4. The fullness and integrity of the ecclesiastical nature of each community determines its independence. Each community, as the fullness of the Church, has within itself all that is necessary for its life and does not depend in this respect on another community. Theoretically speaking, the existence of other communities is not a prerequisite for the fullness of the existence of any community, no matter how insignificant. By virtue of this, one community is independent of another community, in other words, in apostolic times there is no legal authority over the community. "The church is subject to Christ," whom God "has set above all things, the head of the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all" (Ephesians 5:24; 1:22-23). Therefore, the community, as the fullness of the Body of Christ, obeys Christ alone. If, along with the authority of Christ as the Head of the Church, there were another authority in the person of another community, or other communities, or any of its primates, then this authority would be at the same time an authority over Christ Himself and His Body. This impossibility of admitting the existence of power over Christ excluded for early Christianity the legal subordination of one community to another or to its primate. In spite of all the authority with which the apostles were vested, they had no legal authority. When they acted as the supreme leaders and instructors of church life, they acted not from without, but from within the community, not as persons invested with authority over the churches, but as persons in the Church and appointed by Christ Himself "to perfect the saints, to the work of ministry, for the edification of the body of Christ" (Ephesians 4:12). The work of service (έργον διακονίας) was not concerned with the exercise of personal authority, but with the exercise of the authority of God Himself. The most influential and significant communities, like Jerusalem, the source of all communities, and Rome, had no legal authority. Up. Paul, addressing the Romans, praises the Roman church in every possible way, but does not say a single word about any authority of the Roman community over the communities closest to it.

5. The autonomy and independence of church communities does not mean that they are isolated and disconnected from each other. The unity of the Body of Christ determines the unity of all communities. Not a single church community can limit itself from communion with other communities, close itself off into itself. The absence of communion with other communities would be at the same time a denial of the fullness of the ecclesiastical nature of these communities and, what is even more inadmissible, an affirmation of one's own community as the only form of empirical embodiment of the "heavenly" Church {21}. Disunity is overcome by the realization that not only in one, but in each community, the fullness of the Body of Christ is present. The voluntary isolation of one community would be a relapse into the Jewish ecclesiastical consciousness. The Old Testament church was only in Jerusalem, where there was a temple and a sacred hierarchy, and where sacrifices were offered. The temple was the dwelling place of the Lord and His presence. The New Testament church consciousness affirmed a different understanding of the Church: the Church is where Christ is, and Christ is where two or three are gathered in His name.

The unity of all ecclesial communities is the union of communities in love in Christ. One community appears to another as an object of its love in the Holy Spirit. "Let all things be done with love" (1 Corinthians 16:14). At the same time, in love for another community, the community itself is the object of its own love. By loving another community, it loves itself, since the ultimate object of love is the Church as the Body of Christ. The absence of love for another community, the exit from the loving unity of all communities, is a rejection of love for oneself and for the Church. Love is the binding principle that creates the loving unity of all communities. Only "in true love do we grow in all things to <Him> Who is the Head<>Christ" (Ephesians 4:15).

The loving union of communities in relation to the individual communities that enter and remain in love and harmony is not an organism of a higher order. In the Church, there can be nothing higher than the Church. If the loving union of communities were an organism of a higher order, then this would mean the incompleteness of the ecclesiastical nature of the communities that make up it. Entering into a love union, each individual community remains itself, does not dissolve in other communities and is not absorbed into the whole. Each individual community preserves in the union of love of the communities all its absolute value and uniqueness. The unity of communities in love does not lead to their identity. Each community preserves in unity with the others its own image, which it alone realizes. The Corinthian community is not identical with the Ephesian community, nor is the latter identical with the Thessalonian community. "The gifts are different, but the Spirit is the same. And the ministries are different, but God is one and the same, working all things in all." —1 Corinthians 12:4-6.

The lack of identity of communities, with the absolute value of each of them, leads, in the union of love of communities, to the existence of a hierarchy of communities. In the loving union of communities, one of them can stand above the other, not because it is more valuable than the other—Christ is the same in both—but because it can enjoy greater authority than the others. Such a hierarchy of communities is already observed in apostolic times. The Jerusalem and Roman communities had the greatest authority. Each church community is an empirical embodiment of the "heavenly" church, but this incarnation always leaves a certain boundary between it and the essence of the Church. In empirical reality (with the exception of the Eucharistic Assembly, which is always an icon of the heavenly Church), there is no complete coincidence of the empirical incarnation of the Church with the Heavenly Church, but only of varying degrees of approximation to this coincidence. In different epochs and in different communities in the same epoch, the degree of approximation is constantly changing. The greater the degree of approach of this or that community to the essence of the Church, the greater the authority of this community, and the greater the circle of its influence, and the higher its place in the hierarchy of communities. Apostolic times brought about a unification based not on a legal principle, but on Love. And this Love, as the basis of unification, turned out to be no less effective than law.

6. The fullness and integrity of the ecclesiastical nature of each community was to affect the nature of the decisions of the church meetings of the community. If the community is the Church, then its decisions are ecclesiastical decisions in all their fullness and significance. As the decisions of the Church based on the revelation of the will of God, they are the truth, but not only for the community that makes these decisions, since the latter is not the only empirical embodiment of the heavenly Church, but alongside it there are other communities – the empirical embodiment of the same Church. The loving unity of communities presupposes their loving harmony. Just as Christ cannot be separated, and just as Christ cannot rise up against Himself, so one church community lovingly accepts what is done in another, because what is done in one is done in all, it is done in the Church. What is true for one community is also true for another, since there can be only one truth in the Church. Thus, in principle, the decision of one community is universally binding, universally significant and has a general ecclesiastical character, i.e. it is catholic in nature. The only condition for the adoption of the decisions of one community by the others, which is tantamount to the recognition of their catholicity, is their ecclesiastical nature. For other communities in apostolic times, there are no external signs (or, in any case, they are insufficient). Within each community, the ecclesiastical character of its acts and decisions is determined by the testimony of the church assembly that the will of God has been revealed in it. The charisma of trial, which belongs to the church meeting of the community, extends not only to what is done in it. Just as a church congregation bears witness to and accepts what is done in it, it bears witness to the decisions of another congregation and accepts them as its own. This acceptance – reception – as well as the adoption of internal acts, has no legal character. No community is bound by the will of other communities, and the will of any community is not binding on others, but only the will of God determines everything. The act of making decisions by one community by another means recognizing the revealed will of God as the truth, and, conversely, rejecting the decisions of another community can mean either that the church that does not accept these decisions sins against the truth and the Spirit, or that these latter are not the truth. The Church of Antioch accepted the decisions of the Church of Jerusalem when it saw that the truth had been revealed in them, and lovingly submitted to this truth. No matter how high the place occupied by the community in the love hierarchy of communities, its decisions require reception to the same extent as the decisions of the most insignificant community.

A church assembly is a concrete expression of the love that exists between communities and, at the same time, an empirical expression of the dogmatic conviction about the fullness and integrity of the ecclesial nature of each community. If the latter is dogmatically or factually defective, then the significance of the Church's reception decreases accordingly. Ecclesiastical reception belongs to the Church as the Church's witness to the truth, i.e., the Church's witness to Herself. It follows from this that the reception of the Church does not belong to a part of the Church. The ecclesial community, as part of the Church, loses the opportunity to witness and freely make decisions of other communities, especially the community that stands higher in the loving hierarchy of communities.

7. In principle, every decision of a church assembly is universally binding and universally significant, but in fact this nature does not always manifest itself. Each church community is unique – there are not even two absolutely identical communities. Each has its own face, its own life, its own conditions of spiritual life, as well as its own conditions of empirical existence. By virtue of this, the actions and decisions of one community, which are directly related only to its life, are not directly applicable to the life of other communities. Other communities are not interested in these decisions and acts, and the community itself does not need to interfere with them in its life, especially when church life is proceeding normally. As long as the decisions and actions of one community do not go beyond that community, there is no direct need for other communities to bear witness openly to those decisions. In such decisions, their catholicity remains within the community itself and is in a certain latent state. The latent state of catholicity corresponds to the latent state of church reception. As soon as the decisions and actions of the community receive one or another Church-wide resonance, the catholic nature of these decisions passes from a latent state to an active one, and the ecclesiastical reception comes into force. It is extremely difficult to determine precisely the range of issues with an openly catholic state, since it varies from one era to another.

It should be noted that every decision of the community can easily bring catholicity from a latent state to an active one. If, generally speaking, communities are not interested in the purely local questions of a community, this <not> interest does not mean indifference. If one community is the object of its love for another, then in the event of difficulties experienced by one community, the other cannot remain indifferent. She either comes to the rescue herself or responds to the call for help addressed to her. Assistance consists in the fact that it either accepts or rejects decisions that have caused disagreements, or itself makes decisions on a controversial issue. Thus, the Church of Jerusalem responded to the call of the Church of Antioch and made a decision that the Antiochian community could not find on its own.

In general, in apostolic times, questions rarely took on an openly catholic character. Thanks to the apostles, each community could relatively easily overcome all its difficulties on its own. In the future, the number of such questions increases significantly. In some cases, the community itself seeks to make the issues it solves catholic, turning to other communities for their acceptance (most often in matters relating to doctrine); In other cases, the incorrect teaching of one community causes the intervention of another community. Finally, any member of a community could appeal to neighboring communities about the rejection of what was decided by his community.

Thus, the catholic nature of the decision of any church assembly could appear either in a latent state, which did not require an open reception by other communities, or in an active state. In this latter case, ecclesiastical acceptance had to be made open.

IV {22}

1. The Jerusalem assembly of the apostles was the church assembly of the church of Jerusalem. The catholicity of its decree, the so-called apostolic decree, at least in that part of it which speaks of the non-obligation of circumcision as a preliminary step to the adoption of Christianity, is sufficiently attested to by subsequent history. It is as obligatory for us as dogmatic truth as it was for apostolic times. It does not matter that this meeting was a meeting of the Jerusalem Church alone, or, at most, a joint meeting of the Churches of Jerusalem and Antioch. As we have seen, the separation of the concepts of "local" and "universal" church was alien to apostolic times. To extend this "local" assembly to the limits of the "universal," as is done in theological literature, on the grounds that the apostles participated in it, is an unsuccessful attempt to explain the universal character of the decrees of the local church. In itself, the catholicity of the decision of the Jerusalem assembly did not depend on the participation of the apostles. Of course, the participation of the apostles in the Jerusalem assembly gave him special authority. Subsequent church consciousness saw in him the highest authority. When, in post-apostolic times, they wanted to give some ecclesiastical norm the greatest authority and the greatest degree of obligation, they attributed the publication of this norm to the apostles themselves at the Council of Jerusalem, which is proved by the so-called "apostolic" writing. Nevertheless, the catholicity of the decisions of the Jerusalem assembly in itself did not depend on the participation of the apostles. It is not difficult to establish that the basis of the universal character of this decision lay in the fact that it was a decision of the church assembly, which by its very nature is universally binding and universally significant. The presence of the Apostles as bearers of an absolutely exceptional charisma emphasized with particular force the openly catholic nature of the decisions of the Jerusalem assembly and testified to its truth. If the Antiochian community or other communities had not made this decision, it would not have been, thanks to the exclusivity of the Jerusalem assembly, a testimony to its non-ecclesiastical nature, but, on the contrary, a testimony to the incorrectness of the ecclesiastical assembly of these churches. Therefore, "those who were sent (from Jerusalem) came to Antioch and, having gathered the people (συναγαγόντες τό πλήθος), delivered a letter. And when they had read it, they rejoiced in this instruction" (έπί τή παρακλήσει — exhortations, consolations) (Acts 15:30-31). The possibility of supposing that the Antiochian community met only to hear the decisions of the Church of Jerusalem is completely excluded. The role of the Church Assembly of Antioch was to test and testify as a test of this decision. As a truth revealed by God through the Holy Spirit, the Jerusalem decision was accepted by the Church of Antioch: therefore it was for him an exhortation and consolation (παράκλησις) as the revealed will of God. It was also adopted by other communities and became a generally binding rule for all churches.

2.