Ecclesiology (Doctrine of the Church)

The Orthodox teaching on the Church, which is less a doctrine about an institution than a confession of what the Church is: the Body of Christ and the temple of the Spirit, one, holy, catholic and apostolic, as the Creed says. It is found whole in each Eucharist gathered around its bishop. Wherever the bishop appears, wrote St Ignatius, let the people be, as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic Church. The local Churches are not branches of a larger organisation but the one Church in each place, held together by one faith, one Eucharist and the councils, with no bishop above the council. The Orthodox Church confesses itself to be that one Church, not one part of it. How to speak of Christians outside it is debated among Orthodox theologians themselves: some, following Fr Georges Florovsky, have said the Church’s canonical boundaries are not the limit of the Spirit’s work, and others hold to a stricter reading. The Church itself has not settled the question by council.