It has come to our attention that the post Christianity is Dangerous has been interpreted as “ecumenist.” In the post, the example of the 21 Coptic Christians was used to highlight how dangerous it is to profess the name of Christ in the world. In fact, that has been a dangerous thing to do since 33 A.D. Please note the following things:
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- The example of the Coptic Christians beheaded by ISIS was used because it is current, it was recorded on video and widely watched, and it was a massacre of a large number of people. It was chosen an an example because it dramatically illustrates the point of the article. The Coptic Church is non-canonical. The 21 men are recognized as martyrs by the Coptic Church, but not by the canonical Orthodox Church. That was not meant to be implied. A revision to the article has been published that makes this very clear. As the Coptic Church is not canonical, her recognition of these men as martyrs does not make them martyrs of the canonical Orthodox Church.
- These men died for Christ. Regardless of their status as schismatics, that fact is undeniable. So, again, their example was put forward because it was recent (to illustrate the ongoing danger in professing Christ), it was familiar to everyone (most people don’t die for Christ on video and get worldwide coverage), and it was gruesome. The preceding paragraph in the article had mentioned some of the horrific ways in which canonical martyrs have died.
The walls of our Orthodox Churches are covered in the icons of martyrs whose sacrifices we hold up as examples to all generations. Their stories are told in hymns and recited by priests as part of homilies. Their deaths were often gruesome. Frequently we find ourselves, with our children by our sides, listening to how martyrs were skinned alive, cooked to death on hot grates, crucified, beheaded, boiled in oil, frozen to death in a lake, burned alive, and even worse. Most of the time, the torture accompanying death was intended to force the martyrs to renounce Christ. They didn’t, obviously, which is why they are remembered by the Church.
Gruesome deaths and oppression still occur, and many canonical Orthodox suffer shocking and horrible torture and death for the name of Christ. As noted in the article, most martyrdom occurs in small numbers and obscurely, away from the spotlight. This was an example that actually received worldwide attention. At no point did the author or any other author on this site espouse any kind of ecumenical heresy.
- A Coptic icon was originally used to promote the article. It was selected by editorial staff for illustrative purposes, again, because the 21 died so recently. We frequently encounter Orthodox Christians who somehow believe that dying or suffering for Christ was something that occurred “in the past” but is no longer happening. These men were a dramatic and recent example that this is not the case. There was no intention of promoting the Coptic Church or union with the Coptic Church. All contributors to this site are canonical Orthodox. We do not promote or endorse ecumenism in any form. Any and all Coptic Christians are free to convert to the Orthodox Church and become members of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. That is the same offer to all those who are not already Orthodox. That icon is no longer being used.
- This entire incident also illustrates the tendency of “online Orthodoxy” to devolve into heresy hunting. A reader of the Orthodox Reflections site reached out to us in a personal email, and expressed some concerns over the use of the 21 Coptic Christians as an example. We immediately took his thoughts into consideration, and added this footnote to the article, “*Please note that the Coptic Church is not canonically Orthodox. This horrifying incident is included as a dramatic example of Christian persecution. Due to the ongoing schism, the canonical Orthodox Church does not recognize these men as martyrs.” When we were made aware that some groups online were criticizing the use of a Coptic Icon, we also swapped that our for an icon of the 10 Martyrs of Crete. We are not interested in promoting the heresy of ecumenism. If the examples used in the article are distracting from the primary point of the article, then we have no problem explaining and/or swapping them out. The purpose of the article was not to promote ecumenism, which is a heresy, but to make it clear that we, the Orthodox Faithful, are willing to put risk into the context of the history of the Faith. Whatever distracts from that point is unnecessary. We answer 100% of all emails and read all comments. If you want to get back to us, we are always listening.
In Christ,
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- Editorial Staff of Orthodox Reflections
ISIS executioners didn’t understand ecclesiology.
Here are the facts: Even within their heretical, monophysitic understanding of Christ, these people preferred to die for their heretical understanding of Christ vs. convert to Islam.
Certainly, this does not automatically imply a de facto recognition of sainthood by the Orthodox Church on the next day, but we should recall the following:
1) The Thief on the Cross who was the first to enter the Kingdom of Heaven was never baptized.
2) The Orthodox Church commemerates the approximately ~20,000 unbaptized babies slaughtered by Herod, who unkowingly died as a result of Christ’s appearance on Earth.
3) At the 9th hour of the Crucifixion, tombs opened, and many “pre-baptism” righteous / saints were raised and appeared to many. This is also a bit of a paradox, if we focus on fundamental details of sotiriological theology.
4) St. Kyrakos was a participant in the execution of St. Antiochus (July 16th), and due to something he saw at the execution, he confessed belief in Christ and was also executed on the spot (without being a Catechumen or baptized), and now he is commemerated on July 16th as a saint.
There are multiple similar stories in our Synaxarion.
The bottom line here is, when it comes to the “moment of confession of faith and martyrdom”, the Church in the past has acknowledged “exceptions to standard rules”. This doesn’t mean heresy is not heresy or that heresy is not an abomination, because any distortion of the Truth is a violation of the Commandment that says “Thou shalt not Lie”…Heresy is always guilty of Lying about the Truth, at a minimum. Yet, the moment of martyrdom, (even by unbaptized heretics) as we see historically is a bit unique, because the Church Fathers have interpreted that martyrs were (in a sense) being “baptized” in their own blood at the hour of martyrdom… We should let time sort this Coptic martyrdom situation out, before jumping to conclusions.
“Regardless of their status as schismatics…”
Non-Chalcedonians such as the Copts may be good people and sincere Christians but Orthodox they are not as they traditionally see “nestorianism” or “crypto-nestorianism” in the dogmas of the Orthodox Church. It would be a shame for the good intentions and efforts of this site to be tarnished by errors made out of ignorance. I think it would be helpful to avoid ecclesiology and stick to the matter of holy communion, lest by combatting one error you propagate another.
Well, from our perspective, that is the rub. We weren’t trying to address ecclesiology. This entire controversy took all of us completely by surprise. We were trying to use a recent, topical example of how individuals professing Christ can end up getting beheaded, or worse. We’ve dealt with even our own children saying things like, “Okay Christian persecution happened in the 1st Century or in 1930’s under Stalin, but isn’t all that over?”
Well, no. It’s not over. And there is a lot of indication that Christian persecution is spreading and not getting better. See Church closures, for example, or Antifa attacks on Churches. The goal of the article was to point out that if we are willing to die for Christ, then going to Church can’t be seen as all that risky by comparison.
After having prayed about this and reflected on it, we think the real sadness here is what the ecumenical movement has done to us as Orthodox Christians. This article did not promote the Coptic Church, or advocate communion with the Coptic Church, or in anyway shape or form address ecclesiology. But because the ecumenists have been so active and so underhanded, then even mentioning individuals who died violently, on camera, for professing Christ (but who were Copts) has generated this kind of response. For many Orthodox, it seems the entire point of the article is lost simply because these 21 Coptic Christians were used as an example. The fact that Orthodox Christians have been conditioned to be this “on-guard” is a shame that has to be attributed squarely to those Theologians, hierarchs, and writers who have been advocating ecumenism for decades now. This has caused at least some sincere Orthodox to read way, way more into the use of this example than we intended as an editorial group. If we had anticipated that including these poor men and the words “Coptic Church” in this article would have detracted from the main point, then we would have chosen a different example. It might have been less well-known and less dramatic than 21 men beheaded on a beach, but it would have kept us from dealing with all this controversy that we neither wanted nor expected.
And one last point, we are dealing with 21 men who were actually beheaded on a beach. No, they are not canonically Orthodox martyrs. No one disputes that. But it is still disturbing that this happened and we feel very sorry for the families and their communities. It is a horrible thing that happened, and should be a warning to all of us that our brethren in the Middle East, and all around the world, are in danger. We are too. Same thing with all the Roman Catholic statues that were toppled and the RC churches that were attacked. The RC is not canonical, and canonical Orthodox don’t use statues. But they are still horrible examples of anti-Christian bias and iconoclasm. Anyone that would behead a statue of Christ or topple an RC saint holding a cross, would not hesitate to deface an Orthodox Icon or to attack a canonical Orthodox Church. What is happening to the RC should be a wake-up call that our Icons and our people are also in danger.
Certainly, all people are created in the image of God and are deserving of our love, prayers and care.
I was just responding to your comment quoted in my previous post which incorrectly classified the Copts vis a vis the Orthodox Church as “schismatic”. The Church in fact regards the followers of Dioscorus and Severus as non-orthodox.
Mistakes happen and we all make them. I’m sure that it was not your intention to deviate from the Church’s traditional ecclesiology.
If people seem jumpy about this it is not necessarily only because of the ecumenists. There are lots of people claiming to speak for the Church today and while proclaiming others to be in error they themselves don’t even know or accept the teachings of the Holy Fathers. “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:8)
As for people getting jumpy, it turns out that things like this had slipped by us:
That is from Goarch: https://www.goarch.org/-/a-delegation-from-the-standing-conference-of-oriental-orthodox-churches-scooch-visits-archbishop-elpidophoros
Evidently there have been more such contacts, and meetings abroad as well. So while that may not have triggered your comments, it certainly did others. The assumption was that we were somehow participating in this ongoing series of meetings. So while we had not really been paying attention to the Orthodox / Coptic situation on the global stage, I assure you that are paying attention now.
We do not support ecumenical dialogues, so we are not in favor of those either.
The Coptic Church was born out of what we were taught to call the “Chalcedonian Schism.” Thus from a historical perspective, we used the term schismatics. We were taught that if you can trace a particular group to a specific “falling away” from the Church then the term was appropriate. That does not imply, from our perspective, that their Christology is not heretical. It clearly is. We were taught that the term differentiates a group that was once in communion with the Orthodox Church from a group (mormon, evengelical, etc) that is totally alien and was never Orthodox. Given the ongoing “schism” / “break in communion” between Constantinople, perhaps we need to tighten that phrasing up.
While a couple of us have worked on “official” Orthodox sites (as meaning official publications endorsed by either the Assembly of Bishops or at least a synod of a canonical jurisdiction) this is a private site and we make no official claims.
The thing about terms like “Great Schism” and “Chalcedonian Schism” is that they originated outside the Church and when we Orthodox use them we don’t mean the same thing as the non-orthodox. So when the Orthodox church separated from what is today called Roman Catholicism during the Great Schism, the reasons involved doctrine and not non-dogmatic, administrative matters. In that context, although we borrow and use the term “Great Schism” to refer to the separation with our Roman Catholic friends, clearly, we do not consider them “schismatic” but non-Orthodox. The same would apply to the Copts and based on your response, I see that you would agree and that the issue has been one of semantics.
Let me also forward these words of Hieromonk Seraphim [Rose] a brother graciously shared under my post just now:
“Many of us use the words ‘martyr’ and ‘confessor’ too freely. For Orthodox Christians, these words have a very definite meaning: they refer to those who knowingly suffer and die for Christ and His True Church – and not for ‘humanity,’ not for ‘Christianity’ in general and not even for ‘Orthodoxy’ if it is not True Orthodoxy.”
These words are not extreme or unusual as the numerous quotes from the Saints in the below video confirm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-sszSlK_vQ
We agree. We did not mean to imply that the Coptics who died could be considered martyrs in the canonical church. So this was clarified. It is also true that while they cannot be martyrs, they were killed for professing Christ. That was the point of the article, that doing so is dangerous.
Hello,
this is the person who published criticism of your original article. When you talk of “heresy hunting,” you might consider that when I linked your article, someone commented thinking your article had been written by Copts. Thanks for implementing the changes you did.
In Christ
-Hans
Thank you for the feedback. The heresy hunting comment was around the rest of your post that was forwarded to us. We were not aiming for heresy, and so it was a bit extreme to say in your post that this was a new method of promoting ecumenism. It was nothing of the kind. If you have questions / reservations about anything on the site, please reach out to us either via email or on the comments.
It wasn’t my intention to imply your motives (it may have appeared that way, forgive me for that) but to show the implications of your article and how they fit in with the “new” strategy of the ecumenists as defined by Met. Hilarion.