Tag Archives: The Third Rome

The Orthodox Teaching on the Church

The following is the English translation of the statement we made at the Conference on ‘The Orthodox Teaching on the Church and Contemporary Challenges’, which was held in Moscow on 26 October and organized by the Analytical Centre of St Basil the Great.

http://ruskline.ru/video/2018/oktyabr/27/konstantinopolya_bolshe_net/

The Russian Orthodox Church suspended Eucharistic communion with Constantinople because of its politically-backed and therefore uncanonical support of schism in the Ukraine. The Russian Church has the canonical authority to do so, for by supporting schism Constantinople entered into dialogue with the anathematized, and so fell under anathema itself. But is this event a disaster or an opportunity?

We believe that this is an opportune time for the Russian Orthodox Church to re-emerge as the Church of the Third Rome. As before 1917, it can now assume leadership of Orthodox Christendom by agreement with the other twelve Local Churches. All of these are very small, but some are very ancient. This is unlike Constantinople, which only had a political claim to leadership, as the former capital of the Empire.

The ancient Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch go back to the apostles and their voices in particular must be heeded. As Patriarch John of Antioch has said, we need a Council where all Orthodox can meet. We would say, as we have been saying for the past eleven years, that such a Council can take place outside Moscow, on the Istra: this will be the long-awaited New Jerusalem Council.

Archpriest Andrew Phillips

On the Liberation of the Three Romes

Introduction: On Reversing Historic Injustices

Life is unfair. Life is full of injustices, both for individuals and for whole nations. No doubt, many examples come to mind, both personal and from history. On a national level, only in recent times, we can think of terrorist outrages, like that a few days ago in London, but we can think also of the unjust fates of Serbia, Iraq and Syria over the last generation. Or we can think back to the unjust outcomes of the First and Second World Wars. And we can think of more distant historic injustices, like colonialism, the first example of which took place in England 950 years ago after 1066, and many other examples.

For us, however, the greatest terrorist outrage and injustice, costing the lives of tens of millions, unbalancing the whole world and causing a Second World War and then a potentially nuclear Cold War, was the coup d’etat which took place in Russia exactly 100 years ago through the treachery of its elite and overseas meddlers and destroyers. As a result, for 100 years we have been in exile, whether physical, as in the case of subjects of the former Russian Empire, or spiritual, as in the case of all other Orthodox, who have suffered because of that treason that caused the fall of that Empire, our spiritual protection.

The Liberation of the Third Rome and the Restoration of Imperial Rus

For 100 years we have fought for the righting of that injustice, carried out by overseas evildoers and internal traitors. And so we have fought for our existential rights as Christians, the possibility to be with Christ, for the restoration and liberation of that Empire, the Third Rome, the Centre, the last remaining bastion of Christianity in the world. At first, deprived of the Centre, all we could do was preach the Faith, in its integrity, and work for a worldwide, if tiny, Empire, formed of oases in the desert, and only distantly hope for the coming Tsar, in faithfulness to our motto, ‘For the Faith, the Tsar and Rus’.

However, by Divine Providence and human repentance, since 2000 the Russian Federation has largely been liberated and voices have also been raised there in support of our Civilizational values, won by spiritual warfare, the worldwide Rus that we have worked for and for the coming Tsar. Only recently, among many, many others throughout the Russian Orthodox world, Metropolitan Benjamin of Vladivostok and Bishop Mitrofan of Severomorsk and Umbinsk have spoken of the inevitability of the restoration of the monarchy in at least the Russian Federation. Bishop Mitrofan has summed up our feelings in this way:

‘The Emperor is the litmus test on the basis of which we can verify if people have been cured of the poison of the 20th century or not…it is precisely the name of Nicholas II which is the test to see to what extent people have been cured and to what extent they are still sick’. Vladyka explained why people react less violently to scoundrels like Napoleon and Hitler than to the Tsar, saying that: ‘We are speaking of sacral, mysterious matters, of the destinies of the world, whether human history is to continue or to end, will there be another who restrains evil now or will there be no-one to restrain evil?…’.

‘On this cause stands resistance to the final attack of the power of the prince of darkness over humanity….If this cause is from men, it will fail all by itself, but if it is from God, then take care that you do not become apostates….We are doing God’s work, we are withstanding and resisting, in us beats the faith that Russia does have a future, that there will be a Tsar. There will be! We feel this in our hearts and there is nothing that can be done against it because this is God’s Work. Amen’.

http://ruskline.ru/news_rl/2017/03/22/v_nas_betsya_vera_v_to_chto_u_rossii_budet_car/

Conclusion: The Liberation by the Third Rome of the Second and First Romes

If the Third Rome is restored, then its first task will be to liberate others, notably liberating the Second Rome from its fall into spiritual decadence, which has led to its disincarnate philosophizing, freemasonry, ecumenism and modernism. This we clearly saw at its 2016 meeting in Crete, which was boycotted by the Third Rome and all the spiritually free. Such liberation by the Third Rome will lead to the spiritual restoration of the Greek Orthodox world, much, but by no means all, of which has fallen so far from spiritual purity and is losing its soul to the prince of this world through Westernization.

Its second task will be to liberate the First Rome. This is a far greater task. This is not a matter of reversing the fall into spiritual impurity of a hundred years ago, but of the gradual but inevitable fall from Christ of a thousand years ago by the rejection of the Holy Spirit in favour of the things of men, of man-invented structures and ideology. However, this is the source of long-standing worldwide injustices and the world cannot survive unless they are righted. For men this is impossible, but we trust in the mercy and righteousness of the Just Judge, Who will do this Himself, if we should fail to do it in His Name.