Author: Subdeacon Nektarios Harrison, M.A.

Since the time of the holy apostles and the apostolic fathers, the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church has faced numerous threats of heresy posed by those who have strayed from doctrinal Orthodoxy and publicly promulgated false teachings. In the Scriptures handed down by the apostles of Christ, we find the true apostolic teaching and the proper response to those who preach ‘any other gospel.’ The apostles explicitly command us to “withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us” (2 Thessalonians 3:6). This apostolic injunction to avoid those who teach heresy—even if it were “an angel from heaven” (Galatians 1:8)—is consistently echoed by the patristic fathers in every century following the apostles of the first century.

Nevertheless, as we are warned in Scripture that “there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you” (2 Peter 2:1), the Orthodox Church continues to confront such false teachers and pseudo-bishops. These individuals, who preach another gospel, now advocate for remaining in communion with unrepentant public preachers of heresy. Under the guise of defending the faith against the pan-heresy of ecumenism, these false teachers present themselves as confessors of Holy Orthodoxy. However, their teaching—that communion must be maintained with heretics—represents a new heretical ecclesiology that is unprecedented in the tradition of the Orthodox Church and foreign to the teachings of the holy fathers.

This volume, The History of Resistance: From the Apostles to the Twentieth Century, provides a thorough chronological examination of the authentic Orthodox response to public heresy. Drawing upon Scripture, scriptural commentaries, the writings of the patristic fathers predating each Ecumenical Council, canonical texts and their interpretations, as well as liturgical sources, this book demonstrates conclusively that the Orthodox response to heretics has never been to remain in communion with them. Instead, the true Orthodox teaching has been to wall off from such false teachers and break eucharistic communion with them, thereby safeguarding the Church from the taint of their infectious heresy.