The Living Tradition An Orthodox Archive of the Church Fathers and Early Church

Theme

The canons and Church order

What canons are, how they are received, and why they are not an internet law code.

  • Canonical normEstablished by a received canon of a council, or of a Father whose canons the Church has received. Canons are applied within the Church's pastoral and conciliar life; a canon is not a rule a reader applies to themselves or to anyone else.
  • Pastoral applicationHow a teaching is ordinarily applied in practice, under the guidance of a priest and bishop. Never a substitute for that guidance.

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A canon is a rule, and the Church's canons are the accumulated judgements of councils and Fathers about how its life is to be ordered. Canon II of the Council in Trullo is the index: it names the collections the Church receives.

Canons are applied within the Church's pastoral and conciliar life, by bishops, with the distinction between akribeia and oikonomia in view. They are not a code a private reader applies to themselves or to anyone else.

Canons also differ in kind. Some express dogma, some moral principle, some structural arrangement, some a response to conditions that no longer exist. A canon whose direct application has lapsed is not thereby void, and an ancient penalty is not thereby in force.

Follow this theme through the archive

  • The Council in Trullo

    The council that supplied disciplinary canons for the Fifth and Sixth Councils, which had issued none. Its 102 canons are the backbone of the Orthodox canonical tradition, and Rome never received them.

    Council

  • The First Council of Nicaea

    The council that confessed the Son to be of one substance with the Father, addressed the date of Pascha, and issued twenty disciplinary canons. It did not decide which books belong to the Bible.

    Council

  • How to read a canon

    Six questions to ask of any canon, and the one mistake that causes most of the trouble.

    Lesson

Sources for this page

  1. Tier C The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church Henry R. Percival (ed.); Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (series eds.) The Seven Ecumenical Councils annotated edition of conciliar texts Source record

Tiers are explained in the methodology. No page on this site has been reviewed or approved by any bishop, priest, synod or seminary.