Church Autocephaly Through the Lens of Carl Schmitt's Theory of Sovereignty

Abstract

The article discusses the issue of the church autocephaly through the leus of the Carl Schmitt's theory of sovereignty. It starts from the premise that the concept of autocephaly is synonymous with sovereignty in the area of the inter-Orthodox relations. He uses Carl Schmitt's concept of sovereignty-as-exception as an analytical tool seeing proclamation of autocephaly by a local church as introducing a state of emergency (exception), from which, in turn, sovereignty is born. As an example, the article considers the history of the Russian autocephaly. The article also introduces the distinction between sovereignty and its limited version, which arises in situations when a mother-church grants autocephaly to her part. An alternative model is the Church of Constantinople's sovereignty derived from the “primacy of honour” in the Orthodox diptychs. In this respect, the article considers the prospective Pan-Orthodox Council as claiming the supreme authority in Eastern Orthodoxy.