What is Wrong With Cyprianism?

[尼古拉前执事]

Living Orthodoxy in its January-February 2003 (#133, Vol.XXXIII #1) issue trashed that book that you are reading. Said that it has an agenda that is not immediately apparent but is there and pollutes the entire writing. In the end Saint John of Kronstadt Press ended up not selling the book for these reasons. You might be interested in reading their 9 page review in that issue.

[Justin Kissel]

I will have to get that! (after I get a bunch of other stuff, lol) I've noted the pro-sergianist rhetoric though, if that's mainly what the article pointed out.

[尼古拉前执事]

"The book hides within this remarkable story numerous barbs and half-truths, so well covered as to be all but invisible except to the well informed."

"What more need we say? This is, indeed, (pseudo-) hagiography with an agenda. We are invited to marvel over this man. ... and to draw the unmistakable corollary conclusions that somehow or another all that horor was in accordance with the Will of God, and those that struggled against it, even at the cost of their lives, were deluded fools."

[Justin Kissel]

I'm now 124 pages into the book and I can more fully understand why a ROCOR publication would (rightly) take issue with it. At first the hints of sympathy for Sergianism (and Sergius himself) were few and far between, and seemed to be coming from the authors of the work, not "bishop Luke" himself. Now, however, there are entire sections of outright pro-MP/pro-Sergianist rhetoric and justification, and the actions and thoughts of bishop Luke are at the center of such sections. I now regret quoting from the book in the above posts.

[Justin Kissel]

But no less on the "right" side is the position of Metr. Philaret misunderstood and even condemned. There are those who, in their "zeal not according to knowledge" (Rom. 10:2), wish to make everything absolutely "simple" and "black or white." They would wish him and his Synod to declare invalid the Mysteries of new calendarists or Communist-dominated Churches, not realizing that it is not the business of the Synod to make decrees on such a sensitive and complex question, and that the church disturbances of our time are far too deep and complicated to be solved solely by breaking communion or applying anathemas, which—save in the few specific instances where they might be applicable—only make the church disturbances worse. Some few even think to solve the tragic situation of Orthodoxy today with the declaration, "We are the only pure ones left," and then abuse those who take a stand of true Orthodox moderation with a most un-Orthodox mechanistic logic ("If they have grace, why don't you join them or receive communion from them ?" At various times the Russian Church Outside of Russia has avoided or discouraged communion with several other Orthodox bodies, and with one in particular (the Moscow Patriarchate) it has no communion at all, on grounds of principle; and separate hierarchs have warned against contact with the "modernist" bodies; but this is not because of any legalistic definition of the lack of grace-giving Sacraments in such bodies, but because of pastoral considerations which are respected and obeyed by al true sons of the Church without any need for a merely "logical" justification. - Article on Metropolitan Philaret of New York; Originally printed in The Orthodox Word, Vol. 12, no. 1 (66), 1976

I wonder if the same thing goes today? Or have things changed to the point where ROCOR is forced to speak openly out of love? Obviously most people in world Orthodoxy are being hoodwinked, and Satan's old trick of causing apathy within them to keep them fooled is more alive now than it has ever been before. A question though, if things have passed the line, when was the line passed?

[Justin Kissel]

I'm going to again read through the various Cyprian documents* in the next few days. Before I begin reading, though, I have a question for anyone who wishes to respond (though I am especially hoping to hear from Julianna and OOD): what heretical or unorthodox beliefs do you believe I will find in these documents? Basically, what are the particular things that you think Met. Cyprian gets wrong in his ecclesiology?

Justin

• Ecclesiological documents written primarily by Met. Cyprian of Oropos and Fili, but also including many texts by Archbishop Chrysostomos, Bishop Auxentios, and a few others.

[Daniel]

Off the top of my head...

He maintains that the Ecumenists are not fully heretical nor schismatic, and that that can only be desidedby a 'Pan-Orthodox' council. If he maintains that they are neither heretical or schismatic, then on what grounds can he lawfully 'wall himself off'? If he does not think that any of the bishops in the Greek State Church (which, I think, he refers to as the 'Mother Church') openly and bear-headedly preach heresy, then he cannot lawfully seperate himself from them.

Again, that's only off the top of my head. OOD can tell you much more than I can.