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