§ 49. The Head of the Church

Having founded His Church on earth, Christ gave all His apostles equal power in it,[1] reserving to Himself the headship of the Church and calling Himself the head shepherd and the sole supreme shepherd.[2] When it arose among His apostles as to which of them should be greater, He pronounced solemn condemnation on the very thought of it,[3] and told them that He alone is the head of His grace-bestowing kingdom, His Church,[4] and that He would be with them only when they were in communion, and, on terms of equal power among themselves, acted together in the Church.[5] Just as among the apostles there was, and could be, no primacy of power exercised by one over the others,[6] so too no such primacy exists, nor can it exist, among the apostles’ successors, the bishops—rather, all of them possess equal power and dignity, whatever see one or another of them may occupy.[7] The Church is a spiritual kingdom, and as such there can be in it no head but a spiritual one, to whom belongs the fullness of royal power, and consequently the visible governance must be divided among spiritual administrators in the various places of the Christian world.[8] “The husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is head of the Church,” we read in holy Scripture,[9] and further: “and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all”;[10] “and he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.”[11] The Acts of the Apostles give us the clearest confirmation of this,[12] and the apostle Paul, on the occasion when a certain primacy was asserted in the Church by one or another, brands such aspirations with sharp words.[13] The Fathers of the Church of later centuries confirm the same.[14] Today the Orthodox Church confesses this teaching thus: “Christ Himself alone is the head of the Church, as the Apostle teaches (Eph. 5, 23; Col. 1, 18). If the hierarchs who govern the churches are also called heads of them, this is to be understood in this way: that they are, each in his own province, vicars and particular heads, according to holy Scripture (Acts 20, 28); but the head shepherd is Jesus Christ Himself alone, as Peter says of this (1 Pet. 5, 4).”[15] “Since man is subject to death and cannot be the perpetual head of the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, as head, holding the helm of the Church’s governance, governs it through the holy fathers. For this reason the Holy Spirit has, in the local churches that are lawfully founded and consist of lawful members, appointed bishops, presiding elders, shepherds, heads and leaders, who attained this not through abuse but lawfully, showing in these shepherds the image of Him who was the author and finisher of our salvation, so that all the faithful, under such governance, might become partakers in the work of salvation.”[16]