The Reception of Converts

Every time the Church receives a convert she draws her boundary in public, and the mode she chooses is the most concrete ecclesiological statement she makes. This file treats reception as ecclesiology rather than as procedure: the three modes and their canonical basis, the historical oscillation that left Greek and Russian practice divergent, the two competing accounts of what the milder modes mean, and the honest report of what varies today — with the point, stated plainly, that the variation has coexisted with communion for centuries and is not itself a rupture.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Reception as an Ecclesiological Act

A person coming into the Orthodox Church from another Christian body is received by one of three acts: baptism, chrismation, or profession of faith. The canonical apparatus governing the choice is set out in the canon-law hub (Reception of Converts), and this file does not duplicate it. What concerns ecclesiology is what the choice says.

It says something because reception is the only routine occasion on which the Church acts directly on the boundary question. She may decline to theorize about what obtains outside her; she cannot decline to decide what to do with the man standing in front of her. Whatever she does is a judgment in practice, and it is why the boundary question has been argued out through the reception canons for eighteen centuries rather than in a treatise.

The Three Modes and Their Canonical Basis

Baptism. The convert is baptized as one not previously baptized. This is the mode of strict akriveia, and it follows if the rite performed outside the Church conferred nothing. Its canonical anchors are Nicaea I, Canon 19 (the Paulianists), the “as heathens” clause of Constantinople I, Canon 7, and the classes assigned to baptism in Trullo, Canon 95; behind it stands Cyprian and the Carthaginian council of 256.

Chrismation. The convert, having been baptized with water in the name of the Trinity, is received by anointing with holy chrism after renouncing his former errors in writing. This is the mode Constantinople I, Canon 7 prescribes for Arians, Macedonians, and Novatians, and which Trullo, Canon 95 confirms and extends.

Profession of faith. The convert is received by a formal profession and renunciation, without repeating either baptism or chrismation. Trullo, Canon 95 assigns a written libellus to Nestorians, Severans, and others; the mode is used for converts whose prior chrismation as well as baptism is accepted.

The three form a descending scale of strictness, and the assignment of a given body to a given mode is where the whole argument lives — because the ancient canons do not name the Western confessions, which did not exist when the canons were written.

The Oscillation and What It Left Behind

The history is one of movement, not of a rule with exceptions. Four decisions define it, and all four are acts of legitimate authority.

Constantinople, 1484. A synod under Patriarch Symeon, repudiating the union of Florence, prescribed the reception of Latin converts by chrismation — renunciation, a signed libellus, and anointing — without rebaptism. This became the Greek norm for over two and a half centuries.

Moscow, 1620. A synod under Patriarch Philaret ruled that Latins, Uniates, and even Orthodox of Ukraine baptized by Uniate clergy must be rebaptized. The severity is inseparable from the recent trauma of the Polish intervention and the Time of Troubles, and it is a good illustration of how far the boundary question has been shaped by political history — which is a fact about the record, and not an argument against either position.

Moscow, 1666–67. The Great Moscow Council, citing the 1484 Constantinopolitan precedent, reversed the 1620 decision and adopted reception of Latins by chrismation. Russian practice has largely held to this since.

Constantinople, 1755–56. Patriarch Cyril V issued the Oros of the Holy Great Church of Christ requiring the rebaptism of all Western converts, treating Latin baptism as no baptism. The decree was contested at Constantinople itself and was not received by the Russian Church.

What this left is a divergence rather than a contradiction of principle: after 1755 the Greek tradition holds baptism as the strict standard while very often practising chrismation, and the Russian tradition holds chrismation as its settled practice. The two have never been formally harmonized, and the two churches have remained in communion throughout — which is the single most important fact in this file.

The Two Accounts of What Chrismation Means

The practice is agreed to be variable; the explanation is not.

The economy account. Following Cyprian’s principle, there are no sacraments outside the Church, and the heterodox rite conferred nothing. When the Church receives by chrismation she is not recognizing a prior baptism; she is supplying by her own act what the empty form lacked, and choosing for pastoral reasons not to require the full rite. St Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain states the matter in these terms in his footnotes to the Pedalion: the strict standard is baptism, and reception by chrismation or libellus is an act of oikonomia, not an admission that grace was present in the heterodox rite.

The recognition account. More characteristic of much Russian and later academic theology: where the Trinitarian form and the intent were preserved, the Church can genuinely recognize the rite, and receives the convert by chrismation because his baptism is accepted as real rather than tolerated by dispensation. Fr George Dragas, surveying the reception of Roman Catholic converts, sets the 1484 and 1667 chrismation practice against the 1755 decree and argues that the tradition’s dominant received practice has been chrismation, read by many as recognition rather than bare economy.

The sceptical account. John H. Erickson, the leading modern canonist on the question, argues that both frameworks are later rationalizations imposed on a more varied early practice, and that neither Cyprianic absolutism nor the Western-derived vocabulary of “valid but illicit” fits the canonical evidence cleanly.

The point of naming these positions rather than choosing among them is that the Church has not chosen. The mode of reception in a concrete case rests on the bishop’s judgment exercised within a genuinely unsettled theology — which is an uncomfortable sentence and an accurate one. The underlying dispute is recorded as a structured note in Where the Church Ends and in The Limits of Economy.

Practice Today

Reported as it is, without harmonizing.

The Russian Orthodox Church and churches in its tradition generally receive Trinitarian-baptized Roman Catholics and Protestants by chrismation, and converts from non-Chalcedonian or near-Orthodox bodies by profession of faith — the settled descendant of 1667.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate and Greek-tradition churches most often receive by chrismation in practice, with the 1755 Oros standing as a strict-standard reference invoked by those who urge baptism.
ROCOR has historically inclined toward akriveia, more frequently requiring baptism of converts from Western confessions — one instance of the general disposition documented in Pastoral Economy.
In North America practice varies by jurisdiction, by bishop, and sometimes by parish, so that a convert may be received by baptism in one parish and by chrismation in another nearby. This has become a live pastoral and polemical issue in the convert milieu.

What the Variation Does and Does Not Establish

Four conclusions, stated because the variation is regularly enlisted for arguments it cannot support.

It does not establish that some Orthodox churches deny the Church’s boundary. Every mode, including the mildest, involves an act of the Church: a renunciation, a profession, an anointing, an admission to communion. None of them treats a person as already inside.

It does not establish that the strict practice condemns the mild one, or the reverse. ROCOR’s practice of baptizing has coexisted with the Russian Church’s practice of chrismating for a century, within one church since 2007 (The Act of Canonical Communion). Greek and Russian practice diverged after 1755 without a rupture of communion. Whatever else the record shows, it shows that the difference has not been treated as church-dividing.

It does establish that the mode is disciplinary rather than dogmatic — at least in the Church’s operative judgment. If the mode of reception were itself a dogma, the divergence could not have been tolerated for centuries. That is an argument from practice, and it is the strongest available; it is not an argument that the underlying theology is unimportant.

And it establishes that a convert’s reception is not a verdict on his past. A man received by baptism has not been told that his former community was godless, and a man received by chrismation has not been told it was a church. He has been received, by the mode his bishop judged right for him — which is what economy is for.

A Note on Re-reception Within Orthodoxy

One further application belongs here because section 09 depends on it.

The same canonical apparatus governs the reception of persons and clergy from bodies that separated from the Orthodox Church itself, rather than from Western confessions. Basil’s three-fold distinction is designed exactly for this: heresy, schism, and parasynagogue are three grades of intra-Christian separation, and the mode of reception follows the grade. Where clergy are concerned, the receiving synod must decide whether to receive them in their orders or to ordain them, and the decision turns on its judgment about the character of the separation and the derivation of the orders in question.

That decision is a synodal act and belongs to the receiving church. It is not a private judgment, it is not automatic, and — because it involves the derivation of orders rather than merely the status of a rite — it engages the fourth limit of economy: the Church may decline to repeat what was done, but she cannot by economy cause an act that did not occur to have occurred (The Limits of Economy).

References

Basil the Great, Ep. 188 to Amphilochius, Canon 1; trans. NPNF II/8.
Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople I, 381), Canon 7; Council in Trullo (692), Canons 2, 95; First Ecumenical Council (Nicaea I, 325), Canon 19 — trans. NPNF II/14; Cummings, The Rudder.
Synod of Constantinople (1484), reception of Latins by chrismation.
Moscow Synod of 1620 (rebaptism of Latins), reaffirmed 1621; Great Moscow Council of 1666–67, ch. 6 (reversal).
Oros of the Synod of Constantinople under Patriarch Cyril V (1755–56) on the rebaptism of Western converts.
St Nikodemos the Hagiorite, footnotes in The Rudder (Pedalion); trans. D. Cummings. Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957. (Footnotes are commentary, not canon text.)
Dragas, George. “The Manner of Reception of Roman Catholic Converts into the Orthodox Church.” Greek Orthodox Theological Review. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press.
Erickson, John H. “The Reception of Non-Orthodox into the Orthodox Church: Contemporary Practice.” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 41 (1997); The Challenge of Our Past: Studies in Orthodox Canon Law and Church History. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1991.
Nikodim (Milaš), Bishop. Pravila pravoslavne crkve s tumačenjima, 2 vols. Novi Sad, 1895–96.
Act of Canonical Communion between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, 17 May 2007.