06 — The Boundaries of the Church

This is the hardest section of the collection and the one where the tradition speaks with the least uniformity. That the Church has a boundary is not in question: she has an altar, a communion list, and canons about who may approach. What is in question is what lies immediately outside it — whether the rites performed there are nothing at all, or something the Church may recognize — and the Fathers themselves are ranged on both sides.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Contents

File Description
where-the-church-ends.md The two poles at full strength: St Cyprian (De unitate; Epp. 69–75; the Carthaginian council of 256), holding that there are no sacraments outside the Church; and the practice reflected in St Basil’s Canon 1, with its three-fold distinction of heresy, schism, and parasynagogue and its subordination of Basil’s own strict judgment to the general economy. Then Stephen’s counter-practice, the Augustinian development and why Orthodoxy has not received it as dogma, and the variation of Orthodox practice — reported and not resolved
the-reception-of-converts.md The boundary drawn in practice: the three modes and their canonical basis; the oscillation (Constantinople 1484, Moscow 1620 and 1667, Constantinople 1755–56) and the divergence it left; practice today by jurisdiction, including ROCOR’s tendency toward baptism; and what the practice does and does not license anyone to conclude

Why This Section Does Not Resolve the Question

Because the Church has not resolved it, and pretending otherwise would be the most damaging thing this collection could do.

Both poles are held by canonized saints. St Cyprian, who taught that heretical baptism is no baptism, is a martyr and Father whose position was never condemned; the practice of receiving by chrismation, which presupposes something different, is enshrined in canons the Church receives. The strict position has behind it the Pedalion; the milder has behind it the Great Moscow Council of 1666–67 and the settled practice of the largest Orthodox church. Both are inside the Church, both have canonical support, and no council has adjudicated.

What can be said without adjudicating:

  • The Church’s boundary is real and visible. She is not an invisible fellowship, and the question is not whether she has an edge.
  • Non-Orthodox baptism is not treated as automatically sufficient. Every mode of reception, including the mildest, involves an act of the Church.
  • Variation in mode is not variation in doctrine about the Church. A jurisdiction that baptizes and one that chrismates are not thereby confessing two ecclesiologies; the variation is old, documented on both sides, and has coexisted with communion.
  • The variation is a fact to be reported, not a scandal to be tidied. METHODOLOGY §4.2 governs, and this section reports.

See Also