The Thoughts of Metropolitan PHILIP
on Missiology
—edited by Father Joseph Allen, Th.D.

Our Lord Himself was indeed the missionary par excellence. In Matthew 4:23 we read: “And He went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people.” And in the “fullness of time,” the “Word became flesh” and entered time on a mission of salvation. He was sent by the Father to make us “partakers of the Divine Nature.”

In John 20:21, Christ said: “As the Father has sent Me, even so I send you.” The Church, which is the extension of Christ in time and space, was sent by Christ to missionize and evangelize. Evangelism means “to preach the Gospel.” “Woe unto me if I do not preach,” said St. Paul. After the birth of the Church on Pentecost Day, the Apostles and early Christians went about the oikomene, the known world at that time, preaching the Gospel and missionizing, despite their persecution and the monumental difficulties which they had to face. Although the Church was born in Jerusalem, Antioch became the greatest center for missionary activities. It was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.

There are many stories about the missionary travels of the Apostles. It is clear, however, that Christianity did not spread throughout the entire Roman Empire until after the Edict of Milan. The Pax Romana presented what Michael Green describes as both opportunities and difficulties for evangelism. Some of the opportunities were (a) peace and unity; (b) philosophical hunger; and (c) religious dissatisfaction.

Some of the difficulties were:
a. the cultural offensiveness of the Gospel, i.e., the Jewish communities and their Gentile adherents were openly affronted by the central language of the Gospel: God’s Incarnation and death;
b. political considerations, i.e., the Christian unwillingness to participate in the state cult of the emperor was seen as political treason, and the closed nature of the Christian gatherings likewise led to charges of cannibalism.

After A.D. 313 circumstances changed radically, and organized missionary enterprises became normal. Metropolitan Anastasios divides the history of Byzantine missions into two major periods:
1. The fourth to the sixth centuries witness the Christianization of the empire and its immediate peripheries.
2. The ninth to the eleventh centuries, Byzantium’s classic outreach into the Balkans and Russia.

In the same way, we can missionize and evangelize America, but only if we unite. We pray that the mother churches will soon realize that we are no longer little children and that the Preparatory Commission for the Great Synod will stop discussing the diaspora in absentia.

The truth is that America is searching for the New Testament Church. America is searching for the Church which was born on Pentecost Day. America is ready and waiting for us, but are we ready for America?
Let none of us forget these words from the Perfect Missionary, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Do not say, “There are yet four months, then comes the harvest.” I tell you, lift up your eyes and see how the fields are already white for harvest. He who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper may rejoice together (John 4:35, 36).
Unity in America: An Antiochian Perspective

To be more particular, I believe that the most difficult challenge which the Church will be facing in this new millennium is Orthodox unity in this hemisphere. I would like to state for history’s sake that Antioch was never a stumbling block to Orthodox unity. Two of our illustrious and venerable patriarchs of this century have made crystal-clear statements on behalf of Orthodox unity in North America.

In 1977, the late Patriarch Elias IV, in an interview published in A Man of Love, was asked: “What do you foresee for the future of Orthodoxy in the diaspora, particularly in North America?”

His Beatitude answered:
In preparation for the upcoming Great Council, the Antiochian Holy Synod has studied in depth the situation of Orthodoxy in the diaspora. Our position is clear. There must be established independent churches in Eastern Europe, North America, etc. The possibility for such an autocephalous church is greatest in North America. However, the decision to create such a church must be done with the blessings of all mother churches which have dioceses on this continent.

We are all well aware of the canons of the Church which, among other things, say that there cannot be many bishops in one city. The Antiochian See is ready to do her part to rectify this unfortunate situation of Orthodoxy in North America. We affirm that in North America there should be an autocephalous church with its own patriarch and Holy Synod. However, all mother churches must agree on this point, and more importantly, the faithful in North America must do their part to make independence and unity a reality and not just a written Tomos.

In 1985, the position of Antioch was again stated on the pages of The WORD magazine by our beloved Patriarch Ignatius. In anticipation of the Great and Holy Synod, His Beatitude said:
1. The Orthodox diaspora has reached such a maturity that it is necessary to consider it from a new viewpoint in such a way that leads to resolution.
2. We must see it as the vocation of the Orthodox diaspora, not only to preserve the present, but to become a dynamic and creative element in its own environment.
3. It is desirable that the Council should recognize all the Orthodox churches in the diaspora, provided there is no serious cause not to do so.
4. It is desirable that local synods should be created, comprising the bishops of the Orthodox churches of the area in question and their members. This should be realized especially in Western Europe, America, Australia and also elsewhere, as far as necessary.
5. Autocephaly should be granted to all the churches of the countries mentioned above. The local synods of the autocephalous mother churches should decide on it and determine its boundaries.
6. The traditional apostolic and catholic regulations of the Orthodox Church should be followed so that in each city there would be one metropolitan.
7. The relationship between the mother churches and the diaspora churches are to be kept brotherly and cordial, as is natural to the Orthodox spirit and to the extent that all is for one and one is for all.
8. Within the churches, there should be preserved the cultural, linguistic and other national elements, insofar as they do not disrupt the unity of the local church or the wholeness of the local diocese.

I believe that these two explicit statements of our venerable patriarchs speak for themselves. My predecessor, Metropolitan Antony Bashir, was a staunch advocate of Orthodox unity in North America, and made many statements in this regard. In 1976, speaking in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, I personally said:

We Orthodox have a tendency to glorify the past and feel proud of ourselves. There is no doubt that the church of the Ecumenical Councils was glorious and courageous in responding to the challenges of her time. Have we responded to the challenges of our time? As individual jurisdictions, I believe we have succeeded in building beautiful churches, in educating young priests and organizing good choirs and church schools, etc., but collectively, we have done absolutely nothing.

An example of the problem is seen in the tragedy of Kosovo, which clearly revealed our nakedness and ineffectiveness as Orthodox in this country. We have no clout in Washington, D.C. whatsoever, because we are still speaking to the State Department and the White House as Greeks, Russians, Antiochians, Serbians, etc., instead of speaking to Washington with one voice. Even Madeline Albright refused to talk to us during the dark days of that unfortunate war. We cannot be agents of change in full obedience to the truth unless we transcend ethnicism and establish a new Orthodox reality in North America. I am not asking anyone to deny his or her own history and culture. What I am asking is to blend the old and new cultures into some kind of integrated reality.

This focus on our missionary task was most noted when, in 1994, we in North America experienced a moment of transfiguration when thirty Orthodox bishops gathered at the Antiochian Village to know each other, pray together, and discuss common Orthodox problems. At that time, I delivered a paper on “Missions and Evangelism,” and Metropolitan Maximos of Pittsburgh delivered a paper on “Orthodox Unity in North America.” That was all. The news of this brotherly, long-anticipated and unprecedented meeting caused an earthquake in certain Orthodox quarters, which sent shock waves throughout North America, and beyond our shores. How dare we meet and say, “We are here in America to stay and we are not in diaspora!”

I do realize that we are dealing here with a very complex problem. This multiplicity of jurisdictions is deeply connected to the self-evident reality of our various ethnic cultures. Such cultures cannot be eliminated by a statement from SCOBA or by an edict from some patriarch somewhere. Only time can take care of this problem. Despite this reality, however, we cannot consider this present Orthodox situation in America as final because, by so doing, we will betray Orthodoxy and her basic principles.

Finally, I firmly believe that Orthodox unity in North America is inevitable and such unity will strengthen the mother churches, spiritually and otherwise. No one can stop the wheels of history and no one can reverse the course of a mighty river.

Such a “mighty river” is the true metaphor of Orthodox missiology!

The Thoughts of Metropolitan PHILIP on Ecclesiology
- edited by Father Joseph Allen, Th.D.

The central biblical theme regarding our Ecclesiology is taken from the first Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians 3:9-17:

We are laborers together with God: you are God’s field. You are God’s building. But let every man take heed how he builds; for no other foundation can man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Every man’s work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it. For it shall be manifest by fire, and the fire shall try every man’s work, of what sort it is.

Certainly we do not organize for the sake of organization. We do organize in order to coordinate our efforts, so that our vision and dreams for a Christ-like Church might be fulfilled and realized. The purpose of all our organizations is to grow spiritually in Christ. If we fail to do so, then all our organizations and all our efforts will have been in vain. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and everything else will be added unto you”

For many years we have been administering our local parishes under a false dichotomy, under a dangerous and completely un-orthodox dualism. Thus, we have been preaching two kinds of theologies: one for the church upstairs, and one for the hall downstairs. We do not believe in this “upstairs-downstairs” theology. Nor do we believe in the existence of two classes in the parish opposing each other: namely, clergy versus laity. This kind of dualism has caused us many problems.

Some Orthodox clergy do not think that we need organizations and church councils. They think that they can administer the affairs of the parish without help from the laity. Furthermore, they believe that the councils are nothing but an American innovation in our Church and that we do not need them. We completely disagree with this trend of thinking. At the same time, there are some councils who believe that the priest can be hired or fired if he is not perfect. The question now is: what human being is perfect? If you are looking for perfect bishops or perfect priests, you are going to look, and look in vain.

We are very reluctant to transfer priests from one parish to another because someone does not like the way a priest combs his hair. We are very reluctant, also, to transfer a priest from one parish to another because his English (or Arabic) is not perfect. We are further reluctant to transfer a priest from one parish to another because of complaints that he asks questions about the financial affairs of his parish. Priests are appointed and transferred only by the Archbishop, on the basis of whether or not his ministry in this particular parish is still fruitful.

I believe that we have reached a state of spiritual maturity when we can look at the parish as the family of God, one which is bound together by the bond of love, and which works together for God’s glory.
Saint Peter, in his first Epistle, chapter 2 verse 9, wrote:

You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that you should show forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

Thus, we are no longer living under the yoke of the law but in the grace and fellowship of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. There are no masters and slaves in the parish. The parish is the family of God. The priest who listens to your confessions, who leads you in prayers, who distributes to you the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, must be respected as such. At parish meetings, he must be given the place of honor. Councils must listen carefully to his comments and adhere to his recommendations. In his first Epistle to the Corinthians, Saint Paul wrote, “For though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you have not many fathers” (4:15). The priest, then, is a father to his family and not a dictator. He is the teacher of the faith and must share in the administration of the parish. He must teach his children with love, carefulness, and patience. He must understand that the priesthood is a martyrdom for Christ’s sake.

Charity, or Philanthropia, is also critical to our Ecclesiology. In the Didache (an early Christian document), we read the following: “Thou must not refuse the needy but share everything with thy brethren. Say not that this is thy property, for if we enjoy together the eternal blessings it should be the more so with temporal ones.”

St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil the Great were among the outspoken Fathers against social injustice and the monopoly of wealth:

Say not I am spending what is my own, I am enjoying what is my own. No, not your own, but other people’s. Precisely because you make an inhuman use of it and say I have a right for my personal enjoyment that which belongs to me. I maintain that those possessions do not belong to you. They belong together to you and your neighbors, just as sunshine, air, earth and all the rest (Chrysostom, Homily 10 on Corinthians 1).

To this St. Basil the Great adds:
Who is covetous? He who is not content with what is sufficient. Who is a robber? He who takes away other people’s property. Are you not covetous? Are you not a robber if you make your own that which has been given you in stewardship? He who takes another’s clothing is called a thief, he who does not clothe the naked, although he could do so, deserves no better name. The corn which you store belongs to the hungry; the cloak which you keep in your trunk belongs to the naked; the shoes which are rotting in your house belong to those who go barefoot; the silver you hid in the ground belongs to the needy (St. Basil, Homily 6:7).

The courage of the early Fathers in speaking against the indifferent and affluent upper class and injustice in society is quite amazing.

Our Ecclesiology must also include the relationship of our faith and our works. To St. James, our faith is not something abstract, nor is it an intellectual adventure, nor can it be reduced to a mere philosophy. In James’ own words, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27).

To this he quickly adds: “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22). Therefore, if you have faith, translate it into concrete actions on behalf of your neighbor, for a dead faith can save no one.

What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead (James 2:14-17).

In his explanation of the Orthodox Faith, St. John of Damascus says, “Because faith without works is dead, likewise works without faith are dead, because true faith is tested through works.” Some Christian denominations, unjustifiably, find contradictions between James and Paul. The Church, however, does not find any such contradictions. It is inconceivable that the emphasis of James on good works excludes faith, and by the same token, it is inconceivable that St. Paul’s emphasis on faith in his letter to the Romans, Chapter 5, excludes good works. James and Paul wrote to two different communities with different needs. Concerning the “faith only” issue, I read and reread St. Paul’s letter to the Romans and discovered, once again, that St. Paul never said that we are saved by faith alone. This is a critical distinction in our Ecclesiology.

St. James was concerned with the dead and legalistic approach to faith, while St. Paul was concerned with the self-righteousness of the Judaizing elements in the early Church. Their basic teaching was that salvation can be achieved through the legal piety of the law. St. Paul emphasized that we win salvation only through Christ and in response to divine grace, apart from the Mosaic Law. “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have access by faith through grace” (Romans 5: 1,2). There is a fundamental difference between the old law and the grace brought by Christ. “For what the law could not do … God did by sending His own Son” (Romans 8:3).
If we claim that we love God and our neighbor, but fail to translate this love into acts of mercy and compassion, we are living a false faith, a dead faith, and our Ecclesiology is left empty.

There were other Fathers who later taught this message. For example, St. Clement of Alexandria said… “When you see your brother you see God.” Likewise, Evagrius taught: “After God, we must count all men as God Himself.” Paul Evdokimov adds: “The best icon of God is man.”

St. Anthony the Great put it this way: “From our neighbor is life, and from our neighbor is death. Therefore, if we win our neighbor, we win God, but if we harm our neighbor, we sin against Christ.”

More profoundly, St. Basil the Great expands on this theme even more graphically, when he asks:
If I live alone, whose feet will I wash? What scope will a man have for showing humility if he has no one before whom to show himself humble? What chance of showing compassion, when cut off from the fellowship of other men? The Lord washed the disciples’ feet. Whose feet will you wash?

I would like to reemphasize here that the purpose of all these quotations from the Fathers is not to impress on you that we are saved by good works alone. If good works are not a genuine response to the divine grace and an expression of our deep faith in Christ Jesus, then such good works are to no avail.

Professor John Karmiris can summarize this issue for our clear understanding of Orthodox Ecclesiology. He writes:

Generally, then, we can say that man’s justification and salvation is first and foremost an action and a gift of the divine grace; secondly, it is by the intention and free cooperation of man in the form of concrete faith and good works. While, to the contrary, a fall from faith and good works entails a fall from Divine Grace.
Our Orthodox Ecclesiology, then, entails the fullness of the Body of Christ, which means both the clergy and laity in a healthy dynamic, and then, together, fulfilling the ministry of that Body through common faith and philanthropic work.

The Thoughts of Metropolitan PHILIP on Theology
- edited by Father Joseph Allen, Th.D.

I see three main issues which define our Orthodox Christian theology.

First, the doctrine of man in our theology is based on the biblical view which was fully defined by our Church Fathers. Man has all the potentialities for perfection, simply because he was created in the image of God. St. Maximus the Confessor states:

Those who followed Christ in action and contemplation will be changed into an even better condition, and there is no time to tell of all the ascents and revelations of the saints who are being changed from glory to glory, until each one in order receives deification.

Man was not created to be a slave, neither to society nor to history, neither to science nor to technology, neither to communism nor to capitalism. Even though nature has limitations, these limitations can be overcome by the sacramental life of the Church. Each and every one of us can become Christlike through prayer, contemplation, and action. St. Maximus further says:

While remaining in his soul and body entirely man by nature, he becomes in his soul and body entirely God by grace. Deification involves the whole human being.

All the ancient Greek dichotomy between body and soul disappears in St. Maximus. When God created man, He created him as a whole being, and when man collapsed, he collapsed not partially but as a whole being. Likewise, when man was redeemed, he was redeemed totally, body and soul. Through the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, God enters into union with the whole man.

The second issue is the theology of hope. While other Christians have focused their eyes on Calvary, we have focused ours on the empty tomb. Do we not experience this reality every year on Easter morning when we shout, “Christ is risen from the dead”? In I Corinthians 15:14, 22, St. Paul said:

If Christ has not been raised then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

On Great Friday, there were tears, pain, agony and death, but on the third day, the darkness of Great Friday was dissipated by the bright light of the empty tomb. The new Pascha inaugurated the new age, the new being, and the new man. The Orthodox Church celebrates this joyful event every Sunday. The following are some of the hymns which we chant on the morning of the Holy Resurrection, which reveal to us this joy and this new being:

Let us cleanse our senses that we may behold Christ shining like lightning with the unapproachable light of Resurrection, that we may hear Him say openly “rejoice,” while we sing to Him the hymn of triumph and victory.

Verily this day which is called Holy is the first day among Sabbaths, it is their king and lord, it is the feast of feasts, and the season of seasons.

Where are those like Sartre or Camus who say there is “no exit”? Let them gaze at the empty tomb. Our hope then is genuine because it is rooted in the reality of the Resurrection. It is not an empty utopian hope which ends in false security. It is the hope of the realization of God’s kingdom first within us, and ultimately, beyond the veils of temporal existence.

The third issue of our Orthodox theology is the relevancy of our liturgical life. During the dark ages of Orthodox theology, our Church survived because of the richness of her liturgical life. If one understands our various liturgical services, one will understand the whole theology of the Orthodox Church. While others talk about liturgical poverty and liturgical renewal, as Orthodox, we must concentrate our efforts on liturgical understanding.

Any Liturgy which does not permeate the faithful with a strong feeling of the holy is a meaningless service. If one has a living priest, a living choir and a living congregation, then one will find oneself involved in a wonderful mystical experience. We cannot acquire a mystical experience in the Church if the Liturgy is nothing but a business meeting or another lecture. A few years ago I talked to a group of non-Orthodox students about the nature of our worship. One of them asked: “Why don’t you preach in the Orthodox Church?” I said, “We do preach in the Orthodox Church, but we do more than that. We do not tell the faithful only what Christ said, but what He in reality did through the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.” In the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the priest prays during the Anaphora the following:

Thou it was who didst bring us from nonexistence into being, and when we had fallen away didst raise us up again, and didst not cease to do all things until Thou hast brought us back to heaven.

In the Orthodox Liturgy, one can see God, man and nature in their proper perspective. Our Eucharist answers the central questions: Who are we? Where are we going? What is the meaning of life? Who is God? The emphasis in the Orthodox Liturgy is first on being, then on doing. If our personality is disintegrated and if the image of God in us is distorted, then our actions will undoubtedly reflect this disintegration and that distortion.

On the evening of July 18, 2006 His Eminence Metropolitan PHILIP presided over the Vespers service held at the Antiochian Village Camp.  After Vespers the Counselors performed skits and sung songs for all the Hierarchs and clergy. 

Below are photos of the evening.