Firing the Canons

By Bishop Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

"A controversy broke out amongst the disciples over who would be the greatest" - Luke 22:25

The Ancient Church believed in a theory of icons in which the symbol, and what is used to make the symbol (paint, wood, color, form), is associated with the prototype that is present in the Mind of God and present in derivative in the psyches of individuals. Therefore, something that is not the "thing in itself" may mentally function as that thing to an extent, just as the pictures we have in our heads for the things that we see are not those things, but are necessary parts of our learning about and interacting with the outside world. While not the thing, they share in the nature and reality of the things they represent. Throughout human history, language, symbols, portraits, ritual actions, and even whole organizations and ways of life have been associated with "higher categories", with things believed to exist and impart meaning to our mundane world. Never has such an inculcation of meaning and association between Heaven and Earth occurred on as grand a scale as in Byzantium, in which the entirety of the Empire was seen as a reflection, an icon, of the Divine Economy revealed through Christ, the Prophets, and maintained by the Divine Revelation that IS the Church. But, just as Orthodox believe that to mistake an Icon for the thing that it represents is idolatry, so we must draw a distinction between the prototype that Byzantium was attempting to manifest and the Heavenly Kingdom itself. While the forms and laws of the Ancient Christian "Ταχις", the "Order" of the Church as it formed in its earliest days, are valuable and beautiful for the understanding of God's work through the Church, they are not God, and God is not Law, but Love. And, therefore, God's love and mercy always trumps the rules that, necessarily, must be in place to allow any human organization to function. This love is "Economia", the pastoral practice of the Church, and is the way that the Church functions with those who are repentant and pliable, with "askrebia", "discipline", only being used when the unrepentant and divisive are being called to repentance by their Church. Withholding of Communion, "excommunication", being the highest form of church discipline, only enacted for the spiritual health and protection of those being disciplined, so that the excluded may not "come under condemnation". Discipline, is, after all, only an attempt to call Christ's beloved back to Communion with Him!

The canon law of the Church happened out of necessity, and is a direct outflowing of the work of the Apostles and of the first Council, held in Jerusalem in Acts 15. The Christ invested pastoral care into the hands of his Apostles, and the Apostles ordained bishops to oversee the Church as they were martyred and the Church entered a new phase of growth. These bishops continued the practice of meeting in council to resolve doctrinal disputes, and these meetings were recognized as representing the Will of God and the conscience of the Whole Church regarding doctrine and interpretation. Conciliarity, mutual submission in love, agreement across place, language, and culture was the evidence of the Presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church and cooperation of the original teachings, and certified the correctness of the Council's decrees and the veracity of their interpretation of the Living Tradition that had been handed down to them.

Of these Councils, the most important Early Councils were Nicea (declaring Christ's Divinity and formulating the Creed), Constantinople 1 (insisting on the Divinity of the Holy Spirit and thus affirming the Trinity as God), Carthage (Canonizing scripture), Ephesus (declaring the Virgin Birth and the Sinlessness of Christ's Conception, while maintaining Christ's Divinity, thus proclaiming Mary to be "Theotokos", the bearer of God), and Chalcedon (which declared Christ to be fully God and fully man, one person in two complete natures). These councils are central to all traditional Christian understandings of theology, even if communion with the Ancient, Apostolic Churches has been broken and the Apostolic Ordination or the laying on of hands was not continued.

The doctrinal and interpretational decisions of these Councils hold weight, not just because bishops declared them, but because they were accepted by the Church at large (with breaks in communion occurring at each Council with the representative heretical special-interest groups). These decisions are called "Canons", "Orders", and are accepted as the guiding directives of the Church and definitions of acceptable belief and practice. How these canons exert authority, and the reasoning behind them, however, is a challenging issue of interpretation and understanding in the Church today, and this is my understanding of the fault-lines between four different perspectives. Unfortunately, these differences now rely upon who is considered the "greatest", forgetting that, at least in the early Councils, it was mutual submission, humility, and accountability which lent authority to the gatherings of Bishops and the Invocation of the Holy Spirit for the direction of the Church!

The Byzantine Theory of Declarative Authority -

The Byzantine's understood that the Emperor was God-given, and thought that he convened and enforced the councils, which were of themselves Holy, due to the legacy of New Rome, the cosmopolitan synthesis of all cultures, the broad mixing of old and new, and the high degree of philosophical depth and clarity of Constantinopolitan philosophical and theological culture, and the extend status of esteem and power that its Patriarch held. The Councils were "Ecumenical" because the Empire was "Ecumenical", the "Known World" or the "Ecumene", the Economy that had been established by God's Grace as a Christian Nation and defender of the Christian Church. In other words, New Rome basically conceived of itself in the same way that Rome understood the status of the Pope, but separated by the reality of Constantinople's real wealth, influence, and importance, as opposed to Rome's increasingly spiritual and moral claims. Constantinople, to those who lived in the empire at that time, was a picture of a successful Christian polity, a baptized Roman Legal system in which freedom, justice and equality were a possibility, a place where Heaven and Earth came together in a true and lasting way. This is the context in which the Greek Christian identity formed, and even after 400 years of Turkish oppression, is the bright ideal to which the Greek people gravitate. It also is the reason for the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s notable fondness for the United States, for it alone seems to encompass the best of the social values that are historically associated with the Byzantine Empire.

The Slavic Theory of Church-State Dependence and Episcopal Conciliarity -

The Slavic theory of authority has changed throughout time, due to the situation of the Church under different regimes, but two things have remained a constant: 1) The subservient role of the Church to brutal leadership, and 2) the great suffering and constant turmoil of the Russian people, in which the Church was the only solace and refuge. The theory of authority under Ivan the Terrible to Peter the Great, on through the Soviet era, was that the Church was a "department" of State, responsible for enforcing the political will of the Emperor. It was a servant of the State and worked to uphold national and racial agendas. Of course, there was always dissent, as the debate between "Possesors" and "Non-Possessors" and the protests of the "Old Believers" against the reforms of Nikon. Now, spearheaded by the "Neo-Patristic Synthesis" of Florensky, Florovsky, Lossky, and popularly spread by +Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev) in both his two volume book of the Orthodox Church and by his numerous articles and interviews, a new theory has come to completely and effectively replace the old Russian view of Church service to State in theory, while facilitating its traditional role in practice. Today it is understood that all bishops are equal, patriarchs represent national Christian interests, and the councils were not holy in of of themselves, and it is their reception is that made them ecumenical. Byzantine marriage of Church and State was the ideal, and this can also be accepted as the foundation of the State (though the Church maintains its conciliar, democratic aspects). The goal is a highly flexible, non-canonically based rule of bishops under a national figurehead, which is meshed to an outwardly Christian, highly centralized State, which enforces the teachings of the Church and protects Christendom for outside corruption and the threat of Islam.

The New Constantinopolitan Theory of Episcopal Authority -

Prof. Liabella at Holy Cross Seminary and His Holiness, Patriarch +Bartholomew of Constantinople, have worked towards a different understanding. They insist that, as the center of the canonical declarations of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, ensconced as "Equal to Rome" and the administrative and liturgical locus of all Orthodox practice, the See of Constantinople has special authority as an irreducible part of the canonical structure of the Church, and as the guardian and interpreter of the first receiving culture of Christianity, the Ancient Greek Bible, Creeds, Patristic Writings, and Liturgical Practices. To them, moral authority does not need to be established by exemplary behavior, or the faithfulness of the laity (Greece being extremely secularized and the values of the Church Tradition being overwhelmingly rejected). To them, their authority is innate, resting in the self-declared holiness of the later councils. Because the Councils of the Church were authoritative in and of themselves (not because they were later received by the Whole Church), the continued place of Constantinople is assured, as a kind of "Orthodox Mecca" or a central part of a history of revelation and a player in the outworking of salvation, and the importance of its ministry as a balance to national and political interests is necessary for the purity and universality of the Church. Contrary to Russian protests, this understanding IS true to how the Byzantine's understood the importance of Constantinople in the formation and interpretation of canon law. Constantinople WAS self-referrential and insufferably self-affirming (as constant friction with the other patriarchates and Rome proves).

In the end, the choice seems to be forced between a papal concept of Constantinople’s authority and a view that assumes that Russia is the "Third Rome" and the de facto inheritor of the "mantle" of Orthodox Empire. How the Orthodox move into a post-imperial mentality, sanctifying this culture in the same way that it interacted with and blessed that culture, is still a question. What we cannot affirm is the superiority and desirability of a post-Constantinian situation for which more questions were raised than answers provided, and I must affirm a rejection of the separatist and reactionary mentality that brands the West as the “Great Satan” and defines an identity and theology in opposition to modernity, technology, and the democratic ideal.

The rise of Russia could be a very good thing, but some of the brutality we are seeing at home, and which I have personally witnessed in Asia right now, makes me doubt that it is aspiring Christianity at work, but more of a desire to become a second Byzantium, an imperial world power, with all of the worst of the brutal repression and dishonest revisionism of ecclesiastical enemies being used to further a political/ethnic/anti-western identity. I would actually compare it more to Christianized Stalinism than anything else. I pray that Russia does not continue on its path towards Liturgically-masked Imperialism, because it will make the ethnic and religious tensions of East Asia all the more palpable, and contribute to the further misidentification of Christianity with Western Colonialism. With the circulation of Patriarch +Kyrill’s book in China, “Responsibility and Freedom”, the anti-democratic position of the Russian Church has become very clear to the Chinese. This, and the Russian desire to create Orthodox hegemony, rather than persuasively converting the world through meekness and a good example, is proving all the accusations of its enemies hard to dismiss.

My Personal View -

I, personally, believe that a “Third Way” is possible, in which we acknowledge that centrality of the early Byzantine contribution, while admitting that it is, as of yet, imperfect and in need of contextualization and new growth. We can do this from within the realistic confines of the Western Orthodox Tradition and the Anglican Patrimony. We can clearly see injustices and problems with the Byzantine model of “ symphonia” (how it handled conscientious dissent and doctrinal uncertainty over Greek terms with non-Roman peoples is a great example, and how it tended towards imperial regulation of the Church through canonical adoption of Roman Law being another), even as we maintain that it was the fullest realization of a Christian desire to sanctify and commit a culture to Christ that has existed up till now, we must realize that it was only an attempt at an icon of the Kingdom, and not the Kingdom itself. I must reject the view of the "Third Rome", not only because of the abuses that it will inevitably cause, but also because it’s history as an unproven construct - The proclamation of a murderous tyrant, Ivan the Terrible, should not be enough for Christian theologians to accept this theory as a reliably doctrine. It originated as propaganda, and has retained this position within Orthodoxy, even as its patently unchristian and evil uses played out in the 17th-19th centuries.

For me, views that promote exclusive peoplehood or self-justification must be rejected by Christians because of the same reasons we reject racism, nationalism, and fascism. It provides an excuse to see good as self and contrast the goodness of that self with the evil of the other. This is the opposite of what Christ called us to do, and controverts the life that Early Christians modeled for us in the lives of Saints. The view that the Ecumenical Patriarch is the "Prima Sine Paribus", the "First Without Equals", must also be rejected, for we know that “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first". Both the Russian and the Greek views are attempts at self-justification, and anything that justifies is an excuse not to repent, and anything that distracts from repentance is a distraction from the primary work of the Church, both on the personal and ecclesiastical levels, which is repentance and a love of God and others!

Cross-section of the Great Church of Constantinople, the Hagia Sophia, built by Emperor Justinian in 537AD and stood as the largest church in Christendom for over a thousand years, before being made a Mosque at the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.