08 — The Theology of Anathema

This is the section that makes the collection worth having. An anathema is not a curse, not a magical formula, and not a consignment of a soul to hell; it is the Church’s declaration that a teaching stands outside her faith and that whoever holds it obstinately has placed himself outside her communion. The section establishes that from Scripture, from the conciliar and canonical tradition, and from the Synodikon’s own formula — and then sets beside it the Fathers’ own severe cautions against the use of the instrument.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Contents

File Description
what-an-anathema-is-and-is-not.md The word from the Septuagint ḥerem to Galatians 1:8–9 and Romans 9:3; the conciliar use, always attached to a proposition; the Synodikon’s own formula, “the curse which they have put upon themselves”; the condition of obstinacy and its parallel in Matthew 18; anathema distinguished from excommunication; who may pronounce one; that anathemas can be and have been lifted; the medicinal intent; and five things an anathema is not
the-sobriety-of-the-fathers.md The homily “That We Should Not Anathematize the Living or the Dead” (PG 48:945–952) quoted at length; the distinction that reconciles it with the Synodikon — doctrines are anathematized, men are prayed for; St. Paul’s own instinct; the Church’s restraint in practice, measured by how rarely the Synodikon grew; Nicaea II receiving repentant iconoclast bishops; the 1971 Russian annulment; St. Isaac the Syrian; and the modern application in three consequences

The Standpoint

This section is written per METHODOLOGY §4.1: the Church’s practice is confessed and explained, neither apologized for nor brandished. The anathema is not treated as an embarrassment to be minimized, and it is not treated as a weapon to be admired. It is treated as what the tradition says it is — the terminus of a pastoral process, pronounced conciliarly, about a teaching, in order that the man who holds it may return.

Where the sources themselves are contested — the authorship of the Antiochene homily, for instance — the dispute is named and the argument is shown not to depend on it.

See Also