IT’S A MATTER OF TRUTH

The Epistle lesson found in Acts 20 records for us the last address St. Paul gave to the priests of the Church in Ephesus. There on the beach St. Paul charged the clergy to, “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things,…therefore be on the alert” (vv.28-32).

Such is the solemn responsibility of the shepherds to protect the flock from heresy and error. It is this responsibility which our holy fathers so valiantly fulfilled at great personal cost at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea.  St. Sebastian Dabovich (+1940) a renown Serbian Priest and missionary to the United States, wrote: “We hear it frequently remarked that it matters not what one believes if he does right. But if one does not believe right, he does not do the right thing—that is, if his belief is sincere and carried out in practice. If one believes that which is wrong, and still acts otherwise from force of circumstance, he is wrong in heart.”  To believe the wrong thing is to pollute the heart.

The Council of Nicea dealt, in the main, with the defense of the full and complete divinity of Christ, whom Arius, an Orthodox Protopresbyter of the Church of Alexandria,  maintained was less then the Father, subordinate to Him.  We Orthodox are not “Johnny come latelys.” We didn’t come into existence a few years ago. We are part of a glorious and ancient lineage – part of a Tradition of truth. We have a rich inheritance of faith. We have received the true faith from our God-loving Fathers, and we accept their inspiration. We sing today of “our God-mantled Fathers, trumpets of the Spirit.” We believe in holy tradition. We believe that our holy Fathers were correct when since the time of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, the preamble of a council’s decrees read, “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us that the following be believed….” (Ac. 15:28).

Our history is holy. It is guided by the Holy Spirit. God has been with us, and is with us today through his divine grace and love toward mankind.  St. Irenaeus of Lyons (130-292 AD) made it clear:   “Where, therefore, the gifts of the Lord have been placed, there it behooves us to learn the truth, namely, from those who possess that succession of the Church which is from the Apostles and among whom exists that which is sound and blameless in conduct, as well as that which is unadulterated and incorrupt in speech.”  Irenaeus stresses that the truth that we believe is not our creation, but was given to us by the Holy Spirit, acting with the common mind of the Church (phronema).

It seems in vogue these days to disparage “Tradition”, to dismiss the teachings and way of life of the Church Fathers as anachronistic, as out of step with the fast developing so-called ”advanced society” (the “hustle culture”) on which we pride ourselves.  Even Christian churchesfind themselves jettisoning doctrine, watering-down Scriptural truth, and, in their minds, making Christianity more “palatable” to the sophisticated person.  Christianity’s mission is not to be palatable — it is soul-saving, it is heart-shaping, it is accepting, in joy, the life-giving Revelation of Christ. The German Orthodox philosopher Herbert Meyer wisely notes that “Such disparaging opinions of the Orthodox Way and her doctrine are but expressions that mask the ego in pride and are founded on the principle that we know better than centuries of devout faith history. To a Church that is Orthodox, doctrine is essential and precious.”  Doctrine is living, it develops as needed, but always remains in substance the same. What we believe is, in a sense, the same as St. Augustine’s description of God: “Unchanging but changing all things.”

There was much at stake at the Council of Nicea – the very nature of God as Trinity. The well-meaning Arius insisted that Christ was a “lesser deity”, below the Creator Father and subordinate to Him. To the Orthodox Bishops present this became a battle extraordinaire. They were challenged to preserve the Biblical truth of Christ’s identity, much of which came from the Lord’s own mouth!  With drama such as St. Nicholas’ striking Arius firmly across his face, after much emotional (and physical) disruption, the Council Fathers gave expression to a Creed, a final statement of what the Church believes. It is that Creed, the Nicene–Constantinopolitan Creed, that the Holy Church sings at every Divine Liturgy. This would cause St. Clement of Alexandria (152 AD-216 AD) to exclaim with rejoicing: “O mystic marvel! The universal Father is one, and one the universal Word; and the Holy Spirit is one and the same everywhere, our God.”

His Eminence Metropolitan Maximos, formerly of Pittsburgh, affirms the importance of holding fast to the Tradition of our faith: “The tradition of the Church is nothing else but the life of the Church, a life in the Holy Spirit. From a Christian point of view, the Church is not a mere human society such that we could identify tradition with the history of this society. The Church is the living Body of Christ, with a history as far as its human members are concerned, but also with an internal life that escapes the eye of the historian, and is only seen by the eye of faith. In this sense we distinguish between an inner force which guides that history and a spirit which inspires it, this force and Spirit being the Holy Spirit of God, and the external, human manifestations of the life of the Spirit in the Church.”

Those for whom ancient history is irrelevant and who equate “old” with “out-dated” (or better yet, “medieval” with “barbarically primitive”) will have trouble appreciating the Fathers of the First Council of Nicea, since they met and produced their work well over a thousand years ago.
The Orthodox theological writer, Fr. Lawrence Farley, points out the real issue with Nicea: “Either Jesus was God and homoousios (of one essence) with the Father or He was created and of a completely different essence than the Father.  Even Arius, the villain of the Nicene piece, got that much right.  But still one may ask:  why should we care?  Sure, we confess His divinity, but what does it really matter?”   This is why it matters:  salvation consists in giving one’s life, heart, and soul to God, living and dying for Him down to one’s last breath and one’s last drop of blood.  The issue is: may we give such loyalty, allegiance, love, and commitment to Jesus of Nazareth, or not?

Yes, we have and always will. Our faith tells us so. Centuries of Christian history tell us so. Despite attempts to change it, dilute it, brand it as antiquarian and outmoded, this is our faith. Because today, believers are still persecuted because of “The Name”, spilling their blood for Christ Jesus – we preserve, protect, and defend the Truth and Tradition that we hold. Should we waver, or cast serious doubt on these two pillars of faith, we, like the defeated priest, Arius, risk surrendeing our very lifeline to Him who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  To this One God in Three Persons, be glory and praise this day and forevermore!

Faithfully in the Ascended Lord,
Fr. Dimitrios