The Apoteichisis: The Wall of the Faithful, Canon 15 of the First and Second Council (861)

What, then, are the faithful to do when the shepherds themselves preach the heresy, when patriarchs lift anathemas without repentance, sign documents that call the heterodox “sister churches,” and prepare a common cup? The Church did not leave her children without an answer. She gave it eleven centuries ago, at the First and Second Council of Constantinople (861), convened under Saint Photius the Great in the Church of the Holy Apostles. Its fifteenth canon names the answer: apoteichisis (ἀποτείχισις), literally, a walling off: the cessation of the liturgical commemoration of a bishop who publicly preaches condemned heresy, even before any synod has judged him.

The canon, having first condemned those who separate from their bishop over personal accusations not yet judged, then declares:

“But as for those who, on account of some heresy condemned by holy Synods or Fathers, withdraw themselves from communion with their president, who, that is to say, is preaching the heresy publicly, and teaching it bareheaded in church, such persons not only are not subject to any canonical penalty on account of their having walled themselves off from communion with the so called bishop before any conciliar or synodical verdict has been rendered, but, on the contrary, they shall be deemed worthy to enjoy the honour which befits them among Orthodox Christians. For they have defied, not bishops, but pseudo bishops and pseudo teachers; and they have not severed the unity of the Church by schism, but have hastened to deliver the Church from schisms and divisions” (Canon 15 of the First and Second Council, 861).

Every word must be weighed. The canon does not shield separation over personal sins, administrative wrongs, jurisdictions, or private suspicions, for these, the canons condemn separation as schism, and rightly. Its shield applies where three marks meet: the error is genuine heresy; the heresy is already condemned by holy Councils or Fathers; and it is preached publicly and bareheaded, openly, shamelessly, from the very teaching seat of the Church. Where these three meet, the one who walls himself off is not a schismatic but a confessor, and the guilt of schism falls not upon him, but upon the pseudo shepherd whose preaching divides the Church. Even Apostolic Canon 31, the ancient canon against schism, punishes only the one who separates “having no charge against the bishop in matters of piety and righteousness”, the exception for the faith is written into the oldest law of the Church itself.

And here the deeper truth must be stated: Canon 15 does not create the duty; it shields those who fulfill it. The duty is older than the canon, for it comes from the Scriptures and from the canons that already forbid communion in condemned heresy. “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8, KJV). “If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds” (2 John 10 to 11, KJV). “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid” (Romans 16:17, KJV). The Apostolic Canons forbid the clergy even to pray with heretics (Apostolic Canon 45). What Canon 15 adds is not the duty but the shield: it strips the name of schismatic from those who obey these commands before the synod has spoken. This is why the defence of the faith is not optional. The permissive reading, that the faithful may lawfully remain in communion with open, condemned heresy until some future council acts, devours itself: at a robber council it would oblige the faithful to follow the heresiarchs, and it would condemn the very saints whom the Church glorifies. The sheep of Christ were never commanded to wait for permission to flee the wolf: “a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers” (John 10:5, KJV).

For the saints practiced the wall before the canon named it. Saint Athanasius stood against the Arian bishops when the sees of the world were in their hands. Saint Maximus the Confessor, told at his trial that all the patriarchates had entered communion with the Monothelites, answered that even if the whole universe should commune with the patriarch, he alone would not, and his tongue and hand were taken, and the Sixth Council vindicated him. Saint Theodore the Studite refused communion with the iconoclast hierarchy and suffered exile and scourging for it. Saint Mark of Ephesus refused the union of Florence alone, and forbade the unionists even his funeral. And let it be noted with honesty, for it is the strength of the argument and not its weakness: not one of them invented a doctrine of his own; every one resisted a heresy already condemned by Councils or Fathers before him; and every one was afterward vindicated by a council. The wall guards the deposit; it never builds a new church beside the Church.

It must equally be said what the wall is not. Apoteichisis is not the founding of a rival synod, nor the pronouncing of anathemas by private men, nor a license for the proud. He who walls off does not judge in the council’s place; he refuses defilement while awaiting the council, for communion in the holy things with those who preach what is condemned is not neutral, it defiles, and the conscience of the Orthodox needs no permission slip to refuse defilement. Toward the timid, the hesitant, and the deceived, the confessors showed patience, not damnation. The wall is raised weeping, not in triumph; and its purpose is the canon’s own stated purpose, to rescue the Church from schisms and divisions.

For the one who ceases to commemorate a pseudo shepherd does not fall out of communion; he falls into it. He stands where the whole Church of the ages stands, with the Seven Councils, with Athanasius, Maximus, and Mark, with the martyrs of Zographou and of Brest, in the communion of the saints, which no pseudo bishop can dissolve. The wall is obedience, not schism; and what it walls in is heaven. In an age when the calendar was altered for the sake of union, when anathemas are lifted without repentance, when “sister churches” are proclaimed and one cup is prepared without one faith, Canon 15 stands in the Church’s law like a gate in a fortress wall: the lawful, ancient, and honored path by which the faithful remain what they have always been, “the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15, KJV).

Below is a direct application of the mind of the Ecumenical Councils to modern ecumenical dialogue, written as the Councils themselves would have judged it, using their method, language, and criteria, not modern diplomacy. This is the key: not what we feel, but how the Church has always judged.

How the Ecumenical Councils Would Have Judged Modern Ecumenical Dialogue Today (1900s, 2000s)

When the holy and Ecumenical Councils gathered, they did not assemble in order to negotiate coexistence, but to confess truth, to heal error, and to guard the unity of the Church by excluding false teaching. Unity was never assumed; it was defined. Communion was never extended as a tool; it was withheld until truth was confessed. This is the decisive point by which all modern ecumenical dialogue must be measured.