THE CHURCH ACROSS TIME Ecclesiological Insights on the Moscow Council of 1917–18 Christophe D’Aloisio For the great majority of Orthodox Russians who found themselves in exile after the Bolshevik Revolution, but remained committed to the life of the church, the Moscow Council of 1917–18 appeared as a heavenly gift granted to the Church in Russia before a long time of tribulation. And so it surely was. But this council was not a gift only to the Church of Russia and those churches subject to it at the time: it was relevant for the whole Church, although it was, strictly speaking, a regional council. Because of the political situation in Russia, the work of the council could not be completed, but its method—its preparation, constituency, and decision-making processes—as well as its decrees should certainly be considered to have left a universal legacy for all Christians, especially for the Orthodox. Within the framework of Eastern Orthodoxy, although every church should convoke ordinary councils on a regular basis, extraordinary councils are held only when the Church is confronted with a catholic problem—that is, a problem which is so grave that the life of the Church cannot continue normally. This means that an extraordinary council is a moment of re-evaluation, clarification, and possibly reformation of church life. Contemporary extraordinary councils should always be oriented to a positive understanding of church reform and held in a spirit of humility towards the world The Wheel 8 | Winter 2017 which the Church is called to serve, not to dominate. Being faithful to the Fathers, as all church councils aim to be, means being devoted to the apostolic faith and being creative at the same time. This was the attitude of those who participated in the uncompleted regional Moscow Council of 1917–18. This extraordinary assembly proved to be an essential step on the path towards a more theological understanding of the Church, opening the way for a more fruitful dialogue between the Orthodox Church in her historical context and the modern world. Indeed, the 20th century was to be a turning point in the history of almost all Christian communities toward a more theological understanding of the Church, and the Moscow Council was a first and important part of this movement. Before the generation of theologians which included Sergei Bulgakov, Nicholas Afanasiev, and Georges Florovsky, studying the Church meant describing it merely as a juridical body, not as the sacrament of Christ’s epiphany, as they came to speak of it. These theologians, as well as the whole Paris School, were directly linked with the reception of the Moscow Council. In what follows, I intend neither to assess the documents issued by the Council of 1917–18, nor to provide a comprehensive analysis of the history 33 See my articles: “Le ‘Grand Concile Panorthodoxe’: Théologie et politique,” Études 4228 (June 2016): 65–77; and “Authenticité et autorité du futur concile général de l’Église orthodoxe,” in Autorité et pouvoir dans l’agir pastoral, ed. Arnaud Join-Lambert, Axel Liégeois and Catherine Chevalier (Brussels: Lumen Vitae, 2016), 337–351. 1 of this unique event in the life of the Church. Rather, I will confine myself to discerning the status of this event and its potential value for the entire Orthodox Church, beyond its reception by the Church of Russia alone. I will engage specifically the theology of Nicholas Afanasiev (1893–1966), who was certainly the most influential Orthodox ecclesiologist of the past century but whose work is still not well known in the Orthodox Church. Afanasiev, a prominent theologian of the Orthodox theological Paris School, is generally considered to have been very critical, if not wholly negative, toward the Moscow Council. I will argue that there is no ground for such an assessment of Afanasiev’s reception of the council: on the contrary, he allows theologians to distinguish between ecclesiological principles and palliative responses to the Church’s historical weaknesses. This article therefore seeks not to contribute another historical assessment of the Moscow Council, but rather to examine some ecclesiological principles which were dear to Afanasiev and his followers and are useful tools for today. A Council Relevant for the Entire Church Before we begin to identify how the Moscow Council might bear fruit for the entire Church, it is necessary to reflect on the reach of this council and on the nature of councils themselves. A church council, whether it is a large gathering or a simple local council, always has the potential to be of universal ecclesiological value. This principle can be established, for example, from the account of the apostolic council in Acts 15: its authority certainly cannot be reckoned to depend on numbers or universalist intentionality, but its teaching is universally binding in church tradition. From this, we may deduce that the reach of any church 34 council dealing with issues of a catholic nature is, at least potentially, the whole Church. In light of this, we should note that an authentic Orthodox ecclesiology cannot but exclude the concept of the “Pan-Orthodox council” as a separately defined category of church assembly. As I have argued elsewhere, neither the Church nor its orthodoxy are quantitative units which can simply be added together.1 There are no incomplete local orthodoxies which can combined into a hypothetical “Pan-Orthodoxy.” This further implies that there can be no distinction between properly “local” and properly “Pan-Orthodox” business, and the business of local councils cannot therefore be excluded from wider discussion. The Council of 1917–18 was a gathering on a large scale, an event of unprecedented dimension in modern church history. It is sometimes referred to as the “All-Russian Council,” although this appellation is apt to be misunderstood today since, volente o nolente, the delegates to the 1917 council were not all members of what is today called the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian Empire had conquered territories outside the borders of the autocephalous Church of Russia and the council gathered participants from across the imperial territories, which fall today within the Patriarchates of Moscow and Georgia and the territories of the Churches of Poland, Estonia, and Finland. There were also delegates from Japan and the U.S. In this respect, the constituency of the assembly exceeded what we would expect of an assembly of the Church of Russia today. The diversity of the council’s membership enriched its debates and the sense of responsibility towards a large portion of Christ’s Church. With the collapse of the Russian Empire and the emergence of the USSR, the decisions which were the fruits of the Moscow Council could not really be implemented. Outside Russia, some communities were founded in accordance with the most important principles for church life renewed by the council, especially a participatory understanding of church administration. The most obvious examples here are the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) and the Archdiocese of Orthodox Parishes of Russian Tradition in Western Europe, also known as “the Exarchate,” whose administration is based in Paris. We can see, therefore, that this council did have impact in a broader context than that of the Church in Russia and its neighboring countries. Perhaps the reason why the uncompleted Moscow Council bore fruit outside its national context may be found in the fact that the Church, through this ecclesiastical gathering, was boldly trying to address issues of modernity facing both East and West. As church tradition recognized the universal legacy of some provincial councils of the first centuries, so also for the Moscow Council of 1917–18: although many Orthodox Churches today reflect atavistic tendencies toward nationalism, the Moscow Council shows that it is possible to overcome this tendency and convey a relevant message to the whole of Orthodoxy, even when the process does not gather delegates from everywhere. A Regional Council An important distinction between “local” and “regional” church life is often overlooked in English. Following strict ecclesiological language, “local churches” are what we call today “dioceses”: ecclesial communities governed by a single presbytery, headed by a single bishop. This idea was developed systematically by John Zizioulas in the collection of essays published as Being as Communion: Studies The Wheel 8 | Winter 2017 in Personhood and the Church. The local church properly has a conciliar life of its own. As Afanasiev argued on theological grounds, all members of the local church—the bishop, presbyters, deacons, and all the laity—are welcome to participate in the local council (the assembly of the local church), under the presidency of the collegial pastoral ministry of the local church (the presbytery chaired by the bishop). If a local church is deprived of the experience of local conciliarity, as is often the case, she is weakened, as she lacks an essential element of her identity. It is necessary to remind ourselves of the fundamental ecclesiological principle of the fullness of each diocesan church and to foster its capacity for self-administration.2 Regional churches, by contrast, are gatherings of local churches. According to Zizioulas: “a metropolis, an archdiocese or a patriarchate cannot be called a church in itself, but only by extension, i.e., by virtue of the fact that it is based on one or more episcopal dioceses—local churches which are the only ones on account of the episcopal eucharist properly called churches.”3 Among regional communions of churches, one local church (often headed by a metropolitan, archbishop, or patriarch) presides in love and facilitates the communion of all local churches. Thus, at a regional council, the host community, which is usually the church over which the metropolitan bishop presides, receives delegates from the local churches. The ordinary delegates of the local churches are the bishops—those who live both in constant communion with the people of their respective local churches and in confraternal understanding with the presbyters who share the task of the pastoral care of the local church. These two conditions are not secondary aspects of the bishop’s ministry. If they are not the case, the bishop is See Nicholas Afanasiev, Церковные соборы и их происхождение (СвятоФиларетовский ПравославноХристианский Институт, 2003), 25–26. 2 John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993), 252–253, n. 7. 3 35 36 in an inadequate position to embody the consciousness of his local church as her delegate in a council. One of the most essential functions of the episcopal minister is to be the accountable “mouth” of his community in its relations with other local churches. ber, therefore, that the Moscow Council was a regional council, and we should not confuse the palliative measures they proposed with the proper diagnosis and cure of the underlying sickness in accordance with ecclesiological principles. The Moscow Council of 1917–18 is often referred to as a “local council,” but this appellation is misleading, even though this is a literal translation of the Russian expression pomestnyj sobor. The council was a regional council—in fact, a multi-regional council, bearing in mind the diversity of its constituency. This corresponds to the fact that the Church of Russia was and is not properly a local church, but a regional church enjoying the status of autocephaly, in accordance with the definitions set out above. Despite the rich results yielded by the pre-conciliar preparatory process for the Moscow Council, which began in 1905, the bishops of the church in the Russian Empire were unable adequately to represent their local churches when the council convened in 1917. As a result, the council resolved that the bishops should be accompanied by other delegates from their local churches, who would make the assembly more representative of the entire church body. The real illness of the Church of Russia during the centuries preceding the council was the inadequacy of the bishops, when considered in the light of a proper theology of episcopal ministry. Let it also be recognized that this problem was certainly not restricted to bishops in Russia. In all the regional churches, the fundamental understanding of the various ministries, which were established to serve the local church, was corrupted over time, leading to a misunderstanding of pastoral ministry. The nature of the church’s ministries has been studied extensively in contemporary ecclesiological research, which has enabled us to recover a better understanding of their functions. Furthermore, if one keeps in mind the difference between the real illness and the palliative solution offered by the Moscow Council, one can approach more attentively the criticisms which have been expressed about the council by some theologians and contemporary church leaders. The council’s intention was certainly good, and, perhaps even necessary as a response to the malfunctioning of episcopal ministry in the Orthodox Church. But their proposal potentially threatened the important theological distinction between local and regional church life. This may not seem of great importance to most observers. Does it really matter if a council is—and is called—local or regional? I would argue that it does. One must remember that, if the local (diocesan) level of church life is neglected, the local church may lose awareness of its genuine catholicity. We must remem- Afanasiev’s Contribution Among these critics Nicholas Afanasiev is prominent. He argued that the main error of the council was to consider the Russian Church as if it were a single diocesan church. He praised the desire to hold a council open to the universal constituency of the local church, but he denied the principle of representation which undergirded this. When proper ecclesiological order is observed, according to Afanasiev, local councils should be open to all members, but regional councils only to bishops—who, by the very defini- tion of their ministry, enjoy the gifts of the Spirit necessary to represent their local church in council—together with all the members of the hosting local church. Afanasiev criticized the denial of the catholicity of the diocese implied by the Moscow Council’s constitution. He insisted that it is the diocese—not the autocephalous (regional) church— which is the local catholic church, and one can hardly disagree theologically with his premise. Although he made these criticisms, Afanasiev recognized the Moscow Council as “an unequaled phenomenon in the life of the Church”—a moment of grace at a very critical time in her life.4 The point of his criticism was to clarify an ecclesiological principle, not to slam the efforts of a whole generation of committed church members ready to serve her renewal. In fact, the participation of lay members in councils seemed an unavoidable historical necessity to Afanasiev, on account of the poor quality of episcopal ministry in actuality: “Even though I am reluctant about these forms of active participation given by the council to laypeople, I have never thought and still do not think that we should renounce these ways of active participation immediately. We have nothing to propose with which to replace them.”5 So perhaps we can affirm Afanasiev’s appreciation of the Moscow Council, with respect to its historical and pastoral value to the Orthodox Church: he did not want to undermine entirely the work of the Council of 1917–18, but rather to distinguish between fundamental principles and stopgap measures. This discussion of the constituency of councils and the nature of episcopal ministry would be of only historical interest, were it not ongoing in contemporary Orthodoxy. An example of its direct relevance can be seen in the The Wheel 8 | Winter 2017 Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church which was held in Crete in 2016. The long period of preparation for the global council presumed that the catholic unit of the church was the regional church and not the local church (diocese). The delegates to both the pre-conciliar meetings and the council itself were not the mouths of their local churches but representatives of regional communions of churches—patriarchates, autocephalous churches, and (until the Preconciliar Conference of 2009) autonomous churches.6 Some episcopal delegates at the council were without pastoral charge of a local community, that is, they were sacramentally qualified as bishops to attend but not pastorally qualified as representatives of local ecclesial communities.7 This kind of ecclesiological oddity arises when one forgets or neglects the catholicity of local churches. Furthermore, only the primates of regional churches were entitled to vote at the 2016 council. It appears, therefore, that most primates have openly become hierarchical chiefs of diocesan bishops, even as Orthodox ecclesiology would categorically exclude this phenomenon. The reality that diocesan bishops have often been considered merely as deputies to the primate of a regional church—a practice sometimes historically counterbalanced by the reverse erroneous principle of denying primacy, as in the Synodal period in Russia or in the system of “Gerontismos” in Constantinople—is well known. But the fact that this theological error has occurred frequently throughout history does not make it worthy of repetition, when it is so easily recognized as contrary to basic ecclesiological principles and when it is no longer imposed by political force. This matter still needs to be addressed in contemporary ecclesiological and pastoral studies and practice. Afa- Nicolas Afanassieff, “Le concile dans la théologie orthodoxe russe,” Συνοδικά 1 (1976): 50. 4 5 Nicholas Afanasiev, О церковном управлении и учительстве, in Церковный вестник ЗападноЕвропейского Православного Русского Экзархата, 60 (1956), 23–24. Calling the ancient patriarchates “autocephalous churches” is very common, though not very accurate canonically, since the church established the system of autocephaly in 431 (in the case of the Church of Cyprus) and the system of patriarchates only twenty years later, at the Council of Chalcedon: if the two canonical concepts were identical, the two notions would not have been distinguished historically. Further ecclesiological and canonical studies could be dedicated to this issue. 6 John Zizioulas very accurately criticizes the possible participation in church councils of bishops without pastoral charge of a diocese. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 258, n. 15. 7 37 nasiev’s commentary on the Moscow Council provides a salient reminder of the importance of living in accordance with our theology. clearly the normative participation of the laity, as the people, in the life of the Church. Conclusion © 2017 The Wheel. May be distributed for noncommercial use. www.wheeljournal.com Finally, the decision to invite lay people to participate in the Moscow Council was made possible by the rediscovery of a notion of the prophetic, priestly, and royal ministry of the whole Church and of each member of the ecclesial body. This had been forgotten, though not abolished, because it is part of the very essence of the Church. The Moscow Council could not have granted the possibility to lay people to take part in the conciliar proceedings—whether as a new principle or as a palliative response to an ecclesiological illness of the Church’s pastoral organs—were not the laity capable of accepting co-responsibility of church governance and church teaching. Afanasiev, again, has been the theologian most dedicated to recalling and developing this theological principle. Through his all work, Afanasiev restored a comprehensive theology of the laity in the Orthodox Church. In his work, in place of the ordinary Russian word for a lay-person, мирянин (miryanin)—derived from the root міръ, which means “the world”— he often substituted a neologism, лаик (laik)—derived from the Greek word for layperson, λαϊκός (laïkos). While the former originated in a period of history in which monastics had become the archetypes of orthodoxy (the миряне were the non-monastics—the ones living in the world, not in the desert), with the latter Afanasiev emphasized What emerges here, as a fundamental demand on Orthodox conciliar theology, is the need for further deep reflection on the relationship between the Church and her structures. The ecclesiastical renewal heralded by the Moscow Council was made possible first by a destabilization of the Russian Empire in 1905 and, second, by the storm of the Bolshevik coup in 1917. But is it necessary to await historical catastrophes before we seek necessary reform? Would it not be expedient to conceive of renewal as a constant element of church culture, of her modus vivendi? The Moscow Council reestablished that the council is the proper organ of the Church, facilitating a culture of renewal. Furthermore, Nicholas Afanasiev, who must be rehabilitated as an ecclesiologist who made a positive assessment of the Moscow Council—a real theological receptio— has drawn our attention both to the importance of not misunderstanding some temporary measures considered necessary by the council as normative principles for the Church and to the central significance of the laity in the ordinary local conciliar life of the church. Holding these insights together, we must work to ensure that ecclesial deliberative assemblies can again become fruitful and prophetic councils of Christ’s Church. The Rev. Christophe d’Aloisio is rector of Holy Trinity and Saints Cosmas and Damian parishes and director of the St. John the Theologian Institute in Brussels, Belgium. He is also chief editor of the journal Le Messager orthodoxe (Paris, France), member of the Board of the Orthodox Fellowship in Western Europe, and former president of Syndesmos, the World Fellowship of Orthodox Youth (2003–2014). 38