Folia Canonica 5. (2002)

PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE "Tra Chiesa universale e Chiesa particolare", Budapest, 2nd February 2002 - Gennadios of Sassima: The Canonical Status of the Ecumenical Patriarch in the Canonical Order of the Orthodox Churches: Nature and Extension of its Authority

FOLIA CANONICA 5 (2002) 267-278.

* GENNADIOS METROPOLITAN OF SASSIMA

THE CANONICAL STATUS OF THE ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH IN THE CANONICAL ORDER OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCHES: NATURE AND EXTENSION OF ITS AUTHORITY

I. the Gift of Unity Given to the Church; II. The Canonical Structure of the Church; III. The Primacy of the Church of Constantinople; IV. Primacy and Primacies of Honor; V. The ‘Diaspora’ and the Parallel jurisdictions; VI. the Ecumencal Patriarch: A Primacy of “Primus inter pares” in Love.

I. The Gift of Unity Given to the Church

By faith, which is professed in the Nicea-Constatinopolitan Creed, the Church of Christ is One. The oneness is based upon the mystery of our Christian God, tri-hypostatic, but one in essence and energies. As reflection of the mystery of divine life, the Church is profoundly One as the life of God, which it reflects, is also One. Christ’s supplication for his disciples was one in unity, so that “as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (John 17:21).

According to the very words of Christ, the mystery of Christian unity is founded upon the mystery of the Oneness of God. There is an interpenetration ‘perichoresis' of Christian persons, just as there is an inter-dwelling of divine hypostases in God. As the late Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky affirms it, a Christian person reflects the personhood of the divine hypostases: Christians share together and in an unselfish way the new humanity in Christ, which is redeemed and defied. They are the one people of God. The One Body of Christ, and the One Temple of the Holy Spirit, the One Kingdom of God inaugurated upon our planet earth, and the One Church of God.

This unity of the Church because is founded in the mystery of the divine life, it is both a gift given, and a dynamic reality. For human beings called to this unity, the process of unity is eternal, as the ultimate goal of this unity is unity with the divine hypostases as they communicate themselves in their energies. The goal of this unity is constant growth in the life of deification “theosis ”, which is life in communion with God.

From an empirical point of view, the unity of the Church is realized on three different levels and in three different ways; doctrinally, sacramentally, and administratively.