Heretical Saints?
Excerpt from a Letter from Archbishop Chrysostomos
With regard to your
questions about Peter the Iberian, who has apparently been a
subject of debate on the EOCHR-List, this fifth-century heretic
is not a saint in the Orthodox Church, but in the
non-Chalcedonian Syrian, Coptic, and Armenian churches. As you
point out, superficial scholars have associated St. Isaac the
Syrian with Monophysites (or St. Constantine the Great with
Arianism, for that matter), and so here a superficial view of
this Georgian figure—whom
the Georgian Church has tried to revive and whose Monophysitism
it has played down—leads
to his association with "Orthodox Saints." He is not
recognized or commemorated by the Orthodox Church as a Saint.
More to the point, once
we pass beyond the non-Orthodox, dated book by the eccentric
British scholar D.M. Lang, who is quoted in the text that you
sent me, as well as the mind-set of such Westernized theologians
as Father John Meyendorff and Metropolitan John (Zizioulas), to
the eminently Orthodox thought of Father Georges Florovsky
(though Zizioulas was a student of Father Georges, his
theological and philosophical thinking has deviated substantially
from the Patristic principles set forth by his mentor), we see
this matter in a clearer way. First, it is not sufficient to cite
objections to the Tome of Pope Leo or a rejection of Chalcedon to
convict one of Monophysitism. The Tome was accepted only after
careful scrutiny and following initial objections to some of its
expressions. And the Synod (Council) of Chalcedon was not
immediately fully understood by all, as evidenced by the
clarification of the Synod's decisions in a subsequent synod. So,
while Peter the Iberian was certainly a heretic, initial
opposition to Chalcedon does not necessarily signify heresy. (We
see a similar situation in the Arian controversy, where some
Fathers, influenced by Arianism, later came, after the
declarations of the First Ecumenical Synod, to an wholly Orthodox
understanding of the controversy.) The Synods were not convened
to define the Faith, but to reveal the Church's common teaching
(its consensus), through the action of the Holy Spirit, and thus
to call those who had deviated from it back to the standard of
Faith. One cannot speak of "Arian" Orthodox or
"Non-Chalcedonian" Orthodox, but only of those who,
errant in their Faith, eventually returned to the common body of
belief. Those who resisted such a return, Peter the Iberian being
a case in point, are heretics and always have been. They are not
"heretic Saints," an oxymoron which betrays a poor
understanding of the very notion of sanctity in the Orthodox
Church, but heretics outside the consensus of Orthodoxy.
I should also add that
the dogmas of Orthodoxy are not subject to mere intellectual
evaluation (however unsophisticated or unlearned that
evaluation). Consensus, by the same token, is not simply
empirical or representative of some attitudinal "mean."
When the Church excludes heretics from its consensus, it does so
not only because of their wrong belief, but because that wrong
belief simultaneously and inevitably estranges them from the
common spiritual experience of Orthodoxy. An ignorant man can
believe wrongly and come to correct his belief by submission to
the Church (even, at times, without understanding the
"intellectual" source of his wrong belief), a spiritual
act which restores his mystical communion with the body of True
Believers. A heretic, however, cannot enter into that communion,
if he persists in wrong belief, not simply because his views are
wrong, but because his defiance closes to him the spiritual path
to communion with Orthodox believers. Even if he were to come to
a correct confession intellectually, if this confession is not
within the context of submission to the Church and a spiritual
re-entry into Her consensual integrity, it does not necessarily
restore him. The matter is not one of "right" or
"wrong" or of personal opinion, but of genuine
spiritual experience within the authentic body of Christ. Just as
contemporary Orthodox "officialdom" (which hides a deep
spiritual inferiority) destroys the spiritual foundation of the
Church, so ecumenical thinking, which looks at right belief and
heresy from the standpoint of mere belief and verbal confession
(and thus as things that can be reconciled by dialogue and common
formulations), leads us away from the fact that heretics are
estranged from the Church. They exist outside that common arena
in which we are transformed, united to God, and made saints.
A mere listing of Western
and "Westernized" writers who express their various
opinions about this-or-that theological matter is not sufficient,
in Orthodoxy, to express the deeper, inner meaning of the things
which we hold as Truth. Theology begins, as Father florovsky
emphasizes, quoting a great Father of the Church, with
"fact" (that is, "spiritual fact," an
ontological phenomenon) and with experience, not theory and
speculation. Dispute is solved not by reconciliation and
dialogue, but by humility and submission. And the criteria by
which Truth is established are not the domain of arrogant,
puffed-up Christians who have created, in the name of Orthodoxy,
a religion of their own, but of those who exist among the
properly Baptized, who converse with God, heal the sick, raise
the dead, and who converse with Angels, according to St.
Nicodemos the Hagiorite. This alone should warn us against the
kind of babble which "computer Orthodoxy" engenders,
for all of its possible good points. It should warn us, too,
about the ascendency of "unstudied" opinions about who
is or is not genuinely Orthodox. Those who occupy themselves with
this matter are usually the ones with the most to lose. We must
simply state the spiritual facts and let God, not organizations
and self-created church authorities, reveal the Truth."
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