Message to a certain monk, the rank of abbot, about the German charm called Fortune, and about her wheel

Of the many signs of the property and action of true and perfect love according to God, enumerated by the divine Apostle, I recognize that the most demonstrative signs of this are not to rejoice in untruth, but to rejoice in the truth. He is a truly faithful and true friend who with all his soul rejoices over the good deeds and success of his friend, as if about his own, and grieves again when he sees that he is either mistaken regarding the saving apostolic dogmas of piety and paternal traditions, or has fallen into some kind of everyday troubles, and, sympathizing with his friend, tries in every way to help him and bring him back to his former good state. arrangement. I, too, being so lovingly attached to your reverence, beloved brother, would be truly wrong according to the law of holy love, if I were silent, seeing that you follow the Hellenic, Chaldean and Latin teachings invented by demons. I am talking about the concept of the wheel of happiness, called by the Latins fortune, which you yourself have and which you teach to others, as if Christ and our Savior through this wheel controls human affairs and with it raises some to the heights of power, and reduces others from there to extreme dishonor and disgrace. I am surprised how you, such a person, more experienced than others in the knowledge of God-inspired scriptures, so quickly became carried away by such an abominable teaching of the deceiver Nicholas the German! We have never heard or seen such a teaching in any divine scripture. If you want to follow the truth, you will find, on the contrary, that this is not only completely rejected by all God-inspired fathers and teachers, but also anathematized, both this teaching itself and those who follow it and preach it. We know that this false teaching originated from Zoroaster and other ancient wise men who were in Persia, who taught that all human affairs are arranged according to the celestial movements of the stars, whether they be virtues or everyday troubles. The Egyptians accepted this charm with all their souls, and from them the Hellenes, who came up with many other evil blasphemies against the Creator Himself. They, the accursed, philosophize and teach that He (the Creator), by the violent influence of the stars and the approach of the planets to the zodiacs, makes evil and good, glorious and ignorant those born under this or that planet and star. This they came up with from earthly wisdom, prophesying from their womb, and invented fabulous happiness or fortune, which some Hellenic sage, named Kevis, called blind and sitting on a round stone. He called her blind because of her deceptions, since she randomly, senselessly and unevenly gives people estates and positions of power; He called it sitting on a round stone because her gifts are not solid, but easily change, passing from one to another. Amusing themselves with such fables and themselves serving as amusement for demons, the Hellenes and Egyptians wrote and established their teachings, as alien to divine enlightenment and the infallible, God-devoted reason of the prophetic and divinely inspired scriptures. The chief of evil, the malicious devil, seeing that true believers, enlightened by the divinely inspired Scriptures, do not attach themselves to such abominable teachings of his, but, on the contrary, hate and turn away from it, tried, the wicked one, in another way to make his teaching acceptable to the pious. He convinced the Latins and Germans, already immersed in this teaching and absorbed by all this soul-destroying charm, to depict, somewhat higher than the godless likeness of false reason, that is, fabulous fortune, the most pure and venerable image of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Who, with a thin chain descending from His holy hand, seems to govern it and the depicted before her wheel, so that the pious, deceived by such an image, would be inclined to the godless astrologer's charm, seeing fortune controlled by the most pure hand of the Savior. The unclean devil intentionally allows a small amount of piety to be attributed to his evil one, in order to thus confirm in the concepts of the pious the charm of false astrologer teachers. And this is not surprising. After all, it often happened that this wicked man, taking the form of not only an angel of light or a holy priest, approached the holy hermit in order to deceive him, but it also happened that he, the bad one, acted in a terrible way in the form of the Savior Himself. And that this wisdom is an evil one invented by the Greeks, listen carefully and diligently understand what some wise Christian philosopher says about fabulous fortune: “Happiness,” he says, the Greeks call the management of the world alien to Providence, or movement from the unknown to the unknown and random. We, Orthodox Christians, confess that Christ God arranges everything and controls everything." And again he: "It is not by human thoughts and reasoning, but by God's providence and His untested destinies that all human affairs are arranged; foolish people are accustomed to calling this chance and fate, not understanding where and for what reason certain cases happen to anyone. But we, pious Christians, believe in Christ, who governs everything." Pay due attention to the Greeks' definition of fortune. They say that happiness is the control of the world alien to Providence, that is, that everything does not happen according to the wise and righteous providence of God. Do you understand from here that the Latins and Germans blaspheme the one good, righteous and wise Creator and Ruler of all, depicting near the most pure image of the Savior a godless likeness of fortune, recognizing it as some kind of His helper and co-ruler. They could not learn this from the divine scriptures, for nowhere in the divinely inspired Scriptures will you find such soul-destroying wisdom, and none of all the external philosophers praised this. On the contrary, some of them called it blind, attributing this name to the governance of the world, which is alien to Providence, that is, to the teaching that everything is not done according to God’s providence and arrangement. They condemn the philosopher Epicurus for the fact that he thought and taught incorrectly, and for this they do not praise him, and call him godless, saying this: “The teaching of Epicurus is also that all this creation is governed by some kind of happiness, and not by the will and judgment of God." Do you hear whose godless teaching this is, and how the Greeks themselves condemn it? How can you, such a person, so easily You foolishly admire such crazy German idle talk, not listening to the divine secret teacher, who tells us in the Epistle to the Colossians: Beware, lest anyone deceive you with philosophy and vain flattery, according to human tradition, according to the elements of this world, and not according to Christ (2:8). (13:9) And how are you not afraid of the same preacher of God, who speaks about the same thing to the foolish Galatians: If anyone preaches anything more than this to you, that is, what you received from us, the apostles of Christ, let him be accursed, even if an angel from heaven is like that, let him be accursed, that is, let him be cursed. Do you understand from this that some of the Latins are subject to the same anathema pronounced by the Apostle as introducing alien teachings into the minds of the pious? Try, for God’s sake, try to escape from such German deception and confess directly and honestly with the God-inspired David and with the prophetess Anna, who clearly and without any cunning say this: The Lord makes poor and rich, humbles and exalts, raises up the poor from the earth, and raises up the poor from the pit. For what, tell us, O sacred prophetess? Seat him, he says, with strong people and give him a throne of glory as an inheritance. Not by fabulous fortune and the turning of the wheel, but by a holy prophet, the Lord anointed Saul as king first, and then David, taking this one from the sheep pasture, from the milking sheds, as it is written, and that one when he was looking for his father’s lost donkeys. Also reason with your mind about how blessed Joseph became famous in Egypt, so that he was recognized as the second ruler of all Egypt after Pharaoh. Also: how Moses was raised to such a height by the dispensation and wave of God, and not by blind happiness and the rotation of the wheel. This Latin doctrine of fortune is alien, completely alien and unknown to the Holy Scriptures, my beloved brother and master! For this reason, those who adhere to this ungodly teaching are driven far from the congregation of the Orthodox. Such people do not turn out to be gathering pure and immaculate wheat with Christ into His heavenly granaries, which are the hearts and thoughts of Orthodox believers in Him, but, on the contrary, pouring out of themselves and from those who listen to them that divine treasure that is placed from above in their thoughts, that is, Orthodox dogmas about the righteous providence of God. What was not written by the divinely inspired prophets and apostles, we should not accept, as the great lamp of the entire universe, John Chrysostom, strictly bequeaths. Let us remain within the limits of infallible godly understanding. Like gentle babies, let us drink with kindness the verbal and unflattering milk, so that we may be found to have exactly fulfilled the command of the Savior, who said: unless you are converted, and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. And again: if anyone does not receive the kingdom of God, as if he were a child, he should not enter into it. The Lord here calls the Kingdom of God the gospel sermon, that is, what, having heard Himself from His Father, He revealed to His disciples. This is the essence: commandments, mysterious teaching in parables, dogmas about the infallible knowledge of God, such as: about the eternal existence of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit - the one Godhead, dominion and kingdom, about the immortality of the soul and about the future, after the end of the century, general resurrection and reward for those who lived piously and pleasing to God, also about the endless torment of those who did not submit to the apostolic preached and lived wickedly. All this and similar apostolic and prophetic dogmas and traditions, the Savior called in one word “The Kingdom of God,” and wants us to accept this simply, with all faith and reverence, and to firmly internalize it, like gentle children who, without testing, accept the teachings of their teachers and, through faith and obedience to them, achieve perfect knowledge of the sacred scriptures and verbal sciences. and we must diligently adhere to the dogmas and testaments taught to us by our Savior Himself and His holy disciples and apostles and ecumenical councils, and not add or subtract anything from them, as our God-bearing fathers correctly established, through whose holy prayers may we be honored to receive a portion of those saved.