Do Old Believers and New Ritualists Believe in the Same God? -Gleb Chistyakov
The question of faith—whom to believe in, how to pray correctly, and how to glorify God—was one of the central issues following the schism in the Russian Church in the 17th century. While the ritual differences between Old Believers and New Ritualists have been thoroughly studied in both polemical and scholarly literature, questions of dogmatic and ideological nature remain less explored today.
Attempts to identify doctrinal disagreements were made by both sides of the conflict almost from the outset of the church schism. One of the earliest, perhaps the first, such attempts was made by a representative of the dominant confession, Metropolitan Dimitry of Rostov. He addressed this at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries in his apologetic work, An Inquiry into the Schismatic Bryn Faith.
In this work, for example, he claimed that the Old Believers had their own distinct Gospel:
“The Brynites have some other new gospel, not of Christ, but of Avvakum. For Avvakum, the false teacher and renowned schismatic, wrote a book filled with heretical reasoning and called it the Eternal Gospel, claiming it was not written by him but by the finger of God.”
Another accusation by Dimitry (Rostov) concerned the Old Believers’ alleged distortion of the doctrine of the Trinity:
“Among the schismatics, a new, unorthodox, and heretical confession has been found, where they profess a tri-substantial Trinity. Thus, their faith is not the old faith but a new one, a novel and contrary confession, never brought by Vladimir from the Greeks.”
Yet another accusation was directed at Avvakum, alleging Nestorianism:
“O new Nestorius, Avvakum, and his disciples! This wicked teacher, with his harmful confession of faith, teaches in the likeness of Nestorius, as if it were not the Son of God Himself who was incarnated in the Virgin’s womb, but only His power or grace poured into her.”
However, the most influential thesis in the subsequent polemic between the two sides of the schism was Dimitry’s claim about the name of the Savior, implying that Old Believers believed in a different Christ:
“In Hebrew, it is Iasus; in Latin, Iesus; in Greek, Iisous, signifying our Savior and Healer. But in the Russian language, the schismatics, pronouncing ‘Isus’ in only two syllables, do not confess the Savior and Healer of our souls. Indeed, they have another Isus: they do not confess the true Jesus, the Savior and Healer, but some equal-eared Isus.”
He explained this as follows:
“In Greek, Isos means ‘equal,’ and Ous means ‘ear.’ When these two words are combined, it becomes Iisous, which means ‘equal-eared.’”
One might assume that this opinion of Metropolitan Dimitry of Rostov was an isolated case. However, the dogmatization of the spelling of Christ’s name had already occurred before his writings. The book The Staff, endorsed by the Church Council of 1666–1667, stated:
“This is the most sweet name Iisus, which we received from the Greek Iisus—trisyllabic, signifying Savior, as announced by the angel. If it is not trisyllabic, it will not carry that meaning… This name depicts two mysteries: through the first two syllables, I and I, the soul and body of the incarnate Son of God are signified; through the third, trisyllabic syllable SUS, the Holy Trinity is revealed. If one syllable is omitted, the significance of this mystery is destroyed…”1
These same councils established the doctrine of depicting Christ’s name through the fingers of the human hand, known as the nominate hand gesture. The council acts state that the fingers representing Greek letters were given to humanity by God:
“By divine providence, from the beginning, the Creator of all arranged the fingers of the human hand, neither more nor less… but sufficient for such signification” (The Tablet, folio 817).
In addition, the council members asserted that Christ Himself was the first to bless using Greek letters:
“We have learned this form of blessing from our Lord Jesus Christ Himself” (The Staff, folio 63).
It is important to note that the forefathers Adam and Eve did not actually speak Greek. Jesus Christ also did not preach in Greek. Secondly, His name cannot be depicted with fingers in any other ancient or modern language. Thirdly, fingers similar to those of humans are found not only in humans but also in monkeys, lemurs, and some other animals. It is difficult to assume that these animals were given fingers to display certain letters.
Despite the absurdity of these arguments, the New Ritualist teaching that the name “Isus” does not signify the Savior quickly became widespread in the dominant confession. For example, in the book Exposure of the Schismatics’ Falsehood, compiled by Archbishop Theophilact (Lopatinsky), it is stated:
“The name Iisus, when written correctly, must signify the Savior, Physician, and Healer, but the name Isus, written without the ‘i,’ does not signify the Savior.”
Similarly, Simon, Bishop of Ryazan, noted:
“Moreover, this [letter] is absolutely necessary in this name, as through it Iisus, our Savior, is distinguished from Isus, which means ‘equal-eared.’”
Bishop Nikifor of Astrakhan, at the end of the third chapter of his responses to the twenty chapters of the Solovetsky Petition, regarding the name of Jesus Christ, stated:
“And this is what your predecessors, through the temptation of the enemy of the human race, dared to distort, removing one syllable and making it monstrous and meaningless.”
Researcher R. Atorin, a candidate of philosophical sciences, in his article dedicated to the name of Christ, pointed out other New Ritualist authors, such as Archbishops Pitirim (Potemkin) of Nizhny Novgorod and Nikifor (Theotokis) of Astrakhan, who developed the doctrine against the use of the Old Russian spelling. He notes:
“From the perspective of the theologians of the official church in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Old Russian spelling of Christ’s name was dogmatically incorrect, and its use in books was considered heresy”.
It is significant that the dogmatization of the spelling of the name Iisus ultimately led, in the Synodal Church, to the emergence in the early 20th century of the doctrine of imiaslavie (Name-Glorification) or imibozhie, which proclaimed “the invisible presence of God in Divine names.” This teaching became widespread among Russian monks on Mount Athos and the church intelligentsia, including church philosophers such as Fr. Pavel Florensky, Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdyaev, and Alexei Losev. “The name Iisus is God,” the proponents of imiaslavie asserted.
Fr. Sergius Bulgakov wrote:
“The Name of God is not merely a means of designating or invoking the Divine but is a verbal icon, and therefore it is holy… The Divine names are verbal icons of the Deity, embodiments of Divine energies, theophanies, bearing the seal of Divine revelation.”
At some point, the debate surrounding imiaslavie became so heated that the Russian government decided to suppress it decisively. In 1913, military ships landed troops on Mount Athos, which stormed the Russian Panteleimon Monastery, arresting 621 of its inhabitants.
This event was, in a way, unique since the schism of the 17th century, as previously only monasteries that rejected Patriarch Nikon’s reforms, as well as Old Believer monasteries, had been subjected to such destruction.
Thus, there are sufficient grounds to conclude that, after the church schism, the spelling of Christ’s name as Iisus in the dominant confession acquired a doctrinal character. The old spelling Isus was considered not only erroneous but also heretical. In several writings, it was regarded as signifying a different entity altogether.
To be continued…
- Жезл (Жезл правления). Изд. собора 1666. Ч. 2. Возобл. 10. ↩︎