Плоды экуменического древа. Экуменическое движение в экклезиологическом аспекте

St. Ignatius, as a true shepherd of Christ's flock, warns us, saying that «only those books on religion one is allowed to read, which were written by the Patristic of the Eastern Church. This is what the Eastern Church demands from its children...⁷⁶ And if you consider differently and find the requirement of the Church less significant in comparison with the considerations of your own and those in accordance with you, then you are not a son of the Church, but her judge... Spiritual and saint teachers of the Church read the blasphemous manuscripts of heretics, forced by the urgent necessity of the whole Christian society. They with a strong, with a spiritual word exposed the delusion, made clear to the children of the Church the concealed danger of heretic writings, which was covered by a seeming gorgeous effect of sanity and piety... Experience proves that the results of unscrupulous reading are ruining. One can come across a huge variety of ideas regarding Christianity, ideas the most irregular, inconsistent and contradicting the teaching of the Church, very often finding faults with this holy teaching, — ideas, implemented by reading heretic books!»⁷⁷.

Such inconsistent ideas, to my great pity, one may find in «The School of Prayer» by Metropolitan Anthony, the dignified doctor of theology, respected by many heretics and regarded as an embodiment of love. But true love is not like that. This is what writes about love St. Maximos the Confessor: «I am not willing for the heretics to suffer, and I am not happy about their hardships. God save me! — But I'm especially happy about their conversion! For what can be better for the faithful as to see the dispersed children of God unite! I'm not insane to advise to value mercy more than love for mankind. On the contrary, I advise to do good things for all people and be helpful to everyone in need. But at the same time I tell you: it is forbidden to help the heretics in strengthening their insane beliefs, that is where you should be tough and uncompromising. For I wouldn't call love, but I would call hatred for people and falling away from God's love when someone establishes the heretic in their delusion leading to their due ruin» ⁷⁸.

From the work of the Most Reverend Anthony comes the smell of ecumenism. The followers of this false teaching accuse the Church in deviating from truth, claiming that it has broken Christ's commandment of unity. Such thinking is false for the True Church is holy and immaculate, and if some have broken the commandment of unity, then those are the ones who fell apart from the righteous unity of the Orthodoxy. But even for them the doors of the Church are open. We accept even them, after denying their delusions. Ecumenical heresy aims at smoothing out all the corners, making all religions equal in a certain universal state so that everyone may acknowledge this «unity». For this purpose ecumenists under the pretext of love try to find new points of overlapping, avoiding any arguments; His Eminence Anthony found such possibility in the theme «Of Prayer».

That is why it is important for any Orthodox to be attentive with the books he is reading in so as not to accept the spirit of ecumenical virus. Each one will have to answer on the day of Final Judgment not only for reading, but as well for spreading such books, and for the silence, when your nearest is reading them. St. Ignatius writes: «Don't be charmed by a pompous title of a book, promising to give the lesson of Christian perfection to those who still need the food of babies, don't be seduced either by the richness of edition, or by paintings, or the strength and the beauty of words, or by the writer's being as if a saint who proved his sanity by numerous wonders... A soul can be ruined by only a thought, containing any kind of blasphemy, very sophisticated and unnoticeable for a novice...⁷⁹

Great God's saints, having learned the weak nature of human beings, feared the poison of heresy and lie, and that is why with scrupulousness avoided talking to people, infected by false teachings, and reading heretic books. Remembering the example of degradation of the most educated Origin and sophisticated in arguments Arius, and eloquent Nestorius and the others rich in wisdom of the world, those who ruined themselves due to their self-esteem and self-assuredness, they [the saints] sought for salvation and found it in avoiding false teachings and precise obedience to the Church»

An Orthodox doctor I. N. Andreev.

Endnotes

1. St. John Chrysostom (the Goldenmouthed). Works, SPb.: 1898, vol. I, book 2, p. 660.