Awful News from the Western Coast

News come fast nowadays and can knock you down by surprise. This was the case with the GOC’s Western Diocese bragging on its website about the wonderful news of helping some Non – Orthodox celebrate the Western Christmas, which left me in a shocked state for a short while. In such a context, in which I avoid to greet my own parents (so-called Orthodox on the New Calendar) with “Merry Christmas” on their holiday, the whole Local Bishop’s establishment makes it bold in putting on a festal dinner with carols sung by nuns to mark the event.

I have been following the Western Diocese since the Ciprianites came back to the Church, about a couple of years ago. The Union created a lot of commotion in the aftermath, and, as expected, some people took it to the extreme. In my opinion, the Holy Synod did it exceptionally well, in a genuine Christian spirit not seen for long, by focusing in the Union document only on getting a common agreement on what the Church is, and leaving to God to judge the past, healing thus the current generation, and providing a healthy spiritual environment, that can be found only in the bosom of the Church, for generations to come.

The current running astray, a first of this gravity from what I have seen, may not be a consequence of their past in heresy, when their attitude toward the Ecumenist Church was friendly, often even communing people of that belonging. My feeling is that it is something more profound and of a wider spread.

America is great in many ways, but it is certainly not a healthy ground for an Orthodox living. As a historical outcome, all is heavily imbued with the Protestant essence that affects every member of the society, regardless he is a Protestant or not. The Church, her members to be more exact, makes no exception. Her voice is always that of converts and native Orthodox, but her life is still mostly that of the immigrants. As such, it is quite impossible not to see discrepancies coming from the Protestant culture or Protestant influenced culture, which is hard to die, as it is the breath of the land, hot and melting everything foreign sooner than later.

Monks, nuns, and lay people of the Western Diocese, probably with the local Bishop’s blessing, help the poor and the elderly celebrate the “Western Christmas”, while many were persecuted and even died for the Holy Tradition according to which there is only an “Eastern” Christmas. I would blame that Protestant environment for their not believing the iota that says that there is no Church outside the Orthodox Church, other than in an academic sense. I cannot see any better explanation for also not getting complaints from the wider community about the grotesque of doing so in a open and self – laudatory way against that which is confessed. The lack of knowledge is inexcusable.

Doing good deeds and promoting the Orthodox Faith cannot be done endorsing anyone’s heresies. The Church canons and the Holy Fathers’ examples do not allow room for the faithful participation in the Heterodox festivals. To organize such celebrations is even worse. It might have been “a special pleasure to inaugurate the seminary facility in such a manner”, but I am afraid the beautiful baby is nothing more than a stillborn.

 

Is God Love?

Throughout the Holy Scripture “love” is mentioned many times with regard to God. For three hundred thirteen times is the Greek “agape” or “philia”, and only for two times is the Greek “eros”. Agape/Philia is that kind of love that is rational, which, had we had a better word, we would have used it to express our love towards parents, children, and friends, but eros is full of passion, unstable, and it can quickly become irrational and mad. The modern languages seem not to have that kind of Greek finesse, and for that reason, although we know that love can come in many forms, no one is passionless. Even the Greek “agape” is not the perfect love; otherwise there had been no need for Aristotle to develop philosophically the concept of “philia”.

“God is love” is one of the most abused catchphrases. People like the idea of a God as an infinite ocean of love, because such a God is understanding, able to change and even to contradict Himself, and most importantly, all – forgiving. A God who is love would discipline the man, but would eventually overlook his folly and sins, and would forever nurture His creation. That is the magic of the human love, which is never void of passion, when attributed to God. Moreover, if God is love, then love is God, and it logically follows that what man has to do to please that god and get close to him is to love. “God is love“ and “do not judge“ are the wry synthesis of the Bible, well known, and often invoked by us, sinners, to fool ourselves into being at peace.

According to the Holy Fathers of the Church, God is many things but love:

“Uncreated, without beginning, immortal, infinite, eternal, immaterial, good, creative, just, enlightening, immutable, passionless, uncircumscribed, immeasurable, unlimited, undefined, unseen, unthinkable, wanting in nothing, being His own rule and authority, allruling, life-giving, omnipotent, of infinite power, containing and maintaining the universe and making provision for all: all these and such like attributes the Deity possesses by nature, not having received them from elsewhere, but Himself imparting all good to His own creations according to the capacity of each.” (St John of Damascus)

Love, as either agape/philia, or eros involves passion, and God, who is Perfect, has no passions. But He is Goodness, the only one Who is good (Mark 10:18), and in showing it, He is capable of loving us without emotions, always unchanged and rational.

Passion is not necessarily bad. We are called to be hot about the Faith (Revelation 3:16). We are also called to love God, and our neighbour (Mark 12:30-31), which, it seems, makes love the next best thing to being good, provided it is rational, and the passion is kept in check.

God is “agape” (1 John 4:8), and even that is only as a derivation of God’s goodness. God is love, but while always rational, righteous, and totally void of passion.

The Neo – Theologians of the Russian Diaspora fall in between Foolishness and Protestantism

(N.B. – Not all Russian post – revolutionary theologians are neo – theologians. There are also those of the old (Orthodox) school, of which Fr. Michael Pomazansky is of eternal memory.)

The new theologians of the Russian emigration are widely seen as a sign of the rebirth of the Orthodox theology after centuries of “Western captivity” of the thought and communist oppression in the Orthodox old countries. According to those very theologians, out of whom Georges Florovsky emerges predominantly, the Western captivity began with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. As a consequence, generations of Orthodox theologians had to be educated in Western Universities, and thus they became corrupted by the Latin and Protestant thought, which is manifest in their later works and in the Synodal decrees, up to well in the XX-th Century, when alleged independent theological schools were founded, ironically, in Catholic and Protestant countries (in France and in the USA).

These new theologians uphold a return to the purity of the Church Fathers’ teachings by dismissing later Tradition, especially that of the XVII-th Century, and they are very bold at making the point:

“The Seventeenth century was a critical age in the history of Eastern theology. The teaching of theology had deviated at that time from the traditional patristic pattern and had undergone influence from the West. Theological habits and schemes were borrowed from the West, rather eclectically, both from the late Roman Scholasticism of Post-Tridentine times and from the various theologies of the Reformation. These borrowings affected heavily the theology of the alleged “Symbolic books” of the Eastern Church, which cannot be regarded as an authentic voice of the Christian East.” (Georges Florovsky, The Ethos of the Orthodox Church, p. 191)

“In the 17th century, as a counterpart to the various “confessions” of the Reformation, there appeared several “Orthodox confessions,” endorsed by local councils but, in fact, associated with individual authors (e.g., Metrophanes Critopoulos, 1625; Peter Mogila, 1638; Dosítheos of Jerusalem, 1672). None of these confessions would be recognized today as having anything but historical importance. When expressing the beliefs of his church, the Orthodox theologian, rather than seeking literal conformity with any of these particular confessions, will rather look for consistency with Scripture and tradition, as it has been expressed in the ancient councils, the early Fathers, and the uninterrupted life of the liturgy. He will not shy away from new formulations if consistency and continuity of tradition are preserved.” (John Meyendorff, Eastern Orthodoxy, Doctrine, Councils and Confessions)

At a first look, regardless if they are right or not about the Western Captivity, that seems to be a welcome and possible needed course of action to preserve the Orthodoxy. However, if we remember that they were not at all shy towards the Protestant Ecumenism, it makes us question their intentions and the honesty of their advocacy. It may very well be that the return to the Holy Fathers’ writings is a deceiving move to get under the unquestionable cover of those pillars of the Orthodoxy in order to “safely” dispose of the bothering Tradition from after 1453, as speculatively alleged to be contaminated by the Western thought. In truth, the latter is many times the direct Orthodox answer to the modern Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, that can’t be found at the Holy Fathers, who were not confronted with the more recent heresies. The Church literature and the Synodal decisions of the XVII-th Century are the most problematic, as they became more restrictive with the advance of the novelties from the West. A good example would be to see how the baptism of the heretics was considered by the Orthodox, confronted with both the Unia and the Reform in the XVII-th Century, and, then, by the Roman Catholics confronting the Reform in the XVI-th Century:

“But this Mystery being once received, is not to be again repeated; provided the Person who administered the Baptism believed orthodoxly in Three Persons In One God, and accurately, and without any alteration, pronounced the afore – mentioned Words; namely, In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen. As the Holy Catholic and Orthodox Church directs.” (Met. Peter Mogila, Orthodox Confession, Part I, Question 76)

“If any one saith, that the baptism which is even given by heretics in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, with the intention of doing what the Church doth, is not true baptism; let him be anathema.” (Council of Trent, On Baptism, Canon IV)

It should be clear now that the Orthodox, far from being influenced by the West, became uncompromisingly defensive against the Western heresies. Believing orthodoxly in the Three Persons means that the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father, and that the two natures of our Lord Jesus Christ are united, which excludes everything Roman Catholic, Protestant, and the Monophysitism of the East, dearly called “Oriental Orthodoxy” in the Ecumenist circles. The same “Orthodox Confession” does away with the Roman Catholic teaching of the Purgatory by calling it “fable”; and it clears its own house of the “aerial toll – houses” theologumenon.

A return to only the patristic writings, as envisioned by the new “Orthodox” theologians, is not needed and impossible. The “Western Captivity” is an invented concept used to neutralize the Church teachings of the late few centuries, that confront the modern Protestant Ecumenism. The Church may have formulated answers in Latin terms or Protestant patterns not because many of Her theologians were educated in Western Universities, but because She was confronted with new ideologies to which She had to replay by using the same language. It was not for the first time in history; following the same logic, we would be obliged to invent Jewish and Pagan captivities for the Church of the first centuries. Most Holy Fathers were highly educated in the Pagan schools of thought, and they used the acquired knowledge and language to write Christian theology. Should we do away with them and just restrict our consideration to the Holy Apostles, I’m afraid we could not avoid also suspecting them of close ties to the Jewish thought:

“I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers.” (Acts 3:3)

It may be argued that the Church was in error for a few hundred years, as it was the case with the Russian Church that spun off the Old Believers. Such comparison would not be proper, as the “Western Captivity” claims the whole Church, not just a Local Church, and, from an Orthodox standpoint, the Church of Christ can’t be in error and drifting for centuries. Those who corrected the Russian Church were able to show the Holy Tradition as it had been kept uninterrupted by all the other Local Churches. The new theologians can only try to make us believe that the Church of old, although fiercely Orthodox, was accommodating the Protestant Ecumenism. Their challenge is not from the Holy Fathers, for whom the Church was one, with no other particular specification, but from later Fathers, who fought the modern heresies. Those later Fathers are the more dangerous enemy of Ecumenism, as they reformulated the Holy Fathers’ teachings in such a way as to clearly and exactly answer the errors coming from the West.

Those brought up Orthodox and in an Orthodox environment have a natural sense of what is right and wrong in Orthodoxy, a sense deeply rooted in Tradition. A few years ago, a heresy was brought in the Church, and I remember what Met. Chrysostom of Attica and Boeotia’s answer was when asked in a meeting what he thought about that novelty: “My mother, who is not a theologian, has never told me about it.” Not having that sense is not an handicap; an educated understanding of the Orthodoxy is always a very good substitution. Either way or the other, as true Orthodox we know that nobody can add to or take from the Holy Tradition, which, we firmly believe, is the very work of God the Holy Spirit. This is why the return to the Holy Fathers’ writings by denying the later Holy Tradition is impossible from within Orthodoxy. It is, however, perfectly doable from outside, and in good Protestant tradition.

“Wherefore thou oughtest to believe, that whatsoever the holy Fathers have decreed, in general and particular Councils, wheresoever they were held, is taught by the Holy Ghost.” (Orthodox Confession, Part I, Question 72)

The new theology is a fraud that can’t escape to the honest individual with a clear understanding of what Orthodoxy is. Such a person would know that no part of the Holy Tradition can be overlooked without Scriptural reason and without a synodal decision to cancel and condemn the errors of the past. Yet as transparent as it is, it may be the best that the theologians of St. Serge, St Vladimir, or any European and American Universities, where they might have worked undercover as Orthodox, could produce to steer the Orthodox Church to more Protestant Ecumenism. If that is the case, then I am wrong, and the neo – theologians of the Russian Diaspora and all those like them do not fall in between foolishness and Protestantism, but only on the latter. Their exact reason is not important, but the Orthodox who conveniently do not know that God is reason, and give credit to the new theology, deserve to make the subject of another, but silent, post.

“The Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Eastern Church” By Metropolitan Peter Mogila

It is exactly what it reads like: an expression of the Orthodox Faith, short and concise, in other words, a Catechism praised by many hierarchs and synods. It was issued in 1640, most likely as an answer to the Unia and the Reform, which the Church was confronted with at that time. Two years later, it was reviewed by the Holy Synod of Jassy (German spelling, or Iasi, the capital city of the historical Moldavia province of Romania), which found it proper to re – organize it in a series of questions and answers, and changed it slightly. It was then forwarded to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which, in 1643, deemed it sound and made it an Orthodox Standard in the following words:

“We find the said Book to be set in the Footsteps of the Church of Christ and to be agreeable to the holy Canons, from which it differeth not in any Part… We do therefore with an unanimous and Synodical Sentence; decree and ordain, that every pious and orthodox Christian, who is a member of the Eastern and Apostolical Church, do attentively, and sedulously, read and receive this Book.”

Later, in 1662, Nectarius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, wrote in his Preface to the Catechism:

“If thou desirest, dear Reader, to be instructed in the right Faith and to be enlightened with the Brightness of the immaterial Light; now, whilst thou livest in this thy Material Body which is to live above all visible Beings, and to ascend on the Wings of the Mind, to God; it behoveth thee to read, with the closest Attention, this little Book, which containeth a very compendious, yet plain and clear, Comprehension of true Doctrine…

Peter Mogila, who lately departed piously, and holily, unto God, being chosen and ordained, an orthodox Metropolitan… As became a good Shepherd and zealous Defender of the Faith, he entered immediately on a Resolution, the most pious and pleasing to God, of restoring and conducting the Russian Church into that purity of the holy Doctrine, in which it had flourished from its first Beginning.”

And there is more endorsement from many years after:

“If it be asked how much weight is to be attached to the Orthodox Confession, we answer, that besides all that we have related above of the care taken originally in its composition and revision, and of its approval both by the Synod of Jassy, and by the four Patriarchs, it received afterwards the testimonies of Nectarius, Patriarch of [Jerusalem], whose Preface is prefixed to the edition of Panagiotti, published in 1662; and of Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, with his Synod held at Bethlehem in 1672; also at the same time of Dionysius, Patriarch of Constantinople; again, in 1691, that of a Synod held at Constantinople; and lastly, in 1696, that of Adrian, Patriarch of Moscow.

It is acknowledged by the Spiritual Regulation subscribed by Bishops and Clergy of Russia in the year 1720; and all Russian Theologians since have rested very much on this book.” (R. W. Blackmore, The Doctrine of the Russian Church, Aberdeen 1845, p. XXV)

Peter Mogila’s name is circulated in different spellings. Mogila is Russian, but he was a beloved and Holy Father of the Ukrainian people, so his name should be better spelled Mohyla. By birth he was a Moldavian (Romanian) prince, and for that reason his name is also spelled Movila. His father ruled for short periods of time in both Walachia (another historical Romanian Province) and Moldavia, but, due to political instability, Peter and his mother had to leave the Romanian Lands for Poland, where his sister was married to a Polish prince. Peter was brought up like the other noblemen, yet he kept his Faith, became part of the clergy, and was later consecrated Metropolitan of Kiev. As such and being favoured by the Polish King, who was his nephew, he not only promoted the Ukrainian Church, but also created a network of schools for the Ukrainians to get them closer to the Western culture. He is highly regarded as a Father of the Ukrainian nation. He is also controversial today from a Slavic Orthodox standpoint for his openness to the West. But his Catechism, as corrected by the renown Greek theologian Meletius Syriga at the Jassy Synod, has remained formally unchallenged as the Orthodox Standard to today.

You can download this Catechism from the Internet for free. Unfortunately, it is not to the liking of many, as it contradicts some false teachings that make the modern trend. However, it is still available in print, although as a scanned version of the 1898 edition that was preserved by the Cornell University Library, but of very good quality. I bought a copy from Amazon for about 15 dollars. The language is old, but beautiful, and although it can be a little difficult sometimes, yet if it is perfectly understandable to me, then it should be so even more to the native English speaker. I highly recommend this Catechism to anyone who is interested in getting the exact teaching of the Church, as stated and confirmed by Local and Pan – Orthodox Synods. It may be of great help to hold to the truth nowadays, when many seem to forget that God is reason and favour a more emotional and visionary Orthodoxism with a lax approach to doctrine.

Please also read my other post, “On The Aerial Toll – Houses”, that makes reference to Met. Mogila’s Catechism.

On The Aerial Toll Houses

(Please read here what the Aerial Toll – Houses is about)

God is reason, and we are made in this image. Nobody calls us to a blind Faith.

The aerial toll houses is another contended issue that crept in, developed into tradition, and it’s now being justified and about to become “holy tradition”. The rationale is compounded and somehow difficult to be seen because of clouds of incense smoke. To the understandable reluctance to opposing what could be a genuine input from the faithful and the delays in taking corrective actions, adds up the nationalism of each ethnical Church, which feels the urge to contribute to the common wealth by adorning the Orthodox Church with particular customs and more local saints, sometimes, unfortunately, in a “holier than thou” spirit.

No party disputes that the devil takes his last chance to get hold of the soul when leaving the dying body; it is the detailed inquiry and the theatrical passage through the aerial toll houses that separates the opinions, where the soul is said to be tried for particular sins in courts resembling the earthly ones, but stuffed with accusing devils and angels as defenders. It is the most unchristian theologumenon we chose to let flourish along, because it kills the Christian Hope. To anyone reading Blessed Theodora’s confessions, it will become perfectly clear that salvation is just for a very few, and hence the consequence is obvious: why bother? It was born with the Greeks, but it got wings with the Slavs, and it came back to all of us, sinners, to tell that there is practically no mercy and forgiveness if stained more than that nun Theodora. There are many other theological issues, but for present purposes, I think it is enough to remember the thief from the cross, who got the promise of Heaven for the same day by only confessing our Lord Jesus Christ as Messiah.

Most of the “patristic evidence” (please read at the provided orthodoxwiki link) is speculative at best. If, however, there is something backing up the Toll Houses, it is rather didactic, and it doesn’t necessarily mean it is the Church teaching. The “liturgical evidence” is also debatable. For instance, the prayers and canons of the Greeks and the Romanians may differ to the Russian versions. “The St. Andrew’s Canon for the Departing of the Soul” is a late change, and only the irmoses are from “The Great Canon”, everything else is more or less from unknown sources. “The Canon for the Hard Departure of the Soul” from “The Romanian Great Book of Needs” of 1689 (which is from a Slavic source, and it does not contain any reference to the Toll Houses) is different to the editions of 1713, 1742, and 1849, and all of them to that of 1813, when the so called “St. Andrew’s Canon for the Departing of the Soul” was first introduced. “The Great Canon” itself does not mention the Toll Houses even once. Also, whatever evidence is in “The Canon of Supplication at the Parting of the Soul” in “The Great Book of Needs”, is to be found only in the Slavic version.

This is a newly re-found “tradition”, and some will already go as far as making all kind of illogical statements to justify it. For instance, according to an official Romanian catechism of 1993, God makes use of devils at the Particular Judgement to show that His judgement is right, which means that after a whole life of striving to build trust in a reasonable concept of God, based on natural observation, indirect revelation, and other people’s writings and experiences, yet, for some reasons, once your spiritual eyes are opened and you have the ultimate proof that your reasoning was good, which is the very living of the after – life, you doubt God’s impartiality and think that the presence of the Father of Lie as prosecutor at your trials is the best assurance that He is a fair judge!

The Orthodoxy is not a faith based on sola scriptura. We do have the Holy Tradition, which is the work of the Holy Spirit, and which enriches the knowledge without ever contradicting the Holy Scripture. But what happens when the tradition speaks other than the Word of God? Then it must be discarded, and the right teaching must be stated, as it has always been done by decision of ecumenical and local synods. I believe that it is exactly what happened with the Aerial Toll Houses four hundred years ago.

In 1642, the Synod of Jassy (Iasi, in present Romania) endorsed Metropolitan Peter Mogila’s “Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Eastern Church”, which was re-confirmed as the Orthodox Standard by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1643, the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672, the Synod of Constantinople in 1691, and by Patriarch Adrian of Moscow in 1696.

However, according to John Meyendorff, an author of great renown and once dean of the St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary in the USA, Met. Mogila’s catechism, and not the only one, can be dismissed as it is not consistent with Scripture and tradition:

“None of these confessions [of the XVII-th Century] would be recognized today as having anything but historical importance. Orthodox theologians, rather than seeking literal conformity with any particular confession, will look for consistency with Scripture and tradition, as it has been expressed in the ancient councils, in the works of the Church Fathers (the early theological authorities of the church), and in the uninterrupted life of the liturgy. Most theologians will not shy away from new formulations if consistency and continuity of tradition are preserved.” (Eastern Orthodoxy, Doctrine, Councils and Confessions)

The irony has it that Met. Mogila’s catechism that was the Orthodox Standard for so many years is in perfect accord with the Bible, and not only with regard to what happens to the soul after death. We would be blessed if the Orthodox theologians of today were as accurate as Met. Mogila at following the Holy Scripture and the Holy Tradition. They would know that promoting the Toll Houses theologumenon is to deny the truth of Jesus Christ, Who is quoted in the catechism’s answer to Question 59, as in Matt. 12:36, “every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment”, and as in 1 Cor. 4:5, “judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God”. So, if there is a detailed trial after death at the Particular Judgement, as the promoters of the Toll Houses claim, then, could it be possible not to ask what is the rationale for the reiteration in the Last Day?

And there is much more to help dismantle the unscriptural construct (if there is anything left). Even what happens in the Last Day has no resemblance to human thought and activity, but to what God is:

“The Judgement of that Day will not be by inquiring after every minute Circumstance, for all things are known and manifest unto God; and as every one, at the Time of his Death, is fully conscious to himself of all his Faults, so does every one, after Death, very well know what is to be the Rewards of his Deserts; For as his Deeds are manifest, so is the Will of God concerning them also manifest… When, therefore, we say that God does not require an exact Account of our Lives, is to be understood that we mean, not according to the Forms and Weakness of human Tribunals.” (Part I, Answer to Question 61)

The Particular Judgement has only the role to assign a place to the soul waiting for the Last Day, and in the soul’s understanding of the obvious as explained above:

“Neither the Just nor the Wicked receive the full Recompense of their Deeds before the final Judgement; nor are they in one State, nor limited to one Place. Now, from hence it is clear enough that this could not be, before the general Judgement, without some kind of (as it were) particular Judgement: And such a particular Judgement as this there is only.” (Part I, Answer to Question 61)

Of later times, father Michael Pomazansky of ROCOR, a true Orthodox Theologian, who approaches the Faith with much modesty and fear not to distort the Holy Spirit’s work by his thought, pays tribute in his “Orthodox Dogmatic Theology” to the new trend, but as to nothing else than an allegory:

“With regard to the images in the account of the toll – houses, Metropolitan Macarius in his ‘Orthodox Dogmatic Theology’ remarks: “One must firmly remember the instruction which the angel made to St. Macarius of Alexandria when he had just begun telling him of the toll – houses: ‘Accept earthly things here as the weakest kind of depiction of heavenly things.’ One must picture the toll – houses as far as possible in a spiritual sense, which is hidden under the more or less sensuous and anthropomorphic features.” (p. 334)

As true Orthodox, we hold the Church Tradition as holy, the very work of God the Holy Spirit. What become part of the Holy Tradition are the Holy Synods decrees and their acceptance in the Church conscience.

There has been no critique of Met. Mogila’s Orthodox teaching for almost four hundred years, and needless to say, no synodal decisions to dismiss it as wrong or to annul the previous decisions of those local and Pan – Orthodox Synods that found it sound. Therefore, for as long as they are not proved wrong, that teaching is the teaching of the Church!

On The Holy Trinity Icon

Icons are to be venerated for the holy themes they describe. They are always depictions from the visible world. Even the angels of icons are only what they wanted the human eye to see, or true manifestation of their energising on the Earth. What exactly an angel or a spiritual being is, no living man can describe.

The veneration of the holy icons can be easily abused by either misinformation or excess of zeal. The latter could be also a consequence of the former, when the iconography uses physical types of things of the spiritual world based on the attributes they make or choose to make known about them to man in the material world. This is the case with God the Father, Who is indeed a creator, a guardian, a teacher, and a provider, Who can be addressed as a father, but Who is not to be imagined as such, and for that reason not to be graphically represented as an old man with a grey beard, or like anything else of the same archetype. God is infinite spirit, through all things, and above all things, the only one who is, in three subsistences, each containing the other, each self-conscious, but all with one will and one operation. Even if we could somehow render God to conform to the above definition, we still wouldn’t have the whole image of God, Who is beyond human understanding. A cropped image is not the image, and confined as it is, but taken as a whole, or left to imagination, it becomes the image of an idol, a fruit of the imagination, if it is venerated.

An angel is a created spirit, and although with no form, it has a location in space from where it can stir the ether. Jesus Christ, the incarnated Logos, interacted even with men of the Old Testament in a very material way (see Abraham and Jacob), as a human, for God is the creator and master of time, to Whom there is neither past, nor future. The Holy Spirit was seen descending as a dove and as tongues of fire. All these holy encounters and phenomena are perfectly fit to be in icons, as they could be perceived by the human senses. Yet nobody has ever seen God the Father, the Logos, the Holy Spirit, Them together, or the Godhead in its awesome one movement. More than that, the Holy Scripture states that no man can see God and live. Then why are there Holy Trinity icons?

Trouble comes when errors are not corrected, like with painting icons on things imagined or unimaginable. In time, some themes and procedures become tradition and, unfortunately, even “Holy Tradition”, when synods mechanically endorse what became the culture of the pious through neglect or the vicissitudes of history.

There are two main Holy Trinity icons: 1. Two old men (one sometimes with a triangle as a halo) and a dove, and 2. The Rublev icon. Mr. Vladimir Moss, a known author not only in the True Orthodox world, tried to justify the first one in the Orthodox paraphernalia (read here his article), yet, as expected, he couldn’t do anything more than making the icon somehow acceptable by admitting that it’s not a true Holy Trinity icon, but the Holy Trinity in either a symbolic way, or in a symbolic way with manifestations of the spiritual beings energizing naturally on Earth, or in a form allowed by God, as I also showed above.

The icon that could be really troublesome is the Rublev one, which is a heightening in meaning of “The Hospitality of Abraham” or “The Meeting at The Oak of Mamre” icon by not only suggesting, but even by stating the presence of the Holy Trinity in the form of three angels with Abraham at the Oak of Mamre.

What happened at the Oak of Mamre is extensively treated by the Holy Fathers, and it is very likely that even if some Holy Trinity icons had been venerated in the popular culture, it wasn’t until 1551 that the scene, in Andrei Rublev’s touch, became the canonical way of painting the Holy Trinity. The “Book of Hundred Chapters”, containing rules for iconography, and endorsed by the Stoglav Synod, especially esteemed by the Old Believers, came at time when the Russian Church was confronted with many deviations from the canon.

If the Stoglav Synod built its decision on tradition, it was undoubtedly human tradition, as The Holy Tradition doesn’t allow depictions of God the Father, and important Church Fathers make very clear that it was the Lord Jesus Christ and two accompanying angels who sat at the table with Abraham. Here are a few quotations from their writings:

“The Scripture speaks of angels, that in Abraham’s tent, both angels and their Master showed themselves. And the angels, like servants, were sent to destroy those cities, but He stayed, to tell the righteous one, like a friend to a friend, what he was to do.” (St. John Chrysostom, Homily XLII on Genesis)

“Lest you fall into the error of supposing that this acknowledgment of the One was a payment of honor to all the three whom Abraham saw in company, mark the words of Lot when he saw the two who had departed; And when Lot saw them, he rose up to meet them, and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; and he said, Behold, my lords, turn in to your servant’s house. Here the plural lords shews that this was nothing more than a vision of angels; in the other case the faithful patriarch pays the honour due to One only.” (St. Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate, Book IV-28)

“It will suffice for me to point out that He Who was the Angel of God, when He spoke with Hagar, was God and Lord when He spoke of the same matter with Abraham; that the Man Who spoke with Abraham was also God and Lord, while the two angels, who were seen with the Lord and whom He sent to Lot, are described by the prophet as angels, and nothing more.” (St. Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate, Book IV-31)

“Moses, then, the blessed and faithful servant of God, declares that He who appeared to Abraham under the oak in Mamre is God, sent with the two angels in His company to judge Sodom by Another who remains ever in the supercelestial places, invisible to all men, holding personal intercourse with none, whom we believe to be Maker and Father of all things.” (St. Justin the Martyr, Dialog with Trypho, Chapter LVI)

The idea of a Holy Trinity theophany at the Oak of Mamre is contradicted even in the Service for the Sunday of the Forefathers, where, in Ode no. 6, it reads that Abraham got the Holy Trinity mystery in a type or, as in a Romanian version of 1873, with imagination. Yet, instead of getting fixed, the issue got exacerbated from 1551 to 1991, when we are told that there is more than one canonical way of painting the Holy Trinity:

“There exist four icons of the Holy Trinity. They are indicated in the rite of the blessing of these icons in our Book of Needs (Trebnik). These are: the Old Testament appearance to Abraham (in the form of three Angles), the Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, Theophany and Transfiguration. All other depictions must be discarded as distorting the teaching of the Church.” (Orthodox America [ROCOR], Liturgical Renewal, No. 4 Nov. – Dec. 1991)

As we can see, those four icons are icons of the Holy Trinity, but they should be thought of as icons of symbols and/or manifestations of the Holy Trinity if we are to accept Mr. Moss’ well intended explanation. And there is no other way if we want to stay away from heresy, but that also brings us to the brink of a very slippery slope. In the way the “Ancient of Days” was brought from the Holy Prophet Daniel’s vision to make up together with the portrait of Jesus Christ and the dove a Holy Trinity icon, nobody can give assurance that in the same way or by fragmentation of the said icon, sometime up to year 2455, there will not be people venerating icons of a dove or portraits of an old man with or without a triangular halo, suggestively marked “The Holy Spirit of God The Father and of Jesus Christ” and “God The Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth”, obviously, very canonically as symbols of what they are. Those who have seen in churches God the Father overseeing from above the iconostasis or the radiant dove alone on walls know that I am far from fabulating.

Of course, the Holy Spirit has been taking care of what He made, and it is not a life or death (if there are no unintended consequences) issue, but that is not an excuse to resume contemplation. Mr. Vladimir Moss showed that he cares, and I’m sure there are many others who feel in the same way. They will be proved wrong or right in the Holy Spirit to the glory of Him Who is reason, goodness and justice, but let us pray it happens sooner than later, so that all who question are re-assured in truth and peace.

“The Law of God” By Fr. Slobodskoy

(Read about this book on Orthodoxwiki)

The book in question has been used in Christian education for years. It was published by ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia) for the first time in 1966, and for that reason it got a sacrosanct statute. It has never been really reviewed, and generations after generations of educators have mechanically endorsed and used it in the detriment of many children. Its content on Genesis is unorthodox, and if there is anything of value left, it is too much tainted by what the foundation of the book teaches of God. I have no intention to do what others more learned than me and with authority should have done a long time ago, but I will point out some of the obvious.

The main problem I see with Fr. Slobodskoy’s take on the Bible’s first chapters is his attempt to read Evolution and science (that kind of “science” that has nothing to do with the empirical science, and which is just wild speculation regardless what it pretends to be) into God’s account on the beginnings.

“God could have created the world in a single instant, but since He wished from the very beginning that this world should live and develop step by step, He created it not in an instant, but over several periods of time, which in the Bible are called ‘days’.

These ‘days’ of creation were not the usual days that we know, consisting of twenty-four hours. Our days depend on the sun. However, during the first three ‘days’ of creation there was no sun yet in existence, which means that the days described in Genesis could not have been the kind of days as we understand them. The Bible was written by the Prophet Moses in the ancient Hebrew language, and in this language both ‘day’ and a period of time are called by the same word Yom. It is impossible for us to know exactly what kind of days these were…” (The Sacred History of the OT, 2. The Creation of the Earth, the Visible World)

Many Christian authors have tried to update the faith to the modern cosmogonies that are also anti – Christian, as they are without exception manifest atheist. Despite that evidence, they attempted to make God fit some satanic elucubration, and they did so because they failed to differentiate between true science (the empirical science, that based on experiment) and bogus science, which if honest, is nothing else than philosophy, a product of just the human mind. The Christian understanding of the World is one hundred percent compatible with whatever the empirical science has been finding, but there is no need to correlate the Christian teaching with the satanic work, not even when wrapped and delivered as science, once you stand your ground and recognize it for what it is.

Unfortunately, much ado is done by also some other Orthodox authors, and all of them seem to be strengthened in their strange desire to be seen worldly by the verse in Psalm 89, “for a thousand years in Thy sight are but yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night”, or by St. Peter’s comment in 2 Peter 3:8, “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day”, which are thought as a kind of scriptural green light to integrate Evolution in God’s revealed dispensation for the World, although there’s nothing more in both contexts than expression of eternity and, as consequence, the irrelevance of time for God. There are serious logical arguments to refute such wishful thinking, but it is outside my scope to do a complete analysis, so I will only make appeal to the first chapter, which, they say, was written by God Himself. Every work day (N.B. – the first three days, too!) is ended in the same manner: “and the evening and the morning were a day”, and for the human mind the meaning is but one: a 24 hour day. The repetition is no poetry, but insistence, which shouldn’t be wondered, for God foreknew and richly provided for the epigones of the latter days. My post is beyond any debate on the merits of the Evolution or any other “truth” of the New Religion.

Moving further, if God built the World through evolution, the Flood can’t be but a local deluge, and Fr. Slobodskoy is perfectly logical in his attempt to establish evolution in the Bible, but he’s also totally careless about the flagrant contradictions he thus introduces with the reading of the biblical text:

“The flood may not have covered the entire earth… Consequently, the flood can be imagined as covering only that part of the earth populated by sinful people, but how great an area this was at the time of the flood is entirely unknown to us.” (The Sacred History of the OT, 9. The Flood – Discussion of the Flood)

Then man, according to the same Fr. Slobodskoy, is a three – nature being, body, soul, and spirit, reminding of Gnostic or Kabala writings, but undoubtedly a heresy, even specifically condemned if canon 11 of the first eighth ecumenical council has remained valid:

“Therefore, although the soul of man is in many ways similar to that of animals, still, in its higher part, it incomparably surpasses the souls of animals, thanks to its being joined with the spirit which is from God. The soul of man is the link between the body and spirit, being, as it were, a bridge from the body to the spirit.” (The Sacred History of the OT, 4. The Life of the First People in Paradise, 2. Soul)

And lastly, on taking on icons, although there’s no scriptural basis to support Holy Trinity theophany at the Oak of Mamre, Fr. Slobodskoy still insists that the Rublev icon is the Holy Trinity icon. However, to be fair to him, his assertion and more is endorsed by the Russian Church, but I will talk about this subject in another article. Until then, I’ll just point out that even the Church in her service clearly states what Abraham met was the Holy Trinity in a type (December Menaion, Sunday of the Holy Forefathers), and if type, then it is neither the Holy Trinity, nor the Holy Trinity in the form of angels:

“We depict the Most – holy Trinity in the form of three angels sitting at a table. This is because the Lord once appeared to Abraham in the form of three angels. In order to represent more clearly the spirituality of the angels that appeared to Abraham, we represent them with wings.” (Basic Concepts, 13. Icons – How God is portrayed in the Holy Icons)

We live in a world where man is conditioned starting from a very early age to believe in the new universal religion, which is atheism, and to never seriously question it, as it is based on science and proved by science. Yet the naked truth about it is that everything dealing with the philosophical categories is still philosophy, and in most part of poor quality, as it breaks clear with the logical thought and the natural observation. To make things worse, Fr. Slobodskoy’s book came from old ROCOR, which is rightly revered as a pillar of the true Orthodoxy. So it is no wonder that the book has been very welcomed by many Orthodox who see their worldly concerns well addressed.

I have tried several times to raise the flag about this book with monastics and clergy, but I could never get past the fact that it’s what they used for many years and what the holy fathers of a certain monastery recommend. Maybe I should have insisted, but I was afraid because I know that there are some of them who really believe in good faith that it is possible to marry the Orthodox teaching to the worldly (and satanic) view, and I chose to not know the depth of the affair.

The book is an accident that sooner or later will be corrected, but it would be better if it happened sooner, as it is used by parents and in church schools, conveying wrong teachings and messages that cripple the younger minds to the devil’s laughing and satisfaction. It would be good even to just silently retire it from the private libraries and church bookstores, to never print it again, to let it go and forget, so God can heal in His Great Mercy.