THE THREE LEVELS OF APOSTASY
By Fr. Damascene Christensen, from “One Man in the
Face of Apostasy ” Orthodox Word Magazine, #130, Sept. - Oct. 1986.
In studying Archbishop Averky’s writings on the
apostasy, one can discern three levels of which he spoke, these levels
progressing from the most obvious to the most difficult to detect.
The First Level
At the first level is the loss of Christianity’s
“savour” by Christendom in general. The roots of this are found in the schism
of East and West and in the medieval West’s gradual formation of a “new
Christianity,” in which man’s fallen reason—rather than divinely revealed
tradition—-became the criterion of truth. In essence, it was this change in
perspective from the spiritual to the natural that led, through the Renaissance
and “Enlightenment,” to the blatant materialism of our own times—a materialism
that has spiritually blinded modern man. “There can be discerned,” wrote
Archbishop Averky, “some kind of rationally acting black hand which is working
to bind people as tightly as possible to this temporary, earthly life by
forcing them to forget the future life, the eternal life assuredly awaiting us
all.”
Materialism, Archbishop Averky understood, corrupts
the faith of Christians without their even knowing it.
Even their ostensible stand “against worldliness” or
their talk of Heaven may be filled with worldly conceptions if they have lost
the right understanding of the “world” that is opposed by basic Christianity.
Moreover, that which would, from an Orthodox viewpoint, be considered immoral, becomes
permissible to a Christianity infected with worldliness. Wrote Archbishop
Averky:
“Of what sort of genuine union of all Christians in
the spirit of Christian love can we speak now when the Truth is denied by
almost everyone, when deceit is in control almost everywhere, when a genuinely
spiritual life among people who call themselves Christians has dried up and
been replaced by a carnal life, an animal life which has nonetheless been
placed on a pedestal and concealed by the idea of pretended charity which
hypocritically justifies any sort of spiritual excess, any sort of moral
anarchy. Indeed, it is from this that are derived all these numberless ‘balls,’
various kinds of‘games,’ ‘dances’ and amusements, toward which, despite their
immoral and anti-Christian
nature, even many modern clergymen have a tolerant attitude,
sometimes even organizing them themselves and participating in them.”
In losing touch with the essence of its faith—which
is, in a word, otherworldliness—Christendom deprives believers of living
contact with the grace of the Holy Spirit. Christians must therefore find
substitutes for this grace by inducing, through self-persuasion, “spiritual
experiences.” At the same time they seek a substitute, in this world, for the
other world that is no longer tangible to them. Of these “neo- Christians,”
Archbishop Averky wrote:
“'They want blessedness here in this world, burdened
with its multitude of sins and iniquities; and they await this blessedness with
impatience. They consider one of the surest ways to attaining it to be the
‘ecumenical movement,’ the union and unification of all peoples in one new
‘church’ which will comprise not only Roman Catholics and Protestants, but also
Jews, Moslems and pagans, each retaining its own convictions and errors. This
imaginary ‘Christian’ love, in the name of the future blessedness of men on
earth, cannot but trample upon the Truth.” Archbishop Averky termed the belief
in future blessedness on earth “neo- chiliasm”—chiliasm being the ancient
heretical belief in a thousand-year reign of Christ as an earthly king. He foresaw
that the outward “ecumenical unity” sought by the “neochiliasts” would be
nothing else than an official unity supported and approved of by Antichrist.
For Archbishop Averky, the modern “ecumenical
movement” was indicative of something else: the widespread disbelief in
absolute Truth. Through this comes an unwillingness to take a stand for
anything and a weak-willed acceptance or even justification of evil, all in the
name of the most superficial ideas of “Christian love” and “peace.” Archbishop
Averky expressed it thus:
“In our times, when there are such strong doubts about
even the existence of Truth, when every ‘truth’ is considered relative and it
is considered legal for each person to hold to ‘his own truth,’ the struggle
for the Truth acquires a particularly important meaning. And the person who
does not sympathize with this struggle, who sees in it only a manifestation of
‘phariseeism’ and suggests ‘humbling oneself’ before falsehood by falling away
from the Truth, should naturally be recognized as a betrayer of the Truth,
whoever he might be, whatever he might call or consider himself.”
Those who place all their hope in this world must of
necessity either give into despair or blind themselves to the rising degeneracy
in all forms of public life. Their relativistic and irresolute attitude only
helps to unleash the forces of Satan in the last times. As Archbishop Averky
pointed out:
“The ‘ministers of Satan,’ or, which is the same
thing, the servants of the coming Antichrist, make use of this spiritual
blindness of the majority of modern people and stubbornly and insistently do
their work with genuinely satanic energy. With special efforts and with all
available means, with the aid of all the resources under their control, they
bind forcibly to themselves adepts who are wittingly or unwittingly, willingly or
unwillingly, cooperating with them in creating in the world circumstances and
conditions appropriate for the very near appearance of the Antichrist as the
ruler of the whole world and the master of all mankind.”
In another place,
Archbishop Averky wrote more on this same theme:
“The fundamental task of the servants of the coming
Antichrist is to destroy the old world with all its former concepts and
‘prejudices,’ in order to build in its place a new world suitable for receiving
its approaching ‘new owner’ who will take the place of Christ for people and
give them on earth that which Christ did not give them... One must be
completely blind spiritually, completely alien to true Christianity, not to
understand all this!”
The Second Level
At the second level of the apostasy described by
Archbishop Averky, the Orthodox churches—in “keeping in step with the
times”—leave behind some of the Church’s traditional forms and ecclesiological
positions which they consider “outdated, “ and thus they too cut themselves off
from the tradition that retains the “savour” of basic Christianity. This is one
of the ways in which Orthodoxy becomes a worldly “pseudo-Orthodoxy.” The
essence of Orthodoxy cannot be transmitted when the very context of receiving
it is all but gone.
Archbishop Averky explained why the Orthodox Church,
as St. Athanasius the Great once said, must not serve the times: “The Church
never conforms to the world. Indeed not, for the Lord said to His disciples at
the Last Supper, You are not of this world. We must hold to these words if
we are to remain faithful to true Christianity—the true Church of Christ has
always been, is and will always be a stranger to this world. Separated from it,
she is able to transmit the divine teachings of the Lord unchanged, because
that separation has kept her unchanged, that is, like the immutable God
Himself."
Once in the early 1960’s, a seminarian heard
Archbishop Averky pacing for a long time in the monastery corridor. Finally he
went up to the bishop and asked him what was wrong. “Brother,” replied the
righteous hierarch, contem-plating, “the term ‘Orthodoxy’ has become
meaningless because unorthodoxy is disguising itself behind the external
mask of Orthodoxy. Thus there is a need to coin a new
phrase for that which we call Orthodoxy, just as there once had been a need to
coin the term ‘Orthodox.’ And that is not so easy.” Archbishop Averky perceived
that, for whatever reason, Orthodox churches and church leaders have not
treasured the other worldly basis of Orthodox tradition as passed on from
father to son uninterruptedly through the centuries. About this he wrote:
“Wherever the inherited spiritual link of grace going
back to the Holy Apostles and their successors the Apostolic Men and Holy
Fathers has been broken, wherever various innovations have been introduced in
faith and morals with the aim of ‘keeping step with the times,’ of
‘progressing,’ of not getting out-of-date and of adapting to the demands and
fashions of this world lying in evil—there can be no talk of the true Church.”
These “innovations” are sometimes introduced in order
to make Orthodox life less of a struggle or to make it appear less “odd” in the
eyes of the world. Archbishop Averky wrote that the very concept of doing this
is heterodox, since “the Orthodox Faith teaches how to construct life according
to the demands of Christian perfection, whereas heterodoxy takes from
Christianity only those things which are, and to the degree to which they are,
compatible with the conditions of contemporary cultural life." To lower
Orthodoxy’s standard of ascetic struggle is to deny Christians a means of
self-purification, to deny them even the chance of soul-saving repentance when
they fall short of this standard—in spirit if not in letter. It is to weaken
the very foundation of Orthodoxy, which, as Archbishop Averky stated, “is an
ascetic faith that calls to ascetic labor in the name of the uprooting of
sinful passions and the implanting of Christian virtues.”
In other cases, traditions are dissected and changed
in order to feed the pride of con temporary “theologians” who, cut off from the
direct, living transmission of tradition, strive to find “new ways of Orthodox
theology,” to intellectually “master history” and “restore” Orthodox practice
to some kind of artificial purism. They clamor, Archbishop Averky wrote, “about
how essential it is to ‘renew the Orthodox Church,’ about some sort of‘ reforms
in Orthodoxy,’ which allegedly has become ‘set in its ways’ and ‘moribund.’
These new breeds of‘ Orthodox’ are really no more than modern ‘scholastics.’”
They “theologize” without the proper “feel” for the traditional church
atmosphere in which saints have been raised.
By their fruits ye shall know them (Mt 7:20):
Traditional Orthodoxy, with all its alleged “cultural accretions” and
“impurities,” has nurtured saints even in our own times; “restored” or
“rediscovered” Orthodoxy, with all its claims of being more pure and better
informed, has produced, at best, clever men. The spiritual impotence of the
latter is the result of its “theologians” “knowing better” than the modern,
living repositories of Orthodox sanctity.
Churches, in “keeping step with the times,” can also
lose the savour of Orthodoxy by being caught up in the spirit of the
fashionable “ecumenical movement” which, as we have seen, is a manifestation of
the process of world apostasy. Thus, Archbishop Averky stated in different
places:
“The destructive spirit of Apostasy has already
penetrated even our Orthodox Church, extremely prominent hierarchs of which
openly are proclaiming the approach of some sort of‘ new era’ and cynically are
proposing being done with all the past as they assemble to create some kind of
completely ‘new Church’ in close ‘ecumenical’ contact and unanimity with all apostates
from the true faith and Church.
For a long time we have heard that they
[Orthodox clergy] belong to this movement in order ‘to witness to the peoples
of other confessions the truth of holy Orthodoxy,’ but it is difficult for us
to believe that this statement is anything more than ‘throwing powder in our
eyes.’ Their frequent theological declarations in the international press can
lead us to no other conclusion than that they are traitors to the holy Truth.”
The Third Level
Finally, the third level of the apostasy that
Archbishop Averky warned about is reached when Orthodox churches, even while
preserving all the traditions of what they call “true Orthodoxy,” also lose the
precious savour of their faith and become infected with a worldly spirit disguised
as spirituality. This occurs through:
(1) The loss
of basic Christian love, without which all the traditions become condemning
rather than grace-bearing, and
(2) The use of
outward forms and supports of faith (which are intended to evoke remembrance of
the other world) for worldly ends.
Through these factors arises another form of “pseudo-
Orthodoxy,” this time more subtle because it may be cloaked in all the right
externals.
From the Editor: The symptoms found within this apostatic
state of “pseudo-Orthodoxy” will be presented in our next issue.
ORTHODOX HERITAGE VOL 13, ISSUE 07/08 2015
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