Metropolitan of Pergamum: the debate between Catholics and Orthodox regarding the primacy.

«Catholics must take seriously the notion of the full Catholicity of the local Church promoted by Vatican Council II, and must apply it to their ecclesiology». Ioannis Zizioulas, Metropolitan of Pergamum, takes stock of the debate between Catholics and Orthodox regarding the primacy. Interview

Eminence, the question of primacy undoubtedly lies at the very heart of Roman Catholic-Orthodox relations. Orthodox theology, with regard to this issue, is not monolithic. Could you describe for us some of the basic criteria of distinctions between Orthodox theologians?

JOANNIS ZIZIOULAS. There are some Orthodox theologians, - in the past they were the majority - who attach primacy, every level of primacy, to the organization of Church, and say that what the Pope has asked regarding his primacy does not have a dogmatic content, so therefore it can be relativized. For them primacy is a canonical question not involving the faith. They don?t see any link between primacy and the nature of the Church. For them the office of primate is a matter of the bene esse and not of the esse of the Church.

ZIZIOULAS: Some other Orthodox theologians regard primacy in the Church as belonging to the Church?s esse, and not simply a matter of canonical order. They realise we cannot renounce the primacy without losing something essential to our faith. This shows that the subject of primacy is a question not only concerning the claims of the bishop of Rome, but also within the Orthodox Church itself.

ZIZIOULAS: One of the leading Orthodox theologians, the late Professor Ioannis Karmiris, wrote: «Because of the political importance of Rome and the apostolicity of this Church, as well as the martyrdom in it of the Apostles Peter and Paul and its distinction in works of love, service and mission, the bishop of Rome received from the Councils, the Fathers and the pious emperors – therefore by human and not divine order – a simple primacy of honor and order, as first among the equal presidents of the particular Churches». According to this view, the actual structure of primacies, the primacy of the Roman See included, is due simply to human and transitory factors. This means that the Church could exist without primacy, although she could not exist without bishops or synods, the latter being a reality of iure divino and part of the Church?s esse.

Orthodox theologians very often use the formula «primacy of honor and order». What does it mean?

ZIZIOULAS: When someone speaks of ?primacy of honor? he wants to exclude the right of the primate to exercise jurisdiction over the rest of the bishops. But it seems to be a rather ambiguous formula. There seems, in fact, not to exist, even in the Orthodox Church, ?a simple primacy of honor??

ZIZIOULAS: In the Orthodox Church, for example, in the absence of the Patriarch or during the vacancy of his throne there can be no episcopal elections or the performance of any ?canonical acts?. Can you then describe the primacy of the patriarch as ?a simple honorr??

ZIZIOULAS: The expression ?simple primacy of honour? is used to stress the fact that all bishops, from the Pope and the patriarchs down to the least of bishops are equal from the point of view of priesthood (hieratikós).

But this is a traditional principle for both Orthodox and Roman Catholics too?

ZIZIOULAS: With a fundamental difference between them however, namely that the Roman Catholics would apply this equality only to the level of sacramental grace which does not involve automatically the exercise of jurisdiction (the missio canonica), while the Orthodox would make no such distinction.

ZIZIOULAS: These positions seem to overlook certain facts present in the Orthodox tradition and faith too: the simple and obvious fact that synodality cannot exist without primacy. In Orthodox tradition there has never been and there can never be a synod or a council without a protos, or primus. If, therefore, synodality exists jure divino, primacy also must exist by the same right.

ZIZIOULAS: Alivisatos, for example, maintains that it is not necessary to have a permanent protos; primacy can be exercised by rotation. I think this position is very weak: primacy in the Church has never been exercised by rotation. It is attached to a particular office or ministry and to a particular person. Moreover, if we logically extend the application of rotation also within each autocephalous Church, this would mean the abolishment of the offices of patriarchs and metropolitans as permanent personal ministries?

Other Orthodox theologians appeal to democracy in their theological objections to the primacy?

ZIZIOULAS. Karmiris, for example, appeals to democracy as a characteristic of the Orthodox Church. But he explicitly identifies the Orthodox position with that of western Konziliarismus in his opposition to the primacy of the Pope: there can be no primacy in the Church because the highest authority, the real primus in the Church is the Council.

In order to find an exit from the current impasse, you said that new perspectives came during the period before and after Vatican Council II. Why?

ZIZIOULAS: The question that already dominated the discussions during the long period before the Council, when the leading figures of Congar, Rahner, Ratzinger, de Lubac and others paved the way to the theology of Vatican II, was whether the fullness of the Church, her catholicity, coincided with her universal structure or not.

ZIZIOULAS: Mainly to the so-called ?eucharistic ecclesiology? of the Russian theologian Nicolai Afanassieff, who formulated the axiom ?wherever the Eucharist is, there is the Church?. This meant that each local Church in which the Eucharist is celebrated should be regarded as the full and Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic theologians were influenced by this approach and, as a result, a theology of the local Church entered the documents of the Council.

ZIZIOULAS: The debate was led from the Orthodox side mainly by theologians of Russian origin who lived originally in Paris and some of whom later moved to America. Four of them - Afanassieff, Meyendorff, Schmemann and Koulomzine - produced a collective volume with the title The Primacy of Peter in the Orthodox Church (English edition, 1973). They started with the question: if each local Church is a ?catholic? Church, what need is there to speak of a universal primacy or even of a ?universal Church??

ZIZIOULAS: No. Afanassieff, for example, insists that universal ecclesiology is unknown in the ancient Church until Saint Cyprian. Following him, some Orthodox theologians argue that the universal Church is only an occasional phenomenon, happening when bishops and heads of local Churches meet together in councils. If there were no councils there would be no universal Church. There would only be communion in faith and sacramental communion, without any effect on structure.

ZIZIOULAS: Schmemann, for example, takes a different view. For him, the Church had also known a universal primacyof a jure divino character. «Primacy» he wrote, «is the necessary expression of the unity in faith and life of all local Churches».

ZIZIOULAS: For him Primacy was an inevitable requirement of the very existence of the Church in the world. «There has never been a time», he wrote, «when the Church did not recognise a certain order first of all among the apostles, then the bishops, and that in this order one apostle, Saint Peter, and later one bishop, heading a particular Church occupied the place of primate». He ventured to affirm that «the function of that one Bishop is to serve that unity on the world scale, just as the function of a regional primate is to be the agent of unity on a regional scale».

ZIZIOULAS: The Orthodox rejected universal primacy in the Church for non-theological as well as for theological reasons. After the great Schism, the Orthodox interpreted papal primacy as ecclesiastical imperialism. In modern times, Orthodox theologians oppose primacy in general as incompatible with the democratic ideas of modern society, thus allowing for non-theological arguments to decide a theological issue. But now, we have to ask if this is a correct opinion, from the point of view of Orthodox ecclesiology.

ZIZIOULAS: First of all, we must look to our tradition. As I said before, synods without primates have never existed in the Orthodox Church, and this indicates clearly that if synodality is a dogmatic necessity, so must primacy be also. This is precisely what the well-known 34th Canon of the Apostles explicitly states?

ZIZIOULAS. This canon of the IV century can be the golden rule of the theology of primacy. It requires that the protos is a conditio sine qua non for the synodal institution, and that the synod is in its turn equally a prerequisite for the exercise of primacy.

The fact that all synods have a primate means that ecumenical synods should also have a primus. This automatically implies universal primacy. On this basis, Orthodox theology could be ready to accept primacy at all levels of Church structure, including the universal one. The problem that remains for discussion in the context of theological dialogue between Roman Catholic and Orthodox is what kind of primacy we have in mind.

Which kind of primacy must be excluded, to promote reconciliation on this crucial issue?

ZIZIOULAS: The Orthodox cannot accept a pyramidal ecclesiology, where the titular of the universal primacy, instead of serving, subdues the local Church. Universal primacy can only function in relation to those who comprise the synod, and never in isolation, that is outside a reality of communion.

Why is it so important that all primacies (universal primacy included) should be exercised by the primate as Head of a local Church?

ZIZIOULAS: Primacy is not a legalistic notion implying the investment of a certain individual with power, but a form of diakonia. It implies also that this ministry reaches the entire community though the communion of the local Churches manifested through the bishops that constitute the council or synod. It is for this reason that the primate himself should be the head of a local Church, that is a bishop. As head of a local Church and not as an individual, this will serve the unity of the Church as a koinonia of full Churches and not as a ?collage? of incomplete parts of a universal Church. Primacy in this way will not undermine the integrity of any local Church.

Why don?t you consider the role of exegetical arguments related to the debate on primacy?

ZIZIOULAS: Biblical exegesis and history are an unsafe ground of rapprochement. Although Peter?s leading position among the Twelve is recognised more and more also by the Orthodox, the particular importance attached to him by the Roman Catholics is strongly disputed by them. The late Cardinal Yves Congar saw this very well. He wrote: «In the East, the authority of the See of Rome was never that of a monarchical prince [?]. The Body of Christ has no Head other than Christ himself [?]. Byzantine theologians very rarely relate the primacy of the See of Rome to the Apostle Peter, although authors of prestige like Maximus the Confessor or Theodor the Studite do, at times, say something to this effect...».

ZIZIOULAS: If we wait until Biblical scholars come to an agreement on the relationship between the role of Peter in the New Testament and the primacy exercised by the See of Rome, we may have to postpone the unity of the Church for another millennium, if not infinitely?

How do you judge the proposal of coming back to the model of relationships followed during the first millennium?

ZIZIOULAS: This way seems to me unrealistic, mainly because the Roman Catholic Church would not be prepared to eliminate her second millennium from history in order to unite with the Orthodox.

So, in your opinion what is a realistic common ground for common answers to such open questions?

ZIZIOULAS: For the future development of dialogue on this issue, it is of crucial importance that the Orthodox accept that primacy is part of the essence of the Church and not a matter of organization. They must also accept that there must be a Primacy on a universal level. This is difficult at the moment, but it would become easier if we thought more deeply about the nature of the Church. The Church cannot be local without being universal and cannot be universal if is not local.

ZIZIOULAS: Catholics must take seriously the notion of full catholicity of the local Church promoted at Vatican Council II, and must apply it to their ecclesiology. This means that every form of primacy at the universal level must reflect the local Church and must not intervene in the local Church without her consent. Every local Church, must have the possibility to affirm its own catholicity, in relation to the primacy. For this reason, I repeat, the golden rule for a correct exercise of primacy is the 34th Apostolic Canon.

But how is it possible that a real rapprochement can happen on the basis of a new theological thesis?

ZIZIOULAS: Acceptance of the Roman primacy would depend on whether we agree that the Church consists of full local Churches united into one Church without losing their ecclesial fullness. But this is not a theological ?innovation?. Father Congar believed that the papal primacy, in spite of monarchical tendencies prevailing at that time, was exercised within an ecclesiology of communion also in the West until about the sixteenth century, when the papacy succeeded in imposing monarchical primacy on the whole of the West. If that is the case, the return to such an ecclesiology of communion may not be such an unrealistic proposition.

One last question. You knew Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. What do you think the approach and contribution of the new Pope to these issues could be?

ZIZIOULAS: I had the honor and privilege of meeting the then Cardinal Ratzinger in the early eighties when we were members of the International Commission on the official Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. He is a great theologian and an expert in ecclesiology, both Western and Eastern. In his new capacity as Pope he can certainly contribute decisively to the convergence between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox understanding of primacy. In the past he made some important suggestions for the solution of this problem. It may prove to be providential that he is Pope at this crucial moment of the discussion of this matter.

Well, there you have it. Many of us have tried, and failed, to express what Orthodoxy means by primacy. +John has laid it out more clearly than I have ever seen it. One point which Roman Catholics reading this may not fully appreciate is the great influence that Russian theologians have had on this theory of primacy. Usually the Russian Church is seen as being terribly conservative and ontologically anti-Rome. It is not. Some years back, it was the Russian Church which felt most strongly that we allow inter-communion with Rome as a matter of economia, hardly an anti-Roman attitude. In some areas concerning validity of Roman sacraments, the Russian Church was the first to recognize their full validity. The present problems between Rome and Moscow rest solely on the matter of Uniatism and jurisdiction which is completely consistent with the ecclesiastical view advanced by +John.

Thanks so much for this piece which I think will help all of us interested in this issue come to a better understanding of the proper ecclesiology of The Church.

I am a Uniate who has thought long and hard about becoming Orthodox. I love the Orthodox Church and its spirituality, but my stumbling block about becoming Orthodox has been its lack of coherency.

I frequently feel you can get as many opinions about what is Orthodox as there are Orthodox people.

If Catholics want to be ecumenical with anyone, it should be the Orthodox or at least the traditionally-minded Anglo-Catholics because we share more in common with them than the Protestants.

I just wish the pope would abolish the Eastern congregation and let the Eastern Churches be self-governing without his interference.

Melkite Metropolitan Elias Zoghby's proposal that Rome declare its "Ecumenical Councils" of the second millenium to have been General Councils of the Western Church makes a lot of sense to me.

We need a new ecumenical council with the Orthodox Churches, Eastern, Oriental and Assyrian to negotiate an end to the schism and solve our previous problems.

"I just wish the pope would abolish the Eastern congregation and let the Eastern Churches be self-governing without his interference."

Good idea. You may live to see this come to pass.

"Melkite Metropolitan Elias Zoghby's proposal that Rome declare its "Ecumenical Councils" of the second millenium to have been General Councils of the Western Church makes a lot of sense to me."

+Elias is quite a guy and very Orthodox in his rather vocal Orthodox stances on ecclesiology. He is spot on with this comment about the ecumenicity of the post schism councils of the Western Church.

"We need a new ecumenical council with the Orthodox Churches, Eastern, Oriental and Assyrian to negotiate an end to the schism and solve our previous problems."

Ultimately, this will have to happen before there is any reunion.

Primacy withing synodality -- yes. That has been the case in the Undivided Church as well. The nature of that primacy was more that of an essential honor than of jurisdiction.

If the Church is where the Eucharist is, then every church with valid priesthood is a catholic church, with or without a pope or a patriarch. Obviously, the need for primacy is, as +Ioannis points out, in synodal matters.

Of course, agreement on the nature of the primacy in the Church is only one hurdle -- full communion cannot take place, whether we agree on the role of the "universal primate" or not, until our theologies become identical.

Kolokotrnis, I must say that between all of us Orthodox here we have said pretty much the same thing, but much less skillfully then +Ionanis.

Your comments about the Russian Church and its past history of often being more open to a more "flexible" approach to the non-Orthodox are correct.

This is perhaps best seen in the context of a tendency that has been commented on by some scholars of the Orthodox world: i.e. that the more secure a particular part of the Orthodox Church is, the more flexible it can afford to be.

The Russian Church was not flexible during the Tartar yoke, but reached a zenith of flexibility at the height of the power and reach of the Russian empire. It's flexibility again contracted after the fall of the czars, then expanded at the height of strength of the Soviet Union. It has again contracted during these economically and politically uncertain times after the breakup of the Soviet state.

Similar things were apparently true of the Greek-speaking Church: e.g. much more flexible during the powerful days of the Byzantine empire than it was under the Turkish yoke.

This can be seen as vacillating, but it is not -- it is a reflection of the fact that appropriate economia varies from place to place and age to age. The Russian Church never recognized the "validity" of Western sacraments in the sense that Western theologians think about the concept of "validity." To the extent that they did or do, this was and is the reflection of a Western captivity of thought.

The question is not whether non-Orthodox sacraments are considered to be "valid," but how a particular part of the Orthodox Church will, through the exercise of economia, treat non-Orthodox approaching the Orthodox Church desiring reception into communion or pastoral ministry of some sort.

"The Russian Church never recognized the "validity" of Western sacraments in the sense that Western theologians think about the concept of "validity." To the extent that they did or do, this was and is the reflection of a Western captivity of thought.

The question is not whether non-Orthodox sacraments are considered to be "valid," but how a particular part of the Orthodox Church will, through the exercise of economia, treat non-Orthodox approaching the Orthodox Church desiring reception into communion or pastoral ministry of some sort."

Actually, as recently as the early 90s, it was the Russian theologians who were calling for the allowance not only of non-Orthodox Catholics to receive the Mysteries from our priests but also vice versa. Such a ermission would have been, admittedly an exercise of a sort of blanket economia, but not because of any questions about the validity of the Western Church's sacraments but rather because of the fact of the schism. As we know, that didn't happen because the Churches of Orthodoxy didn't agree, but the fact is that the validity of the sacraments was not in question. Previous to this, the Russian Church was the first, I believe, to recognize the validity of Western Rite marriages and thus dispensing with the necessity of re-marriage of converts.

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Synodality cannot exist without primacy. In Orthodox tradition there has never been and there can never be a synod or a council without a protos, or primus. If, therefore, synodality exists jure divino, primacy also must exist by the same right.