Catechesis · Inquirer
The Local and Universal Church
Catechesis · Inquirer
The Local and Universal Church
The whole Church. This is Zizioulas's central ecclesiological claim, developed from Ignatius and Cyprian: every properly constituted Eucharistic assembly -- gathered around its bi…
Question
Is a single parish the whole Church or just a part of it?
The whole Church. This is Zizioulas's central ecclesiological claim, developed from Ignatius and Cyprian: every properly constituted Eucharistic assembly -- gathered around its bishop (or his presbyter), celebrating the Eucharist -- is the whole Church fully present in that place. Not a fragment of the Church awaiting completion by its connection to a larger institution. Not a branch office of the universal Church. The whole Body of Christ is present wherever the Eucharist is celebrated in apostolic order.
The relationship between local and universal: Zizioulas's correction of the Augustinian ecclesiology that dominated Western Christianity. Augustine tended to locate the Church primarily at the universal level -- the one Church of which local congregations are parts. Zizioulas argues that this gets the ontological order backwards: the Church exists first locally, in the Eucharistic assembly, and the universal Church is the communion of local churches. The universal is not prior to the local; it is the relationship between locals. Communion between local churches expresses the unity that is already ontologically given in each local church's possession of the whole Christ.
The teaching
Autocephaly, primacy, and the structure of Orthodox communion
The Orthodox Church is a communion of autocephalous (self-governing) churches. There is no single head of the Orthodox Church in the way the Pope heads the Roman Catholic Church. Each autocephalous church -- the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Patriarchate of Alexandria, the Patriarchate of Antioch, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Greek, Polish, Albanian, Czech and Slovak, OCA, and others -- is fully the Church in its territory, governed by its own synod of bishops.
The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has a primacy of honour -- first among equals -- but not universal jurisdiction. He cannot unilaterally impose decisions on other autocephalous churches. His role is to convene, to coordinate, and to represent the Orthodox Church in ecumenical relations. When the autocephalous churches are in conflict, as they currently are over several canonical questions, there is no supreme authority to impose resolution -- which is both the weakness and the integrity of the Orthodox structure. Truth is discerned conciliarly, not decreed unilaterally.
The local church is not a part of the universal Church. It is the universal Church in a given place. The whole Christ is present wherever the Eucharist is celebrated in full apostolic order.
This principle -- the local church as the whole Church locally realised -- is the most important contribution of 20th century Orthodox ecclesiology, and it reshapes the way one understands everything from the parish to the patriarchate. The parish is not the smallest unit of a larger organism whose headquarters are in Constantinople or Moscow. It is the Body of Christ, locally and fully present. Its connection to other local churches is not a subordination but a communion -- each bringing the whole to the shared table of conciliar life.
After John Zizioulas
Being as Communion · 1985
The American Situation
Why the Orthodox canonical structure in North America is genuinely unresolved
North America has more Orthodox Christians than many of the ancient patriarchates, and it has more Orthodox jurisdictions in the same territories than anywhere else in the world. In most major American cities, there are Greek Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox (OCA and ROCOR), Serbian Orthodox, Romanian Orthodox, Bulgarian Orthodox, and other parishes -- all Orthodox in faith and sacraments, all in some degree of canonical communion, but none organised according to the ancient canonical principle of one bishop in one territory.