Church Authority

Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology is conciliar: authority in the Church rests with the Holy Spirit speaking through Ecumenical Councils, the consensus of the Holy Fathers, and the reception of teaching by the whole people of God (the 'sense of the faithful'). No single bishop—not even the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople—holds universal jurisdiction equivalent to the Catholic Pope. The Ecumenical Patriarch has a primacy of honor as 'first among equals' (primus inter pares), but his authority does not extend over other autocephalous churches.

The seven Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea I through Nicaea II) are the supreme doctrinal norm for Orthodoxy. The Orthodox Church consists of a communion of autocephalous national churches (Russian, Greek, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Georgian, etc.), each self-governing, bound by shared faith, sacramental communion, and canonical norms. The lack of a single centralized authority has been both a theological strength (guarding against the innovations of the Western papacy) and a practical challenge (as ongoing jurisdictional disputes between the Moscow and Constantinople patriarchates illustrate).