On Various Faiths and Ecumenism
Canon 45: if a bishop, priest or deacon prays together with heretics, let him be forbidden the priesthood. If he allows them (the heretics) to perform any priestly rite, as priests, let him be deposed. Canon 65: if any clergyman or layman goes into a synagogue of the Jews or of heretics to pray, let the clergyman be deposed and the layman punished by excommunication.
Faith is the truth of the heart, and it is not conceived in two forms in one and the same heart. As a two-faced truth is impossible, so is a two-faced faith. Either it is the only one in a heart, or it is not there at all. Faith, whose great knot lies in the spiritual depths of man, cannot be two-eyed and two-hearted, so as to be both ours and yours at the same time. It is one-eyed and one-hearted — if one may say so — and can divide neither the eye nor the heart in two, so as to see both one and the other as Orthodox, and to share the heart’s hope with both. That is why unshakeable loyalty to another’s faith is a shaking, a denial, of one’s own. Those who give themselves for one faith cannot be those who give themselves for another, least of all with unshakeable loyalty. A man is unshakeably devoted only to the faith he confesses and carries in his heart. Without this, faith is not faith but a garment that a man takes off when he likes and puts on when he likes.
The difference of faiths does not frighten us. The Georgian, crucified for his own faith, knows how to respect the faith of others too. That is why there is no example in our history of a Georgian ever wishing to oppress and persecute another’s faith. Armenians, Jews, even Muslims living among us, can reproach us in nothing in this. Those persecuted and oppressed for their faith in other countries found here, among us, a peaceful refuge and freedom of conscience.
How can Christianity, Islam and Buddhism be put on the same level? That is a sign of ignorance of religion, and means that we have not grasped the chief aim of life, do not care for our immortal soul, and are not troubled that because of a wrong position we may lose it for ever… The Orthodox faith is the backbone of our national spirit… Ilia II, Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia
“Ecumenism” dulls the dogmatic sensitivity of the Orthodox and shuts the door of the Orthodox Church to those followers of other faiths who are seeking the true Church.
As a member and a priest of the Orthodox Church, I believe that the Church in whose bosom I was baptised and brought up is the Church, the true Church, the only true Church; and I believe this for many reasons: from personal conviction and from the inward witness of the Spirit who breathes in the sacraments of the Church; I believe it so far as it is possible to come to know it from Holy Scripture and from the divine Tradition of the Church. So I am obliged to regard the other Christian churches as deficient, and I can determine this deficiency of the other churches with absolute precision. That is exactly why, for me, the union of Christians means a universal return to Orthodoxy. …Only in this spirit can the participation of the Orthodox in the ecumenical movement be justified.
Today, unfortunately, a modern “correctness” has appeared among us, and people are eager to present themselves in a good light. The wish to show their own “higher nobility” leads them so far that they bow the neck before the two-horned devil. “Let there be one religion,” they say, and put everyone on one level. Some people with such views came to my cell too. “We — that is, all who believe in Christ,” they told me, “need to unite in one religion.” “That is the same as gathering together gold of many carats and the copper that was separated from it, so as to make one alloy of them again,” I answered. Is it sensible to mix gold with a cheap metal again?! Ask a goldsmith: “Can rubbish and gold be mixed?” Has our Church not endured a great many battles to cleanse the dogmas of rubbish? The holy fathers knew what they were doing. It was not without reason that they forbade communion with heretics. But today they call for joint prayer not only with heretics, but with Buddhists, fire-worshippers and even Satanists. “The Orthodox,” they say, “should also attend ecumenical joint prayers and conferences — it is a witness to the truth!” What “witness”?! These people settle every problem by logic; they find a justification for what can have no justification. The modernist spirit thinks that one can trade even in spiritual things from the counter of a common market.
I do not want heretics to suffer, I take no joy in their misfortune. God forbid! Their conversion gives me joy… I advise people to repay every man with good, with attention and patience, and to help everyone according to his need. But at the same time I say: it is not permissible to help a heretic to be confirmed in his senseless faith: here, on the contrary, one must be firm and uncompromising. I would call it hatred of mankind, and not love, when someone confirms a heretic in his error, which will become the cause of his greater fall and inevitable ruin.
True love for mankind shows itself when we spare no effort to deliver a man from sin and hell. If you think you love someone and at the same time approve of his sins and passions, you are deceiving yourself: it is not him you love but his death. Only in Christ is it possible to love with all one’s soul and strength, to love truly… The god of hatred, the devil, will not allow people who have risen up against Christ to love one another; they are busy only slandering each other — they love no one.
They say: Luther invented a new faith, supposedly from the Gospel, but with his own mind. Why then should we not create a teaching with our own minds, without the Gospel? — and they began to invent and to guess about God and about man — each in his own way; and they invented so many teachings that merely listing them makes the mind reel. And now it is like this with them: believe as it occurs to you, live as you please, enjoy whatever your heart desires. They recognise no law and no restraint, they do not submit to the word of God. There is wide room among them, every fence is broken down. But, as the Lord says, this broad way leads to destruction. See where turning away from the teaching has led.
Whoever, out of fear, regard for others, shame, flattery or any other consideration, shrinks from laying down his life for the faith, from defending the faith; whoever thinks it possible to keep silent, to endure it and not raise his voice when his faith is belittled, abused, insulted and blasphemed — he denies the Saviour before men.” Leonide (Okropiridze), Catholicos-Patriarch of Georgia
Today’s world offers the Orthodox economic security, and in return wishes to fill their inner world with a wrongly understood humanism, whose aim is to diminish the divine nature in man. But Christ says: “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” His Beatitude Sawa, Metropolitan of Warsaw and All Poland of the Orthodox Church
