Page 189 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

C O N C I L I A R I T Y O R S Y N O D A L I T Y
They are not permanent juridical institutions above the
Church, but events in which the universal communion of
Churches manifests itself. A council becomes ecumenical not
by legal claim in advance, but because it is received by the
whole Church in the conscience of the faithful. Its authority is
completed only in reception, just as Eucharistic communion
itself is sealed by the Amen of the people of God.
In this way, conciliarity is revealed as the Church’s own
mode of existence. It is not simply how the Church governs
herself; it is how she manifests what she is: communion in
Christ, through the Spirit, in the image of the Triune God.
Wherever the bishop gathers his Church in the Eucharist, the
seed of synodality is already present. Wherever bishops gath-
er in council around the first, the one Church becomes visible
in her catholic fullness. Synodality is therefore nothing less
than the form of ecclesial life itself—the one and the many
held together in love, truth, and communion.
***
While the traditional intra-episcopal hierarchy respects the
principle of the equality of bishops, certain modern canonical
developments within the Church seem to threaten this prin-
ciple. Orthodoxy must address these issues in a way that safe-
guards its ecclesiology; otherwise, it risks creating a dichoto-
my between ecclesiology and canon law.
The first of these issues concerns the office of the “assistant
bishop.” This office, like that of titular bishops in general, was
introduced into Orthodoxy from the West in modern times
and was completely unknown in the ancient tradition of the
Church. Attempts to justify it by recalling the ancient chorepis-
copi are unconvincing because the chorepiscopi were essen-
tially bishops with their own flock and diocese, whereas to-
day’s assistant bishops are merely titular bishops and, more
189