The Reception of Converts and Related Matters
Webmaster Note: The following was written by Archbishop
Chrysostomos to a young man who corresponded with the Center
for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies about an article that has appeared
in several places and which can be easily misunderstood to suggest that the
first primate of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky)
was a supporter of the irresponsible application of economy that we see by the
contemporary "official" Orthodox jurisdictions in receiving the non-Orthodox
into the Orthodox Church. I believe that His Eminence’s observations are
of value.
The idea of "official" Orthodox Churches (largely the creation of ecumenism) and the notion of a
"canonical" group of local Churches rendered legitimate by their
communion with Constantinople and the "Primate of
Orthodoxy," the Œcumenical Patriarch (an idea put forth
recently by Olivier Clement and consistent with the neo-papist
ecclesiology of the Orthodox innovators)—such contrivances are inconsistent with the very nature
of Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is "canonical" when it operates
as it should (the true sense of "canonicity"),
preserving and perpetuating the content of Holy Tradition, which
in turn leads to the evidence and data of true confession, that
is, sanctity, humility, and the resulting obedience to the
primacy of the True Church, the Holy Orthodox Church. As for
catholicity, it resides, not in administrative universalism, but
in the unity which binds the fullness of the Church in every
right-believing local community to the catholicity of a common
Baptism, common confession, and enduring sanctity. Though Clement
oddly enough evokes the writings of the late Protopresbyter
Georges Florovsky in supporting his neo-papal views, it is Father
Georges, himself, who has so consistently argued, on the grounds
of the actual teachings of the Fathers, that the
"facts" of spiritual life, not administrative bodies,
yield authenticity in the Church; and these facts focus on
spiritual transformation, holiness, the therapeutic restoration
of the human in the Divine Mysteries, and the ultimate theosis
(divinization or Glorification) of man and the cosmos.
Likewise, attempts to codify "oikonomia"
("economy"), making a rule of that process by which
spiritual dispensation is exercised outside the normal categories
of what can be codified, violate the spiritual nature of the
Church. This is especially so, since "economy" is par
excellence a pastoral matter. And if time and individual
differences do not apply to the dogmatic or credal dimensions of
the Church (which are symbols of unchanging, ineffable,
noumenological Truths that rise above time and the person), all
those things relating to the individual believer and the Church
(that is, pastoral things) are, indeed, subject to time, place,
and circumstance. This should be intuitively evident. We must not
attempt to justify, then, the abuses of ecumenism and its
religious relativism on the grounds that the application of
economy in specific times by specific individuals constitutes a
foundational principle for various innovative views of the Church
or its Mysteries, and particularly when these new views violate
both the unchanging spiritual nature of the Church and the
rudimentary dogmatic and symbolic definitions of the Faith.
In simple terms, the primacy of Orthodoxy, as
the very Church of Christ, and the existence of valid Mysteries
ONLY within Her confines (notwithstanding intellectual
speculation about the "wider boundaries" of the Church,
and this even by pious Churchmen) are not things which are
subject to debate or restatement. This is because they are not
ideas, but are spiritual facts that have been revealed to us. The
nature of the Church, Christ as Her sole Head and the source of
Her unity, and the spiritual vision of the clergy (Bishops and
Presbyters) also fall into the category of these universal
spiritual Truths. These immutable Truths are the pillars of our
Faith. Such things as Church administration and clerical rank, as
well as the treatment of those who have fallen from the Church or
who are separated from her, these are pastoral matters. They are
affected by time and circumstance. Thus, we apply the dogmatic
words of the Fathers universally. There can never be a Pope in
Orthodoxy. The Church has no Head except Christ. There is no
salvation outside Orthodoxy. The Mysteries of the Church are
single and unique. We can, however, at the same time, admit that
Church administration, the pastoral treatment of those outside
the Church, the reception of converts, and so on, are subject to
circumstance, history, and the needs of human beings in specific
instances. We can even speculate about the boundaries of the
Church (if soberly so), if we do not, at the same time, violate
the dogmatic definition of the Church. And if we come to
contradictions in doing this, we must always yield to the primacy
of the Church and admit the inadequacy of theory or practice
derived from the temporary phenomenon of given instances of
dispensation (that is, the application of economy).
An article in the "Diocesan News," a
publication of the Denver Diocese of the Greek Orthodox
Archdiocese of America, recently attempted to justify the use of
"economy" in the reception of converts into the
Orthodox Church by referring to an article on the subject by the
late and Blessed Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), first
Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. This follows on
the heels of a recent decision by the Œcumenical Patriarchate to
receive individuals from a number of heterodox confessions by
Chrismation, and not by Baptism, through the exercise of
"extreme economy." The connection between Metropolitan
Anthony’s article and this pronouncement from Constantinople
is obvious: if the modernists are innovators, so was Metropolitan
Anthony, since he favored a liberal policy in receiving the
heterodox into Orthodoxy. In fact, having lost a group of its
Faithful to the ROCA of late, the Southern Diocese of the
Orthodox Church in America, in its official publication,
"The Dawn," reprinted this article from the
"Diocesan News," as though to argue against the
conservative reaction to the ecumenical excesses of the OCA,
which include the virtual transformation of the economy of
Chrismation into the rule of reception—something not unlike
the recent ruling from Constantinople about such divergent groups
as Anglicans, Baptists, the Assembly of God, Methodists, and
Roman Catholics.
There is no doubt that the author of the
article in the Denver diocesan publication of the New Calendarist
Greek Church in America had good intentions in developing a
justification for his Church’s innovation, on the basis of
the thinking of Metropolitan Anthony. Nonetheless, his appeal to
this Prelate is rather ironic. At a time when modernists are
publicly calling us traditionalists heretics and schismatics
(both us Greek old Calendarists, who derive our
"orders" from the ROCA, and the clergy of the ROCA
itself), it is strange to see one of our "Fathers" used
as an example of theological sobriety! Indeed, he is used to
support an exercise of economy accepted by SCOBA, an organization
filled with clergymen who would, were he alive today,
characterize him, to paraphrase the Primate of the OCA in
present-day reference to the ROCA, as the head of a
"sect."
Let us also say that, since we are dealing here
with a purely pastoral issue, one cannot cite the words of
Metropolitan Anthony as normative. First, it should be quite
obvious to anyone that an article which His Eminence wrote in
1927 does not in an unqualified way apply to the state of the
Church seventy-one years later. At the time of his writing,
Anglicans had not yet come to the pitiable theological state in
which we find them today. Nor had the Roman Catholic Church
abandoned its traditional piety. We now live at a time when many
in the former church question the Resurrection, while the
monastic foundation of the latter body (one of the few strong
remnants of its legacy from an Orthodox past), has completely
collapsed. Moreover, when individuals sought to enter Orthodoxy
from these churches six decades ago, they did so out of a
conviction that the Orthodox Church was, in fact, the True
Church. They did not convert, as many do today, to a popular
religion that they could mold and change. They did not imagine
that they were merely changing rites. Nor was their conversion
made easy. There was a spiritual sobriety among these converts
that does not exist among most converts today. And if
Metropolitan Anthony chose to exercise extreme economy (and one
need not agree with all of his decisions, even in context), he
did so with a spiritual goal in mind.
Today, why is there is such a frenzy about
receiving converts by "Chrismation" and economy? We all
know why, and we should be honest about it. When the Orthodox
Church "recognizes" the empty form of the sacraments of
the heterodox, She does not attribute to them Grace, as
Metropolitan Anthony so clearly states in his appeal to the
sixty-eighth Canon of the Council of Carthage. The Church creates
Grace where it was lacking. There is no idea of "partial
Grace" outside Orthodoxy. Is this, however, what we hear
from modernist Orthodox today? Hardly. Some of the theologians at
St. Vladimir’s Seminary have not only called into question
this view of economy, but have even been so bold, twisting and
misrepresenting the historical witness, as to suggest that
Baptism is NOT the standard for receiving converts into the
Church. Could any rational person imagine that Metropolitan
Anthony would have supported such a violation of the
Church’s teachings? Is it at all just to take his words
about economy—those of a single Hierarch—and apply them
to this age in such a way as to damage the very dogmatic
definitions of the Faith upon which economy must never trample? I
think not.
More to the point, Metropolitan Anthony, were
he living today, would no doubt maintain the same position that
we traditionalists uphold. If there is a place for economy, it is
not in a time when Orthodox Hierarchs—whether or not they
call us liars when we quote them—speak of Grace outside
Orthodoxy, openly state that the mere Trinitarian formula of
Baptism is a sign of Grace (outside the Church!), and speak of
Orthodoxy as a Sister Church of Papism, a Church from which she
has been separated for a thousand years. I doubt that
Metropolitan Anthony would have received a heterodox clergyman,
given today’s ecumenical world and theological innovation,
by any act of economy. And I imagine that, rather than lend
credence to the notion that Orthodoxy recognizes Grace outside
Her boundaries, he would have advocated the reception of converts
by Baptism, except in the very rarest of circumstances. After
all, he upheld the primacy of Orthodoxy, which is unchanging. In
pastoral matters, which are subject to circumstance, he would, in
our time, have assuredly followed the "exactitude" by
which we traditionalists (True Orthodox) witness to the absolute
uniqueness of the Orthodox Church, outside of which there is no
therapeutic Grace. To do otherwise would be irresponsible. And a
man so concerned with economy could not possibly be
irresponsible.
Two final observations. In the commentary
attached to Metropolitan Anthony’s article in the
"Diocesan News," much is made by the author about the
tendency towards ecclesiastical anarchy among some
traditionalists in the Orthodox Church. The author of these
comments tells us that we must not use words like
"heretic" or "schismatic" loosely, and that
we should not act without the guidance of our Bishops and
superiors. One cannot argue with what he says, and certainly
there have been excesses among those resisting the innovation and
modernism that curse the so-called "official" Churches.
But let us not forget that it is the modernists who are now
calling us traditionalists liars, heretics, charlatans,
schismatics, and much worse. (And if anyone disputes this, I can
cite ample evidence from the Internet, drawn from the words of an
OCA Bishop and an Antiochian Archpriest.) And if such words were
used in the past perhaps prematurely about the modernists, how
can one describe, if not as an ecclesiological heresy, a
statement by the Œcumenical Patriarch that the Orthodox Church
and Papism are but the two lungs of the one Church of Christ?
What, I ask, can one call this? And how can we not be scandalized
when the same Patriarch who makes this statement also, at the
same time, speaks against ecumenism, when it serves his purpose.
We may be blind, we traditionalists, but we are not deaf. And
when a blind man hears another speaking from both sides of his
mouth, is he truly such an evil being when, despite his presumed
blindness, he wishes to know which side of that mouth is speaking
truly? Indeed, we see little to support the idea that
high-sounding objections to hyperbolic language hold much water
when we are chastised by those who insult us and speak to us in
ecumenical "double-talk."
In consequence of what I have written, I would
also think it prudent to respond to the notion, put forth again
in the commentary on Metropolitan Anthony’s article, that
clergy and Faithful do not have a right to break communion with
their canonical Bishops. This is, of course, true, and the
rupture of unity in Church administration should never be
undertaken lightly. But the more important and over-riding issue
of the right belief of a ruling Bishop is crucial here. And as I
have pointed out, there is much to fear in the pronouncements of
the modernists, at least until they tell us which of their two
views of the Church prevails: that put forth when we
"liars" and "schismatics" challenge them, or
that preached in the domain of ecumenism (e.g., the slippery
rhetoric of Balamand, a betrayal of Orthodoxy often called by the modernists
a "victory"). Moreover, let us not ignore the fact that
the Sacred Canons certainly allow for clergy and Faithful to
break communion with Bishops who preach or embrace heresy, even
before a Church synod or council has condemned them as heretics
or their views as heretical. This action must be taken
circumspectly, and certainly the provisions of this canonical
walling-off can be abused. However, we should not so honor
administrative order that it supersedes matters of conscience.
Nor does the Church prevent or forbid temporary separations in
administration, let alone flatly condemn those who follow their
consciences in piety and in God-pleasing resistance,
leaving it to time and the future judgment of the Church to
vindicate their struggle. Once again, we must not apply what
belongs to the temporal realm of administration in such a way as
to thwart the ultimate spiritual witness of the Church. Were it
not for resisters such as the Cappadocian Fathers, St. Maximos
the Confessor, the Studite monks, the anti-unionists, the
Hesychasts in the age of St. Gregory Palamas, the Kollyvades
movement, the anti-Sergianist Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, and
the Bulgarian, Greek, and Romanian Old Calendarists, among
others, the true unity of our Faith—which lies in correct
belief—would long ago have succumbed to Jesuitical notions
of the administrative prerogatives of officialdom. The
"official" Orthodox, in whatever loyalty they still
show towards Orthodoxy, owe an inestimable debt to Orthodox
resisters, past and present.
Anti-Christ does not come to us in a foreign
tongue and as an unbeliever. He comes to us in our own language
and with a lukewarm commitment to the Faith. He speaks to us of
love, while he hates us. He glorifies Martyrdom, but not that of
faith and blood. He exalts unity, but not in Truth. He takes what
is temporary and seeks to make it universal. He makes what is
standard the exception and what is the exception standard. He
elevates pastoral matters to a high level of priority, hiding
thereby the fact that he is trampling on the absolute Truths
which make economy possible in the first place. We must never
succumb to his tactics, however noble and good our intentions. To
justify innovation by appealing to a dated article by a Pastor
living in a different field and with a different flock than our
own, and particularly when that Pastor would have found the
present-day Orthodox world worthy of tears, is a fall that we
should all examine and avoid. It represents the great danger that
befalls us when we attempt to justify that which cannot be
justified. And it leads us unwittingly into the claws of
Antichrist, who holds forth as much with Byzantine splendor as he
does with the majesty of Latin Papism.
Archbishop Chrysostomos
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