The doctrine of his Excellency Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky of Kiev) differs in two ways from the official doctrine of the Church:
(a) the centre of gravity of the redemptive act of Christ is displaced from Golgotha to Gethsemane,
(b) the redemptive act itself is conceived not at all as an expiatory sacrifice offered for humanity, but as an act of compassion and love for it...
Is our author right in transferring the centre of gravity of the redemptive act of the Saviour from Golgotha to Gethsemane, and does he understand well, in its essence, the prayer of Gethsemane?
Metropolitan Anthony affirms that the words of Christ "May this cup pass from Me" refer not at all to His imminent crucifixion and death, but to the torments undergone in the Garden of Gethsemane and elicited by the sight of the sin of men, and by compassion. He supports his idea by reference to the words of the apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which say that in the Garden of Gethsemane the Saviour besought with great cries Him Who was able to save from death, His heavenly Father, and that He was heard in His prayer because of His piety (Hebrews 5.7-10). If, continues our author, the Saviour prayed that He should be spared the crucifixion and death, the Apostle would not have written that He had been heard, since He endured the crucifixion and death. And if the Apostle wrote that His prayer had been heard, it was that He was not asking that He should be spared death, but something else: that He should be spared the internal sufferings experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane because of the sins of humanity. But it is impossible to concur with this interpretation. Why does our author limit the Gethsemane prayer to the words "May this cup pass from Me" (Matthew 26.39) and omits the second part of the prayer: "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt" (Matthew 26.39)? And besides, it emerges from the complete text of the prayer that Christ was not positively asking to be spared death, but conditionally, if that was the will of God. And the will of God was that Christ should drink to the dregs the cup of sufferings of Calvary for the sins of men.
He was heard and his prayer granted, but in what was his prayer granted, if He was not spared suffering and death? He was delivered from death according to His humanity: that is how the Fathers and Teachers of the Church have always interpreted this passage!..
[St. Athanasius the Great writes:] "When [the Saviour] says 'Father, if it is possible, may this cup pass from Me' (Matthew 26.39), 'nevertheless not My will but Thine be done' (Luke 22.42), and 'for the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak' (Matthew 26.41), He expresses two wills: the human will, which is proper to the flesh, and the Divine will, which is proper to God; the human will, by the weakness of the flesh, recoils before sufferings, while His Divine will accepts them.
In the same way, when Peter learned that Christ was going to suffer, took fear and said 'Be it far from Thee, Lord: this shall not be unto Thee', Christ, without reproaching him, said: 'Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art an offence unto Me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men' (Matthew 16.22-23).
"It is the same thing here. As man, he pushes away suffering, as a man would do, but as God and not being subject to suffering by His Divine nature, He completely accepts suffering and death." (On the Incarnation of the Word and Against the Arians)...
[Then Archbishop Theophan cites another passage from St. Athanasius, followed by citations from St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. John Chrysostom (two passages), St. Cyril of Alexandria (three texts) and St. Ephraim the Syrian.]
[St. John of Damascus writes:] "On the eve of His redemptive passion, He says: 'Father, if it is possible, may this cup pass from Me' (Matthew 26.39), but it is clear that He must drink this cup in His capacity as man, and not as God. That is why, as a man would do, He wishes to be spared this cup. These words are dictated by a natural fear... 'Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done' (Luke 22.42): not Mine to the extent that I have a different nature from Thine, that is, Mine and Thine insofar as I am consubstantial with Thee.
"Evidently He had a will both as man and as God; for the rest, His human will submitted to and obeyed His Divine will, without following its own inclinations, but desiring only what His Divine will wanted. When the Divine will permitted it, His human will found itself naturally subject to that which was proper to it. That is why when it pushed away death and His Divine will permitted it, it then really pushed away death, and was in a state of fear and agony. But when His Divine will wanted His human will to choose death, then His sufferings became fully accepted and willed, because He delivered Himself voluntarily to death, not only as God, but also as man." (Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, III, 18).
After all the above, one sees that for the Fathers the Gethsemane prayer of our Saviour was not the exploit of love and compassion for the sin of the human race, but the expression of the agony of Christ and the fear of the pain suffered on Golgotha.
Metropolitan Anthony finds this interpretation unworthy of the person of Christ... But we can be convinced that this objection of our very reverend author is largely based on a misunderstanding by studying the teaching of the Fathers on what they call he irreproachable and natural passions of human nature. According to the Fathers, Christ the Saviour took upon Himself the natural and irreproachable passions, but he did not take upon Himself sin and the sinful passions.
"We confess," writes St. John of Damascus, "that Christ assumed all the natural and irreproachable passions (sufferings) of man. For He assumed the whole man and all that is proper to man, except sin, for sin is not natural and has not been placed in us by the Creator: it arises only under the influence of the devil, who acts with our consent and does not do us violence. The natural and irreproachable passions (sufferings) are external to our will, - they are those which have been introduced into human life as a consequence of disobedience and condemnation, being hunger, thirst, fatigue, toil, tears, decay, fear, agony which produces sweat, tears of blood and the help of angels who take pity on our weakness, and others besides, which are proper to all men in accordance with their nature." (Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, III, 20).
With regard to fear, St. John of Damascus writes: "The word fear has a double meaning. There is natural fear, which comes when the soul refuses to be separated from the body, in accordance with the natural sympathy and kinship which the Creator breathed into the soul from its origin and which make the soul have a natural experience of fear, anguish and horror of death. The definiton of this fear is as follows: natural fear is the effort made to preserve one's existence out of disgust at death. For if the Creator has brought all things into being out of nothing, it is natural that all things should aspire to be and refuse nothingness...
"But there is another fear, that which comes from a darkening of the spirit, from lack of faith and ignorance of the hour of one's death - for example, the fear that we experience in the night when we hear an unusual sound. That fear is contrary to nature and to define it we shall say: anti-natural fear is terror in face of the unknown. That fear was not experienced by the Saviour..." (Exposition of the Orthodox Faith)...
The teaching of the Fathers of the Church on the Gethsemane prayer, which we have just expounded, can be summarized in the following terms:
1) All the Fathers have seen in Christ's prayer in Gethsemane, by no means the redemptive act itself, which for them took place on Golgotha, but a pre-redemptory struggle and agony.
2) The essence of this pre-redemptory act resides not in the compassionate love of the Saviour suffering for the sins of men, but in the manifestation of the weakness of His human nature, which expresses His fear of His coming Passion on Golgotha.
3) The manifestation of this weakness of His human nature does not represent anything whatever unworthy of His holy Person, since it comes from His free Divine will and has a capital importance in the economy of salvation.
4) This act of our Saviour has a providential significance in that it attests to the fact that the Saviour took upon Himself human nature not at all in an illusory manner but in all its reality, with all its (non-sinful) weaknesses, and that He triumphed in His person over one of the principal weaknesses of men...
The second peculiarity of Metropolitan Anthony's doctrine on the dogma of Redemption is his interpretation of the redemptive act of Christ not at all as a sacrifice offered for the human race, but as an act of compassionate love towards it.
[Bishop Theophanes the Recluse writes:] "We have fallen through the sin of our first parents and we have been plunged into irremediable corruption. Our salvation can only come by deliverance from this corruption. Our corruption comes from two different evils: from the wrath of God in the face of our disobedience and from the loss of His grace and from submission to the law, on the one hand; and on the other, from the alteration of our nature by sin, from the loss of true life, and from submission to death. That is why there were required for our salvation: first, that God should take pity on us, deliver us from the curse of the law and restore to us His grace, and then that he make us live again, we who were dead through sin, and give us a new life.
Both the one and the other are necessary: both that we should be delivered from the curse, and that our nature should be renewed. If God does not show Himself full of pity for us, we can not receive any pardon from Him, and if we receive no pardon, we are not worthy of His grace; and if we are not worthy of His grace, we cannot receive the new life. And even if we had received pardon and remission in some fashion, we would remain in our corrupted state, unrenewed, and we would derive no profit from it; for without renewment of our nature, we would remain in a permanent state of sin and we would constantly commit sins, sins which bring down upon us again our condemnation and disgrace - and so everything would be maintained in the same state of corruption.
Both the one and the other have been accomplished by the expiatory sacrifice of Christ. By His death on the Cross he offered a sacrifice of pardon for the human race. He lifted the curse of sin and reconciled us to God. And by His pure life, by which in a perfect manner he accomplished the will of God in all its fullness, He has revealed and given to us, in His person, an unfailing source of justice and sanctification for the whole human race."
To this teaching on the Redemption which is retained in our dogmatic works and in the 'Catechism' of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, Metropolitan Anthony made objections, substituting for it his own doctrine...
[But] according to St. Gregory the Theologian, these [old-testament] sacrifices were, on the one hand, a concession made to the young Israel in view of his young age, so that he should not allow himself to be seduced by the pagan sacrifices, and on the other, the prefiguration of the sacrifice of Christ on Golgotha.. This mystical prefigurative value is borne especially by the paschal lamb.
"All that took place in old-testament times with regard to the worship of God," writes St. John Chrysostom, "leads always to the Saviour - whether these are the prophecies, the priesthood, the kingship, the temple, the altar, the veil of the temple, the ark, the manna, the rod, or anything else - everything is in relation with Him. If the one God authorized the Hebrews to offer a sacrifical worship to Him, this is not at all because He was satisfied with sacrifices, but because He wanted to turn the Hebrews from the pagan superstitions... In His wisdom and omnipotence He yielded to the desire of the Hebrews and in authorizing them to offer sacrifices to Him, He prepared the image of things to come, so that the victim, in itself useless, might show itself to be useful as an image... By all the sacrifices He prepares the image of Christ and the events to come.
"Whether this image is a sheep, it is an image of Christ; or an ox, it is also an image of Christ; or a calf or a heifer, or any other animal offered in sacrifice, a pigeon or a turtle-dove, everything is in relation to the Saviour...
"And so as not to fall into prolixity, I counsel you to reread the commentary on all this in St. Paul, which forbids the consideration of anything outside its relation to Christ, but rather orders you to bind everything to Him."
[There follow quotations from St. Athanasius the Great, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Gregory the Theologian, eight quotations; St. Athanasius of Alexandria, eight quotations; St. Gregory of Nyssa, three; St. John Chrysostom, eight; St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Basil the Great, four; John of Damascus, two quotations.]
The Council [of Constantinople] of 1156 considers it indisputable that the death of Christ on Golgotha was a propitiatory sacrifice for the human race and is only concerned to know to whom the sacrifice was offered. It concludes that the sacrifice was offered by Christ the Saviour to the Holy Trinity. In doing this, Christ was at the same time both the victim and the sacrifice (in accordance with His human nature) and God receiving the Sacrifice, with God the Father and the Holy Spirit (in accordance with His consubstantiality with the Father and the Holy Spirit). The Council also established that the eucharistic sacrifice is this same Sacrifice, that of Golgotha. The Council consigns to anathema those who think otherwise.
Metropolitan Anthony refers to St. Gregory the Theologian, whom he considers an adversary of the teaching of the death of Christ on Golgotha as a sacrifice in the usual sense. But one cannot agree with him on this point. It is sufficient to recover the words of St. Gregory to be convinced: see On the Holy Pascha, Against Apollinarius.
To defend his point of view on the redemptive act of Christ considered as an act of love and compassion for the sins of men, Metropolitan Anthony cites the passage of the prayer of Symeon the New Theologian before communion in which he speaks of the mercy, the 'com-passion' by which the faithful and the communicants become co-possessors of the Divine light and nature. The writings of Symeon the New Theologian which have been preserved leave no doubt as to the interpretation he made of the redemptive act of Christ. [Homilies I, 1-2, I, 3, II, 3, XXXVIII, 3]
[Then come texts from St. John Chrysostom (two), St. John of Damascus (two), St. Athanasius of Alexandria (five) and St. Cyril of Alexandria (five)].
From all that has been said above concerning the death on the cross of the Saviour Christ, one can draw the following conclusions:
1) The death on the cross of Christ at Golgotha, according to the teaching of the Fathers of the Church, is undoubtedly an expiatory and propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the human race.
2) Although one says readily enough that this sacrifice was offered by the One Son to His Father, one must understand well that the Son offers the sacrifice in His capacity as Sacrificer, in accordance with His human nature, but that this sacrifice is accepted by the Father with the Son and the Holy Spirit, in accordance with the indivisibility of their Divine nature. In other words, the sacrifice is offered to the Holy Trinity, and the Son is at the same time He Who offers and He Who receives.
3) This sacrifice was offered, not because the Father "demanded it or had need of it", to satisfy His wrath or His justice, but by "economy", for the salvation of the human race.
4) The essence of the sacrifice consists in the fact that the Saviour took upon Himself the sins of the whole of humanity and endured, because of them, the punishment which humanity should have undergone because of them.
5) The consequence of this sacrifice of expiation was the reconciliation of humanity with God, which was sealed by the sending of the Holy Spirit upon us, by which we have been made capable of entering into communion with God and thus becoming heirs of eternal life.
(“On the Redemption”, translated from the extracts in French in Archeveque Theophane de Poltava, Lavardac: Monastere de Saint Michel, 1988)
