes, on the one hand, the prohibition of the Ecumenical Councils against making any change in the Symbol without a meeting of another Council, on the other hand, the falsity of filioquism, which destroys the balance between the three Persons and introduces an erroneous conception of the role of the Spirit in the world. This is why the Holy Patriarch Photios condemned it as heresy.
- Wasn't that these theological disputes without much consequence for the current future of the Church?
- Dear friends, there are not important things and details in our faith! Remove a single stone, the building collapses. The consequences of the Filioque have been catastrophic. The scholasticism of the Latins, by insisting more on the unity of essence than on the Trinitarian Persons, has made God an abstraction, an impersonal Deity; and this is already, in germ, the God of the "philosophers". The Filioque mixes Persons, destroys the delicate antinomy of unity and diversity, accentuates indivisibility to the detriment of the Trinitarian aspect, and in doing so, leads to the monarchical institution of the "Vicar of Christ" and its priority over freedom in the Spirit and the universal priesthood. The Western Church has become an institution of this world, a temporal power; within this Church, unity has destroyed diversity, hence the excess of centralisation and authority. Little by little, the will of the Roman pontiffs will be transformed from a moral primacy, an "honorary presidency", into a juridical and authoritarian power. The Gregorian reform of the eleventh century prepared the way for "papal infallibility".
- So it was mainly the question of the Filioque that led to the separation of Constantinople and Rome?
- The dogmatic question of the Filioque contributed to this separation; but it is the question of the Papacy that completed the schism of 1054. It is from this fatal date that the popes arrogated to themselves an authority even in the East, establishing themselves heads of all the Churches: it is absolute power hypostasized. A feudal conception of the Church was developing in the West, and the Crusades arrived to ruin Thessalonica and Constantinople: a devastation so great that the Muslim conquest later turned pale. The Pope of Rome assumed the role of autocrat, even commanding secular leaders; the Church of the West became centralized, ours remained collegiate. Juridical concepts dominated papal Latinism, while our theology was worshiped. - The different points of view became increasingly divergent. The Latins saw in the One and Triune God the Unity of God, we, the triadic harmony of Persons. In the Crucifixion, some saw the death of Christ, - from which later the imposture of the "death of God" was born, - others saw the victory of Him who sits "on the throne of cherubic glory". Gregory VII had already completely changed ecclesial structures. He made the bishops mere representatives of the papacy, separated the Church into clerics and laity, teachers and professors, - which prepared the way for the later struggle between clericalism and secularism. He even predicted damnation to those who would not obey the Pope. Meanwhile, Christ's reasonable flock withdrew to their uncompromising fidelity and inner truth, jealously nurturing that faith which made the fragrant plant of humility grow in them.
All of this was not far from getting our support.
But we wanted to know the exact position of Orthodoxy with regard to the Papacy.
Father Cyril answered us:
http://orthodoxievco.net/bul/49.htm
Second evening conversation
Calendar, Filioque, Roman Papacy
The words of Father Cyril certainly disturbed us and shook many false certainties within us. Curious to know more, we hastened to find the Elder, the next evening, in the same place. He stood there as usual, and was as patient and courteous to us as ever.
We began by asking Cyril what most differentiated Orthodoxy from heterodoxy. Father Cyril signed himself and began with these words:
- We Orthodox have not rejected the Epiclesis*; we ignore unleavened bread, indulgences, superrogatory merits, casuistry; we ignore the opposition of nature and grace, the distinction between nature and the supernatural. Also, the disputes between Papists and Lutherans are meaningless to us.
But it turned out that the three sources of fundamental disagreement were to be found elsewhere. First, in the famous question of the calendar.
- Our Julian calendar is thirteen days behind Gregory of Rome's civil calendar. Now, what were the reformers of the sixteenth century, next to the astronomers of the Church of Alexandria? Ignorant people, who simply destroyed Orthodox Paschalia to please the Jesuits, who wanted to definitively break with us by shifting the date of the feasts. In Italy itself, this reform was considered "childishness". - Our calendar may be astronomically inaccurate, but so is the other one, which some scientists would like to correct now. The error of our Paschalia does not exceed three hours in nineteen hundred years, and our calendar will not be wrong for another thousand years. Why do we have to worry about what will be in a thousand years, when we do not even know if we will be alive tomorrow? Our calendar is the lunar calendar of the Bible; according to this calendar the Lord was born, lived and died, and rose again on the 16th of Nizan. Now, says St. John Chrysostom, "neither angels nor archangels should change anything that has been commanded by God". It is this calendar that was kept "always, everywhere and by everyone", and it is this fidelity to the biblical calendar that causes us to be slandered and persecuted by the very people who claim to follow the Bible!
One of us asked:
- Aren't there also considerations relating to the Jewish Passover?
- Orthodox Paschal Law established as a rule that we do not celebrate our Passover before or at the same time as the Passover of ancient Israel, but on the Sunday after the full moon, at the time of the spring equinox. - This does not often happen according to the new calendar!... The new calendar is a diabolical innovation, added Father Cyril after a silence!
- But, tell us, Venerable Father, is not the Gregorian calendar based on scientific data?
- We have no need of the scientific point of view. The Church is above this astronomical time, which will be abolished. It is not a question of considering the revolutions that the earth makes around the sun, but the liturgical cycle of the earthly Church reflecting the celestial Liturgy, marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit. Eternal in nature, the Church is by grace beyond time.
A second point of disagreement: filioquism.
- We often hear about it, I would say, without ever knowing what it is really about.
- "The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father," declares the Nicene Symbol. However, as early as the sixth century, the Spaniards and the Franks added "and of the Son", (Filioque). The Popes resisted for a long time and maintained the first formula, inherited from the Fathers. John VIII still considered that anyone who added to or subtracted from the venerable and great Creed would be expelled from the Christian confession and equated with Judas. Leo III rejected the addition that Charlemagne wanted to impose upon him with theologically uncultured arguments. However, at the end of the tenth century, the Caesaropapism of the German emperors finally prevailed. At his coronation in Rome, Henry II imposed on the Pope a mass mentioning the Filioque. Two centuries later, the Council of Lyon made the heterodox doctrine of Filioquism obligatory, thus officially introducing two principles into the Divinity. Once again, in the West, the spiritual bowed to the temporal. The East, for its part, opposed this arbitrary innovation, this cursed fabrication, from the very beginning, and refused to unilaterally subordinate the Person of the Spirit to that of the Son: the one and the other proceeds together from the Father. Orthodoxy evokes, on the one hand, the prohibition of the Ecumenical Councils against making any change in the Symbol without a meeting of another Council, on the other hand, the falsity of filioquism, which destroys the balance between the three Persons and introduces an erroneous conception of the role of the Spirit in the world. This is why the Holy Patriarch Photios condemned it as heresy.
- Wasn't that these theological disputes without much consequence for the current future of the Church?
- Dear friends, there are not important things and details in our faith! Remove a single stone, the building collapses. The consequences of the Filioque have been catastrophic. The scholasticism of the Latins, by insisting more on the unity of essence than on the Trinitarian Persons, has made God an abstraction, an impersonal Deity; and this is already, in germ, the God of the "philosophers". The Filioque mixes Persons, destroys the delicate antinomy of unity and diversity, accentuates indivisibility to the detriment of the Trinitarian aspect, and in doing so, leads to the monarchical institution of the "Vicar of Christ" and its priority over freedom in the Spirit and the universal priesthood. The Western Church has become an institution of this world, a temporal power; within this Church, unity has destroyed diversity, hence the excess of centralisation and authority. Little by little, the will of the Roman pontiffs will be transformed from a moral primacy, an "honorary presidency", into a juridical and authoritarian power. The Gregorian reform of the eleventh century prepared the way for "papal infallibility".
- So it was mainly the question of the Filioque that led to the separation of Constantinople and Rome?
- The dogmatic question of the Filioque contributed to this separation; but it is the question of the Papacy that completed the schism of 1054. It is from this fatal date that the popes arrogated to themselves an authority even in the East, establishing themselves heads of all the Churches: it is absolute power hypostasized. A feudal conception of the Church was developing in the West, and the Crusades arrived to ruin Thessalonica and Constantinople: a devastation so great that the Muslim conquest later turned pale. The Pope of Rome assumed the role of autocrat, even commanding secular leaders; the Church of the West became centralized, ours remained collegiate. Juridical concepts dominated papal Latinism, while our theology was worshiped. - The different points of view became increasingly divergent. The Latins saw in the One and Triune God the Unity of God, we, the triadic harmony of Persons. In the Crucifixion, some saw the death of Christ, - from which later the imposture of the "death of God" was born, - others saw the victory of Him who sits "on the throne of cherubic glory". Gregory VII had already completely changed ecclesial structures. He made the bishops mere representatives of the papacy, separated the Church into clerics and laity, teachers and professors, - which prepared the way for the later struggle between clericalism and secularism. He even predicted damnation to those who would not obey the Pope. Meanwhile, Christ's reasonable flock withdrew to their uncompromising fidelity and inner truth, jealously nurturing that faith which made the fragrant plant of humility grow in them.
All of this was not far from getting our support.
But we wanted to know the exact position of Orthodoxy with regard to the Papacy.
Father Cyril answered us:
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