A pillar of old Jordanville’s Holy Trinity Seminary in the 1950s-1960s, I.M. Andreyev, an exile from Russia (pictured above), was a trained philosopher and psychiatrist, whose piety was in the spirit of the pre-revolutionary Russian Orthodox Christian elders. He left a treasure of a short book entitled Orthodox Apologetic Theology, translated by Hieromonk Seraphim Rose of blessed memory. Now out of print (although available online in part here), its field of “Orthodox apologetic theology” is relatively unknown; “moral theology” and especially “dogmatic theology” are more familiar terms in Anglo-Orthodoxy. Yet apologetic theology has its place, too, and includes the gift of using “a word fitly spoken.” As the Septuagint puts it (Proverbs 5:11), “as a golden apple in a necklace of sardius [red-brown chalcedony], so is it to speak a wise word,” or as the King James Version puts it more familiarly to English-speakers, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.”
Hieromonk Seraphim’s translation, published in 1991 after his death (and after Prof. Andreyev’s), appeared with a short story or parable appended in pp. 171-208 by an F.L. Melnikov. It tells of an Orthodox Christian speaking as an apologist in debate with an atheistic Bolshevist in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution (unfortunately this story, Appendix 2, is not included in the partial online copy linked earlier). The implied stakes were high in the background of the story, namely the life of the Orthodox Christian apologist. How could he defend the faith truthfully and courageously, forcefully and directly, but in a way that would convince his simple audience (the villagers) while evading the snares laid by his atheist intellectual foe, who was invested with the power of a violent totalitarian regime, and lead him to faith as well — all without needlessly adding the crown of martyr to that of confessor, unless that was God’s calling for him?
This is the same type of dilemma faced by many Orthodox Christian evangelists today in the global West, as they engage in missionary and apologetic work, both in-person and online, given the radical way in which Orthodox Christianity differs both from secularism and from establishment forms of Western religions, demonic sexual anthropology, and developing systems of techno-paganism and occultism.
In such apologetic work, two Gospel references involving “words fitly spoken” can provide guidance on discerning apologetics, but in different ways. These are the use of the prohibited terms “fool” (or related words) and “father.” They suggest how the choice of fitting words is really a gift of words, in grace that is also power, energeia, through prayer and ascetic struggle. This is not the kind of superficial rhetoric we often see expressing pride and anger on the internet or in “in person” arguments, however; nor is it sticking to comfortable “niceness” without the inspired virtues of courage and the type of self-emptying that empowers truthful speaking with love.
Lessons from a Story
First, though, let’s briefly return to how the character in the above-mentioned story prayerfully handled the tough demands of his apologetical situation, in the spirit of Prof. Andreyev’s work.
It is the beekeeper Damian Lukich who confronts the Bolshevik speaker. He does so in a very humble manner, and through asking questions. He began with questions related to bees and gardening and experience of agrarian life known to all the audience from the community. Continuing to use a bee as an example of God’s providential design for Creation, he challenges directly whether intellectuals like the atheist visiting speaker don’t know less than supposedly “primitive” peoples. Damian presses the speaker and the chairman of the meeting both about the innate directional sense of birds, and other aspects of the natural world, asking them to explain. Then he likewise asks about the creation of the human eye. In all this, Damian also begins to engage in a dialogue between members of the audience who begin supporting his points and the speaker and chairman. Components of time, construction of cells and of seeds, all become part of Damian’s conversation with the speaker, while the chair flees the meeting. In the ensuing discussion, the speaker comes to admit there is a God. Damian leads the assembly in a prayer. When the chair returns with armed soldiers to shoot Damian, they refuse to shoot, although later away from the meeting they do execute the speaker. That’s the way, the story concludes, that the speaker (originally an apostle of atheism) became a martyr for the truth in a little peasant town.
A few notable takeaways from this little story: The use of questions and dialogues, the firmness and directness that eventually calls and unveils the atheist speaker and his intellectual class as ignorant, but does not dwell on epithets. The conversion of the speaker to belief in God and the affirming of the faith of the peasants in the audience as the achieved goal of the apologist–not to demolish the speaker inordinately, but to convert him.
Not Saying “Thou Fool”
With this in mind, we can shift gears to a passage in the Sermon on the Mount that can be applicable to apologetic situations faced by Orthodox Christians in-person or online in America today, looking for “fit words.”
In Matthew 5:22, our Lord, speaking of how hatred can be like murder a violation of the Commandments, unveils the spiritual dimension of sin rather than just the legalistic worldly view. He says,
…whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
The Byzantine exegetical writer Blessed Theophylact (translation here and below by Fr. Christopher Slade, from Chrysostom Press) writes of this verse:
He who “is angry with his brother without good cause” is condemned; but if anyone should get angry for good reason, either by way of chastisement or out of spiritual zeal, he is not condemned. For even Paul spoke with words of anger to Elymas the Magician and to the high priest, not “without good cause,” but out of zeal. But when we get angry over money or opinions, then it is “without good cause.“
Of using the term Raca, Blessed Theophylact gives the meaning of “hey you,” but also “despicable,” adding in his commentary that “whoever insults his brother as ‘despicable’ will be liable to the council of the holy apostles when they sit to judge the twelve tribes.”
Then the saint adds, in commenting on Jesus’ comment about saying “thou fool,”
There are many who say and believe this is too grievous and severe a judgment. But it is not. For is he who would deny the existence of his brother’s faculties of reason and thought, those characteristics by which we differ from the beasts, is such a man not deserving of gehenna? For he who reviles and insults, dissolves love; and when love is dissolved, all the virtues are destroyed along with it, just as when love is present it unites to itself all the virtues. Therefore, he who hurls insults, destroys all the virtues by tearing love to shreds, and rightly does he deserve the fire of hell.
That said, elsewhere in the Gospel, God says “you fool” to the wealthy man who trusted in enjoying his new barn rather than in faith in the Lord (Luke 12):
19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.
20 But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided.
While that is God speaking (and it is important to the Orthodox apologist not out of pride to blaspheme by speaking as God, which is one of the dangers of using a term like “fool” on another), the Apostle Paul does himself say “thou fool” in an epistle. (Interestingly, this comes after a similar phrase to Luke 12:19 in the “rich man and the barn” account, about the “eat drink and be merry” approach to life.)
The Apostle writes (I Cor. 15:35-36), But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die…
Again, there is a caveat for an Orthodox Christian apologist today that this is an Apostle, and not one of us relatively new to Orthodoxy writing online. Yet, it is also true that the Apostle Paul had been in effect a murderer, and a persecutor of Christ, before his conversion not a long time before. The Holy Spirit, given to the Church, can inspire the humblest believer to denounce sin as foolish to help another. But still there is, going back to the Sermon on the Mount, that powerful admonition for discernment in speaking to a person as despicable or deplorable, and thus depriving them of their potential redeemability. In the case of the Apostle Paul, he is denouncing a worldly approach to faith that ignores the basic fact of the Resurrection and its expression in our lives with baptism into the Body of Christ, the Church, and thus ultimately upholding the potential redeemability and dignity of those he corrects.
“Call no man your Father”
In the need for discernment about wording, we can also consider our Lord’s prohibition on use of the terms “teacher” or “father” in a worldly sense. His statement in Matthew 23:8-12 to “call no many your father” especially indicates this. First, again it is good to note the paradox or mystery that Jesus Christ in addition to this statement taught us both to honor our father and mother in accord with God’s law, but he did also encourage leaving them if they blocked our following Him as our Lord. The Apostle Paul meanwhile refers to spiritual fathers without decrying the terminology itself.
Blessed Theophylact comments:
Christ does not prohibit one from being called “teacher,” but rather He prohibits the passionate desire to be so called, and the eager pursuit of every possible means to acquire the name. For the dignity of the office of “teacher” belongs chiefly to God alone. In saying, “Call no man your father,” He is not prohibiting the honor given to parents, since He desires that we should honor our parents and especially our spiritual fathers; rather He is inducing us to acknowledge the true Father, namely, God, for He is chiefly and essentially our Father. Fathers in the flesh are not the authors of procreation, but rather, servants and accessories. Showing them what is to be gained by humility, He says that he who is great among you should be your servant and the least. For he who exalts himself, presuming to be something, shall be humbled and abandoned by God.
And that last sentence by Blessed Theophylact arguably provides the key for choosing words in apologetic theology, knowing that God will give us the words we need, while our words need to be embodied in our deeds, yet not seeking martyrdom, which must be a calling from God.
The dynamic nature of the fitting word, or logos, from the standpoint of apologetics, lies in the mystery of the Incarnation of the Logos, the Word, Jesus Christ, made flesh and dwelling among us, and not in any abstract prideful learning like the Pharisees.
True apologetics in Orthodoxy calls for heartfelt prayerful communication, informed by Tradition, Scripture, and most of all the gift of the Uncreated Grace of God in synergy with our own ascetic struggle to open our heart to HIm.
As the Scriptures note, a soft answer turneth away wrath.
Answer not a fool according to his folly.
Sometimes quietness (the root meaning also of hesychasm!) is the best approach, with prayer.
But, at the same time, speak the truth in love (as the Apostle Paul put it), and, love in truth (as wrote the Evangelist John), knowing that our Lord is Truth (as He has told us).
He it was Who gave the great commission to the Apostles, and through them to His Orthodox Church, with good strength, saying:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.