FIRST WITHOUT EQUALS
A Response to the Text on Primacy of the Moscow
Patriarchate
Elpidophoros Lambriniadis
Metropolitan of
Bursa
Professor of Theology, University of Thessaloniki
(http://patriarchate.org)
In a recent synodal decision,
[1]
the Church of Russia seems once again
[2]
to choose its isolation both from theological dialogue with the
Catholic Church and from the communion of the Orthodox Churches. Two
points are worth noting from the outset, which are indicative of the
intent of the Church of Russia’s Synod:
First, its desire to thwart the text of Ravenna,
[3]
claiming seemingly theological reasons to justify the absence of its
delegation from the specific plenary meeting of the bilateral
commission (an absence dictated, as everyone knows, by other
reasons
[4]);
and
Second, to challenge in the most open and formal manner
(namely, by synodal decree) the primacy of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate within the Orthodox world, observing that the text of
Ravenna, on which all the Orthodox Churches agreed (with the
exception, of course, of the Church of Russia), determines the
primacy of the bishop on the three levels of ecclesiological
structure in the Church (local, provincial, universal) in a way that
supports and ensures the primacy and first-throne Orthodox Church.
The text of the position of the Moscow Patriarchate on the
"problem" (as they call it) of Primacy in the universal
Church does not deny either the sense or the significance of
primacy; and up to this point, it is correct. In addition, however,
it endeavors to achieve (indeed, as we shall see, in an indirect
way) the introduction of two distinctions related to the concept of
primacy.
