Elder Athanasios Mitilinaios: on Christianity and "social justice"


The three excerpts below are from Volume 5 on the Book of the Revelation:

"... this promise of regeneration is the final purpose of all the struggle, toil, and endeavors of our Christian faith. Our life goal is to become citizens of this new world. The elimination of this eschatological reality—the absence of the faith in regeneration—subtracts all the sense and meaning of the gospel.

The Christian gospel, beloved, is not a social system aiming to solve the various social problems (to procure social justice). Christianity’s primary purpose is the salvation of the human existence. Based on this, it cannot be said that Christianity has not fulfilled its purpose because it failed to solve the problem of social justice. This premise is totally false from its inception, because it lowers and degrades Christianity to some earthly social system. 

One only needs to have some elementary knowledge of the gospel to discover the grand truth that makes up the backbone of Christianity in the spiritual and moral aspect of the gospel...

How then is it possible for Christianity to solve social problems? Christianity is the true faith, not a social political system... Christianity is the true faith based on facts that lead to salvation and the resurrection of the dead. Furthermore, the Kingdom of God is not food and drink, as Saint Paul clearly teaches. 

When we resurrect and enter the Kingdom of God we will not occupy ourselves with eating and drinking; we will not marry and develop civilizations. All these belong to the aspiration of this age. When we say that Christianity must serve worldly materialistic states, we are in the area of heresy.

The denial of the doctrine of the Trinity is a heresy on the theological level. The acquittal of fornication (adultery, homosexuality) is a heresy on the moral level. All heresy—theological, moral or social—degrades Christianity... 

Those who wish to limit and reduce Christianity to a form of this age are in the service of the spirit of the Antichrist. People can say whatever they want, but we must not be a servant of a caesar."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Detestable are those who enter the service of the beast, the Antichrist or the False Prophet, such as those who wish to combine the Christian and Marxist [socialist/communist] identity*. It is ludicrous to combine materialism and Christianity, and those who wish to reconcile these two enter the service of the Antichrist, the beast or the False Prophet."

[*One is reminded that the stated "social" goals of the Communists were: to establish social justice and global peace, to fight for human rights, to create a fair economic system, to combat discrimination, to force the world's religions and even the Church to fight for all of the aforementioned goals, and to institute a global new order based on such. These are quite distinct from the true salvific goals of the Orthodox Church - editor.]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"If one were to ask, 'What is Christianity?' we could say: the restoration and re-creation of all [creation], and its participation in the life of the eternal God. If we truly come to acknowledge this, then we will begin to love God with all the power of our soul. 

The sad thing is that we do not have a clear understanding of the essence of Christianity. We mostly see with a narrow-minded scope, and more often than not we see it as a cultural—social—moral system. How many times have I told you these things? 

Not so, beloved. Christianity aims to restore and re-create what has fallen, to de-corrupt the corrupt, and to immortalize that which entered the space of death. It aims to make everything new, and to find its way back to God, including man and the entire universe. This is the essence of Christianity..."