THE JUSTIFICATION OF DIVERSITY

‘The universality of the Church involves, on the one hand, a most solid unity, and on the other, a plurality and diversification, which do not obstruct unity, but rather confer upon it the character of “communion”.’ But ‘balancing unity and diversity in the Church is a task never yet really accomplished’. A doctrine of legitimate diversity in one Church is paradoxical. Nowhere has that paradox been held more creatively in balance than among the Orthodox. Here, a body of autocephalous Churches deems itself to hold to the unalterable single ancient tradition enshrined by the Ecumenical Councils, while insisting in a number of respects upon the ecclesial completeness and independence of member churches and their consequent freedom to govern themselves and to be themselves. The legitimacy of that diversity consists in the mutual recognition of the Orthodoxy of the churches involved, and in adherence to a common tradition; and yet the common Orthodoxy does not reduce the diversity to uniformity. On the contrary, it is seen as necessary to the Church that unity should manifest itself in a legitimate diversity. But the existence of diversity among Churches has been less clearly seen as a good elsewhere until comparatively recent years; and the unavoidable paradox it implies is less easily resolved where the churches cannot point unequivocally to a continuing common tradition.