FACTORS OF THE CHURCH UNITY FROM THE ORTHODOX PROSPECTIVE

Factors of the Church Unity from the Orthodox Prospective

Archimandrite Dr Cyril Hovorun

Košice, May 11-12, 2012

Among the major ecclesiological problems on the modern agenda I would stress the criteria of the unity of the Church. We believe that the Church is one here and now. But what makes the Church one? What keeps different communities with diverse cultural, geographical, ethnical backgrounds together? There are some self-evident answers which however do not easily stand a closer investigation. When we start a historical inquiry into the problem we may discover that the criteria of the unity of the Church varied depending on historical circumstances.

Looking back into the history we can see that there was no a single standardised, unchangeable, and accepted by everyone criterion of the unity. Rather, there was a fluctuating variety of the criteria. Those criteria were not necessarily contradictory to each other. From time to time, some criteria became more important and other – less important.

Some of the criteria were articulated in the Nicean creed: ‘I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.’ Here, apostolicity and catholicity secure the unity and the holiness of the Church. The Nicean creed reflects the situation of the first quarter of the 4^th century and summarises the ecclesiological self-consciousness of the Christian communities of the pre-Constantine era. Interestingly, the creed does not enlist the conformity of doctrinal beliefs as a criterion of the unity of the Church. This criterion would become crucial in the context of the posterior theological controversies. It is possible to assume that for the Christians of the first three centuries, apostolicity and catholicity were more important features that kept the Church one.

Initially, the apostolicity served as a magisterial criterion of the unity. The reasons were obvious: various Christian communities were in communion with each other through the Apostles who directly or by their disciples had established them. It was not only apostolicity of faith and doctrinal traditions that mattered, but also and may be primarily, apostolicity of the origins. With the passage of time, however, apostolicity of origins gradually turned into the apostolicity of faith. I think we find this shift happening in the time of Irenaeus of Lyon. Apostolicity of origins also took shape of the apostolicity of epicsopal succession. Although this change was a reduction of the original notion of apostolicity, it turned into an important practical instrument of securing unity of the Church: those bishops who did not have proper apostolic succession in their heirotonies, were excluded from the ecclesial communion, together with their communities. This incurred another important shift, with the apostolicity being concentrated in the person of bishop, and the unity of the Church being preserved through the unity of bishops, and not directly by the communities sharing the same apostolic faith. In our days, apostolic succession has become especially important in the ecumenical relations. It turned into a criterion of the degree of a possible rapprochement between the Churches that confess different doctrines, as well as a criterion of receiving from other confessions. Thus, the idea of apostolicity went through dramatic developments.

As for the catholicity, we can assume that in the apostolic era it had a simple meaning that the communities which belong to one Church, were not sects. Catholic in that time was synonymous to ‘non-sectarian’ and indicated those communities that considered important to keep together with other Christian communities. This criterion became vital with the outburst of various sectarian movements that did not consider the fragmentation of the Christian oecumene as any big problem. The notion of apostolicity also developed through the centuries. In its historical development, it passed through the idea of geographical spread, numerical majority, uniformity of the ecclesial structure, and even synodality or conciliarity. In the western Christianity, catholicity has become the most important marker of the one Church. It meant, and still means many things, first of all, the unity of the ecclesial structure with one visible centre – the Roman Pontiff. In the East, catholicity was recently identified with conciliarity. A major contribution to this development was made in the 19^th century by the Russian lay theologian Alexey Khomiakov who invented a concept of ‘sobornost’. Thus we can see that both the western and eastern concepts of catholicity, at the current stage of their development, stand quite far from their original idea.

In the 4^th century, catholicity adopted a geographical meaning. With the legalisation of Christianity and its political promotion as a state religion of the Roman empire, catholic would sound to many as imperial. The state took a great deal of care about the unity of the Church. When the Church appeared to be challenged by various doctrinal disputes, it was the state that took a good deal of responsibility for preserving the unity of the Church through various theological controversies. Unity of the Church became an important political agenda for many Byzantine emperors. To protect the unity, they even sometimes compromised faith. This started happening as early as in the era of Constantine and continued through the period of the Christological disputes. The emperors persecuted Athanasius of Alexandria as a troublemaker, attempted to reconcile the adherents and adversaries of Chalcedon by banning theological discussions (Henotikon of Zeno), promoted eclectic doctrines (Monenergism and Monothelitism of Heraklion) etc. All this was done to protect or restore the unity of the people in the Empire, and was accepted by the majority of the Church. Only single figures resisted the attempts to sacrifice the doctrine to the unity. Thus, unity of the Empire and of the Church were among the priorities of both secular and ecclesial leaders of Byzantium, who sometimes pushed the issue of Orthodoxy to the backstage.

On the contrary, in the West in the same period Orthodoxy of faith was something that the Church leaders were fighting for without taking much into consideration the existing political expediencies. Unity of the Church did not much count for them without full agreement on the controversial issues of the doctrine. This occasionally led them to breaking communion with the Church of East, when the latter went too far in compromising faith. The most illustrative example of such kind of ‘Orthodox’ approach exercised by the West, was the Acacian schism (484-519). Apparently, this situation was possible because the state in the East was strong, or had to be strong, while in the West it was weak.

When the statehood in the East became weaker, and in the West a new and stronger Frankish statehood emerged, the situation with the criteria of the unity of the Church changed to the opposite. The East became more rigid about the issues of faith, while the West allowed a more doctrinal flexibility, as it appears in the case of Filioque. As it is well known, Filioque was locally introduced as an interpretation of the Trinitarian dogma much before it became an apple of discord between the East and the West. Charlemagne started promoting this interpretation as a feature of the western Orthodoxy. Quite contrary to other epochs, when the westerners often demonstrated a rigour to the eastern ‘flexibilities’ in the issues of faith, this time it was their turn to be flexible about the doctrinal initiatives of  their emperor, while the easterners did not miss a chance to show their uncompromised adherence to Orthodoxy. May be in any other epoch they would forgive the westerners their collaborationism, in the spirit of their own ‘flexibilities’ that sometimes in the past turned into servility to the state. But at that time, they did not. In the 9^th century, the easterners applied to the westerners a western-style rigourism and made out of Filioque a Church-dividing issue. I do not want to say that Filioque as such was not a Church-dividing issue. I just want to say that the two sides exchanged the roles. Apart of the theological reasons, one of the explanations why they appeared to be so akribic, could be a political expediency, given that the eastern imperial authorities were seriously challenged by the pretensions of Charlemagne.

With the polemics against Filioque and later on, the so-called ‘hesychastic’ controversy, the East more and more identified itself with the Orthodoxy of faith. The doctrinal purity became very dear to the easterners and turned for them into a pivotal identity and an important criterion of the unity of the Church. An elevated attention to the Orthodoxy of doctrine can be seen in the renaissance of theology in the late Byzantine epoch. The new era of Orthodoxy was marked with the appearance and popularity of the ‘Synodika of Orthodoxy,’ the catalogues of heresies. Orthodoxy continued playing the role of a key criterion of the Church unity until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

Under the rule of the Ottomans, the East did not pay the same attention to the Orthodoxy of doctrine anymore. Indeed, the theological outcome of the Greek East in the Ottoman period was strikingly poor. It cannot be compared with the theological achievements of the late Byzantium. Moreover, it often appears to be heretical, if judged against the criteria of the Synodika. This theological downturn cannot be explained only by general degradation of learning in the Greek-speaking East. I believe it means that a strict Orthodoxy of doctrine ceased to be the key criterion of the unity of the Church. Other factors of the unity emerged.

I think that under the Ottoman rule, it was the fact of belonging to one millet that somehow substituted the Orthodoxy as a main criterion of the Church unity. Again, it does not mean that the Orthodoxy as the criterion of the unity disappeared altogether, but that it stopped playing the same important role as it did before the fall of Constantinople. Millet was a quasi-ethnical community of the people confessing the same faith. The Orthodox population of the Ottoman empire regardless of their ethnical backgrounds, constituted a single millet, with one head on top of it, a millet başi, the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Thus Orthodoxy as the criterion of the unity of the Church was shadowed by a sort of ethnical unity. It was not about a nation in the modern sense, since millet contained people of many nationalities. A further transformation happened after the French revolution when the unity of millet evolved into the unity of nation, as a criterion of belonging to one Church. This evolution of the criteria of the unity, I think, gives an explanation to the fervent struggles of the newly-emerged national Balkan states for their own independent Churches. They believed that one nation had to have one Church. The nation, this time, was not regarded in a sense of millet, but in the sense which was shaped by the French Enlightenment. Thus ethnical identity became an important feature of self-understanding of the Orthodox people, up to the point of blending the two identities.

This situation caused many implications which are valid until now. For instance, a popular belief that belonging to a certain Orthodox nation implies being Orthodox, and vice versa. It also led to a restructuring of the entire system of the Orthodox Churches. They turned into a confederation of ethnical bodies, fully independent from each other in a sense of independence of national states. The Church unity within the same local Church became much more valuable then the unity between the local Churches. Hence is a series of schisms that accompanied the emancipation of the ethnic Churches from their kyriarchal centres. The shift of the criterion of ecclesial unity to the ethnic unity resulted also in a phenomenon when one can be considered Orthodox only by the fact of belonging to an Orthodox nation, regardless of what he or she believes or practices as a Christian. One can be completely ignorant about basic Christian beliefs, and yet considers oneself Orthodox, and furthermore, is considered as Orthodox by the Church. For instance, the current practice in some Churches is that bishops could allow one to be buried by the Orthodox rite just by taking into account one’s ethnic identity.

Unity of the Orthodox Serbs, or Russians, or Greeks became detached from the strict confession of the Orthodox faith. It became conditioned by their national identity. At the same time, it happens in the Orthodox world that people could be conscious and practising Christians of the same faith, and yet be refused recognition of their Baptisms, just because they have different political or ethnic priorities. This in particular is the case with the followers of the Ukrainian schism. It is predominantly on the political ground that the canonical Ukrainian Church under the Moscow Patriarchate nowadays refuses to recognise Baptisms of those who belong to the so-called Patriarchate of Kiev.

In the recent years, the national criterion of belonging to one Church underwent new developments under the influence of the civilisations theory. The notion of nation evolved to a notion of civilisation. The new belief says that it is not only the Orthodox nations, but also ‘Orthodox civilisations’ that safeguard the unity of the Church. People who support this theory enlist among the ‘Orthodox civilisations’ Hellenism and the ‘Russian world’. They connect these ’civilisations’ with ecclesial jurisdictions and promote the idea that one civilisation should be contained within one such jurisdiction. In the Hellenic world, it is the Ecumenical Patriarchate which exercises a certain control over other Greek-speaking Churches belonging to the Hellenic civilisation. In the case of the ‘Russian world’, this role is played by the Moscow Patriarchate. This idea, in a popular interpretation, leads to the belief that if any Church attempts to distance itself from its jurisdictional centre, it is in danger of breaking out from the one Church of Christ. This is particularly the case in Ukraine, where the fact of belonging to the Church of Christ is popularly believed to be dependent on the unity with the Moscow Patriarchate.

The fall of the Russian empire in 1917 led to a mass migration of the Orthodox population to the West. People found themselves in the heterodox environment which put them face to face with the problem of preserving their Orthodox identity. What would make them now feeling that they belong to one Church of Christ? The Russian Orthodox empire that made them feeling secure about their belonging to one Church did not exist anymore. In result, they had two ways to follow. One way was to connect their religious identity with the national one. This way had been followed by other national diasporas, mainly from Balkans and Asia Minor: Greeks, Serbians, Bulgarians, and others. This was a well trodden path which was chosen also by a part of the Russian emigration. However, blending the religious and national identities was not satisfactory for everyone in the Russian diaspora. In result, an alternative way of religious self-identification was found.

Instead of the ethnic identity, an alternative factor of the Church unity was suggested, the Eucharist. Sharing the same chalice was promoted as a key criterion of belonging to one Church, thus giving birth to the Eucharistic ecclesiology. Eucharistic ecclesiology dominated the entire 20^th century and is still popular as a theoretical framework that provides explanation to many aspects of the Church life. Eucharist is believed to be a starting point that gave a new sense to the communal life, as well as to the role of bishops, priests, and laity. Even the structure of the local Churches was attempted to be explained in terms of the Eucharistic ecclesiology.

Recently, however, some theologians started doubting the sufficiency of the Eucharistic criterion. Instead or in parallel, they develop alternative ecclesiologies which feature Baptism or hierarchical ministry as major criteria of the Church unity, no less significant than the Eucharist. A strict adherence to the canons is also in several cases promoted as a criterion of belonging to one Church, so that a notion of ‘canonical’ Churches emerged in recent years. In result, the local Churches which are believed to be part of the one Church of Christ are sometimes called ‘canonical’.

I think that no one of these criteria, taken separately, appears to be fully explanatory for the Church unity. Indeed, if we take Eucharist, is it a precondition or a result of the unity of the Church? In other words, do people belong to one Church because they partake of the one chalice, or they partake of the one chalice because they belong to one Church? If we consider as the one Church those communities that share one Eucharist, how then should we treat the instances when some Churches have communion with a certain group of canonical Churches, and with other canonical Churches, they do not? This was the case, for instance, with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). Before its reunion with the Moscow Patriarchate in 2007, this Church had Eucharistic communion with the Churches of Serbia and Jerusalem, and did not have any communion with the rest of the local Orthodox Churches, primarily the Russian Orthodox Church which it anathematised. This situation is a good example of violation of the classical criterion of the Church unity: κοινονῶν ἀκοινονήτῳ ἀκοινόνητος – the one who has communion with someone out of the communion, sets himself out of the communion as well. The criterion of a strict adherence to the canons does not seem to work either, as there are no ‘canonical’ Churches which would act in full conformity with the canons of the Church.

Recently, there was an attempt to set up a new criterion of the unity, based on the communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch. It was attempted in a document adopted by the Joint International Commission for the theological dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church at its meeting in Ravenna in October 2007 (Ravenna document): The councils ‘gathered together the bishops of local Churches in communion with the See of Rome or, although understood in a different way, with the See of Constantinople, respectively’ (article 39). The idea behind this statement is that those local Churches are a part of the one Church which have communion with the Patriarchate of Constantinople. This idea was obviously imported from the Roman ecclesiology and was rejected by the Russian Church. Therefore, it is hardly believable that any version of the Roman-style criterion of the unity, that is a unity around a certain see, can win a consensus in the Orthodox Church.

All that has been said above draws us to an unfortunate conclusion that it is not an easy task to identify the universal and unchangeable criteria of the unity of the Church from the Orthodox prospective. We accept as granted the phenomenological unity of the ‘canonical’ Churches, but theoretical principles of this unity seem to be evasive. This problem is connected with the problem of ecumenism. To clarify the criteria of the unity of the Church is as difficult as to identify the borders of the one Church, and to answer the question whether there is Church beyond the ‘canonical’ Churches. We will be hardly able to answer this question without making clear what is the theological basis of the unity of the one Church. I think no one of the criteria discussed above can constitute a self-sufficient basis for answering the question about the grounds of the Church unity. As no one criterion exclude other criteria. They should be considered in complex. It seems that we have to deal with a multiplicity of the criteria of the unity. In different periods of the history, different criteria became more important and then were shadowed by other criteria. At the same time, they could have been transformed or modified, but never vanished altogether. The criteria of the unity of the Church remain an unsolved ecclesiological problem for the Orthodox. It does not however mean that this problem is insolvable. Ecclesiology as such is a relatively new theological discipline. It still has to answer many unresolved questions. The one in the title of this paper is just one of them.