A dissertation on Constantinople's "primacy": a dispute to be resolved
A major academic study on the “primacy” of Constantinople has been published. Why it matters for both Ukraine and the entire Orthodox world.
At the Moscow Theological Academy, Hegumen Dionisy (Shlenov) has defended the doctoral dissertation "In Defense of the Conciliar Structure of the Orthodox Church: The Theory of the Primacy of the Patriarch of Constantinople and Its Critique".
This is not merely another theological dissertation of interest only to specialists. The subject it examines is a concrete religious conflict that is far from resolved, one that has become a key factor in the persecution of the UOC, has caused a rupture of Eucharistic communion between certain Local Churches, and already threatens the unity of Orthodoxy.
As is well known, the Orthodox Church does not recognize the idea of the supremacy of any single bishop over the entire Church, as exists in Catholicism. There is only a primacy of honor, which pertains to the Diptych. However, in recent decades, Constantinopolitan hierarchs and theologians have begun to advance the idea that the primacy of the Patriarch of Constantinople is not limited to honor alone — that it extends to the sphere of ecclesiastical courts, the right to receive appeals, the granting of autocephaly, and so forth.
In 2018–2019, Constantinople made a bold claim to the practical exercise of its "supreme authority." The OCU was created with the decisive role of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. This organization was recognized by only 4 Local Churches out of 14 universally recognized ones, while the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches severed Eucharistic communion with Constantinople. It was precisely Constantinople's recognition of two schismatic denominations in Ukraine and the creation of the OCU on their basis that served as the primary impetus for writing the dissertation.
To resolve this conflict, many Local Churches and authoritative hierarchs have called upon Patriarch Bartholomew to convene a Pan-Orthodox Council or assembly, but he persistently refuses to do so. Constantinople's argument is: we are the highest authority and our decisions do not require Pan-Orthodox consensus; we have created a new canonical reality that all others must accept.
Thus, the dispute has grown from a local conflict into a global theological question: how is the Orthodox Church structured at the universal level?
1,300 Pages on Primacy
The scale of the dissertation is impressive: 1,300 pages of research, a bibliography of 1,408 entries. The study addresses the full range of arguments used by proponents and opponents of the idea of Constantinople's supremacy over all of Orthodoxy. Particular attention is given to questions concerning Apostolic Canon 34, Canons 9, 17, and 28 of the Council of Chalcedon, the history of the institution of ecclesiastical appeal, the procedure for granting autocephaly. The author also examines the phenomenon of the Orthodox diaspora, the content of the title "Ecumenical" as applied to the Patriarch of Constantinople, the concepts of "head" and "Mother Church," and Byzantine and post-Byzantine precedents.
An indisputable merit of the dissertation is that Fr. Dionisy examines in detail both the works of contemporary Greek proponents of special prerogatives for Constantinople — Metropolitan John Zizioulas, Metropolitan Gregory Papathomas, Metropolitan Cyril Katerelos, Archbishop Makarios Griniezakis, and others — and their opponents within the Greek Orthodox world. That is,
the dissertation is not a one-sided defense of arguments put forward by hierarchs and theologians of the ROC, but an attempt to present a comprehensive picture of the dispute over Constantinople's prerogatives.
Moreover, the phenomenon of primacy, its theological and canonical aspects, is examined throughout the entire two-thousand-year history of the Church. This makes the work a truly comprehensive study, though not without certain debatable points, as is directly noted by the dissertation's official opponent, Doctor of Theology Pavel Ermilov. That is, the dissertation does not claim to settle all questions definitively; it remains open to further scholarly discussion.
Ukraine: How Theory Becomes Practice
Ukraine occupies a special place in the dissertation. It is here that arguments about primacy ceased to be a dispute among canonists and were "road-tested" in practice.
On October 11, 2018, the Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople adopted several highly controversial decisions on Ukraine from a canonical standpoint. It confirmed its intention to grant autocephaly, restored the stavropegion of the Patriarch of Constantinople in Kyiv, accepted the appeals of Filaret Denisenko and Makariy Maletych, and declared the synodal letter of 1686 — on the basis of which the Patriarch of Moscow received the right to ordain the Metropolitan of Kyiv — to have lost its force.
In the context of the primacy dispute, the point on appeals is particularly telling. In the official decision, the Phanar invoked the right of the Patriarch of Constantinople to receive petitions from hierarchs and clergy "from all Autocephalous Churches." The same logic was enshrined in the Tomos of the OCU in 2019. The hierarchs and clergy of the new structure retain therein the right to appeal to Constantinople.
However, such an arbitrary and overly expansive interpretation of Canons 9 and 17 of the Fourth Ecumenical (Chalcedonian) Council of 451 did not find acceptance among the majority of Local Churches. Orthodox ecclesiology itself does not presuppose that any single Local Church holds the right of supreme jurisdiction over the clergy of other Local Churches. A significant portion of Fr. Dionisy's research is devoted to substantiating this position: the Ecumenical Councils, in his view, did not grant Constantinople the right of universal appeal beyond its own jurisdiction.
The author separately examines the documents of 1686 concerning the transfer of the Kyiv Metropolitanate to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Church, since it is precisely the interpretation of these documents that became one of the grounds for the Phanar's actions in Ukraine. Constantinople maintains that the letter of 1686 granted the Patriarch of Moscow only the right, by economy, to ordain the Metropolitan of Kyiv, and did not signify the final transfer of the Kyiv Metropolitanate.
In the dissertation, Fr. Dionisy examines this argumentation in detail and arrives at the opposite conclusion. In a separate 2024 work, later incorporated into the dissertation research, he formulated it with utmost clarity: the act of 1686 "was of an irrevocable character and cannot be subject to revision".
This topic was covered in detail on the pages of the SPJ back in 2018 in the article: "That Very Letter: Did Constantinople Actually Transfer the Church of Ukraine to Moscow?"
The Main Conclusion of the Dissertation
The author acknowledges the primacy of honor of the See of Constantinople, but rejects the inference from this primacy of any special universal judicial or administrative authority over other Local Churches. This is the main conclusion of the dissertation research. Fr. Dionisy reduces the concept of the supremacy of the Patriarch of Constantinople to the following propositions:
- the ecumenical character of the Church of Constantinople;
- the right to act as the highest judicial instance;
- the right to receive appeals;
- the exclusive right to grant autocephaly;
- the exclusive right to govern the Orthodox diaspora;
- the exclusive role in convening Pan-Orthodox assemblies;
- the understanding of the See of Constantinople as the "head" or "mother" of the Churches it has established;
- the connection between the institution of primacy and the unity of the Church.
Each of these propositions is subjected by the author to serious, well-reasoned critique. At the same time, Constantinopolitan theologians explain both the foundations of their prerogatives and the content of the relevant canons, as well as the historical practice of their application, in an entirely different manner. As has already been noted, the dispute over the prerogatives of the Patriarch of Constantinople is far from resolved.
Conclusion
In the dissertation, the author employs rather sharp polemical formulations, but these are not what hold the greatest value. Hegumen Dionisy writes that the research should potentially "serve the restoration of lost unity." But how can this be achieved?
The current situation in Orthodoxy can hardly be considered normal: the dispute over the limits of Constantinople's prerogatives remains unresolved, the Ukrainian ecclesiastical question has divided the Local Churches, and the principle of conciliar resolution of church conflicts is very difficult to implement in practice. The prolonged delay in resolving all these questions threatens the unity of Orthodoxy.
In our view, a step in the right direction would be to shift the conflict from the plane of political, administrative, and, to a certain extent, personal confrontation to the theological plane. The Local Churches need to seek unity and arrive at a common mind. And this can be done far more effectively not by endlessly exchanging statements and unilateral decisions, but through serious study of sources, canons, and historical precedents.
The ultimate goal is a Pan-Orthodox Council at which all current misunderstandings among the Orthodox will be resolved. Let us hope that in this process the dissertation of Fr. Dionisy will play its positive role.
