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By Vladimir Moss

The Russian church writer Lev Regelson has recently pointed out: “The concept of the ‘Local’ [pomestnoj] Church has long ago lost its literal sense. Nobody is surprised any longer by the existence of communities of the Russian Church in Africa, consisting of local aborigines. So that now it would be more correct to speak about the Autocephalous Russian Church as the historical successor of the Orthodox Church of the Russian Empire, which has gone beyond the bounds of the territorial, state or national principle.” In fact, not only has the concept of the Local Church been lost: the administration of the Orthodox Church as a whole has been in a state of increasing anarchy since the fall and break-up of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires in 1917-18. The resultant enormous political changes, combined with the creation of large Orthodox minorities of various nationalities in the non-Orthodox countries of the West, have created huge problems of administration that have stretched the concept of the Local Church almost to breaking point. If these problems have afflicted the heretical, but more-or-less well-organized Churches of “World Orthodoxy”, they threaten completely to tear apart the right-believing, but divided True Orthodox Churches. This article is an attempt to introduce some clarity into the debate by going back to basic principles, on the one hand, and the witness of Church history, on the other.

1. Basic Principles

The first principle of Church organization, according to canon law and the early patristic sources (such as St. Ignatius of Antioch), is that the primary unit of the Local Church is the bishop and the Christians of the territory he administers. There can be only one bishop for any one given territorial unit. All the Christians living within that territory, whatever their nationality, must submit to the bishop of the territory. It is forbidden to create sub-units within the territorial unit on the basis of race, class or any other criterion unless they are blessed by the bishop and under his overall control. It is forbidden to divide the territorial unit into smaller sub-units, each with his own bishop, without the agreement of the bishop of that territory.

Although the power of the bishop is largely autocratic within his diocese so long as he rightly divides the word of truth, he is obliged to join with other bishops of neighbouring territories to form synods presided over by the senior of the bishops – the metropolitan or archbishop. This rank does not constitute a fourth level of the priesthood above bishops, priests and deacons, and a metropolitans or archbishop cannot impose his will on the other members of his synods. At the same time, the bishops of a synod cannot make any decisions in synod without the agreement of the metropolitan or archbishop.

Synods of bishops have the right to investigate complaints against the behaviour of an individual bishop within his diocese and to discipline, or even to defrock, him if he is found to have transgressed the dogmas or canons of the Church. Moreover, they, and they alone, have the right to ordain the successors of bishops who have been defrocked or who have died, and to create new dioceses. It is this collective, collegial character of the episcopate, as expressed in the meetings and decision-making of synods of bishops, that both ensures apostolic succession within individual dioceses and the organizational unity of the Orthodox Church as a whole.

In essence, these two levels of Church organization – that of the individual diocese, and that of the metropolitan or archiepiscopal district – are the only levels of Church organization that are required in order that the Church should carry out all her essential functions…

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