Reference

Glossary

Akriveia: Exactness: the strict and full application of the sacred canons and the confession of the faith, without abridgement.
Antimension: The consecrated cloth, signed by the bishop and containing relics of the martyrs, upon which alone the Divine Liturgy may be celebrated. It binds every altar visibly to the bishop whose name it bears, and through him into the one episcopate.
Apoteichisis (walling off): From teichos, a wall: the ceasing of commemoration of, and communion with, a bishop who openly preaches a heresy already condemned by Synods or Fathers, before any synodal verdict, while remaining within the one Church, raising no rival altar, judging no one's grace, and awaiting the council. Protected and honoured by the second half of Canon 15 of the First and Second Council (861).
Bareheaded (gymnē tē kephalē): The canon's expression for heresy preached openly and without concealment, "with bare head," in the assemblies of the Church, as distinct from a rumour, a suspicion, a private slip, or an ambiguous phrase capable of an Orthodox reading. Only such open preaching meets the canon's condition.
Commemoration: The naming of the bishop aloud in the services, above all at the Divine Liturgy: a public declaration of identity in the faith with the one named. Its withdrawal is the substance of walling off.
Diptychs: The tablets of names by which church answers to church: the visible register of the one communion of the one altar. To stand in the diptychs is to stand in that communion.
Economia: The physician's discretion of the Church: the bending of the application of a rule, for a season and for the salvation of souls, never extending to the betrayal of the faith itself.
Ecumenism: The modern teaching that the one Church of Christ is presently divided into many "churches" possessing grace in their measure, to be united by mutual recognition, common prayer, and doctrinal minimalism rather than by return to the one Church. Named the panheresy by Saint Justin Popović, since it gathers many anciently condemned errors under one new name.
Genuine Orthodox Christians (Old Calendarists): The movement which, after the calendar change of 1924 in Greece, passed from lawful protest into separation: in 1935 three metropolitans consecrated bishops and constituted a rival synod over a matter that was not a heresy, and the movement thereafter divided repeatedly, one party teaching the official Church graceless and perpetuating its hierarchy by single handed consecrations. Distinguished in this book, with sorrow and without judgment of souls, from the lawful walling off of the same century.
Heresy: False teaching concerning the faith itself: a poisoned confession, as distinct from sin, which is a wound of life. The Church forgives all repented sin and can never make room for a false confession.
Holy Chrism (Myron): The consecrated ointment, the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit, by which the baptized is sealed into the one Body, and by which the Church has often received back those returning from schism and certain heresies.
Old Believers (Old Ritualists): Those in Russia who refused the correction of the service books and rites begun under Patriarch Nikon in 1653 and confirmed by the Moscow council of 1666 to 1667, which anathematized the old rites and delivered resisters to the civil power. Holding rite and faith to be inseparable, many declared the reformed Church graceless and the reign of Antichrist begun, and separated, dividing thereafter into the priested and the priestless. The Russian Church lifted the anathemas in 1971, declaring the old rites salvific; the schism nevertheless continues. Treated in the chapter "The Counterfeit Wall" as the standing lesson on defending tradition rightly and wrongly.
One altar: The teaching, from First Corinthians 10:16 to 17 and the first Fathers, that the Church is the one Body created by the one Eucharist: the whole Christ lies on every true holy table, so that all Orthodox altars are one altar, joined visibly through the commemorated bishops and the one confession, and joined to the heavenly altar itself. To raise a rival altar is the mark of schism.
Parasynagogue: In Saint Basil's classification, the unlawful assembly: a gathering held by disorderly clergy or uninstructed laymen, without any difference of faith. The mildest of the Church's three wounds, healed by repentance and return to order.
Phyletism: The organizing and dividing of the Church according to race or nation, rival hierarchies of rival bloodlines in one place, condemned by the Council of Constantinople of 1872. The clearest historical form of the counterfeit of blood: descent put in the place of the one faith as the bond of the Church.
Protodeutera (First and Second Council): The council held at Constantinople in 861 under Saint Photios the Great, in the church of the Holy Apostles, whose canons the Church received among her sacred canons. Its thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth canons govern separation from one's ecclesiastical head; the fifteenth contains the charter of walling off.
Pseudo-bishop: The fifteenth canon's exact word for a hierarch openly preaching condemned heresy: a man still holding office and name, whose formal judgment awaits the synod, but whose teaching has forfeited his claim on the flock's obedience.
Schism: Division of the Church over what is not the faith: a personal charge, a rite, a discipline, a nation, an ambition. Grave sin even among the sincere, marked above all by the rival altar; and, persisted in, it hardens toward heresy, as Saint Basil warned.
Synodikon of Orthodoxy: The Church's liturgical proclamation, read each year on the first Sunday of Great Lent since 843: anathema upon the condemned errors and upon knowing communion with them; eternal memory to the champions of Orthodoxy.
Walling off: See Apoteichisis.