Eastern Orthodox Church
The conciliar idea of episcopal government continues in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the sixteen or so autocephalous primates are seen as collectively gathering around Christ, with other archbishops and bishops gathering around them, and so forth, in a model called "conciliar hierarchy". This is based in part on the vision in the book of Revelation of the 24 elders gathered around the throne of Christ, who are believed to represent the 12 patriarchs of Israel and the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ. There is no single patriarch with exclusive authority comparable to the Pope in Rome.
Read more about this topic: Episcopal Polity
Famous quotes containing the words eastern, orthodox and/or church:
“Midway the lake we took on board two manly-looking middle-aged men.... I talked with one of them, telling him that I had come all this distance partly to see where the white pine, the Eastern stuff of which our houses are built, grew, but that on this and a previous excursion into another part of Maine I had found it a scarce tree; and I asked him where I must look for it. With a smile, he answered that he could hardly tell me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All orthodox opinion—that is, today, “revolutionary” opinion either of the pure or the impure variety—is anti-man.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“It’s better to sit in the bar and think of church than to sit in church and to think of the bar.”
—Swedish proverb, trans. by Verne Moberg.