CAN A CHURCH BE TRULY INDEPENDENT?

Orthodoxy, Canon, and the Error of Performative Independence

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

Introduction

In recent years there has arisen a curious and troubling phenomenon within the wider Christian landscape: the emergence of those who style themselves “independent Orthodox.” These voices often speak eloquently of the truth, antiquity, and doctrinal precision of Eastern Orthodoxy, and they frequently wield Orthodox theology as a polemical instrument against Protestantism and Roman Catholicism alike. Yet they do so while simultaneously refusing submission to Orthodoxy’s recognized canonical structures, synodal discipline, and ecclesial accountability. It is our view that this posture is not merely inconsistent but is ecclesiologically incoherent.

Orthodoxy is not a set of ideas detached from embodied authority. It is not a metaphysical toolbox to be selectively employed against one’s theological opponents. Eastern Orthodoxy, especially as it has developed within the Byzantine canonical theories of Balsamon, Zonaras, and Aristenos, possesses a profoundly strong, self-limiting, and internally coherent understanding of the Constantinopolitan canonical "taxis," or, in common words, its "order." Within that system, salvific grace, sacramental legitimacy, and ecclesial standing are all defined and constrained by a specific imperial exclusionary logic that has set aside reception as the primary engine of spiritual discernment, and replaced this original construct with holy locality, centralized authority, and the power of unquestionable proclamation. To affirm Eastern Orthodoxy’s truth while rejecting these canonical claims is to affirm the soul of the tradition while denying its current self-defined body.

Such a position can only be justified if, and this is no small condition, there exists a canonically superior framework by which one may stand outside the medieval Byzantine system and its contemporary enforcement, while remaining obedient to the Ancient Church itself.

Independence Is Not Justified by Preference, But by Canon

The Ancient Church of the West does not claim independence because it desires autonomy, cultural convenience, or freedom from discipline. We reject independence as a principle in itself. The Church is conciliar, ordered, and apostolic, or it is not the Church at all.

Our refusal to submit to contemporary Byzantine canonical principles is therefore not an act of rebellion, but of discernment. It rests upon a principled, historical, and canonical critique, articulated most fully in our Nine Canonical Principles, which contend that the modern Byzantine canonical system is not merely ancient canon faithfully applied, but ancient canon reinterpreted, reordered, and in some cases overruled by later juridical developments foreign to the mind of the undivided Church.

Central to this critique is the corrupting influence of Theodore Balsamon, whose interpretations of the canons introduced a legal hermeneutic that was neither universal nor apostolic, and centrally founded on provable misrepresentations. Balsamon advanced the claim, both explicitly and programmatically, that later canons possess the authority to redefine, restrict, or even nullify earlier ones. This principle, while convenient for imperial and patriarchal consolidation, is alien to the canonical consciousness of the Ancient Church.

The Ancient Church did not recognize the ability of the later to overturn the former, and in the conservative mind of the Ante-Nicene and Nicene Fathers, such an argument would have been met with great scorn and rejection. We know this because they always appeal to the authority of ancient precedent. The Apostolic Church did not understand truth as something that evolved forward by bureaucratic accumulation, but as something received, guarded, and applied in continuity with what had been delivered “once for all unto the saints.” The appeal of the first ecumenical councils to “ancient tradition” already, after only 300 years of Christian religious practice, shows how central this line of conservative thinking was to the self-understanding of the Early Church. They preserved and passed down the Holy Scriptures to us, based on this fundamental idea.

Submission to Ancient Authority, Not Byzantine Innovation

For this reason, the Ancient Church of the West does not submit to modern Byzantine canonical principles because they are in error, not because we reject authority as such. On the contrary, we affirm, receive, and consciously submit ourselves to the authority of the Apostolic Constitutions, the Ancient Synods, the Ecumenical Councils, and the unbroken canonical tradition of the early Church.

With the ancient Byzantines and the ancient Romans alike, we receive seven councils and no more; not as a political compromise, but as a faithful adherence to the universal consensus of the Undivided Church. Until recently, this was the uncontested stance of Orthodoxy, but now, many local Churches are piling on other, so-called “8th, 9th, 10th, and even 13th” ecumenical councils. Within this original inheritance, we commemorate the ancient patriarchates, recognize their historic dignity, and understand ourselves to be in spiritual communion and organic continuity with them. However, the error of constant development and evolution must be rejected, and the ancient patriarchates called back to fidelity to the original inheritance.

Indeed, on numerous occasions we have communicated precisely this reality: that we are already in submission to the true, ancient, apostolic principles by which the Church was governed before the later accretions of imperial and post-imperial canonism. Our claim is not novelty, but fidelity. We are not “uncanonical”, but functioning by the only true interpretation of canonicity that demonstrably exists within the Ancient Christian Tradition:

The Limits of Communion Under Erroneous Principles

Nevertheless, communion is not merely a matter of sentiment or historical sympathy. It is a matter of shared principles. Insofar as contemporary synods receive and enforce canonical systems grounded in erroneous hermeneutics, systems that the Ancient Church itself would not have recognized, we cannot receive their canonical oversight without compromising the Ancient Faith.

This refusal is not schism, for schism presupposes the rejection of legitimate authority. Rather, it is a recognition that authority itself is bounded by truth, and held in dynamic tension with the laying on of hands. Where oversight is exercised on the basis of principles foreign to the Apostolic mind, that oversight ceases to be binding upon the conscience of the Church, until those who teach and preach rightly are re-established by God, within proper succession, doctrine, and fidelity to the Ancient Covenant of Christ’s Body.

The Ancient Church of the West therefore stands neither as an “independent Orthodoxy” nor as a protest movement against the East. We stand as a canonical continuation of the Ancient Church in the West; submissive to rightful authority, resistant to innovation masquerading as tradition, and committed to the conciliar, apostolic order that predates both modern confessionalism and medieval canonical absolutism.

True Orthodoxy is not independence from authority. It is fidelity to the right authority, rightly understood.

Summary

Those who claim the truth and antiquity of Eastern Orthodoxy while refusing submission to its canonical structures occupy an unstable and incoherent position. Orthodoxy is not a collection of arguments to be deployed at will; it is a concrete ecclesial order with defined boundaries, authority, and discipline. To appeal to Orthodox theology while rejecting its canonical self-understanding is to affirm the form of the tradition while denying its operative substance.

Such independence could only be justified if grounded in a canonically superior framework, and one that is demonstrably rooted in the governance of the undivided Church. The Ancient Church of the West claims no exemption from authority, but rather submission to a more ancient and universally received canonical order: that of the Apostolic Constitutions, the ancient synods, and the Ecumenical Councils received by both the ancient East and West. Within this inheritance, we receive seven councils and no more, not as a polemical gesture, but as fidelity to the historical consensus of the Church before later juridical developments.

Our refusal to submit to contemporary Byzantine canonical systems is therefore not an assertion of autonomy, but an act of discernment. Where later canonical hermeneutics, particularly those shaped by medieval imperial jurisprudence, have reinterpreted or displaced earlier apostolic norms, we cannot receive such oversight without compromising the Ancient Faith. Authority remains binding only insofar as it remains faithful to the truth it was given to guard.

The Ancient Church of the West does not stand as an “independent Orthodoxy,” nor as a protest against the East, but as a canonical continuation of the Church in the West, ordered, conciliar, and apostolic. True Orthodoxy is not freedom from authority, but fidelity to the right authority, rightly understood.

May the Lord help us to continue in our sacred calling, and re-establish the rightful Orthodox Church in the West. Amen.

COLLECT

Almighty and Everliving God, who didst commit to thy holy Apostles and their successors the guardianship of the faith once delivered, grant us grace, we humbly beseech thee, to discern between ancient truth and latter error, that we may neither despise rightful authority nor submit to that which thy Church of old did not receive; keep us steadfast in apostolic order, humble in communion, and faithful in conscience, that walking in the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace, we may glorify thee with one heart and one voice; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.