08 — Discerning the Spirit

“Try the spirits, whether they are of God.” The apostolic command assumes both that spiritual experience happens and that it can deceive, and the Church has spent nineteen centuries developing the criteria. This section sets out those criteria and the two counterfeits they are aimed at, examines the two historical cases in which the Church had to say what she does and does not object to, and applies the whole to the modern charismatic movement.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (the criteria are universal; §2 draws on a ROCOR-influenced application)

Contents

File Description
the-criteria-and-the-counterfeits.md The four apostolic tests — the confession of Christ come in the flesh, the fruits, order and edification, and submission to judgment; the ascetic criteria from St. Antony’s rule in the Life through Diadochos, Gregory of Sinai, and Brianchaninov, converging on humility against elation; the two counterfeits distinguished, the demonic and the merely psychological, with different remedies for each; Montanism and the three things the Church objected to, none of which was prophecy as such; Messalianism and the complication it creates, since the Macarian corpus, St. Symeon, and the hesychasts were all suspected of it; a structured note on the Macarian question; and the line the Church actually drew
the-charismatic-question.md The movement’s history from Azusa Street through Van Nuys and Duquesne to the Orthodox parishes of the 1970s, with Fr. Eusebius Stephanou and Cremeens’ scholarly account; the doctrine of subsequence stated at its strongest with its scriptural warrant and its real pastoral diagnosis; the Orthodox response in three registers, sacramental, ascetic, and ecclesial; a structured note on the contested exegesis of the Corinthian tongues, and why the Orthodox critique does not depend on it; and four concessions, including that the answer to enthusiasm is not formalism and that St. Symeon the New Theologian is the standing rebuke to any Orthodox who forgets it

What Is Deferred

The ascetic machinery — the stages of assent, the anatomy of prelest, the safeguards of obedience and disclosure, diakrisis as a virtue — belongs to the collection on the ascetic vocabulary and is not restated. This section asks the pneumatological question that sits above that machinery: how the Church identifies what is the Holy Spirit’s.

Fr. Seraphim Rose’s analysis of the charismatic movement is the fullest Orthodox treatment in English and is treated in the collection devoted to him; this section agrees with it, cites it as his, and distinguishes his stronger arguments from those that are offered as arguments rather than demonstrations.

See Also