The Orthodox Church holds Holy Scripture as the highest and ultimate authority. It became quite clear, quite early that Scripture was easily twisted and perverted. The guardians and teachers needed more than words on paper.
Their connection to the Apostles was what established their bona fides. So a Bishop could say "I teach the interpretation that Polycarp who was taught by John taught."
If there are two different interpretations and both say they are right and the Holy Spirit confirmed it to them and their opponent is of the devil...what then?
Therefore, Ignatius' admonition that nothing be done without the Bishop.
The Orthodox Church holds Holy Scripture as the highest and ultimate authority. It became quite clear, quite early that Scripture was easily twisted and perverted. The guardians and teachers needed more than words on paper. No they didn't because if the words on paper, which are unchanging and people can go back and reference any time there is a dispute, are not reliable because they can (allegedly) be twisted and perverted, whatever possesses anyone to think that tradition, word of mouth, is any more reliable? Or is even reliable enough to depend on?
If the written word is not reliable enough to depend on, certainly neither is the spoken word passed on down through the centuries and millennia.
The guardians and teachers needed more than words on paper.
Assuming these guardians and teachers were "the ones," which is in the nature of a circular argument. To test that idea, lets try a thought experiment. What if the "guardians" decided they really needed to rein in those older parishioners who were so demanding on their adult childrens' financial resources they were depleting the church treasuries. Matters are further complicated by the fact that the sacred text actually has a rule that seems to support these greedy old folks. One day one of the clerics comes up with a brilliant idea. If we just let the people know that gifts to the church belong to the church and can't be given to those pernicious old fogies, then the gifts will come rolling in and the coffers will be full once again.
Well, everybody loved that idea, except the elderly parents, but they were biased of course. And how could it be wrong? These were the divinely appointed guardians of the sacred text. They had their family tree right in the sacred text! And therefore if they said the words on the page were not enough, even if they were God's own words, why then they just had to be right. And because they were right, that proved that more was needed than just God speaking. They deserved to be heard too.
Then one day an itinerant preacher came along and started messing with the system. He actually had the nerve to say that these protective traditions, so thoughtfully developed by the true guardians, and only to preserve the truth, were more of a problem than a help, that they ended up neutralizing the rules in the sacred text. But by what authority could he say such things? He was not a guardian. He was not even from the right family. It was almost like he wanted to start from scratch, dumping all that hard work the guardians did, only to protect the truth.
So you know this story, right? Corban? It really happened (with some artistic license for the dialog). When mere continuity of men becomes a substitute for continuity of the truth, you are going to end up, no matter how well intended, relocating the seat of authority. If leadership in the church serves any purpose at all, it is to prepare people for their own relationship with God, not to become a proxy for that relationship. That entails empowering people to know and understand the word of God, so that those "words on the page" leap off the page and into the hearts and minds of the faithful, providing every believer with their own personal shield against error, and their own brightly burning lamp of divine truth, which is not their own, but is a faithful copy of the Gospel truth held in common by all who believe.
Isa 8:19-20 And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? (20) To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
Peace,
SR