By Nikolai Stromsky
Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple,
November 21 / December 4, 2011
The Divine Name controversy involved deeply complex theological issues that have as of yet not been fully resolved in conciliar manner by the Orthodox Church. It has been the subject of a small but expanding library of books and articles written by theologians, historians, and churchmen in a variety of languages and from a variety of perspectives. It is a topic about which reasonable people can disagree, inasmuch as the Church has not yet definitely resolved the issue.
What is unacceptable, however, is for people with no knowledge of either the theological complexities involved or the language in which the controversy was conducted, and with no familiarity with either the historical context or the primary sources, unilaterally to declare it a “condemned heresy” and “superstition” (in Bishop Photios' words) purely for reasons of jurisdictional rivalry (hence Bishop Photios' reference to “the parasynagogues of the deposed or un-ordained [sic]” and Fr. Panagiotis' explicit reference to Bishop Gregory of Petrograd and Gdonsk). This is all the more the case when such people display their ignorance by making a series of egregious factual mistakes.
The following is a list of factual errors made by Bishop Photios of Marathon and Fr. Panagiotis Carras with a brief response to each.
1. The “heresy” of name-glorifying was neither “lit” (Bishop Photios) nor “begun” (Fr. Panagiotis) by Schema-monk Ilarion, author of In the Mountains of the Caucasus. This book was originally blessed for publication in 1907, republished in 1910 with funds provided by the New Martyr Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna; and printed a third time in an enormous print run by the Kiev-Caves in 1912. All were printed with full ecclesiastical sanction. Nowhere, contrary to what Fr. Panagiotes writes, does Fr. Ilarion make the explicit claim that the “name of God is God Himself.”
2. Fr. Panagiotes writes concerning the name-glorifiers: “Many of them argued that, since according to the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, the name of an object exists before the object itself does, so the name of God must pre-exist before the world was created, and that it (the Name) cannot be anything but God Himself. Among other things, this was thought to mean that knowledge of the secret name of God alone allows one to perform miracles. A similar concept exists in Jewish Kabbalah and in Buddhism.” This is false from beginning to end. Who are the “many” that argued such evident nonsense? Can Fr. Panagiotis name a single name-glorifier who cited Plato? Where is the evidence that the name-glorifiers taught that God had a “secret name”? What is Fr. Panagiotis source for this information? Has he read any of the works of Fr. Anthony (Bulatovich)? In fact, the answer is quite clear: he copied and pasted this nonsense and slander verbatim from Wikipedia, hardly a reliable source for theological discussion.1
