PRINCIPLES OF CANONICAL TRUTH AND ECCLESIAL IDENTITY: STRUCTURED COMMENTARY ON THE NINE ANCIENT PRINCIPLES OF DISCERNMENT

A Western Orthodox Analysis of the Ontological Order of the Church

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

I. THEOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK

The following nine principles summarize the entire metaphysical and canonical order of the Church as received and expounded by the Ancient Councils. Each principle addresses one axis of ecclesial being: ontology, revelation, communion, and participation. Together, they form a coherent corrective to both Feudal Catholicism and Imperial Orthodoxy, restoring the conciliar and federal nature of the Apostolic Church.

One: Truth is Ontological and Immutable

Meaning: Truth is not intellectual agreement, but participation in divine being. It is uncreated, eternal, and personal, which is the very life of the Trinity. Error is not merely a mental mistake but an ontological rupture: the soul’s withdrawal from the divine Light.

Patristic Grounding - 

• St. Athanasius: “Truth is the being of God.” (De Incarnatione 54)

• St. Augustine: “The immutable Light above my soul.” (Confessions VII.10)

• St. Gregory Palamas (echoed though not cited directly): distinguishes between knowing about God and knowing in God.

Doctrinal Implication: Orthodox faith is not propositional subscription but ontological participation. This principle refutes both rationalist scholasticism (which treats truth as abstraction) and Byzantine institutionalism (which treats truth as jurisdictional decree).

Two: Ontology Precedes Institution

Meaning; The Church exists because Christ exists. Institutions are secondary expressions of an ontological reality, which is the Body of Christ, indwelt by the Spirit. Hierarchy exists to serve being, not to define it.

Patristic Grounding - 

• St. Ignatius of Antioch: “Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.” (Smyrn. 8)

• St. Irenaeus: “The Church… carefully preserves it as though she occupied one house.” (Adv. Haer. III.24)

Doctrinal Implication: The Church is not founded upon administrative continuity but upon Eucharistic and ontological continuity. It invalidates both papal and patriarchal claims that institutional succession guarantees grace without fidelity to being and truth.

Three: Revelation is Complete in Christ

Meaning: All divine revelation culminates in the Incarnate Word. The Spirit does not reveal new truths but deepens illumination of the one Truth. There can be no “new dogmas,” only new contextual applications of the eternal Logos.

Patristic Grounding - 

• St. Cyril of Alexandria: “Christ is the seal of revelation.”

• St. Maximus the Confessor: “All divine mysteries are revealed in Him.”

Doctrinal Implication: This principle rejects the theological evolutionism of modern Orthodoxy (e.g., “living tradition” that mutates over time) and the developmentalism of Roman theology (e.g., new dogmas of the Immaculate Conception, Papal Infallibility). It establishes Christ as the final epistemic horizon of all truth.

Four: Synods Receive and They Do Not Reveal

Meaning: Synods are organs of discernment, not oracles of revelation. Their role is to recognize and articulate what the Church already knows through the Spirit in Christ, not to invent or legislate doctrine.

Patristic Grounding - 

• Acts 15:28: “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us…”

• Canon 34, Apostolic Canons: collegial headship and mutual consent.

• St. Vincent of Lérins: “Everywhere, always, by all.”

Doctrinal Implication: The authority of a council depends on reception by the whole Church, not on coercion by a hierarchy. This principle invalidates both papal autocracy and imperial synodalism (Constantinopolitan dominance). It undergirds the ACW model of federal conciliarity.

Five: Illumination Grows; Essence Does Not

Meaning: The Church may deepen in comprehension but cannot alter her nature. Doctrinal “development” is a modern euphemism for innovation; true development is progressive contemplative internal illumination from an immutable, essential Truth.

Patristic Grounding - 

• Jude 3: “The faith once delivered unto the saints.”

• St. Basil the Great: “Dogmas are treasures kept, not discoveries.” (Ep. 204)

• St. John of Damascus: “We do not change the ancient boundaries.” (Expos. Fidei I.2)

Doctrinal Implication: This forbids doctrinal accretions (e.g., Purgatory, Filioque, hesychastic essence-energy confusion when dogmatized). The Church may refine vocabulary, not alter ontology or develop new categories of theological necessity. Illumination is an ascetic act of embodying/contextualizing God’s holiness in our lives, not an academic process. This holiness does not add new knowledge, all knowledge being already revealed in the Person of Christ. 

Six: Communion with Heresy is Self-Excommunication

Meaning: Heresy severs being, not merely canonical standing. A bishop teaching error or knowingly communing with heretics falls outside the ontological life of the Church, even before formal sentence by a witnessing synod.

Patristic Grounding - 

• St. Cyprian of Carthage: “He cannot have God for his Father…” (De Unitate 5)

• St. Theodore the Studite: “He who communes with one excommunicate shares his condemnation.”

Doctrinal Implication: This redefines excommunication as ontological recognition, not legal punishment. It exposes the modern canonical error of treating communion as a political alliance, as a tool of empire building, or as a power wielded by a synod for its political advantage, claims, or power. The synod’s role is diagnostic, not creative: it confirms what already is through affirmation and reception. 

Seven: The Incarnation Permits Cultural Embodiment Around an Unchanging Deposit of Faith

Meaning: The one Faith can be clothed in many tongues, but never transformed by them. The Incarnation sanctifies culture, yet guards against relativism. Forms and aesthetics may vary, but the essence not the Apostolic Deposit, unchanging teachings, remains inviolate.

Patristic Grounding - 

• St. Gregory Nazianzus: “One faith resounds through all tongues.”

• St. Ephrem the Syrian: “The Word took flesh that every people might clothe the truth in its own garments.”

Doctrinal Implication: This principle safeguards inculturation without syncretism. It validates our Western Orthodox rites, Anglo-Celtic liturgy, and Filipino, Chinese and and Spanish translation efforts, while rejecting both ethnophyletism (Byzantine nationalism) and cultural liberalism (modern relativism).

Eight: Catholicity is Federal, Not Feudal

Meaning: Each apostolic Church is the Church in that place, not a branch of an empire. Unity arises from shared ontology, not subjection to an external throne. Federalism mirrors the perichoretic unity of the Trinity.

Patristic and Conciliar Grounding - 

• St. Cyprian: “The episcopate is one, of which a part is held by each.” (Ep. 55)

• Canon 6, Nicaea I: multiple centers of authority recognized.

• St. Basil the Great: “Let there be no arrogance of one bishop over another.” (Ep. 203)

Doctrinal Implication: This overturns both the Papal model (juridical monarchy) and the Patriarchal model (imperial ethnocentrism). It is the ecclesial principle of the ACW and our World Federation: communion without domination, equality without fragmentation.

Nine: Authority is Participatory, Not Coercive

Meaning: Authority derives from participation in divine being, not external power. The bishop’s role is not to dominate, but to manifest the Logos through kenotic, humble service.

Patristic Grounding - 

• Matthew 20:25–26, 1 Peter 5:2–3

• St. Gregory the Great: “He governs best who serves in humility.” (Reg. Past. II.6)

• St. John Chrysostom: “He who rules must be ruled by charity.”

Doctrinal Implication: This principle restores pastoral ontology: authority as sacrament, not control. It refutes clerical absolutism and restores episcopal ministry to its patristic form, and is rooted in service, sanctity, and communion.

II. SYNTHESIS AND PRACTICAL APPLICATION

III. CANONICAL COROLLARIES

1. All jurisdiction is valid only insofar as it manifests truth ontologically.

2. Synods are bound by received faith; their decrees derive authority from reception.

3. Cultural rites are expressions of one, unchanging, received Gospel, not local inventions.

4. Excommunication is ontological rupture, not political sanction.

5. The Church’s unity is maintained by communion in being, not submission to empire.

IV. CONCLUSION

These nine principles form the ontological constitution of the Church. They recover the metaphysical foundation lost in both Papal absolutism and Byzantine ethnarchy, and they restore the patristic balance of truth, freedom, and communion. The Ancient Church of the West and our communion through the World Federation of Orthodox and Apostolic Churches thus stands not as a “new jurisdiction,” but as a rightful restoration of the ancient conciliar order of the Church, and as such, is authoritative in as much as it reflects this ontological, heavenly reality of Truth. We recognize other Apostolic Churches in as much as they also reflect these ontological principles and manifest them in their language, culture, time and place. 

COLLECT

ALMIGHTY AND EVERLASTING GOD, who hast revealed Thyself as the immutable Truth, the Fountain of all being and the Light of every creature; Grant unto Thy Church grace to dwell evermore in the life of Thy divine reality, that she may neither trust in the power of men nor the decrees of thrones, but in the Word made Flesh, who is the fullness of Thy revelation and the peace of all creation. Preserve us, O Lord, from the pride of false authority and from the confusion of heresy and schism; keep us steadfast in the faith once delivered unto the saints, that our synods may discern and not invent, our bishops may serve and not rule, and Thy whole Body, in every land and tongue, may walk together in the unity of conciliar love and apostolic truth. Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.