Does Christ have a vicar in the Church?

Our Lord Jesus Christ, before His suffering, testified about the apostles in prayer to His Father: “When I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name; which you have given to Me, I have kept, and no one will perish from them except the son of destruction, so that the scripture may be fulfilled. Now I come to You. And who is not in the world, but these are in the world” (John 17, 12, 13, 11). What should we do now for this still insignificant group of simple-minded people, armed only with “Your word” (v. 14). But for this very word the world will hate them with its prince and will fall upon them with all its might in order to extinguish the light of Christ’s truth that is barely burning on earth. However, the Savior does not pray for the apostles to exist comfortably on earth, in peace and contentment. On the contrary: “Sanctify them to Thy truth” (v. 17), He says, that is, consecrate them, give them to the cause of truth, or give them the strength to completely devote themselves to the cause of truth, to the point of being ready to endure everything for it and lay down their very lives, as Christ did. This means that the main danger from which the Lord Jesus prays to save the apostles and their successors is not the suffering awaiting them from the world hostile to them, but lest this world, with its temptations, entice them and bring them to betray the truth. Ap. Paul, in his farewell conversation with the Ephesian elders, instilling in them “attention to themselves and to their flock,” directly warns them about hesitation and betrayal among the shepherds of the Church: “I know this,” He said, “that after my departure heavy hogs will enter into you, not sparing the flock. And men will arise from yourselves, saying that you are corrupt, and will tear away the disciples after themselves” (Acts 20:29-30). Thus, a world hostile to Christ will not only strive to extinguish the lamp of Christ through all sorts of persecution and other external means. The world will be able to penetrate inside the very ship of Christ: among the church guardians appointed by Christ, it will be able to find servants for itself, so that with their hands they can destroy the work of God. In what way and means does the little flock of Christ, having parted with their Teacher and Lord, who, while “he was with them, kept them in the name of his Father” (v. 12), how will they now emerge victorious from such a dangerous struggle? What is the guarantee that “the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church of Christ” (Matthew 16:18)? Roman Catholics give a classically clear and definite answer to this question: the Lord Jesus Christ, departing to His Father, entrusted the earthly Church, that is, the apostles and all “believing words for their sake” in Him, to His vicar Apostle Peter, who became the bishop of the capital of the universe - the city of Rome, and endowed the Apostle with the extraordinary gift of infallibility in resolving issues of faith and church order for the entire universe. From the Apostle Peter, the first bishop in the Roman see, the position of Christ's vicar with all its powers and extraordinary gifts passes successively to the Roman popes, who rule the earthly Church, infallibly preserving Christ's truth in it and, with their infallible authority, repelling the attempts of the gates of hell to distort the latter. We agree that the Catholic teaching about the earthly Church is presented with captivating harmony. They see the Church as the wisest organization, perfectly adapted to the tasks facing it on earth. With all this, when discussing the Kingdom of God and, in particular, about the destinies of the Church of Christ on earth, we must not forget the words of the Lord: “My counsels are not as your counsels, nor are your ways as My ways. But just as the heavens are separated from the earth, so is My way separated from your ways, and your thoughts from My thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9). Or according to the Apostle: “Man is more wise than God, and man is stronger than God’s weakness” (I Cor. I, 25). From the Gospel we see that the Lord Jesus Christ, when physically departing from the earthly world, did not at all think of relinquishing His care for His Church. On the contrary, He promised the Apostles with all certainty: “Behold, I am with you to the end of the age,” and precisely in order to promote “the observance (in the Church) of everything that He commanded” to the Apostles (Matthew 28:20). In this sense, our Church also understands the words of the Lord, and in this persistent presence of the Lord with her, she sees the guarantee of her inability to overcome the gates of hell. “I am with you,” is sung in the kontakion for the Ascension, therefore, “no one is with you.” The Lord, according to the Apostle, is vigilantly vigilant over the Church, “that He may present to Himself a glorious church, not having any filth or vice, or any of these, but may it be holy and blameless” (Eph. 5:27). Delving into the contemplation of the “great mystery” of the coexistence of Christ and the Church, the Apostle sees in this coexistence a spiritual prototype, a prototype of the marriage union. Just as in marriage, two are united into one flesh and henceforth live an inseparable life, so Christ - the Head of the Church - with His Body constitutes a single being, living a single life, and both sides complement each other and are inseparable until the end of the century. Christ graciously “nourishes and warms the Church” and thereby saves people in it, and the Church, by obeying Christ, thereby actively participates in the salvation of people. In the consciousness of this essential unity with Christ, the Church dares to confess itself as the only bearer on earth of the intact teaching of Christ, the treasury of all grace-filled gifts, the only door to salvation. Its external canonical system, the zeal and wisdom of its earthly rulers also mean a lot for the Church. It is not for nothing that “the Holy Spirit appointed them to shepherd the church” (Acts 20:28). However, all this is only as long as He who said: “I am with you” is with them. With His removal, only the form of the Church remains, empty, graceless and unsaving, of which church history provides many examples. In the light of the apostolic teaching about the essential unity of Christ - the Head with His Body - for the Church, any discussion about any kind of vicarage in the Church becomes, in essence, unthinkable. We can talk about this only as long as we consider the Church as an earthly, human organization, albeit with heavenly tasks. In the foreground here is the administration, and for the administration it does not matter from whom the order comes, as long as this person has the proper authority. But given the indicated apostolic teaching, talking about replacing Christ with someone else is not only unacceptable, but is not without even a significant amount of blasphemy for a sensitive Christian conscience. By analogy, it comes to mind that some scientists are not averse to recognizing the doctrine of the ever-virginity of the Mother of God as optional. For us, it is important that the Most Holy Virgin was a Virgin at the birth of the God-man - our Savior, but whether she remained a Virgin forever, or then lived the life of an ordinary woman and had other children, it seems to be indifferent. Buried in dogmatic logic, people forget to think whether the Most Holy Virgin Mary would be worthy of being the Mother of the Lord if it were indifferent to Her whether to remain completely and forever with the Lord or to give Her love to someone else?! Moral incongruity speaks by itself about dogmatic inconsistency; fallibility. The same is true with the doctrine of vicarage in the Church. If Christ says about the Church: “My dove is one, my perfect one” (Song ch. 6, 8) and lays down His life for her, then the Church always remembers: “I am my brother and my brother is mine” (chap. 6, 2). For her, he is incomparable to anyone, “chosen from those” (5, 10). Even theoretically, imagining anyone else in the place of a Brother is unthinkable for the Church: this would be a retreat, a betrayal of its only Bridegroom and Savior. The most striking exponents of total devotion to the Church. Martyrs and ascetics undoubtedly appear to Christ. It is known that some Catholic ascetics reached ecstasy in the veneration of the heart of Jesus - to stigmata in experiencing the suffering of Christ. Could they achieve all this by dividing their hearts and attention between Jesus Christ and His earthly Vicar?! This is psychologically impossible! But apart from the fundamental, moral inconsistency of the doctrine of vicegerency, and from the point of view of the actual Divine Head, neither an angel, nor even less a person, can replace the Body-Church. The Church belongs not only to earth, but also to heaven, as it is called in heaven “to proclaim the manifold wisdom of God” (Eph. 3:10). Man is “earth and ashes” (Gen. 18:27), and even on earth he is only a short-term guest, moreover, he is subject to constant changes. While “his first love” is warming within him (Apoc. 2:4), he stays high, but as soon as he begins to cool down, he immediately goes down and mixes with the crowd. And if in time he does not “remember from where he fell and does not repent” (v. 5), then he may be completely cast out from the mouth of Christ (Ap. 3: 15-17). Neither his church position, nor the former glory of the pulpit on which he sits, nor the ecclesiastical celebrity of the city in which he lives will protect the sinner from such a fate. “Then you will begin to say: Thou didst teach with poison before Thee, and with violence, and at our crossroads. And he says: We don’t know where you come from. Depart from Me, all workers of unrighteousness” (Luke 13:26-27). The same fate sometimes befalls entire nations and cities. The Jews were very proud of their temple and Jerusalem, but the time had come for them to hear: “Behold, your house is left empty” (Matthew 23:38), and only at the “Weeping Wall” to mourn its former glory... True, in practice, any group of people, in order to systematically and successfully do some common task, is usually led by one person as a leader. It is as if the structure of the Church was developing historically and externally in this direction. The initial cells - small, however, virtually independent bishops - gradually united into groups: dioceses, metropolitanates, exarchates, etc., until they formed five patriarchates, next to which large associations appeared in the form of national churches. At the head of each church group there is certainly one of the bishops, whom the other bishops of the group “must respect as the head and do nothing that exceeds their authority without his judgment” (App. pr. 34). Perhaps, there will be nothing disruptive to the described course of development of church life and unacceptable if the entire universal earthly Church were someday headed by a single leader or primate as, for example, the chairman of an ecumenical council, but of course not the vicar of Christ, but only as the head of the church hierarchy; and also if such a leader turns out to be the bishop of some world capital. We do not know when the development of church life will end with such a single leadership. Let us not insist on the danger of concentrating universal power in the hands of one person, subject to all sorts of temptations. Let’s even assume that sole leadership in administrative terms will be useful to the Church; again, let’s not forget the words of God already cited above: “My advice is not as much as your advice,” and so on. The Lord leads His Church in a way known and pleasing to Him alone, and this path does not always coincide with considerations of human wisdom. Without transferring the Church into anyone’s hands, the Lord Himself remains at its head until the end of time, and to preach the Gospel and govern the church flock he sent the Apostles into the world and in their person and after them their successors - the Orthodox bishopric. The apostles went “to preach peace to all, united” not by mutual subordination or dominion of one over the other, but by “the union of love and (unanimous) surrender of oneself to the sovereign Christ of all” (Irmos of Maundy Thursday). In the same way, bishops, although by necessity they occupy departments of unequal importance and merit, are all endowed with equal grace-filled gifts and are also “bound by a union of love,” into which the arrogance of worldly power should not creep in (III Ecumenical Ave. 8). This basic principle of church structure (the freedom of the Churches and their harmonious cooperation in observing Christ’s commandments) church history has found excellent expression in a harmonious system of church government, in the aforementioned grouping of Churches with the sole head of each group. But the same church history also gives us a stern warning against placing special hopes on an external system. It is enough to recall the names of Nestorius, Dioscorus and the like, who headed the patriarchates, or the popes of subsequent times. Entire nations that once shone with Orthodoxy, glorious for martyrdom and asceticism, but have now fallen away from the Church, remain sad monuments of the human imperfection of the system, despite all its wisdom. As a Divine institution and with transcendental tasks, the Church cannot exist only by human means and human wisdom. Therefore, the Divine Head does not leave the life of the Church without His direct intervention. Just as He sent judges and prophets to ancient Israel, so to His Church in extraordinary moments He usually sends people of exceptional giftedness, like prophets, strong in spirit and faith. Without an official appointment, these people are promoted from the general mass and become leaders of others. But this leadership does not have an official character, is not a position established in the Church, and does not always adhere to official boundaries. Like any prophecy, it is a personal feat of such people, a matter of their personal initiative and zeal for God and the Church of God. Being temporary and seemingly accidental, this feat does not assign to the leaders any rights to govern the Church or to occupy this or that episcopal see. A striking example of this is St. Gregory the Theologian, one of the main fighters against Macedonia and the restorer of the Church of Constantinople, however, was not left at the see of Constantinople when the struggle ended. At the very dawn of church history, when it was necessary to “establish the brethren” and lay the foundations of churches in different countries, St. App. Peter and Paul: Peter is for circumcised Christians, Paul is for uncircumcised Christians (Gal. 2:7-8). As we see from the book of the Acts of the Apostles, St. Peter then acted with the initiative of a real leader. However, this did not open the way for him to occupy the only official position in the Church of the Bishop of Jerusalem at that time: it was taken by St. James, the brother of God. And this, we note, even among circumcision Christians. In the same way, St. Paul installed bishops in churches and instructed his disciples to do this, but he himself did not occupy any permanent see. That with the occupation of the Jerusalem see to St. James, one of the seventy, a certain primacy of honor or seniority even before the twelve Apostles passed, this is proved, firstly, by what Ap. James presided over the proceedings of the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem in the presence of both supreme Apostles Peter and Paul (Acts. 15, 13–22); and secondly, and even more, the recognition of this seniority (and before Apostle Peter) of the entire universal primitive Church: in the list of conciliar messages of the Apostles, from ancient times the epistle of St. Apostle was placed first. James, and the Epistles of Peter take second place. Such an order could not have been maintained forever if the original Church had recognized St. Apostle. Peter as his earthly head, and even more so as the vicar of Christ. Extraordinary prophetic leaders rose up in the Church in subsequent centuries: for example, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Cyprian of Carthage. During the Arian Troubles, St. Athanasius the Great rebelled; then - the Cappadocians Basil the Great and the two Gregory. In the fight against Nestorianism, the leader was St. Cyril of Alexandria; with the Monophysites - St. Leo, Pope; in other cases - others. At the same time, we note that the leaders of the Church were not necessarily bishops of any important, central cities, but, for example, Gregory the Wonderworker of Neocaesarea, Spyridon of Trimifunt, Gregory the Theologian, bishop of the insignificant Sasim, or Theodore the Studite, John of Damascus, not even a bishop. In this way, under the grace-filled protection and nourishment of its heavenly supreme Bishop and Head, through the labors and illnesses of the divinely enlightened host of holy apostles, fathers and teachers, our Holy Orthodox Church, “planted in the east” and scattered throughout the world throughout all countries and peoples and glorifying the Holy Trinity in all languages, until now, for so many centuries, and without earthly head and steward, unharmed, maintains the holy Orthodox faith bequeathed to her by Christ and steadily leads her children to eternal salvation. We believe that until the end of the century, Christ will not leave His Church with His gracious presence, but in the days of trials He will continue to send worthy workers into His vineyard, “guardians of the House of Israel,” so that they, having accomplished their feat, will shine like lights in the bright face of the holy fathers, for whom the Church glorifies Christ: “Glorified art thou, O Christ our God, a light upon the earth our fathers who founded and taught us all to the true faith.” You might be interested in: