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).

One would expect that if the apostolic tradition was to use unleavened bread, the practice would have persisted in large parts of the East.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Against the Greeks it suffices to call attention to the historical fact that in the Orient the Maronites and Armenians have used unleavened bread from time immemorial, and that according to Origen (In Matt., XII, n. 6) the people of the East "sometimes", therefore not as a rule, made use of leavened bread in their Liturgy.

"the canon of Trullo has no more authority over the Catholic Church than the decrees of the Robber Council of Ephesus."

Orthodox Christians regard the Council in Trullo as a continuation of the Fifth Ecumenical Council, for which reason it is also called the Quinisext Council. For Orthodox Christians, therefore, the Council in Trullo is God inspired and not open to question.

My point is simply that Canon 32 is clear evidence of the liturgical Tradition of the Church and it provides implicit evidence as to the non-employment of azymes in the liturgy. It is apparent, to me at least, that the original liturgical use at Rome, call it the Liturgy of St. Peter if you will, was derived from the Liturgy of St. James and it did not employ azymes.

Here is the article: The Conciliar nature of the Orthodox Church:

Using Paul’s image of the body of Christ, Cyprian developed the idea that fullness and unity are attributes of the whole church, and each local manifestation is merely a member or part of that whole, not itself possessing catholicity. The Catholic Church is the sum of its parts, like the branches of a tree.
But universal ecclesiology is not the only means to Christian unity, and it was not the pattern of the primitive church. This was eucharistic ecclesiology. In the early centuries, every local church was autonomous and independent. This was not just historical circumstance; it was a doctrinal assertion that the eucharist assembly constituted the church. The Universal Church idea, when it took hold, represented a change in both circumstance and doctrine. Recent Orthodox theology has sought to reclaim eucharistic ecclesiology as being more authentically Orthodox and more suitable to a conciliar church.

I am glad to hear that not all Orthodox hold these strange ideas about how there is no universal Church.

his words do lead to the idea of an "invisible" Church that is not identical to the visible Church

Hardly. St. Cyprian would simply say that anyone who dies outside the visible church is damned.

Agreed. The Orthodox Churches, however, are not the Church. They can only be in the Church when they return to Catholic Unity and the communion of the Apostolic See:

The first condition of salvation is to keep the norm of the true faith and in no way to deviate from the established doctrine of the Fathers. For it is impossible that the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, who said, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church,", should not be verified. And their truth has been proved by the course of history, for in the Apostolic See the Catholic religion has always been kept unsullied. ...
Following, as we have said before, the Apostolic See in all things and proclaiming all its decisions, we endorse and approve all the letters which Pope St Leo wrote concerning the Christian religion. And so I hope I may deserve to be associated with you in the one communion which the Apostolic See proclaims, in which the whole, true, and perfect security of the Christian religion resides. I promise that from now on those who are separated from the communion of the Catholic Church, that is, who are not in agreement with the Apostolic See, will not have their names read during the sacred mysteries. ...
I have signed this, my profession, with my own hand, and I have directed it to you, Hormisdas, the holy and venerable pope of Rome. (Formula of Pope St. Hormisdas, 519 AD)

The Scripture says that he took "artos" and broke it. Keep in mind that the Church in the Greek-speaking world was made up of those who (gasp) spoke Greek and who lived in the near East.

One would expect that if the apostolic tradition was to use unleavened bread, the practice would have persisted in large parts of the East.

You mean like in Armenia?

The problem is more one of philosophical terminology than of faith, as some modern Greeks, otherwise very polemical, such as Fr. Romanides, have stated flatly that the filioqe can be understood in an Orthodox manner

Hermann, "understanding" and accepting are two different things. Just because I undersyand you doesn't mean that I accept what you are saying. That's pretty basic, or are you just obfuscating the issue?

Fr. Romanides does, however, reject the Florentine 'filioque' as explicitly heretical. Some modern Orthodox seem to be moving towards a view that says that the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son, but energetically and not hypostatically. This has the advantage of allowing the Orthodox to accept many of the patristic texts from the Western Fathers which they used to reject, but it seems to be a kind of innovation since the filioque was formerly condemned as unambiguously heretical by Photius and Mark. I have stated before that once Orthodox can agree that the following statement of St. Basil, Against Eunomius, is orthodox, then we will be agreed on the 'filioque', in meaning if not in words:

Even if the Holy Spirit is third in dignity and order, why need he be third also in nature? For that he is second to the Son, having his being from him and receiving from him and announcing to us and being completely dependent on him, pious tradition recounts; but that his nature is third we are not taught by the Saints nor can we conclude logically from what has been said ... the Holy Spirit is behind the Son in order and dignity, ...

Mark of Ephesus insisted that this was a forgery, along with the writings of the Western Fathers, but modern scholarship, as well as Cardinal Bessarion's own research after the Council, has shown that the Latins at Florence were right on this issue.

"Even if the Holy Spirit is third in dignity and order..."

For St. Basil to say that would mean that he is a heretic; so a forgery is a more logical conclusion. The Orthodox never considered the Spirit as "third" in anything; what "order" are you talking about -- eternally? The Orthodox hold that the Trinity is simultaneous and homoousious. Inserting order and degrees of dignity into one and the same Godly nature is like saying that your heart is more important than your lungs!

For St. Basil to say that would mean that he is a heretic; so a forgery is a more logical conclusion

St. Gregory of Nyssa in his books against Eunomius teaches an order in the Trinity, so why wouldn't St. Basil have done the same?

On the one hand, because the existence of the Son is not marked by any intervals of time, and the infinitude of His life flows back before the ages and onward beyond them in an all-pervading tide, He is properly addressed with the title of Eternal; again, on the other hand, because the thought of Him as Son in fact and title gives us the thought of the Father as inalienably joined to it, He thereby stands clear of an ungenerate existence being imputed to Him, while He is always with a Father Who always is, as those inspired words of our Master expressed it, “bound by way of generation to His Father’s Ungeneracy.” Our account of the Holy Ghost will be the same also; the difference is only in the place assigned in order. For as the Son is bound to the Father, and, while deriving existence from Him, is not substantially after Him, so again the Holy Spirit is in touch with the Only-begotten, Who is conceived of as before the Spirit’s subsistence only in the theoretical light of a cause. Extensions in time find no admittance in the Eternal Life; so that, when we have removed the thought of cause, the Holy Trinity in no single way exhibits discord with itself; and to It is glory due. (I, §42)

I don't plan to read the whole article, but I note that it was by a Quaker writing about Orthodoxy, apparently with an advisor at Holy Cross (someone deeply involved in ecumenical activity of the more questionable sort.)

It would seem to reflect only one aspect of the Orthodox understanding of the Church as I tried to articulate it above, at the expense of the other.

I am not claiming that St. Cyprian believed in an invisible Church. I'm saying that if you want to believe that his statement was true *and* believe that there will be those saved who are not part of one's visible Church, however one defines it, then one is forced into the gymnastics of saying that people are members of a church to which they have not given their assent. Call it what one wills, it is an "invisible church" theology.

Many Orthodox, myself included, would prefer simply to take the attitude that his statement is incomplete or incorrect.

Actually, according to your interpretation of our interpretation, not only are we anathema to ourselves, but the Fathers of all Ecumenical Councils after the first are anathema. :-)

Obviously, the Nicean Symbol of Faith is considered by us to be complete in its Constantinopolitan form, thus the citations of the 150 fathers at subsequent Councils alongside that of the 318 when discussing the Symbol...

Had the Council in Ephesus not taken its own injunction seriously, it would have added "Theotokos" to the Symbol. By the lights of subsequent Latin interpretations of the 7th canon, the Fathers at Ephesus should have done exactly that.

It was, incidentally, my understanding that "God from God" was a later (re)addition to the Latin Creed. I suppose it is difficult to say, since it was not in liturgical use in the West as early as in the East. Where's a photo of those silver tablets of St. Leo when you need them? :-)

My point would perhaps better have been stated by saying that "God from God" is a point of divergence in the currently used text of the Creed. If the only argument of the Orthodox was that the finalized formulation of Constantinople should not have been changed, we would also at least mention this point, and the Orthodox never have, to the best of my knowledge.

Which goes back to my real point, which is that the filioque is objected to first and foremost because it is felt by the Orthodox to be incorrect doctrine.

With all due respect to the Orthodox Fathers at Florence (who were hoping for as painless a resolution as possible)and to those Orthodox today whose primary argument against the filioque is that it wasn't ratified by an Ecumenical Council, I have never felt that the strongest argument against the filioque is the procedural one.

In today's situation, we will never get to a meaningful discussion of all of this, since the filioque has been affirmed as correct doctrine by subsequent infallible Popes, so our discussions here on FR on this point are fairly moot.

Actually, throughout history, the Germans were more insistant on retaining Latin than Rome was

Sure Hermann, that's why Luther had no problem convincing so many Germans to read his German Bible and to hear litugy in German.

Greek never held a universal placeof useage

Perhaps you "forgot" that it was Pope Victor I (at the very end of the second century) who changed the Mass from Greek to Latin.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.