A LETTER TO A SPIRITUAL SON: WHY ARE WE ORTHODOX AND HOW ARE WE CANONICAL?

Christ the True Vine, the Source of All Authority, the Foundation of the Church, the Unchanging Truth of God

Dear Son,

When I heard the news of your departure, I was struck to the heart with sadness for you and for all those who know and love you. Hearing this reminded me that all of our friends and family are only here with us for a moment. We must resolve to offer our lives to God as a living sacrifice, rather than grasping on to our loved one, who will all, ultimately pass from us through brokenness or death. Our time together is extremely limited. We live in hope of that glorious resurrection and the promise of final reconciliation in our Savior and Lord, when all tears will be wiped away, and all misunderstandings and human fallenness will cease. I pray that the holy silver cross I gave you, blessed with the Relic of the True and Lifegiving Cross, the Belt of the Most Holy Theotokos, the Relic of Holy St. Anne, the Mother of the Holy Theotokos, and the Relics of our Ancient Bishops - Sts. Willibrord, Augustine, Gregory and Leo - will keep you safe on the journey ahead. That cross comes with a responsibility to be faithful to our Lord, and to serve the Holy Church of East Asia. 

Reflecting on this situation, I see that there is a recognizable pattern in movements that claim exclusive purity. First, they isolate a young person by convincing him that those who have nurtured him are untrustworthy. Second, they replace trust with suspicion and fear. Third, they present themselves as the only safe guardians of truth. Finally, they bind the conscience so that independent thought feels like betrayal. This aggression is not spiritual fatherhood. It is spiritual control, and an attitude that some unfortunately mistake for “Orthodoxy.”

You are no longer a child. The goal of the Christian life is maturity in Christ. A true Spiritual Father does not make you permanently dependent, but teaches you to stand before God with a free and purified conscience. St. Paul warns against those who “creep into houses and lead captive weak souls.” He commands believers to grow into the full stature of Christ, no longer “tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine” (Ephesians 4:14–15). He also exhorts the Church to “stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught” (2 Thessalonians 2:15), and St. Jude urges us to “contend earnestly for the faith once delivered unto the saints.”

This is not about personalities or factions. You are free to leave, live, and discover the world. Free to make your own choices in the Image of God. This is not about me or Chorbishop. We will bless you and pray for you, and there are many good spiritual fathers that you can find out there, as I have in the past. It is about a fundamental theological question that will shape your entire life, and one that must be clearly addressed in order for you to understand history, theology, philosophy, and simple daily Christian praxis.

I will not argue with you endlessly, and I will not compete for your loyalty based on internet definitions and the vitriol of recent online voices. You must decide what kind of spiritual life you wish to live: one rooted in fear and dependence, or one grounded in the freedom of the Gospel.

Please know this: if at any time you wish to return, you will be received with the same love with which you were first welcomed. But you must make this decision in honesty, not under pressure, not under fear, and not under the illusion that truth belongs to any single faction or culture. Do not make permanent decisions based on temporary emotional pressure or online conflict. Truth does not fear time, silence, or careful study. For this reason, I am explaining our position on canonicity and why we, based in deep principle, reject the validity of the current popular paradigms that are so deeply destabilizing young men and attacking us constantly.

The Question of Principle

The question before us is not one of culture, preference, or modern allegiance. It is not a matter of ethnicity, historical memory, or contemporary jurisdictional alignment. It is a question of theological principle. The issue is simple and unavoidable: either the Church permits genuine development in doctrine and authority, or it does not. Upon this question hangs the entire logic of ecclesial identity, canonical legitimacy, and the meaning of Orthodoxy itself.

We call ourselves Orthodox not because we belong to a particular modern communion that has co-opted the term, nor because we submit to a recent center of authority, but because we believe that the Truth revealed in Jesus Christ is complete, unchanging, and sufficient for salvation. The Gospel was not delivered in fragments. It was revealed in the Person of Christ and entrusted to the Apostles, who proclaimed it with God-ordained authority. The Apostolic age did not lack anything essential. All subsequent definitions and clarifications exist not to replace or reinterpret this deposit, but to guard, articulate, and defend it.

This conviction stands at the heart of the Ancient Church. The Fathers did not imagine themselves as innovators. Rather, they saw their task as preserving and explicating what had already been given. The councils did not create the faith; they placed boundaries around the Mystery. As St. Irenaeus of Lyons insisted, the Church everywhere confesses the same faith because it was received from the Apostles and preserved in the succession of bishops. As St. Athanasius of Alexandria declared, the faith handed down once for all cannot be replaced by later inventions. The great definitions of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon were not acts of doctrinal creation, but of doctrinal protection.

Thus, when we insist upon the primacy of the ancient over the recent, we do so not from nostalgia or romanticism, but from theological necessity.

The Apostolic Deposit and the Nature of Authority

If the Gospel was revealed once for all in Christ and transmitted by the Apostles, then authority in the Church must be derivative, not creative. No bishop, patriarch, or synod possesses the power to redefine the faith. Their task is to guard what has been entrusted to them.

This is why the Church has always appealed to antiquity, catholicity, and continuity. The rule articulated by St. Vincent of Lérins, that "the faith is what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all", expresses a deeply catholic and orthodox instinct. It is not a Western peculiarity, nor a later invention. It reflects the self-understanding of the early Church across cultures and languages. As St. Vincent of Lérins also wrote, doctrine is understood “in the same sense and the same judgment,” as a living body grows while remaining itself. From this we see that the growth of the Church is not the same as "development of doctrine."

If this is the true understanding of the Church, then the most secure and defensible canonical position is that which remains anchored in the ancient and universal tradition. The closer one stands to the apostolic and conciliar norm, the firmer one’s claim to continuity.

The Dilemma of Development

Here, however, a dilemma emerges. Either the Church permits the development of doctrine and the increasing centralization and monopolization of authority, or it does not.

If development is permitted, and if later interpretations may modify, expand, or even overturn earlier norms, then Eastern Orthodox objections commonly raised against Rome lose their coherence. The Roman Catholic system represents one trajectory of this developmental logic, and one which has the oldest and most continuous claim. It asserts that the Church grows in understanding and authority, and that later definitions may clarify, specify, deepen, and even overturn earlier teaching in binding ways. If this principle is accepted, then no consistent reason remains to halt the process at later Byzantine theologians, councils, or canonical traditions.

Why, then, should authority stop with the Palamite synthesis? Why not continue? Why should one accept the interpretive supremacy of later Byzantine canonists while rejecting Roman development? The logic of development cannot be selectively applied. If it is, what is revealed is a human political impetus, and not the original Gospel, nor the eternal Word of God, which is the same “yesterday, today, and forever.”

On the other hand, if development in this sense is not permitted, and if the apostolic and conciliar deposit is fixed in substance and authority, then the hermeneutical principles employed in later canonical evolution cannot be sustained, and do indeed show the historical distortions that can arise when authority becomes disconnected from the apostolic norm.

The Problem of Late Canonical Centralization

The medieval Byzantine canonist Theodore Balsamon articulated a principle that later authority interprets, and in certain respects supersedes earlier norms. As you probably know, I have written extensively on this subject. This approach allowed for the consolidation of ecclesial power in new historical circumstances. Yet it also introduced a profound tension.

If the new may interpret and overturn the old, then authority becomes historically fluid. The standard shifts with time. But if this is true, then the argument against Roman doctrinal development collapses, for Rome operates on the same underlying logic, and much more systematically.

Furthermore, if the authority of Constantinople derives from historical and political prominence, then it is unclear why that authority should not shift again. The Russian theory of the “Third Rome” represents precisely such a shift, claiming the inheritance of canonical primacy based on providential destiny, a destiny that can only be "seen" from within the assumptions of that culture. Yet this move implicitly depends on the same developmental principle it criticizes elsewhere.

Thus, the system becomes circular. Authority is justified by current authority. Tradition becomes whatever the present hierarchy declares it to be. This dynamic is visible in many places today, where political or cultural movements present themselves as defenders of Orthodoxy without the corresponding fruits of repentance, humility, and charity.

This undermines the very notion of a stable apostolic rule and overturns truthful continuity.

The Stability of the Apostolic Norm

Against this instability, the Ancient Church offers a different vision. The norm is not historical power, not cultural dominance, not evolving interpretation. The norm is the apostolic and conciliar faith itself. The councils serve this norm. The Fathers serve this norm. Bishops and synods serve this norm. They do not create it. They merely erect barriers around the mystery and do not allow its substance to be altered.

Growth occurs, but such growth is organic and permissible only when it moves that which is universal into that which is particular. This is seen, for example, in the translational and incarnational mechanisms by which the Gospel enters different cultures and languages throughout the world. The Church must speak in many tongues and clothe the unchanging truth in forms intelligible to diverse peoples. Yet confusion arises when this legitimate particularization is mistaken for the universal itself. Thus, the patriarchal authority of the Bishop of Rome or the synodal centralization of Constantinople may be treated as if they were of the essence of the Gospel, the center of God's Economy of Grace, rather than historical and pastoral applications within specific contexts. In a similar manner, certain substitutional atonement theories of Northern Europe translated Christ’s sacrifice into the categories of Germanic tribal law, employing notions such as “wergild” and “death debt.” This is now mistaken by many Protestants as the essence of the Gospel, prohibiting them from being able to understand the ancient context or receive the wisdom of the Ancient Church. 

Such formulations may illuminate aspects of the mystery within a cultural horizon, functioning as redemptive analogies that help people outside of the original revelation to understand and incorporate the Truth, yet they do not exhaust the mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption, nor can these local applications be elevated to universal and binding dogma. When these particular expressions are absolutized, a subtle form of idolatry emerges. The icon is mistaken for the reality itself; the sign is treated as if it has contained and limited the divine rather than pointing beyond itself. But when this process of organic growth is rightly understood, as universals being faithfully applied in local and particular settings, and biblical truth being personally and communally embodied without alteration of its original meaning or substance, then the manifold expressions of the Gospel across time and space may be recognized as legitimate, and becomes mutually intelligible.

In this way the Church deepens her understanding through lived experience and pastoral application, forming diverse local traditions within the one Gospel, the one Christ, and sacramentally continuous in the one Eucharist. She grows in clarity, devotion, and expression, yet she does not change her essence. Clarification is permitted; building a wall around mystery is permitted; innovation is not permitted - regardless of the status of those doing the changing. This distinction alone preserves both continuity and validity.

This is the only coherent basis for canonical legitimacy. Apostolic succession is not merely institutional continuity. It is continuity in the same faith, the same sacramental life, and the same Gospel.

The Question of Orders and Continuity

If authority and sacramental life depend upon continuity with the apostolic deposit, then contradictions in later practice must be examined carefully. For example, if one asserts that certain ancient practices, such as married episcopacy in the early centuries, render orders invalid, then serious questions arise concerning one’s own continuity. The historical Church was not uniform in such disciplines, and there were many debates in the Early Church that all settled on the acceptability of both married and unmarried states in all ranks of holy orders. Rather, Christians descending from one Apostle met with and recognized Christians descending from another, despite differences in discipline and local custom, and celebrated this discovered unity in the Holy Eucharist. To declare these earlier norms defective risks undermining the very succession one claims to preserve. In the words of Holy Scripture: “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

Thus, canonical legitimacy must rest upon the continuity of the whole apostolic life of the Church, not upon selective reinterpretations or political machinations. It must rest on the oldest definitions, not on the most recent. Our communion must rest upon the Gospel as it was received by the Apostles and their disciples, the Apostolic Fathers, and not on some later monastic movement or theological school of development.

True Orthodoxy is known not only by correct doctrine, but by humility, repentance, and love. The Fathers teach that the greatest sign of spiritual maturity is not certainty, but compunction and freedom from judgment. Where zeal produces fear, anger, and suspicion, it has already departed from the mind of Christ and is effectively in schism.

Why We Call Ourselves Orthodox

We call ourselves Orthodox because we cling to that which was originally given. We believe that the faith of the undivided Church remains the standard by which all later developments must be judged. We do not reject history, nor the legitimate growth of the faith, nor local pastoral adaptation. But we reject the notion that the Truth itself evolves.

Eastern Orthodoxy, in its deepest spirit, has always affirmed this. Even when struggling in practice because of fallen human politics and centralized tendencies, it has preserved the conviction that the apostolic and conciliar faith is normative and complete. The Church may suffer, fragment, and fall into conflict, but the standard remains. In the end, Christ triumphs over all of our fallen human cultures, our foibles, and desire for passion and pride, and through repentance and humility calls us all back to the Truth.

Therefore, our claim to Orthodoxy and canonical legitimacy rests not upon any novelty, personality, preferences, or political claim, nor on recent jurisdictional alignments, but on fidelity to the ancient, universal, and conciliar Church.

The Choice Before Us

The choice is not between modern communions. It is between two visions of authority:

1. A historically shifting norm, in which later authority may redefine earlier teaching.

2. A stable apostolic rule, in which later generations serve what has been entrusted.

If the first is true, then anti-Roman polemics lose their force, and we must humbly submit to the claims of the Pope. If the second is true, then late canonical centralization must be judged by the ancient Church, and we must struggle with our Orthodox brethren to examine recent processes of canonical interpretation and seek a return to a more stable foundation.

Once this distinction is made clear, the circularity of many contemporary debates becomes evident. The question returns to its original simplicity: what did the Apostles teach, and how did the undivided Church preserve it? This can be discovered through deep study of Scripture and the Fathers. The recent saints are all wonderful and good, but they have no authority to overturn that which was given from the beginning.

Final Blessing

So, my son, despite all of the aggressive accusations and online identity formation by voices that often speak with confidence but without historical depth, this is why we are "Orthodox" in the truest and most relevant sense. This is how we are canonical in a way more faithful to the canons than those who boast of such things. We stand not upon recent authority, but upon the faith once delivered to the saints, and this unchanging foundation in the rock of St. Peter’s confession: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” There is no other foundation.

I pray that God gives you wisdom and protection as you venture out from the gentle shelter of our Holy Church, which has birthed you in baptismal water, strengthened you by the impartation of the Holy Spirit, formed you, called you by a new name, and given you a place of honor and love in our midst. I pray you will be protected from those influences that seek to divide, and given a spirit of clarity, true holiness, and the ability to see through the pressures and motivations that often accompany controversy and online conflict. If at any time you find that this path does not bring the peace, clarity, and stability that you seek, do not hesitate to return. There will be no reproach, only thanksgiving to God. 

May the Lord grant you peace.

COLLECT

O Almighty and everlasting God, who didst once for all reveal the fullness of Thy saving truth in Thy Son Jesus Christ, and didst commit the same unto Thy holy Apostles, to be preached unto all nations; Grant, we beseech Thee, that Thy Church may ever hold fast the faith once delivered to the saints, neither adding thereto nor taking away, but faithfully guarding the sacred deposit entrusted unto her. Deliver us from the pride of novelty, from the instability of shifting doctrines, and from all false authority that would obscure the light of Thy Gospel; and give us grace so to abide in the ancient, catholic, and apostolic rule, that, being steadfast in the truth and grounded in charity, we may grow in holiness and unity, and at the last be found worthy to sit down at the heavenly banquet of Thy Kingdom; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.