Saint Meletios

An online Synaxaristes including martyrologies and hagiographies of the lives of the Orthodox Church's saints. All Forum Rules apply. No polemics. No heated discussions. No name-calling.
Post Reply
User avatar
Jean-Serge
Protoposter
Posts: 1381
Joined: Fri 1 April 2005 11:04 am
Location: Paris (France)
Contact:

Saint Meletios

Post by Jean-Serge »

There has been here and there assertion that Saint Meletios was illegaly ordained by Arians. This site entirely denies this, giving sources like Theodoret.

http://www.trueorthodoxy.org/schismatic ... ical.shtml

For the benefit of those unfamiliar with Church History, we are forced to digress a moment from our course and point out the truth about the ordination of St. Meletius. In reality, what happened was as follows:

After the 1st Ecumenical Council (Nicaea, 325 A.D.), some Arians pretended conversion to Orthodoxy to avoid the penalties decreed against Arianism by St. Constantine the Great and his successors Constans and Constantius. These crypto-arians struggled from within to gradually remove Orthodox bishops on false canonical pretexts and to move the Church to a more ambiguous formula of the Faith, instead of the clear confession of the Nicene Creed. These crypto-Arians pretended that the word homoousios caused confusion, since some interpreted it as Sabellian (i.e., the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one Person), and therefore, all that was necessary to reconcile the remaining Arians to the Church was to find another way to say the same thing.

Emperor Constantius convoked two, simultaneous Councils (Arminium and Seleucia) of several hundred bishops in the West and in the East in the hope of resolving the quarrels over the term homoousios and the canonical accusations against various bishops. With the exception of a handful of crypto-Arians all these bishops were staunch up-holders of the Nicene Creed and refused to change it; however, the crypto-Arians tricked the Emperor into thinking that the homoousian was not necessary if the Creed already said Christ “was begotten not made”, “begotten of the Father before all ages”, “God of God”, “true God of true God”, and many other such assertions of Christ’s eternal divinity, and so he pushed the bishops to agree to dropping “homoousios” for the sake of reconciling the apostates. After many months, the bishops eventually gave in and signed a creed lacking the homoousian. It was this Council (Seleucia) that ordained St. Meletios to the see of Sebaste in Armenia. The Council was in no way Arian or Semi-Arian or heretical, but it did fail to uphold completely to the letter the Creed of Nicaea. Sozomen and Theodoret, the Church historians of this period, clearly demonstrate that this Council was Orthodox in faith, despite its forced failure in the matter of the homoousian. Thus, ‘Metropolitan’ Cyprian has already falsified history on this point.

Not long afterward, the crypto-Arian bishop Eudoxius obtained the banishment of the strict homoousian Orthodox Archbishop Eustathius of Antioch and tried to obtain the see of Antioch for himself, but failed. Therefore, not wanting another strict homoousian to obtain it, his faction petitioned the Emperor to appoint St. Meletios of Sebaste to Antioch, thinking that a man consecrated by a Council that had dropped the homoousian, would be susceptible to Arian persuasion. However, the Orthodox also knew of Meletios’ Orthodoxy and therefore, seconded the Eudoxian petition. When St. Meletios arrived he and other crypto-Arian bishops were each asked to expound a Scripture used by Arianism to supposedly prove that Christ was a creature; the Arians came out of the closet with their blasphemies, but St. Meletios loudly upheld the homoousian openly. The parties split into three factions, the Arians who preached their impiety openly from now on, the Meletians who followed St. Meletios, and the Paulinians who followed a presbyter named Paulinus who found fault with the manner of St. Meletios’ appointment. Some saints held communion with Paulinus, some with St. Meletios, but eventually, the 2nd Ecumenical Council reconciled the two Orthodox factions in favor of St. Meletios, who then became its president, and which confirmed that the Nicene Creed must be kept forever inviolate.

This is the true history of St. Meletios, and anyone that wishes may read this in the works of the Church historians mentioned (Sozomen and Theodoret; Socrates is less accurate). Thus, ‘Metropolitan’ Cyprian has falsified history and blasphemed a great saint of the Church attributing impiety and false ordination to him who never submitted to either. From this example, dear reader, understand that ‘Metropolitan’ Cyprian is neither a scholar, nor Orthodox, but a heretic attempting to corrupt the faith of the flock by falsehood and fantastic inventions of his own corrupt mind.

Priidite, poklonimsja i pripadem ko Hristu.

User avatar
Barbara
Protoposter
Posts: 3983
Joined: Sat 29 September 2012 6:03 pm

Re: Saint Meletios

Post by Barbara »

Fascinating ! Thank you, Jean-Serge.

Post Reply