Global Orthodoxy faces a profound crisis similar to the one it experienced a century ago following the collapse of major empires. The current crisis has challenged longstanding theological ideas and identities, including synodality, eucharistic ecclesiology, and personalism. Recent events, such as the Holy and Great Council, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russian war against Ukraine, have further exposed the tensions and contradictions within the Orthodox Church. To address these crises, it is imperative to re-examine fundamental questions about the nature of the Church and its relationship to its members. A distorted ecclesiology, often rooted in fear and a desire for control, has contributed to the current disarray. By fostering a more open and inclusive ecclesiology that respects individual freedom, the Orthodox Church can overcome its challenges and rediscover its true essence.
History demonstrates that crises help the churches develop. We are in the middle of a major crisis, almost an ideal storm. We are surprised to find ourselves there, because we have accustomed to believe that we had reached the eudaemonia of what we call “spiritual renaissance.” It followed the collapse of the Communist bloc, which upheld anti-religion as its established religion. We believed that anti-religion was the worst that the Church could face. Now we are gradually realising that we are facing something worse. Namely, political and social neo-totalitarianism, in its softer or harder editions, endorsed by totalitarian ecclesiologies that are becoming fashionable across what we call “Global Orthodoxy.”
By “us” I mean a very few people who realise that there are faulty ecclesiologies driving the almost ideal storm sucking our churches inside. At the same time, the majority of those who are supposed to prevent catastrophic scenarios by “rightly dividing the word of truth” (i.e., bishops), seem to fail registering the destruction of countries and the massive loss of human life. They may register interventions to their canonical territories, but that’s it. In other words, when the Church’s structures are threatened, hierarchs ring bells. When something more profound, which can be ascribed to the Church’s nature, is in danger, there is silence. The same sort of silence that can be observed in the eye of the storm. The Church leadership’s refusal to register the reality adds to the storm and makes it spinning faster.
A previous crisis of such magnitude occurred about a hundred years ago, with the collapse of the empires where Orthodoxy was present predominantly, namely the Ottoman, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian. This caused not only an exodus of Orthodox masses from the fallen empires to the West but also a transformation of their identities and theological ideas. The latter included the famous neo-Patristic synthesis, which was more about identities and ideological standpoints than Patristics; synodality and eucharist, which we now believe to be deeply embedded within Orthodoxy as its ostensibly unalienable identity; and personalism, which became perceived as a distinct feature of Eastern Christianity that differentiates it, so many of us believe, from the Western Christianity.
Recent events put all these ideas and identities to the test. The Holy and Great Council, which was envisioned as early as the 1920s as a celebration of synodality, when eventually happened, disillusioned many and urged them to ask the question: does synodality really exist in Orthodoxy beyond declarations? The local Orthodox churches that decided not to come to Crete in 2016, have unwillingly undermined the tenet held for a century that the quintessence of Orthodoxy is conciliar. They have demonstrated that conciliarity cannot translate from theological theories to the Church’s praxis, at least now. The pandemic of COVID-19, which sparked in early 2020 and lasted about two years, forced many to rethink the Eucharistic essence of the Church. Indeed, the Eucharistic ecclesiology states that the Eucharist makes the Church. However, what happens to the Church when the Eucharist cannot be celebrated and shared? Does she cease to exist? If she does not, what holds her together? The Russian war against Ukraine provoked the question of whether there is such a thing as the togetherness of Global Orthodoxy. One Orthodox nation wages a genocidal elimination of another Orthodox nation, and most local Orthodox churches pretend this does not happen. The protagonists and supporters of the war, especially in the Russian Orthodox Church, did not read the fascist theologians of the interwar period. Their favourite books are Fr Georges Florovsky’s, Vladimir Lossky’s and other personalists’. They started their intellectual journey by fervently affirming the prevalence of human hypostasis over essence. They are ending it by searching in cold blood for theological justifications for the brutal destruction of both human hypostases and essence in Bucha and Mariupol.
The Coronavirus of War and the Sectarian Ecclesiology of Fear
The Russian war against Ukraine is like the coronavirus: we may ignore it, but it does not ignore us. It eventually makes ecclesial bodies suffocating or breathless, without them realising what kind of virus has affected them, as this has happened to the Russian Orthodox Church. Some other ecclesial bodies can survive it but will experience the so-called “long COVID”—discomfort and the loss of some capacities for years, if not decades. Like with the virus, ignoring the war does not help us to deal with it. On the contrary, the more we ignore it, the more damaging it is to us. To face the coronavirus of war, we first need to diagnose it. We should start by asking two basic questions: what is the Church, and how do we relate to her?
A hundred years ago, the answer that Orthodox theology gave to similar questions was that the Church is different from both an empire and, by extension, from any kind of coercive state power. She is something ontologically else. Among the most enlightened Orthodox Church members, there grew an understanding that the ecclesiastical body is closer to the social body of responsible citizens than to the state bureaucracy. Consequently, twentieth-century post-imperial ecclesiology radically shifted from top-down to bottom-up. That is, from so-called “ecclesiology from above” to “ecclesiology from below.”
Freedom is the main element that differentiates the latter from the former. In radical contrast to the ancient world, where religion was not an individual choice but imposed by authorities from above, Christ gave everyone the responsibility to choose how to relate to God: “To sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father” (Mt 20:23, English Standard Version (ESV)). From then on, one’s relationship with God has value as long as it remains his or her free choice. Which means that belonging to the Church requires both the potentiality and actuality of freedom. People need to be allowed to exercise their freedom and to actually have the will to do so. I would venture to say that belonging to the Church is not a momentary status but must be continuously chosen and asserted. Only through perpetual choice and assertion does the congregation remain genuine and susceptible of salvation. Then a church with the small “c” becomes the Church with the capital “C”. Otherwise, the Church gets reduced to a sect. I believe that the key criterion that differentiates the Church from a sect is respect for the freedom of each of its members. Such respect implies a great deal of risk, but it is a precondition sine qua non for the Church to remain both orthodox and catholic.
The riskiest aspect of the Church is synodality. Those who try to contain the risk of freedom in the Church effectively reduce its conciliar functions. They confess synodality with their lips only, without using or practising it. The local churches that did not show up in Crete in 2016, were either consciously or unconsciously afraid to take the risk of the synodality. Although they declared that they wanted to protect the Church from misguidance, in effect they were moved by misguided perceptions about the Church, i.e., by the fear of freedom and not by the faith in the Church.
Ecclesiology that fears, avoids, or marginalises freedom causes local churches to succumb to fear, distrust, and even paranoia. In its extreme version, such ecclesiology provides an indirect justification for various abuses, including the most catastrophic of them: war. Churches that fight against their members’ freedom inspire their people’s leaders to wage wars against other peoples. Fear-based ecclesiology looks for arguments to justify authoritarianism and totalitarianism of all kinds.
This ecclesiology imposes within the churches an ethos that is not much different from the ethos that cements empires. It prefers coercion to consent. However, the church’s use of coercion—always presented to be for the best of the Church’s interests—often ends up with the churches supporting wars. That is how we have come to the tragic situation in which the majority of Orthodox Christians today (I include here those in Russia who identify themselves with the Orthodox Church and those Orthodox outside Russia who sympathise with what the leadership of that country is trying to achieve) either actively or passively support the complete annihilation of an Orthodox people—that of Ukraine.
I cannot explain this paradox except by a distorted ecclesiology. Its main element is that it looks not to Christ as the head and sole reference point for the phenomenon of the Church but to his substitutes. These may include secular authorities, so-called traditional values, the glorious pasts of the churches and empires, etc. All these are nothing else but idols that substitute for God.
