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APOCALYPSE OR REPENTANCE:
THE SEVEN DAYS OF WESTERN HISTORY
INTRODUCTION:
THE ORTHODOX WEST
The
seeds of Orthodox Christianity in the West were sown by immigrants, at
first Jews, then Greeks, Syrians and others. It was only at the end of
the second century that Latin began to replace Greek as a liturgical language
in Rome and the first native Popes of Rome appeared. This period began
with martyrdoms in Rome in the first decades after the Resurrection of
Christ, among them those of the Apostle Peter, founder of the Church of
Antioch, and the Apostle Paul, founder of the Church of Rome, in c. 64
A D. Indeed during the first three centuries after Christ, Orthodoxy was
fiercely persecuted in the West, making Rome into a widely revered seedbed
of martyrs.
Thus
the history of Christianity as an official religion in the West does not
begin until the early fourth century, with the proclamation of Constantine
as the Roman Emperor in York in 306. Constantine, with his Latin name
suggesting stability and constancy, was the bilingual head of the Empire
and was to accept Orthodoxy as the State religion of the Roman Empire.
He was so zealous that he actually set up a new Capital of the Empire,
a New Rome, untainted by pagan Rome, establishing it unitively on the
frontiers of Europe and Asia at the fishing-town of Byzantium.
It
was he who called the First Council of the whole Roman Empire (Oecumene)
near New Rome in 325. Opened in Latin and Greek by the Emperor and chaired
by the Spanish bishop, Osius of Cordoba, it was the first time that so
many Orthodox bishops had met. This Council set the scene for a new age
or 'day' of Western history.
THE
FIRST DAY OF WESTERN HISTORY c. 300 - c. 550
The
whole period from about 300 to 550 was not to be an easy period in the
West. Although it would be an age when monasticism flourished and great
Church Fathers like St Hilary, St Ambrose and St John Cassian appeared
in the West, the barbarians were knocking at the gates of the city. Indeed
in the fifth century the Western part of the Empire would fall to barbarians.
By the year 550, when the great Western monk, St Benedict reposed, the
Western part of the Empire had endured great turmoil - the barbarians
had occupied the West.
Despite
the baptism of the Frank Clovis in Rheims at the end of the fifth century,
other barbarian tribes had fallen into a tribal nationalism. In order
to avoid humble submission to the Roman Orthodox authorities, they had
become anti-Orthodox Arians and persecutors of Orthodoxy. Thus the first
age of Western history ended with a question-mark concerning the very
survival of the West as a home of Orthodox Christianity.
THE
SECOND DAY OF WESTERN HISTORY c. 550 - c. 800
The
second age began then with the realisation that Western Christendom was
going to have to conquer the barbarians, not militarily, but spiritually.
Could the West do this, assimilating and absorbing the barbarians into
Orthodoxy without allowing Orthodoxy to be diluted by barbarianism? The
answer came through the efforts of perhaps the greatest of all Roman Popes,
St Gregory the Great. In 596 he sent out a mission to convert the barbarian
Germanic peoples who had invaded the former Roman province of Britain.
The
success of this mission was to lead to the consequent success of the English
mission to the other Germanic peoples in Continental Europe. An important
role was placed by the English St Boniface with the blessing of Popes
of Rome, among them the last Greek Orthodox Pope St Zacharias (+ 752).
By the year 800, this mission was symbolically and literally crowned with
success by the event of 25 December 800. In that year, against the will
of Charlemagne, Pope Leo III crowned that Germanic warlord, Charles the
Great, as Emperor of the West, showing that power belonged to the Orthodox
Papacy, not to Germanic kinglets.
THE
THIRD DAY OF WESTERN HISTORY c. 800 - c. 1050
At
first sight it would seem that Western Christendom had been successful
in converting the barbarians, but success had come with a risk. This risk
was that the newly converted Germans under Charlemagne would take over
the Church in order to justify their Imperialistic ambitions, as had the
Germanic Arians before. Indeed, the iconoclastic Germanic Charlemagne
was set on creating a schism with the centre of Christendom in Jerusalem
and all the East by refuting the Seventh Oecumenical Council. To do this
he had recruited philosophers, trained by Jewish scholars in Spain. Opposition
to him was also strong in southern and western Europe, indeed among all
the peoples on the fringes of his Continental Empire, Basques, Bretons,
Slavs, Saxons and others, who fiercely opposed his tyranny. Fortunately,
after Charlemagne's death, his ambitions, but not his misguided ideas
of reviving pagan Rome, died with him.
The
third age of Western history, from 800 to 1050, covers a period of decadence
and difficulty, a period of new barbarian invasions, by Vikings and Huns,
and a period of decadence in the Papacy in Rome. So low did the Roman
Papacy sink that at the end of this period the Roman Papacy did indeed
fall into the hands of its enemies, the spiritual children of Charlemagne
who took it over. This Germanic Papacy realised the ambitions of Charlemagne
and in c. 1054 completed the Germanic Schism, cutting off the West from
the Church until the present day.
THE
FOURTH DAY OF WESTERN HISTORY c. 1050 - c. 1300
The
period around the year 1050 was a watershed in Western History, a revolution
in World History, as the German Church historian Tellenbach has called
it. It was the beginning of a new 'Judeo-Christian' West, called 'Catholic'.
It was an arrogant, Scholastic, imperialistic West, which reached its
apogee under Pope Innocent III (1198-1216). This new Aristotelian West
set out to conquer the world through 'Crusades' and the persecutions and
massacres of Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, Cathars and any other
'dissidents'.
The
crimes of this period are well-known to history, culminating in their
barbarian sack of the Christian Capital in Constantinople in 1204. The
fatal weakening of Christian countries by this anti-Christian West was
later to lead to the occupation of south-eastern Europe by Muslims for
some 400 years. These are events for which the West has still not repented,
lying and lieing like a curse across Western history. They lie behind
the whole history of the twentieth century, as in its refusal to repent,
the ethnocentric West continues to persecute Orthodox Christians, Jews
and Muslims alike.
THE
FIFTH DAY OF WESTERN HISTORY c. 1300 - c. 1550
Such
evil wrought by the West could not last. As a result of its lack of repentance,
the West was swept in the late fourteenth century by the Black Death which
killed over a third of Western people. A time of great change began with
a Western Schism, presaging others more serious. A movement of repaganisation
began, known as the Renaissance, a new appreciation of pagan culture and
values. Technological changes, including the invention of printing, disseminated
new philosophies.
New
movements dissenting from Rome, arose, especially in Bohemia with Hus,
but also in Holland with the Lollards and in England with Wyclif. They
were savagely repressed, but were to spread to all the Germanic North.
This period ended in the first half of the sixteenth century with Luther
and his followers and the division of the West into countless protesting
sects. The so-called 'Reformation' which largely concerned the Germanic
northern half of Western Europe was attractive to the rulers of the north.
It meant that they could take over the power of the Catholic Popes, becoming
absolute rulers by divine authority, as they imagined, as the Popes had
imagined before them. This movement was to set the West on the path to
the atheism of modern times.
THE
SIXTH DAY OF WESTERN HISTORY c. 1550 - c. 1800
Now
began a period of 'Wars of Religion', which quite naturally led to the
atheist movement of discovery and 'science', leading to the beginnings
of the Industrial Revolution. It also saw the Age of 'Reason', the so-called
'Enlightenment' of 'Neo-Classicism', the renewal of Greek and Roman paganism,
which had slaughtered the Orthodox martyrs of Rome and all the Orthodox
West of the first centuries. This age saw the concentration of power in
the hands of absolute monarchs, called therefore 'absolutists'.
By
reaction this in turn culminated in the Freemasons' French Revolution
with its two million deaths in wars, genocides and atheism. To this day
France has still not recovered from those events which provided a model
for all other atheist revolutions around the world. To this day France
still venerates in its Capital the ghastly remains of the result of its
Revolution, Napoleon. Unlike Chalemagne, he crowned himself, snatching
his diadem from the hands of his imprisoned Pope. One of the most bloodthirsty
demons in the history of the Western world, he became a model for all
later tyrants.
THE
SEVENTH DAY OF WESTERN HISTORY c. 1800 - c. 2050
The
nineteenth century lay the foundations for subsequent industrial development
throughout the Western and Westernised world. Its theories of progress,
its naive and superstitious belief in the all-saving powers of science
and technology, its disbelief in God and therefore God's creation, man
and the environment, led to the westernisation of the world.
'Humanist'
but in fact man-hating, this modern, but in fact archaic and neo-pagan,
'democratic' West spread through its blood-soaked Empires, World Wars
and genocides. The Western philosophies of Capitalism, Fascism, Communism
and Freudism, that is, institutional greed, hatred, envy and lust, the
Concentration Camp, the Atom Bomb, mass abortion and the threat of holocaust,
were thus globalised. They lead us to the present day; the barbarians
have re-entered the city.
CONCLUSION:
THE END OF HISTORY?
With
globalisation in place, some have spoken of the end of history. But history
can only truly come to an end if the world comes to an end. This of course
is possible. Perhaps the seventh age of Western history, now become World
history, is indeed soon to come to an end, as the West drives itself to
the self-destruction of its Apocalypse. Thus the seventh day will be followed
by the eighth day, that is eternity.
But
perhaps this is not to be, perhaps the West will repent by returning to
the way of thought and way of life of its saints of the first centuries,
those who at present it so denies and despises. The eighth day will then
be preceded first by a period of repentance and return to the Orthodox
bases of Western civilisation. It is these bases which have for so long
been forgotten and buried by the West and yet haunt it as a ghost haunts
the guilty conscience of one who has killed his own father. In its parricide,
the West is like unto the Prodigal Son who still wavers and falters in
repentance and as yet prefers to dine with swine.
The
choice then is clear: Apocalypse or Repentance.
Fr
Andrew Phillips
St
Joannicus the Great
4/17 November 2003
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