Canon Law and Church Order: Sources, Akribeia and Oikonomia
This domain tests the sources of Orthodox canon law, the principles governing its application, and the structures of church order: pentarchy, territoriality, and the pastoral use of oikonomia.
Sources
- The Apostolic Canons (85), the canons of the ecumenical councils, the canons of the Fathers (notably Basil's ninety-two canonical letters and Gregory of Nyssa's), and the Quinisext Council (Trullo, 691–692), which supplies disciplinary canons without a doctrinal definition of its own.
- Collections: the Nomocanon, the Syntagma of Rhallis and Potlis, and the Pedalion ("Rudder", 1800) of Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, with commentary.
- Canons are applied by bishops, synods and spiritual fathers; there is no single universal code with automatic jurisdiction.
Principles
- Akribeia is strict application; oikonomia is pastoral dispensation for the person's salvation. Oikonomia never overturns dogma and does not abolish the canon.
- Pentarchy: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem. Canon 28 of Chalcedon grants Constantinople second place "because it is the new Rome"; Canon 3 of Constantinople I ties ecclesiastical rank to civil rank.
- Territoriality: one bishop in one city. Overlapping jurisdictions in the diaspora are widely acknowledged as a canonical abnormality tolerated for historical reasons.
Marriage and orders
- The Byzantine tradition bars marriage within the seventh degree of consanguinity, though computation varies locally; affinity and spiritual relationship (godparenthood) also create impediments.
- A priest may not marry after ordination; a widowed priest does not remarry; bishops are celibate. A man twice married is not ordained.
Worked example
A widower with one marriage asks to be ordained. Reasoning: the impediment is not widowhood but a second marriage; a first-marriage widower may be ordained, though he may not remarry afterwards, and if made bishop he must be celibate or a monk. State the norm, then the oikonomia available, then the bishop's decision - in that order.
Traps
- Treating the canons as an exhaustive legal code with no dispensation.
- Confusing oikonomia with abolition of the canon.
- Forgetting that Trullo is disciplinary and supplements the fifth and sixth councils.
- Assuming all local marriage-impediment computations are identical.