DIVIDING THE INVISIBLE RAIMENT OF CHRIST, I.E. DIVIDING HIS ONE CHURCH

By casting doubt on the Orthodox dogma which states that only the Orthodox Church is the "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church", ecumenists maintain that "the Church has lost its unity and now exists only in schisms: Eastern schism, Papal schism, Anglican schism" [49].

Theologizing liberals [*] regard every heresy as a new "branch" of the Church of Christ, and they think that every separate part has the right to be called a "church". Even orthographically they have "equal rights". The Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate (JMP) and other ecumenical journals spell them with a capital letter.

The heterodox ecumenical theoreticians, being outside the Church, do not wish to and cannot understand that their communities had fallen away from the Church because of heresies, and that they can join it again only through repentance and rejection of all their errors. In their present state, they have no right to call themselves churches, while being pseudo-churches and while the true Church of Christ, by cutting off heretics, continues to exist as an indivisible Church, integral and internally united in faith.

The ecumenical "branch theory" according to which the Church is divided into Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant "branches", completely contradicts the teaching of the Orthodox Church. The oneness and the uniqueness of the Orthodox Church have always been professed by all the Holy Fathers and teachers of the Church, from the Holy Apostles onwards. This explains the great zeal of the Fathers which they manifested during any act of division and apostasy from the Church, and their strict attitude to heresies and schisms.

The great contemporary Orthodox theologian Justin Popovich says that "as the Lord Jesus Christ cannot have several bodies, so there cannot be several churches... hence, ontologically, splitting the Church is essentially impossible. There never was and can never be any splitting of the Church; but there always has been and will always be falling away from the Church. There was the falling away of Gnostics, Arians, Dukhobors, Monophysites, Iconoclasts, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Uniates and all other renegades forming the heretical schismatic legion" [50].

Theological pluralism admissible and approved by ecumenism is nothing but an attempt to turn Divine Truth into something relative which may be settled by compromise.

St. Mark of Ephesus who upheld Orthodoxy during one of the most critical periods for the Orthodox Church, would say: "Never, oh man, can any matter concerning the Church be improved by compromises: there is nothing in between Truth and lies" [51].

On the other hand, some twenty five years ago, archpriest Livery Voronov, Professor of Dogmatics at the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) Theological Academy openly urged the differentiation of "universally compulsory dogmas" (necessaria) from the other truths of Christian teaching, which he relegated to the category of "doubtful ones" (dubia), thereby proposing a re-examination of Holy Tradition, calling it "diverse". He wrote that such a revision "should be accomplished in the spirit of humble (!) awareness of the necessity to eliminate by way of ecumenical understanding, historically caused inaccuracies or exaggerations in the methods or results of theologizing. These may have served to defend Orthodoxy well in the past, but have now become a sort of obstacle to the Church in her great mission to enlighten the world" [52].

Theoretical basis for distortion of Orthodox dogmas was more than one decade in preparation: already at the end of the 20ies of our century, archpriest Sergei Bulgakov, who subsequently became a malicious heretic, began to publish his invention on "Sophia" as a certain imaginary feminine principle in the Divine Trinity. Priest Pavel Florensky also added his gnostic contribution to this false doctrine.

The Sophian heresy, distorting the dogma of the Holy Trinity, was sympathetically received and further developed first by the renovationists of the "Paris School" and later elaborated and "canonized" by adherents of ecumenism, both "Orthodox" and their heterodox brothers.

The blasphemy of ecumenical feminists was the final and logical crowning touch of Sophianism. Scoffing at the God-man's hypostasis of our Savior they worship the "Divine Sophia" as the third hypostasis of the Holy Trinity.

By signing, in June 1993, the so called Balamand Union with Catholics, "Orthodox" ecumenists have openly expressed their utter disregard for the dogmatic teaching of the Church on the Holy Spirit". It is a generally known fact that the distortion of the Creed by the Roman Church through unlawful addition of the "filioque" to it, in 1054, led to the falling away of Rome from the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Nevertheless, archpriest Ioann Sviridov, who represented the Moscow Patriarchate at the conference in Rome, dedicated to relations between the Orthodox and Catholic Christians, cynically announced, among other things, that "both Churches confess the same Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan Creed" [53].

Disregard of Christology and the dogma on the two natures of our Lord Jesus Christ is evidenced by the "Orthodox" members' of the World Council of Churches recognition of Monophysites as their coreligionists, and by their union with them.

[*] Keeping in mind the patristic saying that "A theologian is the one who truly prays", we shall abstain from calling the pseudo-wise theoreticians of ecumenism -- "theologians" (L.P.)

[49] See G.G. "O vzaimootnosheniiakh Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi s inoslaviem" (Concerning the Relations between the Orthodox Church and Heterodoxy, Orthodox Russia (Pravoslavnaia Rus') No. 5 (309), 1941, pp. 2-3 (in Russian). Cf. Vkumenische Rundschau , Stuttgart, 1969, S. 378.

[50] Archimandrite Justin (Popovich), "Dogmatics of the Orthodox Church", book 3, Belgrade, 1978, pp. 209-212 (in Serbian).
The ever-memorable Fr. Justin (+1979) was a Professor of Dogmatics at Belgrade Theological Faculty; he is an author of many works, in particular of the book "The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism", Thessalonica, 1974. Greek translation by hieromonks Amphilochius and Athanasius.

[51] See Archimandrite Amvrosy, "Sviatoi Mark Efesskii i Florentiiskaia Unia" (St. Mark of Ephesus and the Union of Florence), the St. Job of Pochaev Press, Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, N.Y., 1963, p. 340 (in Russian).

[52] Prof. Archpriest Livery Voronov, "Edinstvo i raznoobrazie v pravoslavnoi traditsii" (Unity and Diversity in the Orthodox Tradition), JMP No. 10, Moscow, 1970, pp. 72-73 (in Russian).

[53] "Na putiakh sblizheniia i primireniia" (On the Path of Raprochement and Reconciliation), Pensée Russe, Paris, 9-15 February, 1995, No. 4064, p. 16. It should be noted that archpriest Ioann Sviridov is the director of the mass media information at the Department of Religious Education and Catechization of the Moscow Patriarchate, and is also the chief editor of the Radio "Sophia".