Problems of Ecclesiology Between Anglicans and Orthodox in the Dublin Agreed Statement (1984)

By Fr. John Daly

From the now defunct periodical Anglican Orthodox Pilgrim, Vol. 2, No. 4

There is much to celebrate in the Agreed Statement between Anglicans and Orthodox which was the result of the 1984 Dublin meeting. There is a commonness of vision in many places and a great deal of mutual respect conveyed in areas of disagreement. This is cause for hope in future dialogues.

However, the sometimes profound areas of disagreement in our respective understanding of the Church combined with very different parameters for dissent and disagreement within our respective communions is evidence of how very far we still are from anything approaching reunion. Events in the Anglican communion in the years following the Dublin meeting have only exacerbated the situation (e.g., the consecration of several women to the episcopacy; ever widening disputes between traditionalist bishops and churchmen on the one hand, and radicals, on the other, about basic doctrine; the issues surrounding human sexuality and homosexuality in particular; the very real possibility of a major schism or series of schisms among Anglicans worldwide as these matters reach their climax). As we shall see, the very possibility of actually defining an Anglican response to Orthodox apprehensions and doubts about the authoritativeness of any such attempt were it accomplished makes it extremely difficult for Orthodox to know who actually speaks for Anglicanism (i.e. what distinguishes the position of various Anglican spokespersons as authoritative vs. mere opinion? Who decides and on what basis?). In a very real sense, our discussion with Anglicans is a sort of tertium quid—neither like the discussions with Roman Catholics nor like those which might be had with Protestant congregationalists. All of this, of course, is grounded fundamentally in the ecclesiology, or lack thereof, which forms the basis of the Anglican Communion.

Section I, para. 9, of the Dublin Agreed Statement reflects the fundamentally different approaches to the Church between Orthodox and Anglicans: Anglicans are accustomed to seeing our divisions as within the Church, but they believe that they belong to it. Orthodox, however, believe that the Orthodox Church is the one true Church of Christ, which as His Body is not and cannot be divided.

Though the true doctrinal position of each Church is presented very openly here, what is not (and perhaps cannot—or at least ought not be) set forth is the tremendous psychological and emotional conflict between the two views. For instance, it is extremely distressing for most Anglicans to deal with the fact that Orthodox view them as not fully in the Church. This perceived (and real) exclusion is especially painful when it is contrasted with Anglican openness to intercommunion and mutual recognition of orders. Conversely, Orthodox are often offended and hurt when our own very deeply held convictions about the need for unity of faith to precede any restoration of communion is attacked as mere triumphalism or as the rejection of others as persons. Orthodox believe that there can be no ambiguity or compromise about Church dogma even while admitting the need to explicate certain dogmas in a manner more intelligible to the contemporary culture. Anglicans allow a wide expanse in the interpretation of dogma—to the point of what appears to be contradiction in Orthodox eyes—even while they believe that they are continuing to affirm the catholic faith. This leads to a real problem that can (and does) arise when both groups use the same words to describe their faith but in vastly different contexts.

Before exploring specifics within the main body of the Agreement, it may be helpful to look at the summary statements regarding the Church in the Epilogue. While we agree that the Church is one, holy, catholic and apostolic, we are not agreed on the account to be given of the sinfulness and division which is to be observed in the life of Christian communities. For Anglicans, because the Church under Christ it is the community where God’s grace is at work, healing and transforming sinful men and women; and because grace in the Church is mediated through those who are themselves undergoing such transformation, the struggle between grace and sin is seen as characteristic of, rather than accidental to, the Church on earth. Orthodox while agreeing that the human members of the Church on earth are sinful, do not believe that sinfulness should be ascribed to the Church as the Body of Christ indwelt by the Holy Spirit (Epilogue, Section IV, para. 99 (d)). This paragraph alone reveals a great deal about the quandary in which we find ourselves when talking about the Church with Anglicans. It also reveals how it is possible to talk to each other in the same language, using the same vocabulary and still misunderstand each other on the most basic level.

For example, Orthodox are often perplexed and frustrated in theological conversations with Anglicans. It is quite easy to find Anglicans who are very close to the Orthodox theologically, sacramentally, and devotionally, and at the same time it is just as easy (in fact much easier nowadays) to find Anglicans who are so far removed from an Orthodox understanding of anything that it is rather difficult to seriously regard them as Christian (in the sense of confessing Jesus Christ as Lord and God, one of the Trinity who was Incarnate in our midst). How, we Orthodox will say, is it possible for both to exist in the same Church (often in the same diocese, deanery, or parish)? How is it that one bishop may for all intents and purposes deny the Virgin birth, the Bodily Resurrection of Christ, the necessity of confessing the Trinity alone as Godhead, the whole ethical and moral tradition of the Church and then some, while another bishop may strictly abide in the universal tradition of the Orthodox Catholic Church (yes, there really are some who do!)?

If we look at what is stated in Sec. IV, para. 99 we may be able to better understand the enigma. If the Church herself is understood to be struggling between grace and sin, then there is indeed a very wide room in which debate may take place. After all if grace (and truth) are mediated (and often corrupted) through sinful women and men, then how exactly can one ever determine the fullness of Truth in anything before the Eschaton? Since not only particular persons but the Body as a whole may at times fall into error, it will be exceedingly difficult to categorically admit the rightness or wrongness of any doctrine. At the extreme end, this line of thinking becomes so positivistic that everything is reduced to the perceptions and valuation of each individual (in the fullest sense of that terrible word!). The actual experience of doctrine as authoritative has eroded so profoundly in some segments of Anglicanism (notably the Churches in North America and Oceania—and with increasing rapidity in the British Isles themselves) that new doctrinal statements are being made without regard (or with flagrant disregard) for the experience of the Church in the past. This is especially so in the area of liturgical reform (e.g. inclusive language liturgies), moral and ethical teaching (e.g. homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia), and sacramental order (e.g. the ordination of women, the admission of persons to communion from traditions which deny any understanding of the actual presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in the eucharist), &c. This, rather harsh, critique of the implications of Anglican ecclesiology from an Orthodox perspective will find a mixed response at best from those who are committed to the Anglican tradition even if they are otherwise very close to us in their assessment of specific issues. This is why bishops with utterly contradictory interpretations of the faith will remain in communion with one another.

How does the Orthodox claim that sinfulness should (not) be ascribed to the Church as the body of Christ indwelt by the Holy Spirit sound in ears of many Anglicans—especially considering that we admit that the members of the Body may indeed by sinful (in all fairness, one could probably find not a few Orthodox who would also have a problem with the apparent paradox inherent in this question)? For most Anglicans, coming from a cultural and religious mileu (Protestant, mostly) which takes as a given fact the idea that every institution is fallible and which furthermore, understands the Church much more as a structure than as an organism, the very idea that dogma is immutably and eternally true—the same yesterday, today, and forever—is alien and reeks of totalitarianism and fanaticism. Once again, to be fair, history and some of the would be spokespersons for the Church have lent more than a little credence to such apprehensions.

However, in spite of the miscommunication and misinterpretations of our ecclesiology by some who would represent us, there still remains the fact that we confess that the Church, as the Body of Christ, cannot fall into error. The very presence of error (heresy) and confusion in the assembly is evidence that it has departed from the fullness of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. This is hard to convey in a pluralistic culture which not only tolerates but even celebrates a wide diversity of mutually exclusive traditions (the real depth of this celebration of differences, however, often falls short of accepting any teaching which makes absolute claims about anything—especially when such claims call into question the beliefs and behaviors of others).

This leads to a consideration of communion and so called intercommunion. Anglicans along with Protestants in general (as well as a not inconsiderable number of individual Roman Catholics) regard shared communion as a means toward unity. The sharing at the table is seen as a sign of hope for future organic reunion. The Orthodox understanding of communion as something which can only be shared within a community of faithful in which there is no difference of faith (DAS, sec. I, para. 20) bears a much closer resemblance to the sharing of the marriage bed than it does to the prevalent notion of table fellowship among Anglicans. Just as marriage is a closed community when it comes to the sharing of its most intimate form of communion so is the Church (the Bride) in Communion with the Body and Blood of Christ (the Bridegroom). To put it rather bluntly, the idea of sharing communion with those outside the Orthodox Church—using the symbolism found in Ephesians 5 and elsewhere—has as its parallels: fornication and/or adultery in marriage. The only means of entering into communion is through the establishment of complete unity of faith. The image of fidelity in both the Church and within marriage is by no means accidental.

However, when we read certain section of the Agreed Statement concerning the marks of the Church it would appear that we are on our way toward re-union. For instance, in DAS sec. I, para. 12, we read a statement about catholicity of faith (as opposed to schism and heresy) with which both Anglicans and Orthodox were in full agreement. Once again, the actual interpretation of the paragraph within the respective communions may not be at all the same. Consider the statement, If Christians cease to love each other or to respect Church order they are in danger of schism. If they depart from the essentials of the apostolic faith they become guilty of heresy. (DAS, I 12). According to Orthodox standards, Anglicans have, to varying degrees, become both schismatics and heretics. In the matters of Church order and in keeping of the apostolic faith (and praxis), it can be quite fairly demonstrated that the Episcopal Church in the United States has indeed departed from the Tradition in several areas. Obviously, the Anglicans who agreed to the statement about catholicity have a very different understanding of the essentials of increasing—even as the words and concepts which fill these agreements sound more and more harmonious.

Continuing with the same paragraph we read,

…local churches, in faithful response to their own particular missionary situation, have developed a wide diversity in their life. As long as their witness to the one faith remains unimpaired, such diversity is to be seen, not as a deficiency or cause for both faith and order. This terminological confusion is all the more striking because the Agreed Statements and other Ecumenical documents (e.g., B.E.M.) have come out at a time when the actual doctrinal distance between the Church and the various denominations, may, as a matter of fact, be division, but as a mark of the fullness of the one Spirit who distributes to each according to his will (1 Cor. 12:1).

What is meant by diversity? Differences in ritual and ceremony have always existed in the church; the admission of western rite Orthodox into canonical Orthodoxy bears witness to this. However, the diversity which is accepted—even celebrated—among Anglicans goes far beyond ritual (i.e. ceremony). The theological understanding of the rites and sacraments of the Church is interpreted by Anglicans in such diverse ways as to make it impossible to identify any one Anglican definitive, authoritative, statement about virtually anything (just ask what the Real Presence actually means at a gathering that includes representatives of the various types of Anglican churchmanship). Furthermore, diversity as understood by many Anglicans (at least those who control the General Convention of ECUSA) includes tolerance of (or acceptance of) beliefs and behaviors which have no precedent in Christian experience other than their identification with sin—sometimes very grave sin. This is by no means a polemical statement. A cursory glance at virtually any mainline (i.e. neither reactionary nor radical) publication of the Episcopal Church USA will show how broadly the call for respecting diverse opinions has been interpreted—even when such opinions would have been understood to be deeply perverted at any other time in Christian history.

Finally, attention must be given to two additional aspects of ecclesiology, related to one another and to everything else that has been put forth in this paper; these aspects are Tradition and the contemporary innovation of ordaining women to the priesthood in several parts of the Anglican communion (since 1989 there have also been consecrations of women to the episcopate). Section III, para. 47, states:

Looked at from outside, the two Churches appear to be very different in their attitude to tradition, the Anglicans allowing a great variety of attitude and teaching, the Orthodox being strongly attached to the definitions and the structures of the tradition, especially to those established in the Ecumenical Councils and by the Church Fathers.

Not only do the two Churches appear to be very different from the outside regarding Tradition but they appear so from the inside as well, at least in the experience of one who has been on the inside of both. This fundamental difference in approach to Tradition is really connected with fundamentally different approaches to authority in general, as we have already seen. The fact that Anglicans, like most western Christians, believe to some degree in the development of doctrine in the sense that new and innovative doctrinal assertions may arise out of historical experience, allows for the establishment of practices which may (apparently) contradict what had gone before. Were this confined to matters of discipline alone it might indeed be an acceptable example of diversity but since the changes and developments also touch on matters of the esse of the Church (at least to the Orthodox mind) there arises the immediate objection that the Spirit of Truth Who blows where He wills is not a spirit of contradiction blowing against the Church and the Holy Tradition (which has been given to us in and through the same Holy Spirit).

In Sec. III, para. 52 the discussion is of the dynamic nature of tradition under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and exercised with careful discrimination in the midst of the societies and cultures in which the Church finds herself. The Church at the present time needs to exercise…discrimination, remaining true to the mind (phronema) of the Fathers and facing the new questions with which our century confronts us, concludes the paragraph. Here again, the way Orthodox understand the mind of the Fathers and its living application to the present seems to be very different from Anglican evaluations of the same things. Whereas many (but by no means all) Anglicans view the ordination of women to the priestly and episcopal orders as in keeping with the mind of the Fathers and faithfully facing up to the challenges of our times, the vast majority of the Orthodox regard the move to ordain women as a contradiction of the Church’s mind and Tradition and a very rash one at that—something which was done in response to political and social changes in the larger culture which had more to do with a power struggle than with the right practice (orthopraxia) of authority.

With regard to the specific, unilateral, and sudden decision to ordain women to priestly ministry, the Orthodox response in the Agreed Statement (DAS IV, 102) cites contrariness to Scripture and Tradition.

However, in a very positive way the paragraph goes on to state the need to examine such issues as the meaning of the distinction of the sexes, the meaning of the sacramental priesthood and its connection to both the High Priesthood of Christ and to the royal priesthood of all believers and to furthermore explore the other forms of ministry in the Church.

From such explorations we shall no doubt see again a difference in the approach and in the conclusions drawn by the two communions. Orthodox will continue to look to Holy Tradition to provide a consistent and continuing witness to the meaning of the sacramental priesthood even while exploring new but never contradictory expressions of the other ministries of women and men in the Church. Likewise, Anglicans will probably continue to regard doctrinal and sacramental expressions of the Church as being subject to historical and cultural conditions and always in the light of the tension between grace and sin. Of course, some individual Orthodox will come out in favor of women’s ordination (as an eschatological sign?) while some Anglicans will reject it as a compromise with the spirit of this world. However, it is exceedingly unlikely that the Orthodox will discover in the Tradition a line of thought that would permit the wholesale rejection of Church practice for 20 centuries on such a central matter as ordination (of the esse of the Church) just as it is unlikely that Anglicans as a body will repent of what many of them consider to be an issue of justice and prophetic witness to the world.

The good which will come of all this is that Orthodox will be challenged to explore the meaning and truth which underlies our understanding not only of the all male sacramental priesthood but of the much larger issue of the meaning and value of the two sexes created in the image and likeness of God. This too, as we will see, is a fundamentally ecclesial issue directly related to the most fundamental of all ecclesial models, that of the Bride-Bridegroom with all its ramifications for Christian life both in the home and the Church. If Anglicans and Orthodox actually do manage to address this issue seriously among themselves and with each other, it promises to be a profoundly enlightening experience—though the likelihood of real agreement may prove to be unobtainable.

In the final analysis, ecclesiology and how it relates to our understanding of Tradition and authority is by far the most difficult and even contentious area in our dialogue with Anglicans. However, if our dialogue is conducted in a spirit of frankness, fearlessness, and love, we have much to say to one another. This means we must be willing to say (and hear) hard sayings. The failure or unwillingness to do so at this critical juncture in our respective histories will spell the end of any fruitful conversation. The ultimate question is whether or not either or both participants in the dialogue have the courage to proceed into the rough and uncharted waters ahead.

Fr. Daly is a former liberal Episcopalian who converted to Orthodoxy. He is pastor of St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, Southbridge, MA.