On the False Teachings of Vladislav Andreev’s Prosopon Sect
By Hegumen Lucas (Stepanov),
Assistant Professor, Head of the Department of Theology
The Essenin Ryazan State University
This article was originally published in Russian in Art-Sobor (http://www.art-sobor.ru/archives/7048)
Laymen can rarely show competence in the Orthodox theology these days. The main reason is that the dogmatic church system is mostly studied in schools coaching priests of the future and also that its right and profound understanding requires a life in faith submerged in the living and benevolent church tradition. The absence of such a humble attitude of son-like obedience to Mother the Church, reinforced by relative ignorance of dogmas gives birth to such disfigured entities as the Prosopon School. There is no need to analyse in detail all the articles of their doctrine because their ‘multi-storeyed edifice’ is erected upon the sand of a false teaching about comprehension and depiction of the Divine Essence (Ousia).
Manipulating and taking scriptural passages out of the context of the Holy Scripture and Church Fathers’ writings, Vladislav Andreev and his followers are trying to justify their right (grounded in some obscure qualities, either their own personal ‘holiness’ or their consecration into special mysteries of the faith concealed from the ordinary members of the Church) for special relationship with Shekinah as a visible and depictable image of the Divine Energies. It is difficult for our poorly educated contemporaries to invent heresies that have never been. So, here we are dealing with unskillful followers of Gnostic esoteric ideas, who transfer (as usual with all kinds of sectants) their false teaching devoid of elementary logic into the field of soteriology. They promise their adepts an inevitable deification through belonging to their gathering and by means of painting icons pursuant to their doctrine.
Vladislav Andreev’s teaching about ‘the Divine Presence in His Energies’ is alien to the Orthodox dogmatics both in terms and in contents. The notion of Person which is identical with Hypostasis was referred to by the great saints and teachers of the ‘golden age’ of the Orthodox Church doctrine to each of the three Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit which together make the Consubstantial and Inseparable Trinity. God’s Face cannot be comprehended through Energies, but the Divine Energies are common to all the Persons of the Holy Trinity as inherent to Godhead, One for Them. The Divine Energies are the manifestations of God outside His Essence (Ousia), They are multiple and can be called God, being His everlasting qualities. They can enter in a divine, sacral and redeeming communication with human beings but not on the plane of rational and comprehensible reflections. The Divine Deeds can give us some relative ideas about personal qualities of the Godhead, but by no means can they allow any intrusion in the transcendental domain of the Divine Essence. Everything substantially visible and describable about the Godhead we can behold only in the both historical and timeless Person of all God and all human Jesus Christ our Lord.
The 'Vladislavovites' have apparently gained ‘the interminable light of glory’ which they promise to transfer to their followers, have reached the ecstasy which their doctrine equals with the Divine Love and finally attained ‘the wisdom of mind’, having appropriated ‘the image of the Divine Energy’, Shekinah, reflected in the material world! All we can do is to congratulate them on their achievement and to suggest applying to the canonization committee for their immediate glorification!
As all things mysterious, this heresy is appealing to the today’s poorly educated neophytes who get engrossed in the murky waters of notions that are either taken out of the context of the sound teachings of the Fathers of the Church and are presented in a distorted manner, or are not used in the communal theological writings, but were merely mentioned by one of the Church Fathers in passim somewhere. These include the very term ‘prosopon’ and the ‘Angel of God’s Face’ and the idea of ‘noetics’ (the mind of the heart) and many others. It is necessary to remind the seekers of a ‘special’ spirituality that the Orthodox doctrine contains only those truths revealed by God that have been either formulated and adopted at the Ecumenical Councils or were practically accepted for use and consecrated for us by ‘the consensus of the fathers’ of the absolute majority of Orthodox theologians of all the Christian time.
The ways to overcome the influence of such organizations as the Prosopon School, alien to Orthodoxy can be found in the dissemination of at least elementary theological education among the young people turning to the faith and in recovering of the blessed traditions of Byzantium and Russian iconography by the home-grown ‘God-painters’.
Translated by Alexey Ulko
Assistant Professor, Head of the Department of Theology
The Essenin Ryazan State University
This article was originally published in Russian in Art-Sobor (http://www.art-sobor.ru/archives/7048)
Laymen can rarely show competence in the Orthodox theology these days. The main reason is that the dogmatic church system is mostly studied in schools coaching priests of the future and also that its right and profound understanding requires a life in faith submerged in the living and benevolent church tradition. The absence of such a humble attitude of son-like obedience to Mother the Church, reinforced by relative ignorance of dogmas gives birth to such disfigured entities as the Prosopon School. There is no need to analyse in detail all the articles of their doctrine because their ‘multi-storeyed edifice’ is erected upon the sand of a false teaching about comprehension and depiction of the Divine Essence (Ousia).
Manipulating and taking scriptural passages out of the context of the Holy Scripture and Church Fathers’ writings, Vladislav Andreev and his followers are trying to justify their right (grounded in some obscure qualities, either their own personal ‘holiness’ or their consecration into special mysteries of the faith concealed from the ordinary members of the Church) for special relationship with Shekinah as a visible and depictable image of the Divine Energies. It is difficult for our poorly educated contemporaries to invent heresies that have never been. So, here we are dealing with unskillful followers of Gnostic esoteric ideas, who transfer (as usual with all kinds of sectants) their false teaching devoid of elementary logic into the field of soteriology. They promise their adepts an inevitable deification through belonging to their gathering and by means of painting icons pursuant to their doctrine.
Vladislav Andreev’s teaching about ‘the Divine Presence in His Energies’ is alien to the Orthodox dogmatics both in terms and in contents. The notion of Person which is identical with Hypostasis was referred to by the great saints and teachers of the ‘golden age’ of the Orthodox Church doctrine to each of the three Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit which together make the Consubstantial and Inseparable Trinity. God’s Face cannot be comprehended through Energies, but the Divine Energies are common to all the Persons of the Holy Trinity as inherent to Godhead, One for Them. The Divine Energies are the manifestations of God outside His Essence (Ousia), They are multiple and can be called God, being His everlasting qualities. They can enter in a divine, sacral and redeeming communication with human beings but not on the plane of rational and comprehensible reflections. The Divine Deeds can give us some relative ideas about personal qualities of the Godhead, but by no means can they allow any intrusion in the transcendental domain of the Divine Essence. Everything substantially visible and describable about the Godhead we can behold only in the both historical and timeless Person of all God and all human Jesus Christ our Lord.
The 'Vladislavovites' have apparently gained ‘the interminable light of glory’ which they promise to transfer to their followers, have reached the ecstasy which their doctrine equals with the Divine Love and finally attained ‘the wisdom of mind’, having appropriated ‘the image of the Divine Energy’, Shekinah, reflected in the material world! All we can do is to congratulate them on their achievement and to suggest applying to the canonization committee for their immediate glorification!
As all things mysterious, this heresy is appealing to the today’s poorly educated neophytes who get engrossed in the murky waters of notions that are either taken out of the context of the sound teachings of the Fathers of the Church and are presented in a distorted manner, or are not used in the communal theological writings, but were merely mentioned by one of the Church Fathers in passim somewhere. These include the very term ‘prosopon’ and the ‘Angel of God’s Face’ and the idea of ‘noetics’ (the mind of the heart) and many others. It is necessary to remind the seekers of a ‘special’ spirituality that the Orthodox doctrine contains only those truths revealed by God that have been either formulated and adopted at the Ecumenical Councils or were practically accepted for use and consecrated for us by ‘the consensus of the fathers’ of the absolute majority of Orthodox theologians of all the Christian time.
The ways to overcome the influence of such organizations as the Prosopon School, alien to Orthodoxy can be found in the dissemination of at least elementary theological education among the young people turning to the faith and in recovering of the blessed traditions of Byzantium and Russian iconography by the home-grown ‘God-painters’.
Translated by Alexey Ulko