HALKI
by
Metropolitan Ephraim of Boston
The inspiration for this article came from an essay in Theodromia (Jan.-March, 2012), a Greek theological periodical. In this extensive essay, the author, Rev. Theodore Zisis, a priest of the new calendar Church of Greece, deplores the anti-patristic mind-set (i.e. the Latin Captivity) of the theological schools of Greece.
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Theologically, one of the worst theological academies in the history of the Orthodox Church probably was the theological school of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on the Island of Halki (in Turkish: Heybeli Ada) in the Bosporus. Fortunately, the Turks closed the school some years ago.
Its professors, for the most part, were trained in the Protestant and Roman Catholic schools of the West, and they absorbed many of their prejudices. Most of the professors were remarkable only for the rapidity with which their theological ideas went out of style in scholarly circles. Do most people know the names of some of these lamentable professors? No. But, in this article, I will torture you for a few moments by telling you something about a few of them, just to ruin your day.
First of all, around the turn of the twentieth century, one of Halki’s “bright lights” was the Dean of the school, Metropolitan Germanos Strenopoulos of Seleucia, later of Thyateira, who was one of the authors of the infamous Encyclical of January, 1920, addressed “To the Churches of Christ Wheresover They Might Be,” which is the Encyclical that became the big impetus for World Orthodoxy’s involvement in the Ecumenical Movement.
Then there was Deacon Basil Stephanides, another “luminary”, who was a contemporary of the above-mentioned Metropolitan. He had studied and taught in Germany, where he probably should have continued to study and teach. Instead, he came to teach at Halki, and there, the young Orthodox students were taught by Professor Stephanides that St. Symeon the New Theologian was a mystic who used “erotic” language in his religious poetry, and that the Saint’s writings, like those of many other such “mystics” in the Orthodox Church, (such as St. Dionysius the Areopagite), were Monophysitic (a heresy condemned by the Fourth Ecumenical Council!), what with all that talk about the “deification” of man.
Then there was my own professor of Old Testament, D. Zaharopoulos, also a graduate of Halki, who taught us all the latest Protestant theories of “higher criticism” of the Holy Scriptures (i.e., no miracles or prophecies are true), who scoffed at and ridiculed the Holy Fathers, and obliged us to “correct” the Orthodox Church’s Old Testament text according to the more modern Masoretic Hebrew (and Protestant) text (that is some 1,300 years newer than the Church’s text).
As the seminary’s custodian once said after having had a theological discussion with our Old Testament professor: “Why, that man doesn’t believe in anything!”
Then there was my professor of Patrology, the priest G. Tsoumas, also a graduate of Halki, who taught us that the Hesychast Fathers (among whom was St. Gregory Palamas) were people who sat in their closets and stared at their navels (exactly the same slander that the heretics Barlaam and Acindynus uttered against those saintly fathers in the 14th century).
In other words, where the Saints saw and experienced God’s deifying and uncreated grace, these professors from Halki jeered and saw only heresy and pantheism.
Thank you, Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther.*
Oh, I almost forgot the plastic spoons. This same Patrology professor also believed and taught that the Church should use disposable (where?) plastic spoons when giving people Holy Communion, “because of the germs.”
Should I continue? Have you had enough?
(“No, Metropolitan Ephraim. Please continue.”)
Okay, I’ll tell you also about Archbishop Iakovos of the new calendar Greek Archdiocese here in America another graduate of Halki who taught that we Christians should get rid of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.
I could go on, but enough is enough.
In the middle of the 19th century, when the school of Halki first opened its doors, Cosmas Flamiatos, a popular and saintly lay preacher in the Peloponessus, prophesied that, “I foresee that out of this school [i.e., Halki] will proceed batches and batches [fournión, fournión] of bishops, like muffins out of a bakery, that will one day gather together in an assembly to dissolve Orthodox Christianity.”
These “muffin-bishops” are identical to the “astrologer-bishops” I wrote about earlier.
Well, my beloved Orthodox Christians, do we not see Flamiatos’ prophecy coming true right before our eyes?
