February 1, 1881

     "First of all, he loved the living human soul in everything and everywhere, and he believed that we are all the race of God, he believed in the infinite power of the human soul, triumphant over all external violence and over every inner fall. Having accepted into his soul all the malice of life, all the hardship and darkness of life, and having overcome all this with the infinite power of love, Dostoevsky proclaimed this victory in all his works. Having tasted the Divine power in the soul, which broke through every human weakness, Dostoevsky came to the knowledge of God and the God-man. The reality of God and Christ was revealed to him in the inner power of love and all-forgiveness, and this same all-forgiving grace-filled power he preached as the foundation for the external realization on earth of that kingdom of righteousness which he longed for and to which he strove all his life."

Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, No 1, 1997

ORTHODOX UNDERSTANDING OF ECUMENISM

      The question of the nature of the unity of Christians sought in ecumenism does not seem to be a great problem at first glance. However, if from the Orthodox point of view it can be described quite unambiguously, this evidence is questioned, sometimes quite decisively, by the very course of the historical development of ecumenism.      Orthodoxy cannot conceive of the unity of Christians assumed by ecumenism in any other way than on a purely ecclesiastical basis, for which all the other, incidental aspects of real and possible Christian solidarity are only external, psychological elements that have no direct and fundamental relation to genuine unity. Such incidental moments, however important they may be in themselves, are, for example, questions of the cultural, political, social, international, and economic life of modern mankind. All these problems, being one of the concerns of Christians and churches and being one of the important objects of study in the ecumenical movement, nevertheless do not belong to the ecumenical question in its original, ecclesiological essence. The attainment by Christians, communities and churches of unity of views and actions in these "horizontal" spheres of life, although it would serve as one of the factors determining the necessary psychological compatibility of Christians and creating the prerequisites for a more frank and objective study and solution of the ecumenical problem itself, cannot in itself be regarded as ecumenical unity in its Orthodox understanding.      This assertion seems to need constant repetition, for there is a very real tendency in certain ecumenical circles not only to put the external secular unity of Christians in the foreground, but also to make it almost the main goal of the modern ecumenical movement. At the same time, naturally, there is a great danger of a gradual deviation of ecumenism from the main goal of Christianity - the eternal salvation of man.      It is quite obvious what the emphasis on "horizontalism", which is quite common in various ecumenical documents and discussions, can lead to for Christians and churches participating in the ecumenical movement, if it is not sufficiently clearly and strongly opposed to a genuine understanding of the purpose of ecumenism. Not to mention the undoubted, in this case, loss of ecclesiastical and even religiousness by the ecumenical movement, it can turn out to be an instrument for the ideological preparation of many, "if possible, even of the elect" (Matt. 24:24), to accept an ideal directly opposed to Christ...      An equally important characteristic of Orthodox ecumenism is its demand for a certain spiritual foundation, on which and on the basis of which the sought-after pan-Christian unity must be built. Of course, this aspect is a deep and voluminous problem for study. Here, therefore, we will confine ourselves only to pointing out the very fact of the existence in Orthodox ascetic theology of certain requirements for spiritual life, so that it can really lead a Christian along the path of life, and not death.      It is very important to note that Orthodoxy does not consider religiosity, prayerfulness, inspiration and asceticism as ipso facto [1] spiritually positive phenomena, as already indisputably leading the Christian or Christians to God and to unity with each other. On the contrary, and this is the specificity of Orthodoxy in comparison with non-Orthodoxy, it, in the person of the unanimous voice of its ascetic writers, warns of the very real danger in the spiritual life of deviation from the truth and falling into the so-called delusion, that is, a high opinion of oneself, of one's Christian merits and the search for spiritual pleasures. And it is not only individual Christians who can be in this state. With a deviation from the path paved and carefully studied by the holy ascetics and sanctified by the entire tradition of the Ancient Church, it can embrace entire communities, manifesting itself in various forms of ecclesiastical and religious life. At the same time, falling away from the true path of spiritual life, in the thought of all Orthodox teachers of the Church who have touched upon this question, is tantamount to falling away from the Church. It leads to spiritual destruction and to the spiritual division of Christians in the true sense of the word, regardless of the degree of their psychological, ideological or any other, including doctrinal, unity.      In ecumenical forums, with the great diversity of traditions represented at them in the confession of faith, piety, divine services and all church practice, the question of the spiritual authenticity of these meetings to Christ and their results acquires profoundly fundamental significance. It is not always and not everywhere at Christian gatherings that one can assume and see the unity of Christians in the Holy Spirit. The a priori conviction in the presence of the Holy Spirit in all ecumenical meetings: business, liturgical and prayerful, including the most extravagant, modernist ones, cannot but evoke a critical assessment on the part of the Orthodox.      The realization of spiritual unity, so necessary for the attainment of the ultimate goal of the ecumenical movement, cannot from the Orthodox point of view have the character of an indefinite, uncontrollable process.

From this arises the task of primary importance for Orthodox ecumenical theology: the development and presentation to ecumenical non-Orthodoxy of the foundations of that theology of spiritual life which can serve as a prerequisite for the creation of a genuine, pan-Christian unity in the Holy Spirit.      Thus, ecumenism in its Orthodox understanding, having a common goal for all Christian confessions participating in the ecumenical movement - the unity of Christians, at the same time cannot accept any indefinite, compromise or, moreover, extra-Christian interpretations of the very nature of this unity. Neither the secular basis of the horizontist dimension, nor the exalted mysticism that sometimes deeply and strongly encompasses entire inter-Christian gatherings, can be regarded as positive signs, as necessary components or as guarantors of the growth and development of the ecumenical unity of Christians. Such unity can be achieved only on purely ecclesiastical soil and only in the Church. But what is this supposed to mean? The numerous divisions that have taken place in the history of Christianity have brought the question of the Church, its understanding, and its boundaries to the forefront in theology. With the emergence of the ecumenical movement, this question acquired special urgency and acuteness. However, in the context of the topic under consideration, the main emphasis should not be placed on the revelation, albeit very concise, of the Orthodox teaching on the Church as a whole, but only on the main discrepancy in the understanding of "unity in the Church" that exists between Orthodoxy and a significant part of the Protestant ecumenical community.      All Christians agree that their unification must ultimately be in the Church. But in what Church? Is it the one that, according to many, already invisibly unites all Christians and all Christian communities, regardless of differences in their faith and church structure? Or in that in which unity is possible only on the basis of unconditional and complete subordination to the earthly "infallible" man - the bishop of Rome. Or in that which, perhaps, embraces even a relatively insignificant part of Christians, but preserves unchanged the faith, the foundations of spiritual life, and the principles of the internal structure of the Ancient Church of the epoch of the Ecumenical Councils? In this connection, I would like to cite here the statement of one of the authoritative Russian theologians, His Holiness Patriarch Sergius, who in his work "The Attitude of the Church of Christ to the Societies Separated from Her" wrote about this question: "In a cultured Christian society, it is not customary to put the question of the true Church point-blank. There we hear more often the so-called broad view, according to which our "earthly partitions do not reach heaven," church divisions are the fruit of the lust for power of the clergy and the intractability of theologians. Let a person be Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant, as long as he is a Christian in life, and he can be calm... But such breadth, so convenient in life and so comforting, does not satisfy people who are truly ecclesiastical, accustomed to giving themselves a clear account of their faith and convictions. Under this breadth he senses simply skepticism, coldness to faith, indifference to the salvation of the soul" [2].      The broad view of which Patriarch Sergius spoke and which is quite clearly formulated, for example, in the so-called "branch theory," expresses essentially the basic ecumenical idea of the Protestant majority in the question of understanding the unity of the Church.      It is quite obvious how far this ecumenical conception of the unity of the Church is from the Orthodox understanding of it. From the Orthodox point of view, the division that exists between Christian churches and communities is not a mere appearance, but concerns the very essence of those who have separated from the Church of Christ. The internal unity of individual members of the Church with her Body, of individual branches with the Vine (John 15:1-6) has been broken. And just as every branch, according to the word of Christ, cannot bear fruit unless it abides on the vine, so in the case of churches that are divided, there can be no alternative but to seek the true Church and return to it. Such a Church exists. It is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. This means that it is not mystical, but divine-human, and as such must have its own earthly, visible, human existence within the boundaries of earthly time and space. It is always self-identical. And another faith, another life, another tradition cannot remain in unity with it. Therefore, ecumenism can achieve its goal only if the existing Christian churches impartially evaluate their true creed through the prism of the teaching and practice of the Early Church, as the most complete and pure expression of the apostolic preaching and the spirit of Christ, and, finding something changed in their essence, return to their original integrity. And if the modern Orthodox Church bears witness to her devotion and faithfulness to the Tradition of the Universal Church and calls on other Christian Churches to do so, then this cannot be regarded as some kind of narrow confessionalism or egocentrism. Orthodoxy calls not to itself as a confession, but to unity with the one Truth which it possesses and to which anyone who seeks this Truth can partake.      Orthodox ecumenism, therefore, presupposes the possibility of the true unity of the Christian Churches only on the condition of the unity of faith, the unity of the foundations of spiritual life, the unity of the principles of church order, the unity of Holy Tradition, that is, all that in its main features characterizes the Church of the living God (1 Tim. 3:15).      In discussing the question of church unity, it is necessary to dwell on one of those characteristics of the Church which, with the development of the ecumenical movement, especially with the growing importance of the World Council of Churches in the Christian world, is becoming an increasingly important object of study at the inter-confessional level. The catholicity, or conciliarity, of the Church is constantly in the center of attention of ecumenical meetings devoted to the discussion of the problem of the unity of the Church.      As is known, in the ecumenical movement, among some Protestants, there is always the idea that the World Council of Churches has a special ecclesiological content and that such a community of Churches represents, if not conciliar, in the full sense of the term, then very close to it. The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, in its Epistle on the Fifth Assembly in Nairobi to the Chairman of the WCC Central Committee and the WCC General Secretary, warned: "Another danger that seriously threatens Christian unity and the future of the ecumenical movement after Nairobi is the illusion nurtured by some participants in the ecumenical movement that the World Council of Churches can achieve such a degree of ecumenical rapprochement among its member Churches. that one of its future General Assemblies will turn into a pan-Christian council. To think so is to assume that the World Council of Churches may in the future become a kind of "super-church." As is known, such "ecumenical temptations" were at one time decisively condemned and rejected by all the member Churches, and the leadership of the World Council of Churches many times solemnly rejected this. And although this idea has already been rejected in the previous formulation, some of its echoes sometimes slip through (as was the case at the Assembly in Nairobi) in the veiled form of general arguments about the "special prophetic ministry" of the administrative apparatus of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, which is supposedly not just an instrument for serving the Church and the ecumenical movement, but something more. Hence one step towards the seductive and dangerous idea of the special ecclesiological significance of the World Council of Churches and its central apparatus in Geneva."[3]      Undoubtedly, to endow the WCC with the signs of the Church, and first of all with the property of catholicity, means to fundamentally change, or rather, to distort the very concept of conciliarity. Therefore, the presence of this tendency in ecumenism should stimulate in Orthodox theology a new search for an expression of the understanding of the conciliarity of the Church, which could contribute to a greater understanding of it by non-Orthodoxy. This is especially important because the use of specific Orthodox terms in ecumenical use in meanings that are sometimes far from their Orthodox content can dissolve these sacred terms in a sea of significance and lead to their complete devaluation.      The Orthodox understanding of catholicity-conciliarity is fundamentally different from what is expressed in English by the word fellowship (fellowship, solidarity) - a concept that has an exclusively moral, psychological content with an extremely wide amplitude of sound in ethical and emotional relations, but in no way ecclesiological; nor does it coincide with "conciliarity," the term of the Assembly in Nairobi, which describes some of the outward signs of conciliarity without specifically indicating the doctrinal basis that alone makes conciliarity possible in the Orthodox sense.      Conciliarity, as one of the fundamental properties of the Church, reveals its ontological content through the dogma of the Most Holy Trinity. The conciliarity of the Church is the most concrete image of the Trinity of God, in Whom the unity of nature is combined with the trinity of Hypostases. In the words of the famous Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky, "in the light of the Trinitarian dogma, conciliarity appears to us as the mysterious identity of unity and multiplicity, unity that is expressed in multiplicity, and multiplicity that continues to be unity... Just as in God each Person – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is not a part of the Trinity, but is wholly God, by virtue of His ineffable identity with the one nature, so the Church is not a federation of parts" [4]. Conciliarity is the complete unity of many in a single whole, in the image of the unity of the members in one body, but the unity is not external, administrative, or temporary and accidental, not a conglomerate, not a mechanism, not a fellowship, but a living single body in the diversity of members, which is manifested, of course, also in institutional ecclesial unity, continuity and continuity. The Holy Apostle Paul speaks of conciliarity when he writes: "There is one body and one spirit, even as you were called to the one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all of us" (Ephesians 4:4-6). It is precisely the unity of spirit and faith, hope and baptism, priesthood and the Lord's Chalice that determines what can be called catholicity, or conciliarity, in Orthodoxy. At the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great, immediately after the celebration of the Eucharist, the liturgist says: "Unite us all, who partake of the one bread and chalice, to one another, into one communion of the Holy Spirit." This union with one another in communion with the Holy Spirit through the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist is the fullest and most perfect expression of the conciliarity of the Church. For in this sacrament all Christians become living members of the one Body of Christ.      The term "catholicity" in Orthodoxy thus has an exclusively ecclesiological content, expressing the ontological unity of the Church. In this it is fundamentally different from those definitions of the unity of the Church that have taken place up to the present time in the ecumenical theology of the Protestant majority, and which have pointed only to separate, mainly external, aspects of this unity.      Thus, speaking of the Church, in which the unity of Christians is conceived by Orthodoxy as the ultimate goal of the ecumenical movement, it is necessary to note the following propositions: 1) Such a Church is not all Christian Churches and communities taken together, for it is not the number of individual Churches that determines the fullness and unity of the Church, but the correspondence of any Local Church to the truth of the early Church Tradition. Truth can be in one Church. And in this case, she is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, in communion with which all other Christian Churches can find true unity.      2) The unity of the Church is her catholicity. But catholicity is not an organized fellowship of Churches, a fellowship, a federation. Nor is catholicity described by the concept of "conciliary fellowship," as it does not have a clear substantive definition and reflects the external features of conciliarity rather than its ontological meaning.      Catholicity, or conciliarity, is the integrity of the entire body of the Church, preserved by spiritual, doctrinal, sacramental, moral, institutional unity, and which receives its fullness and finality in the unity of the Lord's Chalice.

1. ipso facto (Latin) - "by the fact itself", by virtue of the fact itself. ^

     2. ZhMP, 1968, No 9, p. 47 ^

     3. ZhMP, 1976, No 4, p. 8. ^

     4. V. Lossky. On the Third Property of the Church. ZhMP, 1968, No 8, p. 77. ^

The article was published in the journal "Orthodox Conversation" 1996, No2