Jerusalem Patriarchate - Oros of 1775

[PFC Nektarios]

http://monastery.org/oros.html

Does this Oros signed by Constantinople, Alexandria and Jerusalem apply only to these Patriarchates? How are "mainstream" Orthodox Jurisdiction still being able to recognize Heretic Sacraments as valid?

In Christ
OL

[romiosini]

Lord Have Mercy!

[Anastasios]

This should help you:

http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets ... agodin.htm

http://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english ... holic.html

anastasios

[OrthodoxyOrDeath]

The OCA has recommended that this Oros be annulled and stricken from their ecumenist church.

[PFC Nektarios]

Orthodoxyordeath,

Please give me your opinion on this matter, for I know you will give me the most "Traditional" interpretation of this Oros. I know what the OCA will say on this matter. Its pretty important to me, because there is now a chance that I might only be chrismated into Orthodoxy. So I want to fully understand the "Context" of this Oros and what it means. I need a not so ecumenistic bias opinion.

What I take of out the whole thing is that Heretic baptism is not recognized as having sanctifying Grace. PERIOD.

In Christ
OL

[bogoliubtsy]

Why does a statement made by the EP a couple hundred years ago carry weight, but not the ones today? Perhaps there were those back in the time of this "oros" who were against it, just as there are those today who are against the EP's current statements.

[OrthodoxyOrDeath]

OL,

Sorry for the late reply.

The Oros is of course exactly Orthodox which is why Bartholomew and the OCA despise it and struggle to cast it into a fog of confusion.

An important distiction needs to be made when thinking about how the Orthodox Church has received and receives converts.

1) There is positively no Baptism outside the Church. This is witnessed by many canons of the Church such as the ones which demand the depostion of any clergy who recognize a heretic "baptism". It is just as important for the Orthodox to understand this as it is for people coming to the Church.
As much as the Church calls everyone to salvation, it does so on Her terms, which is merely the start of the many other ways the Church seeks to change people.

2) The Church sometimes receives people by economia, but this has been for exceptional circumstances and is only done for people who at least received the proper form of an Orthodox Baptism, or some other special condition.

Please read this most informative description...

...If this reasoning is true [that the Latins have a baptism], then we must accept that neither the Arians nor the Macedonians were heretics, since the Church accepted for a time their baptism also. But away with such blasphemy! The baptism of heretics and schismatics is not Baptism. It holds the place of Baptism only when afterwards by economy the Church validates it. "One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism" teaches the Apostle Paul (Eph. 4:5). And the Council of Carthage, approved by the Sixth Ecumenical Council, explains: "For if the Catholic Church be one and the true Baptism be one, how can that of the heretics and schismatics be a true Baptism at a time when they are not in the Catholic Church but have been cut off from it by heresy? But if the baptism of heretics and schismatics be true and the Baptism of the Orthodox Catholic Church also be true, then there is not one Baptism as Paul proclaims, but two, which is most absurd." 3

Also, St. Basil the Great in his canons does not accept the baptism of schismatics: "Nevertheless, it seemed best to the ancient authorities --those, I mean, who form the party of Cyprian and our own Firmilian --to class them all under one head, including Cathari and Encratites and Aquarians and Apotactites; because the beginning, true enough, of the separation resulted through a schism; however, those who receded from the Church no longer had the grace of the Holy Spirit upon them, for the importation thereof ceased when the continuity was interrupted. For although the ones who were the first to depart had been ordained by the Fathers and with the imposition of their hands they had obtained the gift of the Spirit, yet after breaking away they became common men and had no authority either to baptize or to ordain, nor could they impart the grace of the Holy Spirit to others, alter they themselves had forfeited it. Wherefore they bade that those baptized by them should be regarded as being baptized by common men, and that when they came to join the Church, they should have to be repurified by the true Baptism of the Church" (1st Canon of St. Basil).4 Further on in the same text of St. Basil the thought of the Fathers is shown forth clearly, for they affirm that the baptism not only of heretics but even of schismatics is invalid --that is, without grace and sanctification. However, for reasons of economy they permit that it be confirmed afterwards upon the admittance of the schismatics into the Church. St. Basil, therefore, writes: "Inasmuch, however, as it has appeared reasonable to some of those in the regions of Asia that their baptism [i.e., of schismatics] be accepted as an economy to the many, let it be accepted." 5

From the above, it is clearly obvious that the Fathers consider the baptism of heretics and schismatics to be non-existent. When they decide in certain circumstances not to repeat it, they are not, of course, changing their mind. They are making an act of economy in which the external and empty baptism of the schismatic or heretic obtains, upon his entrance into the Church, content: sanctifying power and grace which he, a man who until then had been outside of the Church, had never received.

If then, St. Basil the Great says such things for schismatics, "those who on account of ecclesiastical causes and remediable questions have developed a quarrel amongst themselves," as he defines them, let everyone consider how much more so these hold true for heretics, "who have broken entirely and have become alienated from the Faith itself" (1st Canon of St. Basil),6 and indeed for those heretics who are not burdened with only one heresy, but with a multitude of frightful and unnamable heresies, as are the Papists.

St. John Chrysostom also says: "Let not the systems of the heretics fool you, O hearer; for they have a baptism, but not enlightenment; and so they are baptized according to the body, but as for the soul, they are not enlightened" (Homily on "In the beginning was the Word"). And St. Leo "No heretic confers sanctification through the mysteries" (Epistle to Nicetas). And St. Ambrose: "The baptism of the impious does not sanctify" (Concerning the Catechumens).

But, someone may yet wonder, if it be true that heretics do not have Baptism, then why did the Church in the Second and Sixth Ecumenical Councils accept the baptism of certain heretics such as the Arians and Macedonians?

Here is how St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain answers this problem: "In order to have an easily understood solution to this perplexity, it is necessary to know beforehand that two kinds of government and correction are observed in the Church. One kind is called 'Exactness' (Akribeia), and the other kind is called 'Economy' and 'Condescension' (Oikonomia and Synkatabasis). With these the Stewards (Oikonomoi) of the Spirit administer the salvation of souls, at times with one, at times with the other. So the Holy Apostles in their aforesaid canons, and all the Saints who have been mentioned, employed Exactness; and for this reason they reject the baptism of heretics completely; while, on the other hand, the two Ecumenical Councils employed Economy and accepted the baptism of Arians and of Macedonians and of others, but refused to recognize that of the Eunomians and of still others .... Those heretics whose baptism they accepted also rigorously observed the form and the matter of the Baptism of the Orthodox and were willing to be baptized in accordance with the form of the Catholic Church. Those heretics, on the other hand, whose baptism they had refused to recognize, had counterfeited the ceremony of Baptism and had corrupted the rite, or the mode of the kind, or (in the terminology of the Latins) species, and the same may be said of the invocations, or that of the matter, and the same may be said of the immersions and emersions, with reference to Roman Catholics and Protestants" (Second footnote to the 46th Canon of the 85 Apostolic Canons).7

We must well understand that when the Church for reasons of economy accepts the baptism of heretics or schismatics, it does not mean that she accepts that their baptism was a real one from the beginning. She merely accepts that the form of the baptism need not be repeated so long as the form resembled that of Orthodox Baptism. This form (triple immersion in the name of the Holy Trinity, etc.) does not sanctify the heretic except only at the moment when, repentant, he is accepted into the Orthodox Church by the Chrism. Then and only then, by the sanctifying grace of the Church, is value given to that baptismal form which that man had at some time received and which was till then a dead form.

We see, therefore, that even though our Church occasionally accepts repentant Papists without baptizing them, this practice does not mean at all that she accepts the priesthood of the Papal Church and its mysteries as being a true Church. We know very well, and all the Latins confess it, that our Church in the beginning always baptized repentant Papists. We have the witness of the Papal Council in the Lateran at Rome in 1215, which reports in its fourth canon that the Easterners would never liturgize where a Westerner had previously liturgized if they had not first blessed water there for purification, and that they would rebaptize those coming into the Eastern Church as if they had no Baptism. Therefore, if then, when the Papists had far fewer heresies, the Church rebaptized them, how much more so should it be done now when the Latins have added error upon error? "Therefore:" writes St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain, "since until then, according to the witness of those selfsame enemies [the Latins], the Easterners had been baptizing them, it is evident that for a great economy they used later the method of Chrismation ...So the need of economy having passed, exactness and the Apostolic Canons must have their place." 8

"The baptism of the Latins," writes St. Nicodemos, "is one which is falsely called Baptism, and for this reason it is not acceptable either by reason of exactness or by reason of economy. It is not acceptable by reason of exactness for they are heretics." Further on he explains that neither by reason of economy is it permitted to be accepted, for the Latins do not even preserve the form of Baptism intact, inasmuch as "they do not perform the three immersions and emersions in accordance with the Apostolic Tradition. Therefore, the Latins are unbaptized;" concludes the Saint. And further on --as if he lived in our days! --he adds: "I know what the unhired defenders of the Latin pseudo-baptism say. They argue that our Church became accustomed at times to accepting converts from the Latins with Chrism, and there is, in fact, some formulation to be found in which the terms are specified under which we will take them in. With regard to this, we simply and justly reply thus: It is enough that you admit that she received them with Chrism. Therefore, they are heretics. For why the Chrism if they were not heretics?" 9 The natured (or hired) defenders of the Latin deception, says the Saint, gave it to be understood that since the Church became accustomed to accepting Latins with the Holy Chrism, without rebaptizing them, this signifies that she does not consider them as heretics and as completely alien to the Church. But, answers the Saint, to whom does the Church give the Chrism? Does she not give it to those who lack the Holy Spirit? Is not the Chrism "The Seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit"? Therefore, would she have ever chrismated them if she did not consider them as lacking the Holy Spirit, that is, as alien to the Church? The fact, therefore, that she chrismates them is the most manifest proof that she considers them heretics. Besides, it is Chrism, that gift of the Holy Spirit, which makes operative the previously dead Latin "baptism;" and which the Church only permitted by economy not to be repeated.10

"That the Latins," he continues, "are heretics, there is no need of our producing any proof in this matter. The very fact that we have felt so much aversion for them for so many centuries is a plain proof that we loathe them as heretics, in the same way, that is to say, as we do Arians or Sabellians or the Spirit-defying Macedonians. If, however, anyone should like to apprehend their heresies from books, he will find all of them in the writings of the most holy Patriarch of Jerusalem, Lord Dositheos, the Scourge of Popes, together with their most wire refutations. Nevertheless, one can also obtain sufficient information from the booklet of the wise Meniates entitled A Rock of Scandal. Enough was said concerning them by St. Mark of Ephesus in Florence (at the 25th Assembly), who boldly spoke thus: ' We have cut the Latins off from us for no other reason than that they are not only schismatics, but also heretics. For this reason it is wholly improper to unite with them.' And Sylvester, the Grand Ecclesiarch, said: 'The difference of the Latins is heresy, and as such did those before us hold it to be' (Section 9, Chapter 5). So, it being admitted that Latins are heretics of long standing, the immediate conclusion from this is that they are unbaptized, according to St. Basil the Great, cited above, and of the Saints preceding him, Cyprian and Firmilian. Because, having become common men as a result of their being cut off from the Orthodox Church, they no longer have with them the grace of the Holy Spirit with which Orthodox priests accomplish the Mysteries." 11

We have seen, therefore, that according to the mind of the Fathers, schismatics and heretics have of themselves withdrawn from the life-creating and illuminating grace of the Holy Spirit, and so that which many call "Church" is in reality nothing but a dead body which, although it preserves the external marks of the Church, has lost its life. It would be stupid and blasphemous to consider that Papists, who are guilty of the worst schism that the history of the Church has ever known and of a whole system of heresies, have valid Mysteries and priesthood. The fact that the Orthodox Church of late does not rebaptize them when they repent and return to her does not signify, as we have seen, recognition of the mysteries of the Papal "Church" and its ordination, but signifies a conveying of life and grace to a dead form which would have remained forever a meaningless social rite if the person involved had not repented and been accepted by the real Church of Christ.

Is there any need for us to say any more in order to prove that the Papacy is nothing but a prodigious organization of heretics, without the truth, without Mysteries, without Divine Grace; that it is not a Church, but an organized worldly system with a religious veneer and, as other heresies, completely alien to the Church of Christ? But we shall continue and answer, with the help of God, the other two arguments of the unbind defenders of the Latin falsity.