“neo-Patristic synthesis or post-Patristic theology”;

PIRAEUS 2012

OPENING ADDRESS

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

by His Eminence Serafeim, Metropolitan of Piraeus

Your Grace, Bishop Meliton of Marathon, representative of His Beatitude Ieronymos II, Archbishop of Athens and All Greece,

Your Eminence Damianos, Archbishop of Sinai, Faran and Raïtho,

Your Eminence Pavlos, Metropolitan of Glyfada,

Your Eminence Serafeim, Metropolitan of Kythira,

Archimandrite Damianos, Exarch of the Holy Sepulchre in Greece and representative of His Beatitude Theofilos, Patriarch of Jerusalem,

Honourable Minister, representative of the Prime Minister and the Government,

Very Reverend and Reverend Gentlemen,

Monastic Brothers and Sisters,

Honourable members of the Body of Christ,

Blessed Nikodimos, the Athonite, that fragrant blossom of the grace of God and of the tradition of the Kollyvades, wrote the astonishing work “Invisible Warfare” in which he repeatedly refers to the debilitating labours of the vengeful and murderous devil, of whom Saint Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, so eloquently spoke: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in the heavenly realms…” (Eph. 6, 12). The attack and battle against the truth is being intensified in our own apocalyptic days, when darkness has appeared as light and light as darkness. It is being promoted within the walls of the Church, with the cultivation and projection of ideas supposedly of theological perspicacity and the contextual “updating” of the truth, the aim of which is revision, negative transformation, banishment of true theological dialogue, reinforcement of error and the conversion of the Church’s work of salvation into a secular system of social principles which will embrace all the tendentious  contradictions of the postlapsarian reality: a new and extremely dangerous process of structuring a supposedly new theological discourse.

            Those aspiring “reformers” of the Patristic theology of the two-thousand-year old, undivided Orthodox Catholic Church of Christ claim that the main problem of the world is not that of rejecting deification (glorification) and sanctification but a supposedly urgent demand for a new incarnation of the word and a contextual reading of the Fathers, as well as the existence of a post-Patristic Orthodox theology, the product of an intellectual approach.

            The subjects they raise, however, such as: the notion and content of authenticity and agreement among the Fathers and of the recourse to the invocation of their authority; the exclusivity of the relationship between Patristic theology and the Greek categories of thought, between the Fathers and Hellenicity; the enduring nature and prescriptive nature of the use of the ontology and Greek philosophical categories in theology; the authoritarian Patriarchal pre-modern model and its relationship with Patristic theology; the tolerance and persecution of heretics in the Patristic texts and in today’s cultural pact; the interweaving of the Church and theology with imperial ideology; the anthropological heights of the theology of the Fathers and the supposedly imperfect anthropology of the Fathers; the new challenges to humanity of bioethics and biotechnology. All these supposedly make for an imperative demand for a contemporary “Orthodox Post-Patristic theology”, a reinterpretation of our fidelity to the Patristic tradition and fur us to it transcend it “when and where necessary”.

            They also propose the outrageous position concerning a “new Orthodox theology of religions”, with even hierarchs in high positions in the Church claiming that the saving grace of God is not restricted to the canonical bounds of the Orthodox Catholic Church but extends, to a different degree and model, to other Christian “Churches”, i.e. communities, to communities of “other living believers” such as the anti-Trinitarian Islam of the pseudo-prophet Mohammed, or the anti-Trinitarian Judaism of the Luciferian rabbis of the Kabala and the Talmud, to agnostics and even to atheists. They propose the really tragic position- and attempt to graft it onto people’s consciousness- that “the possibility of salvation that exists for those who are outside the Church must bring Christians to the unshakeable hope that God, in His boundless love and mercy, communicates His saving grace through other unknown and hidden paths to those who have natural knowledge of God and faith, as well as a moral conscience, which is characterized by a life of love, though lived beyond the clear bounds of the Church”. But this is to traduce the Gospel entirely and to make a mockery of the incarnate dispensation of the Word of God and, in particular, His Crucifixion and Resurrection.

            They refer to non-existent concepts, such as “neo-Patristic synthesis or post-Patristic theology”; to supposed “Patristic fundamentalism”; to supposed “Church triumphalism” which they analyze as a position of spiritual superiority against the “Alter” of the West and which they present as a spiritual isolation and Hellenicity which approaches idolatry.

            Of course, no-one ought to be surprised by this new attack against our spotless faith, since those responsible for the above shamelessly write articles in favour of the tragic retreat from human ontology, which breeds the ontological and ecclesiastical abomination of homosexuality, or the more secular expression of homo-eroticism. Everywhere present is the well-known Fordham University of the Jesuits of America, which openly “expresses”  its intention to “modernize” and “correct” the theological positions of the Fathers of the Church. It has already organized two conferences on the themes of “Orthodox Readings of Augustine” (2007) and “Orthodox Structures of the West” (2010). The effort behind all of the above is to reintroduce into theological thought the institutional alienation which springs from Augustine’s transformation of theology and the Church into legalism and the reversal of the terms of ecclesiastical ontology by Thomas Aquinas. They also aim at consolidating the view that the negative approach by the Fathers of the Church to Western theology was unfair and misconceived; they accuse them of anti-Westernism and an inability to understand the issues.

            Finally, these particular circles who preach the transcendence of Patristic theology or the re-formulation of it for the sake of some supposed harmonization with the modern world, oppose participation in the enduring unity of ecclesiastical experience, and do so in an exceptionally skillful manner which is entirely devoid of content. Patristic teaching and the Orthodox study, and application in practice, of the experience of the holy Fathers have been declared under persecution because a “post-Patristic heresy” is being hatched which insults the Holy Spirit Who glorified the Fathers, as if He were not aware of the future and especially the fact that the eternal Word would be found wanting in terms of contextual updating by people who are besmirched by worldly passions. This is a crime which is already being carried out by the false beliefs and heresies of so-called “baptismal theology”, the theory of the “unseen Church”, the theory of “branches or climbing vines” and the theory of “perverted eucharistic ecclesiology” which form the basis for the total and very real impairment of the word of the Gospel and for the success of the misconceived union of the Church with the heretical para-synagogues of the Roman Catholics, the Monophysites and the Protestant communities of every ilk of the self-styled World Council of “Churches”, and not of the union in the Holy Spirit, concerning which the Church continually prays on the basis of the dogmas of its Synodal constitution and the Canon Law of the first millennium.

            They impiously, insolently and shamelessly mangle the Lord’s words of the Hieratic prayer in the 17^th chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John (21-25) “that they all may be one”, passing over, deceitfully and impiously, the whole sentence of the Lord as well the following passages with the same content, where the Saviour addresses His Father of Lights saying: “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world”. They  sweep away and hide these words of the Lord, isolating from them a few words to support their wrong-headed ideas, and in this way undermine the true faith, because the Lord of the Church is praying for the unity of His children, but with the Triune mode of existence of the eternal God as His model, that is in truth, interpenetration and faithfulness- and certainly not in heresy, misrepresentation of the divine revelation in deceit and impairment of the dogmas formulated by the Holy Spirit through the 9 Ecumenical Synods.

And with these humble words, I declare the opening of this conference and ask of you to pray to the Lord of the Church to bless it.

I pray that the years of all of you may be blessed, peaceful and joyful.