'First Millennium Church' Ecclesiology

From a Russian Orthodox Archbishop, the classical Catholic and Anglican ecclesiological position, Eucharistic ecclesiology, Church as Eucharistic Communion of Eucharistic communions, the faith and doctrinal tradition of the undivided Church of the first thousand years of Christian history, primus inter pares primacy, collegial episcopate and conciliar church government - in short, the Church of the First Millennium.

'...Full Christian unity is the Eucharistic communion. We do not need to reshape our Church administration, our local traditions. We can live with our differences within one Church, participating from one bread and one cup. We need, however, to rediscover what united us and what brought us to disunity, particularly in the 11th century.

So the basis for the restoration of the full communion would be, I believe, the faith of the Church east and west in the first millennium...'

'...In any case, we do not believe that there could be a bishop above all other bishops whose decisions would be binding for the entire Church. We believe that the bishop of Rome in the first millennium was obviously first in honour but he was first among equals. He did not have direct jurisdiction, for example, over the East. Therefore, when we come to the discussion of the primacy we would argue that the universal jurisdiction of the Pope is something that didn’t exist in the first millennium and that if we restore, for example, Eucharistic communion, we would accept his role as first among equals but not as the universal bishop...'

'...We still discuss the role of the bishop of Rome in the first millennium, and even on this issue we see clear differences between the Orthodox and the Catholics. If we come to the discussion of the second millennium, the differences will become much more obvious. Therefore we should not pretend that we are close to solving this problem.

I think, however, that we should discuss it honestly; we should describe the differences in our positions, and we should see what would be the way out. For us, as I said, the way out would be the return to what we had in the first millennium...'