- The Miracle of Truth
Saint Photius was the chosen vessel of
God in his times. He was, in other words, the outstanding, genuine
bearer of Tradition and for that reason was the most famous and
therefore the most significant theologian of the period. His outlook and
his theology were an expression of the being of the Church and the
result of enlightenment by the Holy Spirit.
This fact, which is not so common as we
would like in the Church, has warmed the hearts of the faithful to
Photius over all the centuries since, and has made him a symbol and
beacon of the truth.
It is proper, therefore that the Church has decided to celebrate his memory (6th
February) in a special way, with particular emphasis. In this way, we
have the opportunity to realize the dimensions of, the profound meaning
of, the feast.
Today we honour a holy man of the
Church, we honour the saint, who differs from the great cloud of saints,
witnesses and the blessed. The latter were sanctified through
martyrdom, which the faithful of the time wondered at, through their
exceptionally virtuous lives and through their ascetic struggle and
visions of God. All of these became signs which underscored their
sanctity which functioned and continues to function in the spirit of the
faithful as model and momentum, as an example and proof of our truth.
In the new reality, that is in the
Church, the martyrs and saints took the place of heroes and models. And
this was because they embodied more than others the ethos of the Church
and sacrificed their lives for it. Even more, the saints and martyrs
often sealed and continue to seal their superiority to other people by
performing miracles.
At all times, in all places the Church
has known and knows countless miracles, apart from the miracle of
miracles, its Divine Eucharist, which is repeated thousands of times all
over the earth. The miracles of the saints show how small and how great
humankind is. So the miracle, as a blatant abrogation of natural and
spiritual reality, was kneaded into the life of the Church and is
stunning proof of the sanctity of its saints, which, for centuries now,
it has honoured daily.
But behold how tonight and tomorrow we
are honouring a saint who does not bring to our minds the Roman
persecutions and martyrdom. We do not honour Saint Photius for his many
miracles: we do not know if he healed the lame and the blind; if he
consoled people in pain; if he appeared to the faithful after his demise
to advise, support, or encourage them.
And though this is all true, Photius is
admirable and great. So the miracle is to be found elsewhere. It is in
the truth he expressed in his theology, in his struggles for the Church.
He does not have wonder-working icons, but he has wonder-working truth
in his works.
The faithful are not accustomed to
seeking comfort from Saint Photius, but they have become accustomed and
must be accustomed to seeking the truth. His miracle is his truth. This
is his uniqueness, his greatness. The miracle of manifesting the truth
is a mightier miracle than other ones and in particular it is difficult
to contemplate, to understand. Those who are unprepared do not recognize
it for what it is. Those who have not learned to care as much for the
truth as they do for their bodies do not understand.
And yet, the manifestation of the truth
to people is God’s greatest intervention. With His uncreated energies,
the Holy Spirit breaks through the barrier of human relativity, parts
the veil of secularity and makes people capable of contemplating, of
experiencing the truth more deeply and broadly and then of expressing
this terrible and divine experience.
This is precisely the miracle of the
truth. This is precisely what happened to Saint Photius and why we are
honouring him today, as the Church honoured him in the past and will
continue to do so in the future. Just how significant the miracle of
truth and how great the teacher who contributed to it are is clear from
this simple fact: you can be saved even if your body is crippled; you
cannot be saved however, if your faith is severely crippled, if you lose
the truth, if you do not have genuine truth, if you doubt it. And this
is so because salvation, deification, beatification mean participation
in the divine reality. People with wrong beliefs however, are
delusional, they think they have the truth when in fact they have
nothing and so they are not brought to salvation.
This outstanding teacher of the Church,
as the genuine voice of truth, has contributed to the salvation of
people, has participated in the task of the divine design for salvation
and this is why he, who became Patriarch of Constantinople in 858, is
considered a saint.
The broader awareness of the nature of the Church
This holy man challenged the evil of
false faith and the Eastern Church, through his struggles and theology
preserved its purity, which had been in grave danger from the bishops of
Rome and the Frankish theologians. The Popes of Rome, imbued as they
were with secular concepts, adulterated the fact and the institution of
the Church. And they attempted, through Pope Nicholas I (858-867) to
introduce this adulteration, this ecclesiological sickness, by force
into the Eastern Church.
When the Church of Rome sought the
primacy of authority, when it sought jurisdiction over another
Patriarchal Church, this meant that it was not living the fact of the
Church in a proper manner, that the undefiled mystical body of Christ
had been damaged. Photius’ reaction, his robust and deeply theological
struggles were justified because they were an attempt to manifest the
genuine structure of the Church. Inspired by the anti-ecclesiastical
claims of Rome, Photius demonstrated and underlined the nature of the
Church.
The significance of his struggles does
not lie merely in the fact that the newly-constituted Church of Bulgaria
did not, in the end, come under Roman jurisdiction, nor that they
showed that the Pope did not have the right to intervene authoritatively
in the theme (province) of the East, and, therefore, in
matters of any local Church. What is fundamental is that the theology
concerning the Church, the theology which began with Ignatios the
God-bearer and was now widened by Photius, took on new dimensions.
In a final and impressive analysis,
Photius expressed and salvaged the notion of the local Church,
particularly in relation to other local Churches. The primacy of
authority sought by the Roman Church did great damage to local Churches.
Local bishops were, to some extent, reduced to administrative organs,
that is they were not “in place of God the Father”, as Ignatian theology had it, as the Eastern Church accepted it and as Photius correctly understood.
The enormous significance of the problem
can be understood when you consider that the Church has two fundamental
poles; “Eucharistic realism” and the theology of the bishop. For those
outside our Church, these two poles- sometimes one, sometimes the other
or even both together- scandalized, continue to scandalize and are
strongly opposed. Precisely because there is no Church without the real
Eucharist or without a real bishop to celebrate it.
In the context of the ninth century, as
later, the Popes essentially attempted to shrink the true dimension of
the episcopacy. Photius’ work, however, nullified their plan and so, in
the East, the office of bishop has spiritual dimensions, created by
Christ, the head of the Church.
- The procession of the Holy Spirit
The other aspect of Photius’ great
theological contribution is in the field of Trinitology and
Pneumatology. The Frankish theologians, without a powerful Orthodox
tradition and the Roman theologians, on doubtful theological grounds,
taught that the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son. They taught the Filioque which some of them, particularly the Franks, added to the Creed.
The Eastern Church felt that, through
this teaching, faith in God the Father was being adulterated, since we
accept Him as the source of the other two persons. In other words, with
this new teaching, consciously or unconsciously, the sources, the
beginnings, of the persons became two, the Father and the Son, which
cast doubt on the unity of the Trinity and the consubstantiality of the
Spirit as regards the Father and Son.
The Filioque, then, was not
genuine theological progress, but a partial subversion of the faith of
the Church, which until then had been acquired and expressed through
dramatic struggles and by enlightenment from the Holy Spirit.
Saint Photius was able to show, in
theological terms, the character of this innovative Western teaching,
its mistaken basis and its subversiveness for what they were. With the
aid of Tradition, brief study and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, he
manifested the truth and thus it became clear that the Filioque does
not stand up, it is not real, it is an imaginary truth and therefore
puts at serious risk the salvation of those who accept it.
The consequences of this theology on the
life and outlook of the faithful quickly became obvious: after the
ninth century, the Orthodox Church had a clearer awareness than it had
previously had of the manner of the precession of the Holy Spirit and
was entirely certain that the Filioque was a false belief. Even the Westerners have since tried to interpret their Filioque in
such a manner as not to adulterate Trinitology. This is due to Saint
Photius, who, for this, too, acts in the Church as a great Father and
Teacher.
- The primacy of truth
If we look at the person and theology of
Saint Photius through a broader prism which will not distort either him
or his contribution, then we shall make an observation of great
significance.
While it was the Roman bishops who
generally claimed primacy, the Church, Eastern and Western, then
accepted, directly or indirectly, the position and theology of Photius.
The Roman bishops sought to impose themselves, believing that they had
the special authority to do so. They did not, however, have genuine
truth to impose, and therefore no authority over other Churches.
Photius, who had Tradition on his side, tried to manifest the truth as
this was related to the problems of his day. He did not speak of
authority; he laboured for the truth, which is the only thing that
guarantees salvation. But the fact that the truth was given to Photius,
who laboured for it, and not to the Popes, who sought authority, means
that the view of Photius and not that of the Popes was worthy of
adoption; believers ought to have the mindset of Photius, to live like
him. It follows then that the rule in the Church is that truth is what
counts, as is he who expresses it.
This is self-evident, because the
ultimate measure and criterion in the Church is truth. Privileges and
primacies depend solely on the truth. This is why there is no other form
of primacy in the Church. There is only the primacy of the truth,
which, in the ninth century was given by God through the person of
Photius.
The primacy of truth, which we can see
and follow in the whole historical course of the Church is not related
to any place, because the Spirit breathes wherever He wills. It does not
compromise with secular ambitions, with claims for privileges, because
God is indifferent to those.
And particularly today, the Church,
which is hovering between nominally “Churchy” groups, transitory
traditional figures, contemporary problems on the one hand and the truth
on the other, will win this spiritual battle of life and death only if
it follows in the footsteps of Saint Photius, that is, if it lives its
true Tradition, if it sacrifices itself for the problems of the time, if
it demonstrates complete confidence in the enlightening Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Source: Η προσωπικότητα και η θεολογία του Μεγάλου Φωτίου. Επίσημοι λόγοι εκφωνηθέντες επί τη ιερά μνήμη του κατά τα έτη 1970-2010, The Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, Athens 2011, pp. 201-7.
Source-Pemptousia.com
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