Eastern Orthodox Ecclesiology: against false unions [my title]

The commotion about union of the churches makes evident the ignorance existing as much among the circles of the simple faithful as among the theologians as to what the Church is.

They understand the catholicity of the Church as a legal cohesion, as an interdependence regulated by some code. For them the Church is an organization with laws and regulations like the organizations of nations. Bishops, like civil servants, are distinguished as superiors and subordinates: patriarchs, archbishops, metropolitans, bishops. For them, one diocese is not something complete, but a piece of a larger whole: the autocephalous church or the patriarchate. But the autocephalous church, also, feels the need to belong to a higher head. When external factors of politics, history, or geography prevent this, a vague feeling of weak unity and even separation circulates through the autocephalous churches.

Such a concept of the Church leads directly to the Papacy. If the catholicity of the Church has this kind of meaning, then Orthodoxy is worthy of tears, because up to now she has not been able to discipline herself under a Pope.

But this is not the truth of the matter. The catholic Church which we confess in the Symbol (Creed) of our Faith is not called catholic because it includes all the Christians of the earth, but because within her everyone of the faithful finds all the grace and gift of God. The meaning of catholicity has nothing to do with a universal organization the way the Papists and those who are influenced by the Papist mentality understand it.

Of course, the Church is intended for and extended to the whole world independent of lands, nations, races, and tongues; and it is not an error for one to name her catholic because of this also. But just as humanity becomes an abstract idea, there is a danger of the same thing happening to the Church when we see her as an abstract, universal idea. In order for one to understand humanity well, it is enough for him to know only one man, since the nature of that man is common to all men of the world.

Similarly, in order to understand what the catholic Church of Christ is, it suffices to know well only one local church. And as among men, it is not submission to a hierarchy which unites them but their common nature, so the local churches are not united by the Pope and the Papal hierarchy but by their common nature.

A local Orthodox church regardless of her size or the number of the faithful is by herself alone, independently of all the others, catholic. And this is so because she lacks nothing of the grace and gift of God. All the local churches of the whole world together do not contain anything more in divine grace than that small church with few members.

She has her presbyters and bishop; she has the Holy Mysteries; she has the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Within her any worthy soul can taste of the Holy Spirit's presence. She has all the grace and truth. What is she lacking therefore in order to be catholic? She is the one flock, and the bishop is her shepherd, the image of Christ, the one Shepherd. She is the prefiguring on earth of the one flock with the one Shepherd, of the new Jerusalem. Within her, even in this life, pure hearts taste of the Kingdom of God, the betrothal of the Holy Spirit. Within her they find peace which "passeth all understanding," the peace which has no relation with the peace of men: "My peace I give unto you."

"Paul, called to be an Apostle of Jesus Christ ... to the Church of God which is at Corinth ...." Yes, it really was the Church of God, even if it was at Corinth, at one concrete and limited place.

This is the catholic Church, something concrete in space, time, and persons. This concrete entity can occur repeatedly in space and in time without ceasing to remain essentially the same.

Her relations with the other local churches are not relations of legal and jurisdictional interdependence, but relations of love and grace. One local church is united with all the other local Orthodox churches of the world by the bond of identity. Just as one is the Church of God, the other is the Church of God also, as well as all the others. They are not divided by boundaries of nations nor the political goals of the countries in which they live. They are not even divided by the fact that one might be ignorant of the other's existence. It is the same Body of Christ which is partaken of by the Greeks, the Negroes of Uganda, the Eskimos of Alaska, and the Russians of Siberia. The same Blood of Christ circulates in their veins. The Holy Spirit enlightens their minds and leads them to the knowledge of the same truth.

There exist, of course, relations of interdependence between the local churches, and there are canons which govern them. This interdependence, though, is not a relation of legal necessity, but a bond of respect and love in complete freedom, the freedom of grace. And the canons are not laws of a code, but wise guides of centuries of experience.

The Church has no need of external bonds in order to be one. It is not a pope, or a patriarch, or an archbishop which unites the Church. The local church is something complete; it is not a piece of a larger whole.

Besides, the relations of the churches are relations of churches, and not relations which belong exclusively to their bishops. A bishop cannot be conceived of without a flock or independent of his flock. The Church is the bride of Christ. The Church is the body of Christ, not the bishop alone.

A bishop is called a patriarch when the church of which he is the shepherd is a patriarchate, and an archbishop when the church is an archdiocese. In other words, the respect and honor belongs to the local church, and by extension it is rendered to its bishop. The Church of Athens is the largest and, today, most important local church of Greece. For this reason the greatest respect belongs to her, and she deserves more honor than any other church of Greece. Her opinion has a great bearing, and her role in the solution of common problems is the most significant. That is why she is justly called an archdiocese. Consequently, the bishop of that church, because he represents such an important church is a person equally important and justly called an archbishop. He himself is nothing more than an ordinary bishop. In the orders of priesthood—the deacon, the presbyter, and the bishop—there is no degree higher than the office of the bishop. The titles metropolitan, archbishop, patriarch, or pope do not indicate a greater degree of ecclesiastical charism, because there is no greater sacramental grace than that which is given to the bishop. They only indicate a difference in prominence of the churches of which they are shepherds.

This prominence of one church in relation to the others is not something permanent. It depends upon internal and external circumstances. In studying the history of the Church, we see the primacy of prominence and respect passing from church to church in a natural succession. In Apostolic times, the Church of Jerusalem, without any dispute, had the primacy of authority and importance. She had known Christ; she had heard His words; she saw Him being crucified and arising; and upon her did the Holy Spirit first descend. All who were in a communion of faith and life with her were certain that they walked the road of Christ. This is why Paul, when charged that the Gospel which he taught was not the Gospel of Christ, hastened to explain it before the Church of Jerusalem, so that the agreement of that church might silence his enemies (Gal. 2:1-2).

Later, that primacy was taken by Rome, little by little. It was the capital of the Roman Empire. A multitude of tried Christians comprised that church. Two leading Apostles had lived and preached within its bounds. A multitude of Martyrs had dyed its soil with their blood. That is why her word was venerable, and her authority in the solution of common problems was prodigious. But it was the authority of the church and not of her bishop. When she was asked for her view in the solution of common problems, the bishop replied not in his own name as a Pope of today would do, but in the name of his church. In his epistle to the Corinthians, St. Clement of Rome begins this way: "The Church of God which is in Rome, to the Church of God which is in Corinth." He writes in an amicable and supplicatory manner in order to convey the witness and opinion of his church concerning whatever happened in the Church of Corinth. In his letter to the Church of Rome, St. Ignatius the God-bearer does not mention her bishop anywhere, although he writes as though he were addressing himself to the church which truly has primacy in the hierarchy of the churches of his time.

When St. Constantine transferred the capital of the Roman state to Byzantium, Rome began gradually to lose her old splendor. It became a provincial city. A new local church began to impose itself upon the consciousness of the Christian world: the Church of Constantinople. Rome tried jealously to preserve the splendor of the past, but because things were not conducive to it, it developed little by little its well-known Papal ecclesiology in order to secure theoretically that which circumstances would not offer. Thus it advanced from madness to madness, to the point where it declared that the Pope is infallible whenever he speaks on doctrine, even if because of sinfulness he does not have the enlightenment of sanctity the Fathers of the Church had.

The Church of Constantinople played the most significant role throughout the long period of great heresies and of the Ecumenical Councils, and in her turn she gave her share of blood with the martyrdom of thousands of her children during the period of the Iconoclasts.

Besides these churches which at different times had the primacy of authority, there were others which held the second or third place. They were the various patriarchates, old or new, and other important churches or metropolises. There exists, therefore, a hierarchy, but a hierarchy of churches and not of bishops. St. Irenaeus does not advise Christians to address themselves to important bishops in order to find the solution to their problem, but to the churches which have the oldest roots in the Apostles (Adv. Haer. III, 4, 1).

There are not, therefore, organizational, administrative, or legal bonds among the churches, but bonds of love and grace, the same bonds of love and grace which exist among the faithful of every church, clergy or lay. The relationship between presbyter and bishop is not a relationship of employee and employer, but a charismatic and sacramental relationship. The bishop is the one who gives the presbyter the grace of the priesthood. And the presbyter gives the layman the grace of the Holy Mysteries. The only thing which separates the bishop from the presbyter is the charism of ordination. The bishop excels in nothing else, even if he be the bishop of an important church and bears the title of patriarch or pope. "There is not much separating them [the presbyters] and the bishops. For they too are elevated for the teaching and protection of the Church .... They [the bishops] surpass them only in the power of ordination, and in this alone they exceed the presbyters" (Chrysostom, Hom. XI on I Tim.).

Bishops have no right to behave like rulers, not only towards the other churches but also towards the presbyters or laymen of the church of which they are bishop. They have a responsibility to Oversee in a paternal way, to counsel, to guide, to battle against falsehood, to adjure transgressors with love and strictness, to preside in love. But these responsibilities they share with the presbyters. And the presbyters in turn look upon the bishops as their fathers in the priesthood and render them the same love.

All things in the Church are governed by love. Any distinctions are charismatic distinctions. They are not distinctions of a legal nature but of a spiritual authority. And among the laymen there are charisms and charisms.

The unity of the Church, therefore, is not a matter of obedience to a higher authority. It is not a matter of submission of subordinates to superiors. External relations do not make unity, neither do the common decisions of councils, even of Ecumenical Councils. The unity of the Church is given by the communion in the Body and Blood of Christ, the communion with the Holy Trinity. It is a liturgical unity, a mystical unity.

The common decisions of an Ecumenical Council are not the foundation but the result of unity. Besides, the decisions of either an ecumenical or local council are valid only when they are accepted by the consciousness of the Church and are in accord with the Tradition.

The Papacy is the distortion par excellence of Church unity. It made that bond of love and freedom a bond of constraint and tyranny. The Papacy is unbelief in the power of God and confidence in the power of human systems.

But let no one think that the Papacy is something which exists only in the West. In recent times it has started to appear among the Orthodox too. A few novel titles are characteristic of this spirit, for example, "Archbishop of all Greece," "Archbishop of North and South America." Many times we hear people say of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the "leader of Orthodoxy," or we hear the Russians speaking of Moscow as the third Rome and its patriarch as holding the reins of the whole of Orthodoxy. In fact, many sharp rivalries have begun. All these are manifestations of the same worldly spirit, the same thirst for worldly power, and belong to the same tendencies which characterize the world today.

People cannot feel unity in multiplicity. Yet this is a deep mystery. Our weakness or inability to feel it originates from the condition of severance into which the, human race has fallen. People have changed from persons into separated and hostile individuals, and it is impossible for them now to understand the deep unity of their nature. Man, however, is one and many; one in his nature, many in persons. This is the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and the mystery of the Church.

It is imperative that Christians realize that the Church has sacramental and not administrative foundations; then they will not suffer that which has happened to the Westerners who followed the Pope in his errors because they thought that if they did not follow him, they would automatically be outside the Church.

Today the various patriarchates and archdioceses undergo great pressures from political powers which seek to direct the Orthodox according to their own interests. It is known that the Patriarchate of Moscow accepts the influence of Soviet politics. But the Patriarchate of Constantinople also accepts the influence of American politics. It was under this influence that the contact of the Ecumenical Patriarchate with the similarly American-influenced, Protestant, World Council of Churches was brought about, and its servile disposition toward the Pope started to take on dangerous dimensions and even to exert over-bearing pressure upon the other Orthodox churches.

America thinks that it will strengthen the Western faction against communism if, with these artificial conciliations, it unifies its spiritual forces. But in this way the Church becomes a toy of the political powers of the world, with unforeseeable consequences for Orthodoxy.

Are the Orthodox people obliged to follow such a servile patriarchate forever? The fact that this patriarchate for centuries held the primacy of importance and honor in the Christian world cannot justify those who will follow it to a unifying capitulation with heresy. Rome also once had the primacy of importance and honor in the Christian world, but that did not oblige Christians to follow it on the road of heresy. The communion with and respect for one church on the part of the other churches remains and continues only as long as that church remains in the Church, that is, as long as it lives and proceeds in spirit and truth. When a patriarchate ceases to be a church, admitting communion with heretics, then its recognition on the part of the other churches ceases also.

The Orthodox people must become conscious of the fact that they owe no obedience to a bishop, no matter how high a title he holds, when that bishop ceases being Orthodox and openly follows heretics with pretenses of union "on equal terms." On the contrary, they are obliged to depart from him and confess their Faith, because a bishop, even if he be patriarch or pope, ceases from being a bishop the moment he ceases being Orthodox. The bishop is a consecrated person, and even if he is openly sinful, respect and honor is due him until synodically censured. But if he becomes openly heretical or is in communion with heretics, then the Christians should not await any synodical decision, but should draw away from him immediately.

Here is what the canons of the Church say on this: "... So that if any presbyter or bishop or metropolitan dares to secede from communion with his own patriarch and does not mention his name as is ordered and appointed in the divine mystagogy, but before a synodical arraignment and his [the patriarch's] full condemnation, he creates a schism, the Holy Synod has decreed that this person be alienated from every priestly function, if only he be proven to have transgressed in this. These rules, therefore, have been sealed and ordered concerning those who on the pretext of some accusations against their own presidents stand apart, creating a schism and severing the unity of the Church. But as for those who on account of some heresy condemned by Holy Synods or Fathers sever themselves from communion with their president, that is, because he publicly preaches heresy and with bared head teaches it in the Church, such persons as these not only are not subject to canonical penalty for walling themselves off from communion with the so-called bishop before synodical clarification, but they shall be deemed worthy of due honor among the Orthodox. For not bishops, but false bishops and false teachers have they condemned, and they have not fragmented the Church's unity with schism, but from schisms and divisions have they earnestly sought to deliver the Church" (Canon XV of the so-called First and Second Council).

Why dig up writings from the 5th century when you could go to liturgy in a church from the 5th century?

Very true. I just did that this morning. :-)

This is the part that is hard to convey, but one hopes comes across with time: Catholics excel at quoting the Fathers (and are often much better at it than we are), but we breathe them. You are right that scholasticism is precisely the point.

This does not mean that there isn't a place for deep and encyclopedic knowledge of the writings of the Fathers -- there is. But the kind of knowledge of the Fathers that matters is the knowledge that a spiritual father has, knowing how to apply the insights of the Fathers to one's salvation.

I am reminded of the story from the desert fathers in which a very learned man left the world and placed himself under an unlettered monk. When friends expressed surprise, he replied that this monk was fluent in a language of which he himself did not even know the alphabet...

Ecumenical Councils do not determine the truth. The truth exists and is articulated by God-seeing Fathers prior to any Council, and heresy is likewise identified as such, albeit it in an "unofficial" way, by the Church prior to the Council, which articulates the mind of the Church in a way that is as infallible as anything that is not Scripture can be.

This is how there can be gatherings of bishops that "decide" something, and yet have it be later rejected as a false council. It was false not because of technicalities about who was or wasn't there or what the procedures at the meeting were, but rather because what it "decided" was false.

Like Scripture, even the decrees of a Council must be interpreted in the light of the writings and mind of the Fathers.

There is also a second part to every Council: official canonical action both with regard to the heresy being addressed and with regard to other issues of the time.

It is not exactly true that no Ecumenical Council has declared on the Filioque. Councils of the Orthodox Church have done so, although unlike the Catholic church, we generally refrain from coming out and calling our subsequent councils "Ecumenical."

Also, since Rome cut herself off from the Orthodox Church prior to these councils, I am not certain that the Orthodox Church attempted in any of these to take canonical action against Rome. The circumspect nature of how the Orthodox Church has acted in this regard tends to reflect, in my opinion, the hope that Rome will someday return to Orthodox belief. The fact that the Orthodox never created an Orthodox Patriarch of Rome (even though their Catholic counterparts acted with no similar restraint) reflects this.

As my postings have indicated, the Orthodox Church has issued any number of statments, either by councils, from individual bishops, or from groups of bishops, that address the filioque and other issues. The Orthodox Church has been unequivocal that the filioque is theologically incorrect.

The Latins also added "God from God" to the Creed without "authorization." We Orthodox generally don't complain about the canonicity of this (even though this addition is also an inadmissible alteration of the Creed, from a canonical standpoint) and generally choose to ignore it because it is not heretical.

The filioque *is*, however, incorrect teaching. The doctrine of God is at the heart of all theology -- it is, in the truest sense of the word, the only thing truly worthy of the name "theology -- therefore this, not canonical and juridical details, is the fundamental reason that it cannot be overlooked.

Truth

Our notion of truth is presently under the spell of objectivization. Only what can be objectively verified is considered to be true, genuine, and trustworthy. The rulership of objective thinking, which plays itself out as science and technology, alienates and suffocates both the life of the spirit and the individual.

Truth has two meanings: there is truth as knowledge of reality, and truth as reality itself. (BE, 48)

Where shall we seek criteria of truth? All too often men seek these criteria in what is lower than truth, in the objective world with its compulsions, seek criteria for spirit in the material world. And they fall into a vicious circle. Discursive truth can provide no criteria for final truth: it is only at the half-way mark, and knows neither the beginning nor the end. Every proof rests upon the unproven, the postulate, the created. There is risk, and no guarantee. The very search for guarantee is wrong and really means subjecting the higher to the lower. Freedom of the spirit knows no guarantees. The sole criterion of truth is truth itself, the light which streams out of it. (BE, 49)

Truth has nothing to do with the objective world, but rather is related to spirit. Truth is something present and immediate.

Truth is the awakening of spirit in man, his communion with spirit. (BE, 48)

Truth is not of the world, but of the spirit: it is known only in transcending the objective world. Truth is the end of this objective world, it demands our consent to this end. (BE, 72)

Berdyaev on truth.

In 1054 you did. And today you disallow the possibility of the Latin bishops joining with the Greek to resolve the issue

What precisely happened in 1054? What were the "offenses" of the Greeks to warrant Pope Leo's (IX) excommunication of the EP? Was it his wounded pride that the Bishop of Constantinople assumed the name of the Imperial (Ecumenical) Patriarch. Imperial and Ecumenical were one and the same, and in the East, Constantinople is still referred to as the Imperial City.

The manner itself of the "excommunication" was indiciative of the way the Latin side behaved. Never mind the fact that the act itself was invalid because Leo IX was dead and Cardinal Humbert's authorty as the papal legate had expired.

As to disallowing Latin bishops to join us so as to resolve the issues, we have been talking for the last 30 or so years in case you hadn't noticed, and we have not progressed at all. We are not one iota closer, all the statements of brotherly and mutual respect notwithstanding.

That's because we have rehashed this a million times from 1054 onward and have gotten nowehere. Why can't you just live with that? Why do your Popes continue to make overtures without any concrete offers? Why not just lay down an offer and see if there are any takers and be done with it?

Agrarian was the one who focused it on the liturgy

Kolokotronis must be experiencing the same thing, even magnified, as I do. The Church Slavonic is simialr to what Old English might be to English speakers -- rusty but intelligible. Gramatically, it is the closest to Serbian (they both share 7 cases and an infintive that ends on "-i," as in pisati [to write] rather than pisat', as is commong in other Slavinc languages).

Thus listening to the Churhc Slavonic liturgy is like listening to your ancestors, knowing that they prayed in the same language and that makes the past seem perfectly alive and present, unchanging.

Petrosius, I am being forced here to get into territory I had hoped I would not need to penetrate, disagreement among contemporary Eastern hierarchs. Do you wish union with the Church or simply union with those hierarchs who will either agree with you or with whom you can construct an agreed statement of some sort? If the former, you can only have it through repentance. If the latter, Metropolitan John just may be your guy.
At the Council of Florence, because of the force of circumstances and the Erastian policy of the Byzantine Emperor, all of the attendees who stayed to the end - with but one exception(St. Mark of Ephesus) - finally caved in and agreed to all of the Latin demands and union was proclaimed with bells and whistles. Is that your desire? Another Florentine union? If so, it has already been accomplished with some of the Eastern jurisdictions.
But what happened after Florence? All of the bishops who agreed to the Latin demands were defrocked and sent back to the monasteries to live out the rest of their lives in shame. The Ecumenical Patriarch died in Florence and was there buried. A few, such as Metropolitan Bessarion, were paid off with Latin jurisdictions or red hats.
My point is that everything you have brought up has already been covered ad infinitum by others far wiser than me. The best and the brightest hashed all of this out at Florence. And the best of them all was St. Mark of Ephesus. Instead of beating your brains out against poor little old me, read the History of the Council of Florence by Ivan Ostroumoff. Then, and only then, if you still think you have something to say, say it.

But we could stop calling each other heretics (and mean it) and recognize that we are both orthodox according to our own theological languages.

That certainly sounds reasonable.

With that then there would be no reason we could not once again celebrate the liturgy together.

But there's a problem. So long as dogmatic differences exist, we are not united in faith and discipline.

Can you imagine how the tension level would rise in every liturgy as the words "Who proceeds from the Father" are spoken?

I'm sorry fellas, but as to co-celebrations of the Divine Liturgy, that's impossible. In fact, even joint prayers are impossible. Why, we do not even agree on the nature of the Godhead. Our differences as to ecclesiology generate differences as to Christology. Our differences as to the procession of the Holy Spirit generate differences as to Triadology. And so when we address the Holy Trinity, our prayers do not go at all in the same direction. One set goes to the Holy Trinity as it is and another to the "Holy Trinity" as the other person believes it to be. One set goes to God and the other to a demon. We can be polite and not call one another heretics, but this politeness masks a reality and, by doing so, encourages the party in error to think there is no problem. That does a disservice to him.

We can and should treat each other with respect, recognizing our commong roots, but we really have not much to talk about.

If I make an overture to someone it is because I want something from that person. The recepient of my overtures expects me to state exactly what I am offering. Thus, when the Roman Catholics continue to approach the Orthodox with overtures of reconciliation, we assume they have something to offer that will make reconciliantion a realistic possibility.

As soon as it becomes obvious that all they want is for the Orthodox to recognize the Pope as they see him, the Orthodox lose interest, because it is the same-old-same-old bait that has been thrown at us repeatedly, but someone always falls for it and starts negotiating until they too learn that this is the same old stale cracker they have thrown at us all along.

Let them list our "offenses" and we will list theirs. If neither side is willing to make mends on them -- and neither side is, trust me -- the overture is DOA.

We are not asking anyone to become Orthodox. If they are interested we tell them about it. Those who are ready to come back will come back with or without negotiations.

In the military they used to say "mind over matter -- I don't mind and they don't matter." It may not be the best PC statement but it's true.

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