BISHOP AUGUSTINOS KANTIOTES
METROPOLITAN OF FLORINA

WHAT IS HERESY?

Small Pamphlet Issue no.16

“I beg you to contend for the faith that has once and for all been handed down to the saints” (Jude verse 3)

Being ready, my beloved, being ready to speak concerning the heretics and concerning the stance, which we must faithfully observe before them, it is necessary first to say, what is heresy and what is a heretic. For the Orthodox person only then will take the necessary stance before the heretics, when he obtains a clear idea of heresy. Ignorance is a terrible thing and the source of many evils. And if this holds true for all things in general, much more does it hold true, when the object of ignorance is questions relating directly to the Faith. Woe unto us if we struggle to know the small and least important things, and are indifferent towards the greatest things, upon which life or death depends.
What, then, is heresy? We won’t give the definition from the start. For, if we give it from the beginning, on account of the gross indifference of the many for super-cosmic truths, no feeling will be provoked. We live, unfortunately, in the century of disdainers, concerning whom the prophet says: “Behold, you disdainers, and look and marvel marvelously and vanish” (Habakkuk 1:5; Cp also Acts 13:41). These disdainers, as we also wrote about at another time, are like the rooster of the Aesopian myth, which scratched the ground and found diamonds, but not being able to appreciate the value of the diamond, threw it far away and continued his digging of the dirt to find worms…
For this reason we too, in the desire to awaken the interest of the people for the great and sublime truths of our Faith, which at another time shook up the spirits of our living forebears in the Faith and for the Faith, we shall try with examples drawn from the daily experience of life to give an analogous, proportionate idea of heresy and the danger deriving from it.

Food

Let’s suppose that you’re hungry. You feel in your stomach the feeling of hunger sharply. You see a restaurant and you enter. Do you want the food, which the restaurant will offer you, to not be clean? Do you want to suffer food poisoning? Even worse: Would you like it for someone to throw into your food strychnine (nightshade; a highly poisonous alkaloid; stimulant), and for you to die? Of course not. You want the food to be pure, healthful, and nutritious. The milk, which you drink, you also want it to be genuine and clean. The sweet, which the pastry store owner prepares, again you want it to contain genuine and pure materials. And generally whatever you introduce into your stomach you want to be pure. Now if it were ever supposed, that you are invited to table, whose foods are prepared by the most brilliant cooks, but someone informs you, that in the foods there has been placed a little poisonous powder, despite all the appetite, which the smell and view of the dishes stimulates, you don’t touch them. But you leave and inform some other relative or friend to stay away from the table.

Medicine

Let us now suppose that you’re sick. The doctor recommends medicine, which is effective. Thousands of illnesses have received also their cures. So you too buy the medicine with the sure hope of therapy. But paradoxically you see no improvement in your health. The doctor wonders. Something is suspected. He sends the medicine to the Chemistry lab, they make an analysis of it and it is proved that the medicine, despite all its advertisement, doesn’t contain all the indispensable ingredients. It’s about pharmaceutical adulteration. What will you, the sick person, feel, I beg to ask, who awaited your therapy from the medicine? Of course you’ll get angry and become indignant. And you will hasten to report the pharmacist to the ministry of Justice as being criminally active against the health of people. And some will shout even more robustly: “Hang the evil-doer”! We remember what a wave of indignation and clamor was stimulated among public opinion, when an unconscionable big merchant of medications adulterated quinine, an indispensable medication then for Greece, which was plagued by malaria. And because the one guilty for the adulteration had close relations with political factors of the then governing party, the clamor against him, became a clamor against the Government too, as supporting supposedly the guilty one, and the whole government was shaken. Yes, it was shaken because of the adulteration of a medication.

Deposit

Let’s hypothesize and suppose moreover that you hand over a precious object to a trustworthy person for safekeeping, an object that came to you from your forebearers as an inheritance and is considered a sacred heirloom. When you will ask for this object to be returned to you, you want it to be returned as it was during the hand-over. Untouched. If, however, the one receiving it for safeguarding, instead of returning to whatever you handed over to him, gives you a similitude of the precious object, and you discover the deception, what, I beg to ask you, will you feel before him? Won’t you run to the police and the courts to bring a charge against the rogue? Will you not endeavor surely to have him return the precious object?

Gold coinage

Let us again suppose that you hold in your hands a gold coin. If now you go to the Bank and ask to cash the gold coin and there you are informed that it is not concerning a genuine, but about a counterfeit coin, how will you set yourself psychically before those who set into circulation counterfeit coins? Of course you will become indignant, irritated and will hasten to accuse them before the police, which will be mobilized immediately towards the discovery of the gang of counterfeiters.

The Parthenon

Let us mention another example too. On the Acropolis of Athens the Parthenon is elevated. This is considered, according the judgment of specialists, a perfect architectural work, an unrivalled masterpiece of the ages. If now it is supposed that someone at the time of night achieved going up to the Acropolis, and in his stupidity lightly scratches a pillar, thinking that thereby he is rendering it more beautiful, and the keepers of Acropolis in the morning discover the corruption of the pillar, and the newspapers disseminate the news, we ask: The civilized people, who marvel at the masterpieces of art, will they hear the news dispassionately? For days and weeks perhaps the global press will be occupied with the scratches, which the pseudo-artist restored to the marble. The Parthenon must remain untouched, not accepting change or dissolution! For antiquity-worshippers even the idea that perhaps the Parthenon will undergo corruption from the strong waves of the sound provoked from the flights of planes scares them! And lately a serious Athenian newspaper considers it a crime against the sacredness of the rock of the Acropolis that there is the thought of erecting sky-scrapers in Athens, because sky-scrapers will surpass the height of the rock and will overshadow the Acropolis!

Ship

Let us mention also a last example: You travel on a ship. The captain, who has the responsibility for the ship, is careful in order that the ship may sail canonically (regularly). He refers to the map, looks at the compass, and canonizes, regulates the line of sail. If he deviates a little from the line, there exists the fear that the ship will collide with rocks and reefs and be shipwrecked. For this reason no deviation is forgiven.

[Here in the text Satan is pictured happily stirring a cauldron over fire.]

But why all these examples? As we said in the beginning, we desire to give through examples an idea of heresy and the danger that comes from it.
Man, do you want, pure, clean food for your body? But you must also seek for pure, clean food for your soul. For the soul too hungers. And the pangs of spiritual hunger are strong for those people, who do not desire to live as crows and gluttons, don’t want to be satiated just like the pigs, but have higher desires and yearnings. They desire knowledge. They seek after the truth. The truth is the food of the human spirit. And it is food, pure and perfect food, so long as this same food, the religious and ethical truth, which deals with the highest interests of man, is rid of every alien element, every lie or falsehood. The lie, or falsehood, is as the poison that contaminates the food. But where is pure and immaculate truth? There were so many errors/deceptions, which have entered into all the philosophical and religious systems of antiquity, that many doubted whether it was possible for the truth to be found, the religious and moral truth. The spirit of religious doubt and pessimism as regards the discovery of truth was expressed by the question of Pilate: “What is truth?” (John 18:38). But the truth, which the ancient cosmos/world in vain sought after, the truth in all its grandeur, at that moment was standing before Pilate. Christ himself had declared: “I am the truth” (John 14:6). But before the truth the arrogant representative of Rome did not humble himself. The shining of the weapons would not allow him to duly appreciate the truth. Souls, however, simple and humble, hungering and thirsting the truth, found her in Christ, and no power stood capable to detach them from Christ. If others taking occasion from certain words of the Lord, which they were unable to understand through their small logic, or small capacity for rational thinking, were scandalized and departed, humble souls, devotedly attached to Christ by faith and as infants sucking the guiless milk of his teaching, were able with Peter to say: “Lord, to which person shall we go? For you have words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
The words of the Lord is the life of man. They contain all those ingredients which man needs spiritually in order to be nourished, to be increased and to reach becoming “a perfect man, unto the measure of stature of the fullness of Christ” (*)
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(*) In the vespers service of the feast-day of the Great Teachers and Fathers of the Church, Athanasios and Cyril, the sacred hymnographer, in praising the sacred duel calls these two hierarchs “breasts”, which give forth the milk of salvation. “Rejoice – says – the sacred Duel, the earthly horizon of the sun…truly O great and wise Athanasios, divine Cyril: the compasses of the Spirit; god-inscribed plates: breasts gushing forth the milk of salvation: the ornament of wisdom. Entreat Christ to grant his great mercy to our souls”. This icon of Orthodox teaching as guiless milk, from which the faithful are nourished, the ethno-martyr Chrysostom of Smyrna mentioned in his marvelous enthronement speech, when he had initially become bishop and was established in Drama. Behold the related passage: “The Church, as the holy fathers have made to stand firm, is not a cold power giving orders, nor an organization calculating, threatening or being vindictive with the threat of retribution. It is a mother loving and forgiving and inspiring the sweetest feelings on the earth. And her serving shepherds have as their mission to bring together the thirsting lips of Christians with the breasts that are full of the divine milk for the unshakable, the superior health of life.
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This teaching of Jesus Christ, we firmly believe, was maintained pure in the Orthodox Church. The food, which the Orthodox Church offers, is pure, clean, healthy, therapeutic, salvific food. Saint Ignatios, the God-bearer, bishop of Antioch, who martyred in Rome, being thrown in with starving lions, characterizes Christian teaching as being such kind of food. St. Ignatius vividly admonishes “to only utilize Christian food”; and to abstain from the other food, botany, as he calls it, poisonous and harmful botany, “which is heresy”.
O if only people were careful in regard to what they hear and what they are taught just like they care for what they eat and drink! But people of the present time have elevated into a dogma of life the health of the body, and give tremendous significance to the kind of food, and measure the vitamins, and follow a diet with care and precision, and abstain from harmful foods, but concerning the health of the soul and spiritual food, they don’t even speak of it. Indiscriminately they introduce into their psychical organism, or organism of the soul, whatever the world of corruption serves. They leave the choice meals of the Lord’s table, and they devour gluttonously the harmful foods that Satan and his instruments prepare in his cauldrons. The preachers of the “Evangalion,” the Gospel shout: Christians, caution! Don’t approach the Devil’s kitchens. With as much art that the Devil might have used to prepare his meals, they contain destruction. “Death in the cauldron”! (4 in the Septuagint, or 2 Kings 4:40). There are not few of those who ate from the food of the Devil and died. There are not few Orthodox who were enticed by alien teachings and were poisoned psychically or in respect to soul. After how much toil certain ones of these apprehended the error/deception, repented, spit out the poison and returned to Orthodoxy! Most of them however, the majority, remained unfortunately in error/deception and the poison killed them. They were not careful to guard themselves from the leaven of the heretics and were lost.
An ever-memorable spiritual elder, whom I was made worthy to come to know and to hear, in admonishing his spiritual children to abstain from the fearful heresy of the so-called Jehovists, would say characteristically the following: Those who want to wipe out dogs take meat, food that dogs like, they cut it up, and they make it into chopped meat, they knead it with strychnine, they make it into a “poison-ball”, throw it to the dog, and the dog, unsuspecting, devours it; and after a short while the unfortunate animal is killed. In this manner, my beloved children, Satan acts. He takes meat, teaching from the Holy Scripture, he adulterates it, mixes it with his poison, that is, with the lie/falsehood, and thus he offers it to Christians. My children, be careful! This teaching is a “poison-ball”, which bears spiritual death.
But let us come to the second example. Man, for the restoration of his shaken health, for the therapy of the multi-form diseases that provoke and attack him, has need of medicines. Some of the medicines are consequential, effective. They perform radical therapy. And much gratitude is owed to those scientists who discovered these medicines. Already with anxiety humanity awaits for that day in which science will discover medicine effective against the sickness of cancer, which as a plague of pharaoh is wiping out mankind today.
But besides those medicines of the body there exist also those medicines, which perform therapy upon the plagues and diseases of human existence. Such plagues and diseases are the vices and the passions, which Scripture with only a single word calls sin. She (sin) contaminates the cognitive, thinking faculty with thoughts, which as other germs circulate in the internal part of the soul and provoke most serious diseases. She contaminates the power of sentiment with the wild and shameful feelings that shake up the soul of man from its very depths and creates violent storms in the internal world, for the sake of which man is not able to enjoy the peacefulness of his conscience. Sin, finally, is that which contaminates the will of man and weakens it to such a point, that man sees the good, marvels at it, wants to carry it into effect, and yet he is not able to, but is carried violently and irresistibly towards evil, even though internally he disapproves and abominates it. The apostle Paul, in presenting this esoteric, internal tragedy of man, gives a sigh: “Miserable man that I am! Who will free me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24)
Man is psychically sick, or ill in respect to soul, breathing his last breath as that most heavily wounded person of the parable of the good Samaritan. Who is able to perform therapy upon man? And what are the medications towards this end? In a prophecy of Ezekiel marvelous trees are presented. These trees are planted by the shores of a marvelous river, too. From the waters of the river the roots of the trees draw and leaves blossom and bear fruit. The fruits are for nourishment. The leaves, containing therapeutic power, are for health, for doctoring (Ezekiel 47:12; Cf. also Revelation 22:2).
These trees which the prophet Ezekiel saw in his vision are symbolic of the tremendous, the miracle-producing power of Christianity. Christ planted the tree. A tree, the branches of which are for the therapy of the nations. Christ is the doctor of souls and bodies. He, according to another prophecy, of the prophet Isaiah, came into the world “to heal those who are broken in heart” (Is. 61:1). He according to the parable of the merciful, charitable almsgiving Samaritan established an inn, the clinic, the holy Church, in which he left the miracle-working medicines, his divine words and mysteries (sacraments). These are the leaves for the nations’ therapy. Who by running to this clinic does not find therapy? Thousands of psychically sick people have found their therapy in the Church of Christ.
But O the disaster! The medicines, which the Lord recommended, and which in every respect are provided in the Orthodox Church, outside the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church have undergone adulteration and have suffered counterfeiting. Let us take as an example the mystery of repentance. Repentance is a medicine – a medicine that has been tried in thousands of instances of sinful people.
But this medicine, which the infinite love of God prepares, a medicine that draws its power from the inexhaustible river of the blood of Christ, has suffered alteration. The heterodox have adulterated and counterfeited it. The Protestants recognize only the internal contrition of man as the element of repentance, and have abolished confession before the spiritual father. The Papists, enclosing the spiritual father within the confessionals, established the act of confession in a way that is un-psychologically sound, cold, “typical”, that is, being only under the type or form without the substance or content – mechanical.
While in Orthodoxy the mystery has maintained both its internal and its external form. The penitent, the one repenting, laments because of his sins, he breaks his stoney heart through sacred contrition, but he doesn’t limit himself to his internal sentiments. He hastens and finds the spiritual father, to whom the Lord gave the authority to bind and loose sins, he humbles himself and confesses to him face to face, just as he would confess before Jesus Christ. And thus he receives the verification that his sins were forgiven. The mystery stands perfect in Orthodoxy. The medicine is offered genuine and in all its fullness, and it acts of course in all its effectiveness, so long as, it is understood, the one hastening to the mystery conforms to all the pointers of the spiritual cleric-doctor.
But heresy plagues yet another mystery of Christianity. It is the mystery of the Divine Eucharist. According to the teaching of the Apostolic Fathers, the Divine Eucharist is the medicine of immortality; it is the antidote of not dying. It is a medicine, as this is offered in the Orthodox Church. According to the commandment of Christ, the founder of the mysteries, the faithful are invited to commune the Body and Blood of Christ. But the Protestants don’t accept the change, the trans-subtantiation, the trans-elementation of the bread and the wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. They simpley accept symbolism and the high presence of Christ under the forms of bread and wine. The mystery has evaporated for them. Now the Papists do not administer from the blood to the people. They administer only from the Body, the so-called wafer. That is to say, the medicine is administered among them to the people and not in its fullness, but only half-way.
Similar changes among the heterodox we shall observe, if we extend the research also to the rest of the mysteries.
Let us come to the third example: We spoke about the precious object, which a certain person entrusted to another person for safekeeping and he has the right to receive it in time just as he had given it. No change is allowed to be effected upon the precious object.
But besides the different precious objects of matter, there exist also precious things of the spirit. What is more precious than the Christian Faith? What is more precious than Divine Teaching? This is the sacred deposit, which Christ handed over to the Apostles and the Apostles to their successors the bishops, and through the continual and unbroken succession of the Hierarchy this sacred deposit has reached until us. To the ears of all Christians, and especially to the clerics, and most especially to the bishops, the god-inspired voice of the apostle Paul must be heard clearly and intensely: “O, Timothy, guard the deposit, turning away from the sacrilegious empty-speech and conflicting talk of pseudo-named knowledge, which certain ones who are pronouncing them concerning the faith have missed the mark” (1 Tim. 6:20-21).
A great deal of discourse of the Fathers of the Church is devoted to the issue of the sacred deposit. Have you been present, beloved readers, at the ordination of a presbyter? All are emotionally moved during that time. But the most moving thing of all is the point at which the bishop hands over into the hands of the one being ordained the sanctified bread and directing himself towards him, with a strong voice says in the hearing of all in the church: “Receive this deposit and guard it until the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ, at which time it (the deposit) will be demanded of you.”
The deposit must be guarded vigilantly and diligently, because many are [cunningly] deliberating against it. In the museums, wherein are found precious objects of unspeakable value, crowns of kings and emperors variegated through valuable stones, day and night their exists a continuous, alternating guard. Not even for an hour, nor for a minute are the treasures left unguarded. But what are these treasures before the priceless treasures of the Faith? The material treasures are guarded in the museums of the world, and they remind one of a past that was more or less glorious, but they have no influence upon the present and future life of mankind. They are dead treasures. Quite the opposite, the sacred deposit, the one containing the god-given words and the mysteries of Christianity, has not ceased, nor shall it ever cease to have a vital influence upon mankind. The Church, the Orthodox Church, will never be turned into a museum, as her implacable enemies desire. The only thing these enemies would want to remain from Christianity, would be a few icons of great artistic value, surely not for reasons of worship, but for artistic aims, and at the same time as a momento from a regressive past according to them, during which people believed supposedly in pieces of wood.
Orthodoxy, diligently guarding the deposit, does not hold it as an inactive, non-operational treasure, but sets it into motion. Her life-giving, pure and undefiled current flows from the most ancient times and reaches until our last years, watering and flooding the souls of the pious and godly. A wondrous phenomenon. Physicists speak with amazement about sub-terrestrial rivers, which traverse through various strata, and oftentimes below the depths of oceans, and suddenly in a region they gush forth as rich and most pure well-springs. But more amazing is this phenomenon, according to which the living water running unto eternal life flows through the centuries, through various states and ideologies, and reaches unto every epoch pure from every influence, crystal clear, and with a surge that jumps from the seven-faucet source of Orthodoxy. Towards these ever-living sources the voice of Isaiah invites the world, which says: “Those who thirst, go upon the water” and “Draw up water with gladness from the sources of salvation” (Is. 55:1;12,3).
This sacred deposit, which is not a dead, but a living treasure, it is necessary during every epoch for it to be preserved unchanged and intact (uninjured), that it may save all of its vitality and to give it to those of every epoch who desire life. In this sacred deposit, which is kept guarded in the Orthodox Church, the saying holds true: “Jesus Christ yesterday and today is the same, and unto the ages.” (Heb. 13:8).
Who wants the vitality of the sun to be decreased? Science is in a state of unrest that the sun in the passing of centuries might lose part of its heat and illuminating power and that a day will come during which the star of day will be extinguished. All want the sun to preserve its power without decrease for the good of the world. But if we want, one time, the physical sun to preserve its power, which nourishes the physical life of the world, we must a thousand times, a million times want the power of the spiritual sun, which is all-brilliant Orthodoxy, who bears in her own self Christ and eternally nourishes the spiritual life of the world. If the power of the sacred deposit is lessened, then Orthodoxy will appear on the horizon of ideas as a pale sun, continually weakening and treading towards annihilation. But no. This shall not happen. Orthodoxy is the sun, which the Holy Trinity lit up in the spiritual horizon. Orthodoxy is the unfading sun.
Let us come to the fourth example. The coin, O man, which you hold in your hand, you want to be real, true. You want it to be exactly just as it came forth from the coin-producing factory of the Nation.
But there exist those who decrease the value of the gold coin. There exist people who are specialists, who with a small file lightly file the gold coin, and in such a manner the coin loses something of its weight and its value is decreased. No one apprehends this loss of the coin. I read somewhere that at the National Bank of England there exists a machine, which checks the wholeness of gold liras. Within it are thrown the liras, and as many of them that have canonical (regular) weight, these are held, and as many as have lost even the slightest weight, are removed from the machine.
But besides gold coins there also exist another kind of coins, with incomparably superior value than the first. They are the words of the Lord. Concerning them the Psalmist says: “The law of your mouth is good to me more than thousands of gold and silver” (Psalm 118:72). Truly every word of Holy Scripture is as a gold coin. If someone receives it, that is, if someone believes in it, he is able to become rich spiritually. For example, how much ethical enrichment does the word of the Lord have, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matt. 16:26).
But just as there exist those who file away and counterfeit the coins, thus too there exist those who file away and counterfeit the Holy Scripture. They are the heretics. They add or subtract something, so that the meanings of the passages are changed, transformed. And what is worse yet, they distort the meanings of the passages, so that a completely different meaning comes from it. And others, faithless and atheists, paint over their worldly ideas, their fearful errors/deceptions with a covering of gold, that is, with words of Holy Scripture, while the meanings of these words differ a great deal from their (Scripture’s) ideas. Thousands such counterfeit coins circulate. The most unbelievable and antichristian ideas appear as Christian ideas. Who shall check and separate the ones from the others, the right ones from the erroneous-deceptive ones? The Church is she, who through Regional and Ecumenical Synods rejected some as mistaken, and other ones she accepted as correct.
In the minutes of the Synods and in the teachings of the Fathers one often meets the Greek verb paracharatein, to counterfeit. They use this whenever they want to characterize a teaching as being heretical.
The great deceiver, Satan, through his instruments counterfeits the sacred precepts and floods the world with counterfeit coins. And there was always such a circulation of false teachings, that among the many ideas in circulation it is difficult for one to discern the right idea. It is in rare cases when the coin of Orthodoxy comes up. Blessed then is the person who possesses the coin of Orthodoxy. She (Orthodoxy) is the precious drachma, concerning which the Lord speaks in the Evangelion, the Gospel. Many unfortunately have lost the precious drachma and they must toil a great deal in order to find her anew. And when they find her, they feel great and inexpressible joy. They see in her imprinted and vividly the icon of the Lord. These are as many of those to whom God showed mercy and returned from the heresies. They hold tight the precious drachma and they don’t exchange her any more for whichever other coin (See issue no. 270/1964 of the periodical “Christian Spark”).
Let us come to the fifth example. We said that the Parthenon is a masterpiece of the ages, a perfect work, not accepting alteration.
But besides this Parthenon there exists also another Parthenon. “Wisdom has built herself a house and set up seven pillars” (Proverbs 9:1). The enhypostasized Wisdom of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, through teaching, his honorable blood and in general all his energies erected the majestic edifice of Christianity. The words of Christ as all-white columns of excellent style are erected and hold firm the edifice of Christianity and provoke the amazement of the centuries. And just as no one is allowed to set hand upon the Parthenon in order to supposedly correct it, so too also no one is allowed to set an abominable hand upon Christian teaching in order to change something from it. The perfect is not corrected by the imperfect. But the perfect is projected as the prototype, and every imperfect one gazing towards it tries to imitate it. It is extreme brazeness, for the imperfect to condemn the perfect and to want to adapt it to its own measures. This brazenness reminds one of the myth of Aesop, according to which ducks, when they saw an eagle flying in the heights, criticized him because he flew so high! They wanted the eagle on their own level.
Orthodoxy is eternal, because it expresses the perfect. It expresses the perfectness of Christian teaching.

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Let us now come to the last example. The ship, with which you travel, must follow a correct line of sail, in order not to collide on rocks and reefs. But so that may remember an ancient philosopher of our Fatherland, man seeks among the many ideological systems the most perfect one of them, so that as when on a ship he may sail upon the sea of life in the most secure manner. The ship, which in vain the ancient philosopher searched after, appeared. It appeared by the shore of Gennesaret. It is the Church of Christ. It began officially on the day of Pentecost.
A wind of the Holy Spirit enveloped her sails. The mast is the honorable Cross. The rudder (“pedalion” in the Greek) is the sacred laws. The anchor is hope. Passengers are the faithful. Governor of the ship is Christ. The line of sail is the right interpretation of the “Evangelion,” the Gospel. The destination of the ship is the Kingdom of the heavens. Long and harrowingly adventurous is the ride of the ship through the centuries. The Leviathan that lurks in the waters oftentimes raises big storms. The ship is shaken and tortured amid the waves. It appears for a moment that she will go under. But again it comes up from the waves. She is shaken, but not sunk. The Lord each time orders the wild sea and calmness comes.
There exists a serious danger. It is the danger of deviation from the right line of sail. When the representatives of Christ don’t study the Scriptures and are not careful, the ship, which they govern according to the command of Christ, is capable of deviating from the line and colliding onto the rocks and reefs of heresies and many of the passengers will be shipwrecked in regard to the faith. The ship, which was in danger, after the substitution of the unworthy ship staff, continues its correct travel.

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Beloved readers! With the above examples we tried to give an answer to the question, what is heresy. Heresy, then, is the poisonous food of the soul; it is adulteration of salvific, redeeming medicines; it is the stealing of the sacred deposit; it is the counterfeiting of the coins of truth; the perversion of the perfect; it is the deviation from the correct line, which the word of God inscribes. Heresy is the acceptance of religious ideas, which the Church condemns as false and are set against her correct faith. Heresy is a crime against the validity and authenticity of the Church, which Christ established as the pillar and ground of truth (1 Tim. 3:15).
But the world today doesn’t pay attention to the seriousness of the danger that comes from heresy. This too is a sign of the times.
O world! You pay attention to the small things. You are careful that the milk you drink is genuine, that your food is pure and filled with vitamins, that your medicines are active, that your coins and paper currency are not counterfeit; that your archeological monuments not suffer the smallest corruption, that the means of transportation, by which you make your trips, that they do not deviate from their lines. You are careful about all things. Except one thing. The Orthodox Faith. She doesn’t interest you. Woe unto you, O world, for the apprehensions that you have, and for your indifference. Remaining thus indifferent about the greatest and highest matters, you will fall into the pits of Rationalism, of Materialism, of unbelief and of atheism, and then you will understand what Orthodoxy is, which you spurned.
Now you, faithful souls, as many of you who have been left in our century, don’t be dragged away by the modern currents of the world, don’t waver from the multitudes of the enemies, those attacking together by a circle, but remain firm upon firm upon the faith handed over ONCE AND FOR ALL to the saints, and be ready to fight the good fight. Orthodoxy lives, and the final triumph belongs to her.