The Disreputable Gladiator

the isolated one who fights alone.
“In a free society we should welcome open and honest debate.”
​
Concerning the preposterous editorial written by George Michalopoulos: The Scandalous Nature of the Word “Archon” for a Christian Organization I thought I’d squelch a few of the many misnomers penned. There are too many errors, dozens of distractions and tangent ramblings to consider, but here it goes.

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First a bit about the author, George is a 60 years old pharmacist and a contributing editor to several tabloid style websites and blogs. He self-identifies as a monomachos (defined as one who fights alone) but I envision him listening to Tobey Keith enjoying his calf fries as he discharges on his blog. George’s main concern is “how and why the bishops and theologians of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America allowed the term Archon to be used in the first place. It seems inconceivable to George that trained theologians at the time of this organization’s inception were unaware of the full implications of this loaded word,” implying they were prompted by gnostic ideology. Let’s see if we can help George with this concern and review his silly anxieties.

Disinformation starts with his first exhortation and misleading innuendo, he says:

In the past, yours truly has taken issue with the order known as the Archons. Also known as the Knights of St Andrew, this lay order of business leaders and other eminences was created several decades ago as an auxiliary of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, with a special emphasis on absolute loyalty to the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

In fact, there is no order known as Archons. There is an Order of Saint Andrew the Apostle (www.archons.org) and we are Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It was known as the “Knights” for a few years in 1960s-70s but eventually, as the new Order coalesced into an organized brotherhood with more than a handful of members many things began to change in administration structure and protocols. What has never changed is the great honor it is to be bestowed an official ecclesial title (offikion) and cross. Similarly, the commitment we each hold for the first throne of Orthodoxy, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the beckoning to defend Orthodoxy in all arenas is inherent in our Order. The order is not an auxiliary of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese -whatever that implies, and the dog-whistle phrase ‘special emphasis on absolute loyalty’ is baseless and deleterious in an overtly obvious endeavor to get-a-rise out of constituents.

George continues:
This term [archon], however, is unfortunate in many respects. For one thing, it smacks of hubris in that its members are self-proclaimed leaders (archon in modern Greek means “leader”).

Archons are not self-proclaimed but honored by the Ecumenical Patriarch with the dignity of office. The only haughtiness seems to be emanating from the self-importance of the author’s pretentiousness. The modern Greek definition: ἄρχων, ἄρχοντος, ὁ (present participle of the verb ἄρχω) a ruler, commander, chief, leader, elder... refers to all sorts of leaders from government officials, organization heads, and modest families.

Secondly, it scandalizes Christian ears who are cognizant of what Christ Himself said about leaders: that they are “to be last”; to be the opposite of what is found in the gentile world, where “their leaders lord it over them” (Matt 20:25).

To a Christian of honest discernment, the term Archon appears several hundreds of times in the bible. “Strongs Concordence Usage: a ruler, governor, leader, leading man; with the Jews, an official member of the executive of the assembly of elders, it is even used referencing Jesus, ἄρχων τῶν βασιλέων τῆς γῆς. the ruler of the kings of the earth (Rev. 1:5)

There is however a third misgiving about this term, one which I’m afraid has escaped the notice of many Greek Orthodox Christians, hierarchs and priests as well as laymen. Specifically, that it has another more nefarious origin in Gnosticism, that is to say, that within that particular heresy, “archons” were terrifying cosmological entities which controlled the universe, all in the service of malevolent Demiurgos (“creator”).

At this point George goes completely off the rails into one of his many irrelevant peripheral tirades aimed at diverting attention and focus on the so-called demiurge, gnostic theologies, and all manner of non-vaginal coition trying to make his point. He would have done better to discuss the archons in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek episodes, archons in Thor comics, or the most famous archon of all, Jabba the Hutt an archon from Star Wars... Sorry George, but your trivial theories are as applicable as these.

What is astonishing in George’s undertaking to sow discord and dissent, he never mentions any relevant history attached to the Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. I addressed these relevant historical points in my book A History of Archons, which will soon be available in its second printing, fall 2019 (yes, that’s a plug).

He makes no reference to the archons of ancient Athenian Areopagus, the earliest aristocratic council of ancient Athens under Solon. Not a single mention of Saint Paul discussing the nature of the Christian God with the archons of the Areopagus. "Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands." (Acts 17:24)

George makes no reference to Constantine the Great, who in moving the Senate of Rome and combining it with the Archons of the Areopagus in Athens to Constantinople, created the brand-new Senate of the New Rome. No Mention of it. George makes no mention of the offikia (titles) established in Constantinople both ecclesiastical and administrative to run the Eastern Roman Empire and the Orthodox church. No mention of the thousands of archon saints from the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste in 320 AD to the many neo-martyrs after the fall of Constantinople.

He makes no mention of the importance and authority of Roman (Byzantine) archons for over two millennia. The impact of the “word archon” in the Eastern empire was so notable that Czar Peter utilized it to establish credibility in his empire, where in 1698 he established his own Knights of St Andrew and “the eminence of the Archons was now reflected in the court of the Czar.”

Of such influence and competence was the “scandalous word archon” that even the notorious Genghis Khan and his successors, the supreme rulers of the Turkish, Tartar, and Mongol peoples, even the emperors of China in the Middle Ages were all given the title (ar)Khan. As in every human endeavor there are good and bad personalities: politicians, lawyers, car repairmen, bakers, and yes even pharmacists!

George speaks of ethnocentric myopia but makes no mention of the reestablishment of the Russian archons in 1998 by Patriarch Pimen and the Russian Synod honoring the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of the Kiev-Rus. He makes no mention of the establishment of the Archons in Africa, the Order of St Mark by the Patriarch of Alexandria. George fixates with zeal and preoccupation of Gnosticism, as if its relevant to the conversation.

There is an unbroken lineage in the Great Church of Christ, the titles Protopsaltis, Protosygkelos and many others go back for well over a millennium. So, in 1966 when His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras and His Eminence Archbishop Iakovos (both of blessed memory) established the Brotherhood of Archons in the Western Hemisphere it was simply a continuation of an age-old Tradition of the Holy Orthodox Church. Axios!

Somehow or other George terminates his overblown gnostic rant by attacking the New Archbishop of America His Eminence Elpidophoros

“given the extreme Constantinopolitan supremacism that permeates the thought of the new Archbishop of the GOA, I for one, cannot see things being any different.”

As if anything George Michalopoulos theorizes is relevant to the Archons and or its etymological origins (yet again this and much more in my book A History of Archons), George panders to haters with the antipatriarchal propaganda and lie of “supremacy.”

I for one, favor the Constantinoplicentric permeations of His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros, a proven individual of accomplishments, a man of integrity, a pastor of the lost sheep, over the self-stimulating rants of an online lonely personality of destruction.
 
 
Diocles insisted that health requires an understanding
of the nature of the universe and its relationship to man.
 
Elias Damianakis
Hagiographos, Archon Maestor
The Great Church of Christ, Constantinople
www.orthodoxiconography.com
ArchonElias.com
[email protected]