On guarding against books containing false teachings

Again, I bring you, faithful son of the Eastern Church, a word of unfalse and good advice. This word is not mine: it is the word of the Holy Fathers. From them comes all my advice. Guard your mind and heart from false teaching. Do not speak about Christianity with people infected with false teachings; do not read books about Christianity written by false teachers. Truth is found in the company of the Holy Spirit: He is the Spirit of Truth. Lies are accompanied and aided by the spirit of the devil, who is a liar and the father of lies.

He who reads the books of false teachers undoubtedly enters into fellowship with the cunning and dark spirit of lies. Do not let this seem strange and unbelievable to you: thus say the luminaries of the Church, the Holy Fathers. If nothing is written in your mind and soul, let the Truth and the Spirit write in them the commandments of God and His spiritual teaching. If you have allowed yourself to completely scribble the tablets of your soul with various unspiritual thoughts and impressions, without paying attention with wisdom and caution: “Who is the writer, what does he write?”, cleanse those written by foreign writers, cleanse through repentance and the rejection of everything that is contrary to God. Let only the finger of God write on your tablets. Prepare for this writer a pure mind and heart, living with piety and all wisdom: then, as you pray and read the holy books, the law of the Spirit will be written on the tablets of your soul unnoticed and in a mysterious way.

You are not permitted to read other books on religion than those written by the Holy Fathers of the Eastern Catholic Church. This is what the Eastern Church requires of its sons. And if you think otherwise and consider the commandment of the Church to be less well-founded than your own and others’ opinions, then you are no longer a son of the Church, but its judge. Do you call me limited, insufficiently enlightened, a rigorist? Leave me in my limitations and other shortcomings: I would rather remain, with all these shortcomings, a son of the Eastern Church, than, having all the apparent qualities, make myself smarter than her and, as such, allow myself to disobey her and separate from her. The true sons of the Eastern Church will be pleased with my voice. They know that he who wants to receive heavenly wisdom must reject his earthly wisdom, no matter how great it may be, lay it aside, cut it off, recognize it as foolishness, as it actually is (I Cor. III, 19).

Earthly wisdom is enmity against God: it does not submit to the law of God, nor can it (Rom. VIII, 7). From the beginning, this has been its nature; thus it will remain until the end, when the earth and the things on it, and with them earthly wisdom, will be burned up (II Pet. III, 10). The Holy Church permits the reading of heretical books only to those of its members who have their minds and feelings of the heart healed and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, who can always distinguish between true good and evil that pretends to be good and hides itself under the guise of truth.

The great and well-pleasing men of God, who knew the common impotence of all men, were terrified by the poison of heresy and falsehood. Therefore, they shunned with all zeal the company of men infected with false doctrines and the reading of heretical books. Having before their eyes the fall of the learned Origen, the quarrelsome Arius, the eloquent Nestorius, and others rich in the wisdom of this world, who perished because of self-confidence and self-esteem, they sought salvation and found it in fleeing from false doctrines, in obedience to the Church, even in the smallest details.

The shepherds and teachers, the bearers of the Spirit and saints of the Church, did not read the writings of the heretics who blasphemed God unless compelled by the inescapable need of the entire Christian community. By their powerful word, the spiritual word, they burned away the errors; they announced to all the children of the Church the danger hidden in the heretical writings under the beautiful names of holiness and piety. But you and I must absolutely guard ourselves against reading the books composed by false teachers. Anyone who wrote about Christ, about the Christian faith and spirituality without being a member of the Eastern Church, the only holy one, bears the name of a false teacher.

Tell me, how is it possible to allow yourself to read any book, when every book you read carries you wherever it wants, persuades you to believe in everything for which it needs your consent, to reject everything that it needs you to reject? Experience shows how disastrous the consequences of reading without proper consideration are. Among the sons of the Eastern Church, how many ideas about Christianity can we not encounter that are the most confused, the most erroneous, the most contrary to the teaching of the Church, the most defamatory?

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov

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