Imiaslavie

Schema-monk Illarion

Imiaslavie (Template:Lang-ru) or Imiabozhie (Имябожие), also referred as onomatodoxy, is a dogmatic movement which was condemned by the Russian Orthodox Church, but that is still promoted by some affiliated with Gregory Lourie of the "Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church" (a splinter group of the Russian Orthodox Church), and by some other contemporary Russian writers (many of whom are associated with St. Sergius Theological Seminary in Paris), which asserts that the name of the God is God Himself. The movement emerged in the beginning of the 20th century but both proponents and opponents claim its connections with much religious thought throughout the history of Christianity (proponents claim its connections to the Church Fathers, while opponents claim the connections to the ancient heresiarchs).

Beginning

The 20th century history of Imiaslavie started in 1907 with the publication of the book On the Caucasus Mountains by a revered Schema-monk starets, Illarion. In his book Illarion told of his spiritual experience with the Jesus Prayer as a proof that The name of the God is God Himself and can produce miracles. The book became extremely popular among the Russian monks on Mount Athos in Greece. Many of them argued that since according to Plato The name of an object existed before the object itself so the name of the God must be pre-created before the world and cannot be anything but God Himself. Among other things it might mean that knowledge of the secret name of God allows one to make miracles. It also required an extreme caution with the use of names like Jehovah, Christ, etc. Their opponents, the other Athos monks, consider this teaching as pantheism incompatible with Christianity. They argue that before the Creation God did not need the name, so the name was created and is actually an empty sound having no mystical attributes by itself. The proponents got the name Imyaslavtsy (those who glorify the Name) and the opponents got the name Imyabortsy (those who fight the Name).

The main proponent of the Imiaslavie doctrine was a Hieromonk of the Andreyevsky skete of Athos Mountain, Anthony Bulatovich, who published a few books on it. Those who promote this doctrine claim support from the writings of Saint John of Kronstadt, and the influential mystic and healer Grigori Rasputin. It should be pointed out, however, that St. John reposed before this controversy erupted, and these quotes, it can be argued, are taken out of context to support a whole set of ideas that are not found in the writings of St. John.

The most vocal opponent was the archbishop of Volyn Anthony Khrapovitsky, who considered imiaslavie as a variation of Khlysts heresy (khlystovschina). In 1912 by the decision of the Holy Synod the book On the Caucasus Mountains became forbidden in Russia. It was not reprinted until 1998. In September 1912 the book was judged by Patriarch Joachim III of Constantinople, who gave a negative opinion about it (though in 1907 he supported the same book).

In January 1913 a monk by the name of David, who was a supporter of Imiaslavie, was elected as the hegumen of the Andreyevsky skete. He took the place of the monk Hieronim who was an opponent of it. Hieronim did not recognize the results of the elections and complained to the Russian Embassy in Greece. The Imperial Government insisted on changing the hegumen back. In April the teaching of Imiaslavie was also proclaimed pantheism by the new Patriarch Germanus V of Constantinople.

Storming the monastery

Modern view of the St. Panteleimon Monastery

In June of 1913 a small Russian fleet, consisting of the gunboat Donets and the transport ships Tsar and Kherson, delivered the archbishop of Vologda, Nikon Rozhdestvensky, and a number of troops to Mount Athos. The poll organized by the archbishop had shown that among 1700 of the Rossikon's monks, 661 monks identified themselves as imiabortsy, 517 as imiaslavtsy, 360 refused to participate in the poll, and the rest identified themselves as neutral. In May and June the archbishop Nikon held talks with the imiaslavtsy and tried to make them change their beliefs voluntarily, but was unsuccessful. On July 31 the troops stormed the St. Panteleimon Monastery. Although the monks were not armed and did not actively resist, the troops showed very heavy-handed tactics. They set up two machine guns and a number of water cannons, and the soldiers were ordered to beat the monks with their bayonets and rifle butts. Allegedly, four monks were killed and at least forty-eight were wounded. After the storming of St. Panteleimon Monastery the monks from the Andreevsky Skete surrendered voluntarily.

The military transport Kherson was converted into a prison ship. It took 628 monks to Russia and on July 9 set sail to Odessa. Forty monks were left in the Mt. Athos hospital, judged unable to survive the transportation. On July 14 the steamship Chikhachev delivered another 212 monks from Mt. Athos. The rest of the monks signed papers that they rejected the imiaslavie.

After interrogation in Odessa, 8 imprisoned monks were returned to Athos, 40 put into a jail, and the rest were defrocked and exiled to different areas of the Russian Empire according to their propiska. One of the leaders of imiaslavtsy, Antony Bulatovich, was sent to his family estate in the village Lebedinka of Kharkov gubernia, to where many imiaslavtsy moved.

Aftermath

Alexander Bulatovich tonsured Hieromonk Antony. Leader of Imiaslavtsy

In February 1914 some imiaslavtsy were received by the Emperor Nicholas II. The kind reception was considered a sign of a changing fate. In May 1914 Moscow Metropolitan Makariy and the Moscow Synodal Office decided to accept the imiaslavtsy into church services without them having to repent, as there was nothing to repent about. A similar decision was taken by the Kiev Metropolitan. On May 10 the decision was partially adopted by the Holy Synod that the imiaslavtsy were allowed to keep their positions in the Orthodox Church without a formal repentance, but it specified that the teaching itself was still to be considered a heresy.

On 27 August 1914 the leader of the movement Anthony Bulatovich asked to be sent as an Army priest to World War I, his request was granted by the Holy Synod. On July 1 1915 the Holy Synod got a letter from the original author, schema-monk Illarion, asking whether he was expelled from the Church (Illarion lived as a hermit in the Caucasus Mountains and seems to be unaware of all the commotion over his book). Illarion died on June 2 1916, without having received an answer. In September 1917 the Pomestny Sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church was assembled to solve the problem with Imiaslavie, with both strong proponents and opponents of Imiaslavie present. The work of the Sobor was aborted due to the October Revolution. Among the theologians who spoke out for Imiaslavie was Saint Pavel Florensky and Sergey Bulgakov.

In October 1918 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church canceled the decision allowing imyaslavtsy to participate in church services unless they repented. The decision was signed by Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow. In January 1919 the leader of the imyaslavtsy, Anthony Bulatovich, broke relations with the Holy Synod and Tikhon and returned to his family estate in Lebedinka. There, he was killed either by robbers or by soldiers of the Red Army in December.

In 1928, after the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church was taken by the Patriarchal Locum Tenens, Metropolitan Sergius (future Patriarch Sergius I), the imiaslavtsy completely broke contact with the official Russian Orthodox Church. The imiaslavtsy remembered that in 1913, demonstrating that there is nothing sacred in the Name, Sergius publicly tore down a paper with the name Jesus Christ written on it and trampled on it. According to their beliefs it was an unforgivable, anti-Christian act. They also deplored Sergius' servility to the atheistic Bolshevik authorities.

After Perestroika there were steps taken towards reconciliation between the official Church and the underground Churches. The question of compatibility between Orthodoxy and the Imiaslavie is still hotly argued by some theologians. Bishop Hilarian Alfayev, in 1999, wrote: "Even though the movement of the 'Name-worshippers' was crushed at the beginning of the century on the orders of the Holy Synod, discussion of the matter regained impetus in the years preceding the Moscow Council (1917-18), which was supposed to come to a decision about this but did not succeed in doing so. Thus the Church’s final assessment of Name-worshipping remains an open question to this day."

Imiaslavie and Buddhism

One fascinating and unexplored parallel lies with the Pure Land schools of Buddhism in China and Japan. They both revere the Nembutsu, the formulaic name of Amida Buddha (Namu Amida Butsu), as the sole method in this latter age of "degenerate Dharma" (mappo) for birth in the Pure Land after earthly death. Shinran, the founder of the Japanese Pure Land sect of Jodo Shinshu, went so far as to declare the Name as the same as Amida and his characteristics (Infinite Light and Infinite Life).

That two different religions separated by time and space arrived at a similar reverence for the sound of the name of their Deity is the subject material Joseph Campbell studied during his lifetime.

J.D. Salinger also mentions this parallel in his book Franny and Zooey.

Imiaslavie and mathematics

The Russian Mathematic School is considered by some to have been created by Dmitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin, both of whom were Imiaslavtsy and personal friends of Saint Pavel Florensky as well as philosopher Aleksei Losev (both imiaslavtsy in theology) [1],[2]. Florensky was a pupil of Egorov and a classmate of Luzin, and they published together. Florensky published works on the parallels between abstract mathematics and religion. Stating that the mathematics of continuous functions is like rationalism while some concepts, such as transfinite numbers, can be explained only in the framework of the Imiaslavie philosophy, where the Name of God is God Himself.

Math Historians Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor state the works of the Russian Mathematics school is still filled with this mysticism as opposed to the French Mathematics school which is considered to be based in rationalism.

References

• Template:Ru iconAlexei Losev Imiaslavie
• Template:Ru icon Schema-monk Illarion On the Caucasus Mountains
• Template:Ru icon Metropolitan Veniamin (Fedchenko) Imiaslavie
• Template:Ru icon A select bibliography on the history and perspective of the imiaslavie disputes
• Template:Ru icon Pavel Florensky Brief biography of Starets Illarion and History of Imiaslavie in Russia
• Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor Russian Religious Mistiques and French Rationalists:Mathematics, 1900-1930
• Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor A Comparison of Two Cultural Approaches to Mathematics: France and Russia, 1900-1930
• Template:Ru icon Father Pyotr Andrievsky Heresy of Imiaslavie in the Past and in the Present - an opinion of an opponent
• Template:Ru icon Archbishop Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii), "The Crafty designs of the enemy will destroy...": Diaries: 1910-1917 - by active disputant in the controversy with the Imiabozhie
• Template:Fr icon Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, Le Nom grand et glorieux. Etude sur la vénération du Nom de Dieu et la prière de Jésus dans la tradition orthodoxe. Paris: Cerf (à paraître)
• Template:It icon Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, La gloria del Nome. L’opera dello schimonaco Ilarion e la controversia athonita sul Nome di Dio all’inizio dell XX secolo
• Theological Discussion About the Name of God: Historical and Contemporary
• Tom E. Dykstra, Heresy on Mt. Athos: Conflict over the Name of God Among Russian Monks and Hierarchs, 1912–1914 - 1988 Master's Thesis
• Arjakovsky on Glorification of the Name and Grammar of Wisdom
• P. Florenskij, Onomatodoxy as a Philosophical Premise (excerpts)
• Robert Bird, Pavel Florensky’s Hermeneutic Theology - Contains some reference to Onomatodoxy in connection with Florensky
• Nikolai Berdyaev Quenchers of the Spirit (Gasiteli Dukha)
• Sergey Horujy The Idea of Energy in the Moscow School of Christian Neoplatonism
• G. M. Hamburg, The Origins of 'Heresy' on Mount Athos: Ilarion's NA GORAKH KAVKAZA (1907)
• Vladimir Moss The Name Of God And The Name-Worshipping Heresy
• Blog entry at moinillon au quotidien In French
• Blog entry the name of god is god himself
• Imiaslavie - Catholic Answers Forums
• The Name of the Hero by Richard Seltzer
• A.I. Resnichenko, Category of Name and Ontology Experience: Bulgakov, Florovsky, Losev
• Blog entry Nathanael Speaks! - "Name-Worshipping Heretics!"
• Heresy at Mount Athos: A Soldier Monk and the Holy Synod - The London Times, June 19, 1913
• Template:Ru icon onomatodoxie - LiveJournal community for discussion of imiaslavie and related issues
• Robert Bird, Ph.D., "Imiaslavie and Baroque Spirituality." AAASS Convention, Pittsburgh, PA, 22 November 2002
• Scott M. Kenworthy, Ph.D., "Church, State, and Society in Late-Imperial Russia: The Imiaslavie Controversy," presentation at American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies National Convention, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, November 2002
• Scott M. Kenworthy, Ph.D., "Church, State, and Society in Late-Imperial Russia: Nikon (Rozhdestvenskii) and Imiaslavie," presentation at Midwest Russian Historians Workshop, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, March 2003
• Dr. John Eugene Clay, Arizona State University, "Popular Uses of the Jesus Prayer in Imperial Russia from the Old Believers to the Name-Glorifiers", presentation at AAR, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 2005