Holy Fathers of the First Council of Nicea

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today we commemorate the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, who defended the truth faith of the Orthodox Church against the Arian heresy of the 4th century. This heresy proposed that Christ was merely a being created by the Father, and not the very Son of God Himself, eternally begotten of the Father. It became a wildly popular teaching, spreading throughout the entire Empire, until at one point the Arian heretics far outnumbered the Orthodox faithful.

We might ask how this heresy became so popular that Orthodoxy was nearly eclipsed by it. The simplest answer is that it provided a belief that people could relate to. Bear in mind the timing of these events. Christianity, which had formerly been outlawed, was now the official religion of the Roman Empire. Thus, the Church was flooded with false believers, many of which were pagans simply seeking the advantages in politics and commerce that being a Christian now offered. These people had no real interest in traditional Christian beliefs, and wished for something more in keeping with their residual pagan concepts. The heretic Arias proposed a simple belief that did away with the inconvenient mystery of the Holy Trinity, and gave these people what they wanted. To put it in modern terminology, we might say that Arianism was politically correct, fitting the whims of the contemporary culture far better than traditional Christian beliefs.

I think we can identify an impulse in this that is still present in our day. Whenever there is conflict between the beliefs of the prevalent culture and those of the Church, there will always be people whose instinct is to change the beliefs of the Church. They want the Church to be “relevant” to the culture and not in conflict.

Today, many denominations are doing just that; bending over backwards to accommodate the secular culture through such things as the ordination of women as pastors, the approval of homosexual marriage, and campaigns to keep abortion legal. Some of these issues are obviously incompatible with our Faith; others are more subtle, causing many Orthodox Christians to wonder if they are truly in conflict with our Holy Faith and Tradition at all.

The ordination of women to the diaconate is one such issue within Orthodoxy today. Proponents of this argue correctly that there were women deacons in the early Church, but then go on to insist that these were forced out by a chauvinistic, all-male hierarchy in a conspiracy that would rival The Da Vinci Code, and which included blaming Eve for the fall of mankind and falsely exalting Mary as an inappropriate ideal of womanhood: pure, ever-virgin and submissive. But is this really what happened? Has the Church’s view of Eve, of Mary, of women, and thus ultimately of humanity itself, been so completely distorted for all this time? Or was the principle reason for changing the custom of ordaining women to the diaconate simply that the function of the diaconate itself evolved and changed over time?

In the primitive Church, the deacons did not typically serve at the altar, but as the scriptures show, they served the temporal needs of the church community, bringing food and care to the widows and orphans, and fulfilling such tasks as St. James called “true religion” on behalf of the Church. In addition, since the early Church baptized converts nude, women deacons naturally assisted any women being baptized with a cloth sheet to maintain modesty during the rite. In time, a fitted baptismal garment replaced the sheet, thus removing the need for assistance. Also the liturgical role of the deacons began to be expanded to include serving alongside the bishop at the altar. Since it was understood that the traditional imagery established in the Old Testament and maintained by Christ was to have men serve at the altar, women did not generally do this.

Thus it is the office itself that changed, and not necessarily the Church’s essential understanding of womanhood. We should point out that the Orthodox Church has never “banned” women from serving in the sanctuary. Even today in many convents, an elder nun may be blessed to assist the priest in such a capacity. But this is done out of need, and not out of a redefining of roles.

Is the Church out of step with contemporary society? Yes, it would appear so. But which of the two offers us the more profound and enlightened understanding of our humanity? Is the Theotokos nothing more than a male-crafted legend, designed to oppress women by keeping them “pure and submissive”? What about our Orthodox understanding that there is no difference between the clergy and the faithful, except that the clergy have been ordained to fulfill specific roles within the Church? Shall we throw that out and redefine our clergy as the “power base” of the Church, one that is inherently unfair unless shared equally with women? Must our definition of equality itself be based on eradicating the God-ordained distinctives of gender; our different yet complimentary roles that together are meant to reveal the image of God in humankind? In short, should we allow the whims and frequently unwise experiments of the secular culture to define our beliefs and practices within the Church, or should we try to better understand our Holy Tradition and what that has to teach us?

The whole world seems to be telling us that we are wrong. The temptation to be politically correct and to bring change is therefore very great. But what difference does it make if the attack on our Faith takes the form of redefining Christ, or of redefining our humanity, or even the Church itself? The end result will be the same: a loss of truth, a loss of salvation, and perhaps most ironically of all, the loss of our relevancy in the world.

The more a church seeks to become relevant to the darkened culture of its time, the less relevant it becomes to the kingdom of heaven and to those who are truly seeking salvation. Orthodoxy still remains a place where one can find the true God, together with the profound spiritual therapies that can restore our humanity, both male and female, and can heal our broken communion with God and with one another. It would be an unspeakable tragedy to replace these treasures with philosophies that may not lead us to God or which may only further confuse our understanding of human nature and gender, and our mutual salvation in Christ.

I pray that God will raise up in our generation truly spiritual men and women who will be able to address these issues and help defend the truth, even as did the Holy Fathers which we commemorate this morning.

+To the glory of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.