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 | The topic of the contradictions between religious and scientific worldviews was once very fashionable and seductive for many. To a significant extent, this contradiction is inevitable, since the religious worldview is a stable phenomenon, fundamentally eternal, and the scientific one is unstable, fundamentally constantly changing depending on new discoveries and the development of scientific views. The religious worldview that comprehends life and gives it a certain direction cannot change because, for example, the atom in the 19th century was considered undevidable, and in the 20th century it was proved that it is divisible. But scientific work should be completely free in its experiments, research and conclusions. It cannot be guided in this by any preconceived thoughts created outside of its area. Therefore, strictly speaking, there can be no scientific worldview as a constant value at all. This value is constantly changing, depending on the success of the development of knowledge. But does this mean that complete disunity should always remain between the religious worldview and scientific knowledge, that these two sources of understanding the world and its phenomena are inconsistent with each other? Not at all. On the contrary, such a discrepancy is a very sad phenomenon that brings discord and temptation to human souls. The integrity and consistency of the entire worldview is a precious property that the holy apostles and the great fathers and teachers of the Church of ancient times possessed in full measure. Contrary to the usual idea, such integrity, such a unity of the world outlook was achieved by them not at all by the simple method that is attributed to them by vulgar descriptions: the substantiation of both their religious and scientific ideas on the same Holy Scripture. Contrary to popular opinion, such a simplified solution is also wrong from the churchly point of view. If regarding social issues we know that Christ the Saviour with all decisiveness said to those who asked Him: Who made Me a judge or a divider over you? (Lk. 12, 14) — and by this He rejected the direct solution of social problems from Himself, and if the state area, according to the thoughts of Metropolitan Anthony, the Lord left to free human will and does not want the least dogmatization in it, the same can be said about the scientific field. The Church has never patronized references to Holy Scripture or to her own tradition as a reference book on natural science and other branches of science. And if such references were nevertheless made, and the Church did not punish for this, it was only out of condescension to the creative weakness of those who made these references, for from such a course of their actions there was no immediate soul harm. But the churchly authors did not act so. The Apostle Paul knows Greek philosophy, knows Talmudic wisdom and, when the need arises, knows how to handle these extra-church sources of knowledge. Let us recall, for example, his famous speech in the Areopagus (Acts 17, 15–34). This can be seen even more clearly in the example of St. Basil the Great. In his "Six Days", in connection with the presentation of the history of the creation of the world, of course according to Holy Scripture, because this is a religious topic, inaccessible to scientific experience, St. Basil the Great, as soon as it comes to natural science topics, switches to the appropriate scientific soil. But Saint Basil the Great subordinates all the magnificent wealth of his knowledge, just like the Apostle Paul, to the highest wisdom, the wisdom of the Church, bringing to her the wealth obtained from outside, and not simply taking it from her. The integrity of the worldview of St. Basil the Great, like that of the Apostle Paul, is not in the least disturbed by this. Unfortunately, this line of thought, opening up such horizons, was abandoned. It required a very great tension of thought and its flexibility, as well as a high spiritual level. It demanded incessant mental work, for its secret lies in the constant drawing in each period of new connecting threads between the eternal Christian worldview and the constantly changing scientific outlook. The decline of this creative connecting work occurred partly as a result of a general cultural decline in the Middle Ages, but partly due to the fact that during the relatively calm period of Church history, Christian humanity, not only in its "foolish", but also in its "wise" part, "while the Bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept" (see Matt. 25, 2, 5). The gigantic rise of creative thought, so striking in Basil the Great and his contemporaries, has declined. The inquisitive questions of the human mind began to be followed by often sluggish answers, compiled from references to Holy Scripture and the traditions of the Church. Such answers have satisfied both questioners and respondents for centuries. There was no direct soul harm from this sleepiness, there was no danger for salvation. The moral truth of these answers was ensured by the fact that they were given completely Orthodox on the basis of an infallible source. And we clearly understand that for the eternal true purpose of man's existence, for the salvation of his soul and the inheritance of the Kingdom of God by him, it makes no difference whether the Earth is round or flat, whether the Earth revolves around the Sun or the Sun around it, in six days or six milliard years God created the world. Therefore, the Church, preoccupied with her ever-surpassing task, did not worry about the fact that the answers to questions outside this task were given according to the wrong method. But the Lord gave humans mind for a conscious look at the world around them, and therefore people had the moral right to ask these questions and look for the correct answer to them corresponding to the objective truth. It is this very circumstance that the devil's power used in its tireless attempts to attack the Church of Christ, which is the citadel of salvation. Having torn away from the Church a certain part of the leading thinking stratum, through them, it threw the Church a number of sharp questions about certain phenomena of the external world, to which churchly thinkers were not able to immediately successfully answer precisely because the work of St. Basil the Great was interrupted, the Christian holistic worldview was narrowed down to the purely theological, the method of Christian, not in the least compromising, entirely Christian answers to natural science questions, but not on theological, but on natural scientific grounds, turned out to be lost. These questions were sometimes malicious attempts to humiliate the Church and bring confusion to Christian minds, but sometimes, and much more often, they were sincere bewilderments. The fact that the most outstanding creative minds of science, like Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Faraday, Mendeleev and many others, were personally very religious people, did little to help the cause, because these scientists were workers in their field and were not able to fulfil the duties of churchly leaders: to restore the integrity of the Christian worldview on scientific basis, as well as on any other basis. The position of Christian apologetics has improved considerably today. Although the holistic church-scientific worldview, as it was with St. Basil the Great, we still do not have, but we have Christian answers to a number of important scientific questions, strictly scientifically grounded. Sometimes these answers are given by scientists themselves, as, for example, in questions of paleontology, by the Catholic monks Teilhard de Chardin and Abbot Braille, sometimes they naturally follow from a scientific discovery with the already awakened religious interest in the scientific field, as it is especially clearly seen in the example of religious conclusions from theory of relativism of Professor Einstein or from the latest ideas about the structure of the atom. Several such successful and deeply insightful religious answers to scientific questions were enough to refute the wrong and harmful idea that a contradiction between religious and scientific worldviews is inevitable. By now, the idea of the inevitability of such a contradiction is completely outdated and no one will seriously and conscientiously insist on it. But in the 19th century, in a period of confusion in churchly thought, a movement that was anti-religious in its main task was created, based in its anti-religious struggle on these seemingly irreconcilable contradictions between religion and science. Considering science fundamentally and inevitably irreconcilable with religion and proclaiming it as such, this anti-religious movement, called by its main ideologue Marxism, has proclaimed itself a follower and defender of the scientific worldview. Even in pre-revolutionary times, various anti-religious Marxist movements, for example, the publications of Büchner and Bittner that were memorable for the entire previous generation, in every possible way accused religion and representatives of religious thought of oppressing scientific research and painted pictures of the flowering of scientific thought in the age of the triumph of "scientific" socialism. This is echoed by the modern leader of Marxism, Stalin: "The party is conducting anti-religious propaganda against all and everyside religious prejudices, because it stands for science, and religious prejudices go against science, because every religion is something opposite to science... The party is pursuing a policy of the utmost defense of science" (Questions of Leninism). While those views dominated in science, applying to which this anti-religious doctrine built its principles, such its apparent alliance with science could seem to be strong and cause, upon superficial judgment, the corresponding incorrect conclusions. However, if the religious worldview in principle wants to be eternal, then the anti-religious Marxist worldview must also inevitably claim, if not for eternity, then at least for duration, for stability. After all, according to its design, just like religion, it should determine the whole life of a person and, therefore, cannot change in the blink of an eye due to a result of this or that scientific discovery. Meanwhile, the entire fundamental construction of Marxism is associated with a certain level of scientific knowledge at the beginning of the second half of the 19th century, the period of the predominance of materialism in scientific thought. But scientific progress since that time has made very significant steps forward, and the Marxist worldview does not keep up, and sometimes ontologically cannot keep up with it. At the same time, in its conflict with science, the anti-religious worldview is in a much worse position than the religious one. For a religious thinker, the entire visible world is a product of the same Creator, from Whom comes the revelation, on which the religious thinker builds his worldview. Therefore, he knows a priori that there can be no fundamental contradiction in understanding these two manifestations of the same all-wise Reason. These contradictions are always semblant, either through a misunderstanding, or through thoughtlessness, human limitations, or by the evil will of a researcher who resists God, declaring such a contradiction. Therefore, when controversial issues arise, a religious thinker can be calm, he can wait for further investigation of the subject and at the same time use his worldview as a guiding light. In this worldview, he has the key to recognizing what is more and less solid in scientific terms. Meanwhile, the anti-religious thinker has no support outside of scientific concepts. In theory, he slavishly depends on every innovation in science, no matter how fleeting it may be. Under the influence of today's discovery, he must rebuild his entire worldview. Under the influence of today's discovery, he must rebuild his entire worldview in order to rebuild it again tomorrow, if tomorrow today's discovery will be refuted. Consequently, if the anti-religious worldview wants to be conscientious, scientific, then in our age of rapid progress of all types of science, it cannot be solid anyway. In other words, it cannot be a worldview at all. Therefore, in order to exist, it must become unscrupulous. And so it does. For the first time, the Marxists were forced to show this scientific dishonesty in the very first days after the seizure of power in Russia. In 1915, as you know, A. Einstein established the principles of relativism — relativity. The concept of the finiteness of the Universe, strictly based on the theory of relativity, was introduced into the astronomical concept of the world. This is how Professor A. I. Shcherbakov formulates these ideas: “The universe has no boundaries and at the same time it is finite, just as any spherical surface, for example, the surface of a ball, has no boundaries: in whatever direction we move along the ball, we will never reach any boundary, but at the same time a ball, a sphere, undoubtedly represents a finite formation. The picture of the world in the light of the general theory of relativity is presented in the following form: the Universe, assuming a uniform distribution of matter, represents a completed, but borderless whole, in which the general law of conservation of energy operates, because when the Universe is completed, energy cannot be lost and disappear at infinity. We also get the idea of the finiteness of the material world from the other side: astrophysics and atomistic physics come to the conclusion that celestial bodies cannot exist in an infinite number, that the ultimate maximum cannot exceed two billion nebulae." Further developing the thoughts of Einstein, the Belgian scientist, professor at the University of Louvain, Abbot Lemaitre, established that all nebulae are moving away from us at a cosmic speed of 100 kilometers (62.14 miles) per second, and, therefore, the material objects that make up the visible world are distributed more and more vast space. This expansion of the world, according to Eddington's calculations, should double the size of the Universe within 1,300 million years, within one and a half milliard years, the density of matter should decrease to 1/10, that is, after one and a half milliard years from the Earth, ten times less stellar nebulae will be visible. Even the Soviet government could not keep silent about all these discoveries establishing a new era in astronomy. But Marxism had to admit its defeat by the fact that simply by police measures, Soviet scientists were forbidden to draw direct conclusions from these scientific ideas. They did exactly the same with respect to another important discovery of our day: a new concept of the structure of the atom and, consequently, of all matter. During the time of creation of Marxism, the theory of the conservation of matter prevailed in science, that is, the idea that matter is never destroyed and under no circumstances, but only changes its forms in various physical and chemical processes. Thanks to this theory, it was possible to ascribe to matter one of the basic properties of God, that is eternity, in order to build an anti-religious materialist concept of Marxism. But according to new scientific theories, when an atom explodes, matter as such is destroyed, turning into energy. Such a transformation of matter into energy by human means began to be carried out only recently, at first in the laboratory, and since 1945 on a large scale for scientific purposes, but in the bowels of the Sun and other stars it is constantly taking place in gigantic proportions. Moreover, this process is irreversible, that is, the amount of energy that we received from a given amount of matter cannot be converted back into the same amount of matter, since for such a reverse process an additional and significant amount of energy would have to be spent. The apologetic horizons opened up by these latest theories are extremely wide. The discovery of the possibility of converting matter into energy radically destroys scientific materialism. It will not be saved by the substitution of the law of conservation of energy (the inviolability of which remains) instead of the law of conservation of matter, because energy has different properties than matter. Any kind of energy tends to turn into thermal energy, and thermal energy tends to uniform distribution (note, according to Einstein's theory) — finite space. In scientific parlance, this is called the striving for entropy, that is, for uniform heating of the entire space and, therefore, for the cessation of all and any chemical and physical processes in it. This means that if matter had existed forever, then already eternity ago it would have partially turned into energy, which would have achieved a uniform distribution throughout the entire space of the finite universe, and partially, evenly throughout the universe, heated matter would be absolutely lifeless, without change and without movement. These indisputable conclusions from the theory of relativity and from the theory of the decomposition of the atom clearly prove that matter originated from an extra-material source. Similar conclusions can be drawn from Lemaitre's theory of the expanding universe. If all nebulae and star clusters move away from each other at a constant speed of 100 kilometers per second, then 15 milliard years ago, matter would have 10 million times higher density, that is, the starry worlds would be 10 million times closer to each other, and 200 milliard years ago, all matter in the universe would have been concentrated in a space of several cubic millimeters. Of course, the Soviet government did not even allow these problems to be discussed in their possessions, and the circles of Soviet society are very poorly acquainted with Lemaitre's theory. Perhaps even brighter, this conflict between Marxist-anti-religious thought and science was manifested in the dispute over Mendel's biological theory, which ended in the prohibition of the scientific discipline of genetics in the Soviet Union. Mendel's theory is in biology exactly the same constituent of the era, opening up new horizons, as Darwin's theory was at its time. Gregory Mendel, a Czech Catholic monk of the St. Thomas Monastery in Brno, in the middle of the last century, between 1856 and 1866, made a number of interesting experiments on crossing giant beans with dwarf ones and yellow peas with green ones. The conclusions from these experiments, establishing the immutability of the laws of heredity, he outlined in his book "Experiments on plant hybrids", published in 1856. Until 1900, this work by G. Mendel remained unknown to anyone. But in 1900, three biologists, Devrieux, Correns, and Cermak, came across Mendel's work and published it widely. L. Cuénot in France and Bateson in England developed it, moving on to experiments on crossing animals according to Mendel's method, and in 1910 Professor of Columbia University in America T. Morgan with his assistants Mueller, Bridge and Tryrvent, and independently of them Professor Weismann, using the same methods over the crossing of flies and tens of thousands of their generations, have achieved an even more solid establishment of the laws of the new science — genetics, the science of heredity. The laws of this science are briefly reduced to establishing the fact of the presence in the germ cells of living organisms of special molecules that are carriers of heredity. These molecules were named genes. They cannot mix or combine with other similar molecules. Therefore, on the one hand, the offspring inherits from one or another carrier or from both completely this or that hereditary trait, and on the other hand, no trait acquired by the parents during life, even though in a number of generations, if there is no corresponding gene from it in the embryonic cell, cannot be inherited. The appearance of new hereditary traits can only be explained by the so-called phenomenon of mutation under the influence of unusual potent factors. For example, in one case the American Mendelists Professors Mueller and Henson succeeded in mutating fruit flies by exposing them to X-rays. Since with the further development of the theory of Mendelism, it quite clearly enters into a clash with one of the basic principles of Marxism "being determines consciousness", that is, that the environment is a decisive factor in the life of organisms, and since the theory of mutation clearly opens horizons for religious apologetics, the Soviet authorities first waged a struggle against Mendelism with police measures, and then generally prohibited the existence of this science within the reach of their power. At the same time, by the same police measures, Michurin's doctrine of the variability of heredity of traits under the influence of the external environment was raised to the rank of an immutable scientific law. The proclaimer of the Michurin's principle was a certain T. Lysenko, completely unknown in scientific circles, who was appointed by the Soviet government instead of the exiled Vavilov as the president of the Agricultural Academy. The first act of the new president was the closure of the Medical and Biological Institute, where the most interesting experiments were carried out on the so-called "identical" twins of humans and animals, that is, twins descended from the same germ cell. These experiments have established that heredity is of great importance in the formation of the psyche, while the influence of the external environment is completely negligible. The institute was closed in 1937, and all of its leaders were arrested, and most of them were shot. Never, even in the darkest medieval times, has anyone resorted to such bloody measures to suppress objectionable scientific thought. The Soviet magazine "Nauka i Zhizn" (Science and Life), published by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, quite openly writes about the reasons for this inexorable hatred, this panic horror of Mendelism: "The Michurin doctrine affirms the unity of the germ and bodily cells in the organism, the unity of the organism and the environment, affirms the dependence of the heredity of the properties of the organism on living conditions and the inheritance of features acquired by plants and animals in the process of their development under the influence of the environment. "On the contrary, the reactionary Weismanist-Mendelian-Morgan trend in biology asserts that a living organism is divided into an autonomous hereditary substance and a soma, which is only a sheath for the first. With this concept, living conditions cannot change the hereditary properties of the organism, the inheritance of the characteristics acquired by plants and animals in the process of their development under the influence of environmental factors is denied, and, thus, the unity of the organism and the environment is denied. "Mendelism considers the basis for the formation of the hereditary properties of an organism to be a mechanical, according to the principle of randomness, recombination of unknown so-called material carriers of heredity (according to Morgan — genes), passing from generation to generation when crossing animals or plant forms. Weismanism allows changes in the hereditary substance only in the form of neoplasms — mutations, as exceptional phenomena. According to Weismanism, mutations have an immanent conditionality that ultimately leads to the recognition of the Creator. In biology, Weismanist-Mendelian-Morgan trend is an anti-national, pseudoscientific and harmful trend. It destroys practice, orientates a person to humility. The founders of this trend are the reactionary bourgeois biologists Weismann, Mendel and Morgan" (Science and Life, No. 9, 1948, pp. 12–13). With regard to such a formulation of the question, the English scientist Professor Eric Ashby in his book "Scientists in Russia" writes that this is "a product of the medieval mind, using the technique of 'verbal fantasies' reminiscent of the Middle Ages." The coincidence of Soviet methods of struggle against science and medieval ones is not accidental, as we are trying to explain. But the oppression of science by the medieval religious authorities, for all the cruelty and incorrectness of such oppression, was an honest act, because the medieval religious authorities did not proclaim themselves to be a champion of science, but professed themselves to be a champion of religion, which they tried to serve with this rude, incorrect, but fundamentally honest and consistent method. But the Soviet Marxist anti-religious government proclaims its main goal "the utmost defense of science." Therefore, the persecution of scientific thought by it reveals its ontological falsity from a very important side. And for us, believers, this reveals an important truth. Once Metropolitan Anthony wrote that everything kind, everything good, everything true, wherever it is, essentially belongs to the Church of Christ, it is inherent in her. And we see an unexpected confirmation of this in the fact that nothing good, nothing true, even in the area, at first glance, exterior to the Church, can not be somehow firmly owned by that terrible devilish force, which found its fullest manifestation in anti-religious Marxism. At a time, during the first period of the domination of communism, many honest people went into scientific work as a kind of internal emigration. Suffering from the spiritual and political oppression by communism in the civil world and in everyday life, many of those who had the opportunity to do so went away from wide life into scientific fields inaccessible to the masses and political leaders. But satanic authority has found them there too. And in this hidden area, it demands from scientists an answer to the same question that it asks all its victims in all spheres with many threats and enticements: "With whom are you, with the truth (and the truth is always of God) or with us?" And again we are so vividly convinced that with theomachic strength in no area there can be peace to anyone who wants to remain faithful to any form of good. Archbishop Nathanael (Lvov). We were prompted to seriously address the topic of obedience by a problem that has long existed in the Church: most of us often identify the hierarchy, the primate and the episcopate with the Church itself, individuals with a whole institution, which, of course, the Church is. And therefore, the manifestation of disobedience in some matters to any of these persons is perceived as disobedience to the Church itself. But what does obedience to the Church really mean? Is it obedience to the head of the Church, bishops and priests as individuals regardless of whether they are good shepherds or mercenaries who throw sheep to the mercy of fate or even into the arms of wolves? Despite the fact whether they themselves are obedient to the truth of the Orthodox faith, are they rightly dividing the word of truth (2 Tim. 2, 15)?Regardless of whether everything they say and do agrees with Orthodox teaching or is it a delusion? And should we follow any clergy and obey all of them, good and evil ones, observing everything they teach, not discerning whether it is true or false? Unconditionally not! If such a distorted concept of obedience had gained the upper hand in the Church, then heresy would have reigned in it to this day, for the saints would have to remain in obedience to heretical patriarchs and hierarchs; then Nicolaism (the heresy of the apostolic age, in relation to which Christ, through the holy apostle John, twice said that the teaching of the Nicolaitans and their deeds He hates (Rev. 2, 6, 15)), coupled with homosexuality, would have been established in it forever... Obedience to the Church is not obedience at all to some specific individuals (for, as you know, people tend to err), but to the immutable truth of the Church, as it is revealed in the Gospel and the enduring centuries-old patristic Tradition. Everything that the Holy Scriptures and the holy fathers say about obedience to clergy implies obedience to good shepherds who are unceasingly caring for the truth and the salvation of the faithful. A classic example of this is an excerpt from the Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Hebrews: Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves (Heb. 13, 17). However, he considers the necessary condition for such obedience, first of all, to be the vigilant care of the shepherds for the spiritual salvation of the flock: For they watch for your souls, as they that must give account (ibid). The apostle also encourages believers to remember mentors. But what kind of mentors? Those who teach the word of God by example of their lives: Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation (Heb. 13, 7). The same applies to the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch about obedience to the holy hierarchy. Fourteen his epistles have come down to us, in some of them he extols the episcopal dignity and demands unquestioning obedience to the bishop. Many defenders of episcopal ecclesiology quite recklessly appeal to his epistles, trying to find a legal basis or justification for the undivided power of bishops, which often takes the form of pettiness and tyranny even worse than papal ones. Indeed, in his epistles, Saint Ignatius urges one to show complete obedience to the archpastor. But whether to each one? Father George Metallinos (archpriest, professor of the theological faculty of the University of Athens, a famous modern theologian and an outstanding church figure), being present at various meetings of the clergy, where, with reference to the saint, the need for unquestioning and absolute obedience to the bishop is substantiated, always notes that at the same time it would be necessary to clarify what merits he should have in order to demand obedience to him. And in his epistles, Saint Ignatius the God-bearer certainly implies obedience to the good archpastor, which, no doubt, he himself is. How many of today's hierarchs, like the saint, are an example to follow in their humility, ascetic character and active activity against heresies, as well as their confession and willingness to suffer for the truth even to death? But the Church commemorates during the celebration of the Eucharist precisely such worthy bishops who faithfully profess the word of truth. Is it conceivable to obey the clergy who do not preach the truth of the Gospel and by example of their lives lead the flock into the abyss of perdition or who justify the heresy of heresies — ecumenism? And what in the way of life of such clerics would be worth imitating? Holy disobedience is absolutely necessary when heresy and moral corruption take on colossal proportions, when the Church, in the persons of the hierarchy, falls into error, as there is the case today with regard to the heresy of ecumenism... Heresy defiles and affects the entire body of the Church, and therefore it does not matter that the pontiff visited only Athens or that the WCC met within the metropolitanate of Attica. In matters of faith, there is no such thing as "in my charge" or "in someone else's competence." Thus, the heretic Arius appeared in distant Alexandria, and the Cappadocian fathers began to fight the new false teaching; or, for example, in Constantinople, Nestorius began his heretical sermon, but the struggle against him was led mainly by the Alexandrian Saint Cyril. Thus, none of the bishops can be justified by the fact that the pope did not step into their dioceses, and that the WCC conference was not held in their metropolitanate, or that they personally did not perform joint prayers with Catholics and Protestants. Since they did not oppose this, did not counteract in any way, did not protest and did not raise their voice against this wickedness, it means that, along with everyone involved in the heresy of ecumenism, they share responsibility and bear the blame for what was happening, and are equally involved with others. to this delusion. After all, according to St. John Chrysostom, a bishop should take care not only of his diocese, but also of the entire Ecumenical Catholic Church as a whole: "The Primate should take care not only of the Church entrusted to him by the Spirit, but also of the universal One." Since we do not see anyone from the churchly hierarchy fighting ecumenism, opposing it, somehow resisting the onslaught of Roman Catholicism and the anti-Orthodox activities of the WCC, we ourselves are forced to raise our voice. But we will immediately fall silent, as soon as the Lord enlightens the archpastors, and they will begin to do at least something in the current deplorable situation. And until that happens, we, simple clerics and monks, will have to deal with it. We are all responsible for the Church, not just the hierarchs alone, because the Church is not someone's private property. The bishop, together with the clergy, as well as the laity, as a single body with the head, Christ, are responsible for her, each in their own measure. Often, when patriarchs and hierarchs fell into error, just simple presbyters and monks stood up to protect the Church from all kinds of heresies, and the believing people from time immemorial, in general, are recognized as the guardians of Orthodoxy. And lastly, having repeatedly represented the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Church of Greece at inter-Christian conferences, we were clearly convinced that such theological dialogues not only lead to nothing, but, on the contrary, lead to apostasy, to falling away from Orthodoxy. Orthodox ecumenists participating in such meetings do not at all testify to the truth of our faith, although they declare and allegedly pursue this very goal — in fact, they simply hide behind this goal, using it as an argument to justify their participation in the WCC and other similar organizations, and no more. Here are quotations from the book of the holy prophet Jeremiah, which are also used by St. Gregory Palamas in relation to contemporary heretic false shepherds: A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land; the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means (Jer. 5, 30–31). The pastors are become brutish, and have not sought the Lord: therefore they shall not prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered (Jer. 10, 21). Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness. They have made it desolate (Jer. 12, 10–11). Christ Himself clearly divides shepherds into good and evil, prompting the flock to obey only the good ones, and by no means the bad ones - mercenaries who are only interested in their own benefit and who do not at all intend to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the sheep, leaving them defenseless when attacked by wolves: The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep (Jn. 10, 11–12). Many false shepherds entered the sheepfold not through the doors, that is, not by the grace of God, but "some other way," namely through various simony. And therefore, as Ven. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain notes in his "Exhortation Guide", they are not divinely chosen vessels of God and not even proteges of the people, but simply impostors. That is why the sheep look at them as at strangers, do not obey them and do not follow them — because they follow only the true shepherds (see Jn. 10, 1–5). However, if the sheep, that is, the believers, for some reason still follow the bad shepherd, then they themselves will bear responsibility for this step. This is clearly stated in the Apostolic Decrees: the laity cannot claim that they are just obedient sheep, that they themselves do not decide anything and that all responsibility lies purely with the shepherd, who will answer for everything. It is disastrous to think this way, because certain death awaits a sheep not only when it does not follow the good shepherd and is therefore torn up by wolves, but also when it follows the evil one — the false shepherd. In conclusion, the Apostolic Decrees offer the following advice, which sounds relevant at all times: "Therefore, we must flee from destroying shepherds" (2, 19). And lastly: the apostle of peoples warns the faithful that in matters of faith and obedience it is necessary to show such caution and prudence that even if he himself or an angel began to teach something different, previously unknown, one should not listen to them: But though we, or an Angel from heaven, preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed (Gal. 1, 8). Many holy fathers, based on the Holy Scriptures, spoke directly and frankly about evil shepherds, strongly speaking out in favour of expelling them from the Church, especially when they seduce the people of God with their behaviour. Now, by distorting and abolishing the Gospel, refuting and overthrowing the holy fathers, such false shepherds are not only not expelled so that the much desired and long-awaited catharsis can occur, but, on the contrary, they are also awarded unquestioning obedience. Those who refuse to obey those who pervert the Gospel, who expose those who are the source of enticement, are called impudent troublemakers and courts are held against them with the aim of expelling them from the Church. Is not this something absurd, strange and not entirely reasonable? St. Athanasius the Great, understanding the seriousness of the issue of unworthy, bad clergy who seduce the faithful with their behaviour, boldly states the following. It is preferable for believers to gather in houses of prayer, that is, churches, alone - without bishops and priests - rather than to inherit fiery Gehenna together with them, as happened with those Jews who, together with Annas and Caiaphas, rebelled against the Saviour: "If a bishop or a priest, being the eyes of the Church, have unkind behaviour and seduce the people, then they should be expelled. It is better to gather without them in a house of prayer than with them, like with Annas and Caiaphas, to be cast into the fiery Gehenna." The news comes to us like a bolt from the blue that clergy of all degrees, whom we considered pious and abstinent, and even ascetics and were ready to imitate them and show complete obedience, turn out to be possessed by nasty vices, and such ones, about the existence of which we may not have even suspected. With such holy-rollers and "ascetics" adorned with long beards, about whom it is said that all their works they do for to be seen of men (Matt. 23, 5), we must be very careful. After all, hypocrisy has been eroding Christian morality from time immemorial, including among monastics. (St. Eustathius of Thessalonica, an enlightened and straightforward hierarch who lived in the 12th century, devoted a separate work to this vice, "On Hypocrisy," in which he angrily condemned this sin.) Saint Athanasius writes about such two-faced false shepherds as follows: "The Lord said: 'Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits' (compare Matt. 7, 15–16). If you see, brother, someone who has a decent appearance, do not look at whether he is dressed in sheep's wool, whether he bears the name of a priest, bishop, deacon or ascetic, but try to find out about his deeds, whether he is chaste, hospitable, merciful, loving, persistent in prayer, patient. If his belly is god for him, his larynx is hell, if he is greedy for money and trades in piety, leave him — he is not a wise shepherd, but a predatory wolf. If you know how to recognize trees by their fruits — what type, taste, quality they are - then even more so you should recognize the sellers of Christ by their deeds, since they, wearing the mask of reverence, have a devilish soul. You do not gather grapes from thorns or figs from burrs, then why do you think that you can hear something good from criminals or learn something useful from traitors? So, avoid them as the wolves of Arabia, the thorns of disobedience, the thistles of injustice and the evil tree. If you see a wise man, as Wisdom teaches, go to him, and let your foot rub out the thresholds of his doors, so that you can learn from him the prescriptions of the law and the gifts of grace. It is not an eloquent word or an impressive appearance to lead one into the Kingdom of Heaven, but perfect and impeccable faith together with virtuous and brilliant prudence." |
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