The Holy and Great Council of Crete and Eastern Orthodoxy’s Struggle for Identity in the Modern West

Abstract

The version presented here may differ from the published version. If citing, you are advised to consult the published version for pagination, volume/issue and date of publication Christians share. How can they, the non-Orthodox, not be included in Orthodox communion when they are, in their very Trinitarian baptism, "made members by the same Spirit …without which the Eucharist cannot be administered" (Augustine) and when they, just as the Orthodox, affirm the same Symbol of faith/Creed? Drawing on an interpretation of the great Russian theologian Fr Sergii Bulgakov , Augustine wants to argue that the royal priesthood, as the common gift of all Christians in their baptismal anointing with the Spirit, and not the ordered special charism of the episcopate, is the foundation of the handing on of the faith. The principle of communion, the unity of the Church's shared faith/teaching seen in the Eucharist, does not depend on apostolic succession, as many Orthodox and Catholics contend, but, rather, on the baptism of all believers in the royal priesthood. The laity, she argues, is empowered in matters of preservation of the faith in light of their Trinitarian baptism with Chrismation (i.e. Western Confirmation) understood as a sort of general ordination to the royal priesthood. It might be replied to Augustine, from a stricter Orthodox perspective, that Christian baptism and the gift of the Spirit are normally given not by all of God's people but preeminently through the episcopate, as the ongoing synaxis of the apostles seen at Pentecost, or at the very least through those who have been ordained by the bishops to act in their stead. Augustine's response to this sort of more clericalist theology is to point out that there are those who are not Orthodox, such as the Pentecostals, who have been inspired by the Spirit directly, like the household of Cornelius (Acts 10), without even the laying on of Apostolic/episcopal or presbyterial hands. The Spirit, she argues, does not require institutional mediation through the episcopate. Following Bulgakov again, she claims that Christians of different traditions have a unity in Christ, a similarity of Christian experience, which is a sort of "spiritual communion" (Augustine) that exists long before communion at the same chalice takes place. 2 She seems to hint that intercommunion or some sort of eucharistic hospitality might be

Orthodoxy and Ecumenical Dialogue after Crete Synod (2016) and Social Ethos Document (2020): History, Critical Positions and Reception

“…With the convocation of the Holy and Great Synod of Crete, the Orthodox Church entered a new stage of its history. Given that this process lasted more than half a century, I believe that the meeting taking place was an event in itself (Gallaher 2017).…”