§ 102. The Election and Installation of a Bishop

The Election and Installation of a Bishop.

In one of the symbolic books of the Orthodox Church, it is written concerning the significance of the bishop: ‘Without a bishop, not only can there not be, but neither can the Church be called a church, nor a Christian a Christian; for the bishop, as the apostolic successor, who through ordination and the invocation of the Holy Spirit has received by succession the God-given power to bind and to loose, is the living image of God on earth, and by the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit he is the overflowing source of all the mysteries of the universal Church, through which salvation is obtained. And the bishop is as necessary in the Church as breath is to man or the sun to the world.’[1] Given such significance of the bishop in the Church, it is entirely understandable that we find a multitude of canons which speak generally of the bishop, of his rights, of his duties, of his relation to the Church and to his flock, and in particular of the election and installation of a bishop. Church legislation has occupied itself with this last question from the very beginning, and only in the 6th century did a more settled norm on this become established, after the many changes through which this same question passed.[2]

Given the importance of this question, let us first survey it from the historical-canonical side, and thereafter we shall set forth how the election and installation of a bishop takes place today.