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With a majestic divine service on the
Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross, 23 March, at the Monastery of St
Nicholas in Paiania on the outskirts of Athens, the argreement of union was
confirmed between the Greek TOC on one side, presided over by the Archbishop of
Athens and Greece, Kallinikos, and on the other side the now-defunct Synod ''in
Resistance'' (Cyprianites), the Romanian TOC presided over by Met. Vlasie of
Slatioara, the Bulgarian TOC presided over by Bishop Photios of Triadia, and the
jurisdiction under Met. Agathangel which claims to be the sole canonical inheritor of
the fallen Russian Church Abroad.
This union is the result of long
theological dialogues between the Kallinikites and the Cyprianites. As far as we understand at this point, based
on the information we have, the Cyprianites have essentially renounced the
heretical teaching of their teacher and founder, the reposed Metropolitan
Cyprian Kotsumbas - that the ''healthy” (i.e. the Orthodox) and “ailing” (i.e.,
the heretics) co-exist in the Church - explaining that this teaching was their
elder’s personal theological thinking – a mere theologumenon, which they have now put aside. On 21 March, the GOC and
the bishops formerly of the “Synod in Resistance” signed a joint Orthodox
Confession of Faith entitled "The True Orthodox Church in Opposition to the
Heresy of Ecumenism: Dogmatic and Canonical Issues"and made
the resolution to unite into one administrative structure; that is, the former SiR bishops have
submitted to the authority of the GOC Synod under Abp. Kallinikos and have
become members of the one, united GOC Synod.
The resolution of the bishops of the
former SiR was supported by the Churches which until now have been in spiritual
communion with them: the Churches of Romania and Bulgaria, along with the
Russian group under Metropolitan Agathangel.
This unquestionably historical event
brought great joy to the majority of True Orthodox throughout the whole world
(in Greece they called this event a Pascha before Pascha), and hope for the
beginning of the process of unification of all True Orthodox, which after so
many gloomy decades of the splintering and fragmenting of True Orthodoxy, in
any case foreshadows a brighter future of the strengthening of the position of
the True Orthodox on the battleground with apostate official Orthodoxy.
Of course, there are those who are very
sharply criticizing this move of the Greek TOC with Archbishpo Kallinikos at
the head, accusing Her of lacking in principle, and that with this condescension
to the Cyprianites they have abandoned the eccesiological position of their Confession
of the Faith which they held until now, proclaimed in the documents of 1935, 1974,
and 1991.
The “hard line”zealots perceive
serious decadence of True Orthodoxy in this event and a fatal passing of
oeconomia into paranomia (lawlessness). Furthermore, general suprise and various
assumptions were especially caused by the ease with which Archbishop
Kallinikos, until now the representative of the Matthewite line in the Greek
TOC, passed over his former convictions.
Was it from a sincere desire for the attainment of this great
unification of True Orthodox, or for the sake of his own glory as the great
uniter and protector of True Orthodoxy?
The two most important and most
numerous True Orthodox Churches, the Russian True Orthodox Church (RTOC)
presided over by Archbishop Tikhon of Omsk and Siberia, and the Russian Orthodox Autonomos Church
(ROAC) - the Suzdal Synod - presided over by Met. Theodore, have still not made
a statement about this event.
We asked His Grace Bishop Akakije to make
public his stance on the Kallinikos-Cyprianite unification for our ''Serbian
True Orthodox'' blog. In His Grace's
words, though due to the rapidity of events his personal stance on this
unification has not yet crystalised, in principle it is positive. He considers that with this act, the
extremes of Cyprianism and Matthewism which have brought great harm to True
Orthodoxy until now have finally been abandoned.
He
is especially pleasantly suprised by the change in stance of Archbishop
Kallinikos on the matter of validity of the use of ecclesiastical oeconomia,
his denial of which was once the main obstacle in the process of entry into
communion of the Greek TOC with the Russian TOC of Archbishop Tikhon. Bishop
Akakije, on the other hand, does find fault with the questionable canonicity of
the Synod of Metropolitan Agathangel in relation to the True Churches of
Russian origin, the RTOC and ROAC. The
hasty and unconsidered reception into communion of Agathangel, Bishop Akakije
states, could complicate the future discussions concerning the Greek, Romanian,
Bulagarian TOC’s entering into communion with the Churches above mentioned,
which will themselves sometime in the near future surely unite into a powerful
unified Russian TOC, without which a Great Council of the True Orthodox Church
would be incomplete, whose summoning was mentioned in the document referred to above, the joint ecclesiological statement of the
newly united Churches, entitled "The True
Orthodox Church in Opposition to the Heresy of Ecumenism: Dogmatic and
Canonical Issues". Metropolitan Agathangel surely cannot
represent the Russian Church Abroad nor the True Orthodox Church in Russia.
Bishop Akakije hopes that the Greek hierarchs are keeping this in mind.
The great unification of the True
Orthodox into a strong and united front, Bishop Akakije continues, in any case
demands concessions. Without concessions
this complex and important process would never move forward, and it would be
difficult ever to attain the unification of those who fight for the purity of
Holy Orthodoxy against the heresy of ecumenism, the apostasy
of sergianism, and the new calendar schism.
The hierarchs of the Greek TOC with
Archbishop Kallinikos at their head understood this, Bishop Akakije concludes,
and thus they should be supported.
The
editors of the SerbianTO blog
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