Sect: The Inextricably Exclusivist Ecclesiology of the Eastern Orthodox Church
Orthodox ecclesiology, which is to say the Eastern Church’s understanding of the nature of the Church, is necessarily and permanently exclusivistic. This means that, according to the Orthodox position, the Eastern Orthodox Church is the Church, which is to say an identity with the Body of Christ. Whatever calls itself church that is also not in immediate external communion with the Eastern Churches is therefore not in inward communion with the Church, and so not in communion with the Body of Christ, and, a fortiori, not in communion with Christ. Patriarch Dositheus’ synodal and canonical Confession states:
That the dignity of the bishop is so necessary in the Church, that without him, neither Church nor Christian could either be or be spoken of. For he, as a successor of the Apostles, having received in continued succession by the imposition of hands… is a fountain of all the Mysteries [Sacraments] of the catholic Church, through which we obtain salvation. And he is, we affirm, as necessary to the Church as breath is to man, or the sun to the world. (Confession of Dositheus, Decree 10: Of the Visible Church; The Holy Standards, pg 42)
In other words, the inescapable presupposition being that Dositheus is referring only to Eastern bishops, one cannot even hypothetically be a Christian if they are outside of the canonical structure of the Eastern communion of churches. This is a radical claim (one shared by Romans and Orientals) that few who consider Eastern Orthodoxy deeply examine. Often one is focused on issues such as theology proper, Christology, and/or liturgical theology, but the question of ecclesiology is rarely in sharp focus. The reality is, however, that the Orthodox claim a visible boundary for Christ’s Body: the specifically Eastern Orthodox Church, that together with the Church already in heaven Christ’s Body is identical with its own earthly episcopal administration.
Protopresbyter Pomazansky, who wrote perhaps the most normative Eastern systematic theology text in the English language, declared in perfect consistency with Dositheus:
The Church is not only one inwardly, but also outwardly. Outwardly its unity is manifested in the harmonious confession of faith, in the oneness of Divine services and Mysteries, in the oneness of the Grace-giving hierarchy, which comes in succession from the Apostles, in the oneness of canonical order. (Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, 3rd Edition, pg 240)
Thus it is clear that the Orthodox self-conception of the unity of the Church necessarily excludes those that are not manifestly “in the oneness of the Grace-giving hierarchy” or “in the oneness of canonical order.” This is fundamental for Eastern Orthodoxy’s exclusivist ecclesiology. Even though the Romanists and the Orientals will provide the same kinds of evidence and make the same kinds of claims, each mutually excluding the other, it is clear that the Eastern Church sees itself as existing in the privileged position of being alone the one true Church. For, as Pomazansky states,
The Church does not lose its unity because side by side with the Church there exist Christian societies which do not belong to it. These societies are not in the Church, they are outside it (ibid, pg 240).
If one were to ask who just might be included among those outside the Church due to non-superficial dogmatic issues whose consequence is a departure from the truth, one need only turn to St. Theophan the Recluse, who stated in a letter:
The truth of God, the whole, pure, and saving truth, is to be found neither in the Roman Catholics, nor in the Protestants, nor in the Anglicans… It is to be found only in the One True Church, the Orthodox Church. The others may well believe that they possess the truth. In reality, however, they are far from it. (Preaching Another Christ, tr. Kagaris, pg 20)
Thus it is clear that to St. Theophan all who are not in communion with the Orthodox Church have strayed far from the truth. Only the Orthodox Church is the Body of Christ, according to the Orthodox position.
Again, it needs to be stressed that the exact same kind of argument is presented by the Romanists and Orientals (i.e. fidelity to the truth and unbroken apostolic succession), each visible administration accusing the others of having strayed from the boundaries of the Church. For it is nonsensical to claim that one can, on the one hand, be a Christian and, on the other hand, not a member of His Body. There is no class of unsaved Christians separated from His Body. It is thus necessarily both/and, i.e. both a Christian and a member of His Body. To be outside the Orthodox Church, then, is to be outside of Christ’s Body, and so outside of Christ. As St. Paul declares: “Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Romans 8:9 KJV).
Romanists, Orientals, and Protestants are all outside of the Orthodox Church, and therefore according to the Eastern Orthodox cannot even be thought of as Christians, as per Dositheus above. The position is so severe that few take it seriously, and yet as people inquire into the Orthodox Church this position is often not advertised, for obvious reasons, and is often concealed, especially as many convert to the Orthodox Church with universalist, hyper-mystical, and (perhaps counterintuitively) perennialist leanings. The severity of Orthodox, Byzantine, which is to say imperialist ecclesiology, which the Romanists, the Orthodox, and the Orientals all inherited, is muffled, if not muzzled and buried, by the majority of catechists and inquirers.
The Synodikon of Orthodoxy, another canonical text read yearly (at least is called to be read yearly, but often is not either from laziness, unpopularity, or shame), pronounces anathema against all that “innovate” or “enact” anything “outside of Church Tradition and the teaching and institution of the holy and ever-memorable fathers” (The Holy Standards, pg 530). It also pronounces an anathema against those who do not “confess with heart and mouth that he is a child of the Eastern Church baptized in the Orthodox style… shall be outside of our Church and shall be anathematized” (The Holy Standards, pg 567). It even pronounces in the following paragraph an anathema against those who do not affirm that Christ had leavened bread at the Mystic [Last] Supper, while also condemning the Armenian Orthodox Church!
The final two anathemas from the Synodikon militate against any who would call the Roman Pope the head of the Church (pg 568), which, although I agree that the papacy is a severely unbiblical doctrine, as a consistent expression of Orthodox ecclesiology it is inescapable that the Synodikon unambiguously asserts that the Romanists do not in any way function as Church since they are founded on the “unifying” principle of the papacy. Of course, concerning the nature of the papacy, the Romanists in Chapter 2 of Vatican I, from Session 4 on 18 July 1870, countered the Orthodox anathema by declaring:
If anyone says that it is not by the institution of Christ the Lord himself (that is to say, by divine law) that blessed Peter should have perpetual successors in the primacy over the whole church; or that the Roman pontiff is not the successor of blessed Peter in this primacy: let him be anathema.
Clearly, the Romanists and the Orthodox have an intractable problem. Moreover, in the following chapter of the same Session it states that “the apostolic see and the Roman pontiff hold a world-wide primacy,” and that he is the
head of the whole church and father and teacher of all christian people. To him, in blessed Peter, full power has been given by our lord Jesus Christ to tend, rule and govern the universal church.
Predictably, it then immediately states: “All this is to be found in the acts of the ecumenical councils and the sacred canons.” But, fascinatingly, we find in the penultimate paragraph of the Orthodox Synodikon:
That whoever does not follow the customs of the Church as the Seven Holy Ecumenical Councils decreed, and Holy Pascha, and the Menologion with which they did well in making it a law that we should follow it… [and so whoever follows the New Calendar] … and wishes to overthrow and destroy the dogmas and customs of the Church which have been handed down by our fathers, let him suffer anathema and be put out of the Church of Christ and out of the Congregation of the Faithful. (pg 568)
In other words, just as the Romanists declared they were consistent with Tradition, so the Orthodox declared they were consistent with tradition.
Returning to Vatican I, the second paragraph of the third chapter states:
Both clergy and faithful, of whatever rite and dignity, both singly and collectively, are bound to submit to this power by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, and this not only in matters concerning faith and morals, but also in those which regard the discipline and government of the church throughout the world.
The fourth of the same, states:
This is the teaching of the catholic truth, and no one can depart from it without endangering his faith and salvation.
The conclusion of the same being:
If anyone says that the Roman pontiff has merely an office of supervision and guidance, and not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole church, and this not only in matters of faith and morals, but also in those which concern the discipline and government of the church dispersed throughout the whole world; or that he has only the principal part, but not the absolute fullness, of this supreme power; or that this power of his is not ordinary and immediate both over all and each of the churches and over all and each of the pastors and faithful: let him be anathema.
The obviously contrary nature of these two positions, that of Vatican 1 which appeals to the Councils, and that of the Orthodox who likewise appeal to the Councils, both placing their respective positions at the formal level of being unalterable conciliar decrees, which are considered to be divinely true, make their ecclesiologies not only mutually exclusive and exclusivistic, but also irremediable and irreconcilable. They cannot ever be in unity because their view of the Church is that they can in no way err, and since they individually conceive that they, and not the other, are the Church, they can never accept that they have ever made an error.
Thus the Romanists and Orthodox, and similarly the non-Chalcedonians, make reconciliation impossible through the absolutizing of all their prior acts and decisions. They have so encrusted their idea of the Church with everything that has ever been formally decreed within the respective streams of their own unique administrative histories that they cannot re-conceive what unity is or means, but are rather bound by the force of their own canonical law to insist that Church unity necessarily requires outward administrative unity. Even when they appeal to the same councils and canons they come to mutually exclusive positions.
The foregoing sends credulous inquirers and would-be defenders of the faith on a man-centered hunt to find out which “one true Church” is really the “one true Church,” according of course to the investigator’s (gasp!) private judgment. Now it requires a PhD and mastery of multiple languages and intimate knowledge of two thousand years of history, not to mention access to all the relevant resources, to find out whether one is even in the Church and therefore saved! But thankfully St. Paul says:
The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; (9) That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. (10) For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (11) For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. (12) For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. (13) For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. (Romans 10:8-13 KJV)
In light of this Biblical truth and the foregoing exposition, the absurd exclusivism of the Orthodox, Romanists, and Orientals is rendered clear and untenable. It is also thus true that they are sectarian, a term which will be defined here as the affirmation that, all things being substantially equal between A and B, that B is considered by A outside of the Church (and so salvation) for not being in external unity with A. St. Paul, however, teaches:
Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. (11) For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. (12) Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. (13) Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? (1 Corinthians 1:10-13 KJV)
Now, when St. Paul says not to have divisions, the Easterns, Romanists, and Orientals have made such a conception of their visible, administrative unity that they demand almost atomistic alignment on an impossibly large data set of Councils and Canons such that entrenched division is inescapable. Each side is locked in their canonical corners and so repentance is made impossible. It is a world of constant doubling down, ever finer distinction-making, and more and more subtly nuanced circumlocutions about how only one is really the Church, the Body of Christ. But as St. Paul divinely asserts above, not even Christ can become a principle for faction among Christians, i.e. that one group alone has or gives access to Christ, such as the Orthodox claim for themselves.
The absurdity of what could perhaps be called the Imperialist ecclesiological position (which includes the Romanist and Orientals together with the Orthodox) is made all the more clear when one must realize that each schismatic branch says substantially the same thing about themselves being right and the others being wrong, using the same kinds of proofs, and so put ridiculous pressure on those outside the Church to be able to make accurate enough historical judgments concerning the vicissitudes of Church history in order to enter the right, salvific Church. According to this extreme and externalist ecclesiology, a person outside the Church, and therefore a non-recipient of God’s saving grace, could not in principle make such a determination.
The genius of Protestantism, however, is that despite what is claimed by the Orthodox, Romanists, and Orientals, Protestants are not schismatic or factious. Why? Because they do not presuppose in the midst of inevitable differences between administrative bodies that those outside of their administrative bodies are necessarily outside the Church. For example, the mere fact of being, say, a Confessional Lutheran does not necessitate a claim by a Confessional Presbyterian that said Lutheran is outside of the Body of Christ and therefore damned. In other words, merely being “not Presbyterian” does not mean that one is outside of the Church, not Christian, or not saved. That is why and how Protestantism is not sectarian, factious, or schismatic, for a Spurgeon can praise a Wesley, but the presupposition of an exclusivist ecclesiology as found in the Eastern Church has an institutionally ingrained impossibility for understanding unity in this way. For in their case unity must be outwardly visible and within the same administrative and canonical structure. Protestants, however, can create different bodies within a larger Evangelical unity that allows for such differences of administrations, and even on what might be considered important doctrines. Obviously, this doesn’t answer all possible ecclesiological difficulties related to an Evangelical approach to unity and catholicity, nor whitewash all historic tensions, but it certainly moves beyond the impossible impasse of the Byzantiune, the Romanist, and the Oriental churches.
To conclude, the exclusivist ecclesiology of the old imperial churches is untenable. Certainly it is sectarian. Moreover, the severity of the problem must not be reduced or whitewashed. Too many enter into the Imperial ecclesiological model churches without realizing that the consequence of this is that they must be able to affirm that their faithful parents who remain, say, in the Baptist Church, their faithful friends in the Presbyterian Church, and their spouse who may want to remain Catholic, are neither saved nor even possibly Christian, but to consistent canonical reasoning most certainly damned. Since that makes the administrative unity of a particular imperialist ecclesiology (and mutually exclusive with the others of like mind and even practice) a necessary condition of salvation, it essentially makes that visible church a sine qua non of the Gospel.
But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. (9) As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:8-9 KJV)
