The Sobriety of the Fathers

The same tradition that produced the Synodikon produced a homily forbidding Christians to anathematize the living or the dead — and the two are not in contradiction. This file collects the Fathers’ cautions in their own words, sets out the Church’s restraint in practice, and draws the distinction on which everything turns: the Church anathematizes doctrines; she prays for men.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

A Homily Against Anathematizing

Among the works transmitted under the name of St. John Chrysostom is a short homily whose title is startling: “That We Should Not Anathematize the Living or the Dead.” It is printed in Migne at Patrologia Graeca XLVIII, cols. 945–952, and was probably delivered at Antioch near the beginning of 386, not long after Chrysostom’s ordination to the presbyterate by Bishop Flavian — Bernard de Montfaucon, the principal editor of Chrysostom’s works, deduced the setting from the opening paragraph, which refers back to the Third Homily on the Incomprehensibility of God, and defended the homily’s authenticity against Louis Tillemont’s objections that it is too short and stylistically divergent (Hieromonk Patapios, “On Caution Regarding Anathematization: An Annotated Translation of the St. John Chrysostom Homily ‘That We Should Not Anathematize the Living or the Dead,’” with the editorial note giving the PG reference, the dating, and the Montfaucon–Tillemont exchange). [Disputed: the attribution to Chrysostom has been questioned; Tillemont argued against it and Montfaucon defended it, and some modern scholarship has proposed St. Flavian I of Antioch as the author. Nothing in the argument of this file depends on which of the two preached it: it is a fourth-century Antiochene episcopal homily either way, and it is transmitted in the Church’s Chrysostomic corpus.]

The homily was preached into a live situation — the Meletian schism at Antioch, in which orthodox parties excommunicated one another — and it is furious.

On the presumption of the act. “And who are you, that you lay claim to such authority and great power? For ‘when the Son of man shall sit upon the throne of His glory…, He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left’ (Matthew 25:31–33). How, then, did you obtain such great dignity, which was granted only to the community of the Apostles and those who truly became their successors in the strictest sense, full of Grace and power?”

On the Apostles’ own restraint. The Apostles, “having kept the commandment precisely, cast heretics out of the Church as if they were gouging out their right eye, which shows the great compassion and grief that they experienced at the excision of a vital member… Hence, observing exactitude in this matter, as in all matters, they censured and cast out heresies, but did not apply this reproach to any of the heretics.” The homilist notes that St. Paul uses the word in only two places, 1 Corinthians 16:22 and Galatians 1:9, and “without bringing it to bear on a particular person.”

On usurping the judgment. He quotes a martyred predecessor: “just as one who is a private citizen, if he clothes himself in royal purple, is slain as a tyrant, along with his accomplices, so also, those who have recourse to the Master’s verdict and separate a man from the Church by anathema, lead themselves into utter perdition, arrogating to themselves what belongs to the Son.”

The dilemma at the center of the homily. “For the man whom you have chosen to anathematize is either alive and present in this mortal life, or he is dead. Now if he is still alive, you commit impiety in cutting off one who is mutable and capable of changing from evil to good; but if he is dead, all the greater is your impiety… for such a man stands or falls by his own Lord, being no longer subject to human authority, and… it is hazardous to declare what is hidden to the Judge of the ages, Who alone knows the limits of a man’s knowledge and the extent of his faith. For how do we know, please tell me, with what words he will accuse himself or defend himself on the day when God will judge men’s secrets?”

The pastoral alternative. “Spread out the net of love… throw out the sweet bait of compassion and thus, having searched what is hidden, snatch from the depth of perdition him who has let his mind drown therein. Teach him that what is thought to be good, out of prejudice or ignorance, is alien to Apostolic Tradition… If he is unwilling, and remains quarrelsome, in order that you may not become liable for him, simply bear witness with forbearance and goodness.”

And the sentence that reconciles the homily with the Synodikon. “For we must anathematize heretical doctrines and refute impious teachings, from whomsoever we have received them, but show mercy to the men who advocate them and pray for their salvation.”

(All quotations from the homily “That We Should Not Anathematize the Living or the Dead” [PG 48:945–952], in the annotated English translation by Hieromonk Patapios.)

The Distinction That Holds Everything Together

That last sentence is the hinge of the entire question, and it deserves to be stated as a principle: doctrines are anathematized; men are prayed for.

This is not a compromise between severity and mercy. It is a single position, and it is the position the Synodikon itself takes. The overwhelming bulk of the Synodikon’s condemnations are of propositions — “to them who say,” “to them who do not confess.” Where names appear, they appear as the identified authors of a condemned position, and the text is careful to specify that the men in question refused correction after it was repeatedly offered (see What an Anathema Is and Is Not). And the Synodikon does not pretend to know the eternal fate of anyone; it names a boundary of confession, not a destination.

The homilist’s own argument runs in exactly the same channel. He does not say heresy should be tolerated; he says it should be refuted “from whomsoever we have received them.” What he forbids is the private and premature application of a verdict reserved to Christ.

St. Paul’s Own Instinct

The homily is right about its Apostle. The most extraordinary use of the word in Scripture is St. Paul’s wish that he himself “were accursed [anathema] from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh” (Romans 9:3). A man who could wish himself anathema for the sake of those who rejected the Gospel is not a man in the habit of pronouncing anathemas on others; and the homilist draws precisely this conclusion: “Although he had such an attitude towards Christ, he did not insult, compel, or anathematize anyone; for if he had, he would not have brought so many peoples and entire cities to God.”

He notes too what Paul did at Athens — not “You are all atheists and completely ungodly,” but “I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you” (Acts 17:22–23). The homilist’s comment: “O the wonder, O the fatherly compassion! He said that the Greeks had piety, although they were idolaters.”

The Church’s Restraint in Practice

Rhetoric aside, the Church’s actual record with the Synodikon is one of very great restraint, and the numbers make the point better than any argument.

In five centuries there are, at most, a handful of additions. Counting generously, the Synodikon grew in the 840s–860s (monastic names), after 870 (material from the council of 869–870), after 925 (from the Tome of Union of 920), in the early eleventh century (anti-dualist and anti-Jacobite material under Alexios Studites), in 1082 (Italos), in the mid-twelfth century (the Christological and Eucharistic chapters), and around 1352 (the Palamite chapters) (Frederick Lauritzen, “The Layers of Composition of the Synodikon of Alexius Studites,” Studia Ceranea 7 [2017]: 121–128, at 126–127). For a Church that met in synod constantly, and that faced a great deal of heterodoxy over five hundred years, that is a strikingly short list. The Synodikon was not a running blacklist; the threshold for entry was a settled conciliar judgment on a dogmatic question.

No iconoclast emperor is named. The Synodikon anathematizes the iconoclast patriarchs and certain clergy and officials of the second period; it does not name Leo III, Constantine V, Leo V, or Theophilus (see The Iconoclast Anathemas). Whatever the political reasons, the effect is that the men with the most blood on their hands are left to God.

Nicaea II had already set the pattern of receiving the repentant. The Seventh Ecumenical Council, in its opening sessions, faced the question of what to do with bishops who had subscribed to iconoclasm and now repented, and — under Patriarch Tarasius, and against the resistance of some of the monastic party — received them in their orders on their public renunciation of the heresy. The council that most decisively condemned iconoclasm was also the council that restored iconoclast bishops who recanted (see Nicaea II (787) and The Defense of the Icons). The point is structural: the anathema exists in order to be escaped.

Anathemas have been lifted. The Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1971 annulled the anathemas laid by the Great Moscow Council of 1666–67 on the old rites and those who kept them, declaring them “as though they had not been.” An anathema is an ecclesial judgment, and the Church that made it can unmake it.

The Ascetic Tradition’s Voice

The monastic tradition, which produced most of the Synodikon’s saints, is the same tradition that produced the most extreme statements of mercy in Christian literature. St. Isaac the Syrian asks what a merciful heart is and answers: “the burning of the heart for all creation — for men, for birds, for beasts, for demons, and for every created thing” — and says that the merciful man prays even for the enemies of truth (Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies, Homily 71 in the Holy Transfiguration Monastery translation, The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian [Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1984]; see The Merciful Heart).

There is no contradiction between St. Isaac praying for the demons and the Church anathematizing a proposition. They are different acts, directed at different objects, and performed by different agents: the first is the prayer of a man for persons, the second the judgment of a council on a teaching. It is the collapse of that distinction — anathema turned into a private weapon against persons — that the Antiochene homily attacks and that the Fathers uniformly forbid.

The Modern Application

Three consequences, stated plainly and without heat.

No individual may anathematize. The homily is unambiguous: the man who does so arrogates to himself what belongs to the Son. This applies to a layman, a priest, a monk, and a bishop acting alone. The competence is conciliar (see What an Anathema Is and Is Not).

Naming the living is a departure from the pattern. The received Synodikon names the dead. The modern circulating lists that anathematize living persons by name — including reigning primates of other communions — depart from that pattern and collide directly with this homily’s central argument, that a living man is “mutable and capable of changing from evil to good” (see What Is Actually Proclaimed Today).

Refusing to name any error is also a departure. The homily does not counsel silence about heresy; it commands the opposite — “we must anathematize heretical doctrines and refute impious teachings.” The sobriety of the Fathers is a sobriety about persons, not an agnosticism about doctrine. A pastoral practice that quietly drops the anathemas from the Sunday of Orthodoxy in the name of charity has taken only half of the Fathers’ counsel.

The Register the Tradition Asks For

What emerges from the sources is a temper, and it is worth naming, because it is the temper this collection has tried to keep. The Church says what her faith is and where it ends, and says it clearly, because vagueness about the faith is not kindness. She does not enjoy doing it. She does it in the form of a memorial service for confessors. She names men only when a council has judged and only after repentance has been refused. She prays for those she has separated, and keeps the door open. And she leaves the last judgment where it belongs — with the Judge who “alone knows the limits of a man’s knowledge and the extent of his faith.”

References

“That We Should Not Anathematize the Living or the Dead,” transmitted among the works of St. John Chrysostom, Patrologia Graeca XLVIII, cols. 945–952. English translation and annotation by Hieromonk Patapios, “On Caution Regarding Anathematization” (with the editorial note on the date, c. early 386, Montfaucon’s defense of authenticity, and Tillemont’s objections). [Disputed authorship: Tillemont against, Montfaucon for; St. Flavian I of Antioch has also been proposed.]
Scripture: Romans 9:3; 1 Corinthians 16:22; Galatians 1:9; Acts 17:22–23; Matthew 25:31–33; 2 Timothy 2:25–26.
Lauritzen, Frederick. “The Layers of Composition of the Synodikon of Alexius Studites.” Studia Ceranea 7 (2017): 121–128. (The schedule of strata, from which the Church’s restraint in adding to the text is evident.)
Isaac the Syrian. The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian. Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1984. Homily 71 (the merciful heart).
Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, 1971, act annulling the anathemas of the Great Moscow Council of 1666–67 on the old rites.
Synodikon of Orthodoxy. Received Greek text of the Triodion; English translation circulated from Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston.