Orthodox Reflections

By John Lee – an Orthodox Christian

Many information cards, election ballots, and other computer read material have these words on the bottom: “Do Not fold, spindle, or mutilate”. The same applies to the “Faith once delivered” (Jude 1:3), particularly in regards to the Divine Liturgy. If we lose our liturgy, we lose everything. If being “Orthodox” means anything, it means hanging on to the way it always has been done. To allow alterations of the liturgy—in any way, shape, or form—is a betrayal of our moniker. We have no right to change any of it—including which gender serves at the altar. It was delivered to our generation that it should be preserved for the next: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism”—one spoon.

Slippery Slope to the Bottom of the Abyss

During the 1960s—with Vatican II—the Catholic Church remade its liturgy. In the 1970s, the Episcopalians and Anglicans followed suit with the remaking of the Book of Common Prayer, which included changes to their liturgy. The results showed a clear trend—alter what goes on at the altar and more change is inevitable.  At the time some protested. Some of the Episcopalian insiders said the move of changing up the praxis was calculated to let women into the priesthood. Lo and behold…they were right.

“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”

“Those who do know history, repeat it anyway” (Bp. Ray Sutton: Reformed Episcopal Church)

Let us not be guilty of Bp. Sutton’s commentary on modernity as he witnessed it among the Episcopalians. When something so fundamental as gender is skewed in the altar, it touches on the entire cosmological construct. As we have seen from recent experience, the delusions of gender dysphoria and homosexuality set in when we totally erase the distinctions between male and female.

Anglican “priest” the Rev. Carolyn Herold (far left) speaks at the 2019 Calgary Ecumenical Pride worship service at Knox United Church.

When I was ruminating on the choice to become Orthodox, the thing that sealed the deal for me was the sight of altar boys only—no altar girls. At the time, I thought the Orthodox were immune to such slippery slopes as the Episcopalians had experienced. Sadly, not so. In the work of the enemy of our souls—the enemy of the Church—it always starts with changes in the liturgy. Usually not wholesale at first, but incremental steps that accumulate over time. Make no mistake; what happened with Catholics, what happened with Episcopalians, can and will happen with the Orthodox if a strong line in the sand is not maintained.

Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Greek Archdiocese posing with altar girls and boys. Such images are necessary to acclimate parishioners to women at the altar. 

We are in a great battle for the meaning of what true Faith is. Things that seem small on their own combine to radically change the Faith over time: masking for liturgy, using multiple spoons, allowing government to interfere with the Holy Mysteries, and allowing girls to serve in the altar

Unfortunately, during COVID, too many Orthodox hierarchs and parishes yielded to, or exceeded, government mandates to change our cherished and Apostolic liturgical practices. Are we to follow the laws of the land according St Paul? (Romans 13) Of course….until it comes into conflict with the expression of the faith. Even Protestants are figuring that out. Bending the Church to the will of the state, as was done during COVID, is tantamount to the Jewish declaration, “We have no king but Caesar.”

Why is the liturgy the first target of apostates? Because it is the embodiment of Truth. To the many Orthodox who failed at COVID, please understand we cannot afford any more failures to maintain the liturgy.

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The Cosmic Dance

And the Church is united to Her Head. “Just as we do not ordinarily see iron when it is red-hot, because the iron’s qualities are completely concealed by the fire,” says Nicholas Cabasilas in his Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, “so, if you could see the Church of Christ in Her true form, as She is united to Christ and participates in His Flesh, then you would see Her as none other than the Lord’s Body alone.” In the Church, creation is forever confirmed and established, unto all ages, in union with Christ, in the Holy Spirit. (Floroski Bk.3, ch. 4)

The undermining argument is always focused on “equality”. “If boys can serve in the altar, then why not girls?” Their tactic starts with shaming, “You should be ashamed for not allowing girls into the altar, for not allowing women to be priests. Are you a misogynist or what?”  When that does not work, then they roll out intimidation.

On the question of equality, there is—always has been—equality: ontological equality (all individuals share the same fundamental human essence, regardless of external factors such as sex), yet regarding sex with profound differences in function. Here is a question: what’s more honored, a table or the chair next to it? It’s a silly question, isn’t it? It’s not a question of equality, the differences are based in function—we need and use both. One is not preferred over the other except based on what is needed at the time. Sometimes you need to sit. Sometimes you need to put down an object. Sometimes you need to sit at the table and eat.

Going back to the basics, as understood by the Fathers of the Church and pretty much everyone else in all human history, gender goes much deeper than just a reproductive mechanism. The masculine (priest/porter) and the feminine (the altar/portal to heaven) provide the polar axis around which everything cosmological revolves. All of the motions, all of the scripted words recited, and all of the symbolisms afford a “dance”, which plays out week after week, liturgy after liturgy—substantiating God’s Everlasting Covenant.

Connecting Creator with creature, participation in the liturgy is participating in the Cosmic Dance; how God relates to Man through elements of the creation expressed in the masculine and the feminine. That Christ is in the dome, while the Holy Virgin Mother of God is in the half dome, is for a reason. This represents a microcosm of creation, of the dance between the High Priest of our confession—Christ—and His Bride, the Church. Every priest in action is an icon of Christ. It’s not just a drill we go through to check the box that we have done our duty for the week. The liturgy is participation in the Divine realities—the Holy Mysteries—that have been since the creation of the world. Adam was the first High Priest of creation. As the icon depicts, Adam was modeled after the Incarnate, Crucified, Resurrected, and Ascended Lord Jesus Christ, the “Last Adam”. Adam was the priest of creation, tracing the liturgical underpinnings to creation as carried on by the Church.

Skewing gender in the altar remakes—to the participants, anyway—how the Church relates to and communes with God. It is the creation of a faux reality that there is no meaning in the differences between male and female. In God’s making male and female, it was far more than just a reproductive convenience; it was from the beginning cosmology in “flesh”. That husband and wife become one, is how we are to understand the Divine Liturgy—becoming one with God.

Living out this false reality makes all aspects of the faith open for debate in an endless “dialogue”. With the Episcopalians, first they altered their liturgy. Thereafter, many of their core Christological underpinnings came under fire. Now, nobody over there knows what to believe; because anybody can believe as they please. Truth be told, none of it is open for discussion. The ploy of the enemy is to create the illusion that things firmly fixed are things we should revisit. We must resist this, even if a proposed change is minute. Lasting change is usually the sum of incremental steps over time. There is a good reason, beyond innate conservatism, that the Fathers refused to change anything of substance.

Did USAID fund the ordination of a “Deaconess” in Zimbabwe? Are there plans for more “ordained” women?

The Everlasting Covenant

For, in truth, the covenant of salvation, reaching down to us from the foundation of the world, through different generations and times, is one, though conceived as different in respect of gift. For it follows that there is one unchangeable gift of salvation given by one God, through one Lord, benefiting in many ways. For which cause the middle wall which separated the Greek from the Jew is taken away, in order that there might be a peculiar people. And so both meet in the one unity of faith; and the selection out of both is one. (St Clement of Alexandria, bold added)[1]

Orthodox liturgy is rooted in realities “from the foundation of the world.” While baptism is covenant initiation, partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ is the “covenant renewal”. Eucharist is to baptism what sex is to marriage—covenant renewal. It’s why we practice closed communion. Make no mistake, to tamper with the liturgy is to tamper with the Everlasting Covenant of how God relates to Man, leading to the illusion one can come to God on some other basis.

For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work…. and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (Ephesians 2:7, 11,12, bold added).

Altering gender in the altar brings strong delusion. This is not just St. Paul talking, but historical facts as the Episcopalians have demonstrated so clearly. Those who skew gender norms love not the truth—for the liturgy is Truth embodied in action—a microcosm of the cosmos, a participation in the Divine Dance that renews, reestablishes, reinvigorates the Everlasting Covenant on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Within St. Irenaeus’ concept of “Recapitulation”, God never starts over from scratch—as if God would ever say, “Oops, made a mistake here, let’s redo everything with a fresh start.” Or, “Well, Man did not get it right with this approach, let’s try something different.” No, God has never worked this way. Messing with Orthodox praxis is reinventing the wheel and giving the “new and improved version” four corners.

In preserving our liturgy—with the meaningfulness of gender within it—we preserve creation, ourselves, and salvation. When we do not hold to this tenaciously, we have abandoned the “love of the Truth”. Strong delusion sets in.

For the record, “free worship” in no way shape or form establishes God’s covenant on Earth. None of it has any sacerdotal element. If Man is a covenantal being, then God is The Covenant Being and covenants are about rites, rituals, and the sacerdotal—holy things brought down from the beginning of Christianity, even the beginning of time. A Christian-style concert with worshipful music is fine. It can be edifying when inducing a personal love for God, but it can never establish God’s covenant on the Earth. Only liturgy does this. It’s the only way to “occupy until He comes”.

Does anybody have any standing with God that they can change what establishes God’s Everlasting Covenant? Moses was commanded to do exactly what was revealed on the mount. In no way was he given any latitude to improvise or alter what is to happen at the altar. How can it be otherwise?

Aristotle Papanikolaou Professor of Theology and Co-Founding Director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham is just one of the “Orthodox” Theologians pushing female ordination though incremental steps – altar girls, female preachers, deaconesses, then female priests, finally female bishops. Of course, LGBTQ+, climate extremism, and ecumenism accompany those changes. 

Onus of Every Orthodox Christian

Make no mistake; it’s not just the covenant obligation of priests and hierarchs to preserve the liturgy—including all of the praxis with its gender norms intact. Rather, it’s the responsibility of every single Orthodox Christian to insist upon the original, with the protocols of covenant given down through the generations. To love the Truth and avoid “strong delusion” is to love the Divine Liturgy; “Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate.”

As I understand it, Orthodoxy is primarily governed by two things: 1. The Seven Ecumenical Councils, and, 2. The Vincentian Canon in its basic concepts—which means, the way it’s always been done across the broadest spectrum of the Faith from the beginning.

Classically, the Orthodox have taken issue with the concept of an “infallible pope”, and for good reason. Even ordained men can go wrong—Arius was a clergyman and Nestorius a patriarch. They both got their Christology wrong. Dead wrong. Even a bishop cannot “speak for the Orthodox Church”, unless he is echoing what the Church has always believed. He can speak for himself as a hierarch, but hierarchs relying on their own judgment make mistakes. Hierarchs without the “love of the Truth” may be deceived and in a state of delusion, or even in a state of conscious rejection of the truth. Orthodoxy never suggested blind obedience to hierarchs when they enter into innovations of the “Faith once delivered to the saints.”  Of all the fundamental truths we, and our hierarchs must safeguard, among the most obvious is males only in the altar.

Make no mistake, when the enemy of our souls seeks to delude faithful Orthodox Christians, he always starts with altering the liturgy. A little here, a little there, then there a little bit more. Just do it the way it’s always been done. Raising boys to be men, and girls to be women, means each has their own obligations, roles, and respective prohibitions. Everything good flows from the altar, from the threshold of Ezekiel’s temple. All that is meaningful, all that defines community, fellowship, and preaching the Gospel all start there. Get that wrong, and nothing goes well. Purity of Faith is everybody’s job.

[1] Stromata bk. 6 ch. 13