Page 177 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

D I O C E S E A N D PA R I S H
dain, then the theological necessity of episcopacy disappears.
The Orthodox Church cannot accept such a conclusion,
because the bishop is not an optional layer of church admin-
istration. He is essential to the Church’s eucharistic being.
Detached from the Eucharist, episcopacy becomes unintelli-
gible; rooted in the Eucharist, it is revealed as the living icon
of Christ’s headship in the local Church.
The problem, therefore, is not the existence of the parish
itself. The parish arose from pastoral necessity and remains
indispensable to the life of the faithful. The problem lies in
forgetting that the parish is not an independent eucharistic
unit. It exists only as an extension of the bishop’s Eucharist,
never as something separate from it. Every parish is fully
Church only insofar as it remains organically united to the
bishop and through him to the catholic fullness of the Church.
This is why the renewal of Orthodox ecclesiology requires
a renewed understanding of the relation between parish and
diocese. The parish must be seen not as a self-contained con-
gregation, but as the local manifestation of the one diocesan
Eucharistic communion. The bishop must recover his identity
not chiefly as administrator, but as eucharistic father and cen-
ter of unity.
There is no reform of theology without a reform of eccle-
sial vision at this point. The question of episcopacy cannot be
solved in isolation; it belongs to the wider question of the
Church herself. Only when episcopacy is restored to its eucha-
ristic context can parish life recover its full ecclesial meaning.
For this reason, the crisis of episcopacy is not merely ad-
ministrative or canonical—it is theological. Episcopacy be-
comes sick when separated from its Eucharistic raison d’être.
Because the Church lives from the Eucharist, any healing must
begin there: in rediscovering that the bishop is not first the
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