NEW YORK: Communication of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church
Outside of Russia to the Clerics and Faithful — 13 April 2016.
To the Very Reverend and Reverend
Clergy, Venerable Monastics and Pious Faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside
of Russia:
In the Name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit!
In light of the welcome publication of the documents to be considered by
the forthcoming Pan-Orthodox Council, scheduled to take place on Crete from
16-27 June 2016, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of
Russia has undertaken to examine these texts, together with a multitude of
other Hierarchs, clergy and laity who are doing the same as preparations for
the Council continue, and to communicate with our God-preserved flock and
others the manner of suggestions we are proposing, since the documents of the
Council are the cause of interest and questioning to very many. We are
reminded, in this as in all things, of the words of the Lord to the Holy
Apostle St. Peter, when He pronounced that the future shepherd’s work would be
to feed My sheep (John 21.17); and likewise that the food for those who
love Him is to diligently preserve what Christ has taught them: If ye love
me, keep my commandments (John 14.15), and If a man love me, he will
keep my words (John 14.23).
It is with zeal for such divine commandments that the whole plenitude of
the Hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church seeks to apply the counsel of the
Righteous Solomon: incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to
understanding (Proverbs 2.2), scrutinizing the documents that have been
made available to us with humility, diligence and obedience. This task is
undertaken in a spirit free from fear or worldly worry, since we fervently
trust that God Himself is ever the helmsman of the Church, and as He has guided
her through the many centuries to our day, so He will continue to guide and
preserve us now and until He comes again. Rather, we offer reflections on a few
of the texts as a means of conjoining our thoughts to those of many others who
are working for the good of all our inter-Orthodox endeavours, including His
Holiness the Patriarch and those members of our Russian Orthodox Church who
labour with him in these preparations.
While certain of the documents — which have been prepared by the
Pre-Conciliar Conferences for the Council’s consideration, but which are of
course not final texts and are necessarily preliminary — do not give rise for
concern in our reading, and indeed contain elements of useful clarification
(for example, the document “Autonomy and
the Means of Proclaiming It”), the employment in others of ambiguous
terminology, a lack of theological precision, and ecclesiological language
foreign to the sacred tradition of the Church, demand commentary that may lead
to their correction. This is most notably the case in two documents: “Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the
Christian World”, and “The Mission of
the Orthodox Church in Today’s World”; and a few issues arise also with the
procedural text entitled “Organisation
and Working Procedure of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church.”
The Document “Relations of the Orthodox Church
with the Rest of the Christian World”
We cannot read the document “Relations of
the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World” without noting the
pronounced measure of inconsistency — both in terms of language as well as
conceptuality — that marks it out; but also, more painfully, the failure of the
document to espouse proper Orthodox ecclesiology in the manner necessary for
the full proclamation of Christ’s Truth in a divided world. In our estimation
this is the most problematic of the Pre-Conciliar documents, and one which will
require substantial revision and amendment during the sessions of the Council
itself, if it is to attain a form suitable for adoption.
The inconsistencies in ecclesiological terminology are readily apparent,
and have already been noted by many (the Most Reverend Metropolitan of
Nafpaktos and St. Vlasios, the Most Reverend Metropolitan of Limassol, as well
as various learned Orthodox clergy and scholars). While the document opens by
identifying the Orthodox Church as “the One, Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church” (art. 1), which “grounds her unity on the fact that she was founded by
Our Lord Jesus Christ, as well as on the communion in the Holy Trinity and in
the Sacraments” (art. 2), the terminology used throughout the remainder of the
text renders ambiguous these otherwise clear and true phrases. Not only is
proclamation of the Orthodox Church as “the One” Church
befuddled by the statement that “the Orthodox
Church acknowledges the existence in history of other Christian Churches and
confessions which are not in communion with her” (art. 6) and the repeated
references to “various Christian Churches and
confessions” (art 6, art. 20); the document also lacks any reference to the
fact that the Church is not only “founded by” our
Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ (cf. art. 2), but is ever His mystical
Body, always one and indivisible (cf. Ephesians 5.30; Colossians 1.24). Though
of course all acknowledge the existence in history of groups who seek to follow
the Saviour apart from the Orthodox Church, and which may by self-definition
refer to themselves as ‘churches’, Orthodox ecclesiology permits of no
pluralization of what is, and must always be, One: Christ’s Body itself. In
casual usage such terminology (i.e. of ‘other churches’) may at times be
employed out of convenience, but it can have no place in a formal document of
the Church, which must be scrupulously precise and give clear, unequivocal
voice to the traditions we have received from our Fathers, which they received
from the Lord.
More serious are the deficiencies in this text regarding the essential
distinction it seeks to address: namely, the Church and her relations to those
outside her. While our hearts echo the sentiment of the holy Hieromartyr
Hilarion (Troitsky) who observed of the fracture in the Christian world: “What conscious Christian does not sorrow in soul when
he sees the enmity and division among people who should be uniting their faith,
among whom should be reigning the peace left and given by Christ to His
disciples, and love poured into the hearts of Christians by the Holy Spirit!” —
we acknowledge at the same time that the advent of such peace to those who are
divided can come only through the proclamation of the one true path towards
unity: the life of salvation offered in the Church; and that understanding how
to return to the indivisible Church begins with a right understanding of
separation. Here the document is at its most unclear. At no point does the text
heed the example of the Holy Fathers, Councils and Canons of the Church in
identifying the division between Christian peoples as arising from schism and
heresy (terms which, most surprisingly, do not appear in the text at all); that
is, in terms of increasing degrees of severance and departure from Christ’s
Body and Truth.[1] Instead, the document takes the
para-ecclesiological approach of locating division within a broadly-defined
concept of “Christian unity” (cf. art. 4),
which itself becomes an ambiguous phrase used to imply a paramount “unity of believers in Christ” (ibid.) that extends
beyond the “One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic
Church” and incorporates many other confessions.[2]
It is in this context of a heterodox para-ecclesiology that the document
goes on to speak of Christian unity as something that has been “lost” (art. 5), and “the restoration of Christian unity” as one of the
Church’s persistent aims (art. 4, 5, 12, 24). Such statements contradict the
otherwise valid proclamation that “the unity by
which the Church is distinguished in her ontological nature is impossible to
shatter” (art. 6). Moreover, intermingling the right proclamation that the
Church bears witness “to those who
are external to her” (ibid.), with the suggestion that she engages with such
bodies in order to seek “lost Christian
unity on the basis of the faith and tradition of the ancient Church of the
Seven Ecumenical Councils” (art. 5), makes clear that the “unity” being spoken of is one in which the Holy
Orthodox Church of those Councils is but a part or component, rather than the
undivided whole which Christ has ever preserved as His own Bride (cf. Ephesians
5.25-26, 32). In all this, not only is a heterodox ecclesiology implicated in
the draft of a potentially pan-Orthodox statement, but a powerful pastoral
opportunity is neglected. The true disunity present among Christian peoples
today is the loss of unity of heterodox Christians with the Orthodox Church;
and the path of healing that can render divided humanity truly united is the
repentant departure from schism and heresy, and the return to the One Church
whose unity has never been broken.[3] It is for the divine preservation
of this interior unity that we pray when we petition for “the union of all” in the Divine Services, while at the
same time bearing in our hearts the hope that those who are parted from it may
return. A pan-Orthodox statement that fails to proclaim this Gospel hope into
the world misses an opportunity rightly to bear the message of salvation.
The same document contains other errors which cannot be passed over. Its
twenty-third article comments on the necessity of inter-Christian theological
dialogue (itself a good and potentially fruitful endeavour) “excluding any practice of proselytism or any
outrageous manifestations of inter-confessional antagonism” (art. 23). The
loose association of the term “proselytism” with
“inter-confessional antagonism” is problematic, for the Lord
commands both the active preaching (leading to baptism) of “all nations” (cf. Matthew 28.19, 20) and assures the
Church of His special preservation of those being proselytised — a reality we
hymn in the Typical Psalms of the Divine Liturgy (κύριος φυλάσσει τοὺς προσηλύτους, Psalm 145.9). To categorically
forbid “proselytism”, properly understood,
by Orthodox towards the heterodox is a tacit acceptance of an “equality of confessions” (something the document itself
rightly says cannot be accepted; cf. art. 18), since it amounts to an avowal of
the idea that the heterodox are already united to the Body of Christ (the
Church) and therefore need not be drawn towards repentant conversion into it.
We presume this clearly anti-Evangelical prohibition is not what is
intended by the text, which pairs “proselytism” with
“outrageous manifestations of
inter-confessional antagonism”; and instead that it is using the term in a
commonly-acknowledged vernacular to refer to devious and often underhanded
tactics employed in preaching the Gospel, rather than the preaching of the
Gospel itself (which is how we likewise interpret the employment of the term in
the recent joint declaration of His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and the
Roman Catholic Pope of Rome[4]). However, while informal usage of
the term to refer to perversions of behaviour may be permissible in unbinding
documents, it cannot be permitted of a formal ecclesiological statement.
The Document “The Mission of the Orthodox Church
in Today’s World”
The problems contained in the document “The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today’s World” are
more subtle and theological in character than those in the text on the
relations of the Orthodox Church with the rest of the Christian world, but for
precisely this reason deserve special attention. His Eminence the Metropolitan
of Nafpaktos and St. Vlasios has already carefully laid out the basics of the
anthropological flaws that undergird the whole of this text, which render its
otherwise noble focus on the work of Orthodoxy to foster peace, the aversion of
war, the fight against discrimination, etc., deeply problematic until they are
corrected.
The heart of the problem lies in the document’s persistent use of the
term “human person” where it ought to use
“man”, and grounding its
humanitarian discussion in elaborations on this phrase.[5] Usage of the term “person” for man emerges within Orthodox discussion in a
notable way only from the time of V. Lossky, who himself acknowledged the
novelty of his employment of it; and while it has become almost normative in
contemporary discussions, the Holy Fathers are consistent in employing the
Scriptural and liturgical language of “man”. The term
“person” (Rus. лицо, Gr. πρόσωπον)[6] is chiefly
used in Orthodox language in reference to the Divine Persons of the Holy
Trinity, in confessing the unique hypostatic being of Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, as well as the singular hypostatic reality of the One Son in Whom both
the divine and human natures co-exist “unconfusedly, unchangeably,
indivisibly, inseparably” (Definition of the Fourth Ecumenical Council). Almost
never is the term applied to the human creature (in whom such distinctions do
not exist), precisely as a way of noting the absolute distinction between that
which is created and that which is Uncreated — for while man is “in the image
and likeness of God”, he is in no wise comparable, in his createdness, to Him
Who has no beginning.
This clarification, which may at first strike as
overly nuanced or even pedantic, is of fundamental importance to Orthodox
theology and anthropology, and demonstrates the need for the most exacting
attention when considering documents for widespread circulation (even in a case
such as this, where the text does not purport to be about Trinitarian doctrine
at all, yet inadvertently puts forward doctrinally problematic themes). The
rise in misapplication of the term “person” to man over
the past 75 years has resulted in numerous perversions of theological language
in the realm of doctrinal reflection, one of the most notable of which, the
concept that there is a “communion of Divine Persons in
the Holy Trinity”, is directly stated in the document (art. 2.i).[7] The precise
theological discussions of the fourth and fifth centuries clarified that the
Father, Son and Spirit are united in an eternal communion of essence (in the
begottenness of the Son, the procession of the Spirit and the monarchia of the
Father), but not a communion of Persons. Misapplication of the term “person” to man has
led, however, to considerations of the community of the human race being
applied to the nature of the Holy Trinity in a manner that contradicts the
clear teaching of the Fathers and Ecumenical Councils. Furthermore, such
improper language of Trinity creates new anthropological problems that arise
from seeing “the human person” as “a community of persons in the
unity of the human race reflecting the life and communion of the Divine Persons
in the Holy Trinity” (art. 2.i — one of the most problematic phrases in the
document).[8] While it is
true that man’s freedom (the subject of Article 2) is a gift arising from his
being created “in the image” of God, neither his life in the broad community of the
race of men, nor the freedom he exercises within it, are comparable to the
freedom of the Divine Persons expressed in their eternal, mutual indwelling.
In numerous places throughout the document signs
of this flawed anthropology are present, summed up in its desire to advance “the general
recognition of the lofty value of the human person” (art. 1.iii)[9] as the
source for its language of mission. Yet when man is identified improperly as a
human person reflecting an improper conception of a “communion of
Divine Persons” in the Trinity, his “lofty value” is elaborated in
necessarily inaccurate terms. Man’s value is indeed lofty, but the right
foundation of his value lies precisely in his created distinction from the
Persons of the Trinity, into Whose life he is nonetheless called and Whose
image he yet mystically bears, rendering him unique among all creation in that
he can attain the likeness of God through the deification of his nature.
In summary, we wish to stress that this document
on the mission of the Church says much that is good: its emphasis on the proper
exercise of human freedom, the pursuit of peace and justice, the struggles
against discrimination, the identification of multitudinous problems with the
secular and consumerist ideologies of our present culture, and so forth — these
are all laudable and God-pleasing aims. But they must not be met through the
application of flawed anthropological and theological concepts. The phrase “human person”
should be replaced throughout with the more satisfactory “man”,
especially in key phrases like “the value of the human person” (art.
1.iii). Similarly, other ambiguous or improperly-applied anthropological terms
should be carefully scrutinized and corrected (such as the use of “gender”, when in
fact “sex” is meant; cf. Preface, art. 5[ii, iii]).
Finally, a word must be said on the operational
procedures established for the Council, with reference to the authority any
documents it may approve will have within the Orthodox world.
We are not the first to note the flawed
ecclesiological statement present in Article 22 of the document “Relations of
the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World”, which claims that “the
preservation of the true Orthodox faith is only possible thanks to the
conciliar structure which since ancient times has been for the Church the
strong and final criterion in matters of faith”. The Holy Councils of the
Church, even those deemed Ecumenical in the consciousness of the Church, have
never been “the strong and final criterion in matters of faith,” but rather the
Spirit-led confirmation of the one criterion of faith which is the express Will
of Christ. The true Orthodox faith is not preserved “only … thanks
to the conciliar structure” of the Church, but through the unwavering, active
headship of Christ over His Body, which properly constituted and prayerfully
unified Councils manifest rather than determine.
This is accomplished through the charismatic,
Apostolic grace bestowed upon the Hierarchs of the Church, which in conciliar
prayer and reflection mystically discloses the Will of God Who speaks in and
through His ministers. For this reason, those councils which have been assessed
by the Church as having binding authority on her work and life are those in
which the full freedom of this episcopal grace is preserved. Each bishop
equally manifests the Apostolic charism, and in council each bishop is freely
able to raise his voice in the plenitude of that assembly. Only in such a
manner have councils been able to say It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and
to us (Acts 15.28) and proclaim authoritatively the Will of the Lord.
The determinations made through the Pre-Conciliar
process and the decision of the Primates of the Autocephalous Churches, spelled
out in Articles 3, 12 and 13 of the “Organisation and Working
Procedure of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church” document, make
clear that the Pan-Orthodox gathering to take place this year will not be a
council of this nature. We hasten to add, in a spirit of full faith and love,
that this in no wise means it cannot be of value and importance, and indeed we
pray for a fruitful meeting that permits a new degree of inter-Orthodox
dialogue and common work. However, a council that includes only a fixed number
of representative bishops (art. 3.i), in which voting on the adoption of texts
is done on a novel “one Church, one vote” model in which voting “shall be
effected by autocephalous Orthodox Churches, not each particular member of the
delegations represented at the Council” (art. 12.i), in which it is explicitly
asserted that “the voting of a Church at the Council, not a member of a delegation,
does not exclude the possibility for one or a few hierarchs in the delegation
of a particular autocephalous Church to take a negative position towards
introduced amendments or a text in general” (art. 12.ii) and which relegates
any such dissenting voice to “an internal affair of that
Church to which the hierarchs belong” (art. 12.iii) — all these things mean
that any documents which are approved at this council may indeed have “a pan-Orthodox
authority” (art. 13.ii), but this authority can be neither dogmatic nor
doctrinal, but will represent only the authority of the voices of those
hierarchs permitted by such regulations to be present, speak, and have a vote.
While we are satisfied that the insistence upon unanimous consensus for any
amendments (art. 11.ii), as well as the adoption of texts themselves (art.
13.i), adequately safeguards against the possibility of the imposition of any
text by “majority vote”, the fact remains that even in such cases where decisions
are taken at this council by the unanimous consensus of those present, such
decisions can never be considered to bear witness to the consensus of the
plenitude of the Church, and therefore the authority they bear shall be adjudged
accordingly.
We write the above both to offer a few critical
corrections to the documents set forward for consideration by the forthcoming
Council, in the spirit of fraternal co-operation, agreement and support of our
brother Hierarchs and clergy of the other Local Orthodox Churches, such as
those previously mentioned in this letter, who are contributing in like manner;
and also in order to reassure the faithful flock entrusted to us by Christ of
the careful attention being laid upon the task of examining these documents by
their pastors. The process of addressing the pastoral needs of any given age is
one which requires both tremendous prayer and ascetical devotion from all
Christians, but also the dedicated, deliberate work to ensure, in any document
the Church may put forward, the faithfulness to the Gospel we have inherited.
All such texts, now as throughout history, go through many stages of
preparation and revision; and the fact that we, together with others, have
identified serious problems with some of the documents pending consideration by
the forthcoming Council should be a cause for neither fear nor anxiety. The
Holy Spirit Who always guides the Church in love, is not far from us today; and
the Church is not in our times, nor has she ever been, without the active
headship of her True Head, Christ our God, Whom we trust with full faith will
guide His Body in all truth.
We fervently implore the prayers of all our
faithful flock, that standing fast upon the rock of the Church, their prayers
may uphold all those Hierarchs who will work for the good of this dialogue and
assembly.
Signed,
THE HOLY SYNOD OF BISHOPS
OF THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH OUTSIDE OF RUSSIA
[1] As, for example, in the clear language of St. Basil the Great in his
First Canonical Epistle (Epistle 188), as well as the First Canon of the same
Father and the commentary of St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain on the same;
and in many other elements of the Church’s tradition.
[2] In this regard we are particularly grateful for the elucidation of His
Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and St. Vlasios, in his Letter
to the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece (18th January 2016), in which he
draws attention to the implicit presence of so-called “Baptismal
Theology” raised through the document’s reference to the 7th Canon of the
Second Ecumenical Council, and the 95th Canon of the Quinisext Council; and
which His Eminence also notes appears to call into question the decision of the
Patriarchs of 1756, by which the one baptism of the Orthodox Church is
understood to have no parallel in other confessions.
[3] We are grateful for the clarity on these points offered in the recent
letter of His Eminence Athanasius, Metropolitan of Limassol (dated 11th
February 2016), with whose considered opinions we are in agreement.
[5] We note the careful precision that must be applied in
this matter, as the document employs both correct references to “man” (человек, ὁ ἄνθρωπος), as well as incorrect
references to the “human person” (человеческая личность, τόν ἀνθρώπινον πρόσωπον). The latter, which are the core of the
theological problems with this document, are located at: Art.1 Title; 1.i, iii;
2.i, iii; 3.i; and 6.v).
For the sake of those reading
the texts in other translations, the problem is at times compounded (for
example, the English translation in wide circulation, which is not itself an
official translation of the Pre-Conciliar Conferences, regularly confuses the
matter further by failing to distinguish between the different terms in the
official text, rendering almost all instances even of человек, ὁ ἄνθρωπος as “human person”. Cf. Pref.
paras. 2, 4; art. 1.i; multiple instances in 2.i; 6.iii, x; multiple instances
in 6.xii, 6.xv).
[6] We note here an important distinction between theological usage in the
Russian and Greek languages: Russian makes a distinction between Лицо (used in
reference to the Divine Persons, Лицы, of the Holy Trinity) and личность, which is
sometimes used of man, given that it retains a distinction between the type of
Persons identified in the Trinity, and the being of the human creature. Thus in
the official Russian edition of the present document, the phrase in question is
always rendered человеческая
личность and not человеческое лицо; while in Greek such a linguistic
distinction does not exist and therefore the phrase is always rendered as the
entirely unacceptable ἀνθρώπινον πρόσωπον.
In addition to
matters of theological accuracy, this also introduces a procedural problem to
the Council’s documents, since the official version of the Russian text employs
a differentiation of vocabulary that is not employed in the Greek. Further
inconsistency exists in the official French version of the document, which
employs “la personne humaine” (or a
variation) some 12 times, as opposed to 7 in the Russian and Greek versions,
often using it where the Greek text reads ὁ ἄνθρωπος and the Russian reads человек (e.g. in the Preface; art. 1.ii.). Thus we have three
different documents, using different distinctions and nuances of
vocabulary, rather than a threefold presentation of a single text in
translation.
While the
Russian distinction of лицо/личность may be less problematic than attributing the direct
title of “person” (лицо) to man, it
is nevertheless a theological innovation that this document need not foster. It
seems to us that theological precision is best maintained by avoiding it, and
using the proper человек, ὁ ἄνθρωπος, l’homme for man in all instances.
[7] Both the official Russian and Greek versions include this improper
theological statement, describing the Holy Trinity as: « общение Божественных Лиц », « κοινωνίαν τῶν θείων προσώπων ».
[8] Rus. « и как члену сообщества личностей, в единстве человеческого рода по
благодати отражающих жизнь и общение Божественных Лиц в Святой Троице ». Gr. « καί ὡς κοινωνίαν προσώπων ἀντανακλώντων κατά χάριν διά τῆς ἑνότητος τοῦ
ἀνθρωπίνου γένους τήν ἐν τῇ
Ἁγίᾳ
Τριάδι ζωήν καί κοινωνίαν τῶν θείων προσώπων
».
Once again we see here the difference in Russian usage, which distinguishes in
this sentence between лиц and личность, and the Greek which uses πρόσωπον in each instance.
[9] « Всеобщее признание высокой ценности
человеческой личности »; « ἡ κοινή ἀποδοχή τῆς ὑψίστης ἀξίας τοῦ ἀνθρωπίνου προσώπου ». Cf. art. 6.v,
where a similar sentiment is expressed, again using the improper terms.
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου