Love in the Face of Heresy

 

Love in the Face of Heresy: 

A Genuine Orthodox Christian Reflection

by Stavroforemonk Symeon Agiomicheltítēs

“Brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” (2 Thess. 2:15, KJV).

In every age of the Church’s life, the manifestation of love is inseparably tied to the defense of Truth. Love that abdicates the Truth is not love at all, but a subtle betrayal of Christ Himself, who declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Genuine Orthodox Christians (GOC), following the Apostolic and Patristic tradition, have not ceased to proclaim the dangers of heresy precisely because they are bound by Love—a love that refuses to allow souls to drift into darkness unchecked. It is a failure of charity to remain silent when the saving dogmas of the Church are attacked, undermined, or distorted.

Among heretics and critics, a persistent accusation resounds: that by continually exposing the errors of modernity—whether they be the pan-heresy of ecumenism, the innovations of the calendar change, or the collapse of traditional ascetical life—the GOC reveals a spirit not of love, but of judgment and division. Yet, this critique fails to grasp the very nature of Christian Love as revealed in Christ and lived by the Saints. To Love the Other, in Orthodox understanding, is not to indulge their errors or validate their delusions; it is to call them, sometimes with weeping, sometimes with fierce warning, back to Life.

Saint Paul himself exhorts Timothy: "Preach the word; be ready in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine" (2 Tim. 4:2, KJV). The verb “reprove” (ἐλέγξον, elenxon) is an act of Love: a wound that heals, a correction that restores. Thus, when the Holy Fathers contended against Arianism, Nestorianism, Monothelitism, or Iconoclasm, they did not do so out of pride or contentiousness, but out of a burning Love for the salvation of souls and the preservation of the living Body of Christ, the Church.

The condemnation of heresy is not a relic of a bygone ecclesiastical rigor, but the very oxygen of the Church’s faithfulness. Saint Basil the Great, when faced with the Arian crisis, wrote with piercing clarity: “The one charge which is now urged against us is that we are unsympathetic towards heretics. But we do not regret this charge; for sympathy with heretics is enmity towards God.”¹ In the Patristic vision, indifference to doctrinal error is a form of hatred: hatred of the soul’s destiny, hatred of Christ’s sacrifice, hatred of the Church’s salvific mission.

Love in the face of heresy does not abandon the heretic, but refuses to legitimize the heresy. We see this embodied in contemporary GOC confessors such as Saint Chrysostomos of Florina (1877–1955), who stood steadfast against the calendar reform of 1924, understanding it not as a mere calendar dispute but as the tip of a spear aimed at the heart of Orthodox unity and faith. With profound humility yet unwavering resolve, he wrote: “We remain with the Fathers, with the unchanging Faith, not because we hate, but because we love with fear and trembling before Christ's judgment seat.”²

Likewise, the late Archbishop Auxentios of Athens (1907–1981), another modern confessor, tirelessly defended the flock against the corrosive influence of ecumenism, understanding that the abandonment of the Orthodox confession would ultimately result in the loss of the Church’s very soul. His pastoral letters resound with a gentle but immovable insistence: love requires discernment, vigilance, and the willingness to endure slander and isolation for the sake of fidelity to Christ.

True Love, as taught by the GOC, is not sentimentalism. It is cruciform. It bears the marks of Christ’s own agony on behalf of the beloved. Saint John Chrysostom taught, “He who loves the sinner but hates the sin is like a physician who cares for the sick man but fights against the disease.”³ In the face of modern religious pluralism, moral relativism, and ecclesiastical compromise, the GOC’s unwavering critique is thus the cry of the physician, not the bark of a moralist.

Today’s critics would do well to distinguish between the anathema of hatred and the anathema of love. The Holy Canons, solemnly crafted by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit at the Ecumenical Councils, are not chains but life preservers. When Saint Photios the Great excommunicated those who adulterated the Symbol of Faith with the Filioque, he did not create division; he preserved unity in truth, for there is no unity apart from Truth.⁴

Moreover, contemporary GOC communities have continued the witness of love in tangible ways: building parishes without compromise, creating monastic refuges, preserving the Divine Services in all their fullness, and offering sacraments uncontaminated by heretical association. Love for Christ demands Love for His Church. Love for the Church demands Love for the fullness of faith. Love for the faith demands confrontation with every distortion that seeks to seduce souls into perdition.

Thus, when a Genuine Orthodox Christian protests ecumenism, warns against heresy, or refuses sacramental communion with schismatics, it is not because he or she despises others, but because he or she treasures their souls enough to risk being hated for telling the Truth. “Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the Truth?” (Gal. 4:16, KJV).

Finally, Love in the face of heresy is never arrogant or self-congratulatory. The GOC does not claim superiority by its confession. Rather, it trembles, knowing that the maintenance of pure faith is a gift and a responsibility, not an achievement of human pride. As Saint Maximus the Confessor, tortured for refusing to accept Monothelitism, said: “I have not fought for doctrine because I am wise, but because I fear Him who said: 'If you deny Me before men, I will deny you before My Father who is in heaven.'”⁵

We who strive to remain within the ark of the unbroken Orthodox Faith must always correct with humility, admonish with tears, and defend the Truth -- not as warriors eager for victory -- but as servants trembling for the salvation of all. This is the Love we are called to manifest: the love that, as fire, both warms and burns; that, as sword, both cuts and heals; that, as Cross, both condemns and saves.

In this way alone is Christian love shown to be consistent, luminous, and faithful—even, and especially, in the face of heresy.

 

¹ Basil of Caesarea, Epistle 243, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 8, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1895), 285.

² Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Florina, Pastoral Epistles and Sermons (Athens: Orthodoxos Typos, 1960), 112.

³ John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, Homily 50.3, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 10, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 313.

⁴ Photios I of Constantinople, Encyclical to the Eastern Patriarchs, in Photii Epistolae et Amphilochia, ed. B.J. Alivisatos (Leipzig: Teubner, 1901), 211–215.

⁵ Maximus the Confessor, Disputation with Pyrrhus, in Patrologia Graeca, vol. 91, col. 344.