Ecclesiology is thus related to the issue of the priority of substance, or ousia, in relation to personhood, or hypostasis. If the one God were prior to the Trinity and identical with the one divine substance, then substance and oneness would precede personhood and multiplicity, in the Church as well as in God. The consequences for ecclesiology would be very serious. Not only would the local churches be subordinated to the structure of a universal Church, but equally each human person would be subject to that structure. Universal laws would be imposed upon particular personal beings, and the Church would be a totalitarian authority over the person. But such is not the case. Just as one nature of God exists, not in the abstract, but only in the three persons, so the universal Church exists only as a communion of local churches. In this respect there is a convergence between Orthodox and Anglican understandings of the Church. Orthodox and Anglicans agree in rejecting a single centralized authority in the Church. This is not for local and cultural, but for profoundly theological reasons.
The Church of Triune God – The Cyprus Agreed Statement of the International Commission for Anglican–Orthodox Theological Dialogue (Co-Chair Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon) Section I, 25.
