Go to Part 1 or Part 3 of this series of six articles in ecclesiology.

The Windsor report hints that the ancient tradition of respecting the boundaries of dioceses goes back to the canons of the Council of Nicaea itself. Nicaea is today understood by most ecumenical churches to be the “first” ecumenical council. Most liturgical churches at their Sunday Eucharistic gathering say the creed that began at this first ecumenical council. The point here being that this council has ancient and well-nigh universal weight among Christians concerned to be a part of a church with institutional and historical continuity with the ancient church, and, thereby, with the apostles – with Christ himself.

A great irony in our current crisis has been that many of the very folks that cry “orthodoxy,” those who would accept and promote the creed of this ancient council without any reservation, seem easily to elide or forget the issues of church polity as inherited from this gathering. So here are a couple of the most relevant canons that later tradition has interpreted as forbidding diocesan border crossing:

Canon 15. On account of the great disturbance and discords that occur, it is decreed that the custom prevailing in certain places contrary to the Canon, must wholly be done away so that neither bishop, presbyter, nor deacon shall pass from city to city. And if any one, after this decree of the holy and great Synod, shall attempt any such thing, or continue in any such course, his proceedings shall be utterly void, and he shall be restored to the Church for which he was ordained bishop or presbyter.

Canon 16. Neither presbyters, nor deacons, nor any others enrolled among the clergy, who, not having the fear of God before their eyes, nor regarding the ecclesiastical Canon, shall recklessly remove from their own church, ought by any means to be received by another church; but every constraint should be applied to restore them to their own parishes; and, if they will not go, they must be excommunicated. And if anyone shall dare surreptitiously to carry off and in his own Church ordain a man belonging to another, without the consent of his own proper bishop, from who although he was enrolled in the clergy list he has seceded, let the ordination be void.

Now, Canon 15 is really properly about the translation of bishops from one diocese to another. This of course, has never been strictly upheld. The main interpretation of this canon in the life of the church ecumenical, in practice, has simply been that due canonical process must be followed in order for a bishop to translate his (or, as the case may now be, her) see.

Canon 16, however, really brings the point home for our current crises. It does not even require very much commentary to show its relevance. The canon forbids clergy “recklessly remove from their own church.” Clergy may move their canonical status – canonically. A priest is a priest. But the radical particularity of the church means that geography does matter (at least in the counsels of the Nicene fathers). I think key to our current crisis is this line: “if anyone shall dare surreptitiously to carry off and in his own Church ordain a man belonging to another, without the consent of his own proper bishop . . . let the ordination be void.” Tough words. Do they apply to our current situation? Does canon law have a statute of limitations? Are we past the statute of limitations on this canon? How could we know? And who or what body would have the authority to determine it?

At first blush, then, to a traditionalist like me, it seems easy: if we are Nicene Christians in terms of our commitment to the historicity of the church and its historic battle for orthodoxy then we must be committed also to the canons of that very council. Under such a view, respect for boundaries is almost creedal in importance. And yet we find ourselves confronted by a situation where those that cry out for fidelity to diocesan borders seem to their opponents less concerned for fidelity to her common creed, while those quite concerned with the common creed seem to their opponents to feel free to pay no attention to the proper church ordering implicit in the respect of ecclesial boundaries. And both extremes seem to one another, from their varying and disparate ideologies, to flout the common prayer of the church.

Ephraim Radner provided the last chapter, “To Desire Rightly,” for Christopher Seitz’s book Nicene Christianity. His chapter points us to a letter of St. Athanasius where the saint lists, as an observer and defender of the council of Nicea, those things that are, to Athanasius, the three essential results of this first great council. First, Athanasius lists, is the determination of when to celebrate Easter, together, on the same day, for the whole ecumenical church. Second, is that of the formulation of a creed. Third, and finally, Athanasius lists the issue of the healing of a schism in the Egyptian church. Radner goes on to call the unity of these three purposes the principle of “Easter and Order:” the right worship of the church is as important to godly church order as is the right belief of the church and, finally, its political ordering proper.

So the strict canons of the council of Nicaea regarding no translation of clergy from one church to another grow out of the need of unity in a schismatic situation, a schismatic crisis not entirely unlike our current situation. There are great differences as well and I do not mean to elide them. My purpose in this post is simply to point up the deep historicity and, thereby, the radical meaning underlying the church’s tradition of respecting ecclesial boundaries.

My hope is that, in the face of all the confusion, the Anglican Communion will pull through as a kind of “icon” of the church ecumenical. It is beyond my feeble power to imagine what possible shape this could take at this point. But as I continue posting in this series, the hope I will continue to press towards is that of the maintenance of boundary respect among Anglicans - at least among those who are in full communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. But times have changed since Nicea. So look out for the next post in this series: A Theology of Diocesan Integrity.
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Good stuff.  I do hope you’ll deal a bit more with the differences between the 4th century and now, as well as how we should approach these canons.  There are any number of canons that are awkward even for the most traditionalist Christians today.  Some are simply weird (we don’t seem to have quite as big a problem of clergy castrating themselves today), and others present difficulties with virtually every part of the modern economic system (things touching on usury).  The hermeneutical difficulties here are almost as complex as those presented by Scripture…

For my part, the persistent difficulty in bring out the canons on boundaries is that we do not live in an era with such clear boundaries.  I am notorious for bringing up the modern ecumenical situation here, but it bears repeating to no end that it does not make sense to talk about bishops and boundaries if by that we only mean Anglican bishops and boundaries—unless you want to claim that Anglicans are The Church.  This would be one thing in 19th century England; a very different thing in America now. 

But even putting that aside, I would suggest that even the places we would expect—Rome and the East—do not follow these canons.  There is not a single bishop for every city; in every case there are multiple bishops, each operating almost independently.  In the East (though more particularly in the East as it exists in the West) there is the problem of Churches overlapping along ethnic lines; in the West there is the problem of Churches overlapping on “ritual” lines (and sometimes ethnic as well).  In the first case there is no coherence at all; in the second it may be possible to argue that some sort of universal papal jurisdiction simplifies the problem, but somehow I do not think that is consistent with the intent of the Council.

Thanks, Sam. Nope, no more history. That was it. So I am thankful for your comment, because, for the purposes of this little series, that is about as much history as I am up for. I just want to bring awareness of the depth of the history along with the complexity of its historical reception. No, I’m going to theology next. Then I’ll start dealing with some of the other things you bring up in future posts, e.g., the problem of overlapping ethnicities and overlapping confessional bodies after schisms/reformations, etc.

“Some are weird.” There is still some law in Texas against carrying a pair of wire cutters in your pick-up. But because that is void doesn’t make the other laws on the book void. Am I thinking rightly here? It feels right.

Yes, good point: the hermeneutical difficulties are wrapped up in scripture. Scripture = interpreted by rule of faith. Creeds/councils = expand upon, elaborate, comment upon rule of faith.

Thanks for reading and commenting! Peace

Dr. Nathan,
Kudos on this.  Well done. Can’t wait to see the rest. 

At last a chance to ask a Radical Orthodoxy scholar a Milbank question that has been haunting me.

I am particularly interested in how we are to think theologically about ethnicities - and here I don’t mean race as we know it today, but race as Ireneaus, Clement, and others spoke of Christians being a new race in their polemics defining heterodoxy and orthodoxy.  That is, embedded in their boundary setting is ethnocentric reasoning that defined themselves as Christians over and against others in their own locality.  Denise Buell has shown that in earlier Christianity there was a great variance in how these boundaries were set, such that there were many orthodoxies, locally interpreted.  And Charles Taylor describes the genealogy of our forms of Christianity today in terms of a super nova - that we have in reality not just a few but many constantly multiplying forms of Christianity in the world, all creations in reaction to multiple stimuli that are sometimes local and sometime more global.  All of this brings to mind my question, which references Milbank:  in TST, he describes the Church as follows:

The goal of the ecclesia, the city of God, is not collective glory, as if the city were itself a hero, any more than it is the production of heroic individuals.  Instead, it really has no telos properly speaking, but continuosly is the differential sequence which has the goal beyond the goal of generating new relationships, which themselves situate and define ’persons.“ (409)

If the church is the “differential sequence which has the goal beyond the goal of generating new relationships, which themselves situate and define ’persons.“”, is not possible that this “super nova” in which we live as Christians is constantly generating new “ethnicities” that must be ordered locally, but ought to be seen not as disorder, but as Providence?  And if so, then why would we not theologically understand these boundaries that have been historically geographical as now giving way to boundaries that are based on local orthodoxies (of which Buell writes) and which are affinity-based?  If Milbank is right (yes, a question that I don’t mean to blow past), then might we see multiple dioceses in a common geography as the differential sequence which the Church has always been intended to produce, that is part of salvation itself?

Craig—You managed to pick one of the major points of difference that I have with RO when you laid out that quotation above. The church is not a voluntary society of the like minded. And I worry about gnosticism when we divorce the church from its ground (literally) is such things as geography. I don’t think that kind of over-lap is the goal of the peaceable kingdom. But I don’t have any easy solution to the problem. And I have many questions of my own. Thanks for commenting!

Yes, I had a feeling you might object to that view.  But not sure why.  Can you explain how the claim that “The church is not a voluntary society of the like minded” is a response to the quote about the Church being the engine of identity in all its diversity, which is how I understand that claim?

Also, how does geography really protect us against a privatized gnosticism?  Why is that the only way or even an important way to protect against gnosticism?

I agree that overlap is not the goal of the peaceable kingdom.  Can I assume that “peace” that denotes the life of the triune God is?  And if so, then what does that have to do with geographic boundaries, of necessity?

I guess what I mean is that what keeps people separate from one another, at least in our postmodern condition here in the west, is forming groups of like-minded. We are not necessarily related by race or geography as before. The church is more organic. We have bodies. Bodies have locations. Locations are geographic. Geography is part of affirming the body over against the gnostic tendency. Now, God also made us to generate culture, etc. So maybe you’re right. I’d have to think about it more. But now I need to write about things I know more about! Peace

Dr. Jennings,

I thought you might appreciate this from Oliver O’Donovan that I quote often in arguing against the universalizing tendency.  It expresses a bit of what you are getting at with regard to geography and gnosticism.  I don’t think it is really geography but rather a fleshly social identity that is connected to our vocation as Israel that is our real antidote to gnosticism.

We need social identities if we are to act together politically, and this is what representative political forms facilitate. But social identities are irreducibly plural, defined in distinction from one another, and so our political forms must also be. One identity requires another: there is no ‘me’, even at the largest political level, without a ‘you’. God allows only neighbourly identities, not universal ones, as we are taught by the story of the Tower of Babel. The precondition for a world-identity and world-government would be that the Martians had arrived.  O’Donovan, Oliver. “Deliberation, History and Reading: A Response to Schweiker and Wolsterstorff.” Scottish Journal of Theology 54, no. 1 (2001), p. 133.

We need neighbourly identities to combat gnosticism, to be sure.  Not clear to me why - in a world in which the primary form of communication is no longer the physical highway but the information network we called the web - that those identities can’t be grounded in affinities.  To be more clear, up until our point in history, there was not much distinction between peoplehood by virtue of geography and peoplehood by virtue of affinity.  The mountains, roads, and seas were in many ways determinative of affinities, and served as both boundaries of peoplehood as well as the practical reach of an overseer.  But the web has caused a paradigm shift, and we are truly becoming a global village where geography is not necessarily a natural boundary.  We see this already in the Church, where the emerging church movement is proving the concept of widely distributed, affinity based church networks that are centrally managed, all connected via telecommunications.

I am not arguing against your position really, because I know it is what tradition honors.  But I am wondering if this an area where a little traditioned innovation might be appropriate given the major technological paradigm shift we have encountered in our time. 

And I have in mind here not the border crossings that the Windsor Reports speaks of, that are from foreign provinces.  Rather, I am beginning to wonder how we might think about this if we were to have three Anglican entities in North America - with the CP scheme dividing TEC into Canterbury connected and non-Canterbury connected and with ACNA.  Is it possible to see three dioceses in the same region, all of which are Anglican, but all distinct products of that “Super Nova” I mentioned above and thus capable of being bound only by affinities?  Does the notion of Church as the locus of harmonious difference that denotes the unity and diversity of the triune God make it possible for us to see a future in which those divisions are seen in a different light?