Knowing God - Homily for the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council (2025)

Our Savior in His prayer to His Father says: “this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent,” (John 17:3). Eternal life is to know God. This knowledge is not only in our heads, this knowledge is not merely facts about God, but rather a deep relationship with Him. St. Sophrony describes knowledge of God as “the experience of lively communion…co-existence, a sharing of being,” (Saint Silouan the Athonite, 132). And at the same time, we can’t love someone we don’t know. This is why the Church always fights against heresy, against false beliefs about God. How meaningful and deep can our relationship be with someone when we think of him as something he is not?

This is why the Church fights heresy and triumphs in her victories several times throughout the year. Today, we commemorate the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea who fought against Arius. Arius falsely taught that Christ was a mere creature. That Christ is not God like the Father is God, but something lesser. It was not just that Arius was factually wrong, but he was impudent and refused to be corrected by his bishop. Furthermore, Arianism, and heresy in general, is not condemned merely for getting the facts wrong. The Fathers knew what was at stake—our very salvation. If Christ is not God, but just another creature, then fallen human nature has not been restored to communion with God. A moral exemplar, no matter how perfect, even if he also is crucified and resurrected, cannot reunite us to God. Our relationship with God cannot be restored by some go-between who is not God. We need a Savior who is fully God and fully man. The problem with heresy is that it cuts us off from true knowledge of God, it cuts us off from deification, from holiness, from even thinking there is such a thing as holiness. This is how heresy destroys souls.

We tend to see almost all sin as a moral issue that requires repentance, time and patience to be healed. But we curiously make an exception for heresy. We think heresy and apostasy are intellectual errors that require carefully studying the issue at hand, reading the relevant quotes from the saints and maybe some syllogisms here and there to prevent ourselves or others from falling into it. Not that those are bad things, but until we understand that heresy is just as much of a spiritual phenomenon as any other sin, we will continue to be confused when otherwise very pious, very active and involved, and perhaps very intellectual parishioners or monastics leave Orthodoxy for another faith—or for no faith at all. More importantly, not only will we be confused at the apostasy of others, we will be unguarded against falling into heresy ourselves.

People fall into heresy the same way they fall into any other sin. It begins with thoughts that the demons whisper to us. Then they get more and more incessant until we finally agree with the thought and follow through in action. The Fathers tell us that blasphemous thoughts are from the devil—always, they are never ours. This includes not only thoughts cursing God and the saints but also heretical thoughts. St. Paul lays it out very strongly that “some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils,” (1 Timothy 4:1). Demons are the origin of these thoughts, but they prefer not taking credit because it makes heresy credible if it sounds logical, wise, and sensible to the ears of fallen man.

I recently read the account of a woman converting to Orthodoxy who came from a neo-pagan background. She desperately desired healing and was attracted to the faith. However, as a feminist, she couldn’t come to terms with the Church’s teachings on moral issues such as forbidding abortions and condemning homosexual activity. She spent a lot of time reading Orthodox responses and tried to force herself to accept what the Church teaches. But it didn’t work. In the meantime, she was still open to Orthodoxy. She focused on prayer and repentance for her sins. Eventually, God enlightened her, and she trusted the Church was able to make authoritative moral judgements as well as doctrinal pronouncements. 

This is a good model for us for what repentance from heresy looks like in real life. It’s important to know what the Church teaches, to study the Fathers of the Church and to be able to answer objections to the faith. But people are converted by living a life of repentance and learning to trust the Church. So the opposite happens in those who fall away. Distrust in the Church, especially the saints and one’s spiritual father, focusing on external things like politics and scandals and ignoring prayer and repentance all provide fertile ground for the demons to sow their thoughts.

Apostasy can happen in any direction—atheism, Islam, Catholicism, progressive Protestantism. It’s whatever thoughts the demons are sowing. Our reasoning is not neutral. The Fathers tell us repeatedly that our reasoning is enslaved to our passions. So to whatever extent we are not purified, to whatever extent we don’t trust our spiritual fathers, that is the extent that our reasoning is warped and liable to listening to whatever suggestions the demons whisper to us. Perhaps we feel confident that we would never fall into heresy because we’re well-read, we can see the holes in the opposing arguments, we’ve been Orthodox for so many years, and so forth. But again, all this betrays the faulty thinking that heresy and apostasy are only intellectual problems. This is part of it, but apostasy is spiritual and as fallen human beings we are capable of falling into any sin, including apostasy.

“This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent,” (John 17:3). Eternal life is to know God. Not just to know about God. Not just to have facts in our heads, although these are important, but to know Him deeply, personally, in our hearts. This is eternal life. Therefore, the greatest tragedy for man is not to know God. In fact, St. Sophrony tells us that when Christ says a few verses after today’s Gospel “O righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee,” (John 17:25), He was weeping when He prayed these words. That’s how much God desires that we should know Him and how much it pains Him if we should remain ignorant.

God created everything—everything! in order for mankind to become gods. God wants us to share in His eternal Life—His unending and infinite life, His boundless and ever-flowing goodness, His undying and infinite love. Christ says, “the glory which thou gavest me I have given them,” (John 17:22). We see what this glory looks like when we call to remembrance dozens of saints every single day. They show us what God wants us to be. The saints were showered with God’s gifts, not because they were predestined to be better than the rest, but because they believed in God. They responded to His call and were faithful to Him. 

We read of saints who received the gifts of healing, of raising the dead. We know of saints who prophesied, who were clairvoyant. These are astounding gifts, and yet saints have even surpassed this. There are saints who not only had these gifts but could give them to others. They were so united to God, that when they asked that God should bestow on someone else the same gift, God would do it. We see St. Joseph the Hesychast could give his disciples Theoria and transport them to paradise in prayer even though they were only novices. He did this so they would understand what they were fighting for as monks. When St. Silouan asked Elder Stratonikos, a learned ascetic with the gift of tears, how do the perfect speak, St. Silouan did not merely answer his own question. When he answered with the words, “the perfect speak only as the Holy Spirit tells them,” he also imparted to Elder Stratonikos that very gift, so that he would not only factually know how the perfect speak, but in his own heart he would experience what that means. Fr. John Krestiankin was able to impart clairvoyance, if only once, to Metropolitan Tikhon when the latter was a novice. St. Porphyrios boldly stated that there was no one alive on earth who could contain all the grace he was able to transmit to them. Truly these saints were gods on earth.

And yet for all of this—even this, even being able to impart such gifts to others, St. Maximos the Confessor tells us that “The Word of God also has other infinite powers which cannot be encompassed in this world…For the most exalted of the divine gifts of grace bestowed in this world is scant and minimal compared with those that are held in store for us,” (Centuries on Knowledge 100). This is so unfathomable for us to understand. That the exalted state of the life of the saints on earth, the rivers of grace that flowed through them, the gifts they had, the miracles they wrought, the love they bore in their hearts is almost nothing compared to what God wants to bestow upon us in the next life. If we knew, truly knew, who God is and what He desires for us, we would not be tempted by any heresy. So may we learn and re-learn to trust the Church, to trust her saints, to trust our spiritual fathers, to focus on prayer and repentance, and our trust will not be disappointed. Amen.