An Anglo-Orthodox Manifesto

 

The Ancient English Chancel Barrier, Called a "Rood Screen," Shows the Consonance of Ancient Orthodoxy and the English Liturgical Patrimony in One Scene

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

Anglicans make up a disproportionate number of converts to the Eastern Churches, due to the increasing liberalism and disregard for Scripture and Tradition in the West, the ordination of women and homosexuals, and the general compatibility of conservative Anglican theology and the Eastern historical position. This conversion contradicts the recognition of Apostolicity and Orthodoxy within the Anglican Patrimony that the Greek, Antiochian, Alexandrian and Russian Churches gave to Anglocatholics less than 100 years ago, and breaks agreements for mutual recognition and aid that the Churches had established before the Eastern Churches put down roots in the West.

Unequivocal conversion to Eastern churches presents many problems, not only for the traditional Anglican who must abandon the history of the Western Church, the universality of the Christian Faith, salvation through Christ’s mercy (and not merely through the human agency of a historic ecclesial hierarchy), and the equality of all bishoprics, but also for the unresolved theological and cultural problems within the Eastern tradition. Instead of converting to a position that is no better than the flailing Anglican situation, simply choosing to ignore the theological liberalism, sexual and ethical problems hidden within Eastern patriarchates, sober-minded Anglicans must have a plan to restore the Anglican Patrimony to its Apostolic Roots and challenge Eastern churches to return to a sincerely biblical faith in the process.

Those converting to Eastern Christianity invariably identity themselves by the term “Anglo-Catholic.” Unfortunately, this term has been usurped within the episcopacy of the Anglican Communion by a contingency who are primarily “Ritualists” in their orientation, more concerned with the beauty of forms and the weight of authority lent by the tradition, than an actual, living, morally Christian faith. While the Oxford Movement and the initial impetus behind the Anglo-Catholic expression of Anglicanism were all positive, the way in which it has been used to mask effeminacy and homosexuality is reprehensible and must be honestly addressed. The gulf between those who insist on catholicity as expressed through historic forms and those who employ catholic forms as technique for social manipulation and an excuse to protect and support a corrupt priestly class could not be wider. The liturgical forms of the Ancient Church were not aesthetic choices, but ways in which eternal realities were mirrored among us and presented as a Mystery of the Kingdom in the Sacramental Life of the Church. The focus on aesthetics is beside the point. Strict, self-negating, repenting, sacrificial adherence to the Truth of Christ as revealed in Holy Scripture must be the motivation behind our liturgical acts. Liturgy is “kenosis” (self-empyting) and “askesis” (spiritual struggle/exercise), the arena in which we become obedient to the Holy Spirit, immersed in the Life of Christ and in the revelation of His Mysteries.

It is because of this general confusion that the author has coined a new term for use, “Anglo-Orthodoxy”, which is an insistency upon the catholic faith, as expressed in every area, at every time, by all Christians, as expressed in the English language and through Apostolic Succession that is canonically recognizable to other, local, Orthodox Churches. This is a Vincentian expression of God’s Divine Truth in His Body, the Universal Church. Such a position is not merely “Anglican”, but truly and fully “Catholic” and “Orthodox”, adhering, not to some 16th century formularies or the caprices of a renaissance kingdom, but to the Scriptures, the Ecumenical Councils, the Fathers of East and West, and the experience of all Apostolic Churches, in a canonical form comprehensible to the Eastern churches. This is the faith once delivered, this is the faith of the Prophets and the Apostles, and this is the faith that, regardless of how small, despised and betrayed today, will ultimately triumph and declare Christ’s Gospel to the world!

Anglo-Orthodoxy’s Points of Distinction

A) Anglo-Orthodoxy is a continuation of the Anglo-Catholic Movement in particular and Apostolic Christianity in general, responding positively to the doctrinal criticisms from the Eastern Churches regarding the Anglican Communion’s apostasy, liberalism and modernism. Contrary to Eastern Orthodox anti-western apologetics and canonical dismissiveness, we affirm our rightful claim as members of the Body of Christ in the local catholic church, and possessors of an uninterrupted and valid Apostolic Succession through the Laying on of Hands and the Invocation of the Holy Spirit. We do not believe canonical submission to Eastern Patriarchates is the essence of Communion with Christ or with the One, Holy, Apostolic and Catholic Church, seeing that all bishops are equal and all traditions have experienced periods of heresy and recession, only to be renewed by right teaching and a return to the received, catholicity of the Faith “Once and for all delivered to the Saints." Instead, we try to “re-dig the wells” that have either been filled in or salted by enemies of God’s Church.

B) While agreeing in many aspects with the Tractarians and the ritual aspects of Anglo-Catholic Movement, Anglo-Orthodoxy is an extremely different cultural and historical perspective. We are dependent upon and identify with the Early Church and are not dependent upon the Papal Office or recent Roman Catholic developments or innovations for our theological point of reference. This view is one in which Western claims to power and exceptionalism have been lost. Roman Catholic claims or infallibility and universal jurisdiction have been rebutted by unfiltered access to the documents of the Ancient Church in Latin, Greek and Syriac. Protestant claims to purity and institutional altruism have been proven false, failing the test of time. Postmodern developments and the successful reconstituting of Eastern Orthodox theology are factored into a comprehensive plan for a maximalist and traditionalist reinterpretation of the Anglican Tradition.

C) In the past, Anglo-Catholics have emphasized form over substance, allowing for an insidious liberalism to infect the Church "having a form of godliness but not the substance thereof.” Evangelicals have emphasized substance over form, and have pursued an effective individualism and experimentalism that falls apart into subjectivism when philosophically examined. Anglo-Orthodoxy on the other hand, emphasizes both the form and the substance as two irreducible sides of the same lived and received experience of truth, and maintains that the two cannot be separated without a loss of meaning on both sides - forms reflect substance, and the substance reflects the forms of divine will revealed through history and preserved in Holy Writ and in the Common Creedal Mind of the Church. In this way, Anglo-Orthodox theology is both subjectively experienced and objectively united with the common experience of Christianity in history. Anglo-Orthodoxy follows the theology developed by the Tractarians and the Oxford Movement, further clarifying this restorative theological position through advancements in recent scholarship. Some of these helpful teachings can be seen in the contextualization of peoplehood and covenant developed by Bp. NT Wright, Thomas Oden’s “Paleo-Orthodoxy” as an appeal to contextualize the Reformation as a Restorationist Movement within the Catholic Tradition, and the “Radical Orthodoxy” of John Milbanks to contextualize our ecclesial response to our contemporary social crisis. These views reinforce Anglo-Orthodox claims to the central supremacy of the Scriptural narrative, the inerrency of the Gospel and call for personal and communal repentance and recommitment.

D) Anglo-Orthodoxy realizes that moral lines drawn in the sand by cultural conservatives are arbitrary and that the standards for every generation change with the culture, therefore, the Church must return to its central beliefs and tenants and disallow development from these points - God's Existence, Revealed Moral Law, Scriptural Authority and Inspiration and its Literal/Anagogical, Historical, Plenary Interpretation, the Doctrines of Creation, Trinity, Incarnation, of a Worship-Oriented Anthropology and an Iconographic understanding of linguistic meaning and Covenantal Theology are not negotiable and cannot be developed. It insists on the directionality of the Holy Spirit in the Church always leads to Worship and Holiness, which do not change their qualities or definitions throughout time, being a reflection of the Nature of God. It rejects minimalism, secularism and compromise. It embraces martyrdom and suffering, knowing that the promise of those who truly follow Christ is to co-suffer, so-die and co-reign with Him in His Kingdom.

E) The Attitude of Anglo-Orthodoxy toward the Reformation is Two-Fold: It rejects the capacity of the Reformers to "rediscover" or innovate upon doctrine, it negates their ability to reject ancient forms of worship and iconography, or to take issue with the churchliness and acceptability of universally received Christian Tradition in all places - candles, incense, the making of icons, the veneration of the Holy Eucharist. To do so is pride and foolishness, for it is a statement of singular opinion and not a point of solidarity within the whole Body of Christ in different times and places. That which is absent in the explicit, received teachings of the Ancient Church, such as Calvinism, "Low-Church" and anti-hierarchical views of polity, or a non-denominationalism that minimizes and nullifies that which our Christian fathers received and taught, cannot be admitted as a teaching of the Church. However, in rejecting the authority of the Pope and the power of the Catholic Church to innovate or develop doctrine, they are to be congratulated, for in as much as they preserved Episcopal authority and Apostolic polity, they returned the Church back to its universal, complete and locally-functioning norm - the Local Catholic Church.

F) Anglo-Orthodoxy strives to define those who continue to teach the faith in contradiction to hedonism, sexual perversion, gender confusion, secularism and the "niceness" and "professionalism" of hired hands and wolves in sheep's clothing as "Orthodox" in contrast to the "Heterodox" heretic who loves the world and its pleasures rather than the Church and its way of life. It also demands that "Orthodoxy" not be a self-interpreted fidelity or conservatism, but an actual fidelity to an historical and visible Communion, signified by the Scriptures, Creeds, Councils and Worship of the Church throughout time.

Apostolic Ecclesiology

The role of Episkopos, Presbyteros and Diakonos were given by the Holy Spirit to the Apostles at the foundation of the Church at Pentecost, when the "Paraclete" was sent from God to "lead and teach all truth", which was to be reflected in the faithfulness and obedience of God's people in Christ's Body, the Church, which is the "Pillar and ground of Truth". This tripartite order is the universal sign of apostolicity and catholicity, since the original meaning of “catholic” in Greek is not “universal” but “complete.”

The Early Christian ideal of ecclesiology was based on the Pauline use of the word "taxis" and is based in the nature of the Trinity - the Father drawing in love, the Son explaining, communicating and incarnating, and the Holy Spirit working within us to comfort and witness to our sonship. In this view, there is order, a difference of function and a process of initiation and reception, but not of power, or of a lineal descent of charismatic empowerment within the function of the Church. The whole system is energized by a single ground of being, a single source of power, which is the Godhead's self-existent and uncreated energy. This energy fills from all directions and enables us to do good works, the works of the Father's Will. The paradigm is circular, not pyramidal, and emanates from the Presence of the Holy Spirit in Trinitarian Baptism. The ordained roles arise from and are empowered by the Holy Spirit in the People of God, the "Laos", and functionally realize the Priesthood of all Believers, and the gifts that we all share. There are no gifts that are greater than others, just as there are no useless members of our bodies - the old woman who prays is no less important that the Bishop who blesses. They both share in the fullness of the Spirit, but serve in different capacities, all for the glory of God. For God to be at "the top of the triangle" is a wrong analogy, one which is reflected in a wrong view of the episcopacy and leads to the authoritarian papacy - God's power is so great and manifest because He is beneath all things, as the infinite ocean of energy that sustains all other existence.

St. Irenaeus, disciple of St. Polycarp, the disciple of St. John the Apostle and the first to fully explain the Apostolic Ecclesiology in his "On the Teachings of the Apostles", uses St. Paul as his source, turning to the scripture that says, "May the peace of Christ dwell in you, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the Glory of God the Father." In this blessing he sees the structure of the taxis and the relationship between the Created and the Creator. Here he points out man's place within the Trinity, not as an equal, but as an existence that is indebted to Trinitarian reality. Our eternal life is due to this fellowship with God, not to the indestructible nature of the soul. Communion in the Eucharistic gathering of the Church is the fullest illustration of this eternal reality. Because the disciples of the Apostles clarified the original meaning of the Scriptural text, we can understand the earliest reception and transmission of the three-fold ministry of Bishop, Presbyter and Deacon from the time of the New Testament Church.

With this understanding of the Scriptural and theological meaning of ecclesiology and its unbroken use within the Church, it should be clear why all of the Ancient and Apostolic Churches feel that they cannot change any part of this God-given structure. It is understood that we must maintain the Trinitarian Order of the Church, maintaining the Bishops as heirs to the role of Apostles, the Presbyters as a synodal affirmation of the Holy Spirit's ministry ("Where two or three are gathered", "How good and how pleasant it is when brethren dwell together...", and "By the mouth of two or three witness will a thing be established") and the Deacons, liturgical table servers, that are commissioned to incarnate the Church's ministry and take the Eucharist to the world.

A Philosophy of Ecumenism

"The Wind blows where it wishes" and humanity witnesses the cosmic work of Christ to bring us to God through the calling and sanctification of the Holy Spirit, bringing us together, by His Spirit, into communion with the Trinity and with one another. Thus, "Grace" is not restricted to the visible boundaries of the Apostolic Church. Grace is universally at work in the world through Christ's Love for us, His Incarnation, Passion, Death, Descent into Hades, Resurrection and Ascension. The Church is the Community that witnesses to Christ, one with Christ through repentance, baptism and the Gift of the Holy Spirit, and thus, it is "set apart" in its recognition and relationship with Christ to be His Body; but, God leads into the Church, by His Spirit, not excluding any, not biased against any, nor restricted to any "Churchly condition". Christ's work of redemption was truly for ALL, and "God wills that none should parish, but that ALL should have eternal life".

Ancient Christianity defines "salvation" as Communion with Christ, being "In" Him, "Partaking in the Divine Nature", and "Being one with Christ, even as He and His Father are One". Communion with one another is based upon this reality within the Church, being "one with one another". Those who reject their place in this order, who reject and disobey Christ's basic commands, and insist on a merely "personal relationship" and an "individual decision" may be using "Salvation" as an excuse for pride and self-love, which is, by definition, the opposite of true salvation and Life in Christ! We cannot be saved alone, and Christ gave His Spirit to us as a whole, therefore, to claim any position of pride or self-imminence is contrary to the reality of the Spirit.

There are those "within" our flock, however, who would exclude those "outside" from salvation and who do not understand the relationship of the Church with the World, which is a statement of universal salvation, regeneration, renewal, and the livening of the physical creation by the Presence of the Holy Spirit. Grace is, by nature, NOT exclusionary, but it does require submission to God, submission to one another, and the putting down of oneself - and heretics are always visible by their desire to force their own will, break off communion with others, and live as individuals instead of the "holy people" of God. Those who make a point of excluding or pushing people away from the Church, as an ethnic or an "us vs. them" mentality, are not truly in the Church, and they are guilty of the same crimes with which they accuse their enemies.

Baptism is accomplished by the Holy Spirit for washing and regeneration, regardless of the worthiness or ordination of the ones involved, but the fullness of the Spirit requires the laying on of hands, which those who have broken from Christ's Church of have not received themselves cannot possibly give. But, they are NOT excluded from the Grace of the Holy Spirit, which is truly universal and experienced by ALL MEN, regardless of their acceptance, but they may reject the repentance and communion that are necessary to be functional members of the Body, and thus, exclude themselves from fullness of the Spirit.

Repentance and communion is a lifelong process of salvation, and thus, to reject repentance or reject others is to imperil your own soul and proclaim an illegitimate self-sufficiency. Those outside of the visibly Apostolic Church (but who sincerely repent and who have submitted to baptism in the Name of the Trinity), may never reach outward unity with the Church (just as those within the historic Church may never reach the heights of repentance and love for God that makes them living testimonies of God's Love and Healing in the world - but just as we believe our un-saintly members are judged by Christ with mercy and compassion, to experience eternal life with Christ), so too we must believe those who repent in this life and experience the presence of the Holy Spirit as a result, will be judged by Christ with Mercy and Love; and that they, too, will be separated on the Last Day as sheep from amongst the goats. Only by God's Grace and by the work of the Holy Spirit is life possible at all, but only in our repentance is spiritual life given, and only by Christ's Mercy may we be saved! Those who have entered into Spiritual Life by repentance, baptism, and confession of Christ as Lord, but who are estranged from their mother, the Church, are still not without a mother!

Communion encompasses two aspects, directly related to the Natures of Christ in the Incarnation - it is shared life with God and shared life with man. To reject Christian history, the Early Church, the Fathers, and the story of Unbroken Communion throughout time, is to reject OUR HUMAN COMMUNION, a communion which could only come through the Holy Spirit, and which manifests the Love of God. Our communion with God is dis-incarnated if we reject our physical, earthly communion, and we reject the mechanism whereby God chose to save us, the physical, incarnate, unification of God and Man. Human communion is the main evidence of the existence of God and the reality of Christ's work among us. It is not "purer" and "more spiritual" without this human component - only less authentic, less full, and less saving! Therefore, to reject or react against the necessary human communion of Christ's Church is a crime against love, and as St. Augustine says, this is the essence of heresy and schism. Those who do this intentionally, must ask themselves the serious question about the absence of the "Fruit of the Spirit" and the reality of their claims to follow Christ.

Those who are heretics or schismatics because they do not know any better, who have not rejected Christ as Truth or union with the Church as Christ's Body, cannot be held with those who have, in the Spirit of Antichrist, substituted love of God and Church for a love of the power and money of the world, deceiving men by teaching with false authority and desiring to have "lordship over the brethren". One has committed a sin in ignorance, the other has willingly broken off from the People of God. In this case, Ancient Christianity teaches a kind of radical individualism as well, in which Christ will search the personal intents and thoughts of the heart, holding them accountable for their own wishes and desires, and allowing their eternal state to be determined by the individuals themselves. We are saved as a group, in communion with Christ, as the Church, but we are judged on our own for the deeds we have done. In this way, Christ Himself will Chrismate (the anointing of oil represents the giving of mercy and the application of a spiritual cure from the Holy Spirit) the unintentional and unknowing heretics and schismatics into His Eternal Church at the Judgment. And in this way, there will be "no salvation outside of the Church", but the "Church" that is referred to in this ancient axiom is the glorious, resurrected, eternal Church of the Returned Christ at the Last Day. This unbroken communion of saints in the future kingdom is the Church in Eternity, beyond time, with which the Anglican Church believes itself to be in communion - therefore, even though the Church has experienced separation in time, and we freely see the human failings and problems from our side in this separation, because we did not declare self-sufficiency or break communion with all the other Apostolic Churches, we insist that the Anglican Church still experiences an aspect of fullness and communion with the Church beyond time in a way that makes it complete and universal.

The Grace that those beyond the visible Church receive is manifested as a calling to fullness, a calling to communion, and a calling to the unbiased love that recognizes the scope, love, and beauty of God in the world! Those who are experiencing God are feeling a fundamental calling to love and embrace of the Church throughout history. Those who are truly submitting to the Holy Spirit are on their way into the historical and visible Communion of the Saints in the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church of Christ’s formation in His Kingdom!

On the Ancient Doctrine of Process Salvation

The ancient understand salvation to be a relationship with the Incarnate Christ, and for this relationship to manifest as an eternal process. We understand all the biblical references to salvation to be definitive, and as such, salvation to be a process in which we are saved in confession of faith (Rom 10:9), in reception of water baptism in the name of the Trinity (Matt 28:19, Acts 2:38), taking up our cross and following Christ (Luke 9:23), and upon our faithful death (Matt 24:13). In the theological maxim popularized by Bp. Timothy “Kallistos" Ware, “I am saved, being saved, and will be saved."

The consequences of the acceptance of a biblical "Believe, Repent, and be Baptized" doctrine modified by the innovation of the "Once saved, always saved” Preservation of the Saints is monumental. If salvation is a one-time repentance, then this would be a logical conclusion; but what if salvation is not a one time repentance, not a decision sealed once with baptism, but a continual process of repentance, started at baptism? Why does the word for repentance in the Greek New Testament, "Metanoia", mean a continuous action of turning? If this is the case, then the Protestant baptism is wrongly applied, and becomes meaningless as a marker of a non-existent point of past salvation. This is a problem of tense, a problem with the picture of redemption and salvation that comes from an understanding of Christ's work in our lives - if Christ justifies, or makes righteous, without making truly righteous in fact, then it is merely a semantic category. But this is where another word is mistranslated - where the German and English Bibles translate "justification", the Greek says "Diaskosis", which means "being made righteous"! The word “justification”, rooted in St. Jerome’s idiosyncratic translation of the Latin Vulgate, becomes an effective legal loophole or an "excuse", which is not reflective of our experience or of spiritual reality. We do not disbelieve the biblical pattern of "Believe, Repent, and Be Baptized", but we believe that the baptism has effect through belief and repentance, which must be maintained by the submission of the believer's will throughout life to Christ, witnessed in the practice of Repentance, Confession, and doing Good Works as an expression of God's Grace present in our lives. Therefore, a baptized Christian may go to Hell, if he forsakes the faith; and an unbaptized believer in Christ may be saved by Christ's mercy through his faith. The unbaptized thief on the cross was saved by crying out to Christ in faith. It does not follow that a Christian believer who is baptized in infancy does not go to Heaven, or that the non-apostolic believer's adult baptism holds effect for the salvation of one who has fallen away (Christian in name, but not in orientation). In Ancient Church's understanding, Child Baptism and Adult Baptism are both admissible because baptism only continues its effectiveness based on the continual decisions of the individual... both baptisms do the same thing, and are used for the same purpose of motivating and sustaining the life of continuous repentance through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This has always been the practice of the Church, witnessed in the Bible, the Apostolic Fathers, and the practice of all Apostolic Churches. Baptism is the imparting of the Spirit through the ministry of the Church, through the name of the Trinity, for the acceptance of the individual into the sacramental life of the Church. It is a gateway into the life of Christ in the Church, during this life. Our second baptism into the Glorified Kingdom of the Resurrection is Death itself, the "waters that were parted to lead us out of bondage and into the Promised Land."

Therefore, the proper understanding on Calvinist doctrine is that John Calvin mistook the covenant and predestination of the "Elect" (which we understand to be the Church as a whole, just as Israel was the "Elect" in the OT) for an "individual election" (Eph 1:3-5, Rom 8:28-30, I Cor. 2:7, etc). Since there was no Calvinist system historically, its complete absence in the writings of the Fathers leads us to believe that it is an innovative speculation, rather than an Apostolic Teaching. The Early Church Fathers also talked about the difference between the calling to become a Christian, which is a universal calling, and the election of the Bride, which is particular calling within the Church. Understood in this way, there is no contradiction between our view of individual salvation as process and the election and predestination of the Bride for Christ. When individuals mistake themselves for the Church, as John Calvin seems to have done in his theory of double predestination, not only does the responsibility for interpreting Scripture become an individual burden, in which there is no historical standard of truth, but the reason for Christ's establishment of the Church itself dissolves... Leading to the current situation in both Calvinism and Evangelicalism in which "Jesus Followers" are "Christian Despite the Church."

The reason why people historically do not agree on the definition of salvation within the Protestant Paradigm is that it is hard for human pride to accept that Christ makes the judgment about our eternal salvation (which is His embrace) and not some kind of "law" higher than God, which makes it possible to predict what God must do. It is also far easier to forget that Christ said "judge not" (Matt 7:1) and use our judgment about someone's eternal state to justify our own lack of love as somehow "spiritual". We see this often in history in disputes between different Christian groups, who use their own definition of salvation to exclude another group from grace (i.e. Catholics against Protestants, vice versa, and different Protestant sects against one another). We believe that Christ does not will any to perish (2 Peter 3:9), and as such, He grants mercy to all that ask Him. This is why the Ancient Church was not afraid of Christ rejecting them or "losing their salvation", but were also conscious that it IS possible through hardness of heart, unconfessed sins, and a rejection of the work of the Holy Spirit to not want Christ's mercy any more... And we believe Christ loves us so much that He will not force Himself on us. We are aware of our sin in contrast to Christ's mercy, which is in no way a negative "judgment" on Christ's willingness to save us - it shows us what 1 John says so often about God, that He is Light, Love, and Salvation if we will just keep turning ourselves away from self and back to Him! And in this life-long process remembering, "he that endures to the end shall be saved." (Matt 24:13)

Against the Ordination of Women

Women's ordination is based in a profoundly confused hermeneutic, one that attempts two faulty and error-filled associations - 1) That the role of Episkopos, Presbyteros and Diakonos are not well-defined and are somehow interchangeable in the Early Church, and 2) That an argument from symbolism cannot exclude women and, if properly "recalibrated" for the true meaning hidden in an esoteric understanding, would support women's ordination.

The first is historically preposterous, since as stated above, the Ante-Nicene Fathers left explicit manuals for the administration of the Church, describing its rituals and outlining its proto-canonical traditional through both descriptive and proscriptive means. The Didache, the Didaskalia Apostolorum, the writings of St. Justin Martyr’s “Apologia", St. Ignatius’ Epistles, St. Polycarp, St Clement of Rome’s Epistles, St. Irenaeus of Lyon’s “On Apostolic Teaching” and “Against Heresies", the "Apostolic Tradition" of St. Hippolytus of Rome, along with the Apostolic Canons (which can be accepted as the earliest collection of canons from the early Syriac-speaking Church of Antioch) all describe a Christian priesthood that is male in character. If the disciples of the Apostles cannot clarify the original meaning of the Scriptural text, I do not know what would. When the Canons of Alvira, and the Council of Nicaea I and Constantinople I are considered as documentation as to the function, attitudes and perspectives of the Early, Undivided Catholic Church, nothing could be more clear! Women were never allowed to function in the priestly role. Female deacons had different liturgical functions than male deacons, restricted exclusively to the baptism of adult women and to ministry amongst women and children (Apostolic Canons and Synodikon Orientale Seleucia-Ctesiphon 1).

To discount this evidence is to appeal to a secret tradition, a hidden and lost "truth" that was suppressed by the Church Fathers and Councils. This might be convincing, if all other gnostic interpretations and heresies did not claim the same thing at every important juncture in history. Alternate histories and doubts of the clarity of the foundations, which could be no clearer, is, as St. Irenaeus of Lyon says, "the hissing of snakes" of those heretics who bite at the ankles of those weak in faith and prone to "itching ears” that St. Paul warned about from the foundation of the Church.
Secondly, the association of symbols, historically received as one thing, as "properly understood" to mean another is a common technique amongst early gnostic heretics, and reappeared in the textual criticism that has been used by enemies of the Church since the inception of the German Enlightenment, leading to liberalism and disregard for Scripture in a tradition otherwise defined by the Lutheran audacity of "Sola Scriptura". It is subtle, and almost believable, were its fathers not committed to the destruction of the very forms that nurtured and protected them. It is here that we must remember the adage by Evagrius of Pontus, "A theologian is one who prays", and not merely the one writes the most convincing re-associations of symbols to match what fits our popular cultural schema.

We only know the orthodoxy and catholicity of a doctrine by its submission to the faith, once and for all delivered to the saints, and by the common witness of the whole Church. It should be, as St. Vincent of Lerins said, be "believed everywhere, always, and by all." There is no individual interpretation of Scripture, and Holy Tradition does nothing to add to or subtract from that which has been received. When we discover an addition or subtraction, as we did in the 16th century in the medieval faith of Roman Catholicism, which had obscured the mandate of Scripture and the proclamation of the Gospel with idols and formalism, we return to the mean of the Ancient Church, regardless of the pain or trails. That is what the Anglican Reformation was - a return to that biblical, orthodox, catholic faith. Not a spinning off into new and novel doctrines, heresies of the age, and the continuous development of doctrine! This is the only way that Anglicanism means anything and offers anything to the world.

Bishops are constrained by Scripture and the catholic interpretation of the Councils and Fathers. Those who swear the pastoring and protecting of God's flock, but then abandon it for the cares of the world, popularity and political correctness are, as St. John Chrysostom said, the "skulls that pave the road to Hell". The fact that the bishops of a local church agree to heresy does not make it true, in that it is not reflective of the whole Body of Christ in an Ecumenical Councils, and witnessed by the saints and martyrs of God's Church. Therefore, those bishops who support women's ordination are standing against both the ecumenical consensus of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, but also diverging from the Scripture and the Tradition that they are charged to protect.

To support heresy is nothing new for bishops, it has happened at many occasions and has led, invariably, to separation and alienation of a local church from the life of the whole church. While the Pan-Orthodox Congress of 1923 decided to recognize Anglican orders in as much as they conformed to the historical parameters of Scripture and Apostolic Canon, now the Anglican Church has lost all recognition due to the conference of already suspect orders to those to whom such orders have always been prohibited - divorced men, active homosexuals and women.

Women are not a sub-class for being un-eligible for ordination. The most holy and most important member of the Church is a woman. The Blessed Virgin is and always will be the prototype of the Church, and should be the role that we all, as Christians, strive to play. However, the role of priest is reserved for the male, not because of superiority, but because of the symbolism of the priestly role and the part that the priest plays in representing the historical Christ. All baptized believers have all “put on Christ”, and in Him there is no male, female, slave or free. But this does not upend the symbol, just as the fact that God has made all food clean for us does not negate the fact that we offer bread and wine in the Eucharist. With the loss of the symbol, the method for communicating God's truth, the Gospel is lost as well. This can, in large part, be mapped to the loss of the proper veneration and love for women within the Radical Reformation that has infected the rest of Protestantism, and is one of the fueling factors for the push to embrace secular definitions of femininity and reform.

This acceptance of self-contradictory roles of “duel integrity” is a tragedy, not only for the status of Anglican orders, but for all that the Anglican Church has to teach the Roman Catholic and Orthodox worlds, which should be an absolute conformity, reliance and submission to Scripture and a return to the earliest theological and liturgical forms common to all of the world’s Apostolic Churches. Now that we have been unfaithful to Scripture, we cannot point to our Roman or Orthodox brother and complain about their lack of conformity to Scripture or their occasional idolatry.

Why Anglo-Orthodoxy Does Not Require Canonical Submission to the Eastern Patriarchates

If Anglo-Orthodox only receive that which has been synodally received by all local churches in Ecumenical Council, then there is certainly no reason for canonical submission to Eastern Patriarchates – We see how purely local councils, such as "Trullo" (Quintesext) claimed universal authority, or, as the Byzantine Canonist Theodore Balsamon argued, idiosyncratically and unilaterally, that all practices must be brought into conformity with Constantinople, controverting 14 hundred years of Roman Law and the sacred canons of the early councils, creating the current position within Eastern Orthodoxy which is at odds with ancient tradition and the sacred Ecumenical Councils, the very thing to which the Orthodox appeal to as the primary source of their infallible authority and the necessity of canonical submission. Such an argument then, for the general infallibility of the Eastern Orthodox Church, is, in itself, self-contradictory and must be taught as a point of faith in addition to the Gospel, not as self-evident and historical fact or as a bi-product of the Holy Spirit's residency within the Church. This is a theological problem that Anglicans have never seen honestly addressed within the Eastern Church, fearing scandal amongst the faithful and a general reevaluation of the Orthodox Tradition, which would be generally catastrophic for the princely authority of the Byzantine monastic episcopal system.

We believe that communion is first with Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, through repentance, prayer and love towards God and one another, submission to the Gospel, good works and fellowship with other believers. Apostolic succession occurs naturally out of the desire to submit to spiritual authority, love and respect elders, and not break off from the visible, historic Church that Christ started and insured against corruption or destruction. In this spirit of love, respect and collegiality, the local church recognizes other churches, creating local synods and holding bishops accountable through the censure of other bishops. When something goes wrong between churches, the biblical command to reconcile must be invoked, and Christians must remember that we are called to be of one mind and spirit, just as Christ and His Father were one. For this reason, operating on the level of person-to-person and local-church with local-church, these prerogatives are fairly simple to maintain. However, with the adoption of a state church model and an impetus on centralized control, while theoretically maintaining the rights of all bishops as equal, small or rural areas were deprived of their traditional bishops and the whole of Roman Christianity was administered along the lines of the pre-Christian secular administration. This has led to the creation of centralized episcopal authorities, most notably the Roman Catholic Church and the National Orthodox Churches, with universal claims to either jurisdiction or the general guardianship of the truth and stewardship of the Holy Spirit. These claims do not complement earlier theories of the Christian polity and rejects the equality of bishops and the necessity of universal reception of councils for ecumenicity; therefore, they can be discarded as later developments, made for practical administrative reasons, and are not the Essence of the Church.

The Eastern Orthodox theory of communion is truly beautiful, but as it developed within the Byzantine canonical tradition, it is also extremely self-referential and idealistic, incapable of reflecting the simple realities of its own history. While it draws meaningful analogies between Trinitarian Taxis and ecclesial hierarchy, hypostatic union and the divine-human economy of the church, celestial worship and late Byzantine Liturgy, it unfortunately fails to honestly or self-critically address the realities of historical inconsistency and political necessity; appending the Codex Justinianus to the Canons of the Council of Trullo (and thereby subjecting the Church to the laws of the State), leaving unaddressed the Moechian schism and its ultimate triumph over a non-schismatic Patriarchate, two Unia councils officially unifying with the West (only to be discarded at convenience), the common practice of Byzantine caesaropapism and Turkish simony, the Palamite usurpation of universal teaching authority through civil-war, intrigue and the persecution of theological enemies, and the contemporary issues of phyletism and jurisdictionalism, to name just a few.

Today, St. Cyprian, as interpreted by Theodore Balsamon, is the only canonical authority used to interpret ecclesiology within the Eastern Orthodox Tradition. However, there are at least five sources of canonical definition in the Ancient Church that disagree with Balsamon's interpretation of Cyprianic canonicity. St. Augustine's ecclesiology completely contradicts St. Cyprian's understanding in that it asserts that schism occurs, not by the cutting off of grace, but in the denial of love. Schismatic orders and sacraments partake in the same reality of the Church, up to the point that they can be accepted in mutual love and submission, and break where love ceases. The Apostolic Canons (the earliest canonical Tradition from the Ancient Church of Antioch) assert that every area has the right to recognize a senior bishop, a Primus, and that this is the basic unity of the local church, based on conciliatory and mutual recognition. No other "outside" recognition is necessary for the Church to exist in its Catholic, Complete and Universal, state.

The Canons of the First Ecumenical Council also assert that all local traditions hold precedence over imperial declaration, unless they contradict the doctrinal teachings of an Ecumenical Council. This was the point that Balsamon falsely represented and thus changed canonical interpretation - he states, "All things must be as in the God-loved City of Constantinople, unless dictated by an Ecumenical Council." This minor point of misrepresentation was the single most devastating thing that occurred to Orthodoxy, eliminating the Liturgy of St. James, St. Mark, of St. Thaddeus and all of the hymnological and liturgical traditions of all other areas and liturgikons in the Late Medieval Period. If the Church's theological self-understanding is found in its prayers, "Lex Orandi Lex Credendi", then Orthodoxy cut itself off at this point from a major source of doctrinal and cultural inspiration and directly contributed to the narrowing and self-appreciation of the later Orthodox tradition.

The last source of insight was the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in 410AD, where the preface to its Canons explains that, based on the Apostolic Canons, all local churches have the authority to declare their political independence from the Roman Emperor and Imperial authority, and that the only requirement for mutual recognition between churches is reception of the Apostolic Episcopacy, the Teaching of the Gospel and the Epistles of Paul, the Doctrine of the Incarnation, the Belief in the Trinity and the Practice of the Sacraments (basically, the assertions of the Nicene Creed). This view was later ratified when the Byzantine Patriarchs, St. John of Antioch and Sergius the Great, communed with the Syriac Patriarch, Yeshuayab II, under the reign of Heraclius, while maintaining the Syriac definition of Catholicity. This early definition explains the practical and philosophical problems of the Council of Trullo, where Emperor Justinian appended the Canons with the "Codex Justinianus", the secular law of the Eastern Roman Empire, singlehandedly usurping the ecumenical authority of the Fifth and Sixth Councils, instating episcopal celibacy and arranging for the monastic take-over of the Byzantine and Roman Churches.

Fr. Dr. Cyril Hovorun's new book, "Scaffolds of the Church", is an unbiased Eastern Orthodox source that helps contextualize the evolution of the Byzantine position over the last one thousand years, and then follow that with Fr. Dr. Patrick Viscuso's critical translation of Balsamon's "The Orthodox Church Under Islam". Fr. Dr. John Meyendorff's life work is also valuable, focusing on the effects of the Empire on canonical interpretation, particularly in "Imperial Unity and Christian Division" and also seen in his cooperation with Papadakis, "The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy". These are all Orthodox resources that discuss the original understanding of catholicity in contrast to what it became in the Late Byzantine Period and under the Turkish rule and Russian Imperial expansions.

An Anglo-Orthodox Eucharistic Restoration

The Early Church Fathers believed that eternal realities are made present, real, and visible in the conformance of man’s actions with the Heavenly Prototype. This is the underlying understanding that made the Early Church liturgical and timeless, unafraid of repeating actions that were completed, once-and-for-all by Christ. It was not understood to be a "reenactment" or a "redoing", but entering into the New Creation, an Eternal Reality that was accomplished by Christ, in the Will of the Father, by the Work of the Spirit, and accessible through Faith! In this worldview, man does not merely “symbolize” a past action, in the absence of the real or the true, documenting in a commemorative act, communicating what was but is no longer; instead, these actions are manifestations of what is in Heaven, beyond fallen time, in Christ the Incarnate Word. Thus, these actions are forms that are filled with the real substance of Christ's work, and are filled with a meaning far greater than any man could construct or assign!

Man is the creation of God, bearer of God’s love, ruler of the earthly realm, a reflection of God – What we do in our minds, in an infinitely inferior way, what God does in the process of Creation – tying together time/space and the meaning of God’s will into one narrative! This narrative starts with the Creation, through the Fall, into the prophetic anticipation of Christ, and into complete re-creation, triumph, and establishment of a new Heavenly order with Jesus Christ! Christ is the center of history, the meaning of man’s culture, art, and poetry, and the fulfillment of man’s longing for Love, God, and Truth! By the power of the Spirit, the Church is inspired by the Gospel to visions of reality, which are reflected truthfully in its liturgical practices, making present the reality of the Scriptures, Christ's salvation and the presence of the Spirit in the world!

We hold that the Work of Christ in incarnation, teaching, passion, descent into Hell, resurrection, and Eucharistic presence is the bringing together of the separated realities of Heaven and earth, and the re-creation of man’s fallen nature is accomplished through His universal act of salvation, expiation, and reunification to God. The Holy Spirit came into the world to be the life of Christ now made available to all. Those filled with the Holy Spirit through baptism, apostolic chrism, and the laying on of hands are the Church of God. This Church is now the seed of Heaven planted within the fallen world.

Baptism and the apostolic laying on of hands must be seen as the gate into a world of convergence, which is the Church, God’s Kingdom on earth, into which God’s self-sacrificing love is revealed, His presence is granted, and in which the forms of worship are filled with the essence of the reality of the Heavenly Liturgy. Baptism is the first act of communion, and communion occurs as the completion of baptism. Baptism washes, chrism fills with the Spirit, and in the Spirit the Body and Blood of our Savior is taken into our own bodies, for remission of sin and for resurrection into Eternal Life! The liturgical practice of baptism is intimately connected with the cycle of Church Life, which is evangelism, discipleship (catechetical praxis), Preparation through fasting, and the Eucharistic Feast of Paschal Lamb. Conversion must occur through repentance, but this is the repentance that occurs outside of the indwelling grace of the Spirit. Baptism is the beginning of repentance within the Life of the Church, and is invalidated without the constant turning of the heart and seeking after God’s face, His approval, and living in His love. Therefore, repentance and confession is always a return to the cleansing waters of baptism, and Eucharistic communication is a sealing of this connection through Christ's gift of Himself! Only within the Life of the Church and the ancient practice of teaching, fasting, confession, exorcism, prayer, baptism, and Eucharist is the full meaning of baptism understood. It cannot be cut off from any of these things, because to do this would be to break off its fullness. A liturgical and catechetical break with this true tradition is the reason behind the nominalism and lack of evangelical fervor of the Church!

The Church in the Unity of God’s Love, at worship in the power of the Holy Spirit, is the foundational, sacramental reality of the Holy Spirit’s work on earth and the context of all other works. This makes the Church the first and foremost Sacrament, in which the Eucharist is both given and received, and the fullness of Christ’s Presence is fully manifested! The Eucharist is the ultimate expression of the Church, the manifestation of the work of the Spirit that is the Church. Within the Eucharist, Heaven and earth converge as one, and the Church on earth steps into the Heavenly reality of God’s will as in Heaven. Only in the Eucharist is the Church truly the Church, because the True Church is in Heaven, and we must be united with it in order to function as the Church was commanded to function, and to live in the reality of the Comforter, the Spirit, as Christ promised!

The Eucharist cannot be broken into scholastic pieces for study, because each part is integral to every other part. Preparation in fasting and prayer, offering of self and of goods, gathering in one place in the Name of the Lord, the reading of the Word, the Sermon, the Confession of Faith, the Kiss of Peace, the Lord’s Prayer, the Commemoration of Christ’s Sacrifice, the Words of Institution, the Invocation of the Holy Spirit, the Remembrance of the Saints, the Prayers of Repentance, the Offering of Thanks, the Taking of Communion – All of these things are filled with the Spirit, are bestowing the Presence of Christ, and lead to the final reality of truly communing with Christ and with one another! This is the fullness of the Church, the Church in Heaven and earth rejoicing in the victory of our Lord, receiving Christ as our Husband and God! This is a Great Mystery, but not "mysteriological" – It is not a hidden mystery or a cultic practice, but a mystery in the fact that the invisible is made visible. A mystery that makes manifest!

Only when this holistic and completely real understanding of the Church fills our hearts and becomes the essence of our faith, can our Anglican Patrimony baptize the world with God’s Presence, becoming a Light to the World, and living in the Presence, the Experience, of the Holiness of God!

The Symbols of the Church are not forms standing in place of absent substance, because those things that they represent are real, present, and eternal. The truth of Christ’s continual Eucharist in Heaven, His sacrifice, His propitiation/expiation, fills the Eucharist on earth, brings together both realities, and in no way “stands for” but “becomes”, because the “likeness” unites and does not “separate”. This action is not initiated or “magically controlled” by man, but is achieved in the Spirit, by the Spirit, and for the Will of God. Man submits to and is filled with God's Work by this process. They are not only “associated” in the human mind, but they are associated in the Mind of the Creator, and therefore, inextricably linked together in cosmic reality! God makes the Church at worship stand in new time, beyond the fallen world, and makes us who partake in His Spirit, one with Himself! The Church at worship is truly the First-Fruits of the New Creation!  

Summary

In this vision, we see that the benefit of Anglo-Orthodoxy is found in the understanding that local catholic churches all must repent of their past abuses and that "infallibility" consists of God's direction found in the midst of our repentance, not in an ontological state of irrevocable grace. The process of crucifixion and suffering found in becoming more like Christ through the local, apostolic church is hard, but the point is that we are increasingly filled with His Truth, and this truthfulness is expressed in honest humility and a desire for self-negating transparency. It is a shame that so many wonderful Anglican clergymen leave Anglicanism for "greener pastures" in Eastern churches, but all they are really doing is substituting the process of kenosis and metanoia that comes through the normal ecclesial struggle of the “Church Militant” for a "peace" that ultimately consist of merely keeping ecclesial scandals a better secret. Instead of leaving our Patrimony, we must restore it to Orthodoxy, and make our Anglican Tradition fully Orthodox again. We cannot fall into the error of insisting that since the "Church is the Church", there is no need to repent of pride, hidden abuse and institutional evil. We must repent, return and restore the foundations once again, re-building the Temple of God as the saints and martyrs of every generation have done!