An exclusivist sacramental ecclesiology

The dominant feature of neo-traditionalist ecclesiology is a variation of eucharistic ecclesiology, interpreted so as to exclude from membership in the church of Christ those who do not participate in the eucharistic community of the Orthodox Church. This exclusivist eucharistic ecclesiology in turn relies on a theology of sacramental unity, defined as the essential and necessary unity of the sacraments, especially the sacraments of baptism, chrismation and the eucharist, which, in the Orthodox tradition, together signify formal initiation into the church.

The foundations of exclusivist eucharistic ecclesiology occur in St Justin Popovich (1894–1979) and in Fr John Romanides (1927–2001), to be more fully developed in later authors such as Fr George Metallinos (b. 1940), Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos (b. 1945) and more recently Fr Peter Heers. Justin Popovich laid the bases for modern neo-traditionalist ecclesiology in his anti-western and anti-ecumenical writings. In his book The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism he enunciates the essential premises of an exclusivist eucharistic ecclesiology:

In contrast with Justin Popovich's firm anti-ecumenism, John Romanides occupies a more ambiguous place in the Orthodox neo-traditionalist firmament. On the one hand, his writings are often cited in support of neo-traditionalist theses,Footnote ³ but at the same time Romanides defended Orthodox participation in ecumenical endeavours and was himself a long-standing participant in the World Council of Churches and in the bilateral ecumenical dialogue between the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Oriental Orthodox Churches between 1964 and 1990.Footnote ⁴ Indeed, Romanides signed the much-contested 1989 ‘Agreed Statement of the Joint Commission’ and the 1990 ‘Second Agreed Statement and Recommendations to Churches’ calling for the re-establishment of communion between the two families of Orthodox churches, on the grounds that they shared the same christology despite differences in expression.Footnote ⁵

George Metallinos centres the theological basis of his anti-ecumenical argument on baptism, which becomes the centrepiece of neo-traditionalist ecclesiology. The basic argument is that the baptismal rite administered outside the Orthodox Church is invalid and inefficacious, and hence that converts to Orthodoxy from other Christian denominations must be baptised as though they had never been baptised at all, and not received into the Orthodox Church by chrismation (confirmation) alone or any other means. Metallinos grounds this thesis primarily on St Paul's reference to ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism’ (Eph 4:5), the ecclesiology and baptismal theology of Cyprian of Carthage, canons of the ancient church relating to baptism (especially the fourth-century Apostolic Canons 46, 47, 50 and 68, and Canon VII of the Second Ecumenical Council of 381),Footnote ⁶ and, most importantly, on the interpretation of the canonical tradition by key figures in the Greek church during the quarrel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on the reception of Latin converts to Orthodoxy. The central figure in this quarrel was Patriarch Cyril V of Constantinople (d. 1775; patriarch 1748–57), who mandated rebaptism of Latin converts, with considerable opposition, leading to his deposition on two occasions. Metallinos invokes other personalities who supported the same position as Cyril V: the theologian Eustratios Argenti (1687–1757); leaders of Collyvades Movement on Mount Athos, especially St Nikodemos the Hagiorite (1749–1809); and the canonist Constantine Oikonomos (1780–1857).Footnote ⁷ Metallinos adopts a one-sided interpretation of this contested material, from which he and other neo-traditionalists conclude not only that baptism outside the Orthodox Church is invalid, but also all other sacramental rituals, and indeed that the church of Christ does not exist outside the canonical boundaries of the Orthodox Church.

Building on Popovich and Metallinos, and borrowing a page from Orthodox eucharistic ecclesiology, Peter Heers develops a sacramental ecclesiology explicitly in opposition to a baptismal ecclesiology: it is not baptism which defines membership in the church, but rather the Orthodox notion of initiation into the church, defined as the necessary union of the three sacraments of baptism, chrismation and the eucharist, typically administered in sequence at the time of reception into the Orthodox Church. Heers develops this argument most fully in a study of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65).Footnote ⁸ For Heers, Vatican II and subsequent Catholic documents effected an important shift in Catholic ecclesiology. Prior to Vatican II, Catholic theology held that ‘schismatics and heretics enjoyed only a suspended state of grace by virtue of their baptism … which became active only upon entry into the communion of the Catholic Church’.Footnote ⁹ This pre-Vatican II ecclesiology postulated three requirements for membership in the church of Christ, identified solely with the Catholic Church: baptism, dogmatic orthodoxy and unity under the episcopacy.Footnote ¹⁰

In contrast to this exclusivist ecclesiology, Vatican II's Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio) introduced a distinction between ‘full membership’ and ‘partial membership’ in the church. Complete membership is reserved to those who fulfil the same three requirements as in the earlier ecclesiology. Real but nonetheless incomplete membership in the church occurs on the basis of valid baptism alone (hence the expression ‘baptismal ecclesiology’):

Thus non-Catholic churches are churches only in a diminished way – yet ‘these Churches are said to have fully legitimate mysteries’.Footnote ¹² It is on this basis that the Catholic Church can find common ground with Anglicans, Orthodox and Protestants, opening the door to Catholic involvement in ecumenical undertakings. This is a ‘two-tiered’ church: ‘The traditional criteria are retained as necessary for “full” communion, for those subject to the pope, while the new criteria are used to determine an “incomplete” communion for the “separated brethren”’.Footnote ¹³ Such a situation, concludes Heers, ‘cannot be but totally at odds with the patristic view of the Church’.Footnote ¹⁴ For the fathers, ‘“elements” outside the fullness of Tradition and the Truth of Orthodoxy have no ecclesiological significance; the marks of the Church are unrecognizable outside genuine unity in faith.’Footnote ¹⁵

Heers faults baptismal ecclesiology on three grounds in particular: first, it eliminates unity of faith and institutional unity, with the canonical order of bishops as necessary criteria for membership in the church; secondly, baptismal ecclesiology breaks the unity of the sacraments, the bond uniting the sacraments of baptism, chrismation and eucharist as necessary components of the one ritual of initiation into the church of Christ; and thirdly, baptismal ecclesiology creates two classes of adherence to the church, two categories of members. For Heers the Orthodox perspective predicates only total, not partial unity: ‘Authenticity cannot be acknowledged apart from unity. An authentic mystery [sacrament] takes place within the bounds of the One Church with full, not partial, fidelity to the faith and practice of the Church.’Footnote ¹⁶

In this vision, pre-Vatican II Catholic theology insisting on the threefold criteria for membership in the church (baptism, unity of faith, episcopal authority) is thus correct, but with important nuances casting it in an Orthodox mould: the sacrament of baptism must be conjoined with those of chrismation and the eucharist; the unity of faith is identified with the Orthodox faith (no filioque, for example); and episcopal authority excludes universal papal authority and infallibility. Thus the pre-Vatican II criteria ‘more closely resemble the patristic and Orthodox view than that of the new communion ecclesiology’.Footnote ¹⁷ By definition, this conception of the church excludes non-Orthodox, since the church of Christ is fully and uniquely identified with the Orthodox Church. The contrasting view in both post-Vatican II Catholicism and among many pro-ecumenical Orthodox theologians, affirms Heers, is that baptism alone defines membership in the church. It is this theology of ‘baptismal unity’ which so exasperates Orthodox neo-traditionalists and which they see as underpinning Orthodox participation in ecumenical endeavours.

Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos is a prominent neo-traditionalist figure in the Greek church, noted for his staunch opposition to ecumenism and to the Council of the Orthodox Church in Crete in June 2016. A prolific and popular author on a wide range of theological and spiritual subjects, Vlachos echoes the rhetoric of anti-ecumenical sources such as statements from Mount Athos, the Greek Old Calendarist Movement and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. In much of his spiritual and theological writings, Vlachos is nonetheless more pastoral and less categorical in his outlook than John Romanides or Peter Heers. Vlachos does not insist that the sacraments of baptism, chrismation and eucharist are all required for membership in the church, but he stresses rather the necessity of ‘activating’ the grace of baptism ‘by the whole ascetic life’ in order to be a ‘real member’, an ‘active member’ of the church, instead of remaining a ‘potential member’ or ‘dead limb’ or ‘dead member’ of the church.Footnote ¹⁸ Vlachos also writes that ‘through baptism we are enrolled as members of the Church’.Footnote ¹⁹

Insistence on the inseparable links binding baptism, chrismation and eucharist as requirements for membership in the church became more prominent among neo-traditionalist figures opposing the holding of the Council of the Orthodox Church in 2016. For example, at a conference in January 2016, Fr Theodore Zisis (b. 1941), another prominent Greek anti-ecumenical figure, states that inter-Christian dialogue must be conducted on the basis of ‘catechesis, the renunciation of their [the non-Orthodox] heresy and through the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and Eucharist’.Footnote ²⁰

And if neo-traditionalist ecclesiology were correct?

Let us assume for a moment that the neo-traditionalist exclusivist eucharistic ecclesiology is correct. In this light, all non-Orthodox who call themselves Christian are not Christians at all, because their sacraments, including baptism, are empty rituals, which do not unite them to Christ and to Christ's church, either here on earth or in the kingdom of God. What are the consequences of this theology? Because these non-Orthodox (to which must be added all non-Christians) are not joined to Christ and hence are not members of the church, by definition they cannot be saved, since there is ‘no salvation outside the Church’ (extra ecclesiam nulla salus). As Georges Florovsky (1893–1979) points out, the strength of this well-known adage of Cyprian of Carthage is that it is a tautology, since ‘salvation’ and ‘church’ are one and the same.Footnote ²¹ The key to understanding the adage is thus the meaning of ‘church’. A narrow interpretation of church to mean exclusively the visible Orthodox Church is the most important feature of neo-traditionalist ecclesiology.

What then is the fate of non-Orthodox Christians and non-Christians, who comprise over 97 per cent of humanity? Three answers are possible. First, non-Orthodox Christians (and all non-Christians) cannot be saved because they are not members of the one true church, the Orthodox Church, the sole channel of salvation. The only way that they can be saved is by becoming Orthodox – a practical impossibility for most of the world's population, now or in the future. But this stands in contradiction to God's desire that ‘all humans be saved and come to knowledge of the truth’ (1 Tim 2:4), and also to the universal nature of Christ's mission on earth: ‘I came that all may have life, and have life in abundance’ (John 10:10). It is unconscionable that most of humanity cannot be saved for the sole reason that they are not Orthodox.

So perhaps non-Orthodox can be saved? Maybe they can be saved by their personal virtues and actions? But neo-traditionalist ecclesiology strongly affirms that only Orthodox are joined to Christ and his church. How then can non-Orthodox be saved if they are not joined to Christ and are not members of his church? Is there another mechanism of salvation, another Christ, another church, by which salvation can come about? Such an alternate means of salvation is unknown in scripture, the ancient fathers of the church and modern Orthodox theology and must be dismissed.

The third option is to avoid the question: We cannot say anything about the salvation of non-Orthodox and non-Christians; it is in God's hands alone.

John Romanides is not entirely consistent in his treatment of the possibility of salvation for non-Orthodox. In his Outline of Orthodox Patristic Dogmatics, he repeats twice Cyprian's dictum that ‘outside the Church, there is no salvation’, and he emphasises that ‘the Orthodox Church stresses the visible aspect of the Church’.Footnote ²² But he does not state unequivocally here that the Orthodox Church is the sole ‘visible aspect’ of the church. He strongly affirms, though, that salvation is possible for all:

This puzzling formulation can be interpreted first, to mean that there are two mechanisms for salvation, as a member of the visible church (which Romanides appears to equate with the Orthodox Church); or outside the visible church, by Christ's direct action.Footnote ²⁴ This interpretation of Romanides appears inconsistent with his strong affirmation of Cyprian's dictum. An alternative reading of Romanides is that ‘heterodox members’ are indeed members of the church of Christ – but this seems incompatible with his emphasis on ‘the visible aspect’ of the church, equated with the Orthodox Church alone.

What emerges from Romanides's ecclesiology here is an affirmation of the possibility of salvation outside the Orthodox Church. Elsewhere, Romanides also leaves the door open to salvation beyond the Orthodox Church by stressing that salvation comes from God or Christ, not the church: ‘Even within the corporate life of the Mysteries, it is Christ and not the Church that saves’; and: ‘The very basis of all Orthodox doctrine concerning the Trinity, Christology, ecclesiology and soteriology is the fact that God creates, sustains, and saves creation not by created means, but by his own life-giving energy or grace.’Footnote ²⁵ Yet in the same text Romanides appears to close the door to the possibility of salvation for non-Orthodox. Beyond the elite saved by Christ, the rest of humanity is abandoned to the devil:

This text refuses to recognise even the possibility that goodness and hence salvation may exist in non-Orthodox, and that Christ and the Holy Spirit may indeed be active beyond the boundaries of the Orthodox Church. Romanides effectively throws his hands in the air when he writes that ‘only God can know if there is any salvation’. This avoids the dilemma in which neo-traditionalist ecclesiology finds itself: either most of humanity cannot be saved because they are not members of the church of Christ identified exclusively with the Orthodox Church; or they can be saved by some mechanism other than the church of Christ. Neither of these is acceptable in the Orthodox tradition, so it easier to say, like the scribes and the Pharisees in response to Jesus's question ‘The baptism of John, whence was it? From heaven, or from men?’ (Matt 21:25); ‘We do not know’ (Matt 21:27). Evading such a fundamental question as the salvation of non-Orthodox may have been satisfactory in earlier centuries when Orthodoxy was largely confined to the Balkans and the Russian Empire, but it is inadequate in an age when Orthodoxy has become a global church.

Membership-card ecclesiology and the unity of the sacraments

A key element in neo-traditionalist ecclesiology is that ‘one can only be a full member’ of the church of Christ; ‘There are no incomplete members of the Church’, as Peter Heers keeps reminding his readers.Footnote ²⁷ Heers is more radical on this score than Romanides or Vlachos, who recognise both active and ‘inactive’ members of the church. For Heers and others, membership in the church of Christ means holding the right membership card, that of the Orthodox Church alone; membership cards issued by non-Orthodox denominations are counterfeits. In this membership-card ecclesiology, a hardened, serial murder or rapist who was baptised Orthodox is a member of the church of Christ and thus has only to repent to be saved. This is good pastoral theology, confirmed by Jesus’ words to the thief on the cross (see Luke 23:43). But, on the other hand, a pious, honest and loving Anglican, Catholic or Protestant (or Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist, for that matter) has no hope of salvation because he or she does not have the right membership card. This is a form of determinism or predestination, which is contrary to patristic anthropology and modern Orthodox thinking on the human person.

Is salvation a question of having the right membership card, or is it the fulfilment of the teachings of Christ? Are all Orthodox de facto automatically and unconditionally members of the church of Christ? Is the church composed of those who have the right membership card, or is it something else? Metropolitan Georges Khodr of Lebanon (b. 1923) asks ‘Who is a member of the Church?’

Orthodox neo-traditionalist ecclesiology makes a great to-do about the necessity of baptism for all those, including converts from other Christian denominations, who wish to enter the Orthodox Church. The important question is not whether or not non-Orthodox Christians received into the Orthodox Church should be baptised or not, but whether all those non-Orthodox who call themselves Christians are Christians at all. The neo-traditionalist answer is a resounding ‘no’ – Orthodox, and indeed only Eastern or ‘Byzantine’ Orthodox, are the only Christians.

In neo-traditionalist ecclesiology, the only acceptable membership card for salvation is that of the Orthodox Church. This is founded on an interpretation of eucharistic ecclesiology which sees the unity of the sacraments of baptism, chrismation and eucharist as the only means of acquiring the membership card. ‘In the Orthodox eucharistic ecclesiology’, writes Heers, ‘the boundaries of Church unity are clearly drawn along “blood lines”, that is, including all those who share in the common cup of his [Christ's] Blood.’Footnote ²⁹ Heers’ real target in his critique of post-Vatican II Catholic ecclesiology is not so much Catholic theology as such as it is those Orthodox who, in his eyes, adhere to the baptismal ecclesiology enunciated by Vatican II and later Catholic documents. Among the Orthodox singled out are Ecumenical Patriarchs Athenagoras (1886–1972) and Bartholomew (b. 1940), Metropolitan John Zizioulas (b. 1931), and the signatories of such ecumenical documents as the Catholic-Orthodox declaration on Uniatism (Balamand, Lebanon, 1993), and on sacramental economy (New York, 1999), and the agreements on the mutual recognition of baptism in Germany (2004 and 2007) and Australia (2010).Footnote ³⁰ To this group should be added those Orthodox Churches, notably the Church of Russia, which receive into Orthodoxy candidates from other denominations by chrismation, confession of faith or other symbols of adherence, but without baptism.

The unity of the sacraments features in neo-traditionalist ecclesiology as an imperative and over-riding aspect of the Orthodox tradition: ‘In Orthodoxy the mysteriological basis for communion is not one or the other mystery, but all the mysteries together, united in a common life and a common cup.’Footnote ³¹ The argument for the absolute unity of the sacraments has several major weaknesses. Certainly in the Orthodox tradition initiation into the church is often, but not always, by means of the sacraments of baptism, chrismation and communion typically administered one after the other regardless of the age of the candidate. But there is an important difference between baptism and chrismation on the one hand, and eucharist on the other. Baptism and chrismation are, or should be, once-and-for-all sacraments, while communion in the body and blood of Christ is the spiritual food which nourishes the faithful throughout life and, as spiritual nourishment, must be consumed frequently to sustain spiritual life. But there is no convention concerning the frequency of communion. Is once, at the time of initiation, sufficient to ensure continued adherence to the church of Christ throughout one's life? Is once a year necessary and sufficient to maintain one's status, as membership renewal in an association of some sort? Or to sustain spiritual life? More frequently, once a month, weekly, daily? This is a spiritual and pastoral question, not a dogmatic one. The theology of the unity of the sacraments as interpreted in Orthodox neo-traditionalist ecclesiology does not address this issue.

To this problem must be added that of non-practising Orthodox, those who simply cease attending church services or engaging in typical Orthodox spiritual practices, especially personal prayer. Are they still members of the church despite their non-practising status? To answer positively suggests again that the sacraments of initiation administered once are sufficient to result in life-long membership in the Orthodox Church, presumably as long as the person does not formally adhere to a non-Orthodox Christian confession or a non-Christian religion. This non-practising status very likely applies to a great number of nominal Orthodox.

While it certainly is the general practice that the sacraments of baptism, chrismation and eucharist are administered sequentially for infants and young children, this is far from the case for adults who wish to become Orthodox. On Mount Athos and often in Greece adults are received into the Orthodox Church by the three sacraments, but this practice is not typical in other Orthodox jurisdictions, which do not administer a new baptism for converts from Catholicism and other churches which utilise the trinitarian baptismal formula and water. The neo-traditionalist insistence that the only initiation into the Orthodox Church is by means of the three sacraments, including baptism by immersion, would mean that numerous converts to Orthodoxy were in fact never received into the Orthodox Church and remain ‘schismatics and heretics’ in their eyes. Included in this group would be such prominent converts to Orthodoxy in modern times as St Elizabeth of Russia (1864–1918), St Alexandra Feodorovna (1872–1918), Fr Lev Gillet (1893–1980), Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (1907–2005), Jaroslav Pelikan (1923–2006), Metropolitan Kallistos Ware (b. 1934) and Fr Andrew Louth (b. 1944).

Neo-traditionalist ecclesiology thus reifies a pastoral and liturgical practice into a rigid ontological principle, erecting a barrier not only between Orthodox and non-Orthodox but also between ‘cradle Orthodox’ and most converts. Some neo-traditionalist theologians, aware of this problem, argue that in the case of previously baptised Christians who are not rebaptised, the very fact of their joining the Orthodox Church renders efficacious their earlier baptism outside Orthodoxy, under the pastoral principle of ‘economy’.Footnote ³² This argument was already circulating during the quarrel over baptism in the Greek church in the eighteenth century, and in Russian émigré circles in Europe in the early 1930s. Georges Florovsky refutes it in his 1933 article, ‘The Limits of the Church’, on the grounds that such a theology goes beyond the Orthodox understanding of economy, transforming the pastoral practice of economia into a canonical one, and in effect rewriting the past: ‘One can scarcely ascribe to the Church the power and the right, as it were, to convert the has-not-been into the has-been, to change the meaningless into the valid.’Footnote ³³ Florovsky concludes unequivocally:

Peter Heers asks: ‘Can a baptism not consummated in the Eucharist rightly be called holy baptism?’Footnote ³⁵ Ilya Fondaminsky (1880–1942) was canonised by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2003 together with St Maria of Paris (Mother Maria, 1891–1945) and her other companions who died in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World WarI. Fondaminsky was a Jew, a personal friend and associate of Mother Maria, and he actively supported personally and financially her social, cultural and intellectual undertakings and those of other Russian Orthodox in France. Although inclined towards Orthodoxy, for family reasons he refused baptism until he was interned by the Nazis in July 1941. He died at Auschwitz in November 1942. He was baptised in prison and was canonised as a martyr. But he never received communion. Following the rationalistic legalism of neo-traditionalist ecclesiology, he never became Orthodox, and was never a member of the Orthodox Church, of the Church of Christ. In this logic, St Ilya Fondaminsky remained a Jew who is now canonised as a saint of the Orthodox Church.

Use and misuse of sources

Most neo-traditionalist ecclesiology relies extensively on a limited range of ancient and modern authorities. Among the early fathers of the church, Ignatius of Antioch and Cyprian of Carthage are frequently invoked, and Justin Popovich, George Metallinos and John Romanides are preferred modern authorities. More surprisingly, in Peter Heers's book on Vatican II we also find writings of well-known ecumenists such as Metropolitan John Zizioulas, Fr Georges Florovsky, Fr Alexander Schmemann (1921–83) and Metropolitan Kallistos Ware cited in support of a profoundly anti-ecumenical ecclesiology. The texts cited are for the most part early writings, which do not reflect the mature thinking of the theologians in question.

A clear misuse of sources concerns Georges Florovsky's 1926 article, ‘The House of the Father’, invoked to support an ecclesiology which sees the Orthodox Church as the only visible manifestation of the church of Christ. Florovsky does indeed in this article, his first major theological writing, reflect a strongly dogmatic approach to the church, emphasising above all the unity of the faith. Heers cites a long passage in which Florovsky describes

But nowhere in this article does Florovsky affirm that the Orthodox Church is the House of the Father, nor that other Christian denominations are not also church. Neo-traditionalist writers nonetheless take this article as reflecting his ‘more conservative side’, in contrast to the more inclusive views expressed notably in ‘The Limits of the Church’ (1933), which they hotly contest because Florovsky demonstrates that the sacramental limits of the church extend beyond the canonical boundaries of the Orthodox Church. Those who invoke ‘The House of the Father’ to buttress an exclusivist ecclesiology fail to mention that this rambling article was published in 1926, before Florovsky had begun his studies of the early fathers, and is not representative of his mature and stable ecclesiology, as contained in ‘The Limits of the Church’ and later writings.Footnote ³⁷ Although Florovsky consistently insisted on the necessity of full dogmatic agreement prior to the re-establishment of intercommunion among Christian churches, he did not hold that the Orthodox Church is the sole manifestation of Christ's church or that only Orthodox are Christians. Invoking ‘The House of the Father’ to support anti-ecumenical ecclesiology, while neglecting his later writings, distorts and misrepresents Florovsky's ecclesiology, which he consistently maintained from the early 1930s onwards.

Peter Heers also seeks support for his theses in an address by Alexander Schmemann at the conference of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius in 1950.Footnote ³⁸ Again, this does not reflect Schmemann's mature ecclesiology or ecumenical theology. Schmemann's main thrust in this address was to stress the importance of dogmatic wholeness in the church and hence ‘dogmatic agreement is a necessary criterion of acknowledgement of another Church, as being the same Church’.Footnote ³⁹ Schmemann follows here his then colleague at the Saint Sergius Institute in Paris, Georges Florovsky, who argued this point during the debate over intercommunion in the Fellowship in the mid-1930s. While this appears to support a part of Heers’ argument, nowhere does Schmemann identify the church of Christ exclusively with the Orthodox Church, nor does he assert that non-Orthodox Christian bodies are not Christian or are not church.

Indeed Schmemann makes two points that run counter to Heers’ theses. Schmemann refers to baptism alone, without reference to chrismation and eucharist, as the source of ‘the fullness of the gifts of salvation’, making ‘each of us’ – Schmemann is addressing both Orthodox and Anglicans – ‘a participant in the death and Resurrection of our Lord’.Footnote ⁴⁰ Schmemann also speaks of the unity of faith manifested ‘in the full catholic agreement of all the Churches’, and thus ‘through it the sacraments of another Church are recognized as the sacraments of one's own Church, and ultimately as the sacraments of the Church Universal’.Footnote ⁴¹ Schmemann does not clarify what he understands as the ‘Church Universal’, but it certainly extends beyond the canonical boundaries of the Orthodox Church, as Florovsky demonstrated in his 1933 article. This 1950 text is thus not representative of Schmemann's mature ecclesiology.

In a paper on baptism and the unity of the church, Peter Heers cites Kallistos Ware's book on the Greek theologian Eustratios in support of a clear-cut distinction between baptism in the church and baptisms performed by heretical and schismatic groups.Footnote ⁴² In this early work (1964), Ware accepted the views of Greek academic theologians such as Panayiotis Trembelas (1886–1977), Ioannis Karmiris (1903–92) and Ieronymos Kotsonis (1905–88), supporting retrospective or ‘economic’ efficacy of baptism outside the Orthodox Church when the person is received into Orthodoxy.Footnote ⁴³ But, as expressed in later writings, Metropolitan Kallistos moved towards the view of Georges Florovsky, affirming the efficacy of non-Orthodox baptisms per se. As early as the first edition of his classic work The Orthodox Church (1963), Ware refers to different views in Orthodoxy, writing that ‘a more moderate group’ in Orthodoxy

In a letter from 2017 clarifying his position, Metropolitan Kallistos writes:

Peter Heers advances the notion that ‘it is a heretical idea to believe, as Fr John Romanides has written, that “all baptized Christians are members of the body of Christ even though they hardly go to Church to commune and have not the slightest desire to struggle for selfless love and fight against the devil epi to auto as they swore at baptism.”’Footnote ⁴⁶ Romanides does not, as Heers implies, refer to this notion as ‘heretical’, but rather as ‘a peculiar idea’.Footnote ⁴⁷ Romanides’ ‘peculiar idea’ would, of course, also apply to a large proportion of Orthodox who ‘hardly go to Church to commune and have not the slightest desire to struggle for selfless love and fight against the devil’.

Anti-ecumenism runs deep in contemporary Orthodoxy, even after a century of Orthodox involvement in the ecumenical movement.Footnote ⁴⁸ This is illustrated by the adherence to basically anti-ecumenical ecclesiologies of such prominent figures as Georges Florovsky, Alexander Schmemann and Kallistos Ware early in their careers. It can be argued that they, and indeed many other Orthodox, were ‘corrupted’ by ecumenical contacts after their initial leanings towards exclusivist ecclesiological positions, causing them to change their views. But is it a question of ‘corruption’ – or of the opening of minds and hearts to the reality of divine action and presence in the lives and piety of Christians outside the Orthodox Church? It is misleading and a misrepresentation to cite early views of theologians as though these reflected their mature views, without referring to the historical context of these early positions and to their later, inclusive theologies of the church.

Rationalistic or mysteriological ecclesiology?

In 2011 Fr John H. Erickson published a critique of Orthodox eucharistic ecclesiology in which he warns that eucharistic ecclesiology ‘too easily lends itself to triumphalism’, and to ‘ecclesiological and soteriological exclusivism’.Footnote ⁴⁹ Triumphalism is a ‘realized eschatology’ (as distinct from a ‘foretaste’ of the kingdom of God in the eschaton), which then ‘begins to creep from the Eucharist into other aspects of Church life, so that the Church qua Church comes to be seen as perfect in every respect’. ‘Ecclesiological and soteriological exclusivism’, writes Erickson, ‘too rigidly identifies “the limits of the Church” with the limits of the Orthodox Church's Eucharistic fellowship.’Footnote ⁵⁰

Unfortunately, Erickson is right. Grounded on a narrow interpretation of eucharistic ecclesiology, neo-traditionalist ecclesiology manifests both triumphalism (the Orthodox Church as the body and church of Christ is perfect and alone has the truth), and ecclesiological and soteriological exclusivism (a ‘membership card soteriology’, in which only membership in the Orthodox Church opens the door to salvation).

Neo-traditionalist ecclesiology is a rationalistic theology, the fundamentals of which can be expressed as a series of logically interconnected propositions:

• • Membership in the church of Christ, the body of Christ, is the sole means of salvation.

• • There are three requirements for membership in the church of Christ: the administration and reception of the sacrament of initiation (comprising baptism, chrismation and the eucharist); adherence to the fullness of the Christian faith; and acceptance of the authority of the legitimate successors of the apostles (the hierarchy).

• • Adherence to the church requires the fullness of these three criteria together.

• • Only the Orthodox Church perfectly fulfils all three criteria.

• • Non-Orthodox ecclesial entities, because they have cut themselves off from the Orthodox Church, the one church of Christ, fail on all of these criteria: they do not and cannot possess any true sacraments; they deviate from the one true faith; and they no longer have a legitimate apostolic succession.

• • Thus, non-Orthodox ecclesial entities are not church and their adherents are not members of the church of Christ, which alone possesses the means of salvation.

• • Hence, the adherents of non-Orthodox ecclesial entities (and of non-Christian religions) cannot be saved.

This is a rational, logically consistent and coherent theology. And its Achilles’ heel is precisely its rationality. The church is no longer the body of Christ, the full nature of which remains a theological mystery, but a structure defined and encompassed by human reason. It imprisons Christ and the Holy Spirit within a logical framework and the limits of the human mind, refusing to allow the Holy Spirit to blow where he wills (see John 3:8), refusing to recognize that Christ and the Holy Spirit can and do act beyond the limits of the visible Orthodox Church. The ancient fathers of the church rightly emphasised human rationality as a key aspect of the divine image in humans. At the same time, they balanced this emphasis on rationality with recognition, in apophatic or negative theology, that divine existence goes beyond human knowing, affirming that the divine essence is unknowable to creatures. The church has both divine and human aspects; it participates in the divine mystery. Neo-traditionalist ecclesiology overlooks the mystery of the church, as expressed for example in this admirable passage:

In neo-traditionalist ecclesiology, there is no room for such a mystic, apophatic meditation on the church, penned by St Justin Popovich in his Dogmatica of the Orthodox Church.

Downstream consequences of neo-traditionalist ecclesiology can be seen in the attitude towards the martyrdom of non-Orthodox Christians for their faith. Peter Heers cites approvingly Cyprian of Carthage, repeated by John Chrysostom, to the effect that the martyrdom of schematics and heretics is in vain and cannot overcome their schism or heresy: ‘That stain is not even washed away by blood: that stain is not even purged by suffering. He cannot be a martyr who is not in the Church.’Footnote ⁵² Heers offers no reflection on the significance of this theology now, but merely invokes it in support of his arguments against ‘incomplete faith’ and ‘incomplete communion’ in the church.

Is the supreme witness to Christ of Roman Catholics, Greek Catholics and Protestants, side-by-side with Orthodox, at the hands of Nazis during the Second World War, of communists in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and the execution of Coptic and Ethiopian Christians by Islamic extremists in vain because they do not have the right membership card? There is something fundamentally wrong with this theology. It rejects a theology of love, of divine love, of Christ's love for each and every human person. It is a theology which rejects Christ's teaching that ‘he who is not against is for us’ (Mark 40:50) and Christ's refusal to bring down fire on those who did not welcome the apostles (Luke 9:54).

Sentiments such as those of Cyprian and Chrysostom have to be seen in the context of third- and fourth-century struggles against schisms and heresies, but they have to be left in the third and fourth centuries. They have no place in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is a classic example of what Metropolitan Kallistos Ware calls ‘patristic chaff’: ‘Patristic wheat needs to be distinguished from patristic chaff.’Footnote ⁵³

Neo-traditionalist membership-card soteriology and ecclesiology are legalistic and truimphalist theologies attached to external forms and based on animosity, not love. They not only close the door to non-Orthodox Christians and non-Christians, but slam it shut and double-lock it: ‘The option of changing or broadening the meaning of belonging to the Church is not open to the contemporary Church.’Footnote ⁵⁴ In this negative vision, only the Orthodox Church possesses truth and non-Orthodox ecclesial bodies possess not truth, only schisms and heresies. These are theologies attached to external forms which seek to exclude the non-Orthodox other from Christ, from the church, from salvation. They bar non-Orthodox Christians and non-Christians from salvation, like the ancient scribes and Pharisees (see Matt 23:13). They negate a christic and pneumatological ecclesiology which recognises the presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit beyond the boundaries of the Orthodox Church.

Neo-traditionalists exploit a weakness in eucharistic theology: it can be interpreted such as to exclude from membership in the church of Christ those who do not participate in the visible eucharistic community of the Orthodox Church. This was certainly not the intention of the principal exponents of eucharistic theology, Nicholas Afanasiev (1893–1966) and John Zizioulas. Zizioulas was in fact a leading Orthodox ecumenist of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. An exclusivist interpretation distorts the essence and intent of eucharistic theology. Eucharistic theology cannot be utilised as argument against baptismal theology; rather, both are complementary and harmonious elements of a sound Orthodox ecclesiology.

Neo-traditionalist ecclesiology is a radical departure from the Orthodox tradition. As a formalistic, mechanical view of salvation and the church, it is animated by a rationalism which resulted in many of the trinitarian and christological heresies of the early church: an attempt to reduce the mysteries of the faith to what can be seized and understood by human reason. A mysteriological and apophatic approach to the church is more in accord with the thinking both of the ancient fathers and of modern Orthodox reflection on the church than the narrow, simplistic approach of neo-traditionalist ecclesiology. This mysteriological approach affirms on the one hand that the Orthodox Church is the fullness of Christ's church on earth; and on the other hand that we witness to Christ and the Holy Spirit operating beyond the boundaries of the Orthodox Church. It affirms that the church is a mystery that we cannot fully grasp in this life; the plenitude of the church will be revealed only in the eschaton.Footnote ⁵⁵