Terminology - CANONS

CANON – Literally, “a rule. (Gr)“ It describes (1) the inspired Books of the Bible – the Canon of Scripture; (2) the rules and decrees issued by the early Church (Acts 15:23-29) and by Ecumenical Councils – Canon Law; and (3) certain parts of worship, such as the Liturgical Canon or the Canon of Matins…. Read More

APOSTOLIC CANONS – (Sl. Apostolskiya Pravila) A collection of eighty-five ecclesiastical decrees believed to have been drawn up by the Apostles. They are concerned chiefly with the discipline of the clergy and ordination.

Service books of the Church

If anyone wishes to recite or to follow the public services of the Church of England, then (in theory, at any rate) two volumes will be sufficient — the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer; similarly in the Roman Catholic Church he requires only two books — the Missal and the Breviary; but in the Orthodox Church, such is the complexity of the services that he will need a small library of some nineteen or twenty substantial tomes. ‘On a moderate computation,’ remarked J. M. Neale of the Orthodox Service Books, ‘these volumes together comprise 5,000 closely printed quarto pages, in double columns^{‘ (Hymns of the Eastern Church, third edition, London, 1866, p. 52)}. Yet these books, at first sight so unwieldy, are one of the greatest treasures of the Orthodox Church.^{( Bishop Kallistos Ware)}

Sources of Christian Doctrine

^{By Fr. Thomas Hopko}

Revelation

Every morning at its Matins Service the Orthodox Church proclaims: “God is the Lord and has revealed Himself unto us; blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord” ^{(Ps 117[118]:26-27)}. The first foundation of Christian doctrine is found in this biblical line: God has revealed Himself to us.

God has shown Himself to His creatures. He has not disclosed His very innermost being, for this innermost essence of God cannot be grasped by creatures. But God has truly shown what men can see and understand of His divine nature and will.

The fullness and perfection of God’s self-revelation is found in His Son Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of the gradual and partial revelation of God in the Old Testament. Jesus is the one truly “blessed… who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Canons – Holy Tradition

^{By Fr. Thomas Hopko}

There are canon laws of ecumenical councils, of provincial and local councils, and of individual church fathers which have been received by the entire Orthodox Church as normative for Christian doctrine and practice. As a word canon means literally rule or norm or measure of judging. In this sense the canon laws are not positive laws in the juridical sense and cannot be easily identified with laws as understood and operative in human jurisprudence.