The word of Nicetas Stiphatus against the Latins

See also: Epistle to the Romans on unleavened bread, and Sabbath fasting and priestly marriages (Church Slavonic translation) by St. Nikita Stifat Reasoning (διάλεξις) and objection (αντιδιάλογος) of Nicetas Stiphatus against the Latins [A. Beginning of "Discourse"] Nikita, monk and presbyter of the Studite monastery, reasoning against the Franks, that is, the Latins “If you have knowledge,” said the wise one, “then answer your neighbor” (Sirach. 5:14), and “do not hinder a timely word” (cf.: Sirach. 4:27). Peter, the highest among the supreme [apostles], thus exhorting, says: “Be ready always to answer everyone who asks you with a word concerning the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15). And so that we present to the Romans an apology for not in vain prudence and decency, [which] has now been told to us by the most venerable father and brother Basil, abbot of the sacred monastery of St. Benedict, and the most God-loving archbishop of Bari, who presented to us the research on several main [subjects] carried out in their church hierarchy [321] (I’m talking about unleavened bread, the Sabbath fasting, marriage of priests and weddings performed during holy fasting (τελείας) at every liturgy) - so, with the assistance of the Spirit from above, let us compose a word to them. Let's start like this: Roman men, since you are similar to us, and since you stayed in our cities, you saw that there is nothing in common [between] our faith, called by [the name of] Christ, and the ancient customs of the Jews, [and] long ago [already] their Levitical ministry was completely rejected by God in preference to the appearance of the Word, about which their prophets clearly cried out; no communication [can] follow between us, [just as] what is said about the sons of light and day and those freed from the canopy of the law - and those who still sit in darkness and such canopy, the Jews. For you prepare and eat their unleavened bread and fast on the Sabbath, fully fulfilling and observing the punishment of the law and such slavery. However, this should not happen to us who are free. If you still partake of unleavened bread, Romans, then you are still under the shadow of the law and you are eating the table of the Jews, and not the [meal] of God, verbal, living and for us, believing people, essential and consubstantial, just as you were taught to ask for your daily bread from above. [322] [Start of "Objection"] Nikita, monk and presbyter of the Studite monastery, Stiphatus to the Romans [word] on unleavened bread, Saturday fasts and marriage of priests 1. Love for one's neighbor is wonderful, O Romans, wisest and noblest of all nations! After all, from love for one’s neighbor humility abounds in those who have it. [Love] abounding in it, makes the participant love everything, endure everything, as the divine apostle says, never be proud of his neighbor and not rebel against him, not only seek his own, not envy him, not have strife and contention. (1 Cor. 13, 7, 4, 5). Yet such a thing drives out love and humility, and forces a person to walk not according to God, but to please men, which Paul also condemns, saying: since there are quarrels, and envy, and dissensions among you, are you not carnal and not walking according to man? (1 Cor. 3:3). Therefore, I ask your love to humble yourself for the sake of God’s commandment and to hear from us, unworthy and insignificant, what we were asked many times by various Romans who came here, about unleavened bread, [and] what we will say about this in Christ’s love for you. 2. Those who partake of unleavened bread are under the shadow of the law and eat the table of the Jews, and not the verbal and living [meal] of God, and for us, believing people, essential and consubstantial, as we are taught from above to ask for our daily bread. [323] [and “Reasoning” and “Objection” further:] And what does vital mean, if not that it is consubstantial with us? There is no other bread that is consubstantial with us, except the Body of Christ, which became consubstantial with us according to the flesh of His humanity. If the essence of our confusion, which the Word received, is animated, then when you partake of unleavened bread, you are no longer eating bread that is essential and not of the same essence to us. After all, it is obvious that unleavened bread is soulless, as the very nature of things clearly teaches. The small leaven put into the dough at the beginning, mixing it and arranging it into a single perfect kvass, warms it with a certain vital force and makes the movable as if alive (κινητικὴν οἶα δὴ ζῶσαν). In unleavened bread, the “leaven of the Pharisees,” from which the Word convinces us to run away, this never happens and cannot happen at all. We have become partakers of the divine nature, which we partake of every [liturgy], having communion with Christ, just as the Supreme Peter says: May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord, - and a little further: so that for this sake you become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:2,4), and not the unleavened leaven of deicides. Will anyone who thinks ever call the unleavened and dead leaven of the Jews, which you sacrifice to God and which you eat as a substitute (ἀντίτυπον) of the living flesh of the Lord, the divine nature? How then will you have fellowship with Christ, the living God, eating, as was said, the dead and unleavened leaven of the canopy of the law, and not [the leaven] of the New Testament? Even if you say this, you are lying, for the beloved [324] disciple of Christ said: If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not create the truth. If we walk in the light, as He himself is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:6-7). The one who eats unleavened bread walks in the darkness of the law, and how will he have fellowship with Christ, who exists in the light of His new covenant and grace? And those who walk in the light of grace eat bread - the Body of Christ and drink His most pure Blood, and thus have fellowship with each other and with Christ, cleansed, as was said, from all sin. Unleavened bread is not bread, since it is not completely ready (ἄρτιον) and is not self-perfect, but insufficient, half-finished and requires replenishment of leaven. Bread is completely ready, completed, perfect and full, as something that has all the completeness in itself. 3. See, then, that there is no life force in the unleavened bread, for it is dead; in the bread, that is, in the Body of Christ, there are three vital [principles] and give life to those who partake of it worthily: spirit, water and blood, as Christ’s confidante John himself testifies with the following word: “These are the three that testify,” he says, “the Spirit, [325] water and blood, and these three are one (1 John 5:8) - it is obvious that they are in the Body of Christ. Also, during the Lord’s crucifixion, it became clear when water and blood flowed from His most pure side when His Body was pierced with a spear, but the living and holy Spirit abided in His deified flesh, which we taste in the bread transferred by the Spirit into the Body of Christ; [and] we live in Him as those who eat living and deified flesh. Likewise, by drinking His Blood, living and warm, with the flowing water from His most pure side, we are cleansed from all sin and filled with the boiling (ζέοντος) Spirit; warm, as you see - since we drink the cup from the side of the Lord, and since from the living and warmest flesh the warmest blood and water flowed to us by the Spirit of Christ. But in those who eat unleavened bread, [nothing] of this happens. 4. If you eat dead leaven, O wisest of the Romans, as the word has shown, then why should you boast, saying that “we do not knead flour like you - [with] salt, leaven and water, and [do not] thus offer our unleavened bread, but we make unleavened bread only with water, flour and fire, and in these three [substances] we make our sacrifice pure.” I ask you: these three [substances]: water, flour and fire, [326] what do you accept? And what do you consider them to be instead of images? Is it the flesh of the Lord? But John, beloved by Christ, did not say: “There are three who testify - water, flour and fire,” but: “...Spirit, water and blood, and these three are one” - it is obvious that they are in the Body of Christ; as it is said that we, by tasting, are united for the sake of the incarnate and sacrificed Christ, being co-corporeal with Him, as flesh “we are of His flesh” (Eph. 5:20) and bone “of His bones” (Gen. 2:28), as it is written. If you accept this as the uncreated and incorporeal nature of the Holy Trinity, then you are deceived, falling into the heresy of the theopaschites, who say that the flesh of the Word and His very divinity were co-compassionate. For not the whole Trinity was incarnate - Father, Son and Spirit - so that you could see in Her these three [substances], water, as you say, flour and fire, and as a substitute for Her (αὐτῆς) you make unleavened bread and offer [it] as a sacrifice; but One of the Trinity - the Son and Word of God, having become incarnate, became man from the pure flesh of the holy Virgin and, having completed everything [necessary] for the economy, was crucified in the flesh without suffering His divinity. Having been crucified in the flesh, He gave us [the sacrament] of eating through the bread of His flesh, which is alive in the Holy Spirit, saying: “Take, eat, this is My Body, which was broken for you for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28). 5. What have you [our] brothers in Christ to do with the law that was abolished in Christ, that you still eat unleavened bread? [327] We are “in Christ a new creation, [all] ancient things have passed away.” Listen to Paul who says: “Now everything has become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). If you judged it right to eat it, then why are you not circumcised? Christ [after all] was circumcised. Why are you not purified [according to the law]? Paul [after all] did this too. And you also do not observe all the other old things that those who [live] according to the law do, “for their sake the name of God is blasphemed among the nations” (Rom. 2:24), as it is written: “Your praise is not good” (1 Cor. 5:6). And I will address you with the [words] of the apostle: “Do you not know,” he says, “that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?” (Ibid.) And here we are talking about bread, not unleavened bread. What is the apostle writing to the Corinthians about here? Is it not about this, as you propose, that they should celebrate on unleavened bread? [cm. 1 Cor. 5, 8 ] In no case. But since they ignored his stepmother (Ibid. That’s why he says, adding: “And do not be sad, let him who has done such a deed be removed from among you” (5:2), for it is possible, he says, for this evil to spread throughout all your cities, and, like a little leaven that leavens all the dough, to take possession of them all, leaven them and turn them into the dough of great sin. “Purge,” he says, “the old leaven” of sin, remove it from among you, “so that you may be new” in Christ “a test, since you, having been baptized, are “unleavened” [328], that is, pure, mortified to the world and carnal lusts, “for the Passover is ours,” that is, so that we may be free from sin and death, “Christ was slain.” Therefore,” he says, “let us celebrate not in the old leaven” of sin, “not in the leaven of malice and wickedness, but in the unleavened bread of purity and truth,” (5:7-8) that is, the purity of life and faith, with which, believing in the God of truth, we become His true worshipers (cf. John 4:24). The great Gregory the Theologian understood these words in the same way, 1 and this, O wise ones, is the meaning of this apostolic statement, and not as you understand it (about the unleavened bread of the holiday and communion). And if Paul had written to the Corinthians about unleavened bread and its celebration and exhorted them to celebrate on unleavened bread, he would not have commanded or established, teaching with the eleven and all [the rest] and legitimizing the rules of the church of faith, in the 70th canon with the prohibition not to accept the same [unleavened bread] from the Jews: “If anyone,” he says, “is a bishop, or a presbyter, or a deacon, or in general from the list clergy, fasts with the Jews, or celebrates with them, or accepts from them the gifts of their holidays, such as unleavened bread, or something similar: let him be cast out. If he is a layman: let him be excommunicated.” Greek text: Michel-1930, V.2, S.320–342. Latin translation (without the initial fragment of the Dialexis): Acta et scripta... S.127–136. Perhaps this means: “Now we have purely fled from Egypt, from the cruel ruler of Pharaoh and the merciless overseers, we have freed ourselves from clay and plinth-making, and no one will prevent us from celebrating the Lord our God the feast of the Exodus, and celebrating not in the leaven of malice and wickedness, but in the leaven of purity and truth (1 Cor. 5:8), without bringing with us the Egyptian godless kvass." (Word 1, On Easter and about your slowdown. // St. Gregory the Theologian. Creations. M., 1899, vol. 1, p. 4)