Patristics On Guarding the Faith and Apostasy
Before I quote from notable Orthodox individuals, I want to say that the reason so many Orthodox people today tolerate false teachers is because they do not love God enough. Further, many Orthodox Christians today, including clergy, were raised in the 1960's and beyond. The period of the 1960's to the modern day is diseased by religious pluralism and post-modernism. A symptom of these deplorable social constructs is tolerance and indifferentism. So, when you remain indifferent to ecumenism and modernism, you are simply reflecting the cultural attitudes that formed your soul in ungodliness. You should also know that a sick church makes you the problem for pointing out it’s problems. Since indifference is the spirit of our age, those who guard the faith will register with the innovators as problematic.
St. Justin Martyr: “Everyone who can speak the truth, and yet speaks it not, shall be judged by God.”
St. Basil the Great: "Anyone who is capable of speaking the truth but remains silent, will be heavily judged by God, especially in this case, where the faith and the very foundation of the entire church of the Orthodox is in danger. To remain silent under these circumstances is to betray these, and the appropriate witness belongs to those that reproach (stand up for the faith)."
St. Theodore the Studite: "Not only if one possess rank or knowledge is one obliged to strive to speak and to teach the doctrines of Orthodoxy, but even if one be a disciple in rank, one is obliged to speak the truth boldly and openly."
St. Theodore the Studite: "It is a commandment of the Lord that we should not be silent when the Faith is in peril. So, when it is a matter of the Faith, one cannot say, 'Who am I? A priest, a ruler, a soldier, a farmer, a poor man? I have no say or concern in this matter.’ Alas! The stones shall cry out, and you remain silent and unconcerned?"
St. Theodore the Studite: “Shall we say: ‘Since it is lawful for an archbishop together with his associates to do as he pleases, let him be for the duration of his archbishopric a new Evangelist, another Apostle, a different Law-giver?’ Certainly not. For we have an injunction from the Apostle himself: If anyone preaches a doctrine, or urges you to do something against what you have received, against what is prescribed by the canons of the catholic and local synods held at various times, he is not to be received, or to be reckoned among the number of the faithful. And I forbear even to mention the terrible judgment with which the Apostle concludes (Gal. 1:8).” Epistle 24, 94-101.
St. Theodore the Studite: “For it is a commandment of the LORD not to be silent at a time when the Faith is in jeopardy. Speak, Scripture says, and hold not thy peace….”
Saint Gennadios Scholarios: "Keep an eye on your bishops as far as their Orthodoxy is concerned lest they go so far as to teach doctrines against the true faith or celebrate with heretics or schismatics."
St. Meletios of Antioch: "Do not show obedience to bishops who exhort you to do and to say and to believe in things which are not to your benefit. What pious man would hold his tongue? Who would remain completely calm? In fact, silence equates to consent."
“Fight to the death on behalf of truth, and the Lord God will fight for you.” (Sirach 4:28).
St. Gregory the Theologian says, “By your silence you can betray God."
Pope St. Felix III (492): "An error which is not resisted is approved; a truth which is not defended is suppressed.... He who does not oppose an evident crime is open to the suspicion of secret complicity."
"Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth" (Revelation 3.16). This lukewarmness is identified, by Archbishop Theophanes of Poltava, with "the religious-moral fall of bishops, [which is] ..... one of the most characteristic signs of the last times.
St. Ignatius: "If thy bishop should teach any thing outside of the appointed order, even if he lives in chastity, or if he work signs, or if he prophecy, let him be unto thee as a wolf in sheep's clothing, for he works the destruction of souls"
St. Ignatius: "Brethren be not deceived. If any man follows him that separates from the truth, he shall not inherit the kingdom of God; and if any man does not stand aloof from the preacher of falsehood, he shall be condemned to hell."
St. Irenaeus: "Nor will anyone of the rulers (bishops) in the Churches, however highly gifted he may be in point of eloquence, teach doctrines different from these (for no one is greater than the Master)."
St. Sophronius of Jerusalem: “If any should separate themselves from someone, not on the pretext of a [moral] offence, but on account of a heresy that has been condemned by a Synod or by the Holy Fathers, they are worthy of honour and approbation, for they are the Orthodox.”--the local church.
St. Nicephorus of Constantinople: “You know, even if very few remain in Orthodox and piety, then it is precisely these that are the Church, and the authority and leadership (concerning) the ecclesiastical institutions remains with them.”
St. Photius the Great: “Is the shepherd a heretic? Then he is a wolf! You must flee from him; do not be deceived to approach him even if he appears gentle and tame. Flee from communion and conversation with him even as you would flee from a poisonous snake.”
“For it is better to be led by no one,” says St. John Chrysostom, “than to be led by one who is evil. For the former indeed are often saved, and often in peril, but the latter will be altogether in peril, being led into the pit of perdition”.
St. Gregory the Theologian, in his Second Epistle Against Apollinarius, teaches: “Avoid those holding to another doctrine and consider them alien to God and to the Universal Church.”
St. John of Damascus: “he who damages a small part damages the whole.”
St. Vincent of Lérins: "for Christians to declare something which they did not previously accept has never been permitted, is never permitted, and never will be permitted,—but to anathematize those who proclaim something outside of that which was accepted once and for ever, has always been a duty, is always a duty, and always will be a duty."
St. Ambrose (On Repentance, II, 24), followed by St. Augustine (Homily 21 on the New Testament, 28), regards heretics and schismatics as blasphemers against the Holy Spirit insofar as they deny the Spirit and Truth that is in the True Church.
Ivan Vishenskii from Mt. Athos defended the right of the faithful Christians to depose and drive out any apostate bishop, “lest with that evil eye or pastor they go to Gehenna.”
Fr. Georges Florovsky: "Very often the measure of truth is the witness of the minority. It may happen that the Catholic Church will find itself but "a little flock."
Fr. Georges Florovsky: "therefore in questions of faith the people must judge concerning his teaching. The duty of obedience ceases when the bishop deviates from the catholic norm, and the people have the right to accuse and even to depose him."
Archimandrite Adrianos: "the people of God are the defenders of the faith, wielding a veto, rejecting whatever is contrary to Tradition, and even judging the Orthodoxy of any ecumenical synod that can be characterized as a “robber synod."
Aleksey Khomyakov: "The pope is greatly mistaken in supposing that we consider the ecclesiastical hierarchy to be the guardian of dogma. The case is quite different. The unvarying constancy and the unerring truth of Christian dogma does not depend upon any hierarchical order; it is guarded by the totality, by the whole people of the Church, which is the Body of Christ."
Metropolitan Ambrosios (formerly of Kalavryta and Aigialeia) wrote: "Her ministers (deacons, presbyters, bishops, patriarchs, synods) are not authorized to say and do whatever they feel is appropriate, according to their personal opinion."
St. John Cassian the Roman: "he who does not confess the faith of the Church is outside the Church."
St. John Maximovich: "There will be a mass falling away from faith, moreover many bishops will betray faith justifying themselves by pointing at the splendid state of the Church. People will be disposed to search for compromise. A forthright confession of faith will disappear. People will excel in justifying their fall, and tender evil will contribute to such general disposition, and people will become accustomed to apostasy and to sweetness of compromise and sin."
St. Anthony the Great: "Be afraid of the apostasy from faith as the beginning of all evil."
“Heresy separates every man from the Church.”--Seventh Holy Ecumenical Council [Mansi, Vol. xii, col. 1022cd; Praktika, Vol. II, p. 733a (First Session)].
The sixth session of the 7th ecumenical council: "Those who, moved by Divine zeal, always concur with the Fathers and the traditional ordinances of the Church flee from all who hold contrary opinions, as though from enemies."
From the Synodicon of the Holy Spirit
"To all things innovated and enacted contrary to the Church tradition, teaching, and institution of the holy and ever-memorable fathers, or to anything henceforth so enacted, ANATHEMA."
Eighth proceeding of the Seventh Ecumenical Synod
“If anyone breaks any ecclesiastical tradition, written or unwritten, let him be anathema.”
The Confession of Saint Dositheos [1672], Patriarch of Jerusalem, which is respected throughout all of Orthodoxy, teaches that the Church is comprised only of all the faithful that believe and profess correctly the blameless Faith that was handed down to us and preached and explained by our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, the Holy Apostles and their successors, the Holy Fathers and the Ecumenical and Local Synods...
The Serbian Canonist Bishop Nikodim Milaa: "every episcopal act is invalid and nothing and no one is required to heed it if it is contrary to the Canons; if it contains something that the Canons do not include; if it does not express whatever the Local Synods have determined and have been proclaimed as institutions; and lastly, if they are in opposition to civil laws that are not contrary to the spirit of the Church."
Saint Dositheos, Patriarch of Jerusalem: "Those things that are not in agreement with the Canons are not only powerless, but are also disregarded and stripped of all good as impious and abominable."
Saint Philaret Voznesensky in his first sorrowful epistle speaks to us saying, "Should we say in this case that humility commands us to keep silent? [...] St. Gregory the Theologian once said that there are occasions 'when even by silence truth can be betrayed.' Should we not also be betraying the truth if, on noticing a deviation from pure Orthodoxy, we merely kept silence—always an easier and safer thing to do than speaking out? We observe, however, that nobody in a higher position than our own is raising his voice; and this fact constrains us to speak out, lest at the Last Judgment we should be reproached for having seen the danger of Ecumenism threaten the Church and yet not having warned her Bishops"
St. Metropolitan Philaret: “Brethren, we must fear this indifference to the truth. Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Apocalypse clearly indicates to us how terrible indifference to the truth is. There he turns to the Angel standing at the head of the Laodicean Church and says: ‘I know thy works. Thou art neither cold nor hot. Oh if only thou wast hot or cold! But since thou art neither cold nor hot (but lukewarm – neither the one nor the other, the truth is not dear to thee), I will spew thee from My mouth!’ As an organism cast out of itself something which is absolutely repulsive and harmful to it. “Let us remember that this indifference to the truth is one of the main woes of our age of apostasies. Value the truth, O man! Be a fighter for the truth… Place the truth higher than all else in life, O man, and never allow yourself to decline in any way from the true path…”
Archbishop Theophanes writes in reply to the question “Can one have a negative feeling in relation to the enemies of the Russian people and the Orthodox Church or must one suppress in oneself this feeling, repeating the words: ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay’?”: “To have a negative feeling towards the enemies of God and of the Russian people is natural. And on the contrary not to have a negative feeling is unnatural. Only this feeling must be correct. And it will be correct when it has a principled, not personal character, that is, when we 'hate' the enemies of God and of the Russian people not for their personal offences against us, but for their hostile attitude towards God and the Church and for their inhuman attitude towards Russian people. Therefore it is also necessary to fight with these enemies. Whereas if we do not fight, we will be punished by God for our lukewarmness. He will then take His vengeance not only on them, but also on us..." (Archbishop Theophanes, Pis'ma, op. cit., p. 40).
St. Theodore the Studite: “No authority has been given to any hierarch to violate any canon whatsoever."
Holy Canons Related to Ecumenism (Note: Roman Catholics don't accept all of the Apostolic Canons, but this is Orthodox teaching)
http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/ecum_canons.aspx
The whole congregation, not just bishops, elders, and deacons were ordered to guard the ordinances that St. Paul delivered to them. (1Cor. 11:2).
The Prophet Malachi spoke against unfaithful priests. (Malachi 1:6;2:9).
The Prophet Malachi rebuked social injustice. (Malachi 3:5).
The Prophet Zecharia spoke against sham leaders (Zecharia 10:2-3).
Rejection of sham leaders. (Zecharia 13:2-6).
Justice was important to Zecharia. (Zecharia 7:4-10).
The Prophet Hosea pointed out covenant violations (See Hosea 4:1-11. )
We see in the book of Revelation that the churches of Pergamum and Thyatira tolerated false teachers, to the chagrin of our Lord.
Your Christian duty to guard Orthodoxy (the apostles had harsh words for heretics and evildoers (1Cor. 5:5; Gal. 1:8-9; 5:12; 2 Ti. 4:14. Compare with Psalm 62:12; 2 Peter 2:2; John 7-11; Jude 3-16).