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Chap­ter I
Thanks to God for Your Faith

I Glori­fy God, even Je­sus Christ, who has giv­en you such wis­dom. For I have ob­served that ye are per­fect­ed in an im­move­able faith, as if ye were nailed to the cross of our Lord Je­sus Christ, both in the flesh and in the spir­it, and are es­tab­lished in love through the blood of Christ, be­ing ful­ly per­suad­ed with re­spect to our Lord, that He was tru­ly of the seed of David ac­cord­ing to the flesh, and the Son of God ac­cord­ing to the will and pow­er of God; that He was tru­ly born of a vir­gin, was bap­tized by John, in or­der that all righ­teous­ness might be ful­filled by Him; and was tru­ly, un­der Pon­tius Pi­late and Herod the tetrar­ch, nailed [to the cross] for us in His flesh. Of this fruit we are by His di­vine­ly-blessed pas­sion, that He might set up a stan­dard for all ages, through His res­ur­rec­tion, to all His holy and faith­ful [fol­low­ers], whether among Jews or Gen­tiles, in the one body of His Church.

I Glori­fy the God and Father of our Lord Je­sus Christ, who by Him has giv­en you such wis­dom. For I have ob­served that ye are per­fect­ed in an im­move­able faith, as if ye were nailed to the cross of our Lord Je­sus Christ, both in the flesh and in the spir­it, and are es­tab­lished in love through the blood of Christ, be­ing ful­ly per­suad­ed, in very truth, with re­spect to our Lord Je­sus Christ, that He was the Son of God, "the first-born of ev­ery crea­ture," God the Word, the on­ly-be­got­ten Son, and was of the seed of David ac­cord­ing to the flesh, by the Vir­gin Mary; was bap­tized by John, that all righ­teous­ness might be ful­filled by Him; that He lived a life of ho­li­ness with­out sin, and was tru­ly, un­der Pon­tius Pi­late and Herod the tetrar­ch, nailed [to the cross] for us in His flesh. From whom we al­so de­rive our be­ing, from His di­vine­ly-blessed pas­sion, that He might set up a stan­dard for the ages, through His res­ur­rec­tion, to all His holy and faith­ful [fol­low­ers], whether among Jews or Gen­tiles, in the one body of His Church.

Chapter II
Christ's True Pas­sion

Now, He suf­fered all these things for our sakes, that we might be saved. And He suf­fered tru­ly, even as al­so He tru­ly raised up Him­self, not, as cer­tain un­be­liev­ers main­tain, that He on­ly seemed to suf­fer, as they them­selves on­ly seem to be [Chris­tians]. And as they be­lieve, so shall it hap­pen un­to them, when they shall be di­vest­ed of their bod­ies, and be mere evil spir­its.

Now, He suf­fered all these things for us; and He suf­fered them re­al­ly, and not in ap­pear­ance on­ly, even as al­so He tru­ly rose again. But not, as some of the un­be­liev­ers, who are ashamed of the for­ma­tion of man, and the cross, and death it­self, af­firm, that in ap­pear­ance on­ly, and not in truth, He took a body of the Vir­gin, and suf­fered on­ly in ap­pear­ance, for­get­ting, as they do, Him who said, "The Word was made flesh; " and again, "De­stroy this tem­ple, and in three days I will raise it up; " and once more, "If I be lift­ed up from the earth, I will draw all men un­to Me." The Word there­fore did dwell in flesh, for "Wis­dom built her­self an house." The Word raised up again His own tem­ple on the third day, when it had been de­stroyed by the Jews fight­ing against Christ. The Word, when His flesh was lift­ed up, af­ter the man­ner of the brazen ser­pent in the wilder­ness, drew all men to Him­self for their eter­nal sal­va­tion.

Chapter III
Christ Was Possessed of a Body After His Res­ur­rec­tion

For I know that af­ter His res­ur­rec­tion al­so He was still pos­sessed of flesh, and I be­lieve that He is so now. When, for in­stance, He came to those who were with Peter, He said to them, "Lay hold, han­dle Me, and see that I am not an in­cor­po­re­al spir­it." And im­me­di­ate­ly they touched Him, and be­lieved, be­ing con­vinced both by His flesh and spir­it. For this cause al­so they de­spised death, and were found its con­querors. And af­ter his res­ur­rec­tion He did eat and drink with them, as be­ing pos­sessed of flesh, al­though spir­i­tu­al­ly He was unit­ed to the Father.

And I know that He was pos­sessed of a body not on­ly in His be­ing born and cru­ci­fied, but I al­so know that He was so af­ter His res­ur­rec­tion, and be­lieve that He is so now. When, for in­stance, He came to those who were with Peter, He said to them, "Lay hold, han­dle Me, and see that I am not an in­cor­po­re­al spir­it." "For a spir­it hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have." And He says to Thomas, "Reach hith­er thy fin­ger in­to the print of the nails, and reach hith­er thy hand, and thrust it in­to My side; " and im­me­di­ate­ly they be­lieved that He was Christ. Where­fore Thomas al­so says to Him, "My Lord, and my God." And on this ac­count al­so did they de­spise death, for it were too lit­tle to say, in­dig­ni­ties and stripes. Nor was this all; but al­so af­ter He had shown Him­self to them, that He had risen in­deed, and not in ap­pear­ance on­ly, He both ate and drank with them dur­ing forty en­tire days. And thus was He, with the flesh, re­ceived up in their sight un­to Him that sent Him, be­ing with that same flesh to come again, ac­com­pa­nied by glo­ry and pow­er. For, say the [holy] or­a­cles, "This same Je­sus, who is tak­en up from you in­to heav­en, shall so come, in like man­ner as ye have seen Him go un­to heav­en." But if they say that He will come at the end of the world with­out a body, how shall those "see Him that pierced Him," and when they recog­nise Him, "mourn for them­selves? " For in­cor­po­re­al be­ings have nei­ther form nor fig­ure, nor the as­pect of an an­i­mal pos­sessed of shape, be­cause their na­ture is in it­self sim­ple.

Chapter IV
Be­ware of Th­ese Heretics

I give you these in­struc­tions, beloved, as­sured that ye al­so hold the same opin­ions [as I do]. But I guard you be­fore­hand from those beasts in the shape of men, whom you must not on­ly not re­ceive, but, if it be pos­si­ble, not even meet with; on­ly you must pray to God for them, if by any means they may be brought to re­pen­tance, which, how­ev­er, will be very dif­fi­cult. Yet Je­sus Christ, who is our true life, has the pow­er of [ef­fect­ing] this. But if these things were done by our Lord on­ly in ap­pear­ance, then am I al­so on­ly in ap­pear­ance bound. And why have I al­so sur­ren­dered my­self to death, to fire, to the sword, to the wild beasts? But, [in fact, ] he who is near to the sword is near to God; he that is among the wild beasts is in com­pa­ny with God; pro­vid­ed on­ly he be so m the name of Je­sus Christ. I un­der­go all these things that I may suf­fer to­geth­er with Him, He who be­came a per­fect man in­ward­ly strength­en­ing me.

I give you these in­struc­tions, beloved, as­sured that ye al­so hold the same opin­ions [as I do]. But I guard you be­fore­hand from these beasts in the shape of men, from whom you must not on­ly turn away, but even flee from them. On­ly you must pray for them, if by any means they may be brought to re­pen­tance. For if the Lord were in the body in ap­pear­ance on­ly, and were cru­ci­fied in ap­pear­ance on­ly, then am I al­so bound in ap­pear­ance on­ly. And why have I al­so sur­ren­dered my­self to death, to fire, to the sword, to the wild beasts? But, [in fact, ] I en­dure all things for Christ, not in ap­pear­ance on­ly, but in re­al­i­ty, that I may suf­fer to­geth­er with Him, while He Him­self in­ward­ly strength­ens me; for of my­self I have no such abil­i­ty.

Chapter V
Their Danger­ous Er­rors

Some ig­no­rant­ly de­ny Him, or rather have been de­nied by Him, be­ing the ad­vo­cates of death rather than of the truth. Th­ese per­sons nei­ther have the prophets per­suad­ed, nor the law of Mos­es, nor the Gospel even to this day, nor the suf­fer­ings we have in­di­vid­u­al­ly en­dured. For they think al­so the same thing re­gard­ing us. For what does any one prof­it me, if he com­mends me, but blas­phemes my Lord, not con­fess­ing that He was [tru­ly] pos­sessed of a body? But he who does not ac­knowl­edge this, has in fact al­to­geth­er de­nied Him, be­ing en­veloped in death. I have not, how­ev­er, thought good to write the names of such per­sons, inas­much as they are un­be­liev­ers. Yea, far be it from me to make any men­tion of them, un­til they re­pent and re­turn to [a true be­lief in] Christ's pas­sion, which is our res­ur­rec­tion.

Some have ig­no­rant­ly de­nied Him, and ad­vo­cate false­hood rather than the truth. Th­ese per­sons nei­ther have the prophe­cies per­suad­ed, nor the law of Mos­es, nor the Gospel even to this day, nor the suf­fer­ings we have in­di­vid­u­al­ly en­dured. For they think al­so the same thing re­gard­ing us. For what does it prof­it, if any one com­mends me, but blas­phemes my Lord, not own­ing Him to be God in­car­nate? He that does not con­fess this, has in fact al­to­geth­er de­nied Him, be­ing en­veloped in death. I have not, how­ev­er, thought good to write the names of such per­sons, inas­much as they are un­be­liev­ers; and far be it from me to make any men­tion of them, un­til they re­pent.

Chapter VI
Un­be­liev­ers in the Blood of Christ Shall Be Con­demned

Let no man de­ceive him­self. Both the things which are in heav­en, and the glo­ri­ous an­gels, and rulers, both vis­i­ble and in­vis­i­ble, if they be­lieve not in the blood of Christ, shall, in con­se­quence, in­cur con­dem­na­tion. "He that is able to re­ceive it, let him re­ceive it." Let not [high] place puff any one up: for that which is worth all is faith and love, to which noth­ing is to be pre­ferred. But con­sid­er those who are of a dif­fer­ent opin­ion with re­spect to the grace of Christ which has come un­to us, how op­posed they are to the will of God. They have no re­gard for love; no care for the wid­ow, or the or­phan, or the op­pressed; of the bond, or of the free; of the hun­gry, or of the thirsty.

Let no man de­ceive him­self. Un­less he be­lieves that Christ Je­sus has lived in the flesh, and shall con­fess His cross and pas­sion, and the blood which He shed for the sal­va­tion of the world, he shall not ob­tain eter­nal life, whether he be a king, or a priest, or a ruler, or a pri­vate per­son, a mas­ter or a ser­vant, a man or a wom­an. "He that is able to re­ceive it, let him re­ceive it." Let no man's place, or dig­ni­ty, or rich­es, puff him up; and let no man's low con­di­tion or pover­ty abase him. For the chief points are faith to­wards God, hope to­wards Christ, the en­joy­ment of those good things for which we look, and love to­wards God and our neigh­bour. For, "Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neigh­bour as thy­self." And the Lord says, "This is life eter­nal, to know the on­ly true God, and Je­sus Christ whom He has sent." And again, "A new com­mand­ment give I un­to you, that ye love one an­oth­er. On these two com­mand­ments hang all the law and the prophets." Do ye, there­fore, no­tice those who preach oth­er doc­trines, how they af­firm that the Father of Christ can­not be known, and how they ex­hib­it en­mi­ty and de­ceit in their deal­ings with one an­oth­er. They have no re­gard for love; they de­spise the good things we ex­pect here­after; they re­gard present things as if they were durable; they ridicule him that is in af­flic­tion; they laugh at him that is in bonds

Chapter VII
Let Us Stand Aloof from Such Heretics

They ab­stain from the Eucharist and from prayer, be­cause they con­fess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Je­sus Christ, which suf­fered for our sins, and which the Father, of His good­ness, raised up again. Those, there­fore, who speak against this gift of God, in­cur death in the midst of their dis­putes. But it were bet­ter for them to treat it with re­spect, that they al­so might rise again. It is fit­ting, there­fore, that ye should keep aloof from such per­sons, and not to speak of them ei­ther in pri­vate or in pub­lic, but to give heed to the prophets, and above all, to the Gospel, in which the pas­sion [of Christ] has been re­vealed to us, and the res­ur­rec­tion has been ful­ly proved. But avoid all di­vi­sions, as the be­gin­ning of evils.

They are ashamed of the cross; they mock at the pas­sion; they make a jest of the res­ur­rec­tion. They are the off­spring of that spir­it who is the au­thor of all evil, who led Adam, by means of his wife, to transgress the com­mand­ment, who slew Abel by the hands of Cain, who fought against Job, who was the ac­cus­er of Joshua the son of Josedech, who sought to "sift the faith" of the apos­tles, who stirred up the mul­ti­tude of the Jews against the Lord, who al­so now "wor­keth in the chil­dren of dis­obe­di­ence; from whom the Lord Je­sus Christ will de­liv­er us, who prayed that the faith of the apos­tles might not fail, not be­cause He was not able of Him­self to pre­serve it, but be­cause He re­joiced in the pre-em­i­nence of the Father. It is fit­ting, there­fore, that ye should keep aloof from such per­sons, and nei­ther in pri­vate nor in pub­lic to talk with them; but to give heed to the law, and the prophets, and to those who have preached to you the word of sal­va­tion. But flee from all abom­inable here­sies, and those that cause schisms, as the be­gin­ning of evils.

Chapter VIII
Let Noth­ing Be Done Without the Bish­op

See that ye all fol­low the bish­op, even as Je­sus Christ does the Father, and the pres­bytery as ye would the apos­tles; and rev­er­ence the dea­cons, as be­ing the in­sti­tu­tion of God. Let no man do any­thing con­nect­ed with the Church with­out the bish­op. Let that be deemed a prop­er Eucharist, which is [ad­min­is­tered] ei­ther by the bish­op, or by one to whom he has en­trust­ed it. Wher­ev­er the bish­op shall ap­pear, there let the mul­ti­tude [of the peo­ple] al­so be; even as, wher­ev­er Je­sus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not law­ful with­out the bish­op ei­ther to bap­tize or to cel­e­brate a love-feast; but what­so­ev­er he shall ap­prove of, that is al­so pleas­ing to God, so that ev­ery­thing that is done may be se­cure and valid.

See that ye all fol­low the bish­op, even as Christ Je­sus does the Father, and the pres­bytery as ye would the apos­tles. Do ye al­so rev­er­ence the dea­cons, as those that car­ry out [through their of­fice] the ap­point­ment of God. Let no man do any­thing con­nect­ed with the Church with­out the bish­op. Let that be deemed a prop­er Eucharist, which is [ad­min­is­tered] ei­ther by the bish­op, or by one to whom he has en­trust­ed it. Wher­ev­er the bish­op shall ap­pear, there let the mul­ti­tude [of the peo­ple] al­so be; even as where Christ is, there does all the heav­en­ly host stand by, wait­ing up­on Him as the Chief Cap­tain of the Lord's might, and the Gover­nor of ev­ery in­tel­li­gent na­ture. It is not law­ful with­out the bish­op ei­ther to bap­tize, or to of­fer, or to present sac­ri­fice, or to cel­e­brate a love-feast. But that which seems good to him, is al­so well-pleas­ing to God, that ev­ery­thing ye do may be se­cure and valid.

Chapter IX
Honour the Bish­op

More­over, it is in ac­cor­dance with rea­son that we should re­turn to sober­ness [of con­duct], and, while yet we have op­por­tu­ni­ty, ex­er­cise re­pen­tance to­wards God. It is well to rev­er­ence both God and the bish­op. He who hon­ours the bish­op has been hon­oured by God; he who does any­thing with­out the knowl­edge of the bish­op, does [in re­al­i­ty] serve the dev­il. Let all things, then, abound to you through grace, for ye are wor­thy. Ye have re­freshed me in all things, and Je­sus Christ [shall re­fresh] you. Ye have loved me when ab­sent as well as when present. May God rec­om­pense you, for whose sake, while ye en­dure all things, ye shall at­tain un­to Him.

More­over, it is in ac­cor­dance with rea­son that we should re­turn to sober­ness [of con­duct], and, while yet we have op­por­tu­ni­ty, ex­er­cise re­pen­tance to­wards God. For "in Hades there is no one who can con­fess his sins." For "be­hold the man, and his work is be­fore him." And [the Scrip­ture saith], "My son, hon­our thou God and the king." And say I, Honour thou God in­deed, as the Author and Lord of all things, but the bish­op as the high-priest, who bears the im­age of God-of God. inas­much as he is a ruler, and of Christ, in his ca­pac­i­ty of a priest. After Him, we must al­so hon­our the king. For there is no one su­pe­ri­or to God, or even like to Him, among all the be­ings that ex­ist. Nor is there any one in the Church greater than the bish­op, who min­is­ters as a priest to God for the sal­va­tion of the whole world. Nor, again, is there any one among rulers to be com­pared with the king, who se­cures peace and good or­der to those over whom he rules. He who hon­ours the bish­op shall be hon­oured by God, even as he that dis­hon­ours him shall be pun­ished by God. For if he that ris­es up against kings is just­ly held wor­thy of pun­ish­ment, inas­much as he dis­solves pub­lic or­der, of how much sor­er pun­ish­ment, sup­pose ye, shall he be thought wor­thy, who pre­sumes to do any­thing with­out the bish­op, thus both de­stroy­ing the [Church's] uni­ty, and throw­ing its or­der in­to con­fu­sion? For the priest­hood is the very high­est point of all good things among men, against which whoso­ev­er is mad enough to strive, dis­hon­ours not man, but God, and Christ Je­sus, the First-born, and the on­ly High Pri­est, by na­ture, of the Father. Let all things there­fore be done by you with good or­der in Christ. Let the laity be sub­ject to the dea­cons; the dea­cons to the pres­byters; the pres­byters to the bish­op; the bish­op to Christ, even as He is to the Father. As ye, brethren, have re­freshed me, so will Je­sus Christ re­fresh you. Ye have loved me when ab­sent, as well as when present. God will rec­om­pense you, for whose sake ye have shown such kind­ness to­wards His pris­on­er. For even if I am not wor­thy of it, yet your zeal [to help me] is an ad­mirable thing. For "he who hon­ours a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall re­ceive a prophet's re­ward." It is man­i­fest al­so, that he who hon­ours a pris­on­er of Je­sus Christ shall re­ceive the re­ward of the mar­tyrs.

Chapter X
Ac­knowl­edg­ment of Their Kind­ness

Ye have done well in re­ceiv­ing Phi­lo and Rheus Agath­o­pus as ser­vants of Christ our God, who have fol­lowed me for the sake of God, and who give thanks to the Lord in your be­half, be­cause ye have in ev­ery way re­freshed them. None of these things shall be lost to you. May my spir­it be for you, and my bonds, which ye have not de­spised or been ashamed of; nor shall Je­sus Christ, our per­fect hope, be ashamed of you.

Ye have done well in re­ceiv­ing Phi­lo, and Gaius, and Agath­o­pus, who, be­ing the ser­vants of Christ, have fol­lowed me for the sake of God, and who great­ly bless the Lord in your be­half, be­cause ye have in ev­ery way re­freshed them. None of those things which ye have done to them shall be passed by with­out be­ing reck­oned un­to you. "The Lord grant" to you "that ye may find mer­cy of the Lord in that day!" May my spir­it be for you, and my bonds, which ye have not de­spised or been ashamed of. Where­fore, nei­ther shall Je­sus Christ, our per­fect hope, be ashamed of you.

Chapter XI
Re­quest to Them to Send a Mes­sen­ger to An­ti­och

Your prayer has reached to the Church which is at An­ti­och in Syr­ia. Com­ing from that place bound with chains, most ac­cept­able to God, I salute all; I who am not wor­thy to be styled from thence, inas­much as I am the least of them. Nev­er­the­less, ac­cord­ing to the will of God, I have been thought wor­thy [of this hon­our], not that I have any sense [of hav­ing de­served it], but by the grace of God, which I wish may be per­fect­ly giv­en to me, that through your prayers I may at­tain to God. In or­der, there­fore, that your work may be com­plete both on earth and in heav­en, it is fit­ting that, for the hon­our of God, your Church should elect some wor­thy del­e­gate; so that he, jour­ney­ing in­to Syr­ia, may con­grat­u­late them that they are [now] at peace, and are re­stored to their prop­er great­ness, and that their prop­er con­sti­tu­tion has been re-es­tab­lished among them. It seems then to me a be­com­ing thing, that you should send some one of your num­ber with an epis­tle, so that, in com­pa­ny with them, he may re­joice over the tran­quil­i­ty which, ac­cord­ing to the will of God, they have ob­tained, and be­cause that, through your prayers, they have now reached the har­bour. As per­sons who are per­fect, ye should al­so aim at those things which are per­fect. For when ye are de­sirous to do well, God is al­so ready to as­sist you.

Your prayers have reached to the Church of An­ti­och, and it is at peace. Com­ing from that place bound, I salute all; I who am not wor­thy to be styled from thence, inas­much as I am the least of them. Nev­er­the­less, ac­cord­ing to the will of God, I have been thought wor­thy [of this hon­our], not that I have any sens­es [of hav­ing de­served it], but by the grace of God, which I wish may be per­fect­ly giv­en to me, that through your prayers I may at­tain to God. In or­der, there­fore, that your work may be com­plete both on earth and in heav­en, it is fit­ting that, for the hon­our of God, your Church should elect some wor­thy del­e­gate; so that he, jour­ney­ing in­to Syr­ia, may con­grat­u­late them that they are [now] at peace, and are re­stored to their prop­er great­ness, and that their prop­er con­sti­tu­tion has been re-es­tab­lished among them. What ap­pears to me prop­er to be done is this, that you should send some one of your num­ber with an epis­tle, so that, in com­pa­ny with them, he may re­joice over the tran­quil­li­ty which, ac­cord­ing to the will of God, they have ob­tained, and be­cause that, through your prayers, I have se­cured Christ as a safe har­bour. As per­sons who are per­fect, ye should al­so aim at those things which are per­fect. For when ye are de­sirous to do well, God is al­so ready to as­sist you.

Chapter XII
Sa­lu­ta­tions

The love of the brethren at Troas salutes you; whence al­so I write to you by Bur­rhus, whom ye sent with me, to­geth­er with the Eph­e­sians, your brethren, and who has in all things re­freshed me. And I would that all may im­i­tate him, as be­ing a pat­tern of a min­is­ter of God. Grace will re­ward him in all things. I salute your most wor­thy bish­op, and your very ven­er­a­ble pres­bytery, and your dea­cons, my fel­low-ser­vants, and all of you in­di­vid­u­al­ly, as well as gen­er­al­ly, in the name of Je­sus Christ, and in His flesh and blood, in His pas­sion and res­ur­rec­tion, both cor­po­re­al and spir­i­tu­al, in union with God and you. Grace, mer­cy, peace, and pa­tience, be with you for ev­er­more!

The love of your brethren at Troas salutes you; whence al­so I write to you by Bur­gus, whom ye sent with me, to­geth­er with the Eph­e­sians, your brethren, and who has in all things re­freshed me. And I would that all may im­i­tate him, as be­ing a pat­tern of a min­is­ter of God. The grace of the Lord will re­ward him in all things. I salute your most wor­thy bish­op Poly­carp, and your ven­er­a­ble pres­bytery, and your Christ-bear­ing dea­cons, my fel­low-ser­vants, and all of you in­di­vid­u­al­ly, as well as gen­er­al­ly, in the name of Christ Je­sus, and in His flesh and blood, in His pas­sion and res­ur­rec­tion, both cor­po­re­al and spir­i­tu­al, in union with God and you. Grace, mer­cy, peace, and pa­tience, be with you in Christ for ev­er­more!

Con­clu­sion

I salute the fam­i­lies of my brethren, with their wives and chil­dren, and the vir­gins who are called wid­ows. Be ye strong, I pray, in the pow­er of the Holy Spirit. Phi­lo, who is with me, greets you. I salute the house of Tavias, and pray that it may be con­firmed in faith and love, both cor­po­re­al and spir­i­tu­al. I salute Alce, my well-beloved, and the in­com­pa­ra­ble Daph­nus, and Eutec­nus, and all by name. Fare ye well in the grace of God.

I salute the fam­i­lies of my brethren, with their wives and chil­dren, and those that are ev­er vir­gins, and the wid­ows. Be ye strong, I pray, in the pow­er of the Holy Spirit. Phi­lo, my fel­low-ser­vant, who is with me, greets you. I salute the house of Tavias, and pray that it may be con­firmed in faith and love, both cor­po­re­al and spir­i­tu­al. I salute Alce; my well-beloved, and the in­com­pa­ra­ble Daph­nus, and Eutec­nus, and all by name. Fare ye well in the grace of God, and of our Lord Je­sus Christ, be­ing filled with the Holy Spir­it, and di­vine and sa­cred wis­dom.

Every one of us solemn­ly promis­es at his con­se­cra­tion to abide by our Faith and to obey the canons of the Holy Fathers, vow­ing be­fore God to keep Ortho­doxy in­vi­o­late from the temp­ta­tions and er­rors which creep in­to the Church’s life.

If a temp­ta­tion ap­pears in the fold of on­ly one Ortho­dox Church, the rem­e­dy for it may be found in the same fold. But if a par­tic­u­lar evil pen­e­trates in­to all our Church­es, it be­comes a mat­ter of con­cern for ev­ery sin­gle Bish­op. Can any one of us be silent if he sees that many of his brethren si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly are walk­ing along a path that leads them and their flock to a dis­as­trous precipice through their un­wit­ting loss of Ortho­doxy?

Should we say in this case that hu­mil­i­ty com­mands us to keep silent? Should we re­gard it as in­dis­creet to lend ad­vice to oth­er de­scen­dants of the Holy Apos­tles, some of whom are oc­cu­py­ing the most an­cient and dis­tin­guished sees?

But Ortho­doxy be­lieves in the equal­i­ty of all Bish­ops as re­gards grace, and dis­tin­guish­es be­tween them on­ly as re­gards hon­or.

Should we be sat­is­fied with the fact that ev­ery Church is re­spon­si­ble for it­self? But what if the state­ments which trou­ble the faith­ful are made in the name of the whole Church, and there­fore al­so in­volve our name, even though we have not au­tho­rized any­body to use it?

St. Gre­go­ry the The­olo­gian once said that there are oc­ca­sions “when even by si­lence truth can be be­trayed.” Should we not al­so be be­tray­ing the truth if, on notic­ing a de­vi­a­tion from pure Ortho­doxy, we mere­ly kept si­lence—al­ways an eas­i­er and safer thing to do than speak­ing out?

We ob­serve, how­ev­er, that no­body in a high­er po­si­tion than our own is rais­ing his voice; and this fact con­strains us to speak out, lest at the Last Judg­ment we should be re­proached for hav­ing seen the dan­ger of Ec­u­menism threat­en the Church, and yet not hav­ing warned her Bish­ops.

To be sure, we have al­ready ad­dressed His Ho­li­ness Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras and His Emi­nence Arch­bish­op Iakovos of North and South Amer­i­ca, ex­press­ing our grief and con­cern over their ec­u­meni­cal ac­tiv­i­ties, in which the birthright of the Church has been sold for a mess of pot­tage in the form of the world’s ap­plause. But the po­si­tion tak­en by the Ortho­dox del­e­gates at the Assem­bly of the World Coun­cil of Church­es at Upp­sala makes the con­cern of the zealots of Ortho­doxy even more acute, and makes it nec­es­sary for us to com­mu­ni­cate our sor­row and con­fu­sion to all our Brother Ortho­dox Bish­ops.

We may be asked why we write about that Assem­bly on­ly now, near­ly a year af­ter the clos­ing of its ses­sions. Our an­swer is that on this oc­ca­sion we had no ob­servers present, and ob­tained in­for­ma­tion about the Assem­bly on­ly from the press, the ac­cu­ra­cy of which is not al­ways to be re­lied up­on. There­fore we were await­ing the of­fi­cial re­ports; and hav­ing stud­ied them, we find it im­per­a­tive to ad­dress this let­ter to all the Ortho­dox Bish­ops whom the Lord has ap­point­ed to take care of His Church on earth.

The re­port on the Upp­sala Assem­bly shocked us great­ly, be­cause from it we could see more clear­ly than ev­er how far the er­ror of Ec­u­menism is win­ning the of­fi­cial ap­proval of a num­ber of our Church­es.

When the first steps were tak­en in the or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Ec­u­meni­cal Move­ment, many of the Ortho­dox Church­es, fol­low­ing the ini­tia­tive of the Pa­tri­arch of Con­stantino­ple, be­gan to par­tic­i­pate in its con­fer­ences. At the time such par­tic­i­pa­tion did not cause any wor­ry even among the most zeal­ous Ortho­dox. They thought that the Church would suf­fer no in­jury if her rep­re­sen­ta­tives ap­peared among var­i­ous truth-seek­ing Protes­tants with the aim of pre­sent­ing Ortho­doxy in the face of their var­i­ous er­rors. Such a par­tic­i­pa­tion in in­ter-faith con­fer­ences could be thought of as hav­ing a mis­sion­ary char­ac­ter.

This po­si­tion was still main­tained to a cer­tain ex­tent, though not al­ways con­sis­tent­ly, at the Evanston Assem­bly of the World Coun­cil of Church­es in 1954. There the Ortho­dox del­e­gates open­ly stat­ed that the de­ci­sions of the Assem­bly di­verged so sharply from our teach­ing on the Church that they were un­able in any way to join with the oth­ers in ac­cept­ing them. In­stead, they ex­pressed the doc­trine of the Ortho­dox Church in sep­a­rate state­ments.

Those state­ments were so plain that, in fact, they should have is­sued in the log­i­cal con­clu­sion that the Ortho­dox ought not to re­main as mem­bers of the World Coun­cil of Church­es on the same ba­sis as oth­ers. The Protes­tants might well have asked them: “If you dis­agree with our ba­sic prin­ci­ples, why are you with us?” We know that in pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions some Protes­tants did use to say this, but the ques­tion was not raised in the ple­nary ses­sions. Thus the Ortho­dox re­mained as mem­bers of an or­ga­ni­za­tion the dis­parate ori­gin of which they had just so clear­ly il­lus­trat­ed.

But what do we see now?

The Pan-Ortho­dox Con­fer­ence in Gene­va in June 1968 took a dif­fer­ent course. It ex­pressed “the gen­er­al de­sire of the Ortho­dox Church to be an or­gan­ic mem­ber of the World Coun­cil of Church­es and its de­ci­sion to con­tribute in all ways to its progress, the­o­log­i­cal and oth­er­wise, to the pro­mo­tion and good de­vel­op­ment of the whole of the work of the World Coun­cil of Church­es.” His Ho­li­ness Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras in­formed the World Coun­cil of this de­ci­sion in his spe­cial let­ter dat­ed June 30, 1968. There were no reser­va­tions; no men­tion was made of any mis­sion­ary aims, ei­ther in the one case or the oth­er.

We must be very clear as to what sort of re­li­gious union it is of which the Ortho­dox Church has been de­clared “an or­gan­ic mem­ber,” and what the dog­mat­ic im­pli­ca­tions of such a de­ci­sion are.

In 1950, in Toron­to, cer­tain ba­sic state­ments were ac­cept­ed by the World Coun­cil of Church­es which, while more cau­tious than the present state­ments, were al­ready not in con­for­mi­ty with the Ortho­dox doc­trine of the Church. On p. 4 it was then stat­ed that “The mem­ber Church­es of the World Coun­cil con­sid­er the re­la­tion­ship of oth­er Church­es to the Holy Catholic Church which the Creeds pro­fess as a sub­ject for mu­tu­al con­sid­er­a­tion.” This state­ment is al­ready un­ac­cept­able for us be­cause the Church is spo­ken of not as ac­tu­al­ly ex­ist­ing in the world, but as some kind of ab­stract en­ti­ty men­tioned in var­i­ous Creeds. How­ev­er, even then, on p. 3, we read: “The mem­ber Church­es rec­og­nize that the mem­ber­ship of the Church of Christ is more in­clu­sive than the mem­ber­ship of their own church body” (Six Ec­u­meni­cal Sur­veys, New York, 1954, p. 13). But since in the pre­ced­ing point (No. 2) it was stat­ed that “The mem­ber Church­es of the World Coun­cil be­lieve on the ba­sis of the New Tes­ta­ment that the Church of Christ is one,” there is ei­ther an im­plic­it con­tra­dic­tion or else the pro­fes­sion of a new doc­trine—viz., that no one can be­long to the One Church with­out be­liev­ing in her doc­trines and with­out hav­ing litur­gi­cal uni­ty with her.

The sep­a­rate state­ments made in Evanston four years lat­er on be­half of all the Ortho­dox del­e­gates some­what im­proved the sit­u­a­tion, be­cause they clear­ly showed that Ortho­dox Ec­cle­si­ol­o­gy dif­fers so much in essence from Protes­tant Ec­cle­si­ol­o­gy that it is im­pos­si­ble to com­pose a joint state­ment. Now, how­ev­er, the Ortho­dox par­tic­i­pants in the World Coun­cil of Church­es act dif­fer­ent­ly; in an ef­fort to unite truth with er­ror, they have aban­doned the prin­ci­ple ex­pressed at Evanston. If all the Ortho­dox Church­es are or­gan­ic mem­bers of the World Coun­cil of Church­es, then all the de­ci­sions of that Coun­cil are made in their name as well as in the name of the Protes­tants.

If ini­tial­ly the Ortho­dox par­tic­i­pat­ed in ec­u­meni­cal meet­ings on­ly to present the truth, per­form­ing, so to speak, a mis­sion­ary ser­vice among con­fes­sions for­eign to Ortho­doxy, then now they have com­bined with them, and any­one can say that what was said at Upp­sala was al­so said by the mem­ber Ortho­dox Church­es in the per­son of their del­e­gates. Alas that it should be said in the name of the whole Ortho­dox Church!

We re­gard it as our du­ty to protest in the strongest pos­si­ble terms against this state of af­fairs. We know that in this protest we have with us all the Holy Fathers of the Church. Al­so with us are not on­ly the hi­er­ar­chy, cler­gy, and lay­men of the Rus­sian Ortho­dox Church Out­side of Rus­sia, but those mem­bers of oth­er Ortho­dox Church­es who agree with us as well.

We take the lib­er­ty of say­ing that it seems our Brother Bish­ops have treat­ed this mat­ter with­out suf­fi­cient at­ten­tion, with­out re­al­iz­ing how far our Church is be­ing drawn in­to the sphere of an­ti-canon­i­cal and even of an­ti-dog­mat­i­cal agree­ments with the het­ero­dox. This fact is es­pe­cial­ly clear if one turns to the ini­tial state­ments of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Ortho­dox Church­es as com­pared with what is tak­ing place at present.

At the Con­fer­ence in Lau­sanne in 1937, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Ec­u­meni­cal Pa­tri­arch, Metropoli­tan Ger­manos, clear­ly stat­ed that restor­ing uni­ty with the Church means for Protes­tants that they must re­turn to the doc­trines of the an­cient Church of the Seven Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cils. “And what are the el­e­ments of the Chris­tian doc­trines,” he said, “which should be re­gard­ed as nec­es­sary and es­sen­tial? Ac­cord­ing to the un­der­stand­ing of the Ortho­dox Church there is no need now to make def­i­ni­tions of those nec­es­sary el­e­ments of faith, be­cause they are al­ready made in the an­cient Creeds and the de­ci­sions of the Seven Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cils. There­fore this teach­ing of the an­cient un­di­vid­ed Church should be the ba­sis of the re­union of the Church.” That was the po­si­tion tak­en by all the Ortho­dox del­e­gates at the Lau­sanne and Ox­ford Con­fer­ences.

As for our Rus­sian Ortho­dox Church Out­side of Rus­sia, her views were ex­pressed with par­tic­u­lar clar­i­ty up­on the ap­point­ment of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Com­mit­tee for Con­tin­u­a­tion of the Con­fer­ence on Faith and Order on De­cem­ber 18/31, 1931. That de­ci­sion was as fol­lows:

“Main­tain­ing the be­lief in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apos­tolic Church, the Syn­od of Bish­ops pro­fess­es that the Church has nev­er been di­vid­ed. The ques­tion is on­ly who be­longs to her and who does not. At the same time the Syn­od warm­ly greets the ef­forts of het­ero­dox con­fes­sions to study Christ’s teach­ing on the Church with the hope that by such study, es­pe­cial­ly with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Holy Ortho­dox Church, they may at last come to the con­vic­tion that the Ortho­dox Church, be­ing the pil­lar and the ground of the truth (I Tim. iii. 15), ful­ly and with no faults has main­tained the doc­trine giv­en by Christ the Sav­ior to His dis­ci­ples. With that Faith and with such hope the Syn­od of Bish­ops ac­cepts the in­vi­ta­tion of the Com­mit­tee for Con­tin­u­a­tion of the Con­fer­ence on Faith and Order.”

Here ev­ery­thing is clear and noth­ing is left un­said. This state­ment is es­sen­tial­ly in agree­ment with what al­so used to be said at that time by of­fi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives of oth­er Ortho­dox Church­es.

What, then, has changed? Have the Protes­tants aban­doned their er­rors? No. They have not changed, and the Church has not changed; on­ly the per­sons who are now said to rep­re­sent her have changed.

If the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Ortho­dox Church­es had on­ly con­tin­ued firm­ly main­tain­ing the ba­sic prin­ci­ples of our be­lief in the Church, they would not have brought the Ortho­dox Church in­to the am­bigu­ous po­si­tion which was cre­at­ed for her by the de­ci­sion of the Gene­va Con­fer­ence last year.

Since the Assem­bly of the World Coun­cil of Church­es in New Del­hi, the Ortho­dox del­e­gates no longer make sep­a­rate state­ments, but have merged in­to one mass with the Protes­tant con­fes­sions. Thus all the de­ci­sions of the Upp­sala Assem­bly are made in the name of “the Church,” which is al­ways spo­ken of in the sin­gu­lar.

Who is speak­ing? Who gave these peo­ple the right to make ec­cle­si­o­log­i­cal state­ments not mere­ly on their own be­half, but al­so on be­half of the Ortho­dox Church?

We ask you, Most Rev­erend Brothers, to check the list of the Church­es par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Ec­u­meni­cal Move­ment and in the World Coun­cil of Church­es. Take, for in­stance, at least the first lines of the list on page 444 of The Upp­sala 68 Re­port.

There you will find the fol­low­ing names: Evan­gel­i­cal Church of the Riv­er Pla­ta, Methodist Church of Aus­tralia, Church­es of Christ in Aus­tralia, The Church of Eng­land of Aus­tralia, Con­gre­ga­tion­al Union of Aus­tralia, Pres­by­te­ri­an Church of Aus­tralia....

Is it nec­es­sary to con­tin­ue the list? Is it not clear that be­gin­ning with the very first lines, con­fes­sions are in­clud­ed which dif­fer great­ly from Ortho­doxy, which de­ny sacra­ments, hi­er­ar­chy, Church tra­di­tion, holy canons, which do not ven­er­ate the Mother of God and the Saints, etc.? We should have to enu­mer­ate near­ly all of our dog­mas in or­der to point out what in our Ortho­dox doc­trines is not ac­cept­ed by the ma­jor­i­ty of the mem­bers of the World Coun­cil of Church­es—of which, how­ev­er, the Ortho­dox Church is now nev­er­the­less al­leged to be an or­gan­ic mem­ber.

Yet in the name of this union of the var­i­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all pos­si­ble here­sies, the Upp­sala Assem­bly con­stant­ly states: “The Church pro­fess­es,” “The Church teach­es,” “The Church does this and that ....”

Out of this mix­ture of er­rors, which have gone so far astray from Tra­di­tion, the pub­lished de­ci­sion on “The Holy Spir­it and the Catholic­i­ty of the Church” makes the state­ment: “The Holy Spir­it has not on­ly pre­served the Church in con­ti­nu­ity with the past; He is al­so con­tin­u­ous­ly present in the Church, ef­fect­ing her in­ward re­new­al and re-cre­ation.”

The ques­tion is: Where is the “con­ti­nu­ity with the past” among the Pres­by­te­ri­ans? Where is the pres­ence of the Holy Spir­it among those who do not rec­og­nize any mys­ter­ies? How can one speak of the catholic­i­ty of those who do not ac­cept the de­ci­sions of the Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cils?

If these doc­tri­nal de­ci­sions were pre­ced­ed by words in­di­cat­ing that one part of the Church­es ob­serves one doc­trine, and the oth­er a dif­fer­ent doc­trine, and the teach­ing of the Ortho­dox Church were stat­ed sep­a­rate­ly, that would be con­sis­tent with re­al­i­ty. But such is not the case, and in the name of var­i­ous con­fes­sions they say: “The Church teach­es.... “

This in it­self is a procla­ma­tion of the Protes­tant doc­trine of the Church as com­pris­ing all those who call them­selves Chris­tians, even if they have no in­ter­com­mu­nion. But with­out ac­cept­ing that doc­trine, it is im­pos­si­ble to be an or­gan­ic mem­ber of the World Coun­cil of Church­es, be­cause that doc­trine is the ba­sis of the whole ide­ol­o­gy on which this or­ga­ni­za­tion rests.

True, the res­o­lu­tion “On the Holy Spir­it and the Catholic­i­ty of the Church” is fol­lowed by a note in fine print which says that since this res­o­lu­tion pro­voked such a great di­ver­si­ty of views, this de­ci­sion is not fi­nal but on­ly a sum­ma­ry of the mat­ters con­sid­ered in the Sec­tion. How­ev­er, there are not such re­marks re­gard­ing oth­er sim­i­lar res­o­lu­tions. The min­utes con­tain no ev­i­dence that the Ortho­dox del­e­gates made any state­ments to the ef­fect that the Assem­bly might not speak in the name of the Church in the sin­gu­lar; and the Assem­bly does so ev­ery­where, in all its res­o­lu­tions, which nev­er have such qual­i­fy­ing re­marks at­tached.

On the con­trary, His Emi­nence Arch­bish­op Iakovos, in his re­ply to the greet­ing of the Swedish Arch­bish­op, said in the name of the Assem­bly, “As you well know, the Church uni­ver­sal is called by a de­mand­ing world to give am­ple ev­i­dence of its faith” (The Upp­sala 69 Re­port, p. 103).

Of what “Church uni­ver­sal” did Arch­bish­op Iakovos speak? Of the Ortho­dox Church? No. He spoke here of the “Church” unit­ing all con­fes­sions, of the Church of the World Coun­cil of Church­es.

A ten­den­cy to speak in this fash­ion is es­pe­cial­ly con­spic­u­ous in the re­port of the Com­mit­tee on Faith and Order. In the res­o­lu­tion up­on its re­port, fol­low­ing state­ments about the suc­cess of Ec­u­menism, it says: “We are in agree­ment with the de­ci­sion of the Faith and Order Com­mis­sion at its Bris­tol meet­ing to pur­sue its study pro­gram of the uni­ty of the Church in the wider con­text of the study of the uni­ty of mankind and of cre­ation. We wel­come at the same time the state­ment of the Faith and Order Com­mis­sion that its task re­mains ‘to pro­claim the one­ness of the Church of Je­sus Christ’ and to keep be­fore the Coun­cil and the church­es ‘the obli­ga­tion to man­i­fest that uni­ty for the sake of their Lord and for the bet­ter ac­com­plish­ment of his mis­sion in the world’” (ibid., p. 223).

The im­pli­ca­tion is clear in all these res­o­lu­tions that, notwith­stand­ing the out­ward sep­a­ra­tion of the Church­es, their in­ter­nal uni­ty still ex­ists. The aim of Ec­u­menism is in this world to make this in­ner uni­ty al­so an out­ward one through var­i­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions of such as­pi­ra­tions.

In or­der to eval­u­ate all this from the point of view of the Ortho­dox Church, it is suf­fi­cient to imag­ine the re­cep­tion it would find among the Holy Fathers of the Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cils. Can any­body imag­ine the Ortho­dox Church of that pe­ri­od declar­ing it­self an or­gan­ic mem­ber of a so­ci­ety unit­ing Euno­mi­ans or Anomoeans, Ari­ans, Se­mi-Ari­ans, Sa­bel­lians, and Apol­li­nar­i­ans?

Cer­tain­ly not! On the con­trary, Canon I of the Se­cond Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cil does not call for union with such groups, but anath­e­ma­tizes them. Sub­se­quent Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cils did the same in re­gard to oth­er here­sies.

The or­gan­ic mem­ber­ship of Ortho­dox Chris­tians in one body with mod­ern heretics will not sanc­ti­fy the lat­ter, but does alien­ate those Ortho­dox from the catholic Ortho­dox uni­ty. That uni­ty is not lim­it­ed to the mod­ern age. Catholic­i­ty em­braces all the gen­er­a­tions of the Holy Fathers. St. Vin­cent of Lerins, in his im­mor­tal work, writes that “for Chris­tians to de­clare some­thing which they did not pre­vi­ous­ly ac­cept has nev­er been per­mit­ted, is nev­er per­mit­ted, and nev­er will be per­mit­ted,—but to anath­e­ma­tize those who pro­claim some­thing out­side of that which was ac­cept­ed once and for ev­er, has al­ways been a du­ty, is al­ways a du­ty, and al­ways will be a du­ty.”

Per­haps some­body will say that times have changed, and here­sies now are not so ma­li­cious and de­struc­tive as in the days of the Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cils. But are those Protes­tants who re­nounce the ven­er­a­tion of the Theotokos and the Saints, who do not rec­og­nize the grace of the hi­er­ar­chy,—or the Ro­man Catholics, who have in­vent­ed new er­rors,—are they near­er to the Ortho­dox Church than the Ari­ans or Se­mi-Ari­ans?

Let us grant that mod­ern preach­ers of heresy are not so bel­liger­ent to­wards the Ortho­dox Church as the an­cient ones were. How­ev­er, that is not be­cause their doc­trines are near­er to Ortho­dox teach­ing, but be­cause Protes­tantism and Ec­u­menism have built up in them the con­vic­tion that there is no One and True Church on earth, but on­ly com­mu­ni­ties of men who are in vary­ing de­grees of er­ror. Such a doc­trine kills any zeal in pro­fess­ing what they take to be the truth, and there­fore mod­ern heretics ap­pear to be less ob­du­rate than the an­cient ones. But such in­dif­fer­ence to truth is in many re­spects worse than the ca­pac­i­ty to be zeal­ous in de­fense of an er­ror mis­tak­en for truth. Pi­late, who said “What is truth?” could not be con­vert­ed; but Saul, the per­se­cu­tor of Chris­tian­i­ty, be­came the Apos­tle Paul. That is why we read in the Book of Reve­la­tion the men­ac­ing words to the An­gel of the Church of Laodicea: “I know thy works, that thou art nei­ther cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then be­cause thou art luke­warm, and nei­ther cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth” (iii. 15-16).

Ec­u­menism makes the World Coun­cil of Church­es a so­ci­ety in which ev­ery mem­ber, with Laodicean in­dif­fer­ence, rec­og­nizes him­self and oth­ers as be­ing in er­ror, and is con­cerned on­ly about find­ing phras­es which will ex­press that er­ror in terms ac­cept­able to all. Is there any room here as an “or­gan­ic mem­ber” for the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apos­tolic Church, which has al­ways pro­fessed it­self to be holy and with­out blem­ish be­cause its Head is Christ Him­self (Eph. v. 27)?

The LVII (LXVI in the Athens Syn­tag­ma) Canon of Carthage says of the Church that she is “the one spo­ken of as a dove (Song of Songs, vi. 9) and sole moth­er of Chris­tians, in whom all the sanc­ti­fy­ing gifts, sav­ing­ly ev­er­last­ing and vi­tal are re­ceived—which, how­ev­er, in­flict up­on those per­sist­ing in heresy the great pun­ish­ment of damna­tion.”

We al­so feel it is our du­ty to de­clare that it is im­pos­si­ble to rec­og­nize the Rus­sian Church as legal­ly and du­ly rep­re­sent­ed at the Pan-Ortho­dox Con­fer­ences called by His Ho­li­ness Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras. Those Bish­ops who par­tic­i­pate in these Con­fer­ences in the name of the Rus­sian Church with Metropoli­tan Nikodim at their head, do not rep­re­sent the au­then­tic Rus­sian Church. They rep­re­sent on­ly those Bish­ops who by the will of an athe­is­tic Govern­ment bear the ti­tles of cer­tain Dio­ce­ses of the Church of Rus­sia. We have al­ready had oc­ca­sion to write about this mat­ter to His Ho­li­ness Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras. Th­ese per­sons par­tic­i­pate in meet­ings abroad on­ly in so far as such par­tic­i­pa­tion is prof­itable to their civ­il au­thor­i­ties, the most cru­el in the his­to­ry of the world. Nero’s fe­roc­i­ty and Ju­lian the Apostate’s ha­tred of Chris­tian­i­ty are pal­lid in com­par­i­son.

Is it not to the in­flu­ence of that Govern­ment that we must large­ly as­cribe the po­lit­i­cal res­o­lu­tions of the Upp­sala Assem­bly, which re­peat many slo­gans wide­ly ob­serv­able in Com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da in the West?

In the con­clud­ing speech of the Chair­man, Dr. Payne, it was said that “the Church of Je­sus Christ must show ac­tive­ly the com­pas­sion of Christ in a needy world.” But nei­ther he nor any­body else said a word about the mil­lions of Chris­tians mar­tyred in the U.S.S.R.; no­body spoke a word of com­pas­sion about their plight.

It is good to ex­press com­pas­sion for the hun­gry in Biefra, for those who con­stant­ly suf­fer from fight­ing in the Mid­dle East or in Viet­nam; but does that cov­er all the hu­man af­flic­tions of the present time? Can it be that the mem­bers of the World Coun­cil of Church­es know noth­ing about the per­se­cu­tions of Reli­gion in the U.S.S.R.? Do they not know what in­iq­ui­ty is reign­ing there? Do they not know that mar­tyrs for the Faith there are count­ed in the mil­lions, that the Holy Scrip­tures are not pub­lished there and that peo­ple are sen­tenced to ban­ish­ment with hard la­bor for dis­tribut­ing them? Do they not know that chil­dren there are pre­vent­ed from lessons in the ba­sic prin­ci­ples of Reli­gion, and even from at­tend­ing re­li­gious ser­vices? Do they not know of the thou­sands who have been ban­ished for their Faith, about the chil­dren wrest­ed from their par­ents to pre­vent them from re­ceiv­ing re­li­gious up­bring­ing?

All this is cer­tain­ly well known to any­body who reads the news­pa­pers, but it is nev­er men­tioned in any res­o­lu­tion of the World Coun­cil of Church­es. The ec­u­meni­cal priests and Le­vites are pass­ing by in si­lence and with­out in­ter­est, with­out so much as a glance in the di­rec­tion of the Chris­tians per­se­cut­ed in the U.S.S.R. They are silent be­cause the of­fi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Church of Rus­sia, in spite of all ev­i­dence to the con­trary, de­ny the ex­is­tence of these per­se­cu­tions in or­der to please their civ­il au­thor­i­ties.

Th­ese peo­ple are not free. Whether they wish to or not, they are forced to speak in obe­di­ence to or­ders from Com­mu­nist Moscow. The bur­den of per­se­cu­tion makes them more de­serv­ing of com­pas­sion than of blame. But be­ing moral pris­on­ers of the god­less, they can­not be true spokes­men for the Rus­sian Ortho­dox Church, suf­fer­ing, de­prived of any rights, forced to be silent, driv­en in­to cat­a­combs and pris­ons.

The late Pa­tri­arch Sergius and the present Pa­tri­arch Alex­is were elect­ed in vi­o­la­tion of the rules which were in­sti­tut­ed by the All-Rus­sian Church Coun­cil of 1917 at the restora­tion of the Pa­tri­ar­chate. Both were cho­sen ac­cord­ing to the in­struc­tions of Stal­in, the fiercest per­se­cu­tor of the Church in his­to­ry.

Can you imag­ine a Bish­op of Rome cho­sen ac­cord­ing to the in­struc­tions of Nero? But Stal­in was many times worse.

The hi­er­ar­chs se­lect­ed by Stal­in had to promise their obe­di­ence to an athe­is­tic Govern­ment whose aim, ac­cord­ing to the Com­mu­nist pro­gram, is the an­ni­hi­la­tion of Reli­gion. The present Pa­tri­arch Alex­is wrote to Stal­in im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the death of his pre­de­ces­sor that he would ob­serve fi­deli­ty to his Govern­ment: “Act­ing ful­ly in con­cert with the Coun­cil for the Af­fairs of the Rus­sian Ortho­dox Church and al­so with the Holy Syn­od in­sti­tut­ed by the late Pa­tri­arch, I will be se­cure from mis­takes and wrong ac­tions.”

Every­body knows that “mis­takes and wrong ac­tions” in the lan­guage of the Moscow mas­ters means any vi­o­la­tion of the in­struc­tions giv­en by the Com­mu­nist au­thor­i­ties.

We can pity an un­for­tu­nate old man, but we can­not rec­og­nize him as the Head of the Rus­sian Church, of which we re­gard our­selves an in­sep­a­ra­ble part. Both to Pa­tri­arch Alex­is and his col­lab­o­ra­tors the sanc­tions of the XXX Apos­tolic Canon and Canon III of the Seventh Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cil can be dou­bly ap­plied: “If any bish­op, mak­ing use of the sec­u­lar pow­ers, shall by their means ob­tain ju­ris­dic­tion over any church, he shall be de­posed, and al­so ex­com­mu­ni­cat­ed, to­geth­er with all who re­main in com­mu­nion with him.’’

Bish­op Nikodim of Dal­ma­tia, in his com­men­tary on the XXX Apos­tolic Canon, says: “If the Church con­demned the un­law­ful in­flu­ence of civ­il au­thor­i­ties on the ap­point­ment of a bish­op at a time when the Rulers were Chris­tians, how much the more so, con­se­quent­ly, she had to con­demn it when they were hea­thens.” What is there to say, there­fore, when a Pa­tri­arch and Bish­ops are in­stalled by the open and mil­i­tant en­e­mies of their re­li­gion?

When one part of the Rus­sian Epis­co­pate, to­geth­er with the late Pa­tri­arch (at that time Metropoli­tan) Sergius, took the course of agree­ing with the en­e­mies of the Church in 1927, a large (and the most re­spect­ed) part of that Epis­co­pate, with Metropoli­tan Joseph of Len­ingrad and the first can­di­date of Pa­tri­arch Tikhon for the of­fice of locum tenens, Metropoli­tan Cyrill of Kazan, did not agree to go along with him, pre­fer­ring ban­ish­ment and mar­tyr­dom. Metropoli­tan Joseph by that time had al­ready come to the con­clu­sion that, in the face of a Govern­ment which open­ly had as its goal the de­struc­tion of Reli­gion by the use of any avail­able means, the le­gal ex­is­tence of a Church Ad­min­is­tra­tion be­comes prac­ti­cal­ly im­pos­si­ble with­out en­tail­ing com­pro­mis­es which are too great and too sin­ful. He there­fore start­ed se­cret or­di­na­tions of Bish­ops and priests, in that way or­ga­niz­ing the Cat­a­comb Church which still ex­ists in hid­ing.

The athe­ists sel­dom men­tion the Cat­a­comb Church, be­ing afraid of giv­ing her too much pub­lic­i­ty. On­ly very rarely in the Sovi­et Press is the news of some tri­al of her mem­bers men­tioned. In­for­ma­tion about her, how­ev­er, is giv­en in man­u­als for an­ti-re­li­gious work­ers in the U.S.S.R. For in­stance, the ba­sic in­for­ma­tion about this Church, un­der the name of “The Tru­ly Ortho­dox Church,” is giv­en in a man­u­al with the ti­tle of Slo­var Ateista (“The Athe­ist’s Dic­tionary”), pub­lished in Moscow in 1964.

With no open church­es, in se­cret meet­ings sim­i­lar to the cat­a­comb meet­ings of the ear­ly Chris­tians, these con­fes­sors of the Faith per­form their ser­vices un­seen by the out­er world. They are the true rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Rus­sian Ortho­dox Church, whose great­ness will be­come known to the world on­ly af­ter the down­fall of the Com­mu­nist pow­er.

For these rea­sons, al­though rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Moscow Pa­tri­ar­chate par­tic­i­pat­ed in the de­ci­sions of the Pan-Ortho­dox Con­fer­ence in Gene­va last year, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­gard to mak­ing the Ortho­dox Church an or­gan­ic mem­ber of the World Coun­cil of Church­es,—we look up­on that de­ci­sion as hav­ing been ac­cept­ed with­out the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Rus­sian Ortho­dox Church. That Church is forced to stay silent, and we, as her free rep­re­sen­ta­tives, are grieved by the fact that such a de­ci­sion was ac­cept­ed. We cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly protest that de­ci­sion as be­ing con­trary to the very na­ture it­self of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apos­tolic Church.

The poi­son of heresy is not too dan­ger­ous when it is preached on­ly from out­side the Church. Many times more per­ilous is that poi­son which is grad­u­al­ly in­tro­duced in­to the or­gan­ism in larg­er and larg­er dos­es by those who, in virtue of their po­si­tion, should not be poi­son­ers but spir­i­tu­al physi­cians.

Can it be that the Ortho­dox Epis­co­pate will re­main in­dif­fer­ent to that dan­ger? Will it not be too late to pro­tect our spir­i­tu­al flock when the wolves are de­vour­ing the sheep be­fore their pas­tors’ eyes, in­side the very sheep­fold it­self?

Do we not see the di­vine sword al­ready raised (Matt. x. 34), sep­a­rat­ing those who are true to the tra­di­tion­al faith of the Holy Church from those who, in the words of His Ho­li­ness Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras in his greet­ing to the Upp­sala Assem­bly, are work­ing to shape the “new drive in the ec­u­meni­cal move­ment” for the “ful­fill­ment of the gen­er­al Chris­tian re­new­al” on the paths of ref­or­ma­tion and in­dif­fer­ence to the truth?

It seems that we have shown clear­ly enough that this ap­par­ent uni­ty is not uni­ty in the truth of Ortho­doxy, but a uni­ty that mix­es white with black, good with evil, and truth with er­ror.

We have al­ready protest­ed against the un­ortho­dox ec­u­meni­cal ac­tions of His Ho­li­ness Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras and Arch­bish­op Iakovos in let­ters which were wide­ly dis­tribut­ed to Bish­ops of the Ortho­dox Church in var­i­ous coun­tries. We have re­ceived from dif­fer­ent parts of the world ex­pres­sions of agree­ment with us.

But now the time has come to make our protest heard more loud­ly still, and then even yet more loud­ly, so as to stop the ac­tion of this poi­son be­fore it has be­come as po­tent as the an­cient here­sies of Ari­an­ism, Nesto­ri­an­ism, or Eu­ty­chi­an­ism, which in their time so shook the whole body of the Church as to make it seem that heresy was apt to over­come Ortho­doxy.

We di­rect our ap­peal to all the Bish­ops of the Ortho­dox Church, im­plor­ing them to study the sub­ject of this let­ter and to rise up in de­fense of the pu­ri­ty of the Ortho­dox Faith. We al­so ask them very much to pray for the Rus­sian Ortho­dox Church, so great­ly suf­fer­ing from the athe­ists, that the Lord might short­en the days of her tri­al and send her free­dom and peace.

Metropoli­tan PHILARET

In New York,
Sun­day of the Sixth Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cil,
14/27 Ju­ly, 1969

There are, how­ev­er, oc­ca­sions when events are of such a na­ture that their in­flu­ence ex­tends be­yond the lim­its of one Dio­cese, or in­deed those of one or more of the lo­cal Church­es. Events of such a gen­er­al, glob­al na­ture can not be ig­nored by any Ortho­dox Bish­op, who, as a suc­ces­sor of the Apos­tles, is charged with the pro­tec­tion of his flock from var­i­ous temp­ta­tions. The light­en­ing-like speed with which ideas may be spread in our times make such care all the more im­per­a­tive now.

In par­tic­u­lar, our flock, be­long­ing to the free part of the Church of Rus­sia, is spread out all over the world. What has just been stat­ed, there­fore, is most per­ti­nent to it.

As a re­sult of this, our Bish­ops, when meet­ing in their Coun­cils, can­not con­fine their dis­cus­sions to the nar­row lim­its of pas­toral and ad­min­is­tra­tive prob­lems aris­ing in their re­spec­tive Dio­ce­ses, but must in ad­di­tion turn their at­ten­tion to mat­ters of a gen­er­al im­por­tance to the whole Ortho­dox World, since the af­flic­tion of one Church is as “an af­flic­tion un­to them all, elic­it­ing the com­pas­sion of them all” (Phil. 4:14-16; Heb. 10:30). And if the Apos­tle St. Paul was weak with those who were weak and burn­ing with those who were of­fend­ed, how then can we Bish­ops of God re­main in­dif­fer­ent to the growth of er­rors which threat­en the sal­va­tion of the souls of many of our broth­ers in Christ?

It is in the spir­it of such a feel­ing that we have al­ready once ad­dressed all the Bish­ops of the Holy Ortho­dox Church with a Sor­row­ful Epis­tle. We re­joiced to learn that, in har­mo­ny with our ap­peal, sev­er­al Metropoli­tans of the Church of Greece have re­cent­ly made re­ports to their Syn­od call­ing to its at­ten­tion the ne­ces­si­ty of con­sid­er­ing ec­u­menism a heresy and the ad­vis­abil­i­ty of re­con­sid­er­ing the mat­ter of par­tic­i­pa­tion in the World Coun­cil of Church­es. Such healthy re­ac­tions against the spread­ing of ec­u­menism al­low us to hope that the Church of Christ will be spared this new storm which threat­ens her.

Yet, two years have passed since our Sor­row­ful Epis­tle was is­sued, and, alas! al­though in the Church of Greece we have seen the new state­ments re­gard­ing ec­u­menism as un-Ortho­dox, no Ortho­dox Church has an­nounced its with­draw­al from the World Coun­cil of Church­es.

In the Sor­row­ful Epis­tle, we de­pict­ed in vivid col­ors to what ex­tent the or­gan­ic mem­ber­ship of the Ortho­dox Church in that Coun­cil, based as it is up­on pure­ly Protes­tant prin­ci­ples, is con­trary to the very ba­sis of Ortho­doxy. In this Epis­tle, hav­ing been au­tho­rized by our Coun­cil of Bish­ops, we would fur­ther de­vel­op and ex­tend our warn­ing, show­ing that the par­tic­i­pants in the ec­u­meni­cal move­ment are in­volved in a pro­found heresy against the very foun­da­tion of the Church.

The essence of that move­ment has been giv­en a clear def­i­ni­tion by the state­ment of the Ro­man Catholic the­olo­gian Ives M. J. Con­gar. He writes that “this is a move­ment which prompts the Chris­tian Church­es to wish the restora­tion of the lost uni­ty, and to that end to have a deep un­der­stand­ing of it­self and un­der­stand­ing of each oth­er.” He con­tin­ues, “It is com­posed of all the feel­ings, ideas, ac­tions or in­sti­tu­tions, meet­ings or con­fer­ences, cer­e­monies, man­i­fes­ta­tions and pub­li­ca­tions which are di­rect­ed to pre­pare the re­union in new uni­ty not on­ly of (sep­a­rate) Chris­tians, but al­so of the ac­tu­al­ly ex­ist­ing Church­es.” Ac­tu­al­ly, he con­tin­ues, “the word ec­u­menism, which is of Protes­tant ori­gin, means now a con­crete re­al­i­ty: the to­tal­i­ty of all the afore­men­tioned up­on the ba­sis of a cer­tain at­ti­tude and a cer­tain amount of very def­i­nite con­vic­tion (al­though not al­ways very clear and cer­tain). It is not a de­sire or an at­tempt to unite those who are re­gard­ed as sep­a­rat­ed in­to one Church which would be re­gard­ed as the on­ly true one. It be­gins at just that point where it is rec­og­nized that, at the present state, none of the Chris­tian con­fes­sions pos­sess­es the full­ness of Chris­tian­i­ty, but even if one of them is au­then­tic, still, as a con­fes­sion, it does not con­tain the whole truth. There are Chris­tian val­ues out­side of it be­long­ing not on­ly to Chris­tians who are sep­a­rat­ed from it in creed, but al­so to oth­er Church­es and oth­er con­fes­sions as such” (Chre­tiens De­su­nis, Ed. Unam Sanc­tam, Paris, 1937, pp. XI-XII). This def­i­ni­tion of the ec­u­meni­cal move­ment made by a Ro­man Catholic the­olo­gian 35 years ago con­tin­ues to be quite as ex­act even now, with the dif­fer­ence that dur­ing the in­ter­ven­ing years this move­ment has con­tin­ued to de­vel­op fur­ther with a new­er and more dan­ger­ous scope.

In our first Sor­row­ful Epis­tle, we wrote in de­tail on how in­com­pat­i­ble with our Ec­cle­si­ol­o­gy was the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Ortho­dox in the World Coun­cil of Church­es, and pre­sent­ed pre­cise­ly the na­ture of the vi­o­la­tion against Ortho­doxy com­mit­ted in the par­tic­i­pa­tion of our Church­es in that coun­cil. We demon­strat­ed that the ba­sic prin­ci­ples of that coun­cil are in­com­pat­i­ble with the Ortho­dox doc­trine of the Church. We, there­fore, protest­ed against the ac­cep­tance of that res­o­lu­tion at the Gene­va Pan-Ortho­dox Con­fer­ence where­by the Ortho­dox Church was pro­claimed an or­gan­ic mem­ber of the World Coun­cil of Church­es.

Alas! Th­ese last few years are rich­ly laden with ev­i­dence that, in their di­a­logues with the het­ero­dox, some Ortho­dox rep­re­sen­ta­tives have adopt­ed a pure­ly Protes­tant ec­cle­si­ol­o­gy which brings in its wake a Protes­tant ap­proach to ques­tions of the life of the Church, and from which springs forth the now-pop­u­lar mod­ernism.

Modernism con­sists in that bring­ing-down, that re-align­ing of the life of the Church ac­cord­ing to the prin­ci­ples of cur­rent life and hu­man weak­ness­es. We saw it in the Ren­o­va­tion Move­ment and in the Liv­ing Church in Rus­sia in the twen­ties. At the first meet­ing of the founders of the Liv­ing Church on May 29, 1922, its aims were de­ter­mined as a “re­vi­sion and change of all facets of Church life which are re­quired by the de­mands of cur­rent life” (The New Church, Prof. B. V. Titli­nov, Pet­ro­grad-Moscow, 1923, p. 11). The Liv­ing Church was an at­tempt at a ref­or­ma­tion ad­just­ed to the re­quire­ments of the con­di­tions of a com­mu­nist state. Modernism places that com­pli­ance with the weak­ness­es of hu­man na­ture above the moral and even doc­tri­nal re­quire­ments of the Church. In that mea­sure that the world is aban­don­ing Chris­tian prin­ci­ples, mod­ernism de­bas­es the lev­el of re­li­gious life more and more. Within the Western con­fes­sions we see that there has come about an abo­li­tion of fast­ing, a rad­i­cal short­en­ing and vul­gar­iza­tion of re­li­gious ser­vices, and, fi­nal­ly, full spir­i­tu­al dev­as­ta­tion, even to the point of ex­hibit­ing an in­dul­gent and per­mis­sive at­ti­tude to­ward un­nat­u­ral vices of which St. Paul said it was shame­ful even to speak.

It was just mod­ernism which was the ba­sis of the Pan-Ortho­dox Con­fer­ence of sad mem­o­ry in Con­stantino­ple in 1923, ev­i­dent­ly not with­out some in­flu­ence of the ren­o­va­tion ex­per­i­ment in Rus­sia. Sub­se­quent to that con­fer­ence, some Church­es, while not adopt­ing all the re­forms which were there in­tro­duced, adopt­ed the Western cal­en­dar, and even, in some cas­es, the Western Paschalia. This, then, was the first step on­to the path of mod­ernism of the Ortho­dox Church, where­by Her way of life was changed in or­der to bring it clos­er to the way of life of hereti­cal com­mu­ni­ties. In this re­spect, there­fore, the adop­tion of the Western Cal­en­dar was a vi­o­la­tion of a prin­ci­ple con­sis­tent in the Holy Canons, where­by there is a ten­den­cy to spir­i­tu­al­ly iso­late the Faith­ful from those who teach con­trary to the Ortho­dox Church, and not to en­cour­age close­ness with such in our prayer-life (Ti­tus 3:10; 10th, 45th, and 65th Apos­tolic Canons; 32nd, 33rd, and 37th Canons of Laodicea, etc.). The un­hap­py fruit of that re­form was the vi­o­la­tion of the uni­ty of the life in prayer of Ortho­dox Chris­tians in var­i­ous coun­tries. While some of them were cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas to­geth­er with heretics, oth­ers still fast­ed. Some­times such a di­vi­sion oc­curred in the same lo­cal Church, and some­times Easter [Pascha] was cel­e­brat­ed ac­cord­ing to the Western Paschal reck­on­ing. For the sake, there­fore, of be­ing near­er to the heretics, that prin­ci­ple, set forth by the First Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cil that all Ortho­dox Chris­tians should si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, with one mouth and one heart, re­joice and glo­ri­fy the Res­ur­rec­tion of Christ all over the world, is vi­o­lat­ed.

This ten­den­cy to in­tro­duce re­forms, re­gard­less of pre­vi­ous gen­er­al de­ci­sions and prac­tice of the whole Church in vi­o­la­tion of the Se­cond Canon of the VI Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cil, cre­ates on­ly con­fu­sion. His Ho­li­ness, the Pa­tri­arch of Ser­bia, Gabriel, of blessed mem­o­ry, ex­pressed this feel­ing elo­quent­ly at the Church Con­fer­ence held in Moscow in 1948.

“In the last decades,” he said, “var­i­ous ten­den­cies have ap­peared in the Ortho­dox Church which evoke rea­son­able ap­pre­hen­sion for the pu­ri­ty of Her doc­trines and for Her dog­mat­i­cal and canon­i­cal Uni­ty.

“The con­ven­ing by the Ec­u­meni­cal Pa­tri­arch of the Pan-Ortho­dox Con­fer­ence and the Con­fer­ence at Vato­pe­di, which had as their prin­ci­pal aim the prepar­ing of the Prosyn­od, vi­o­lat­ed the uni­ty and co­op­er­a­tion of the Ortho­dox Church­es. On the one hand, the ab­sence of the Church of Rus­sia at these meet­ings, and, on the oth­er, the hasty and uni­lat­er­al ac­tions of some of the lo­cal Church­es and the hasty ac­tions of their rep­re­sen­ta­tives have in­tro­duced chaos and anoma­lies in­to the life of the Eastern Ortho­dox Church.

“The uni­lat­er­al in­tro­duc­tion of the Gre­go­ri­an Cal­en­dar by some of the lo­cal Church­es while the Old Cal­en­dar was kept yet by oth­ers, shook the uni­ty of the Church and in­cit­ed se­ri­ous dis­sen­sion with­in those of them who so light­ly in­tro­duced the New Cal­en­dar” (Acts of the Con­fer­ences of the Heads and Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Au­to­cephal­ic Ortho­dox Church­es, Moscow, 1949, Vol. II, pp. 447-448).

Re­cent­ly, Prof. Theodor­ou, one of the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Church of Greece at the Con­fer­ence in Chambesy in 1968, not­ed that the cal­en­dar re­form in Greece was hasty and not­ed fur­ther that the Church there suf­fers even now from the schism it caused (Jour­nal of the Moscow Pa­tri­ar­chate, 1969, No. 1, p. 51).

It could not es­cape the sen­si­tive con­sciences of many sons of the Church that with­in the cal­en­dar re­form, the foun­da­tion is al­ready laid for a re­vi­sion of the en­tire or­der of Ortho­dox Church life which has been blessed by the Tra­di­tion of many cen­turies and con­firmed by the de­ci­sions of the Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cils. Al­ready at that Pan-Ortho­dox Con­fer­ence of 1923 at Con­stantino­ple, the ques­tions of the sec­ond mar­riage of cler­gy as well as oth­er mat­ters were raised. And re­cent­ly, the Greek Arch­bish­op of North and South Amer­i­ca, Iakovos, made a state­ment in fa­vor of a mar­ried epis­co­pate (The Hel­lenic Chron­i­cle, De­cem­ber 23, 1971).

The strength of Ortho­doxy has al­ways lain in Her main­tain­ing the prin­ci­ples of Church Tra­di­tion. De­spite this, there are those who are at­tempt­ing to in­clude in the agen­da of a fu­ture Great Coun­cil not a dis­cus­sion of the best ways to safe­guard those prin­ci­ples, but, on the con­trary, ways to bring about a rad­i­cal re­vi­sion of the en­tire way of life in the Church, be­gin­ning with the abo­li­tion of fasts, sec­ond mar­riages of the cler­gy, etc., so that Her way of life would be clos­er to that of the hereti­cal com­mu­ni­ties.

In our first Sor­row­ful Epis­tle we have shown in de­tail the ex­tent to which the prin­ci­ples of the World Coun­cil of Church­es are con­trary to the doc­trines of the Ortho­dox Church, and we protest­ed against the de­ci­sion tak­en in Gene­va at the Pan-Ortho­dox Con­fer­ence declar­ing the Ortho­dox Church to be an or­gan­ic mem­ber of that coun­cil. Then we re­mind­ed all that, “the poi­son of heresy is not too dan­ger­ous when it is preached out­side the Church. Many times more per­ilous is that poi­son which is grad­u­al­ly in­tro­duced in­to the or­gan­ism in larg­er and larg­er dos­es by those who, in virtue of their po­si­tion, should not be poi­son­ers but spir­i­tu­al physi­cians.”

Alas! Of late we see the symp­toms of such a great de­vel­op­ment of ec­u­menism with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Ortho­dox, that it has be­come a se­ri­ous threat, lead­ing to the ut­ter an­ni­hi­la­tion of the Ortho­dox Church by dis­solv­ing Her in an ocean of hereti­cal com­mu­ni­ties.

The prob­lem of uni­ty is not dis­cussed now on the lev­el at which it used to be con­sid­ered by the Holy Fathers. For them uni­ty with the heretics re­quired them to ac­cept the whole of Ortho­dox doc­trine and their re­turn to the fold of the Ortho­dox Church. Un­der the prism of the ec­u­meni­cal move­ment, how­ev­er, it is un­der­stood that both sides are equal­ly right and wrong; this is ap­pli­ca­ble to both Ro­man Catholics and Protes­tants. Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras clear­ly ex­pressed this in his speech greet­ing Car­di­nal Wille­brands in Con­stantino­ple on Novem­ber 30, 1969. The Pa­tri­arch ex­pressed the wish that the Car­di­nal’s ac­tiv­i­ties would “mark a new epoch of progress not on­ly in re­gard to the two of our Church­es, but al­so of all Chris­tians.” The Pa­tri­arch gave the def­i­ni­tion of the new ap­proach to the prob­lem of uni­ty by say­ing that, “None of us is call­ing the oth­er to him­self, but, like Peter and An­drew, we both di­rect our­selves to Je­sus, the on­ly and mu­tu­al Lord, Who unites us in­to one­ness” (To­mos Agapis, Rome-lstan­bul, Doc­u­ment No. 274, pp. 588-589).

The re­cent ex­change of let­ters be­tween Paul Vl, the Pope of Rome, and the Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras fur­ther elab­o­rates and de­vel­ops this un­ortho­dox idea to our great vex­a­tion. En­cour­aged by var­i­ous state­ments of the Pri­mate of the Church of Con­stantino­ple, the Pope wrote to him on Fe­bru­ary 8, 1971: ‘’We re­mind the be­liev­ers as­sem­bled in the Basil­i­ca of St. Peter on the Week of Uni­ty that be­tween our Church and the ven­er­a­ble Ortho­dox Church­es there is an al­ready ex­ist­ing, near­ly com­plete com­mu­nion, though not ful­ly com­plete, re­sult­ing from our com­mon par­tic­i­pa­tion in the mys­tery of Christ and His Church” (To­mos Agapis, pp.614-615).

A doc­trine, new for Ro­man Catholi­cism but of long-stand­ing ac­cep­tance for Protes­tanism, is con­tained in these words. Ac­cord­ing to it, the sep­a­ra­tions ex­ist­ing be­tween Chris­tians on earth is ac­tu­al­ly il­lu­so­ry—they do not reach the heav­ens. So it is that the words of our Sav­ior re­gard­ing the chas­tise­ment of those who dis­obey the Church (Matt. 18:18) are set at naught and re­gard­ed as with­out va­lid­i­ty. Such a doc­trine is nov­el not on­ly for us Ortho­dox, but for the Ro­man Catholics as well, whose thought on this mat­ter, so dif­fer­ent from that of the present, was ex­pressed in 1928 in Pope Pius IX’s En­cycli­cal Mor­tal­i­un An­i­mos. Though the Ro­man Catholics are of those “with­out” (I Cor. 5:13), and we are not di­rect­ly con­cerned with chang­ing trends in their views, their ad­vance near­er to Protes­tant ec­cle­si­ol­o­gy in­ter­ests us on­ly in­so­far as it co­in­cides with the si­mul­ta­ne­ous ac­cep­tance of sim­i­lar at­ti­tudes by Con­stantino­ple. Ec­u­menists of Ortho­dox back­ground and ec­u­menists of Protes­tant-Ro­man Catholic back­ground ar­rive at a una­nim­i­ty of opin­ion in the same heresy.

Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras an­swered the above quot­ed let­ter of the Pope on March 21, 1971, in a sim­i­lar spir­it. When quot­ing his words, we will ital­i­cize the most im­por­tant phras­es. While the Pope, who is not in­ter­est­ed in dog­mat­i­cal har­mo­ny, in­vites the Pa­tri­arch “to do all that is pos­si­ble to speed that much de­sired day when, at the con­clu­sion of a com­mon con­cel­e­bra­tion, we will be made wor­thy to com­mu­ni­cate to­geth­er of the same Cup of the Lord” (ibid.); the Pa­tri­arch an­swered in the same spir­it ad­dress­ing the Pope as ‘’el­der broth­er” and say­ing that,” ... fol­low­ing the holy de­sire of the Lord Who would that His Church be One, vis­i­ble to the en­tire world, so that the en­tire world would fit in Her, we con­stant­ly and un­remit­ting­ly sur­ren­der our­selves to the guid­ance of the Holy Spir­it un­to the firm con­tin­u­a­tion and com­ple­tion of the now-be­gun and de­vel­op­ing holy work be­gun with You in our com­mon Holy de­sire, to make vis­i­ble and man­i­fest un­to the world the one, holy, catholic and apos­tolic Church of Christ” (ibid., pp. 618-619).

Fur­ther on the Pa­tri­arch writes: “Tru­ly, even though the Church of both east and west have been es­tranged from each oth­er for of­fens­es known but to the Lord, they are not vir­tu­al­ly sep­a­rat­ed from the com­mu­nion in the mys­tery of the God-man Je­sus and His Divine-hu­man Church” (ibid., pp. 620).

The Pa­tri­arch bit­ter­ly men­tions that “we were es­tranged from re­cip­ro­cal love and the blessed gift of con­fes­sion in one­ness of mind of the faith of Christ was tak­en from us.” He says that, “we were de­prived of the bless­ing of go­ing up to­geth­er to the one al­tar .... and of the full and to­geth­er com­mu­nion of the same eu­charis­tic hon­or­able Body and Blood, even though we did not cease to rec­og­nize each in the oth­er the va­lid­i­ty of apos­tolic priest­hood and the va­lid­i­ty of the mys­tery of the Divine Eucharist” (ibid.). It is at this point in time, how­ev­er, that the Pa­tri­arch notes that, “we are called pos­i­tive­ly to pro­ceed to the fi­nal union in con­cel­e­bra­tion and com­mu­nion of the hon­or­able Blood of Christ from the same holy cup” (ibid., pp. 620-623).

In this let­ter many un-Ortho­dox ideas are ex­pressed, which, if tak­en to their log­i­cal end, lead us to the most dis­as­trous con­clu­sions. It fol­lows from the quot­ed words that the ec­u­menists led by Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras do not be­lieve in the Church as She was found­ed by the Sav­ior. Con­trary to His word (Matt. 16:18), that Church no longer ex­ists for them, and the Pope and Pa­tri­arch to­geth­er would “make vis­i­ble and man­i­fest” a new church which would en­com­pass the whole of mankind. Is it not dread­ful to hear these words “make vis­i­ble and man­i­fest” from the mouth of an Ortho­dox Pa­tri­arch? Is it not a re­nun­ci­a­tion of the ex­ist­ing Church of Christ? Is it pos­si­ble to ren­der a new church vis­i­ble with­out first re­nounc­ing that very Church which was cre­at­ed by the Lord? But for those who be­long to Her and who be­lieve in Her, there is no need to make vis­i­ble and man­i­fest any new Church. Yet even the “old” Church of the Holy Apos­tles and Fathers is pre­sent­ed by the Pope and the Pa­tri­arch in a dis­tort­ed man­ner so as to cre­ate the il­lu­sion in the mind of the read­er that She is some­how con­nect­ed with the new church that they wish to cre­ate. To that end they at­tempt to present the sep­a­ra­tion be­tween Ortho­doxy and Ro­man Catholi­cism as if it nev­er ex­ist­ed.

In their com­mon prayer in the Basil­i­ca of St. Peter, Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras and Pope Paul Vl stat­ed that they find them­selves al­ready unit­ed “in the procla­ma­tion of the same Gospel, in the same bap­tism, in the same sacra­ments and the charis­mas” (ibid., p.660).

But even if the Pope and Pa­tri­arch have de­clared to be null and void the Anath­e­mas which have ex­ist­ed for nine cen­turies, does this mean that the rea­sons for pro­nounc­ing them, which are known to all, have ceased to ex­ist? Does this mean that the er­rors of the Latins which one was re­quired to re­nounce up­on en­ter­ing the Church no longer ex­ist?

The Ro­man Catholic Church with which Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras would es­tab­lish litur­gi­cal com­mu­nion, and with which, through the ac­tions of Metropoli­tan Nikodim of Len­ingrad and oth­ers, the Moscow Pa­tri­ar­chate has al­ready en­tered in­to com­mu­nion, is not even that same church with which the Ortho­dox Church led by St. Mark of Eph­e­sus re­fused to en­ter in­to a union. That church is even fur­ther away from Ortho­doxy now, hav­ing in­tro­duced even more new doc­trines and hav­ing ac­cept­ed more and more the prin­ci­ples of ref­or­ma­tion, ec­u­menism and mod­ernism.

In a num­ber of de­ci­sions of the Ortho­dox Church the Ro­man Catholics were re­gard­ed as heretics. Though from time to time they were ac­cept­ed in­to the Church in a man­ner such as that ap­plied to Ari­ans, it is to be not­ed that for many cen­turies and even in our time the Greek Church­es ac­cept­ed them by Bap­tism. If af­ter the cen­turies fol­low­ing 1054 the Latins were ac­cept­ed in­to the Greek and Rus­sian Church­es by two rites, that of Bap­tism or of Chris­ma­tion, it was be­cause al­though ev­ery­one rec­og­nized them to be heretics, a gen­er­al rule for the en­tire Church was not yet es­tab­lished in re­gard to the means of their ac­cep­tance. For in­stance, when in the be­gin­ning of the XII cen­tu­ry the Ser­bian Prince and fa­ther of Stephan Ne­ma­nia was forced in­to hav­ing his son bap­tized by the Latins up­on his sub­se­quent re­turn lat­er to Rasa he bap­tized him in the Ortho­dox Church (Short Out­line of the Ortho­dox Church­es, Bul­gar­i­an, Ser­bian and Ru­ma­ni­an, E. E. Gol­u­bin­sky, Moscow, 1871, p. 551). In an­oth­er mon­u­men­tal work, The His­to­ry of the Rus­sian Church (Vols. I/II, Moscow, 1904, pp. 806-807), Pro­fes­sor Gol­u­bin­sky, in de­scrib­ing the stand tak­en by the Rus­sian Church in re­gard to the Latins, ad­vances many facts in­di­cat­ing that in ap­ply­ing var­i­ous ways in re­ceiv­ing the Latins in­to the fold of the Ortho­dox Church, at some times bap­tiz­ing them and at oth­ers chris­mat­ing them, both the Greeks and Rus­sian Church­es as­sumed that they were heretics.

There­fore, the state­ment that dur­ing those cen­turies “we did not cease to rec­og­nize each in the oth­er the va­lid­i­ty of apos­tolic priest­hood and the va­lid­i­ty of the mys­tery of the Divine Eucharist” is ab­so­lute­ly in­con­sis­tent with his­tor­i­cal fact. The sep­a­ra­tion be­tween us and Rome ex­ist­ed and ex­ists; fur­ther, it is not il­lu­so­ry but ac­tu­al. The sep­a­ra­tion ap­pears il­lu­so­ry to those who give no weight to the words of the Sav­ior spo­ken to His Holy Apos­tles and through them, to their suc­ces­sors: “Ver­i­ly I say un­to you, What­so­ev­er ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heav­en; and what­so­ev­er ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heav­en” (Matt. 18:18).

The Sav­ior says, “Ver­i­ly I say un­to you,” and the Pa­tri­arch con­tra­dicts Him and de­clares His words to be un­true. It must be con­clud­ed from the Pa­tri­arch’s words that, al­though the Latins were re­gard­ed as heretics by the whole Ortho­dox Church, al­though they could not re­ceive Holy Com­mu­nion, even though they were ac­cept­ed in­to the Church over many cen­turies by Bap­tism—and we know of no de­ci­sion in the East re­vers­ing this stand—still, they con­tin­ued to be mem­bers of the Cor­pus Christi and were not sep­a­rat­ed from the Sacra­ments of the Church. In such a state­ment there is no log­ic. It ev­i­dences a loss of con­tact with the ac­tu­al his­to­ry of the Church. It presents us with an ex­am­ple of ap­pli­ca­tion in prac­tice of the Protes­tant doc­trine ac­cord­ing to which ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Church be­cause of dog­mat­i­cal er­ror does not bar the one ex­com­mu­ni­cat­ed from mem­ber­ship in Her. In oth­er words, it means that “com­mu­nion in the mys­tery of the God-man Je­sus” does not nec­es­sar­i­ly de­pend up­on mem­ber­ship in the Ortho­dox Church.

In an at­tempt to find some jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their ec­u­meni­cal the­o­ry, they are try­ing to con­vince us that mem­ber­ship in the Church with­out full dog­mat­ic agree­ment with Her was per­mit­ted in the past. In his of­fi­cial state­ment at the Pha­nar, made when his let­ter to the Pope was pub­lished, Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras tried to con­vince us that notwith­stand­ing the facts men­tioned ear­li­er, the Eastern Church did not rup­ture its com­mu­nion with Rome, even when dog­mat­i­cal dis­sent was ob­vi­ous.

One can in­deed find some soli­tary in­stances of com­mu­nion. In some places even af­ter 1054, some Eastern hi­er­ar­chs may not have has­tened to brand as heresy var­i­ous wrong doc­trines that ap­peared in the Church of Rome.

But a long ail­ment be­fore death is still a dis­ease, and the death it caus­es re­mains a death, how­ev­er long it took for it to come to pass. In the case of Rome that pro­cess was al­ready ev­i­dent at the time of St. Pho­tios, but on­ly lat­er, in 1054, did it be­come a fi­nal sep­a­ra­tion.

The ex­change of let­ters be­tween the Pa­tri­arch of Con­stantino­ple and the Pope of Rome have made it nec­es­sary for us to dwell to no lit­tle ex­tent up­on the re­la­tion­ship of the Ortho­dox Church to­ward the Latins. But Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras goes yet be­yond equat­ing Papism with Ortho­doxy. We speak here of his state­ment to Roge Schutz, a pas­tor of the Protes­tant Re­formed Church of Switzer­land. “I wish to make you an avow­al,” he said. “You are a priest. I could re­ceive from your hands the Body and Blood of Christ.” On the next day he added, “I could make my con­fes­sion to you” (Le Monde, May 21, 1970).

Ec­u­menists of Ortho­dox back­ground are will­ing to un­der­mine even the au­thor­i­ty of the Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cils in or­der to achieve com­mu­nion with heretics. This hap­pened dur­ing the di­a­logue with the Mono­physites. At the meet­ing with them in Gene­va, a clear Ortho­dox po­si­tion was held ac­tu­al­ly on­ly by one or two of the par­tic­i­pants, while the rest man­i­fest­ed the typ­i­cal ec­u­menis­tic ten­den­cy to ac­com­plish in­ter­com­mu­nion at any cost, even with­out the at­tain­ment of a full dog­mat­ic agree­ment be­tween the Ortho­dox and Mono­physites. Rev. Dr. John Ro­manides, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Church of Greece, was ful­ly jus­ti­fied in stat­ing the fol­low­ing of the Ortho­dox mem­bers at the con­fer­ence: “We have all along been the ob­ject of an ec­u­meni­cal tech­nique which aims at the ac­com­plish­ment of in­ter­com­mu­nion or com­mu­nion or union with­out an agree­ment on Chal­cedon and the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cils (“Min­utes of the Con­fer­ence in Gene­va,” The Greek Ortho­dox The­o­log­i­cal Re­view, Vol. XVI, p. 30). As a re­sult of such tac­tics, one of the res­o­lu­tions of this con­fer­ence is ac­tu­al­ly an agree­ment to in­ves­ti­gate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of draw­ing up a for­mu­la of Con­cord which would not be a dog­mat­i­cal state­ment on the lev­el of a con­fes­sion of faith, but would rather serve as a ba­sis up­on which the Ortho­dox and the Mono­physites could pro­ceed to­ward union in a com­mon Eucharist (ibid., p. 6).

De­spite the cat­e­gor­i­cal state­ments on the part of the Mono­physites that on no ac­count would they ac­cept Chal­cedon and the rest of the Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cils, the Ortho­dox del­e­ga­tion signed a res­o­lu­tion rec­og­niz­ing it as un­nec­es­sary that the Anath­e­mas be lift­ed, or that the Ortho­dox ac­cept Dioscorus and Severus as saints, or that the Mono­physites ac­knowl­edge Pope Leo to be a saint. The restora­tion of com­mu­nion, how­ev­er, would bear with it the im­pli­ca­tion that the Anath­e­mas on both sides would cease to be in ef­fect (ibid., p. 6).

At yet an­oth­er con­fer­ence in Ad­dis Ab­ba­ba, the un-Ortho­dox state­ments of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Ortho­dox Church­es were but­tressed by Metropoli­tan Nikodim of Len­ingrad and Rev. V. Borovoy, re­sult­ing in a res­o­lu­tion that the mu­tu­al Anath­e­mas sim­ply be dropped. “Should there be a for­mal dec­la­ra­tion or cer­e­mo­ny in which the Anath­e­mas are lift­ed? Many of us felt that it is much sim­pler to drop these Anath­e­mas in a qui­et way as some Church­es have be­gun to do” (ibid., p. 211).

Here again we see in prac­tice the Protes­tant con­cept of ec­cle­si­ol­o­gy where­by the ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion of one for dog­mat­i­cal er­ror does not pre­vent heretics from be­long­ing to the Church. Rev. Vi­taly Borovoy clear­ly ex­press­es this at­ti­tude in his pa­per “The Recog­ni­tion of Saints and the Prob­lem of Anath­e­mas” pre­sent­ed at the con­fer­ence at Ad­dis Ab­ba­ba, clear­ly as­sert­ing that both Mono­physites and Ro­man Catholics are full-fledged mem­bers of the Body of Christ. He claims that Ortho­dox, Ro­man Catholics and Mono­physites have “one Holy Writ, one Apos­tolic Tra­di­tion and sa­cred ori­gin, the same sacra­ments, and in essence, a sin­gle piety and a sin­gle way of sal­va­tion” (ibid., p. 246). With such at­ti­tudes, is it any sur­prise that com­pro­mise reigns supreme in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Ortho­dox pro­mot­ers of ec­u­menism and the Ro­man Catholics, Protes­tants and An­ti-Chal­cedo­nians?

Out­do­ing even Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras, Metropoli­tan Nikodim, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Moscow Pa­tri­ar­chate gave com­mu­nion to Ro­man Catholic cler­gy­men in the Cathe­dral of St. Peter on De­cem­ber 14, 1970. He served the Divine Li­tur­gy there, while in vi­o­la­tion of Canons, a choir of the stu­dents of the Pon­tif­i­cal Col­lege sang and Latin cler­gy­men ac­cept­ed com­mu­nion from his hands (Di­ako­nia, No. 1, 1971).

Yet, be­hind these prac­ti­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions of the so-called ec­u­meni­cal move­ment, oth­er broad­er aims are dis­cernible which lead to the ut­ter abo­li­tion of the Ortho­dox Church.

Both the World Coun­cil of Church­es and the di­a­logues be­tween var­i­ous Chris­tian con­fes­sions, and even with oth­er re­li­gions (such as, for in­stance, Is­lam and Ju­daism) are links in a chain which in the man­ner of think­ing of ec­u­menists must grow to in­clude all of mankind. This ten­den­cy is al­ready ev­i­dent at the Assem­bly of the World Coun­cil of Church­es at Upp­sala in 1967.

Ac­cord­ing to ec­u­menists, all this could be ac­com­plished by a spe­cial Coun­cil, which in their eye would be tru­ly “ec­u­meni­cal” since they do not rec­og­nize the his­tor­i­cal Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cils as be­ing tru­ly so. The for­mu­la is giv­en in the Ro­man Catholic ec­u­meni­cal Jour­nal Ireni­con, and is as fol­lows:

1. The ac­com­plish­ment of ges­tures of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion for which the lift­ing of the Anath­e­mas of 1054 be­tween Rome and Con­stantino­ple can serve as an ex­am­ple.

2. Com­mu­nion in the Eucharist; in oth­er words a pos­i­tive so­lu­tion to the prob­lem of in­ter­com­mu­nion.

3. Ac­cep­tance of a clear un­der­stand­ing that we all be­long to a uni­ver­sal (Chris­tian) en­ti­ty which should give place to di­ver­si­ty.

4. That Coun­cil should be a to­ken of the uni­ty of men in Christ (Ireni­con, No. 3, 1971, pp. 322-323).

The same ar­ti­cle states that the Ro­man Catholic Sec­re­tari­at for Union is work­ing to achieve the same re­sult as Car­di­nal Wil­li­brands said at Evian. And the Assem­bly on Faith and Con­sti­tu­tion has cho­sen as its main theme “The Uni­ty of the Church and the Uni­ty of Mankind.” Ac­cord­ing to a new def­i­ni­tion, ev­ery­thing re­lates to ec­u­menism “which is con­nect­ed with the re­new­al and re­union of the Church as a fer­ment of the growth of the King­dom of God in the world of men who are seek­ing their uni­ty” (Ser­vice d’in­for­ma­tion, No. 9, Fe­bru­ary, 1970, pp. 10-11). At the con­fer­ence of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee in Ad­dis Ab­ba­ba, Metropoli­tan Ge­orge Kho­dre made a re­port which ac­tu­al­ly tends to con­nect the Church in some way with all re­li­gions. He would see the in­spi­ra­tion of the Holy Spir­it even in non-Chris­tian re­li­gions so that, ac­cord­ing to him, when we com­mu­ni­cate of the Body of Christ we are unit­ed to all whom our Lord em­braces in His love to­ward mankind (Irenikon, 1971, No. 2, pp. 191-202).

This is where the Ortho­dox Church is be­ing drawn. Out­ward­ly this move­ment is man­i­fest­ed by un­end­ing “di­a­logues”; Ortho­dox rep­re­sen­ta­tives are en­gaged in di­a­logues with Ro­man Catholics and Angli­cans; they in turn are in di­a­logue with each oth­er, with Luther­ans, oth­er Protes­tants, and even with Jews, Moslems and Bud­dhists.

Just re­cent­ly, the Exarch of Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras in North and South Amer­i­ca, Arch­bish­op Iakovos, took part in a di­a­logue with Jews. He not­ed that as far as he knew, at no oth­er time in his­to­ry has such “a the­o­log­i­cal di­a­logue with Jews tak­en place un­der the spon­sor­ship of the Greek Church.” Be­sides mat­ters of a na­tion­al char­ac­ter, “the group al­so agreed to ex­am­ine litur­gy, with Greek Ortho­dox schol­ars un­der­tak­ing to re­view their litur­gi­cal texts in terms of im­prov­ing ref­er­ences to Jews and Ju­daism where they are found to be neg­a­tive or hos­tile” (Reli­gious News Ser­vice, Jan­uary 27, 1972, pp. 24-25). So it is that Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras and oth­er ec­u­menists do not lim­it their plans for unia to Ro­man Catholics and Protes­tants; their plans are more am­bi­tious.

We have al­ready quot­ed the words of Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras that the Lord de­sires that “His Church be one, vis­i­ble to the en­tire world so that the en­tire world would fit with­in Her.” A Greek the­olo­gian and for­mer Dean of the The­o­log­i­cal Fac­ul­ty in Athens writes in much the same vein. In evolv­ing the ec­u­meni­cal idea of the Church, his thought ar­rives at the same far-reach­ing con­clu­sions. He as­serts that the en­e­mies of ec­u­menism are thwart­ing the will of God. Ac­cord­ing to him, God em­braces all men in our plan­et as mem­bers of His one Church yes­ter­day, to­day and to­mor­row as the full­ness of that Church (Bul­letin Ty­pos Bonne Presse, Athens, March-April 1971)

Although it is ob­vi­ous to any­one with an el­e­men­tary grasp of Ortho­dox Church doc­trine that such a con­cep­tion of the Church dif­fers great­ly from that of the Holy Fathers, we find it nec­es­sary to un­der­score the depth of the con­tra­dic­tion.

When and where did the Lord promise that the whole world could be unit­ed in the Church? Such an ex­pec­ta­tion is noth­ing more than a chil­ias­tic hope with no foun­da­tion in the Holy Gospels. All men are called un­to sal­va­tion; but by no means do all of them re­spond. Christ spoke of Chris­tians as those giv­en Him from the world (John 17:6). He did not pray for the whole world but for those men giv­en Him from the World. And the apos­tle St. John teach­es that the Church and the world are in op­po­si­tion to each oth­er, and he ex­horts the Chris­tians, say­ing, “Love not the world, nei­ther the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (I John 1:16). Con­cern­ing the sons of the Church, the Sav­ior said, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:16). In the per­sons of the Apos­tles the Sav­ior warned the Church that in the world She would have tribu­la­tion (John 16:33), ex­plain­ing to His Dis­ci­ples: “If you were from the world, the world would love its own; but be­cause you are not of the world, but I have cho­sen you out of the world, there­fore the world hateth you” (John 15:19). In Holy Scrip­tures, there­fore, we see that a clear dis­tinc­tion is made be­tween the sons of the Church and the rest of mankind. Ad­dress­ing him­self to the faith­ful in Christ and dis­tin­guish­ing them from un­be­liev­ers, St. Peter writes, “But ye are a cho­sen gen­er­a­tion, a roy­al priest­hood, a pe­cu­liar peo­ple” (I Peter 2:9).

We are in no man­ner as­sured in Scrip­ture of the tri­umph of truth on earth be­fore the end of the world. There is no promise that the world will be trans­fig­ured in­to a church unit­ing all of mankind as fer­vent ec­u­menists be­lieve, but rather there is the warn­ing that re­li­gion will be lack­ing in the last days and Chris­tians will suf­fer great sor­row and ha­tred on the part of all na­tions for the sake of our Sav­ior’s Name (Matt. 24:9-12). While all of mankind sinned in the first Adam, in the sec­ond Adam—Christ—on­ly that part of hu­man­i­ty is unit­ed in Him which is “born again” (John 3:3 and 7). And al­though in the ma­te­ri­al world God “maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the un­just” (Matt. 4:45), He does not ac­cept the un­just in­to His King­dom. Rather, He ad­dress­es them with these men­ac­ing words: “Not ev­ery­one who saith un­to me Lord, Lord shall en­ter in­to the King­dom of Heav­en; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in Heav­en” (Matt. 7:21). Doubtless­ly our Sav­ior is ad­dress­ing the heretics when He says: “Many who say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not proph­e­sied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out dev­ils, and in they name done many won­der­ful works? And them I will pro­fess un­to them, I nev­er knew you: de­part from me, ye that work in­iq­ui­ty” (Matt. 7:22-23).

So it is that our Lord tells the heretics, “I nev­er knew you”; yet Pa­tri­arch Athenago­ras tries to con­vince us that “they were not sep­a­rat­ed from the com­mu­nion in the mys­tery of the God-man Je­sus and His Divine-hu­man Church.” It is the be­lief in the re­new­al of the whole of mankind with­in the new and uni­ver­sal church that lends to ec­u­menism the na­ture a of chil­ias­tic heresy, which be­comes more and more ev­i­dent in the ec­u­menis­tic at­tempts to unite ev­ery­one, dis­re­gard­ing truth and er­ror, and in their ten­den­cy to cre­ate not on­ly a new church, but a new world. The prop­a­ga­tors of this heresy do not wish to be­lieve that the earth and all that is on it shall burn, the heav­ens shall pass away, and the el­e­ments shall melt with fer­vent heat (II Peter 3:1-12). They for­get that it is af­ter this that a new Heav­en and a new Earth on which truth will abide will come to be through the cre­ative word of God—not the ef­forts of hu­man or­ga­ni­za­tions. There­fore the ef­forts of Ortho­dox Chris­tians should not be di­rect­ed to the build­ing of or­ga­ni­za­tions, but to­ward be­com­ing in­hab­i­tants of the new Creation af­ter the Fi­nal Judg­ment through liv­ing a pi­ous life in the one true Church. In the mean­time, ac­tiv­i­ties aimed at build­ing the King­dom of God on earth through a fraud­u­lent union of var­i­ous con­fes­sions with­out re­gard for the Truth, which is kept on­ly with­in the Tra­di­tion of the Holy Ortho­dox Church, will on­ly lead us away from the King­dom of God and in­to the king­dom of the An­tichrist.

It must be un­der­stood that the cir­cum­stance which prompt­ed our Sav­ior to won­der if at His Se­cond Com­ing He would find the Faith yet up­on the earth is brought about not on­ly by the di­rect prop­a­ga­tion of athe­ism, but al­so by the spread of ec­u­menism.

The his­to­ry of the Church wit­ness­es that Chris­tian­i­ty was not spread by com­pro­mis­es and di­a­logues be­tween Chris­tians and un­be­liev­ers, but through wit­ness­ing the truth and re­ject­ing ev­ery lie and ev­ery er­ror. It might be not­ed that gen­er­al­ly no re­li­gion has ev­er been spread by those who doubt­ed its full truth. The new, all-en­com­pass­ing “church” which is be­ing erect­ed by the ec­u­menists is of the na­ture of that Church of Laodicea ex­posed in the Book of Reve­la­tion: she is luke­warm, nei­ther hot nor cold to­ward the Truth, and it is to this new “church” that the words ad­dressed by the An­gel to the Laodicean Church of old might now be ap­plied: “So that be­cause thou are luke­warm and nei­ther cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16). There­fore be­cause they have not re­ceived “the love that they might be saved,” in­stead of a re­li­gious re­vival this “church” ex­hibits that of which the Apos­tle warned: “And for this cause God shall send them strong delu­sion, that they should be­lieve a lie: that they all might be damned who be­lieve not the truth, but had plea­sure in un­righ­teous­ness” (II Th­es. 2:10-12).

It is, there­fore, up­on the grounds stat­ed above that the Most Rev­erend Mem­bers of our Coun­cil of Bish­ops unan­i­mous­ly agreed to rec­og­nize ec­u­menism as a dan­ger­ous heresy. Hav­ing ob­served its spread, they asked us to share our ob­ser­va­tion with our Brother Bish­ops through­out the world.

We ask them first of all to pray that the Lord spare His Holy Church the storm which would be caused by this new heresy, open­ing the spir­i­tu­al eyes of all un­to un­der­stand­ing of truth in the face of er­ror.

May our Lord help each of us to pre­serve the Truth in the pu­ri­ty in which it was en­trust­ed to us un­de­filed, and to nur­ture our flocks in its fi­deli­ty and piety.

+ Metropoli­tan PHILARET

At the present time of uni­ver­sal wa­ver­ing, dis­tur­bance of minds and cor­rup­tion, it is es­pe­cial­ly de­mand­ed of us that we should con­fess the true teach­ing of the Church no mat­ter what might be the per­son of those who lis­ten and de­spite the un­be­lief which sur­rounds us. If for the sake of adap­ta­tion to the er­rors of this age we shall be silent about the truth or give a cor­rupt teach­ing in the name of pleas­ing this world, then we would ac­tu­al­ly be giv­ing to those who seek the truth a stone in place of bread. The high­er is the stand­ing of one who acts in this way, the greater the scan­dal that is pro­duced by him, and the more se­ri­ous can be the con­se­quences.

For this rea­son a great sor­row has been evoked in us by the read­ing of the so-called “Thy­ateira Con­fes­sion,” which was re­cent­ly pub­lished in Europe with the spe­cial bless­ing and ap­proval of the Holy Syn­od and the Pa­tri­arch of the Church of Con­stantino­ple.*

We know that the au­thor of this book, His Emi­nence Metropoli­tan Athenago­ras of Thy­ateira, pre­vi­ous­ly has shown him­self to be a de­fend­er of Ortho­dox truth, and there­fore all the less could we have ex­pect­ed from him such a con­fes­sion, which is far re­moved from Ortho­doxy. How­ev­er, if this had been on­ly a per­son­al ex­pres­sion of his, we would not have writ­ten about it. We are moved to do this, rather, be­cause on his work there rests the seal of ap­proval of the whole Church of Con­stantino­ple in the per­son of Pa­tri­arch Demetrius and his Syn­od. In a spe­cial Pa­tri­ar­chal Pro­to­col ad­dressed to Metropoli­tan Athenago­ras it is stat­ed that his work was ex­am­ined by a spe­cial Syn­od­i­cal Com­mit­tee. After ap­proval of it by this Com­mit­tee, the Pa­tri­arch, in ac­cor­dance with the de­cree of the Syn­od, gave his bless­ing for the pub­li­ca­tion of “this ex­cel­lent work,” as he writes. There­fore, the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for this work is trans­ferred from Metropoli­tan Athenago­ras now to the whole hi­er­ar­chy of Con­stantino­ple.

Our pre­vi­ous “Sor­row­ful Epis­tles” have al­ready ex­pressed the grief which takes pos­ses­sion of us when, from the throne of Sts. Pro­clus, John Chrysos­tom, Tara­sius, Photius, and many oth­er Holy Fathers we hear a teach­ing which with­out doubt they would have con­demned and giv­en over to anath­e­ma.

It is painful to write this. How we would have wished to hear from the throne of the Church of Con­stantino­ple, which gave birth to our Rus­sian Church, a mes­sage of the Church’s righ­teous­ness and of con­fes­sion of the truth in the spir­it of her great hi­er­ar­chs! With what joy we would have ac­cept­ed such a mes­sage and trans­mit­ted it for the in­struc­tion of our pi­ous flock! But on the con­trary, a great grief is evoked in us by the ne­ces­si­ty to warn our flock that from this one-time fount of Ortho­dox con­fes­sion there now comes forth a mes­sage of cor­rup­tion that caus­es scan­dal.

If one turns to the “Thy­ateira Con­fes­sion” it­self, alas, there are so many in­ter­nal con­tra­dic­tions and un-Ortho­dox thoughts there that in or­der to enu­mer­ate them we would have to write a whole book. We pre­sume that there is no need to do this. It is suf­fi­cient for us to point out the chief thing, that up­on which is built and from whence pro­ceeds the whole of the un-Ortho­dox thought which is con­tained in this con­fes­sion.

Metropoli­tan Athenago­ras in one place (p. 60) writes, with full jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, that Ortho­dox Chris­tians be­lieve that their Church is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apos­tolic Church and trans­mits the full­ness of Catholic truth. He like­wise ac­knowl­edges that the oth­er con­fes­sions have not pre­served this full­ness. But lat­er he as it were for­gets that if any teach­ing de­parts in any re­spect from the truth, by this very fact it is false. Be­long­ing to a re­li­gious com­mu­nion which con­fess­es such a teach­ing, peo­ple by this are al­ready sep­a­rat­ed from the one true Church. Metropoli­tan Athenago­ras is ready to ac­knowl­edge this with re­gard to such an­cient heretics as the Ari­ans, but when speak­ing about his con­tem­po­raries he does not wish to take their heresy in­to con­sid­er­a­tion. And with re­gard to them he calls us to be guid­ed not by an­cient tra­di­tion and canons, but by the “new un­der­stand­ing which pre­vails to­day among Chris­tians” (p. 12) and by “the signs of our time” (p. 11).

Is this in ac­cor­dance with the teach­ing of the Holy Fathers? Let us re­call that the first Canon of the Seventh Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cil gives us a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent cri­te­ri­on for the di­rec­tion of our church thought and church life. “For those who have re­ceived the priest­ly dig­ni­ty,” it is stat­ed there, “the canons and de­crees which have been set down serve for wit­ness and guid­ance.” And fur­ther: “The Divine canons we ac­cept with plea­sure and hold en­tire­ly and un­wa­ver­ing­ly the de­crees of these canons which have been set forth by the all-praised Apos­tles, the holy trum­pets of the Spir­it, and by the Six Holy Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cils, and by those who have gath­ered in var­i­ous places for the pub­li­ca­tion of such com­mand­ments, and by our Holy Fathers. For all of these, be­ing en­light­ened by one and the same Spir­it, have de­creed what is prof­itable.”

In de­fi­ance of this prin­ci­ple, in the “Thy­ateira Con­fes­sion” em­pha­sis is made the whole time on the “new un­der­stand­ing.” “Chris­tian peo­ple,” it says there, “now vis­it church­es and pray with oth­er Chris­tians of var­i­ous tra­di­tions with whom they were for­bid­den in the past to as­so­ciate, for they were called heretics” (p. 12 ).

But who was it that pre­vi­ous­ly for­bade these prayers? Was it not the Sa­cred Scrip­ture, not the Holy Fathers, not the Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cils? And is the mat­ter re­al­ly one of those who were on­ly called heretics and were not such in ac­tu­al fact? The first Canon of Basil the Great gives a clear def­i­ni­tion of the nam­ing of heretics: “They (that is, the Holy Fathers) have called heretics those who have com­plete­ly bro­ken away and have be­come aliens in faith it­self.” Does this re­al­ly not re­fer to those Western con­fes­sions that have fall­en away from the Ortho­dox Church?

The Holy Apos­tle Paul in­structs us: A man that is a heretic, af­ter the first and sec­ond ad­mo­ni­tion, re­ject (Tit. 3:10), while the “Thy­ateira Con­fes­sion” calls us to a re­li­gious com­ing to­geth­er and com­mu­nion in prayer with them.

The 45th Canon of the Holy Apos­tles com­mands: “Let a bish­op, pres­byter, or dea­con who has on­ly prayed with heretics be sus­pend­ed.” The 64th Canon of the Apos­tles and the 33rd Canon of the Coun­cil of Laodicea speak of the same thing. The 32nd Canon of the lat­ter pro­hibits re­ceiv­ing a bless­ing from heretics. The “Thy­ateira Con­fes­sion,” on the con­trary, calls to prayer to­geth­er with them and goes so far that it even al­lows Ortho­dox Chris­tians both to re­ceive com­mu­nion from them and to give it to them.

Metropoli­tan Athenago­ras him­self gives the in­for­ma­tion that in the Angli­can Con­fes­sion a large part of the bish­ops and be­liev­ers do not ac­knowl­edge ei­ther the grace of the hi­er­ar­chy, nor the sanc­ti­ty of the Ec­u­meni­cal Coun­cils, nor the trans­for­ma­tion of the Gifts at the Li­tur­gy, nor oth­er Mys­ter­ies, nor the ven­er­a­tion of holy relics. The au­thor of the “Con­fes­sion” him­self points to those ar­ti­cles of the “Angli­can Con­fes­sion” in which this is ex­pressed. And yet, dis­dain­ing all this, he al­lows Ortho­dox Chris­tians to re­ceive com­mu­nion from Angli­cans and Catholics and finds it pos­si­ble to give them com­mu­nion in the Ortho­dox Church.

Upon what is such a prac­tice based? On the teach­ing of the Holy Fathers? On the canons? No. The on­ly ba­sis for this is the fact that such a law­less thing has al­ready been done and that there ex­ists a “friend­ship” which has been man­i­fest­ed by the Angli­cans for the Ortho­dox.

How­ev­er, no mat­ter what po­si­tion might be oc­cu­pied by one who al­lows an act for­bid­den by the canons, and no mat­ter what kind of friend­ship might be the cause which has in­spired this—this can­not be a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for a prac­tice con­demned by the canons. What an­swer will be giv­en to the Heav­en­ly Judge by the hi­er­ar­chs who ad­vise their spir­i­tu­al chil­dren to re­ceive, in place of true com­mu­nion, that which of­ten the very ones who give it do not ac­knowl­edge as the Body and Blood of Christ?

Such a law­less thing pro­ceeds from the com­plete­ly hereti­cal, Protes­tant, or—to ex­press one­self in con­tem­po­rary lan­guage—ec­u­meni­cal teach­ing of the “Thy­ateira Con­fes­sion” re­gard­ing the Holy Church. It sees no bound­aries in the Church. “The Holy Spir­it,” we read there, “is ac­tive both with­in the Church and out­side the Church. For this rea­son its lim­its are ev­er ex­tend­ed and its bounds are nowhere. The Church has a door but no walls” (p. 77). But if the Spir­it of God acts alike both with­in the Church and out­side it, why then was it nec­es­sary for the Sav­ior to come to earth and found it?

The care for the preser­va­tion and con­fes­sion of the au­then­tic truth, a care which has been hand­ed down to us by our Lord Je­sus Christ, the Holy Apos­tles and Holy Fathers, turns out to be su­per­flu­ous in this con­cep­tion. Although the “Con­fes­sion” does say on page 60 that the Ortho­dox Church can “right­ly claim at this mo­ment of his­to­ry to be the One Church that Christ the Son of God found­ed up­on earth,” it does not see any ne­ces­si­ty for the in­vi­o­late preser­va­tion of her faith, al­low­ing there­by the co-ex­is­tence of truth and er­ror.

De­spite the words of the Apos­tle, that Christ has pre­sent­ed her to Him­self as a glo­ri­ous Church, not hav­ing spot, or wrin­kle, or any such thing (Eph 5:27), the “Thy­ateira Con­fes­sion” presents the Church as unit­ing in her­self both truth and that which it it­self ac­knowl­edges as apos­ta­sy from it, that is, heresy, al­though the lat­ter ex­pres­sion is not used here. The refu­ta­tion of such a teach­ing was clear­ly ex­pressed in the renowned Epis­tle of the Eastern Pa­tri­archs on the Ortho­dox Faith: “We un­doubt­ing­ly con­fess, as firm truth. that the Catholic Church can­not er­ror go astray, and ut­ter false­hood in place of truth: for the Holy Spir­it, al­ways ac­tive through the Fathers and teach­ers of the Church who faith­ful­ly serve her, pre­serves her from ev­ery er­ror” (Sect. 12).

Sub­mit­ting to the new dog­ma of pleas­ing the times, the au­thor of the “Thy­ateira Con­fes­sion” clear­ly for­gets the in­struc­tion of the Sav­ior that if your broth­er ne­glect to hear the Church, let him be un­to thee as a hea­then and a pub­li­can (Matt. 18:17), and the same in­struc­tion of the Apos­tle: A heretic, af­ter the first and sec­ond ad­mo­ni­tion, re­ject (Tit. 3:10).

There­fore, with great sor­row we must ac­knowl­edge that in the so-called “Thy­ateira Con­fes­sion” there has re­sound­ed from Con­stantino­ple not the voice of Ortho­dox truth, but rather the voice of the ev­er more widespread er­ror of ec­u­menism.

But what will be done now by those whom the Holy Spir­it hath made over­seers, to shep­herd the Church of God, which He hath pur­chased with His own blood (Acts 20:28)? Will this false teach­ing, of­fi­cial­ly pro­claimed in the name of the whole Church of Con­stantino­ple, re­main with­out protests by the Hier­ar­chs of God? Will there be fur­ther, in the ex­pres­sion of St. Gre­go­ry the The­olo­gian, the be­tray­al of truth by si­lence?

Be­ing the youngest of those who pre­side over the Church­es, we had wished to hear the voic­es of our el­ders be­fore speak­ing out our­selves. But up to now this voice has not been heard. If they have not yet be­come ac­quaint­ed with the con­tent of the “Thy­ateira Con­fes­sion,” we en­treat them to read it at­ten­tive­ly and not to leave it with­out con­dem­na­tion.

It is fright­ful that there might be re­ferred to us the words of the Lord to the Church of Laodicea: I know thy work, that thou art nei­ther cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So then be­cause thou art luke­warm, and nei­ther cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth (Apoc. 3:15-16).

We now warn our flock and call out to our fel­low brethren, to their faith in the Church, to their aware­ness of our com­mon re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our flock be­fore the Heav­en­ly Chief Shep­herd. We en­treat them not to dis­dain our an­nounce­ment, lest a man­i­fest mu­ti­la­tion of Ortho­dox teach­ing re­main with­out ac­cu­sa­tion and con­dem­na­tion. Its broad dis­tri­bu­tion has moved us to in­form the whole Church of our grief. We would wish to hope that our cry will be heard.

Metropoli­tan Phi­laret
De­cem­ber 6/19, 1975
Day of St. Ni­cholas, Won­der­work­er of Myra in Ly­cia