The Crisis
by Rev. Deacon [now Priest] Andrew Phillips, France
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness."
It has become commonplace to hear or read that 'the Orthodox Church is in a state of
crisis'. Of course this is untrue, indeed it is ontologically impossible, for the gates of
Hell shall not prevail. What people mean is rather that the outward, fallen human
organization of the Church is in crisis. In one local church a Patriarch resigns and many
of its bishops admit to having lied about a bloodthirsty regime. In another church the
Patriarch is seriously ill, married Metropolitans vie for his place. Bishops declare
themselves hostile to monasticism, though they themselves are supposed to be monks. Other
bishops openly proclaim their sympathies with Freemasonry. A slavish and shameful attitude
to the State is widespread. The people are left in ignorance for lack of pastors and
pastoral leadership. But not only are we witnesses to this 'semi- Orthodoxy', but also to
a 'neo-Orthodoxy'. So-called theologians preach ecumenism, local churches are rent asunder
by calendar disputes. Division and pain seem to be an around. —Indeed outwardly, to
those who have not seen the Risen Christ behind this Body of Christ Who suffers on the
Cross of human infidelity, the picture must seem grim.
Inspired theologians and hierarchs of the free part of the Russian Church, praying and
working at Jordanville and elsewhere have analyzed this situation. They have developed a
theological understanding of the period we are living through, an age of apostasy, indeed
the beginning of the Apocalypse. The source of this apostasy lies in the definitive
separation of the local church of Rome from the Orthodox Church and Her teachings on the
Holy Trinity, the Son of God and in particular the Holy Spirit. Since this separation from
the Church in 1054, apostasy has begun in the world, slowly developing over the centuries
and spreading throughout the world; secularizing itself this apostasy has become known a
'westernisation'. It is no other than the desecration of life, in other words the growth
of the secular at the expense of the sacred to the point where nothing is sacred, nothing
is honored or valued or respected any longer, to the point of ultimate blasphemy, the
worship of Satan. A new world has been founded, autonomous of the Word of Christ and His
Holy Spirit. This process of desecration came to Russia at the end of the seventeenth
century and then culminated in the great Russian Apostasy of 1917. With the death of the
last Orthodox Empire on earth, the whole Orthodox Church has been attacked from all sides,
in an effort to destroy the Church's influence. They have wanted to take away from the
Church the hallowing power of the Holy Spirit, the power to "sanctify" all
aspects of human life, they have wanted to reduce Her to an empty shell. This attack is
the ultimate one to remove from the Church the transfiguring power of holiness, the Holy
Spirit, Who proceeds from God the Father and comes to those who are worthy through the
Body of Christ, the Church. This attack is then none other than an attack on the Church.
To counter it, it would seem that what is required is a reaffirmation at every level,
social, cultural, political and economic, of the Church, the One, Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic Church.
The reaffirmation that the Church is One would counter this attack socially. Today,
through the heresy of ecumenism, the oneness of the Church is attacked. Ecumenism is in
fact the ideology of the Antichurch, whose master is Antichrist. The reaffirmation of the
oneness of the Church would transfigure the way of life of all those who entered Her
embrace, and so socially transfigure our existence on Earth. The acceptance of this
oneness is the acceptance of Christ Who is One, the acceptance of Christ in all His
fullness and beauty, which was lost outside the Church in the West when it was desired to
replace Him by a human being, His "Vicar".
The reaffirmation that the Church is Holy is essential if mankind is to be saved
culturally. Under the effects of apostasy, we see more and more how church culture, the
sense of churchliness, "tserkovnost", is being lost. This attack is being
carried out under the banners of modernism whose purpose is to annihilate all sense of
Tradition, that is to say, the workings in history of the Divine and saving Providence of
the God of Love through the Holy Spirit. It was this Holy Spirit Who was rejected by the
leaders of the West in favor of human agency. Modernism, with its reforming, renovating
spirit, started by attacking the Church calendar and then set its intellectual victims to
work on diluting the canonical and liturgical traditions of the Church. Not understanding
the divine-human nature of the Church, they saw in Her inspired traditions only the
accidental events of human history. Modernism is in fact a new outburst of iconoclasm
whose aim is to demolish the iconographic and sacred Tradition of the Church, Her
transfiguring power of holiness, the mystery of Her sanctification. Modernism says: we
know better than two thousand years of the outpouring of the Spirit of God on man. Only
the reaffirmation of the Holiness of the Church will save mankind culturally, will save
the best in his culture, and thus bring those of good will to the awareness that one
cannot tamper with the dynamism of Church Tradition, with that which is holy, for
"our God is a consuming fire".
The reaffirmation that the Church is Catholic will save mankind politically. The
catholicity of the Church (Her unity in diversity in all places and at all times) is based
on Her very theology of the Holy Trinity, which was lost by the West after the eleventh
century. The lack of understanding of the catholicity of the Church (right up to the total
deformation of the very word "catholic") has for centuries caused division and
strife in the world. First Europe was divided by "Wars of Religion", then by
tribal nationalisms resulting in World War. Today Europe and the whole world is threatened
by the opposite trend, the movement under the direction of Freemasonry towards world
government, the convergence of formerly hostile blocs, the formation of the United States
of Europe, the New Babylon. Patriotism is mocked and scourged, slandered by confusion with
nationalism as moves are made to prepare the enthronement of Antichrist in Jerusalem. Only
the reaffirmation of the Catholicity of the Church, in Her theology of the Holy Trinity
can save mankind politically.
The reaffirmation that the Church is Apostolic can save man economically. For centuries
the Western world, and thus the westernized world, has been divided into first Roman
Catholic and Protestant, then into collectivism (socialism) and individualism
(capitalism), ultimately into communist atheism and materialist 'mammonism'. The Church in
Her Apostles (Acts 2: 42-47), and subsequently in pious lay people and especially Her
monasteries, settled once and for all the question of property, economic development and
also ecological stewardship of the Earth's resources. It is in the present world's
rejection of the apostolicity of the Church, so particularly apparent in Her monastic
tradition, that its economic problems and divisions have taken root. Only the
reaffirmation that the Church is Apostolic can save humanity from economic and thus
ecological catastrophe.
In Greek the word "crisis" means judgement. Indeed whenever a crisis occurs,
a judgement is made—against us or for us, according to how we react in that crisis.
It is therefore ever more urgent for us to understand the Church and to enter into Her
mind and life. And without the affirmation, individually and collectively, of the Orthodox
Church, of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, we, mankind, are lost.
May the Risen Christ, Who shines forth in the darkness of the present age help us to
affirm Her and our life in Her, that we may all come safely into the brightness of His
Everlasting Kingdom.
Pascha 1990
From Orthodox Life, Vol. 40, No. 3 (May-June 1990), pp.
8-10.
|