Peter C. Bouteneff, Christian Century
Perhaps the most
significant thing about the Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox
Church that met in June in Crete is that it took place at all.
The
Eastern Orthodox churches hadn’t met in this way in nearly a century,
and it was their first meeting since the fall of the communist regimes
that had decimated the religious landscape of Eastern Europe, home to
the majority of Orthodox Christians. Even if the decisions taken at the
council are contested, there is now a mechanism in place by which they
might be revisited.
In the Orthodox Church, nothing happens
quickly. Yet the ripples of conciliarity being felt from the June
meeting are significant, and they will not soon die out. Some within the
Orthodox Church are proposing regular meetings, perhaps not unlike the
Lambeth conferences held every decade in the Anglican Communion.
Regular assemblies like this would be something new, and all of a sudden
they feel more possible.
The Eastern Orthodox Church is composed
of 14 self-governing churches (15 if you count the Orthodox Church in
America, whose independent, self-governing status is contested). Of
these, four did not attend, largely due to disagreements over some of
the texts that were to be discussed in Crete.
In a church that is
famously resistant to change—especially when it feels rushed—the weeks
prior to the council saw a flurry of activity, so much that some of the
churches felt it would be safer to postpone the council. But the council
convened anyway, with the churches of Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria, and
Antioch staying away. Even with their absence, the council brought
together hundreds of leaders, clergy, monastics, lay delegates, and
advisers, and it managed to address all the documents before them.
As
is the case with all councils since the ecumenical councils of the
first millennium, the work of the Holy Council awaits a process of
reception within the churches themselves, each of which will decide on
the status of the council’s decisions and the texts it created. That
process has already begun, with some of the four absent churches
contesting the authority of the decisions.
A key area of
discussion had to do with the internal ordering of the Orthodox Church
in the face of modern demographic realities. Especially owing to the
huge increase in migration in the past two centuries, the historic
Orthodox churches of Eastern Europe and the Middle East all have
significant communities—sometimes outnumbering those at home—in Western
Europe, the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. Each traditional
Orthodox nationality established its own satellite Orthodox church
abroad, and each church—Greek, Serbian, Romanian, etc.—is answerable to
its “mother church” overseas. In many North American cities, one is
likely to find a Greek Orthodox church and a Russian Orthodox church,
and perhaps also Serbian, Romanian, and Antiochian churches, as well as a
church that belongs to the Orthodox Church in America.
Orthodox
churches outside their historic homelands are sometimes termed
“diaspora” communities, a name that is resisted by those who feel it
delegitimizes their function in the Orthodox Church. The problem of
governing those churches hasn’t exactly shaken the rest of Christendom,
but it has been a significant issue for the Orthodox, because
technically there ought to be just one Orthodox bishop per locality and a
unified Orthodox presence in every region. In that way it is clear
that the church is not primarily an ethnic reality but simply “The
Church,” residing in different localities.
The council
acknowledged the current status quo as an anomaly, but found it
unrealistic to move directly to a single Orthodox administration holding
together the ethnically diverse churches. It reaffirmed the interim
solution instituted in 2009, which calls for regional assemblies of
bishops, representing all the Orthodox churches in the region (the
United States and Canada; Latin America; Great Britain and Ireland;
etc.), to meet to work toward an administratively unified Orthodox
Church there.
Other discussions concerned the marriage of priests.
Orthodox Christian priests may be married, but the question has arisen
whether they may be remarried after being widowed or divorced. They
cannot, the council reaffirmed, because marriage is forbidden once a
person is already ordained to the priesthood.
The question of
same-sex marriage and civil unions received attention as well. Churches
locally are trying and sometimes succeeding at discussing the issue
pastorally. Though this issue stirs deep emotions in the Orthodox Church
as in other churches, it is not actually dividing the Orthodox. The
Orthodox Church, as it restated at the council, does not allow its
members to contract same-sex unions or pursue any other form of
cohabitation other than heterosexual marriage.
The most
controversial issue at the council might surprise a Protestant
readership: it had to do with whether one can use the word church
for any Christian group outside the Orthodox Church, and if so, in what
sense. The Orthodox Church has historically identified itself as the
“one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church,” the same body established
with the apostles in the first century.
With increased
communication and migration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
Christian bodies increasingly came into contact with one another, and so
began the ecumenical movement. Orthodox churches joined others in
seeking to discern the spiritual and sacramental status of Christians
outside their fold.
There is a certain diversity of views on that
subject within the Orthodox world, but no Orthodox has proclaimed that
all of the world’s Christians together constitute The Church, the Body
of Christ. Rather, all have said that the Orthodox Church is The Church,
and that those divided from it are in some degree of separation.
Although
it may be easy to identify that position with arrogance—who do we think
we are, calling ourselves and nobody else The Church?—Orthodox argue
the point from the perspective of history and doctrine. Orthodox believe
that while some disagreements needn’t have divided Christians over the
centuries—they were largely terminological or cultural in character or
concerned matters that cannot be known—other disagreements rightly
divided the church because there was a correct and an incorrect
position. The Orthodox Church therefore understands itself as The Church
from which the others divided.
The Roman Catholic Church
understands itself in virtually the same way. In a sense, so does much
of evangelical Christianity, which considers the Orthodox believers in
Eastern Europe as subjects for conversion to Christ rather than as
members of the church or even as Christians. Mainline Protestants and
Anglicans, on the other hand, tend to see themselves as parts of The
Church, or as “the-church-together-with-other-churches.” But to an
Orthodox Christian that approach makes no sense. As the Orthodox see
it, not only are some of the divisions between the churches significant
enough to divide them, the divisions within the mainline and Anglican
churches are sometimes even greater, with some leaders denying Christ’s
divinity and still being considered within the limits of a tolerable or
even welcome diversity.
The council agreed that non-Orthodox
bodies may be called churches, at least in recognition that this is what
they call themselves and this is how they are historically known.
Whether that name imparts any doctrinal status to them was left an open
question.
This question of whether there is “church” outside the
Orthodox Church is so divisive that several groups have challenged the
orthodoxy of some of the church’s most high-profile theologians and
leaders—including the ecumenical patriarch himself—who are seen as being
too lenient on this matter and as selling away the unique treasure of
Orthodoxy. These protesters deplore any Orthodox participation in
official inter-Christian dialogues.
The council strongly rebuffed
these voices by affirming those dialogues and adopting guidelines for
how they are to be approached and received. The council even made
explicit mention of the important role of the World Council of Churches
and other global and regional ecumenical organizations.
Holding a
meeting of this nature after so many years is a momentous event. It is
an affirmation of the Orthodox Church’s conciliar nature. But
conciliarity is never simple, especially when one has fallen out of the
habit. It requires humility, adaptability, deep listening, and the
appropriate exercise of authority. We may say that all of these were in
evidence before, during, and after the June council, and also that all
of them were manifest imperfectly.
The Orthodox Church has again
shown itself as a living body, whose members are struggling to heed the
calling to be in council with one another. That struggle is taking place
in a church that is lagging in its responsiveness to modern demographic
realities and to modernity in general. So was the Great and Holy
Council indeed great and holy? That question requires two answers:
“yes,” and “we’ll see.”
A version of this article appears in the September 28 print edition under the title “Great and Holy Council.”