The storm provoked by the “autocephaly” of the Orthodox Church in America is probably one of the most meaningful crises in several centuries of Orthodox ecclesiastical history. Or rather it could be meaningful if those who are involved in it were to accept it as an unique opportunity for facing and solving an ecclesiastical confusion which for too long was simply ignored by the Orthodox. (Sect. 1)
The OCA today is going through its own ecclesiastical storm. Are there any lessons for today? Arguably, the crisis observed by Fr. Schmemann in 1970-71 and the crisis faced by the Church today are related to the same underlying ecclesiastical confusion — that is still being ignored by the Orthodox.
Reading Tradition
That the present controversy takes the form of “appeals” to Tradition… is perfectly normal. What is less normal but deeply revealing of the present state of Orthodoxy is the fact that these “appeals” and arguments seem to result in openly contradictory and mutually exclusive claims and affirmations. It is as if we were either “reading” different Traditions or the same one differently.
The function of Tradition is always to assure and to reveal [the] essential and unchanging “identity” of the Church, her “sameness” in space and time. To “read” Tradition is therefore not to “quote” but to refer all facts, texts, institutions and forms to the ultimate essence of the Church, to understand their meaning and value in the light of the Church’s unchanging esse. But then the question is: What is the basic principle and the inner criterion of such a “reading,” of our appeals to Tradition? (Sect. 2)
The answer to an ecclesiastical storm is to appeal to Tradition. The function of Tradition is to reveal the Church’s essential character. What is the “basic principle and inner criterion” by which to understand all facts, texts, institutions and forms — the canons and historical experience of the Church? The “earliest layer” of the canonical Tradition — the Apostolic Canons, the decisions of ecumenical and some local councils, and rules extracted from various patristic writings — is normative. The Church’s essence, her basic structure and constitution are the primary content of the earliest layer of Tradition, of these “Holy Canons” are common to all the Orthodox churches. Interestingly enough, the earliest layer of Tradition does not speak of “autocephaly” or “jurisdiction.” These terms, at the heart of the debate, are missing.
Essential Tradition - Layer 1
Even a superficial reading of the canons shows that the Church they depict is not, as it is today for us, a network of “sovereign” and “independent” entities called patriarchates or autocephalous or autonomous churches, each having “under” itself (in its “jurisdiction”) smaller and subordinated units such as “dioceses,” “exarchates,” “parishes,” etc. This “jurisdictional” or “subordinationist” dimension is absent here because, when dealing with the Church, the early ecclesiological tradition has its starting point and its basic term of reference in the local church. This early tradition has been analysed and studied so many times in recent years that no detailed elaboration is needed here. What is important for us is that this local church, i.e. a community gathered around its bishop and clerus, is a full church. It is the manifestation and the presence in a given place of the Church of Christ. And thus the main aim and purpose of the canonical tradition is precisely to “protect” this fulness, to “guarantee,” so to speak, that this local church fully manifests the oneness, holiness, apostolicity and catholicity of the Church of Christ. It is in function of this fulness, therefore, that the canonical tradition regulates the relation of each church with other churches, their unity and interdependence. The fulness of the local church, its very nature as the Church of Christ in a particular place, depends primarily on her unity in faith, tradition and life with the Church everywhere; on her being ultimately the same Church. This unity is assured essentially by the bishop whose office or leitourgia is to maintain and to perserve, in constant union with other bishops, the continuity and the identity in space and time of the universal and catholic faith and life of the one Church of Christ. For us the main point, however, is that although dependent on all other churches, the local church is not “subordinate” to any of them. No church is “under” any other church and no bishop is “under” any other bishop. The very nature of this dependence and, therefore, of unity among churches, is not “jurisdictional.” It is the unity of faith and life, the unbroken continuity of Tradition, of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that is expressed, fulfilled and preserved in the consecration of one bishop by other bishops, in their regular synods, and, in brief, in the organic unity of the episcopate which all bishops hold in solidum (St. Cyprian). (Sect. 4)
An absence of “jurisdiction” does not mean an absence of hierarchy and order. There are still primacies within the Church, but they are not primacies of “power” or “subordination.” They are primacies of testimony or witness.
The function of primacy is to express the unity of all, to be its organ and mouthpiece. (Sect. 4)
Fr. Schmemann goes on to mention the three levels of primacy he has discussed in more detail in his “The Idea of Primacy” paper, commented on previously in this blog.
Such is the essential canonical tradition of the Church.
The Imperial Tradition - Layer 2
With the Church’s reconciliation with the empire after Constantine, a new “imperial” layer is added. It is no accident that another layer is — must be — added, since the Church has a mission to the world. The historical form or mode of that worldly relation, however, is not absolute, not essential, and should not invade the essence of the Church itself (expressed in the first layer). While a second layer must exist, the form it takes is one possible “mode” of relating the Church to the world. “For the Church the ‘image of the world always fades away’ (1 Cor. 7:31), and this applies to all forms and institutions of the world.” The Church’s relationship to these forms is thus relative.
For if the first layer is both the expression and the norma of the unchanging essence of the Church, the fundamental meaning of this second, “imperial” layer is that it expresses and regulates the historicity of the Church, i.e. her equally essential relation to the world in which she is called to fulfill her vocation and mission. It belongs indeed to the very nature of the Church that she is always and everywhere not of this world and receives her being and life from above, not from beneath, and that, at the same time, she always accepts the world to which she is sent and adjusts herself to its forms, needs and structures… The first deals with the “unchanging,” the second with the “changing”… In this sense the second canonical layer is essentially relative, for its very object is precisely the Church’s life within relative realities of “this world.” Its function is to relate the unchanging essence of the Church to an ever-changing world. (Sect. 5)
Fr. Schmemann notes in particular that “layer 2” is the source of “jurisidictional” ecclesiology.
Now it is obvious that the jurisdictional dimension of the Church and of her life has its roots precisely in this second, “imperial” layer of our tradition. But it must be stressed immediately that this jurisdictional level did neither replace the earlier, “essential” one, nor merely develop it… jurisdictional “power” comes to the Church not from her essence, which is not “of this world,” and is, therefore, beyond any jus, but from her being “in the world” and thus in a mutual relationship with it… And if any attempt to separate and to oppose to one another these two realities leads to a heretical disincarnation of the Church, her reduction to a human, all too human “institution,” a confusion between the two is equally heretical, for it ultimately subordinates grace to jus, making Christ, in the words of St. Paul, “die in vain.” (Sect. 5)
The Church must be “in the world.” Otherwise there is a heretical “disincarnation.” It will relate to the world and interact with worldly forms and institutions. However, the Church is never to be “reduced” to any human, all too human institution. Grace if of the essence; jus is one (of many possible) incarnations of the Church living in this world. An overemphasis or “absolutization” of this particular “mode” of being is “the main source of our present confusion.”
For several centuries the New Rome became the center, the heart and the head of one “Imperial” Church — the religious projection of the one universal Christian empire. The “jurisdictional” principle, although in theory still distinct from the essential ecclesiology, occupied the center of the stage. Local bishops like civil governors became more and more the representatives and even the “delegates” of a “central power”: the patriarch and his by now permanent synod. Psychologically, in virtue of the same imperial and “jurisdictional” logic, they became even his “subordinates,” as well as the subordinates of the emperor. What was primarily a mode of the Church’s relationship to a particular “world” began to permate the Church’s mentality itself and to be confused with the Church’s “essence.” And this… is the main source of our present confusion and disagreements.
The National Tradition - Layer 3
What was it about the empire that was acceptable to the Church? Why would it enter into alliance with it?
Ideologically and ideally the empire was universal…, and it was this universality that was the main “basis” for its acceptance by and alliance with the Church. (Sect. 6)
Over time, however, “Byzantium was becoming a relatively small and weak Greek state whose universal claims were less and less comprehensible to the nations brought into her political, religious, and cultural orbit: Bulgars, Serbs and later, Russians.” There emerged the new idea of a “Christian nation” and of “autocephaly,” both political and religious (for the two went together as the basic axiom of the old Byzantine imperial ideology). The “fundamental historical connotation is thus neither purely [essentially] ecclesiological, nor ‘jurisdictional,’ but national.” (Sect. 6) A third layer is added to the historical experience of the Church. The second layer morphs into something new. Again, the Church must relate to the world, and there are positive aspects of this relationship, but again, the new layer cannot be made an absolute. Its principle or idea cannot enter into the essence of the Church.
We must stress once more that this new “autocephalous” church, as it appears in Bulgaria and later in Russia and Serbia, is not a mere “jurisdictional” entity. Its main implication is not so much “independence”… but precisely the national church, or, in other words, the church as the religious expression and projection of a nation, as indeed the bearer of a national identity. And again there is no need to think of this as a “deviation” — in merely negative and disparaging terms. In the history of the Orthodox East, the “Orthodox nation” is not only a reality, but in many ways a “success”; for in spite of all their deficiencies, tragedies and betrayals, there indeed were such “realities” as “Holy Serbia” or “Holy Russia,” there truly took place a national birth in Christ, there appeared a national Christian vocation — and, historically, the emergence of the national church, at a time when the ideal and the reality of the universal Christian empire and its counterpart, the “imperial” church, were wearing thing, was perfectly justified.
What is not justified, however, is to confuse this historical development with the essential ecclesiology and, in fact, to subordinate the latter to the former. It is when the very essence of the Church began to be viewed in terms of this nationalism and reduced to it, that something which in itself was quite compatible with that “essence” became the beginning of an alarming ecclesiological deterioration.
Just as grace must not be subordinated to jus, so it must not be subordinated to national identity. Grace — the essence of the life of the Church — is compatible with these, under certain historical circumstances, but it must never be reduced to them.
After 1453 and America as the Flashpoint
What happened after 1453 (the fall of Constantinople)? Very much ecclesiastically, in the historical experience of the Church, but very little ecclesiologically, according to Fr. Schmemann, that is, in critical reaction and evaluation by the Church of her place in an ever-changing world.
Virtually until our very time and in spite of the progressive disappearance of the various “Orthodox worlds,” the Orthodox churches lived within the spiritual, structural and psychological context of these organic “worlds” — and this means by the logic of either the “imperial” or the “national” traditions, or else a combination of both. And the plain fact is that for several centuries there was in Orthodoxy an almost total atrophy of ecclesiological thinking, of any real interest in ecclesiology. (Sect. 7)
A host of ills has plagued the Church in the modern age. The old Byzantine imperium came under Turkish domination and former “autocephalies” were “liquidated.” A Greek “imperio-ethnic self-consciousness” increased. Russia made the downfall of Byzantium “the basis of a new national and religious ideology with messianic overtones (‘the Third Rome’).” Western thought forms shifted ecclesiological attention and Western interest in the “oriental question” affected the fate of Orthodoxy worldwide. There has been a lack of communications between churches, mutual alienation, and even mutual mistrust and suspicion. In short,
there are not many darker pages in “pan-Orthodox” history than the ones dealing with the “modern age,” the age which for Orthodoxy was — with a few remarkable exceptions — that of divisions, provincialism, theological sclerosis, and last but not least: a nationalism which by then was almost completely secularized and therefore paganized.
Add secularization and neo-paganism to the list.
It is not surprising then that any challenge to the status quo, to the tragically unnoticed and normalized fragmentation, was inescapably to take the form of an explosion.
America becomes the flashpoint.
Peeling the Onion
In the concluding sections of the paper, “Meaningful Storm,” Fr. Schmemann lays out the American case as a “hypertrophy of the national principle, its virtually total disconnection from ‘essential’ ecclesiology.” In a distorted third-layer phenomenon we find the “first locus, cause and expression” of the crisis of American autocephaly.
But there is also the complex “Greek reaction,” and in particular, the opposition of the Ecumenical Patriarch. Fr. Schmemann sees Greek nationalism as “precisely not simple,” because the whole second, imperial layer plays into the question. Moroever, Greek nationalism is often reduced to a secular form that values “Hellenism,” by which is meant pagan, ancient Greek civilization, over “Christian Hellenism.” The value is not even necessarily for the Church-in-the-world, for what is beyond history to enter into the historical, essence and mission together.
Consistent with his understanding of the real place of primacy in the Orthodox Church, Fr. Schmemann would like to call on the EP to help resolve canonical and jurisdictional problems in America. But for that to happen, there must be a return to essential Orthodox ecclesiology, to the “very roots” — i.e., layer 1. Constructive leadership is necessary. He concludes:
This is perhaps the most urgent task of the universal primacy today: to liberate us from pagan and heretical nationalisms which choke the universal and saving vocation of the Orthodox Church. We should cease to speak of our “glories.” For glory in the essential Tradition of the Church belongs to God alone, and it is for the glorification of God, not of herself, that the Church was established. Once we have realized this, things impossible with men become possible with God.
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Before reading the final section of Fr. Schmemann’s “The Idea of Primacy” paper, a section critiquing the current Orthodox ecclesiastical situation of autocephalous, national churches, it’s worthwhile to reflect on the ecclesiological model Fr. Schmemann sets before us in the preceding sections of the paper. What are the positive lessons for today?
First, there is the centrality of the local church, gathered together around her bishop. Fr. Schmemann does not discuss in this paper the relationship between bishop and priest, diocese and parish; or the relationship between clergy and laity. He treats those topics elsewhere. But the centrality of the local church as the embodiment of The Church in her essential catholic being is clear. The Church today needs to grow as faithful, living local churches.
Second, we need saintly bishops and saintly local churches who are witnesses to the fullness of faith and life in Christ and who live as His Body. Every time a new bishop is consecrated, there must be testimony that the local church re-constituted around her new bishop is The Church in all her catholic Fullness. The bishop himself must be a man ordained within the Church as apostolic witness and voice, teacher and sign of unity in faith, chief pastor and priest, presider at the eucharist.
Third, local churches need to recognize one another as fully Church, each fully Church in itself, and together fully in union and in all essentials identical with one another — the same in every time and place. Local churches need to support each other in love, and together testify and witness to the world of the life they have in Christ. In regional synods, great churches, and even universally as One Church, the unified voice of a “primate” should be heard, by all the churches together for the sake of their own edification, and by all the world.
The Church which by her very nature belongs to the new aeon, to the Kingdom of the age to come, abides yet in history, in time, in “this world.” She is in statu patriae, but also in statu viae. She is Fullness, but she is also Mission, the Divine love, the Divine will of salvation addressed to the world. And it is by being Mission, by loving those for whom Christ died, that the Church realizes herself as the Fullness. (Sect. 6)
Is it a romantic view? Or is this the very essence of what Life in Christ is? Is this to be the Body of Christ, One, Holy, Catholic (Full), Apostolic — as the Apostles and the apostolic churches were in the beginning?
There will be struggle, disagreement, even dissension — as among the Apostles and their immediate disciples — but there will also be a sense of being THE Church, ONE Church, abiding in holiness, addressing God’s love in mission to the world, suffering and undergoing martyrdom where necessary, and in all cases realizing her very nature in love and care for one another.
The gates of Hell have not prevailed against the Church. There is always hope. But will the Church dedicate herself to being herself once again?
Section VIII
The Orthodox Church today is not free from the poison of a universal ecclesiology. Though condemned in pure and explicit form in the Roman Catholic case, the distortion caused by universal ecclesiology remains wherever there is an understanding and practice of primacy as “supreme power.” There is a constant “natural” temptation.
Universal ecclesiology is a permanent temptation because in the last analysis it is a natural one, being the product of a “naturalization” of Christianity, its adaptation to life “after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”
The sources of temptation are different in the East than in the West.
All the deficiencies in the ecclesiological conscience of the East can be ascribed to two major sources: the close “identification” of the Church with the state (Byzantine “symphony” and its varieties), and religious nationalism. Both explain the unchallenged triumph of theory of “autocephaly.”
Here Fr. Schmemann uses the term “autocephalous” not to apply to any group of local churches capable of consecrating their own bishops (a regional synod), but to today’s “autocephalous” patriarchal and national Orthodox churches.
At a relatively recent date there arose among the Orthodox the opinion that the Church is based in her life on the principle of autocephaly, the term “autocephalous” here being applied exclusively to the Eastern patriarchates or the great national churches.
Fr. Schmemann goes on to apply the two main sources of the deficiency in ecclesiological thinking to the case of Orthodox “autocephalous” churches today.
Church and State
The Byzantine relation (“identification”) of Church and state “changed the very notion of power in the Church.” Fr. Schmemann analyzes change in the nature of the synod as a gathering of bishops in the early Church to a centralized power exercised over the churches. The Patriarch of Constantinople himself acquired a special “mystique” as an ecclesiastical “counterpart” of the Byzantine emperor or basileus. Fr. Schmemann stresses that the origin of the Patriarch’s power is not “lust of power” but the “Byzantine analogy” between two supreme powers, those of Church (patriarch) and state (emperor). The operation of the state becomes a model for how the Church should operate “in parallel.”
The metaphorphosis of the very concept of “power,” its disconnection, even if partial, from the ecclesiology of the Body of Christ and, as the natural result, the emergence of a “supreme power” — all this constitutes the first and yet most tragic crisis in the history of Orthodox ecclesiology. The time has come, it seems to us, to admit openly that the Byzantine period of our history, which in many respects is still for us the golden age of Orthodoxy, saw, nevertheless, the beginning of an ecclesiastical disease. The mystique of “symphonia” (with its only alternative being the monastic “desert” and the individual work for “salvation”) obscured the reality of the Church as the People of God, as the Church of God and the Body of Christ manifested and edified in every place. It was the triumph of universal ecclesiology in its Byzantine form.
Religious Nationalism
Byzantine Church-state relations changed the concept of “power” in the ecclesiastical structures of the Church. Religious nationalism also borrows a “natural” (worldly) form of human existence and imposes it on the Church. Recall that universal ecclesiology considers local churches to be “part” of a universal “whole.” No local church claims to be whole and catholic in itself. Religious nationalism falls into universal ecclesiology by dividing the Church into nationalistic parts.
Religious nationalisms… little by little identified the Church, her structure and organization, with the nation, making her the religious expression of national existence. This national existence, however natural and therefore legitimate it may be, is by its very essence a “partial” existence — the existence as a “part” of humanity which, though not necessarily inimical to its other “parts,” is nonetheless opposed to them as “one’s own” to the “alien.” The early church knew herself to be the tertium genus, in which there is neither Greek nor Jew. This means that it proclaimed and conveyed a Life which, without rejecting the “partial” and natural life, could transform it into “wholeness” or catholicity. Hence it must be clear that religous nationalism is essentially a heresy about the Church, for it reduces grace and the new life to “nature” and makes the latter a formal principle of the Church’s structure.
There is nothing wrong in “natural” human existence for there to be nations and people-groups. The problem is to impose national existence onto the structure and organization of the Church, who knows herself to be a “tertium genus,” that is a Life which supercedes natural human divisions and ethnic identities.
This does not mean that human nations cannot choose — as nations — to be Christian and live out a Christian vocation. It does mean that natural human divisions cannot be imported into the Church as a “formal principle of the Church’s structure.”
This does not mean that there can be no Christian people or any Christian vocation of a nation; it means only that a Christian nation (i.e., a nation which has acknowledged its Christian vocation) does not become the Church. Because the nature of the Church is the Body of Christ, she belongs to the Kingdom of the age to come and cannot identify herself with anything in “this world…”
The New Autocephaly
The combination of the Byzantine state’s concept of power with nationalism’s partitioning principle, as both have infiltrated the Church, has resulted in the new canonical theory of “autocephaly” which forms the basis of Orthodox ecclesiastical organization today.
It is precisely this religious nationalism in combination with the new “statelike” concept of power which supplied the basis for the new theory of autocephaly and made it for centuries the “acting canon law” in the Orthodox East. … the negative significance of this theory (defended, on theone hand, as justification of the national divisions of Orthodoxy and, on the other, as sanction for the prevalent administrative centralism) introduces into the Orthodox doctrine of the Church the very elements of “universal ecclesiology” which she rejects and condemns as it is. It obscures the sacramental structure of the Church rooted in its life as Body of Christ, by a “national” structure, thus making a natural organism.
Harms Done
Is it necessary to mention all the harm done to the Church by this acting “canon law,” disconnected as it is from the living sources of Orthodox ecclesiology? Such as, on the one hand, the bureaucratic spirit pervading the Church, making her the “religious department”; the absence of a living “sobornost”; the transformation of diocese into mere administrative units living under the control of abstract a “centers”; the abyss between the “power” and the body of the Church and, as the result of this, the “revolt of the masses”; the introduction into the Church of the ideas of “representation of interests” of this or that category, be it of “lay control” or of division between clergy and laity, etc… Or, on the other hand, the deep and tragic division of Orthodoxy into national churches, each indifferent to the other, living in and by itself, the crisis of the universal consciousness, and the weakening of the catholic links…
Fr. Schmemann concludes:
In sufferings and sorrows there appears today a new thirst for the truth about the Church, a new interest in discovering the genuine sources of her life. The question … of “primacy,” cannot be separated from a deep and consistent return to Orthodox ecclesiology.
The aim of this reading of Fr. Schmemann’s “The Idea of Primacy” papers has been to present and explain Fr. Schmemann’s basic ideas of Orthodox ecclesiology. Indeed, we are thirsting for the truth about the Church in as much as we are suffering and in sorrow today over our present ecclesiastical crises.
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Fr. Schmemann now returns to the three levels of primacy in the Church.
The Regional Synod
It is in the synod that primacy finds it first and most general expression. The synod, since its basic purpose is the consecration of a bishop, is primarily a regional synod, i.e., the council of a definite geographical area. The boundaries of such an area can be fixed in various ways: they can be geographical, or coincide with a political administrative unit or be the limits of Christian expansion from an ecclesiastical center: in church history there is ample evidence for all of these systems. But ecclesiastically the essential feature of a district is the participation of all its bishops in the consecration of a new bishop.
It is worth noting the three ways (historically) in which the boundaries of the geographical area may be fixed:
Note also that:
the main principle of “autocephaly” is precisely the right to elect and consecrate new bishops.
Autocephaly means that a group of bishops in a district — a group of local churches — can elect and consecrate their own new bishops.
But what about primacy? Fr. Schmemann says that:
[the] second constitutive element [of a regional district] is the existence among [its] bishops of a clearly defined primacy of a first bishop. This primacy is defined in the famous Apostolic Canon 34:
“The bishops of every nation must acknowledge him who is first among them and account him their head, and do nothing of consequence without his consent… but neither let him (who is the first) do anything without the consent of all; for so there will be unanimity…”
Here the essence of the regional primacy is state quite clearly: it is not “power” or “jurisdiction” (for the primate can do nothing without the assent of all), but the expression of the unity and unanimity of all bishops and, consequently, of all churches of the area.
The first bishop gives voice — expression — to the joint testimony of all the bishops and local churches that they all are one. All must consent together.
Practically speaking, the primate was usually the “metropolitan” of a “metropolitan district” — i.e. the bishop of the local church of the head city of a region, where the region is defined in one of the three usual ways listed above (geographical, political, ecclesiastical).
There can be little doubt that for a long time the local primacy was universally understood and accepted as the basic expression of the very function of primacy.
The Great Churches
Almost from the beginning there existed also wider groupings of churches with corresponding “centers of agreement” or primacy within them… For, as it is well known, Christianity was settled first in the major cities of the Roman Empire and from there spread into the suburban areas… At first the function of primacy belonged exclusively to the churches of the great metropolitan centers. Even after the growth in number of local churches and the consequent shaping of metropolitan districts, the original “centers” or “mother-churches” did not lose their special status.
… Let us stress that we have here not so much the primaacy of a bishop (as in the cse of the metropolitan district), but the primacy of a particular church, her special spiritual and doctrinal authority among other churches. The great majority of local Christian communities were born from the missionary activity of some important urban church. From the latter they received the rule of faith, the rule of prayer and the “apostolic succession.” Many of these great churches had, in addition, apostles or their first disciples for founders. Furthermore they were usually better equipped theologically and intellectually.
It is natural, then, that in difficult or controversial cases, these churches took upon themselves the initiative of appeasement or, in other terms, of reaching and expressing the “agreement” of all churches. The local churches looked to them for guidance and counsel and recognized in their voice a special authority. We have early examples of such authority in the activity of St Ignatius of Antioch, St Polycarp of Smyrna, St Irenaeus of Lyons, and later, in the councils of Antioch and Carthage… the seeds of the future patriarchates are to be found in [this primacy of authority]. Once again, we must stress that its essence and purpose is not “power,” but manifestation of the existent unity of the churches in faith and life.
In Fr. Schmemann’s opening list (see section I) of three levels of primacy, he puts the “autocephalous” nation-churches of today second. In early times, regional synods at the first level — local groups of bishops and churches who could consecrate their own bishops — were autocephalous, and a middle level of primacy was assigned to important great churches, to whom the local churches “looked for guidance and counsel” and in whom they “recognized a voice of special authority.” The great churches, later to be recognized as patriarchates, were given special authority because they were missionary centers, because they were the source for many local churches of the rule of faith and prayer, because the great churches were themselves founded by the apostles or their first disciples, and because they were “usually better equipped theologically and intellectually.”
To draw a rough analogy with modern day academia, the great churches of a middle level of primacy were the Ivy League of the Church. Just as Ivy League schools have the most venerable pasts, the greatest scholars, the highest reputation as intellectual strongholds, and extensive academic resources, the great churches embodied the most venerable sources of Tradition, were populated by saints, including the apostles themselves, had acquired the highest reputation as doctrinal strongholds, and had extensive spiritual, theological, and intellectual (not to mention political) resources.
In the whole of the Church, certainly within the expanse of the Roman or Byzantine empire, there were certain historic churches that stood out as great ecclesiastical “centers,” and the bishops of these churches — actually, the churches themselves — were often called upon (or took it upon themselves) to mediate regional affairs.
Universal Primacy
The Church from the first days of her existence possessed an ecumenical center of unity and agreement. In the apostolic and the Judaeo-Christian period, is was the Church at Jerusalem, and later the Church of Rome — “presiding in agape,” according to St Ignatius of Antioch.
Orthodox theology is still awaiting a truly Orthodox evaluation of universal primacy in the first millennium of church history — an evaluation free from polemical or apologetic exaggerations.
On the one hand, there is plenty of evidence to indicate that the early Church had a universal primacy. On the other hand, this primacy is not to be understood on “juridical terms,” that is in terms of a universal ecclesiology.
Such study will certainly reveal that the essence and purpose of this primacy is to express and preserve the unity of the Church in faith and life; to express and preserve the unanimity of all churches; to keep them from isolating themselves into ecclesiastical provincialism, loosing the catholic ties, separating themselves from the unity of life. It means ultimately to assume care, the sollicitudo, of the churches so that each one of them can abide in that fullness which is always the whole catholic tradition and not any “part” of it.
Each local church must remain full, whole, catholic. It cannot become isolated from the Church as a whole, nor “loose its catholic ties,” nor “separate itself from the unity of life.” A universal primacy — of bishop or church — has as its function to “express and preserve” unity and unanimity, to build up local churches into the fullness of faith and life if they are in danger of falling away. Universal primacy is not to be exercised in a juridical sense, in the sense of having “jurisdicational power,” in a manner of subordination. A universal primacy presides in love.
Primacy - the General Conclusion
Primacy in the Church is not “supreme power,” this notion being incompatible with the nature of the Church as Body of Christ. But neither is primacy a mere “chairmanship” if one understands this term in its modern, parliamentary and democratic connotations. It has its roots, as all other functions, in the Church — Body of Christ. In each church there fully abides and is always “actualized” the Church of God; yet all together the churches are still the same one and indivisible Church of God, the Body of Christ. The Church of God is manifested in the plurality of churches; but because ontologically they are the same Church, this ontological identity is expressed in a visible, living, and constantly renewed link: the unity of faith, the unity of action and mission, the common care for everything that constitutes the task of the Church in statu viae.
A local church cannot isolate herself… because the fullness which constitutes her very being is precisely the fullness of the catholic faith and catholic mission, the fullness of Christ who fills all things in all. The Church cannot realize this fullness, make it her own, and, therefore, be the Church, without ipso facto living in all and by all; and this means living in the universal conscience of the Church “scattered in the whole world and yet abiding as if it were in one home.” A local church cut off from this universal “koinonia” is indeed a contradictio in adjecto, for this koinonia is the very essence of the Church. And it has, therefore, its form and expression: primacy. Primacy is the necessary expression of the unity of faith and life of all local churches, of their living and efficient koinonia.
Fr. Schmemann returns in the final conclusion to his understanding of form and essence. The Church IS koinonia, community, the fullness of Christ who fills all things in all. Though scattered in the whole world, the Church abides as if it were in one home. It is One. “Koinonia is the very essence of the Church.” The form and expression (witness, testimony, voice, communication) of this essence is primacy, which is necessary to the unity of faith and life and of all local churches, “of their living and efficient koinonia.”
In a sense, the Church has primacy because it CAN. The Church IS One; therefore it can SHOW itself to BE One — to the world, to each and every local church, and to itself as a catholic whole. This “showing” is the function of the primate.
Now we can return to our first definition of primacy. Primacy is power, but as power it is not different from the power of a bishop in each church. It is not a higher power but indeed the same power, only expressed, manifested, realized by one. The primate can speak for all because the Church is one and because the power he exercises is the power of each bishop and of all bishops. And he must speak for all because this very unity and agreement require, in order to be efficient, a special organ of expression, a mouth, a voice. Primacy is thus a necessity because therein is the expression and manifestation of the unity of the churches as being the unity of the Church.
Fr. Schmemann adds that the primate must, therefore, always be the bishop of a local church and not a “bishop at large.” (There can be no such thing. A bishop IS a bishop of a local church.) Primacy belongs to him because of his status in his own church. Primacy is not a personal charism, but rather a function of the whole Church — which CAN speak as one, which IS one.
]]>The idea of primacy thus… implies that of an “order” of churches which does not subordinate one church to another, but which makes it possible for all churches to live together this life of all in each, and of each in all, thereby fulfilliing the mystery of the Body of Christ, the fullness “filling all in all.”
The synod is not “power.”
The Church is often described as the “Church of the Councils,” and her government as “conciliary” (sobornyi in Russian). But very little has been done to define the nature and function of synods in theological terms.
Fr. Schmemann outlines the two functions of the synod. Both are functions of witness, not power.
Fullness
The synod is not “power” in the juridical sense of this word, for there can exist no power over the Church Body of Christ. The synod is, rather, a witness to the identity of all churches as the Church of God in faith, life and “agape.” If in his own church the bishop is priest, teacher and pastor, the divinely appointed witness and keeper of the catholic faith, it is through the agreement of all bishops, as revealed in the synod, that all churches both manifest and maintain the ontological unity of Tradition. “For languages differ in the world, but the force of Tradition is the same” (St. Irenaeus). The synod of bishops is not an organ of power over the Church, nor is it “greater” or “fuller” than the fullness of any local church, but in and through it all churches acknowledge and realize their ontology unity as the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Ecclesiologically and dogmatically, the synod is necessary for the consecration of a bishop. The sacrament of order is its ecclesiological foundation because, as we have seen, the synod is the essential condition of the fullness of each local, of her “pleroma” as Body of Christ.
Mission
But [the synod] also has another equally important function. The Church which by her very nature belongs to the new aeon, to the Kingdom of the age to come, abides yet in history, in time, in “this world.” She is in statu patriae [in the “state of the fatherland” - the Kingdom, heaven], but also in statu viae [in the “state of journeying” - i.e. on earth]. She is Fullness, but she is also Mission, the Divine love, the Divine will of salvation addressed to the world. And it is by being Mission, by loving those for whom Christ died, that the Church realizes herself as Fullness. A church that would isolate herself from the world and live by her eschatological fullness, that would cease to “evangelize,” to bear witness to Christ in the world, would simply cease to be the Church — because the fullness by which she lives is precisely the agape of God as revealed and communicated in Christ.
“Mission” cannot, therefore, be a static relationship with the world. It means a fight with, and for, the world; it means a constant effort to understand and to challenge, to question and to answer. And this means finally that within the Church herself there must constantly arise doubts and problems and the need for a fresh renewal of the living testimony. The “world,” both outside and inside the Church, tempts and challenges her with all its powers of destruction and doubt, idolatry and sin. This challenge calls for a common effort of all churches, for a faithful and living “koinonia” and agreement. It is this mission of the Church in the world, her “working” in time and history, that gives the synod its second function: to be the common voice, the common testimony of several (or all) churches in their ontological unity.
The unified “common voice” and “common testimony” of the bishops in synod — of the local churches, each in the unity and fullness of the One Church — is essential not only between and among the churches themselves, as in the consecration of a new bishop in a place and the re-recognition of the catholicity of the local church in that place, but also in a unified witness of the Church to the world, both to bear witness to Christ in the world and to continually renew the living testimony within the churches themselves as they engage in their constant missionary fight, their fight with, and for, the world.
The synod is voice, then, witness, testimony — not power over local churches.
In section VII, we return finally to the question of primacy, considering it at three levels within the Church: the regional synod, wider groupings of churches, and universal primacy.
]]>In eucharistic ecclesiology, the idea of a power over the local church and the bishop — a “supreme power” — is excluded.
This ministry of power belongs to the bishop and there is no ministry of any higher power. A supreme power would mean power over Christ himself. The bishop is vested with power, yet the root of this power is in the Church, in the eucharistic gathering, at which he presides as priest, pastor and teacher… For what is the grace of the episcopate if not the “charism” of power? And since the Church knows of no other charism of power, there can exist no power higher than that of the bishop.
Section V
And yet, there is primacy. How to get to a correct understanding? First it is necessary to look at the relationship of bishops to bishops and local churches to local churches. Local churches, though each one manifests the catholic fullness of the whole Church — the Church abiding that place — are dependent upon one another. For what?
To explain the Orthodox conception of primacy, we must now consider the approach of eucharistic ecclesiology towards the Church universal… if universal ecclesiology interprets it in terms of “parts” and “whole,” for eucharistic ecclesiology the adequate term is that of identity: “the Church of God abiding in…” … each church… is the same Church…
It is this ontological identity of all churches with the Church of God that establishes the connecting link between churches, making them the Church universal. For the fullness (pleroma) of each local church not only does not contradict her n eed for other churches and, indeed, her dependence on them, but implies them as her own conditio sine qua non.
“A new bishop shall be installed by all bishops of the province…” (Canon 4 of the Council of Nicaea)
The local church receives the condition and the “note” of her fullness — the episcopate — through the bishops of other churches. What is the meaning of this dependence? … The consecration of a bishop is followed by the eucharist, which is offered by the newly consecrated bishop… From the moment he is elected and consecrated, the bishop is the president of the eucharistic assembly, i.e., the head of the Church, and his consecreation finds its fulfillment when for the first time he offers to God the eucharist of the Church.
How is a local church the fullness of the Church as a whole? Only with a bishop and the eucharist. A local church needs a Head, and it needs to be the Body of Christ. What happens when a local church does not have a bishop, when a local bishop dies? A new bishop must be installed, and the church abiding in that place must be recognized to be again the Church, one in wholeness, one in fullness with all other churches — the same Church in every place — and one in wholeness, one in fullness in succession to what she has been before — the same Church in every time. The consecration of a bishop by other bishops is not a conferral of power, but a conferral of recognition, of testimony.
Thus the consecration of a bishop is first of all the testimony that this man, elected by his own church, is elected and appointed by God, and that through his election and consecration his church is identical with the Church of God which abides in all churches… It is not the transfer of a gift by those who possess it, but the manifestation of the fact that the same gift, which they have received in the Church from God, has now been given to this bishop in this church.
God makes bishops, not men. God makes churches, not men. Bishops testify that God’s gift has been given, and that a local church is The Church.
Apostolic Succession
The unbroken episcopal succession, which was the decisive argument in the polemics against gnosticism, was understood primarily as the succession of bishop within everye church and not in terms of “consecrators.” Today, however, the emphasis in the doctrine of apostolic succession has shifted to the question of consecrators. But such was not the meaning given this doctrine by St. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. IV, III, 3); for in spite of the fact that no bishop could be consecrated by his predecessor in the same chair, it is precisely this succession in the chair which is all-important to St. Irenaeus and is to him the proof of the “identity” of the Church in time and space with the Church of God, with the fullness of Christ’s gift — for “the Church is in the bishop and the bishop is in the Church.” The consecration of a bishop by other bishops is thus the acknowledgement of the will of God as bieng fulfilled in this particular church.
The Function of a Bishop
The bishop’s function [is to be] witness of God’s will in the Church, his “charism” being to keep the Church in the will of God and guide her towards its fulfillment. The church whose bishop has died has also lost the power to express this testimony. The testimony, therefore, must of necessity come from other churches and through their ministers who have the charism of proclaiming the will of God. In other terms, this aspect of testimony (the absence of which may lead eventually to an almost magical understanding of the sacrament of order) is essential to the consecration; while the gift of the Spirit comes not from the bishops, yet their presence, unity and testimony are the signs of its having been given to this particular church by God himself; they are indeed the “form” of the sacrament.
The Interdependence of Churches
The dependence of each church on other churches is thus a dependence not of submission but of testimony: each church testifying about all others and all together testifying about each that they are ONE in faith and life, and that separately and all together they are the Church of God — the indivisible gift of the new life in Christ. Each church has fullness in herself, acknowledged and fulfilled in the unity of the biship and the people; and it is the identity of this fullness with the fullness of the Church of God (and, therefore, with the “pleroma” of every other church) that is both expressed and maintained in the consecration of a new bishop by other bishops.
… And we should add that the conscience of the universal unity of the Church, of living koinonia and mutual responsibility and the joy of belonging to the one household of God, has never been stronger than during the short triumph of precisely this type of ecclesiology. (Iren. Adv. Haer. III, 24, I.)
The joy of witness.
So what is eucharistic ecclesiology?
What then, from the point of view which interests us in this essay, is the essence of this Orthodox ecclesiology? It is, above all, that it applies the categories of organism and organic unity to “the Church of God abiding…” in every place: to the local church, to the community led by a bishop and having, in communion with him, the fullness of the Church. Fr Afanassieff terms it “eucharistic ecclesiology.” And, indeed, it is rooted in the eucharist as the Sacrament of the Church, an act which ever realizes the Church as the Body of Christ. A similar view is expressed by Fr George Florovsky, “The Sacraments,” he writes, “constitute the Church. Only in them does the Christian community transcend its human dimensions and become the Church.” Through the eucharist, we have the whole Christ and not a “part” of Him; and therefore the Church which is “actualized” in the eucharist is not a “part” or “member” of a whole, but the Church of God in her wholeness. For it is precisely the function of the eucharist to manifest the whole Church, her “catholicity.” Where there is the eucharist, there is the Church; and, conversely, only where the Church is (i.e. the people of God united in the bishop, the head, the shepherd), there is the eucharist. Such is the primitive ecclesiology expressed in the tradition of the early church and still recognizable in our canons and in the liturgical “rubrics,” which to so many seem obscure and non-essential. There is no room here for the categories of the “parts” and of the “whole,” because it is the very essence of the sacramental hierarchical structure that in it a “part” not only “agrees” with, but is identical to, the whole, reveals it adequately in itself, and in one word IS the whole. The local church as a sacramental organism, as the gift of God in Christ, is not part or member of a wider universal organism. She is the Church. Objectively, as the Body of Christ, the Church is always identical to herself in space and time. In time, because she is always the people of God gathered to proclaim the death of the Lord and to confess his resurrection. In space, because in each local church the fullness of gifts is given, the whole truth is announced, the whole Christ is present, who is “yesterday and today and forever the same.” In her sacramental and hierarchical order, the Church reveals and conveys to men the fullness of Christ into which they must grow (cf. Eph 4:13).
Basic Principles of Eucharistic Ecclesiology
The essential corollary of this “eucharistic” ecclesiology is that it excludes the idea of a supreme power, understood as power over the local church and her bishop.
More on the implications of eucharistic ecclesiology for primacy next time.
]]>Fr. Afanassieff elaborated two different types of ecclesiology: universal and eucharistic. In this section, Fr. Schmemann explains the universal type:
The Church is the sum of all local churches, which all together constitute the Body of Christ. The Church is thus conceived in terms of a whole and parts.
Universal ecclesiology finds its fullest expression in Roman Catholic theology.
Fr. Schmemann stresses that if you buy into this type of ecclesiology, into this understanding of the Church, then in fact a universal primacy of the sort exercised by the Roman papacy is consistent, logical, and necessary. Orthodox have to be careful here not to accept a universal ecclesiology and reject a Roman-type primacy:
The idea, popular in Orthodox apologetics, that the Church can have no visible head, because Christ is her invisible head, is theological nonsense.
Strong words! On what basis does Fr. Schmemann say such a thing?
It is the basic assumption of a “catholic” ecclesiology that the visible structure of the Church manifests and communicates its invisible nature.
Here we have Fr. Schmemann’s fundamental idea of sacrament, form, and content. The Church must look like — materially, visibly, and in its “form” — that which it is in reality, invisibly, in its “content” and very nature or essence. Form, the visible structure, “manifests” and “communicates” the invisible content or nature or essence.
To say that Christ is the “invisible head” of the Church is, of course, an apologetic against the Roman papacy, but such an argument violates the far deeper Orthodox principle of sacramentality. Fr. Schmemann thus shows the implications of following the argument through to its natural conclusion: “If applied consistently, it should also eliminate the necessity for the visible head of each local church, i.e., the bishop.” This is Protestantism. It turns out that Roman Catholic ecclesiology is consistent and logical because, given its universal ecclesiology, sacramentality requires that there be a single universal visible head of the Church — i.e. a pope.
Orthodox ecclesiology has consistently refused a Roman-type pope. This is not because the head of the Church is invisible. It is because Orthodox ecclesiology is eucharistic.
]]>Section I
Fr. Schmemann begins by noting that historically in the canonical tradition of the Church there have been a variety of different forms of primacy. In particular he notes:
We badly need a clarification of the nature and functions of all these primacies and, first of all, of the very concept of primacy… It would not be difficult to prove that the canonical and jurisdictional troubles and divisions, of which we have had too many in the last decades, have their roots… in this question of primacy. And the same unsolved problem constitutes a major handicap… to the progress of Orthodoxy in countries like America, where [it]… leads to the most uncanonical situation that can be imagined: the coexistence on the same territory of a number of parallel “jurisdictions” and dioceses.
Section II
Primacy is a form of power. But we must ask the question: “is there in Orthodoxy a power superior to that of a bishop?” Is there a “supreme power”? Theologically and ecclesiologically, the answer is “No.” In particular, a universal supremacy of power, as in the Roman Catholic papacy, is rejected. And yet, in practice:
in the present canonical structure of the Church such supreme power not only exists, but is commonly understood as the foundation of the Church, and the basis of its canonical system… “Supreme power” is thus introduced into the very structure of the Church as its essential element. The divorce between canonical tradition and the canonical facts is nowhere more obvious.
The solution can only come by going deeper into the very sources of the Orthodox doctrine of the church, “to the essential laws of her organization and life,” i.e. into basic ecclesiology.
Fr. Schmemann’s statement of the theological objection to the notion of primacy as a power superior to that of a bishop is as follows:
Only sacramentally received power is possible in the Church, whose very nature is grace and whose very institution is based on grace. And the Church has only three charismatic orders, with no gift of power superior to that of a bishop. No sacramental order of primacy, no charism of primacy exists, therefore, in the Orthodox Church.
So what is primacy doing in the Church? What is its source?
‘And ye are witnesses to these things…’ To what things? … in the ascension of the Church in Christ, in the joy of the world to come, in the Church as the sacrament - the gift, the beginning, the presence, the promise, the reality, the anticipation - of the Kingdom, is the source and the beginning of all Christian mission. It is only as we return from the light and the joy of Christ’s presence that we recover the world as a meaningful field of our Christian action, that we see the true reality of the world and thus discover what we must do. It is today that I am sent back into the world in joy and peace, ‘having seen the true light,’ having partaken of the Holy Spirit, having been a witness of divine Love.
~ FLW p 112-113
Without the “light and the joy of Christ’s presence” then the world becomes meaningless, we don’t see true reality, and we don’t know what we’re supposed to do!
Comment
The opposing choice is for secularism, for the values of this world. We all know the pull of those values. We all do. We’re not talking survival here, the pull of basic biology to eat, to take care of children, to secure safety and shelter. We’re not even talking (for most people) the pull of a decent job or education for children. We’re talking sports, social events, extracurricular activities of all sorts, entertainment, and staying at home to do domestic things that don’t have to be done. We’re talking worldly ambition, the desire for prestige, hedonism, the desperate quest for “health” in body and mind.
Secularism … is a tragedy and a sin. It is a tragedy because having tasted a good wine, man preferred and still prefers to return to plain water; having seen the true light, he has chosen the light of his own logic… the tragedy is also a sin, because secularism is a lie about the world. “To live in the world as if there were no God!” — but honesty to the Gospel, to the whole Christian tradition, to the experience of every saint and every word of Christian liturgy demands exactly the opposite: to live in the world seeing everything in it as a revelation of God, a sign of His presence, the joy of His coming, the call to communion with Him, the hope of fulfillment in Him.
~ FLW p 111-112
The Gospel, tradition, the experience of every saint, and every word of the Liturgy demand that we live in the world seeing. And where do we see everything as we should? In the Liturgy, in the services of the Church. That’s what the Church is. Above all else, that’s what the Church gives us and calls us to, to see and to know, to experience and to witness, because that is the world’s salvation. To witness is to know and make known God’s love and His will for the salvation of the world. Says Fr. Schmemann, “The Church is Fullness [in the sense of experience of the Kingdom], but she is also Mission [witness, evangelism], the Divine love, the Divine will of salvation addressed to the world.” (See “The Idea of Primacy,” in The Primacy of Peter, p. 159.)
The salvation of the world — which is God’s will, in His Divine love — is to know God, and we Christians can — must! the Gospel demands it — make Him known as we know Him ourselves.