This term is strange to the believer’s ear, because he is accustomed to hearing about heresy in its intellectual form. But for heresy to be administrative, it requires contemplation and a reading that incarnates doctrines behaviorally. Doctrines are not purely intellectual terms that do not touch human reality, for what does man benefit from Christ being two natures or one nature, as in the model of Eutyches for example, or God being a Trinity or a quaternity? Doctrines, if they do not become life, have no meaning whatsoever except for intellectual dispute.
The importance of defining doctrines stems from their necessity of incarnation in man’s life, that is, their transformation from a model of God’s life and His relation to us into a model in our lives among one another. Salvation is tied to the incarnation of the models of doctrine, not to their preservation on paper nor in thought. The Apostolic Fathers particularly apply the word “doctrine” to practice more than to theory, because they lived the faith, or doctrine, in a practical, applied way. Otherwise we become like the states of the Middle East, whose constitution recognizes freedom of expression and human dignity while the prisons are full of thinkers and people of opinion, so that its constitution becomes one thing and its behavior another.
He errs who imagines, as Metropolitan Paul Yazigi says, that “(administration) in the Church is not a (doctrinal) matter! Nay, it is the first doctrinal matter”…(administration) is not separate from faith; administration is the manner of (existence), that is, the manner of living the faith”(1). In the sense that the Christian must possess right faith (Orthodoxy) and right conduct (orthopraxis). It appears in the introduction to the book Antioch and the Canon by Father Afanasiev: “through it he teaches us theology and dissolves rights within it, therefore he did not use the word ‘canon’ much; we did not discern the independence of its matter (rights) from doctrine” (2).
The theologian Edward Schillebeeckx says of orthopraxis: “It has become evident that thought is an essential factor of action, but for centuries the Church devoted itself to formulating the truths of divine revelation while at the same time it did not work for a better world. In other words, the Church devoted its attention to orthodoxy, leaving orthopraxis to its non-members, to non-believers”(3).
The model of the doctrine of God is a Trinity, and there is a distinction among the hypostases, each having a hypostatic role; and the doctrine of Christ is two natures and two wills without confusion, mixture or diminution, and others. From these doctrines, their models must be incarnated in the Church’s conduct, that is, the administration of the Church and all the affairs of its life, work and organization must be built on the models of the divine doctrines that are tied to man’s salvation. It is not enough that we believe God is a Trinity; “faithfulness to the Christian calling will necessarily be measured by orthopraxis (active love) more than by orthodoxy (theory)”.
The Church must organize its internal relations according to the model of the internal relation among the hypostases of the Trinity, and its external relation with the state must be like the model of God’s external relation to man through the two natures of Christ.
I shall present two examples.
First: the model of building the Church is the model of the Holy Trinity. The internal relation between the bishop, the priest and the deacon, and the relation between the synod, the bishop and the people, and the synod, the metropolitan and the patriarch, are all tied to that model. The bishop, as the Fathers say, the metropolitan is the image of the Father, the priest the image of Christ, and the deacon the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, there is no authoritarian hierarchy, but absolute equality among them, each having a role in the Body of Christ, the Church. Whereas if we take the worldly model — the metropolitan is the king, the priest is the minister and the deacon is the soldier — the Church becomes a worldly model of this world, and Jesus’ saying “you are not of the world” does not apply to it.
Second: the Church’s relation to the state is like the relation of the divine nature and the human nature in the hypostasis of the Son. The divine nature is a nature not of the world but which (entered) into the world, and the human nature is of the world and its earthliness, and what unites them is the hypostasis of the Son. Likewise, the nature of the Church “is not of the world but in the world, and the nature of the state is of the world and human thought; what unites them is man, without confusion, mixture or diminution. The Church’s relation to the Byzantine state is built on the model of the heresy of Eutyches (the two-headed eagle), and the model of the Catholic Church’s relation to the state in the West is the model of the relation of Nestorius.
Just as the divine nature entered to save the human nature, to sanctify it and purify it through the person of Christ, so the Church works to elevate the state by sanctifying the person of man “that he may grow in stature and wisdom” and dyeing him with the Gospel and Kingdom values in order to pour them into the state, elevate it, and build the model of a sound, just, democratic and free homeland.
The example of Christ, who came for the salvation of every man coming into the world — does the Church work for the salvation of all the citizens of its place of existence, or was it formed on a nationalist-sectarian basis working for its individuals and members? Sin and redemption, and salvation is a social event, and liberation is a real thing.
Patriarch Athenagoras says “the churches feared the Gospel” 206. The failure of ecclesiastical authority stems from its following models different from what Jesus walked in His relation to the world, and it set principles for its work from the principles of the people of the world, distancing itself greatly from the Gospel principles and values. We can pose a thousand questions about the reflection of faith in conduct and the incarnation of right faith in right conduct. The Church’s remaining a mere abstract thought, inapplicable, makes it one existence facing the existence of different ideologies, and consequently, as Patriarch Hazim says, “we condemned ourselves, and consequently Orthodoxy, to spiritual and geographical migration and to sufficing with symbolic existence”. The book Fragrances of Antioch, p. 6.
Did the Church apply Jesus’ declaration “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor; He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and to set free the oppressed” (Luke 18:4)? How was this declaration applied during the crisis in Syria? What are the determinants that the ecclesiastical authority set in order to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s, and how did it work to protect (what is God’s), namely man, in the Middle East for example?
How did the Church apply the concept of the resurrection and victory over death in reality? Did it fight the forms of death, sin and social corruption, and work to build more just social systems?
What is the Church’s relation to public life and its role toward the cry of the suffering, the suitability of its discourse to lived reality? Did they propose forms of a social, economic and political system of greater justice, and the defense of the rights of the oppressed? Is the liberation of Jesus a liberation from a hell in another world? Is liberation from sin a moral liberation, or does it work to liberate peoples from servitudes?
How did the ecclesiastical authority deal with applying the concept of the diversity of the gifts of the Body of Christ? How did the ecclesiastical authority deal with administering the Church — did it follow the model of the two wills, or did the will of authority swallow the will of the people? Did the metropolitans walk according to the model of Christ: I came to serve, not to be served.
References
- Metropolitan Paul Yazigi, Tower and Body, part one, Publications of the Monastery of the Annunciation, Aleppo, 197
- George Tawfiq Ghandour, The Book of Antioch and the Canon: An Introduction to the Antiochian Canons and Their Application in the Twentieth Century, An-Nour Orthodox Cooperative, Al-Yanbou’ Press, 2009, p. 14
- Gustavo Gutiérrez the Dominican, A Theology of Liberation (History, Politics and Salvation), translated by Jean Rizkallah and Father John Gabriel the Dominican, Christian Theology series 2, Al-Aquini House, first edition 2016, p. 81