St. John of Kronstadt Debunks Ecumenism

Passages Concerning the Oneness of the Church and the Necessity of Orthodoxy for Salvation

I. Understanding of the Church. The Church as the instructor of Christian souls which possesses all the means for the salvation of man.

The holy Church is God's most supreme, most holy, most good, most wise and necessary establishment upon the earth. She is "the true tabernacle'' of God, "which the Lord pitched, and not man" (Heb. 8:2)—not Luther, not Calvin, and not Mohammed, nor Buddha, nor Confucius, nor any other suchlike sinful, passionate person. The Church is a union of people established by God, united among themselves by the Faith, doctrine, hierarchy, and mysteries. She is Christ's spiritual army, equipped with spiritual weaponry against the numberless armed hordes of the devil: "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Eph. 6:12). She is a spiritual hospital where mankind, enfeebled by the open wound of sin, is cured by grace-filled treatments given by God—by repentance and communion in the Holy Mysteries of Christ, in Christ's body and blood, and by the word of God, by the instructions and counsels and consolations of the shepherds of Christ's rational flock. She is a common laver of purification, rebirth, and sanctification; she is God’s sanctuary in which all are sanctified by the Holy Spirit through Baptism, Chrismation, and the other mysteries, and the Divine Liturgy. She is the spiritual sun of the world, enlightening and giving life to all who sit in the darkness and shadow of death and who are dead through sin.

In nature there is the law of the attraction of smaller bodies to larger ones, and these in turn to still larger ones, and also the law of the attraction by cohesion (the cohesion of the various soft, hard, and fluid parts of organic bodies, and likewise of non-organic bodies—of rocks, metals, minerals, petrifactions); whereby is conditioned the existence, firmness, order, use, beauty, mutual bond, and diversity of all created things. The reason for this is the measureless wisdom, goodness, and infinite omnipotence of the Creator, Who has made such a wonderful, majestic, and beautiful world, of endless diversity and marvelous magnitude, a work which presents itself as a single harmonious, fair unalterable whole.

In the spiritual world there also exists a law of mutual attraction and unity. The world is one, God is one, the Faith is one, and God's Church is one; for her Head is Christ God, and her Pilot, Who quickens the whole body of the Church, is the Spirit of God, the Giver of life, Who also quickens and fills the entire universe.

The Church is one; her Head is one; the flock is one; the body is one with many members. Without the Head—Christ—the Church is not the Church but a self-willed gathering. Such are the Lutherans, the Russian Old Ritualists, the Pashkovtsy, and the followers of Tolstoy.

"I am with you always, even unto the end of the age" (Mt. 28:20). The Lord Himself is ever-present in His Church—why then a vicar, the pope? And can a sinful man take the place of the Lord? He cannot. There can be, and there are, vicars for the tsar, for the patriarch, but no one can be a vicar, a substitute, for the Lord, Who is the Tsar without beginning and the Head of the Church. Truly, the Catholics have gone astray. Suggest to them, O Lord, that those who affirm such things are foolish and laid around with pride as with a necklace.

The most harmful thing in Christianity, in this God-revealed, heavenly religion, is the leadership of one man in the Church—for instance, the pope, and his supposed infallibility. It is precisely in the dogma of his infallibility that the greatest mistake is contained, for the pope is a sinful man, and O the disaster if he fancies himself to be infallible! How many great errors, destructive of the souls of men, has the Catholic, papal church thought up—in dogmas, in rites, in canonical rules, in the services, in the deadly and malicious relations of the Catholics with the Orthodox, in blasphemies and slanders against the Orthodox Church, in revilings directed against the Orthodox Christians! And of all this the professedly infallible pope is guilty, with his and the Jesuits' teaching, their spirit of falsehood, duplicity, and every sort of unrighteous means ad maiorem Dei gloriam (for the—allegedly—greater glory of God).

We are members of the holy Orthodox Church, members of the body of Christ, whose Head is Christ God Himself, but each is a member individually; Christ is holy, the Head of the body, and therefore the members also must be holy.

After the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles is described in the Book of Acts, the all-providential activity of the Holy Spirit in the Church is often mentioned, His most sovereign guidance through the apostles, by means of their salutary preaching and actions within the Church. Indeed, this is the "other Comforter" (John xiv. 16), Who is all-good and all-true, Whom the Lord Jesus Christ promised to send to the apostles. Glory to Thee, O Holy Spirit, the life-creating Comforter, acting unceasingly everywhere within the Church of Christ. Convert, O Lord, by the judgments which Thou knowest, the peoples gone astray—the Jews, Mohammedans, pagans, and within Christianity itself, the heretical and schismatical peoples and races; reprove and uproot vices; direct them to piety and enlighten the Orthodox Christians guilty of impiety and corruption and direct all upon the way of salvation; teach and guide the youth, protect childhood, cause babyhood to grow, and guide them by guardian angels; instruct men young and old, enlighten and strengthen both men and women through Thy most good, most wise, all-powerful dominion, and fortify and guide them unto every virtue, dispersing sinful passions like darkness for the sake of Christ our Lord, by the good will of the Father. Amen.

Mighty and all-powerful is the intercession of the holy Church before God, which is clothed in the virtues, power, truth, and magnificence of the Son of God, of her all-good and all-powerful Head. All things are possible to her intercession. No other, heterodox church possesses such power of intercessions since they are without the Head and are wrong in their thinking.

The Christian must unremittingly care for his spiritual education for which he was born anew in the holy font through the Holy Spirit, received spiritual regeneration, and was sealed with Chrism, or the seal of the Holy Spirit, and was made worthy of the right to communicate in the most immaculate blood of Christ. According to God's intent, the holy Church is the first and most lawful educator of Christian souls. There is no more important work than that of Christian education. Judge and understand for yourselves how dear are these rational, immortal souls unto God, which were redeemed by the blood of the Son of God Himself, which were called out of the darkness of ignorance into the light of the knowledge of God by the Lord Himself, which were betrothed and united to the Lord as pure virgins to a most pure Bridegroom! How dear is the salvation of these souls, to whom He offers His most immaculate body and most pure blood as food and drink, whom He Himself undertook to educate spiritually through these wonderful, dreadful, life-creating and divinizing Mysteries! Devote yourselves, all of you, to your spiritual education with all attention and diligence; devote yourselves to thoughts concerning God, to prayer, self-investigation, self-condemnation, with self-amendment in every way; exercise yourselves in the virtues of meekness, humility, obedience, patience, compassion, chastity, simplicity, guilelessness, and cut off all sinful thoughts, lusts, habits, passions.

Christ came to renew human nature, which had been corrupted by sin, and entrusted this greatest work of His goodness, mercy, truth, and wisdom to His holy Church. The Holy Spirit, Who came into the world and Who operates in the Church through the clergy, the Divine Liturgy, the sermon, and the mysteries, works this renewal without ceasing. Only within the Church is this renovating force contained; outside the Church it does not exist and cannot.

The Lord, for the good of His rational creation—that is, men—desires to unite all into one body and Himself to dwell in them. "That they may all be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us" (John 17:21). However, the devil strives to disunite, dismember, drive all apart, like a flock without a shepherd: in families he plants enmity, dissension, dissatisfaction, or insult; in villages, in cities he causes some to rise up against others; among nations he causes peoples to rise up against peoples, kingdom against kingdom; among religious communities he causes those who have one confession to rise up against the adherents of another, and he especially breathes wrath upon those who confess the Orthodox Faith, as against the true Church of God, inciting different persecutions against them. But let us hold to the one holy Orthodox Church, whose Head is Christ our God Himself, ever acting within us for our salvation and renewal.

II. Life in unfailing union with the Church. The indispensability of belonging to the one true Orthodox Church.

Thus it is indispensable to belong to Christ's Church, the Head of which is the Almighty Tsar, the Conqueror of Hades, Jesus Christ Himself. His kingdom is the Church which wars with principalities, powers, the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, with spirits of wickedness in high places, which compose a skillfully organized kingdom, and do combat in an extremely experienced, intelligent, well-directed and powerful manner with all men, having well studied all their passions and inclinations. Here no man by himself on the battlefield can be a combatant; and even a great community which is not Orthodox, and is without the Head—Christ—can do nothing against such cunning, subtle, constantly vigilant enemies, who are so skilled in the science of their warfare. For Orthodox Christians a mighty support is necessary from on high, from God and from Christ’s holy warriors who have defeated the enemies of salvation by the power of the grace of Christ, from pastors and teachers, and then—from common prayer and from the Mysteries. Behold, precisely such a helper in the struggle with our invisible and visible enemies is the Church of Christ, to which, through God's mercies, we belong. The Catholics have invented a new head, having demoted the one true Head of the Church—Christ. The Lutherans fell away and remained without a head. The Anglicans likewise. There is no Church among them; the union with the Head is broken; there is no almighty help and Belial wages war with all his power and cunning and holds them all in his delusion and perdition. A multitude perish in atheism and depravity.

By creating man in His own image and likeness, the Creator placed a close bond between Himself and His creation, that is, man. Man was obliged to maintain this blessed union through scrupulous submission to his Creator, through fulfillment of His holy, wise, and life-giving commandments; as a summary of these commandments, the commandment not to taste of the fruits of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was given to him. This commandment was to have strengthened his will in its agreement with the will of God, so that God's will should be one with the will of man—as the will of one of the Persons of the Trinity is in complete accord with the will of the second and third Persons: "As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us" (John 17:21). But by his disobedience, man audaciously broke his union with God and thus fell away from God and His life. And since the wages of sin is death, man was subjected to temporal and eternal death, and to all the innumerable, pernicious consequences of sin—illnesses, calamities, griefs, sorrows, corruption, every sort of deformity, and every kind of slavery to sin. Other than the Son of God no one could reestablish this lost union, and He, in His measureless goodness and condescension towards fallen man, most wisely and wonderfully restored it; and intelligent and chosen men have utilized this marvelously good restoration. But by what means was this union reestablished? By the Son of God's assumption of human nature without sin, fulfilling all God's righteousness with human nature, taking upon Himself our curse, suffering and dying for us, and, having conquered death, by rising from the dead and giving resurrection to us—incorruption to us. He established one Church upon the earth with Himself as the Head and under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Within the Church He granted all the means for the restoration of the broken union with God through the Mysteries and teaching, through the guidance of the pastors; He gave Baptism, Chrismation, Repentance, Divine Liturgy, constant instruction in the word of God. Now, whoever among you wishes to live in holy union with God, be in union with the Church which instructs, which holds divine services unto holiness and truth and the kingdom of God—and you shall be saved.

"He that is not with Me is against Me: and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth" (Luke 11:23). He who is not with the Church is against the Church; he who is not within the Church is against the Church; he who has not the Faith is against the Faith; he who does not do the works of repentance, the works of virtue, is against virtue. It is but a small thing to be named a Christian: one must do the works and fulfill the commandments which Christ decreed; unceasing repentance is necessary, unceasing attention to oneself in the spirit of faith, unceasing prayer, unceasing correction, unceasing forcing of oneself ahead, unceasing self-perfection, and with this goal—unceasing self-examination: are we in the Faith? Do we live according to the Faith? Are we with the Church? Do we go to church? Do we love the Church? Do we fulfill the dictates of the Church, or the commandments of Christ preached by her? Behold then how Christ God teaches. Therefore he who does not repent, who does not attend church, and instead of church goes to the theater and various spectacles and worldly gatherings, disdaining the Church—such a one is not a Christian.

God has bound the Orthodox faithful to Himself by means of the one Holy Spirit and the one Church, by one Faith, by the unity of the law, the mysteries, and the hierarchy, for the general good of His rational creation. One must hold on to this bond through holiness of life and submission to one another.

Christian man! While there is still time, strive to appropriate God and His saints to yourself here upon the earth through faith and piety; be churchly, nourish in yourself the spirit of churchliness, the spirit of repentance, holiness, peace, thoughts of God, the spirit of love, meekness, humility, patience, submissiveness to good, salvation. Lift not your head, and scorn not your Mother the Church which saves you;—attend church often during Divine Liturgy, stand with humility, listen, reflect, or read and chant. If you do not gain her here, and through her, God, you shalt remain foreign to her and to God, and after death, God shall not take you, and all His saints shall renounce you as some one foreign to them in spirit and in disposition of heart and thoughts. You shall be driven into a strange country, into the gloomy and fiery place of the fallen spirits and unrepentant souls of men. Be wise, therefore, in order to escape the craftiness of the devil and attain your great calling.

You belong to the Church of God, that is, the community of those who believe in Christ; this Church is the one body of Christ, God is the Head. Are you a worthy member, do you live in holiness, do you always repent, do you correct your heart and life, your morals, thoughts, feelings, intentions, yearnings, your whole behavior? Are you a living member, or dead? Will the saints receive you when you depart from this temporal life into the eternal one? Will they not renounce you as a putrid member reeking, worthless? Will not your fate be in common with those who are reprobate from God? Hasten to set this matter right, to correct your entire behavior. For this you are granted time.

The work of the salvation of our souls is the greatest and most wise work, and to learn this work, this art, it is necessary to have recourse to those to whom this work is known, who have completed it. This work of salvation, this work of repentance, is especially known to the saints, since they have especially endeavored to concern themselves with it, and have carried it in a surpassing manner, one saving for their souls and pleasing to God. Indeed, the saints have left this spiritual inheritance, this art of repentance and salvation, to the Orthodox Church, having laid up in her, as in a secure treasure house, all their understanding, their instruction, their zeal, their art, their experiences. Let us therefore learn repentance and salvation from her. We all have come and do come to the church services for Sundays, holidays, ordinary days, and for the Great Fast. All these services teach us repentance and salvation. Have you heard the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete? Heard the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian? Heard the troparia and canons for the Great Fast? What a spirit of repentance is in them! What a compunction, what contrition for the sins of sinful mankind! What a thirst for salvation and pardon from God! What wails and tears of sinners repenting! Behold and learn repentance and propitiation of the Lord from the holy Church. Attend well, reflect, comprehend your sins, have contrition, repent, vaunt not yourselves, do the works of mercy: for the merciful shall obtain mercy.

The holy men of God would not betray the Faith and by even so much as a word, and if it did happen that because of the cunning of the persecutors, they unawares betrayed it by either word or deed, they were ready to erase their sin by means of the tortures. See how strictly the saints held to the right confession! And of what sort are present-day Christians? "Reeds shaken with the wind" (Mt. 11:7).

"Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls" (I Peter 1:9). Behold the end and goal of the Orthodox Christian Faith—the salvation of the soul of every believer. How invaluable is our Faith, how holy, true, God-pleasing, powerful, saving! How necessary it is to love her, worthily to esteem her, constantly to utilize her for one's own salvation and that of others. O Lord, save the race of Orthodox Christians, and convert all the non-orthodox to Orthodoxy, as to the one Faith which saves, established by Thee, glorified by Thee, and to be eternally glorified by Thee! Thou art holy and righteous—and Thy faith is holy and righteous.

What does the rite of conversion from different beliefs and confessions and of being united to the Orthodox Church show forth? The indispensability of the rejection of false beliefs and confessions, of the renunciation of errors, of the confession of the true Faith, and, of repentance for all former sins and of the promise to God to keep and firmly confess the blameless Faith, to guard against sins, and live in virtue.

The beginning of all false teachings, heresies, sects, and schisms is in the serpent who deceives the whole world. The first, most pernicious false teaching was preached by the serpent to Eve in paradise and then to Adam, then Cain, to whom the primordial man-slayer—the devil—falsely whispered against Abel that he stood in Cain's way, went against him, did not think, did not feel, did not live as he did, that he supposedly mocked him, reviled him. From hence arise all heresies, sects, and schisms. They wish to be teachers, not from God but rather from themselves and according to their passions. From hence arise the followers of Tolstoy, the Pashkovtsy, the Stundists, and others.

"Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on the earth? I tell you, nay; but rather division: for from henceforth there shall be five in one house (the Church of Christ) divided, three against two, and two against three" (Luke xii. 51-52). Catholics, Reformed, Lutherans, Old Ritualists, sectarians.

A hatred of Orthodoxy, fanaticism against and persecution of the Orthodox, even killings, run like a crimson thread through all the ages of Catholicism's existence. By their fruits ye shall know them. Was such a spirit commanded to us by Christ? If to anyone, it is always possible to say to Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of" (Luke ix, 55).

The cause of all the errors of the Roman Catholic Church is pride and the acknowledgment of the pope as the real head of the Church and what is more—that he is infallible. From hence all the oppression on the part of the Western church arises. The oppression of thought and faith, the deprivation of true freedom both in faith and life, in all things upon which the pope has placed his heavy hand; from hence come the false dogmas, from hence the duplicity and slyness in thought, word, and deed; from hence—the various false rules and regulations for the confession of sins; from hence indulgences; from hence the distortion of dogmas; from hence the fabrication of the saints of the Western church and non-existent relics, not glorified by God; from hence—"the exalting against the knowledge of God" (II Cor. 10:5), and every sort of opposition to God under the appearance of piety and zeal for the greater glory of God.

The pope and the papists have become so proud and have so exalted themselves that they have thought to criticize Christ Himself, the hypostatic Wisdom of God Himself, and have extended their pride to the point that they have distorted some of His words, commandments, and ordinances which should not be altered to the end of this age: for example, His statement concerning the Holy Spirit, His commandment concerning the cup of His all-immaculate blood, of which they have deprived the layman, setting at naught the words of the Apostle Paul: "For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come" (I Cor. 11:26); instead of leavened bread in the Liturgy, they use wafers (cf. Mt. 26:17, where artos – leavened bread – is used, not azymos – unleavened bread).

I thank the Lord Who has heard and hears my prayers in the presence of the most saving and dread Sacrifice (the body and blood of Christ); for the great communities which have gone astray in their faith, which though named Christian are in reality apostate—the Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, and others; also that all peoples may be drawn to the true Faith, likewise also our “Old Believers.”

Count Leo Tolstoy infringed upon the truth of the Gospel and the whole of sacred Scripture and perverted the thought of the Gospel, which is indisputably most important and invaluable for the people of all ages. He rejected the belief in Christ as the Son of God, the Redeemer and Savior of the world, and led astray many who followed in his footsteps, and destroyed them; he renounced the Church, founded by Christ, trampled upon the grace of Baptism, Chrismation, Repentance, Communion, and all the mysteries; because of his self-conceit he accounts himself to be the judge of the word of God and his own supreme criterion and does not verify himself by it. But woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes and in their own sight! (Is. 5:21).

From Orthodox Life, July-August 1970 (no. 4), pp. 14-29. Originally from Christian Philosophy, Ch. IV (appendix to My Life in Christ).