Having entered the Christmas season, we ask those who find the work of the Mystagogy Resource Center beneficial to them to help us continue our work with a generous financial gift as you are able. As an incentive, we are offering the following booklet.

In 1909 the German philosopher Arthur Drews wrote a book called "The Myth of Christ", which New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman has called "arguably the most influential mythicist book ever produced," arguing that Jesus Christ never existed and was simply a myth influenced by more ancient myths. The reason this book was so influential was because Vladimir Lenin read it and was convinced that Jesus never existed, thus justifying his actions in promoting atheism and suppressing the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the ideologues of the Third Reich would go on to implement the views of Drews to create a new "Aryan religion," viewing Jesus as an Aryan figure fighting against Jewish materialism. 

Due to the tremendous influence of this book in his time, George Florovsky viewed the arguments presented therein as very weak and easily refutable, which led him to write a refutation of this text which was published in Russian by the YMCA Press in Paris in 1929. This apologetic brochure titled "Did Christ Live? Historical Evidence of Christ" was one of the first texts of his published to promote his Neopatristic Synthesis, bringing the patristic heritage to modern historical and cultural conditions. With the revival of these views among some in our time, this text is as relevant today as it was when it was written. 

Never before published in English, it is now available for anyone who donates at least $20 to the Mystagogy Resource Center upon request (please specify in your donation that you want the book). Thank you.



November 2, 2021

Explanations and Clarifications of Ecclesiastical History and the Deontology of the Ukrainian Issue (Part 10)

Archbishop Petru of Bessarabia

...continued from part nine.

* Let us proceed to some of their other movements, which show a purely political and secular sense of the mystery of the Church. They recently awarded Irinej of Bačka of the Serbian Patriarchate the title of Honorary Doctor at the Theological Academy of St. Petersburg. They have published numerous photographs on the internet, insisting in every way to influence the public opinion in Greece that they also have theological academies, which are accepted by the other Churches, and that they have something that measures a mature scientific theological education in their country.

* The bearers of the Muscovite ecclesiastical policy (from 1948 onwards, as the Metropolitan of Nafpaktos writes) do not hesitate to cooperate even with Catholic priests. Initially, the Minister of Foreign Affairs presented a distinguished Catholic theologian clergyman at the Theological Academy of Moscow as a distinguished scientist (until this point, I present no blame), and the next day at the Divine Liturgy he was received as a protopriest who co-liturgized with Orthodox clerics. In other words, they promote advanced practices in inter-Christian relations without fundamental barriers.

* In Moldova there is an Autonomous Church as proclaimed by the Russians, which is under the jurisdiction claimed by the Romanian Patriarchate. Bessarabia is a relative of the Romanians and not of the Russians. In response to the Russian expansionist stance, the Patriarch of Romania received a Russian bishop, a priest who had been deposed by the Russians, and sent him there as a liaison between Romania and Moldova (this is Petru of Bessarabia, a Russian in origin from where he began ecclesiastically, and after he was deposed by the Russians, he was taken in by the Romanians). There is a peculiar silence from Moscow about Bessarabia. This shows the motives of the hypothetical ecclesiastical reactions of Moscow (they are motives for political manipulations and claims, they are not motives for the truth of the canons of the ecclesiastical order).

Moreover, the whole attitude of the Romanian Church towards the Ukrainian Church is prohibited by the problem of the claim for Moldova. The Romanians are experienced in regards to Russian expansion, but now the compulsion of Communism no longer exists as a motive for communication, and they freely claim what belongs to them, while the Russian Church is under the control of the Kremlin. The Russians want it as their own as a political space and as an ecclesiastical region, while Romania considers it its own as a patriotic space and as an ecclesiastical territory.

This further shows that the Russian Church is spreading out globally, but to the extent permitted by other local Churches. And the whole attitude of several local Churches is prohibited primarily by motives of national deontology.

PART ELEVEN 


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