Об удалении от чтения книг, содержащих в себе лжеучение

Again I bring you, faithful son of the Eastern Church, a word of sincere, good advice. This word does not belong to me: it belongs to the Holy Fathers. That's where all my advice comes from. Keep your mind and heart from the teaching of lies. Do not talk about Christianity with people infected with false thoughts; do not read books about Christianity written by false teachers. The Holy Spirit is co-present with Truth: He is the Spirit of Truth. Lies are co-present and assisted by the spirit of the devil, who is lies and the father of lies. He who reads the books of false teachers will certainly become familiar with the evil, dark spirit of lies. Let this not seem strange or incredible to you: this is what the luminaries of the Church - the Holy Fathers - say. (“Let no one read,” said the Hieromartyr Peter of Damascus, “that does not serve to please God. If he ever reads something of this kind in ignorance, then let him strive to erase it from his memory as quickly as possible by reading the Divine Scriptures and of them precisely those that most serve for the salvation of his soul, according to the state that he has achieved... But let him not read books contrary to this. What is the need to receive an unclean spirit instead of the Holy Spirit? Who is in what he practices a word, he receives the properties of that word, although the inexperienced do not see this, as those with spiritual experience see.”) 17. If your mind and heart are not written with anything, let the Truth and the Spirit write on them the commandments of God and His spiritual teaching. If you have allowed the tablets of your soul to be scribbled and erased with various concepts and impressions, without prudently and carefully discerning who the writer is and what he writes, then clean out what was written by alien writers; cleanse through repentance and rejection of everything that is ungodly. Let the finger of God be the writer on your tablets. Prepare for this writer purity of mind and heart through a pious, chaste life: then, during your prayers and when reading sacred books, the law of the Spirit will be unnoticeably, mysteriously inscribed on the tablets of the soul. You are allowed to read only those books about religion that were written by the Holy Fathers of the universal Eastern Church. This is what the Eastern Church demands from its children 18 . If you reason differently, and find the command of the Church less solid than the reasoning of yours and others who agree with you, then you are no longer a son of the Church, but its judge. Are you going to call me one-sided, not quite enlightened, a rigorist? – Leave me my one-sidedness and all other shortcomings: I wish it better to be obedient to the Eastern Church with these shortcomings than, despite all the imaginary perfections, to be smarter than her, and therefore allow myself to disobey her and separate from her. The true children of the Eastern Church will be pleased with my voice. They know that whoever wants to receive heavenly wisdom must leave his own, earthly wisdom, no matter how great it may be, renounce it, recognize it for what it is, “riot” (1 Cor. 3:19). Earthly wisdom is enmity against God: it does not submit to the Law of God, and cannot submit (Rom. 8:7). From the beginning this is its property; She will remain like this until her end, when “the earth and the things that are in it,” and with them earthly wisdom, “are burned up” (2 Pet. 3:10). The Holy Church allows reading the books of false teachers only those members whose thoughts and heartfelt feelings are healed and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, who can always distinguish from true good the evil that pretends to be good and is covered with the guise of good. The great saints of God, who knew the weakness common to all people, feared the poison of heresy and lies, and therefore, with all possible care, avoided conversations with people infected with false teaching and reading heretical books 19. Having before their eyes the fall of the most learned Origen, Arius, skilled in argument, the eloquent Nestorius and others rich in the wisdom of the world, who died from arrogance and conceit, they sought salvation and found it in flight from false teaching, in the most precise obedience to the Church. Spirit-bearing, holy shepherds and Church teachers read the writings of blasphemous heretics, forced to such reading by the necessary need of the entire Christian society. They denounced errors with a strong word, a spiritual word, and announced to all the children of the Church the hidden danger in heretical writings, covered with magnificent names of holiness and piety. But you and I need to be guarded from reading books written by false teachers. Anyone who does not belong to the Eastern Church, the only saint who wrote about Christ, about the Christian faith and morality, has the name of a false teacher. Tell me: how is it possible to allow you to read every book, when every book you read leads you where it wants - convinces you to agree to everything that it needs your consent to, to reject everything that it needs you to reject? Experience proves how disastrous the consequences of indiscriminate reading are. How many concepts about Christianity can be found among the children of the Eastern Church, the most confusing, incorrect, contrary to the teachings of the Church, condemning this holy teaching - concepts acquired by reading heretical books! Do not be offended, my friend, by my warnings, inspired by the desire for your true good. Will not a father, mother, or kind teacher fear for an innocent, inexperienced baby when he wants to enter a room where there is a lot of poison between the food supplies? The death of the soul is more unfortunate than the death of the body: the dead body will be resurrected, and often the death of the body is the cause of life for the soul; on the contrary, a soul killed by evil is a victim of eternal death. The soul can be killed by one thought containing some kind of blasphemy, subtle, not at all noticeable to those who do not know. The time will come, the holy Apostle foretold, “when they will not listen to sound teaching, but will choose for themselves teachers after their own lusts, with their ears scratched; they will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to fables” (2 Tim. 4:3-4). Do not be seduced by the loud title of the book, which promises to teach Christian perfection to those who still need the food of babies; Do not be seduced by the magnificent publication, or the painting, the power, the beauty of the style, or the fact that the writer is like a saint, as if he has proven his holiness by numerous miracles. False teaching does not stop at any fiction, at any deception, in order to give its fables the appearance of truth, and the more convenient it is to poison the soul with them. False teaching in itself is already a deception. By him the writer is deceived before the reader (2 Tim. 3:13). The sign of a book that is truly, essentially beneficial to the soul is that it is a holy Writer, a member of the Eastern Church, approved and recognized by the Holy Church. Amen. St. Peter of Damascus, book one, article on reasoning. Dobrot., part 3. When performing the sacrament of confession, it is necessary to ask the penitent whether he is reading heretical books? Breviary. Life of Pachomius. Patrologiae. Tomus LXXIII, cap. XLIV. You might be interested in: