Canons are the Church’s rules. They’re the guidelines bishops have issued throughout history to organize church life, address problems, and help Christians grow in holiness.
Think of them as the Church’s operating manual. When the apostles and their successors gathered in councils, they didn’t just define doctrine. They also made practical decisions about how the Church should function. How should bishops be chosen? What happens when someone falls into serious sin and wants to come back? How should we handle disputes between churches? The canons answer these questions.
Not the Same as Doctrine
Here’s something that confuses people at first. Canons aren’t dogma. Dogma is what we believe, that Christ is fully God and fully man, that the Trinity is three Persons in one essence, that the bread and wine become Christ’s Body and Blood. Those truths don’t change. The Nicene Creed is dogma. It’s what we stake our lives on.
Canons are different. They’re disciplinary. They address how we live out the faith in concrete situations. A canon might say a bishop can’t be transferred from one diocese to another without serious cause. That’s important, but it’s not the same as confessing that Jesus rose from the dead.
The seven Ecumenical Councils gave us both. Nicaea in 325 gave us the first form of the Creed and also issued twenty canons about church order. Constantinople in 381 completed the Creed and added more canons. All seven councils worked this way, defining the faith when heretics attacked it, then making rules to protect and organize the Church’s life.
How They Work Today
We still follow the canons. Your priest can’t just decide to do things however he wants. He’s bound by the canons, and so is your bishop. When Metropolitan Joseph makes decisions for our Archdiocese, he’s working within the canonical tradition that goes back to the apostles.
But here’s the thing. Canons aren’t laws in the American legal sense. They’re not a contract you can take to court. They’re pastoral tools. The Church applies them with what we call “economy”, a word that means flexibility for the sake of salvation. A canon might prescribe a three-year penance for a particular sin, but your priest might shorten or lengthen that based on your actual spiritual condition. The goal isn’t punishment. It’s healing.
This trips up people coming from Protestant backgrounds where everything’s either permitted or forbidden, and it confuses Catholics who are used to a more juridical approach. Orthodox canon law is pastoral first. It exists to help you become more like Christ, not to create a legal system.
Living Under the Canons
Some canons you’ll encounter right away as an inquirer. There’s a canon that says you need to be baptized to receive Communion. Another says you should fast before receiving the Eucharist. These aren’t arbitrary rules. They’re the Church’s wisdom about how to approach the holy things reverently.
Other canons govern things you’ll never think about. How many bishops need to be present to consecrate another bishop? Three, according to the canons. What happens if a diocese goes years without a bishop? The canons address that too. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware’s book “The Orthodox Church” has a good section on this if you want to dig deeper.
The canons also protect you. They prevent bishops from acting like tyrants. They ensure priests are properly trained. They keep the Church from splintering into a thousand independent congregations, each doing its own thing. If you’ve been part of a non-denominational church that split because the pastor and three elders had a fight, you know why that matters.
A Word About Rigorism
Some people treat the canons like they’re the Pharisees with the Torah. They’ll tell you that if you don’t follow every canon to the letter, you’re not really Orthodox. That’s not how the Church works. St. Paul wrote that the letter kills but the Spirit gives life. The canons exist to serve the Gospel, not replace it.
Your priest at St. Michael’s isn’t going to hand you a rulebook and tell you to figure it out. He’s going to guide you. If you work offshore two weeks on and two weeks off, he’ll work with you on how to keep a prayer rule and make it to Liturgy. That’s the canons functioning as they should, flexibly, pastorally, aimed at your salvation.
The canons are part of Holy Tradition, that living stream of faith that flows from Christ through the apostles to us. They’re not dead rules in a dusty book. They’re the Church’s living wisdom, applied by living bishops and priests to help living people become saints.
