The Orthodox world today suffers from numerous divisions on the ecclesiastical level, for you see the various schisms and quarrels plainly and without concealment, affecting our internal community and our dealings with both the Christian and the non-Christian world. And on the other hand there is no longer a unified Orthodox vision of the world, nor is the Orthodox world a strong unity expressing the catholic character of the Church, which means “that all be together”; but rather as local fragmented parties that have lost the catholic character. This was evident in the Great Orthodox Council, which was not only necessary to solve the problems facing the Church but was necessary to avert the danger of schisms, and to express the unity together without schism. For today Russia has broken communion with Constantinople, and Antioch with Jerusalem, over ecclesiastical rights. Patriarch Ignatius IV says: “Is the reality of schism not a declaration of the failure of the Church to fulfill the message of Christ? And paradoxically, atheism and the scattered ideologies gathered the hearts of thousands that the Church could not gather after two thousand years of teaching and preaching.”0.
Today, even after the seven councils, there are no longer intellectual heresies as there were in the first centuries, especially because the councils defined the faith and formulated all the doctrines in the best formulation. Metropolitan Paul Yazigi says: “But the other heresies began to multiply, namely the schisms of belonging.”1.
For we have three kinds of belonging: for a church to belong to some political power and ally itself with it – and this we do not see in the Church of Rome, for “Rome belongs to Rome”; or to some nationalism, as Dr. George I. Mantzaridis says: “you see a relapse towards nationalism in the old sense of the word, that is, towards idol-worship, because in this way the character of the believers ceases to be unity in Christ and becomes national particularity, or what is worse, national discord. But the dominance of racial or national distinctions in the Church is a state contrary to the nature of the Church.”(3). And Antioch was always protected from national belonging, and the third belonging, which is the most difficult on the internal level: “belonging – this one to Paul and this one to Apollos,” that is, as Metropolitan Paul Yazigi says, the politics of partisanship when some teach “to draw the disciples after themselves,” belonging to this spiritual father or that.
On the general level, the refusal of some churches to participate in the Great Orthodox Council was the best evidence of the extent of the fragmentation in which the Orthodox world lives, and the beginning of new fragmentations. This diminishes the standing of the Orthodox Church. Every division leads the Church towards absence from the international and even the local arena until we reach nonexistence. Do not the non-Orthodox stand helpless, wondering: whom do we dialogue with? With whom do we speak? And every global problem will be presented with many divergent Orthodox opinions, while the Catholics are one voice.
What is the cause of the schism? The first is a lack of love, and an increase in the law that was established to preserve the Church, not to divide it. Every law that causes schism, love abolishes it. For the Church is the refraining from division and the holding fast to unity at the expense of thought (and of ecclesiastical right). The Church is history and extends, but it is an extension of the unity of Christ, not of the division of men. Its unity is an expression of the unity of Christ and of God, and division is an image of the division of humanity – humanity that sees in the Church an example of human unity before the fall.
And the second: viewing the ecclesiastical reality through our great human belongings and our rights, that is, through the law and its interpretations.
What is the remedy for the schisms? Christ left us a healing remedy for all the schisms and differences: His precious blood that was shed on the cross for the life of the world. Metropolitan Paul Yazigi says: “Schism is a permanent sin. The holiness of the Church is proven by its unity. Indeed, the unity of the Church is the proof of its Orthodoxy, because this unity is the proof of the purity of its divine origin and its freedom from human admixture.”4. This unity which we draw from the blood of Jesus and His body – contemplating it and thinking upon it breaks all human considerations, and makes us place unity above every difference (over borders, authority, or partisanship), for unity is realized only by Jesus, whatever the transgression against ecclesiastical rights. For unity is not where ecclesiastical right is, but where Jesus is. Jesus is its cause and to Him it is directed. Truth does not exist in abstraction, but is born of love; abstract truth He turns into a source of schism. Christ unites us – He is the remedy and the goal. Everything in our world we see dividing because of interests and belongings; the schisms in the world are schisms of societies. But in the Church the schisms are a tearing of the body of Jesus. Shall we then divide the body of Jesus? And where are we today from fulfilling His prayer, and from fulfilling His message on earth?
References
- Fragrances of Antioch, Ignatius IV, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, p. 164.
- Tower and Body, Metropolitan Paul Yazigi, Part Two, Manshurat al-Bishara, Aleppo, p. 152
2. The Travels of the Word, Metropolitan Paul Yazigi, Part One, Manshurat al-Bishara, Aleppo, p. 216
3. The Sociology of Christianity, George I. Mantzaridis, translated by Father John Musa Badr, Manshurat of the Institute of St. John of Damascus, Balamand, p. 75
4. The Travels of the Word, Metropolitan Paul Yazigi, Part One, Manshurat al-Bishara, Aleppo, p. 216