Orthodoxy: Definition, Analogies, Heresies – Father Theologos

Why is Orthodoxy important? What is Orthodoxy, in fact? How should we relate to it? How did the other heresies arise, and which ones are we facing today?

By watching this video, you will find answers to the questions above, as well as to others.

Enjoy!

Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us! Amen!

What is Orthodoxy? This is a question to which we must always have a very clear answer, not just when we enter Great Lent and approach the Sunday of Orthodoxy. Actually, I believe there are some of us who never have a clear answer. Now it is very important to listen to the tradition of our people, and this is not for reasons of race or poorly understood nationalism, that is, of “We are superior because we are Romanian” – be very careful with this, brethren, because it can lead to very dangerous extremes!

Yes, I know cases not so much within Romanian people, from which geographically I have been far away for many years, but within other peoples that I have encountered more often in the Holy Mountain for as long as I have been here. You should know that if we are to speak comparatively, Romanians are the ones who love their people and the faith the least. We must love our people and faith more, but without going, as I said, to the dangerous extremes that some from other nations have gone to, who put the biological – the people – above the faith. These are types that lead towards Nazism, brothers! Love for one’s people is one thing, Nazism is another. Love for one’s people is an expression of love and humility, whereas extremism in this direction is an expression of pride and hatred towards others. But let’s not get into these details, because it’s not good to concern ourselves too much with evil.

We must say in our hearts that each of us tries to do good, but does not know how or what to do, or cannot do it. They cannot do it for many reasons, including some low or high pressures, or even extremely high pressures, foreign to Orthodoxy. And here I am referring to, more or less, all the Orthodox, and not only. Many of us have traumas from the past as individuals and as a people, cognitive distortions, and many other things. The burden of trauma weighs upon all nations, brethren—especially upon those who have borne, and bear, the weight of an empire through history—and most profoundly on nations far from Orthodoxy, because Orthodoxy heals traumas.

We love our nation because it is the cradle where the flame of the Orthodox faith burns, and the Orthodox faith is a successful teaching of faith. Brethren, nothing satisfies the human desire for success except the resurrection of Christ— that is, the triumph over death. This is what Orthodoxy offers: triumph over death, triumph over imperfection, triumph over limitations. You see, here on earth we are all struck by death, decadence, decay, the darkening of the mind, by chaos, by the distortion within us. On this earth, we run and fight endlessly, caught in a ceaseless battle without purpose or a clear method—amidst a constant physical (auditory), informational, and mental clamor.

We live in constant existential anguish, a continual turmoil the Holy Fathers vividly characterize as the darkening of the mind. We do not even know why or with whom we fight, because in reality, we battle ourselves in the desire to become better. So, brethren, to become victors we must conquer ourselves and not everyone else. As I was saying, this is exactly what Orthodoxy offers: triumph over death through cleansing from passions and healing from sins. Sin is a sickness, a stain, an existential distortion that we must cleanse and eradicate for the mind to break free from its darkness. Thus, Orthodoxy is the correct medical science aimed at healing from passions, stains, existential distortions, from sins, as the Church says, achieving eternal personal perfection, and being able to heal others as well.

Well, and now you’re going to ask me: who doesn’t want to get there? Well, know that all people seek heaven, all people desire eternal personal perfection, but due to the darkening of the mind, several phenomena occur. First of all, due to this darkening, most of us do not know what this perfection looks like. In other words, we lack the practical experience of God, for the mind is the sense organ through which man feels God. If the mind is darkened, then the person no longer senses God and therefore does not know which way to go. The direct consequence is that most of us seek perfection where it is not and we seek it in the wrong way. This is where faith, the suprarational, the obedience to the Church must step in, because our logic is distorted, being so due to the darkening of the mind.

Now, what is the difference between suprarational and irrational? Because it’s not well known. Irrational is when we have to believe information against our reason without the source of the information proving its rationality. The “Believe and do not investigate” from the Quran. For that is from the Quran, brethren, it is not from the Holy Scripture –”Believe and do not investigate” – let’s be clear. Supra-rationality is when we have to believe information or a fact against our reason, but the source of the information proves its rationality and, above that, the power to act in a suprarational way. For example, God tells us, “Whoever has two coats, should give to the one who has none.” I have a coat right now from one of the fathers from our cell. This is a rational commandment. And there are also other rational commandments. Once we accept the wisdom of these commandments, God also shows us miracles that cannot be explained rationally, but produce the effects that He claims they will produce. From here, further on, He also gives us suprarational commandments – “Love your enemies” – which we must do because we know based on our reason, by induction, by extrapolation from the previous two stages, that this commandment will have the good effect that God promises us. Do you understand? As I said, this is not Islam.

Another definition of Orthodoxy, related to the inability of our reason to manage things and to the necessity of faith, is that Orthodoxy is the true GPS. Let me explain! You see, at our cell there are several paths: one goes up and is promising, beautiful, but it leads nowhere, it stops at a small glade, and then goes through the forest. Another leads down and this actually leads to the skete, another goes in the opposite direction, also down, and it also leads to the skete, but it leads to the highest cell in the skete – our cell. The path next to it, which runs parallel to it but goes up, does not lead to the skete at all, even though it is parallel to the first. So, it does not lead up at all but actually down, to the seashore – right to the seashore, to the Monastery of St. Paul. Next to it, at a 90-degree angle, there is a path that leads to Karyes and also to another cell of the skete. As you can see, it’s complete madness: things defy logic, much like in Orthodoxy. You must have faith that what I say is true.

Someone who does not have the faith and the necessary geographical experience does not know where these roads lead. That is why we need the right GPS—in spiritual terms, we need the guidance of the Holy Fathers who say, “Take this path first, then that one.” The consensus of the Holy Fathers represents the map by which we navigate. Beyond the map and GPS, we need a guide, brethren. An Abba. A spiritual leader. In parenthesis, a word of caution, brethren, don’t venture into Mount Athos without someone who knows the way, who’s been there before, if it’s your first time and you plan to travel on foot. I close the parenthesis. Back to the spiritual plan, the paths ahead of us and the darkening of the mind we suffer from, it is as if we are lost at night in the forest and need information from several explorers who have been there before us, information that the Church cross-checks and provides us with the correct map. These explorers had the light of the Holy Spirit to guide them.

Or coming back to the example of Orthodoxy as a medical science, the Church chooses the right recipe based on the experience in the Holy Spirit of the consensus of the spiritual people in the Church. What must be noted here is the fact that none of the Holy Fathers has absolute authority in the Church. There is no papal infallibility. No one is infallible, only the Church, meaning the unity, the consensus of the Holy Fathers under the guidance of the Holy Spirit – that is infallible, brethren. This stems from the fact that the recipe for the healing of humanity, of the unique and universal Adam, is so complex that no human mind can grasp it unless it is united with God and through God with the others.

A characteristic of God is the perfect unity of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. God is the Truth and, therefore, Truth is found through the experience of unity. God is unity. That is, if a saint said something, their statement it is accepted in the Church only if the consensus of the Holy Fathers validates it in the space-time continuum, meaning many spiritual people validate that stance over a long period and from there into eternity. This is especially true in matters where the saints lack expertise, such as scientific issues. Illumination from God, brethren, grows over time and is not absolute from the beginning – meaning a saint does not know everything.

No one is born perfect; we are all children of Adam. Only the Lord was born from the Virgin. God does not tend to reveal scientific truths to the saints, brethren – you see that the saints have not become Nobel laureates and the Church does not promote the Bible or other patristic books as the ultimate scientific authority regarding creation, but the ultimatescientific authority regarding the Creator – this healing of the darkness of our minds. Understand?

At one point, the Catholics tried to use it as a scientific book when referring to geocentrism and prove that the earth is flat, yet they only proved that their mind was flat. May good God forgive me! Let us be careful, brethren, not to make the same mistake, because, as I said, theology is a branch of medicine and not of the natural sciences! Think about the book from the New Testament that we are now experiencing in a particular way – specifically, Revelation. I am thinking now that people who take everything from the Old Testament in a strictly literal and scientific sense without regard to what the Church says, should better interpret, in the same strictly literal style, the first 12 chapters of Revelation to see what comes of it – because anyway, they are all focused on the famous chapter 13, which they consider we are now experiencing, where the well-known 666 is mentioned. Well, brethren, if we are to take it scientifically, since the other 12 chapters have come about, I would like to see the practical, literal, scientific fulfillment of everything written there with the beasts, serpents, dragons, a third of the stars of the sky, eagle wings, and everything else. Brethren, it’s not like that!

We must first experience holiness in order to speak about what the saints spoke about and listen to what the Church says. God does this intentionally to keep us humble and united in the Church and not to become bitter over someone’s saying, even that of a spiritual person – a saying that fits our ambitions and passions, if this position is not accepted by the Church. We do not use spiritual people and even saints to cause division, dissension, to break the unity of the Church. Of course, we can humbly and peacefully express our position, but if we see that it is not validated by the Church, brethren, humility tells us to calm down. We are not breaking the Church that the Holy Fathers have left us. In fact, you need to know that heretics went to hell with the Bible in their hands. They relied on Scripture, forgetting—or rather, not wanting to take into account—that Scripture is interpreted in the Council of Saints and not according to each one’s whim, even if they have a certain mental capacity, oratorical talent, or they are cultivated.

You should know that things are very complex; do not imagine that the Councils where heretics were condemned lasted 5 minutes. No, not at all, brethren! I mean, it is out of the question that participants just went in, declared so-and-so a heretic, signed, and left in 10 minutes. No, not at all! Hundreds of fathers participated in each council for months, and there were very intense discussions. Brethren, it’s not that simple to declare someone a heretic! Not just anyone can declare whoever they want a heretic. The respective teaching must be condemned in a Council. Do you understand?

There have been enough heresies in history, greater or lesser. Regarding the current ones that still have an influence today, in the West, the process of becoming a heretic, of drifting away from the correct recipe for healing the human personality, from the true GPS, arose as early as the 5^th or 6^th century in Spain – we’re talking about a famous, negatively speaking, dogmatic error called the Filioque, which is based on the speculations of Blessed Augustine. I wouldn’t want to go into too many theological details here, but what we need to remember is that a path was created that increasingly separated itself from the Church, supposedly motivated by various forces and pressing circumstances of that time. That’s not right, brethren!

Actually, it was about human passions. God is almighty! Let us not give up on the exactitude of the path to Him, on the exactitude of the therapy for the human personality, and then God will help us get to Him. You see that the Westerners have drifted away and several shocks occurred that led to total separation. As I said, regarding the Councils accepted by the Church, there were even more Councils at the time of St. Photius the Great and St. Gregory Palamas. The word “Orthodoxy” means “right faith” – the right, correct position, knowledge about something, about a certain matter, the right glorification of a certain entity. “Ορθός” means right, correct, true, and “δόξα” means glory but also opinion, position, belief, suprarational knowledge. The Orthodox is the one who has the appropriate way of life through which he proves that he is at least partially healed, that he has the true faith, suprarational knowledge about God. Well, this knowledge is manifested through the Church, brethren, through the union of the universal Adam, the union of the saints with and through God.

No one can do it by themselves, brethren! Now, if this unity which is the Church has derailed into Catholicism, Protestantism, and Neo-Protestantism, it has been completely destroyed. There is a cyclopean number of Protestant and Neo-protestant denominations – some say there are 33,000, others say 35,000, others 47,000 – numbers like these. Others speak of only a few hundred categories, main branches. So, just the categories number in the hundreds. Why is that? Because, brethren, that’s where individualism, egotism, and subjectivism are, to the fullest. Well, brethren, where is the unity in the Holy Spirit? “So that they may one even as We are One.” Isn’t that what the Lord said?

Let us not forget that Protestantism arose as a result of an utterly immoral life, the desire for power, and the intrigues within the leadership of Catholicism – mainly the Popes. This is not a theological issue. These heinous sins lasted in Catholicism for hundreds of years – let’s just recall the crusades organized by the Vatican, the famous debauchery at the Papal Court – there were even well-known and very influential mistresses of the popes such as Marozia and Theodora, as well as – especially – the ferocious pursuit of money, the system of indulgences being famous at the time. All these led to a protest from many people in the 15th and 16th centuries – this is Protestantism – culminating in Martin Luther’s protest in 1517. He was an antisemitic defrocked priest whose teachings significantly influenced even the rise of Nazism in Germany.

Luther formed his own congregation, his own heresy which, due to the mistakes it contained, was corrected, patched up, by many – Zwingli and later Calvin and then several others – leading up to today’s huge numbers that I’ve mentioned above. All these Protestant and Neo-protestant currents actually have a very simplistic GPS, an almost non-existent therapy because by kicking away the Church – or rather the distorted form they found in Catholicism – they said that the only authority is Scripture, which each one interprets as they think, in the darkness of their mind, forgetting or simply not knowing that Holy Scripture itself was established and conceived as a collection (because Holy Scripture, the Bible, is a collection) by the Church, by the Saints of the Church in a long process that was completed more than 300 years after Christ during the time of Saint Athanasius the Great, who gave the final canon in a letter. That’s where the books that are to this day included in the collection called the Holy Scripture or the Bible appeared.

“Vivlia” in Greek means “the books.” “Vivlio” in Greek means “book.” Plural – “Vivlia” – the Bible – the books. Due to the fact that Protestants and Neo-protestants are separated from the Church, they do not have its fruits either, meaning, the Saints. They have no healed people, they have no deified people, they have no Saints. And if you don’t have saints, if you don’t heal traumas, then you generate atheism because people ask themselves, “Why should I still go to Church if I can’t get healed, if it doesn’t benefit me in any way? You see that they have a very sad world, devoid of miracles, a non-wonderful world, a world that generates atheism, as I said, formalism. Saints appear right in the Scripture, Scripture itself is written by saints, and the saints perform miracles in the Scripture. In the Acts of the Apostles, we remember about the Holy Apostles Peter and John healing a paralytic, Saint Paul who did not even know Christ while He was on this earth, he was not even one of the twelve apostles; and he, from being a persecutor of the Church, ends up raising people from the dead – you remember that in the book of Acts it is narrated the incident when Saint Paul raises Eutychus from the dead. Well, if the Holy Scripture speaks very clearly about saints, that is, about people above nature, and about miracles, why have saints and miracles ceased to exist today in Protestantism?

It is proven that there is a problem with this path, with this recipe of healing, with this GPS. Don’t tell me they’re all saints because come on, let’s be realistic. Someone is not a saint because they say so about themselves. Come on, be serious! It is true that, while these wrong paths, these heresies can and must be condemned, we cannot judge people. Not one. First of all, that is what the good Lord said and beyond that, we do not know what’s in each person’s heart.

On the one hand, we have Orthodox Christians who are Orthodox only by name, because Orthodoxy is a way of life that consists of applying the therapy, the medical science I was talking about; it is the journey on the path shown by the GPS I’ve mentioned. I also have a path behind me now. At one point, someone was emphatically saying he was Orthodox, meaning, on the path, and I asked him:

“Do you pray?”

“Father, I don’t have time!”

“Do you go to church?”

“Father, it’s far!”

“Do you fast?”

“I can’t, I get dizzy.”

“Do you confess?”

“No, father!”

Well, then where is your Orthodoxy? Where is the recipe for healing the human personality? Do you understand? Orthodoxy is a way of life.

On the other hand, in the world that’s far from God, there are people who seek God as they can, and because they keep their conscience [pure], God helps them. Yes, brethren, absolutely! God wants the salvation of all and loves everyone. But, of course, for some it is very difficult. Let me explain. Let’s recall the image with the roads. The Orthodox has the right GPS, is in a car on the road with the headlights on, and is heading home. Of course, they might get into an accident, God forbid, they might miss the way, but the possibility is relatively small. The one with a more or less wrong GPS, however, if they follow their conscience, it tells them: “Hey, you’re getting lost in the bushes, this isn’t good – get out of here! Go that way!” Of course, it’s difficult for them because they are fighting against their own GPS, and they don’t know the way, they are fumbling, yet they can still reach home, even if it’s much harder and the probability is low.

Brethren, we must love these people, pity them, greatly appreciate their effort, but also be very careful and avoid, as much as possible, contact with them because they can influence us with their wrong GPS, with their wrong belief. I say this, brethren, because heresies are very logical, very attractive, at least partially. You see, sin is pleasure, sinful pleasure, fleshly pleasure, and because of this, it attracts us, distorts us from the right path, from the correct GPS which – pay close attention – we can know and follow only with the help of the Church. Yes, brethren, only with the help of the Church because staying on the right path, away from the distorted attraction of sinful pleasure entails pain, brethren. It must hurt, we must repent, we must struggle.

No one went to heaven by sitting in their armchair! For this reason, we must not discuss dogmatic issues with those of different faiths as much as possible, unless God validates us. We must love them, but not validate them from a dogmatic, religious point of view. You see that they are experiencing a great drama, brethren; I see they face certain problems, quite a few problems that we ourselves begin to have, influenced by them, but they cannot solve them; at most, they go only so far, because the solution is Christ, the True Christ, and not the One distorted by their wrong faith or by the passions of each of us. Let us love them, brethren, for the Lord said, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” But, as I said, we must be wise as serpents and yet innocent as doves in order to stay on the right path and, if possible, through our example, to bring others onto the right path as well. Thank you for being on the path!

May good God help us! Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us! Amen!

Online commemoration lists and donations

May the Lord help us!

Online Commemoration Lists and Donations

May the Lord help us!

If you have a bank card and wish to send commemoration lists and donations online using your card, and/or to support our philanthropic activity, including this site, please fill out the form below to make a small donation. The form is secure – we use Stripe for payment processing – a world leader in this field. We do not collect your personal data.

If you do not have a card, or do not wish to use it, visit the webpage for Online Donations and Commemoration Lists.

We will pray for your loved ones! (Please do not include inessential details like wishes, degree of kinship, introductions etc. JUST the name!)

Especially for recurring commemoration lists, we ask that you please keep them to under 20 names long. If you include a member of the family, we add “and for their families.”