Saint Basil the Great of Caesarea (330 - 379) documents the breach in the church 1,700 years ago from Arianism.

 

Russian icon of Saint Basil the Great of Caesarea (330 - 379)

The Arian schism as a war full of hatred on a battlefield and as a shipwreck in a storm

The Council of Nicaea, with Arius depicted beneath the feet
of the Emperor Constantine and the bishops.

Now, go with me from the image to the evil reality.  Not long ago, how did the Arian schism, set apart as an adversary, seem on its own to set itself over and against the Church of God as if it were aligning itself for battle?  When they advanced from a long and painful quarrel to an open struggle against us, the war fractured into many parts in myriad ways, so that an irreconcilable hatred belonged to everyone because of common enmity and peculiar sort of suspicion.  Now this disturbance of the churches is stormier than a wave of the sea, in which everyone of the fathers' boundaries has been removed, and every foundation -- even if it is a doctrinal fortress -- has been shaken.  Everything that rested on unsound footing is in confusion and cast down.  We attack each other, and are overturned by each other.  Even if the enemy did not hit us first, the comrade wounded us; and if someone was hit and fell, his comrade stepped on him.

Be warned about enemies

The Wreck, by Knud-Andreassen Baade c.1835

We have in common with each other that we hate our common opponents, but whenever the enemies leave, we then harm each other as enemies.  In such cases who could count the number of shipwrecks, some sinking because of the enemies' attack, others, because of the treachery of allies, and still others because of the inexperience of the helmsmen?  Wherever the churches, men and all, were destroyed by being dashed against heretical trickery as if it were an object hidden under the sea, others, who hated the suffering of the Savior, took the helm and suffered shipwreck in the faith.

The war continues with those who deviate from the right teaching of true religion

Russo-Polish war, Battle of Orsha in 1514, Attributed to Hans Krell

The confusion that has been brought on by the rules of this world overturns men more violently than any kind of storm or squall.  Indeed, a downcast and abhorrent darkness possesses the churches since the luminaries of the world, which God established to illuminate the souls of the people, have been put out.  They refuse to recognize their excessive desire to fight with one another, and already there is an impending fear that all may be lost.  Personal hostility deteriorates into general and public warfare, the glory of lording it over opponents is preferred to the common ground of all, and the present delight in ambition is preferred to rewards stored up for later.  On account of this, all raise murderous hands against each other insofar as each is able.  Harsh is the cream of those clashing and arguing against each other, and unintelligible shouting and the sound of unending indecipherable groans has already filled almost the whole Church with the excesses and defects of those who deviate from the right teaching of true religion.  Some are carried away into Judaism by confusing the persons, others, into Hellenism by setting the natures in opposition.  Inspired Scriptures cannot mediate between these two, and apostolic traditions arbitrate the disputes that they have with each other.  The one limit of friendship is to speak as one pleases; and a lack of agreement in beliefs is a sufficient motive for hatred.  Similarity of error is a more trustworthy indication of party-communion than any oath.  Everyone is a theologian, even those who have stains on their souls.  Thence, for the innovators there is an overabundance of people to join in the faction, and so, self-selected men eager to hold office obtain leadership positions in the churches and set aside the economy of the Holy Spirit.  Already the ordinances of the Gospel have been altogether confounded by the disorder, and there is an unspeakable struggle for positions of honor, as each of the self-promoters is constrained to install himself into office.  Moreover, a dreadful anarchy rushes on the people because of this lust for power.  Hence the bidding of the authorities is unavailing and vain, since every man madly and stupidly thinks that it is owed to him that he rule others rather than listen to someone else.

The most cruel war is waged against our own kin and love grows cold

The Battle of Waterloo by William Sadler II

And so, I posited that silence was more useful than speech, since a man's strong voice is not heard over the noise.  For, if the words of Ecclesiastes are true, that "the words of the wise are heard in stillness" (Eccl 9:17), to speak about such things in their current state would be very inappropriate.  That verse of the prophet restrains me, "The prudent shall keep silent in that time, for it is an evil time" (Amos 5:13).  At present, some trip and fall, while others applaud, but there is no one who out of sympathy extends a hand to the one who has fallen.  Even still, according to the Old Law, he who passes by his enemy's beast of burden when it has fallen under its load stands condemned.  But this sort of beneficence does not exist now.  Why?  In everyone love has grown cold, and fraternal communion, destroyed.  Even the name of unity is unknown, and loving correction has disappeared.  Nowhere is there Christian mercy; nowhere, a sympathetic tear.  There is no one who receives "the weak in faith" (Rom 14:1), but rather there is such an hatred kindled up between members of the same race, that each rejoices more in a neighbor's faults than in their own perfections.  Just as happens in acts of compassion during a plague, when those who lead a disciplined life suffer the same illnesses as the others since they were infected with the illness by their association with the sick, so also we all have become similar to each other.  We have been carried away to the imitation of evil by the contentiousness that possesses our souls.  So then, the judges of those who fail are merciless and harsh, while the critics of the upright are senseless and hostile.  So great an evil is seemingly established in us, that we have become more irrational than beasts -- they at least herd with their own kind, while for us the most cruel war is waged against our own kin.

Source: St. Basil the Great. On the Holy Spirit. Translated by Stephen Hildebrand. Yonkers, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011, 30.77-30.78, pages 104-106.

Who is right and who is wrong? The tide of de-christianization in Canada has proven irresistible.

The present flag of the governor general, adopted in 1981

"A historical snapshot illustrates the contrasts over time with which I am concerned." - Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame

1959: "May Almighty God in his infinite wisdom and mercy bless the sacred mission which has been entrusted to me by Her Majesty the Queen and help me to fulfill it in all humility."

Major Georges P. Vanier of the 22nd Battalion became Canada's 19th Governor General,

serving from 1959 to 1967.…

On September 15, 1959, Georges Vanier was installed as Canada's 19th Governor-General, the Queen's formal representative in her Canadian dominion.  Vanier, a much-decorated general, diplomat, and active Roman Catholic began his acceptance speech like this: "Mr. Prime Minister, my first words are a prayer.  May Almighty God in his infinite wisdom and mercy bless the sacred mission which has been entrusted to me by Her Majesty the Queen and help me to fulfill it in all humility.  In exchange for his strength, I offer him my weakness.  May he give peace to this beloved land of ours and, to those who live in it, the grace of mutual understanding, respect, and love."

2005: Canadian history "speaks powerfully about the freedom to invent a new world."

Jean presiding over Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa, 2007.

Fifty-six years later, on September 27, 2005, Michaëlle Jean, became Canada's 27th Governor-General.  Jean, a multi-lingual, Haitian-born film-maker and journalist, offered a forward-looking address that stressed, as had Vanier's, the importance of mutual toleration for Canada's social well-being.  Otherwise, however, there were no themes in common, for Jean's primary concern was the exaltation of individual liberty; for her, Canadian history "speaks powerfully about the freedom to invent a new world."  In this speech there was no mention of the deity.

2005: Contrast with the United States' 2004 Presidential Election

George W. Bush

John Kerry

The contrast with the United States is striking.  Vanier's straightforward invocation of God could be likened to the prayer with which Dwight D. Eisenhower began his presidential inaugural in January 1953.  And Governor-General Jean's stress on the theme of freedom certainly echoed emphases in the presidential inaugural of George W. Bush in January 2005.  Yet her sphere of discourse was far removed from both Georges Vanier's 1959 address and the speeches that John Kerry and George Bush made during the 2004 presidential campaign, when talk of God and more general religious matters was noticeably more prominent than it had been in Eisenhower's day.

1982: Canada's New Constitution

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Queen Elizabeth II

The proclamation of the Constitution Act, 1982, signed by Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada

 A second example underscores a similar contrast.  Until the recent past Canada's constitutional existence had been enfolded in the common-law traditions of the British parliament before which Americans, with our penchant for thinking that a constitutional democracy requires a written constitution, stand in clueless bemusement.  Yet in 1982, after painstaking exertions by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada, with the relieved cooperation of the British parliament, finally took control of its own constitution.  Even at that relatively late date public theism remained prominent in Canada's new Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  In a complex drafting history, Trudeau first proposed including one off-hand reference to God in the new constitution, which was taken from an earlier Canadian Bill of Rights written during the administration of Conservative leader, John Diefenbaker.  That reference was removed because of pressure from members of Trudeau's own Liberal party.  But then the issue resurfaced when a broad ecumenical coalition lobbied for formal recognition of Canada's traditional Christian posture.  As a result of its pressure, the new Charter was amended to include the following assertion in its preamble: "Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law."  The inclusion of such an affirmation in the Charter did not, however, presage a resurgence of traditional Christianity, for under the new Charter, Canadian legislation and jurisprudence have increasingly privileged principles of privacy, multiculturalism, enforced toleration, and public religious neutrality, even when such moves de-christianize public spaces in which religious language was once commonplace.

Education from 1948 to Today

1950 Canadian School Train. Pupils attend classes at Nemegos near Chapleau, Ontario.

Education provides another example of significant cultural change.  Ontario public schools long included a major place for confessional Christian instruction, even as the province also funded a separate system for its Catholic citizens.  This well-established practice, however, came to an end in the recent past.  In the words of R. D. Gidney and W. P. J. Millar, "The centrality of Christian doctrine in Ontario's public schools, albeit in a nondenominational Protestant form, was alive and well in the mid-twentieth century; still alive, though less well, as late as the mid-1960s; and, even in the last third of the century, finally ousted only through a prolonged, contested process."  But the result of this recent change in unmistakable: "In this particular part of the public arena ... Christianity has not only been disestablished but banished."  Inherited religious traditions lasted longer in Quebec and Newfoundland, where virtually all education has been effectively under church supervision until the 1990s.  But even in Quebec, which has enjoyed more than two centuries of Catholic educational dominance, and in Newfoundland, which entered the Dominion in 1948 with an explicit guarantee for its government-funded but denominationally-administered school system, the tide of de-christianization has proven irresistible, and education has been secularized.

Source: Noll, Mark A.  What Happened To Christian Canada?, Vancouver, Canada: Regent College Publishing, 2007, pages 8-12.

Saint Basil the Great of Caesarea (330 - 375) documents early non-scriptural traditions including the sign of the cross, turning East for prayer, and the oil of chrism

Icon of St. Basil the Great (330 - 375) from the St. Sophia Cathedral of Kiev.

The solemnity of the mysteries: Non-Scriptural teachings include the sign of the cross, turning east for prayer, blessing the water of baptism and the oil of chrism, etc.

Chrismatory for ritual oil from Germany, 1636 (silver-gilt, Victoria and Albert Museum, London).

Of the dogmas and proclamations that are guarded in the Church, we hold some from the teaching of the Scriptures, and others we have received in mystery as the teachings of the tradition of the apostles.  Both hold the same power with respect to true religion.  No one would deny these points, at least no one who has even a little experience of ecclesiastical institutions.  For if we attempt to reject non-scriptural customs as insignificant, we would, unaware, lose the very vital parts of the Gospel, and even more, we would establish the proclamation merely in name.  For instance -- I will mention the first and most common -- who has learned through the Scriptures that those who hope in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ are marked with the sign of the cross?  What sort of scriptural text teaches us to turn to the east for prayer?  Which saint has left us a scriptural account of the words of the epiclesis at the manifestation of the bread of the Eucharist and the cup of blessing?  We are not satisfied with the [Eucharistic] words that the Apostle or the Gospel mentions, but we add other words before and after theirs, since we have received non-scriptural teaching that these words have great power in regard to the mystery.  We bless the water of baptism and the oil of chrism in addition to the very one who is to be baptized.  By what Scriptures?  It is not by the secret and mystical tradition?  But why?  What scriptural authority teaches the annointing itself of oil?  Where does a man being immersed three times come from?  How much of the baptismal ritual is for the renunciation of Satan and his angels, and what scriptural text does it come from?  Does it not come from this secret and unspoken teaching, which our fathers guarded with a simple and unprying silence, since they were well taught that the solemnity of the mysteries is preserved by silence?  Such matters must not be seen by the uninitiated, and how is it appropriate that this teaching be published abroad in writing?

Basil argues that the non-scriptural traditions come from the Law of Moses



Jewish High Priest wearing Hoshen and Ephod in the Holy of Holies.  Illustrators of the 1890 Holman Bible

What did the great Moses intend when he made it so that all the things of the sanctuary were not accessible to everyone?  He made the profane to stand outside of the sacred precincts, he gave those who were purer access to the first courts, and he judged the Levites alone worthy of being ministers of God.  He assigned sacrifices, holocausts, and the rest of the holy work to the priests and admitted only one of all of them  who was chosen to enter the Holy of Holies, and not even this one at any time, but on only a single day of the year.  He established a fixed hour of this day for the priest's entry, so that astonished by its strangeness and unusualness he may behold the Holy of Holies, and not even this one at any time, but on only a single day of the year.  He established a fixed hour of this day for the priest's entry, so that astonished by its strangeness and unusualness he may behold the Holy of Holies.  Moses saw well and wisely that disdain readily belongs to what is trite and easily understood, while that which is much desired is somehow naturally coupled with retirement and scarcity.

Basil explains that the apostles and fathers claim the same authority as Moses

Adriaen van de Venne's Fishers of Men. Oil on panel, 1614.

In the same way, the apostles and fathers ordained from the first the matters of the Church and guarded the solemnity of the mysteries in secrecy and silence, for what is made known for a public and casual hearing is no mystery at all.  This is the reason for non-scriptural traditions, that knowledge of dogmas not be neglected or despised by the many because of familiarity.  For doctrine is one thing, and proclamation is another.  One is kept in silence, but proclamations are made public.  Now, obscurity is a form of silence used in Scripture, which makes the meaning of dogmas difficult to see for the benefit of the readers.  Because of this we all look to the East for prayers, but few of us know that our ancient fatherland, the paradise that God planted in Eden, was in the East.  We say our prayers standing of the first day of the week, but not all  know the reason why.  By standing for prayer we remind ourselves of the grace given to us on the day of the resurrection, as if we are rising to stand with Christ and being bound to seek what is above.  Not only this, it also seems somehow to be an image of the age to come.  On account of this, although it is the beginning of days, Moses names it not "first" but "one."  For it is written, "There was evening, and there was morning, one day" (Gen 1:5), as if the same one often repeated.  Now, "One" and "Eighth" are the same, which indicates of itself that the really "one" and true "eighth" which the Psalmist mentions in some titles of psalms -- are the state of after this time, the unceasing, unending, perpetual day, that never-ending and ever-young age.  Necessarily, then, the Church teaches her foster children to pray standing on this day, so that we would not neglect the provisions for our journey to everlasting life by a constant reminder of it.  And the whole of Pentecost is a reminder of the resurrection to come in eternity, for that "one" and first day, multiplied by seven seven times, fills up the seven weeks of sacred Pentecost.  It begins on the first day and ends on the same day, revolving fifty times through similar days in between.  Eternity is like a circular movement, beginning from the same points where it ends.  The ordinances of the Church well taught us to prefer to stand at prayer on this day, as if we were leading our minds from the present to the future.  With each going down on the knee and rising up we indicate in deed that we have fallen through sin to the earth and are called up to heaven by the love of our creator.

Source: St. Basil the Great. On the Holy Spirit. Translated by Stephen Hildebrand. Yonkers, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011, 27.66, pages 104-106.