So,I made the comment on the "curses" with the added comment about their being no possibility of repentance and applying it even to those already departed not because I have an exaggerated view of an anathema, but because that was the actual language used in the 1666/1667 council. To my knowledge, it is the only time such an extreme punishment has ever been used. I am aware of course of the anathemas and their corrective purpose, but that is not what was used against the Old Believers.
Your questions are wonderful! They are never a bother, even when they challenge. The position of the Old Believers is, as you know, that the faith and piety it received is both Apostolic and without corruption (broadly speaking). Having the only consistently Orthodox political environment since the Crusades and Islam, this stands to reason. So, when dealing with other Orthodox Churches, yes, it is true that the same issues that separate us from the MP would also separate us from them as well.
It is illustrative to look at the history of the Roman Cathoic church, whose footprint was similar to the Orthodox, historically. Those items that ultimately caused division and divergent liturgical practices (like the Filioque, etc), started off locally, but soon spread throughout the west so that now, you would be hard pressed to find a Catholic who thinks there was ever a time when their practices or beliefs were different. My point is that beliefs and practices spread and things tend to homogenize over time. Russia, politcally, was intentionally self-isolated until the Old Believer Schism and viewed all Greeks with deep suspicion since the time of Florence, which caused the Greeks to be seen as betrayers of the faith long before the Old Believer issue.
I think the issue is that, like the Roman Church in the West, the Orthodox Church comprises, statistically, essentially all believers in the Christian East. So, like the absurdity of claiming all Western Christians fell away from the Church, so too do Old Believers fall into the absurdity of thinking the same way of the East, but nevertheless it is the reality of the worldview wherein these churches, dependant upon Italian printers, under Islamic rule, etc, found their faiths corrupted in ways unacceptable to Old Believers. This of course is not a nice thing to say or think, but it is an Old Believer reality. When you believe your faith and its practices are Apostolic, they must be defended and preserved.
There is a nice book by an OCA scholar/priest, Meyendorff, called Russia, Ritual, and Reform, which looks in detail at the liturgical changes made to the Old Rite. His finding, which mirrors all the modern Russian scholarship, is that the "corrections" were in fact innovations from Venetian printing presses, and did not correspond to any ancient Greek texts. But this is another topic altogether. Likewise, I hope you are not offended in what I hope is as straightforward and honest an answer as I can give!
I wanna clarify my comment about the filioque, I was rushing to get out the door and didn’t properly explain. I meant that I don’t think that the Filioque is the MOST important issue about reconciliation with the church in Rome. Papal infallibility and other dogmatic statements of the Catholic Church are much more relevant today than the Filioque is. The reason I say this is because the Catholic Church is basically forced, by material reality, to admit that the Orthodox Church was correct. History shows that they were clearly innovating. The reason I don’t think it’s necessarily that critical is because the Orthodox have the unfortunate habit of caricaturing the Catholic understanding of the Filioque as if the Catholics still believe it as it was espoused by them in the 11th century, which they simply don’t anymore. I don’t think any historically literate Catholic believes that the Filioque, as the Orthodox rightly condemns, expresses truth. I think these Catholics find a tutelary and pedagogical USEFULLNESS for using it, if someone is that poorly versed in theology, but fully recognize that the eternal procession of the Spirit from the Son is theologically incorrect. The Catholic Church is no longer teaching this heretical understanding as dogmatic and infallible, as far as I can tell (with it being optional to include in the nicene creed for people who understand the problem of it’s inclusion, I think, though I may be wrong on this) and largely accepts that we are correct in rejecting it. I do not think it would take much for this issue to completely resolve itself in our lifetimes. The OTHER dogmatic innovations of the Catholic Church are the areas where they are unlikely to budge from their position and accept the Orthodox faith.
I think this mirrors, but also contrasts the relationship between the Orthodox and Old Believers. There was a point in time when the Orthodox dogmatically rejected the position of the Old Believers, but that time is gone and the church is forced by material reality to realize that it was wrong to do so. The Old Believers and Orthodox COULD come to an understanding and rejoin each other, because I don’t think (and I could be wrong here) the Old Believers perceive the world Orthodox as being in outright heresy of faith. But what I worry about is that the Old Believer position has calcified to an opposite extreme. They have dogmatized things as a reaction to the MP dogmatizing things that should have never been dogmatized. But the Old Believers must also accept that liturgical development is a reality for them as well. The 2 finger sign of the cross is an older form of the cross, but it isn’t the only extant form. It isn’t historically tenable to claim that the faith as practiced by 15th century Russia is somehow unchanged from the time of St. John Chrysostom. I think the grievances of the Old Believers are valid and should be rectified. But I struggle to accept that it means that every liturgical change instituted in the Greek and Russian churches is somehow heretical and thus irreconcilable with the Old Believers liturgical practices. I do think an edinoverie solution is the most appropriate.
Now that said! I am definitely unaware of the cultural and political environment of Russia at the moment and in the past as to whether or not there are deep problems with the edinoverie solution, I say all this as an outsider looking in through a murky window and I would love to know why the Old Believers may reject the idea of the Belokrinitskaya (sorry for the spelling error!) becoming a self governing autonomous church within the MP or even completely separate and autonomous, but within communion. But to me, the MP has said the Old Rite in all its Glory is good and should be practiced, so it seems to me that reconciliation is at least POSSIBLE now, where it was completely impossible before. I’d love to know your thoughts, as well as thoughts on the other priested Old Believer groups that are in a different jurisdiction from the Belokrinitskaya.
Yes, I think that you are right and scholarly consensus largely agrees with the findings of Fr. Meyendorff as well along with anyone who has more than a passing knowledge of who the old believers are. It is a historical fact that traditions kept by Old Believers are not some aberration, as initially posited by the Nikonians, but reflect an older strata of Orthodox praxis. Specifically with the 2 finger sign of the cross, while I am myself at the point of being unwilling to dogmatize either version as a matter of true Orthodox faith, I absolutely do recognize the superior Christological statement and perspectives in favor of the 2 finger version. Particularly the point made that the 3 finger sign of the Cross crucifies the Trinity. It’s very compelling. But on the other hand, a person making the 3 finger sign of the cross doesn’t believe that is being done. I think that to say the 3 finger sign of the cross is automatically “evil” renders the sign of the cross, in general, into a magical invocation reliant on a specific formula. And I say all this as someone who routinely makes a conscious choice to make the 2 finger sign of the Cross instead due to its superior symbolic meaning and gravity. I just worry about an extreme position that reduces an act of faith to a mechanistic “spell”, like how the Catholics believe that a priest saying the Words of Invocation during the Mass AUTOMATICALLY transforms the bread and wine to the body and blood, without the will of God being required. And to be fair I am also a person who doesn’t think the filioque is all that “important” any more. I totally think it is wrong and shouldn’t be said, and if a Roman bishop is arguing that it is is true and SHOULD be used then we have a big problem, but by and in large the Catholic Church continues to use it, claiming its aid for expressing something a “simple” lay person might understand, while on the other hand accepting its historical innovation and theological inaccuracy. So the Catholics seem to have reduced the statement of the filioque as a matter of economia for people who don’t understand the nuance of procession. Though I think this does an insult to the layperson who should be capable of making this distinction and thus understand why it is inaccurate to say. And please don’t interpret my statements as a condemnation or a challenge, I simply am expressing my understanding.
And I wholeheartedly agree with you on the sentiment that the Apostolic faith MUST be defended and preserved. Though for my part, I would prefer the language of schismatic versus heretic (not saying that the Old Believers do or don’t say this). I’m reminded of the Old Calendarist schism in the Greek Church with some groups of Old Calendarists going as far as to say that all of the new calendar churches are WITHOUT GRACE, while others hold to a “walling off” mentality and view themselves as separating to preserve the faith, not to accuse the new calendar churches of being heretics, just in error. To me, I can see the World Orthodox churches being in error over several things, but I wouldn’t say they are in heresy like the Catholics or the Protestants. The faith taught by the Orthodox NOW, in our patristic renaissance and rejection of western influences, seems to be widely the same faith taught by the Old Believers with the exception of matters of liturgical practice, which the rest of Orthodoxy is happy to accept, as evidenced by the presence of Old Rite parishes within the MP and ROCOR and pre-schism western rite practices authorized for use by some as well. I think the time of foreign influences corrupting the church is over, Catholicism and Islam is laughable to the Orthodox (at least the ROCOR/OCA circles I run in). I think that the old believers suspicion was and is worth having, but I think we are past that point any longer. The bigger issues are the role of the MP in the state and the role of the MP/EP to make decisions “for Orthodoxy” that others don’t agree with. The Slavic world and the Greek world are at odds over so many “political” things. I would like to think that the Old Believers have a sober mind about those issues, but I honestly don’t know.
And with the Anathema of the 1667 councils yes I fundamentally find it absolutely villainous. The council was completely wrong and filled with an anti-Christian spirit.
May I ask for some clarification on the comment regarding ROCOR? Is he saying that the New Rite church offered repentance to ROCOR, and thus should do the same to the Old Believers? Or is he saying that ROCOR has offered repentance to the Old Believers?
The latter. In the 70s there was a swelling of good intentions in the ROCOR regarding Old Believers. But it was received as a bizarrely out of place and with suspicion.
No. Actually that happened in the 80s and their nastavnik, now their priest Fr. Pimen, when he decided to change course, shopped around and ended up with ROCOR coincidentally after seeing some things in the general culture of the OCA that he did not want to be a part of.
Yes that makes sense. I understand they rejected the anathemas in place and began their work of establishing an Old Rite diocese, but it seems more akin to the Edinoverie model rather than a mending of the schism. I have also heard rumors that a couple old believers parishes in the US have used “negotiations” with ROCOR as a tactic to get more attention from their bishops but I’m totally unsure as to the veracity of this.
I consider myself to be akin to the interviewee in this article, as a new rite Orthodox Christian who is deeply sympathetic to the Old Believers and wholeheartedly believes they did nothing wrong. I pray that this schism will be ended, even if a spread of the Old rite into much of Orthodoxy in America is unlikely to ever occur. Thank you so much for this translation project!
Thank you for sharing this article! Have you had a chance to learn about the Uniate heresy that creeped into Russian Orthodox Church and Ukrainian Orthodox Church? Zahary Kupetsky recants in his book Palinodia the attack on Orthodoxy by Jesuits.
Yes, the Unia was a disaster and left many pernicious problems. Metropolitan Peter (Mogila's) Catechisms were written primarily as a defense against the teachings that were infiltrating the Church due to "uniatism". I am unfamiliar with the book you mentioned and will look for it right away. Thank you!!
So,I made the comment on the "curses" with the added comment about their being no possibility of repentance and applying it even to those already departed not because I have an exaggerated view of an anathema, but because that was the actual language used in the 1666/1667 council. To my knowledge, it is the only time such an extreme punishment has ever been used. I am aware of course of the anathemas and their corrective purpose, but that is not what was used against the Old Believers.
Your questions are wonderful! They are never a bother, even when they challenge. The position of the Old Believers is, as you know, that the faith and piety it received is both Apostolic and without corruption (broadly speaking). Having the only consistently Orthodox political environment since the Crusades and Islam, this stands to reason. So, when dealing with other Orthodox Churches, yes, it is true that the same issues that separate us from the MP would also separate us from them as well.
It is illustrative to look at the history of the Roman Cathoic church, whose footprint was similar to the Orthodox, historically. Those items that ultimately caused division and divergent liturgical practices (like the Filioque, etc), started off locally, but soon spread throughout the west so that now, you would be hard pressed to find a Catholic who thinks there was ever a time when their practices or beliefs were different. My point is that beliefs and practices spread and things tend to homogenize over time. Russia, politcally, was intentionally self-isolated until the Old Believer Schism and viewed all Greeks with deep suspicion since the time of Florence, which caused the Greeks to be seen as betrayers of the faith long before the Old Believer issue.
I think the issue is that, like the Roman Church in the West, the Orthodox Church comprises, statistically, essentially all believers in the Christian East. So, like the absurdity of claiming all Western Christians fell away from the Church, so too do Old Believers fall into the absurdity of thinking the same way of the East, but nevertheless it is the reality of the worldview wherein these churches, dependant upon Italian printers, under Islamic rule, etc, found their faiths corrupted in ways unacceptable to Old Believers. This of course is not a nice thing to say or think, but it is an Old Believer reality. When you believe your faith and its practices are Apostolic, they must be defended and preserved.
There is a nice book by an OCA scholar/priest, Meyendorff, called Russia, Ritual, and Reform, which looks in detail at the liturgical changes made to the Old Rite. His finding, which mirrors all the modern Russian scholarship, is that the "corrections" were in fact innovations from Venetian printing presses, and did not correspond to any ancient Greek texts. But this is another topic altogether. Likewise, I hope you are not offended in what I hope is as straightforward and honest an answer as I can give!
I wanna clarify my comment about the filioque, I was rushing to get out the door and didn’t properly explain. I meant that I don’t think that the Filioque is the MOST important issue about reconciliation with the church in Rome. Papal infallibility and other dogmatic statements of the Catholic Church are much more relevant today than the Filioque is. The reason I say this is because the Catholic Church is basically forced, by material reality, to admit that the Orthodox Church was correct. History shows that they were clearly innovating. The reason I don’t think it’s necessarily that critical is because the Orthodox have the unfortunate habit of caricaturing the Catholic understanding of the Filioque as if the Catholics still believe it as it was espoused by them in the 11th century, which they simply don’t anymore. I don’t think any historically literate Catholic believes that the Filioque, as the Orthodox rightly condemns, expresses truth. I think these Catholics find a tutelary and pedagogical USEFULLNESS for using it, if someone is that poorly versed in theology, but fully recognize that the eternal procession of the Spirit from the Son is theologically incorrect. The Catholic Church is no longer teaching this heretical understanding as dogmatic and infallible, as far as I can tell (with it being optional to include in the nicene creed for people who understand the problem of it’s inclusion, I think, though I may be wrong on this) and largely accepts that we are correct in rejecting it. I do not think it would take much for this issue to completely resolve itself in our lifetimes. The OTHER dogmatic innovations of the Catholic Church are the areas where they are unlikely to budge from their position and accept the Orthodox faith.
I think this mirrors, but also contrasts the relationship between the Orthodox and Old Believers. There was a point in time when the Orthodox dogmatically rejected the position of the Old Believers, but that time is gone and the church is forced by material reality to realize that it was wrong to do so. The Old Believers and Orthodox COULD come to an understanding and rejoin each other, because I don’t think (and I could be wrong here) the Old Believers perceive the world Orthodox as being in outright heresy of faith. But what I worry about is that the Old Believer position has calcified to an opposite extreme. They have dogmatized things as a reaction to the MP dogmatizing things that should have never been dogmatized. But the Old Believers must also accept that liturgical development is a reality for them as well. The 2 finger sign of the cross is an older form of the cross, but it isn’t the only extant form. It isn’t historically tenable to claim that the faith as practiced by 15th century Russia is somehow unchanged from the time of St. John Chrysostom. I think the grievances of the Old Believers are valid and should be rectified. But I struggle to accept that it means that every liturgical change instituted in the Greek and Russian churches is somehow heretical and thus irreconcilable with the Old Believers liturgical practices. I do think an edinoverie solution is the most appropriate.
Now that said! I am definitely unaware of the cultural and political environment of Russia at the moment and in the past as to whether or not there are deep problems with the edinoverie solution, I say all this as an outsider looking in through a murky window and I would love to know why the Old Believers may reject the idea of the Belokrinitskaya (sorry for the spelling error!) becoming a self governing autonomous church within the MP or even completely separate and autonomous, but within communion. But to me, the MP has said the Old Rite in all its Glory is good and should be practiced, so it seems to me that reconciliation is at least POSSIBLE now, where it was completely impossible before. I’d love to know your thoughts, as well as thoughts on the other priested Old Believer groups that are in a different jurisdiction from the Belokrinitskaya.
Yes, I think that you are right and scholarly consensus largely agrees with the findings of Fr. Meyendorff as well along with anyone who has more than a passing knowledge of who the old believers are. It is a historical fact that traditions kept by Old Believers are not some aberration, as initially posited by the Nikonians, but reflect an older strata of Orthodox praxis. Specifically with the 2 finger sign of the cross, while I am myself at the point of being unwilling to dogmatize either version as a matter of true Orthodox faith, I absolutely do recognize the superior Christological statement and perspectives in favor of the 2 finger version. Particularly the point made that the 3 finger sign of the Cross crucifies the Trinity. It’s very compelling. But on the other hand, a person making the 3 finger sign of the cross doesn’t believe that is being done. I think that to say the 3 finger sign of the cross is automatically “evil” renders the sign of the cross, in general, into a magical invocation reliant on a specific formula. And I say all this as someone who routinely makes a conscious choice to make the 2 finger sign of the Cross instead due to its superior symbolic meaning and gravity. I just worry about an extreme position that reduces an act of faith to a mechanistic “spell”, like how the Catholics believe that a priest saying the Words of Invocation during the Mass AUTOMATICALLY transforms the bread and wine to the body and blood, without the will of God being required. And to be fair I am also a person who doesn’t think the filioque is all that “important” any more. I totally think it is wrong and shouldn’t be said, and if a Roman bishop is arguing that it is is true and SHOULD be used then we have a big problem, but by and in large the Catholic Church continues to use it, claiming its aid for expressing something a “simple” lay person might understand, while on the other hand accepting its historical innovation and theological inaccuracy. So the Catholics seem to have reduced the statement of the filioque as a matter of economia for people who don’t understand the nuance of procession. Though I think this does an insult to the layperson who should be capable of making this distinction and thus understand why it is inaccurate to say. And please don’t interpret my statements as a condemnation or a challenge, I simply am expressing my understanding.
And I wholeheartedly agree with you on the sentiment that the Apostolic faith MUST be defended and preserved. Though for my part, I would prefer the language of schismatic versus heretic (not saying that the Old Believers do or don’t say this). I’m reminded of the Old Calendarist schism in the Greek Church with some groups of Old Calendarists going as far as to say that all of the new calendar churches are WITHOUT GRACE, while others hold to a “walling off” mentality and view themselves as separating to preserve the faith, not to accuse the new calendar churches of being heretics, just in error. To me, I can see the World Orthodox churches being in error over several things, but I wouldn’t say they are in heresy like the Catholics or the Protestants. The faith taught by the Orthodox NOW, in our patristic renaissance and rejection of western influences, seems to be widely the same faith taught by the Old Believers with the exception of matters of liturgical practice, which the rest of Orthodoxy is happy to accept, as evidenced by the presence of Old Rite parishes within the MP and ROCOR and pre-schism western rite practices authorized for use by some as well. I think the time of foreign influences corrupting the church is over, Catholicism and Islam is laughable to the Orthodox (at least the ROCOR/OCA circles I run in). I think that the old believers suspicion was and is worth having, but I think we are past that point any longer. The bigger issues are the role of the MP in the state and the role of the MP/EP to make decisions “for Orthodoxy” that others don’t agree with. The Slavic world and the Greek world are at odds over so many “political” things. I would like to think that the Old Believers have a sober mind about those issues, but I honestly don’t know.
And with the Anathema of the 1667 councils yes I fundamentally find it absolutely villainous. The council was completely wrong and filled with an anti-Christian spirit.
May I ask for some clarification on the comment regarding ROCOR? Is he saying that the New Rite church offered repentance to ROCOR, and thus should do the same to the Old Believers? Or is he saying that ROCOR has offered repentance to the Old Believers?
The latter. In the 70s there was a swelling of good intentions in the ROCOR regarding Old Believers. But it was received as a bizarrely out of place and with suspicion.
Ah I see! I’m assuming that this was part of the reception of the priest-less community in PA that became part of ROCOR?
No. Actually that happened in the 80s and their nastavnik, now their priest Fr. Pimen, when he decided to change course, shopped around and ended up with ROCOR coincidentally after seeing some things in the general culture of the OCA that he did not want to be a part of.
Ohhhh I see. Very interesting! So the repentance from ROCOR has borne no fruit per se then?
Well, repentance means to change, not to feel sorry. And whatever ROCOR felt, they did not institute any changes.
Yes that makes sense. I understand they rejected the anathemas in place and began their work of establishing an Old Rite diocese, but it seems more akin to the Edinoverie model rather than a mending of the schism. I have also heard rumors that a couple old believers parishes in the US have used “negotiations” with ROCOR as a tactic to get more attention from their bishops but I’m totally unsure as to the veracity of this.
I consider myself to be akin to the interviewee in this article, as a new rite Orthodox Christian who is deeply sympathetic to the Old Believers and wholeheartedly believes they did nothing wrong. I pray that this schism will be ended, even if a spread of the Old rite into much of Orthodoxy in America is unlikely to ever occur. Thank you so much for this translation project!
Thank you for sharing this article! Have you had a chance to learn about the Uniate heresy that creeped into Russian Orthodox Church and Ukrainian Orthodox Church? Zahary Kupetsky recants in his book Palinodia the attack on Orthodoxy by Jesuits.
Yes, the Unia was a disaster and left many pernicious problems. Metropolitan Peter (Mogila's) Catechisms were written primarily as a defense against the teachings that were infiltrating the Church due to "uniatism". I am unfamiliar with the book you mentioned and will look for it right away. Thank you!!