The attitude of an Orthodox person to his Church and heterodoxy

The truth of Christianity is that it is not just a theory, a human guess about existence, about God, about the origin of the world and man and the purposes of their existence, or a system developed by the human mind from given premises, but is a description of real life, which has been in God from eternity and brought into the world by Jesus Christ. Therefore, dogmas for an Orthodox Christian have always been and should be dogmas of piety, the metaphysical basis of his moral life, they should confirm the instructions of a righteous Christian conscience and, in turn, find in it confirmation and experimental explanation for themselves. The ideal Christian, therefore, in his theology always proceeds from his inner experience and is confident in the truth freely, on the basis that he is directly aware and experientially participates in this truth. External rational recognition of the existence of God is also inherent in demons (cf. James 2:19), but the truth of Divine life is comprehended and felt only by those who experience it. Of course, the source of life is not inside man himself; sin constantly lives in him, a principle that denies Divine life; therefore, external means of obtaining truth is necessary for each individual person. For him, the Holy Scripture and the Church are witnesses of the truth, but he believes these witnesses again freely, not so that historical and other conclusions force him to recognize these witnesses as trustworthy, but because in his own spiritual experience, in his conscience, he finds a direct and immediate reflection of the truth that the Church and the Holy Scripture offer him. “The Church,” says Khomyakov, “is not an authority, just as God is not an authority, Christ is not an authority; for authority is something external to us. Not authority, I say, but truth and at the same time the life of a Christian, his inner life; for God, Christ, the Church live in him a life more real than the heart beating in his chest, or the blood flowing in his veins; but they live because he himself lives the universal life of love and unity, that is, the life of the Church.” A Christian does not need to ascend to heaven or descend underground to find his Christ there (cf. Rom. 10:7); he believes in Him because he is constantly convinced that Christ gives him life and breath and everything (Acts 17:25)... Every representative of heterodoxy, no matter how far he may be from the [Orthodox] Church, will always remain an object of spiritual care for the [Orthodox] Christian. It is common for a Christian to be everything to everyone (1 Cor. 9:22), to recognize the very last grain of truth, if a person has it, so that through this grain he can be understood by his opponent and save at least some (1 Cor. 9:22). But such an elevated mood is only an ideal, rarely realized in practice. Most people only partly live by faith and only partly belong to the Church. Therefore, the inner sense of truth is not heard by them with such immediate clarity, and faith for them is something external, a certain rule imposed on their will. Therefore, their relationship to their faith and the Church will not be so vibrant, and at the same time their relationship to heterodoxy will no longer be the same. In accordance with their spiritual make-up, following their sympathies, etc., such semi-church people can be either conservative or liberal. Conservatives are always true to their religion. But this is not the churchliness of a true Christian; this is only semi-civil loyalty to one’s banner, only confessionalism. A person adheres to a given creed not because he has internally comprehended its truth, but simply because for some reason he belongs to this confession. This essentially self-contradictory phenomenon occurs precisely because a person does not live by faith and therefore does not experience its truth. The direct conclusion from here would be falling away, but this does not happen either because spiritual inertia prevents a person from seeing the internal contradiction of his life, or because he is afraid of the inevitable, in the case of consistency, bleak skepticism and unbelief. A striking example of such half-belief, external obedience to faith without internal comprehension of it, can be the famous Catholic scientist of the 14th century Ockham (f 1349). As a true nominalist, he recognized that general concepts (and therefore the concept of God, the origin of the world, etc.) are only forms of human thinking, and therefore, operating with them, a person will never come to knowledge of the truth; what is proven by reason can be true to the same extent as its direct opposite. From here Occam unexpectedly comes to the recognition of the unconditional truth of the Holy Scriptures and the Church! Having no knowledge of the truth and even refusing to understand it in advance, Occam seems to want to limit himself only to what he is told to recognize as truth. This is essentially the spiritual state of all confessionalists in general: not having the truth within themselves, they are forced to define it by the letter of the external, from the given testimony, and, of course, will never be in complete possession of it. The position of such people in the face of other faiths is very fragile and uncertain. Just mental and, to some extent, forced recognition of this or that truth, without internal experience in oneself, without implementation in life, will never give complete confidence and peace of mind. A person will always fear for the strength of a faith that was so easily given to him and a belief that was so accidentally founded. Therefore, any new thought, and even more so a direct denial of his official faith, will be scary and, like a terrible thing, hateful to him. Instead of pastoral benevolence, such a person’s attitude towards heterodoxy will be dominated by fanaticism, the desire to drive away and destroy before the opponent’s arguments shake the unsteady foundations of his half-faith. On the other hand, one cannot expect from such people a desire to somehow enter into the position of non-Orthodox people, to discover something good in them and through this to find for them a bridge to the truth. Without understanding the truth in his heart and knowing it only by external signs, a person, of course, cannot evaluate another confession except from the outside: does it agree with the letter of Orthodoxy or does it not agree. He doesn't ask for more. A typical example of such narrow, unreasoning polemics is scholastic polemics, and especially in Catholicism... The opposite of confessionalism is liberal indifferentism, that is, indifference to religious characteristics; all faiths are the same. But this opposition is rather visible, superficial - in essence, this direction of thought expresses the same spiritual state, that is, the same only external, half-hearted affiliation with the Church. People in this camp also see in the doctrine of their Church only a set of dry formulas without tangible content. They also do not know the living truth of their Church and, therefore, also in the depths of their souls, imperceptibly for themselves, are infected with doubt or denial. The only difference from conservatives is that the fanaticism (odium theologicum) that plagues the conservative camp is not characteristic of these liberal people. Therefore, their attitude towards heterodoxy is softer than the attitude of the conservative camp, that is, more consistent and sincere: unsure in the depths of their souls in their religion, they do not try to impose it on others, do not make dogmas a subject of dispute or a cause of division. Some of them, in their mood less abstract or softer in soul, alienating dogmas or not understanding them, do not cease to be interested in Christianity, or, strictly speaking, in the destinies of Christian society. They are painfully struck by the religious divisions occurring in this society, the mutual hatred between the followers of Christ. Polemics, alien to the knowledge of truth, fruitlessly playing with incomprehensible and unnecessary formulas and hating opponents, give these gentle people many reasons to consider themselves fair. And indeed, they seem to rightly say that divisions are not characteristic of a society of love - the Church of Christ, especially divisions due to such abstractions that even those who defend them are not sure of. The task of theological science, in their opinion, should not be to defend subtleties and thus deepen the abyss separating the disputants more and more, but, on the contrary, to somehow reconcile them, to show them their common ground in the fulfillment of the law of Christ, to remind them that Christianity is not school philosophy, not scholasticism, but life. As a protest against the soulless polemics of the orthodox Protestants of the 17th century, this trend began among more well-meaning Protestants; It was in this spirit that the Protestant theologian Georg Callixtus (1656) first began to write. In the Catholic world, traces of this trend can be seen in the writings of the famous Bossuet. There are many representatives of this direction at the present time. These scientists set their task to contribute in every possible way to the cause of Christian unity and church peace. The task, of course, is great, and the goal of the activity is completely Christian, holy, but the fact is that, not having the consciousness of Christian truth in themselves, the people of this camp place the very cause of unity on completely false grounds. They try in every possible way to smooth out, blur the existing differences between confessions, to present them as unimportant and accidental. Some went so far as to say, following Richelieu, that, for example, “even in the doctrine of justification there is absolutely no difference between Catholics and Protestants.” From the completely legitimate desire for the “unification of all”, thus, a completely incorrect view of dogmatic teaching resulted, as something unimportant for salvation, as something conditional, owing its origin to human opinions. This direction, of course, is most natural in Protestantism, where there are so many divisions and they arise so easily. No matter what a Protestant says about the authority of Holy Scripture and so on, for him a matter of faith is still a matter of personal conviction. Can this private property be used as a yardstick for others? No matter how faithful a sincere Protestant may be to his confession, to his private Church, he cannot forget that it too is the work of people, that it is impossible to see unconditional truth in it. “Was the Church somewhere in a completely healthy state,” asks Neander? This could only take place where there was no taint of sin. In all the different forms of Christianity, we must be able to distinguish the image of one Christ - obscured, perhaps more, perhaps less - various refractions of one Divine ray.” If in the world it is impossible to find a completely complete and correct expression of Christ’s teaching, then everyone has to choose only what he likes best, without checking especially carefully how true this form is; he is no longer looking for truth, but only for the “greatest satisfaction” of his religious needs. Of course, there’s no arguing about tastes.” The Anglican Church is especially distinguished by this direction: its very composition and position force it to make the described direction almost the main principle of its church policy. The Anglicans constantly talk about union either with Rome (now, however, this desire has fallen silent), or with the Orthodox Church, or with their dissidents. They want to achieve this union on the basis of mutual forbearance in matters of faith, mutual patience, and cite as a basis the words of the Apostle regarding the acceptance of the weak without a dispute about opinions: let each church community believe and teach as it seems correct (of course, preserving the basic Christian doctrine), let it perform divine services in its own way, with or without the veneration of icons, with or without candles, but only let it not express claims to unconditional truth, does not deny what is Christian in other communities and does not interrupt communication with them. The first thing that is set as a goal in this desire for union, or, more precisely, for a certain kind of church confederation, is communion in the sacraments, and in communion, first of all. Having decided this question for themselves and allowing everyone to come to their Eucharistic table, members of the Anglican Church demand the same for themselves and turn to the Orthodox for communion. And every time an unpleasant conversation arises about why this cannot be done. Refusal to receive communion seems like some kind of medieval stubbornness, fanatical exclusivity, and generally insufficient penetration of the spirit of Christ. The official expression of what kind of union the Anglicans wish to achieve can be, for example, the message of the Lambeth Conference (1898), in particular its appeal to English nonconformists. In this message, the Anglican Church has essentially conceded everything to the nonconformists and agrees to accept them into communion if they recognize only two sacraments and Holy Scripture as the only source of doctrine (with the indispensable condition, of course, that they allow the Church itself to perform the remaining sacraments and observe the forms accepted in it). And the recently retired Anglican Bishop of Gibraltar (he is London’s assistant for the management of overseas Anglican churches in Europe) in one of his messages, without mincing words, speaks of “almost complete dogmatic agreement of the Anglican Church” with our Orthodox Church. Of course, such a peaceful mood and attitude towards heterodoxy will always win sympathy: being intolerant of other people’s opinions and beliefs is always considered a sign of mental narrowness and moral underdevelopment, imperfection. However, it is necessary to see how pure the source from which this peaceful mood emanates. At the same time, we will see that all these noble attempts at union are dear to us and attractive only as long as in matters of faith we stand exclusively from the point of view of this, earthly life and earthly interests. Of course, it is a great benefit for the Christian world to be united: all faiths have... a common cause - the enlightenment of millions of people with the light of Christ... Is it time to think about religious accounts and dogmatic subtleties? Anglicans (for example, the Bishop of Gibraltar just mentioned) and Old Catholics indicate an even more special motive for union: our common division with Rome... The argument, of course, is solid and quite convincing, but it has significance only if other, more significant and more important interests of the Church are not forgotten. In this case, we understand it only from the side in which it is a society or institution standing on earth next to other societies and institutions. For such a society, of course, crowding, external force, and the like are very important, significant issues, especially in the struggle for existence. For the Church, what is more important is not external power, but salvation, because Christ did not come to establish a kingdom on earth, but to save lost sheep. Salvation is determined by the extent to which the Church preserves in all purity the life of Christ, which Christ Himself entrusted it with guarding. Can the Church allow another life, a different understanding of life into its midst? This would be a renunciation of oneself, even if this small concession to the world and the spirit of the times brought the Church innumerable benefits for its own earthly existence... The Apostle John the Theologian defines the nature of Christian unity this way: We learn that we love the children of God when we love God and keep His commandments (1 John 5:2). Not every world, therefore, is desirable, but only one for which one does not have to sacrifice Christ and His teaching. Christ Himself says that He brought to earth not peace, but a sword, fire, and not a sugary and, in essence, insincere reasoning about unity, when in fact there is no complete unity in the heart. In general, it must be said that in all this, just like among conservatives, the earthly benefit of a given confession or community, in general, confessional interest, although in a broader sense, takes precedence over Christian interest, over the love of truth. The same Anglican Church can, moreover, be a living example of what such an artificial union of incompatible elements in one church body will lead to. Pusey was undoubtedly a true member of the Anglican Church, as was Lord Halifax (who raised the issue of union with Rome), but an equally true and full member was that ridiculous Kensit, who raised iconoclastic scandals in Anglican churches (throwing crosses and the like from altars). In English spiritual magazines one can often find endless discussions about the permissibility and even obligatory veneration of saints, about the preservation of reserve gifts for the communion of the sick, etc., and at the same time, other magazines and writers and preachers wonder whether it is even permissible to put a cross on a church building. And as a result, it turns out that only one establishment (institution - Ed.), only the state organization of the Church, in other words, only external civil law, binds these people of different opinions and different faiths. The first condition for church unity is sincerity, and it is possible only when people openly and without reticence say what they see wrong in the non-Orthodox and what correction they demand from him. The presented examples of incorrectness and deviations of theological thought quite clearly indicate to us the path that an Orthodox thinker should choose in relation to heterodoxy. We must understand Western confessions and evaluate them from the point of view of truly Christian teaching. By saying that we need to understand them, we partly define the research method itself. If we only point out the partial deviations of these confessions from the truth, and on the basis of the Holy Scriptures and Holy Tradition we refute each point by point of their doctrine, then we will not understand the Western confessions, and without understanding them, we will not convince anyone of their falsity: there will always remain the possibility of assuming an imperceptible trick in our evidence, and in the failure of the enemy - only a temporary oversight or inexperience... We need to understand the Western faiths in their basic worldview, to find out their understanding of life... then private points, perhaps, will not require refutation. Life is a subject that can be judged by anyone who has reason and conscience, an unperverted moral consciousness. Someone may not understand dogmatic reasoning, one may not know historical evidence, but the understanding of life is before everyone’s eyes. If we keep in mind this fundamental side of Western Christianity, then our research will receive even greater interest. The fact is that Catholicism and Protestantism, in addition to the fact that they are well-known, externally defined confessions, exist at the same time as principles of life and thinking (are these two principles or just unique forms of the same thing, we will talk about this later), as principles that, of course, are not confined to any specific place or institution and, therefore, can and do act not only in Western society, but also in our country. For example, one could point to V. S. Solovyov as a characteristic and conscious exponent of Catholic thinking; but I mean a Catholic or Protestant bias in views, expressed unconsciously, covertly. This latter can be found in Orthodox scientific works, and in sermons, and in ordinary everyday understanding of life. Borrowing alone cannot explain all this. It is more reasonable to see in this the offspring of a homogeneous soil, that is, Catholicism and Protestantism, therefore, are related to the human soul in its certain state. That is why members of the Orthodox Church, representatives of Orthodox theological science can sometimes speak and think and write in Catholic or Protestant ways. The difference between the Church (Orthodox - Ed.) and Western confessions in this regard will only be that in the Church this is a moral state and hence a way of viewing, although they are characteristic of many, very many members, but they do not express the views of their own church, and are not accepted by the Church. In the West, this is set as the cornerstone, recognized as truth by the Church and theological science and, as a dogma, in turn, guides the lives of members of Western communities. Thus, making a judgment about Catholicism and Protestantism as ways of thinking and understanding of life, we will touch upon objects and concepts that may be very close to us, and we will perhaps reach a positive conclusion, in the sense of developing an Orthodox understanding of life and the principles of Orthodox theological thinking.