Paul, the Apostle to the Nations, loved the Corinthians very much. He remained with them for a long time, and when he was far away from them, he prayed for them and sent them two important epistles. In his first epistle, after he thanks God for the gifts He has granted them, and for their growth in every Christian teaching, he makes a fervent request for a very basic and important matter.
“Now I beseech you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing…” (1 Corinthians 1:10) He asks his spiritual children with great politeness that in the name of Christ, they all have a unified voice and speak the same confession of faith as if they had the same heart – that there may not be schisms and divisions among them; that they be composed, aligned, and unified among themselves with the same mindset and point of view.
The Apostle Paul wrote all these things because disagreements and divisions appeared in the local Church of Corinth, as a result of religious matters. These differences created an unstable situation of division and factiousness among the early Christians. The root cause was favoritism, namely specific attractions that some Christians had to a specific Apostle. One would say “I am a disciple of Paul,” another, “I am of Apollos”, another, “I am of Cephas,” and yet another, “I am a disciple of Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:12).
With a pained soul, as a result of these disagreements and quarrels, the Apostle of love poses burning questions to the Christian Corinthians. “Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?” (1 Corinthians 1:13)
In other words, he admonishes them in a fatherly manner and tells them: What are these things you are doing? Is the body of Christ partitioned? Don’t be fixated on people. Disagreements, quarrels, and schisms are not permitted here. It is certainly a grave sin, when there are disagreements and quarrels (among Christians of similar dogma and faith) over the worship of persons [προσωπολατρεια].
Often times Christians marvel at a worker of the Gospel for the great sermon he is giving; or a priest with certain qualifications, who conducts liturgy with great compunction. They talk about him constantly. They only acknowledge him and humiliate the rest. And thus, the “worship of persons” is cultivated consciously or unconsciously.
However, there exists another category of Christians who monopolize ecclesiastical conscience with ego and pride. Among those who had the greatest egotism within the first Church of Corinth were the ones who said, “we are of Christ,“ as if they were the only ones who believed in and loved Christ. They monopolized Christ as if He were their own possession.
Unfortunately, there exist some people, even today, who monopolize Christ and his Church. You hear them saying with ego and pride, “we are of the Church!” and they attribute to those belonging to missionary organizations of the Church, or those who have monastics of the Church as their spiritual fathers, the title of extra-ecclesiastical or para-ecclesiastical; in other words, fanatics or extremists. This is a grave contortion of the truth, as well as an ecclesiological error of the first degree.
And yet, if such disagreements and quarrels are unacceptable, there also exist some disagreements which are not only not permitted, but even obligatory. When people who are “of the Church” deny basic dogmas of faith within the Church, is it not possible for us to disagree with them? We are all called to love one another, even our enemies, but does that mean we must agree with them? Can anyone agree with a Jehovah’s Witness who betrays his Orthodoxy in the name of love? Should an Orthodox individual agree with Roman Catholic dogmas and practices in the name of love? Of course not, but what if errors occur within the Orthodox Church itself? Should we turn a blind eye to Christ, the central focus of our Church, so as to avoid disagreement with those who are in error for the sake of love?
Although we are called to love one another, even our enemies as ourselves, we are NOT called to love one another more than Christ, as He should be the primary focus of our love. Christ is Truth which means, without truth, there can be no real love.
Again, it was Paul who gave us a prime example of this type of obligatory disagreement when he publicly admonished Peter for errors Peter had made in the Church. “But when Peter came to Antioch, I (Paul) opposed him in public, because he was clearly wrong…When I saw that they were not walking a straight path in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, ‘You are a Jew, yet you have been living like a Gentile, not like a Jew. How, then, can you try to force Gentiles to live like Jews?’” (Galatians 2:11-21) Does this mean that Paul did not love Peter? Of course not!
Paul clearly shows us that we are called to love the sinner but hate the sin; to love the heretic but hate the heresy. With heresy, therefore, there is no compassion, nor is it possible NOT to disagree with error. On the contrary, if we silence ourselves and do not disagree, we become accomplices of the wrong. But together with our like-minded Christian brethren, let us strive to be “aligned perfectly in mind and thought” (1 Corinthians 1:10)
Contributed by Billie, Greek Archdiocese
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