Moscow Agreed Statement (1976)

Moscow Agreed Statement (1976) is the usual name for the agreed theological report issued by the Anglican-Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission after its meeting in Moscow in 1976. The document belongs to the modern Anglican-Orthodox dialogue and addresses the knowledge of God, Holy Scripture, Tradition, the authority of the council, the Filioque, the Church as Eucharistic community, and the invocation of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist.

The statement is important for Anglican theology because it shows how Anglican doctrine can be expressed in the language of the undivided Church, while remaining accountable to Scripture, the Creeds, and the historic formularies. It is especially relevant to Anglican discussions of catholicity, Branch Theory, Eucharistic ecclesiology, the Filioque Clause, and the relation between Scripture and Tradition.

Bibliographic Details

Item	Detail
Date	1976
Place	Moscow, USSR
Commission	Anglican-Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission
Subject	Revelation, Scripture, Tradition, conciliar authority, the Filioque, Eucharistic ecclesiology, and the epiclesis
Official source	Anglican Communion Office document library

The Moscow text should not be confused with a treaty of reunion or an act of mutual intercommunion. It was an agreed theological report of the Commission, offered to the Anglican Communion and the Orthodox Churches for consideration and reception. The later Dublin Agreed Statement (1984) continued the same dialogue, followed by further Anglican-Orthodox work in later decades.

Historical Background

Formal Anglican-Orthodox theological conversations did not begin in 1976. Earlier joint conversations took place in the twentieth century, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, and postwar discussion included a theological conference in Moscow in 1958. The Moscow Agreed Statement was therefore not the first Anglican-Orthodox theological convergence since the Reformation, but it was one of the most substantial modern agreed texts produced by an official joint commission.

The immediate sequence of the modern dialogue began with the joint Commission's first meeting at Oxford in 1973 and continued through work at Cambridge in 1974, Canterbury in 1975, and Moscow in 1976. The Moscow meeting gathered the results of those sessions into a coherent doctrinal report.

Scope and Status

The Statement covers major doctrinal themes but does not present the whole doctrinal system of either communion. It records theological agreement where the Commission believed such agreement could be responsibly stated. Its appendices, including material connected with the Filioque and the ordination of women, should be distinguished from the main agreed chapters.

This distinction matters. The Moscow Statement is a serious ecumenical text, not merely a private theological essay; but it did not by itself establish full communion, settle the Orthodox judgment on Anglican orders, or require all Anglican provinces to alter their liturgical texts immediately. Its authority lies in its official conciliar-dialogue context and in the quality of its doctrinal convergence.

Textual Anchors

Because the Moscow Statement is often cited in compressed form, several exact phrases are useful for reading the document accurately:

Scripture is the main criterion

should not be included in this Creed

The Eucharist actualizes the Church

The operation of the Holy Spirit is essential

Main Doctrinal Themes

Knowledge of God

The opening section treats the knowledge of God as a gift of divine self-revelation. God remains transcendent and incomprehensible in his essence, yet truly makes himself known and communicates divine life by grace. The language is congenial to Orthodox theology of participation and theosis, while also fitting classical Anglican teaching that the saving knowledge of God is received through revelation, faith, and obedience.

For Anglican readers, this theme connects naturally with the Prayer Book's doxological pattern. God is known not as an object of speculation but as the Holy Trinity worshipped, confessed, and obeyed by the Church.

Holy Scripture and Tradition

The Statement presents Scripture and Tradition as inseparable in the life of the Church, while avoiding the claim that there are two competing revelations. A classical Anglican reading should state this carefully: Scripture remains the final canonical norm of doctrine, while holy Tradition is the Church's living reception, confession, worship, and interpretation of the apostolic faith.

This is compatible with the Anglican formularies when Tradition is understood as ministerial rather than an independent source above Scripture. Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles makes Scripture sufficient for salvation, and Article XX teaches that the Church may not ordain anything contrary to God's written Word. Moscow's formulation is therefore strongest for Anglicans when read as a patristic account of the Church's scriptural memory, not as a denial of scriptural sufficiency.

Councils and Catholic Reception

The section on councils emphasizes that the Church receives and guards the apostolic faith through conciliar judgment. This has special importance for Anglican catholicity. Anglican divines have commonly appealed to Scripture, the Creeds, the Fathers, and the early councils as witnesses to the doctrine of the undivided Church, while also refusing to treat any council as incapable of error apart from its fidelity to the apostolic faith.

The Moscow Statement therefore presses Anglicans to take conciliar reception seriously. It also requires honesty about differences: Orthodox theology gives a fuller and more settled place to the seven Ecumenical Councils, including the Seventh Council's teaching on icons, than many Anglican formularies explicitly define.

The Filioque

The Commission's treatment of the Filioque is one of the best-known parts of the Statement. It identifies the original Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed as the proper ecumenical form and treats the later Western insertion of "and the Son" as lacking the authority of an Ecumenical Council.

For Anglicans, this does not require rejection of every Western theological explanation of the Son's relation to the Spirit. It does, however, support the restoration of the Creed's original conciliar form in ecumenical and liturgical use. Wybrew notes that, in the Commission's 1976 judgment, the Anglican members agreed the clause should not be included in the Creed because it was not in the original form, had been introduced unilaterally in the West, and concerned the Eucharistic confession of the whole people of God.

The Church as Eucharistic Community

The Moscow Statement gives strong expression to Eucharistic ecclesiology. The Church is not merely an association of believers who occasionally receive the sacrament; she is the Body of Christ, visibly gathered and manifested in the Eucharistic assembly under the ministry of bishop, presbyter, and deacon.

This theme has obvious resonance with High Church and Anglican Catholic theology, but it need not be separated from classical Anglican doctrine. The 1928 American Prayer Book's Communion Office, shaped in part by the Scottish and Nonjuror inheritance, includes an explicit invocation over the gifts:

bless and sanctify, with thy Word and Holy Spirit, these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine

That prayer shows why Moscow has been attractive to many Prayer Book Anglicans: it connects Eucharistic doctrine to the Father, the Son's institution and sacrifice, and the operation of the Holy Ghost, without requiring later Roman definitions of transubstantiation.

The Invocation of the Holy Spirit

The section on the epiclesis teaches that the Eucharist is a Trinitarian action. The Father gives the Body and Blood of Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church's prayer. This emphasis agrees closely with Eastern liturgical theology and also with the American Anglican Communion Office, where the invocation is more explicit than in the 1662 English rite.

For classical Anglican theology, the epiclesis should not be isolated from the Words of Institution, anamnesis, oblation, thanksgiving, and faithful reception. The whole Eucharistic action is ordered to Christ's command and promise. For High Church and Nonjuror interpreters, Moscow gives ecumenical support to the claim that an explicit invocation belongs naturally to the fullness of the Eucharistic prayer.

Anglican and Branch Theory Significance

The Moscow Statement is often important for Anglicans who hold, or are sympathetic to, Branch Theory. It does not prove Branch Theory in a juridical sense, nor did the Orthodox participants accept an Anglican claim that the Anglican Communion is simply one branch coordinate with Rome and Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, the very shape of the dialogue is significant: Anglican theologians were not treated merely as representatives of a modern Protestant denomination, but as interlocutors capable of stating the apostolic faith in catholic, patristic, and conciliar terms.

From a pro-Anglican perspective, this supports the classical claim that Anglicanism is a reformed catholic church: scriptural in authority, creedal in confession, episcopal in order, sacramental in worship, and continuous with the ancient Church where it remains faithful to the apostolic deposit. Wybrew's account of Anglican-Orthodox dialogue is useful here precisely because it records both the real promise of convergence and the obstacles that prevented simple recognition or reunion.

The best Anglican use of Moscow is therefore neither triumphalist nor defensive. It is evidence that Anglican doctrine can be articulated within the shared grammar of the ancient Church, while also reminding Anglicans that catholicity requires holiness, doctrinal seriousness, disciplined worship, and visible communion.

Reception in Anglican Commentary

Anglican writers have continued to cite the Moscow Statement especially in three areas: Scripture and Tradition, the Filioque, and Eucharistic theology. A 2010 Streams of the River post, for example, republishes the Eucharistic sections as "the substance of the Moscow Statement as touching on the Eucharist," showing how the document has been received as a resource for Anglo-Catholic and ecumenical Eucharistic theology.

At the same time, sympathetic Anglican reception is not uniform. Some High Church and Anglican Catholic readers emphasize Moscow's patristic and sacramental language; some Evangelical and Reformed Anglicans welcome its biblical and creedal seriousness while asking for careful safeguards around the sufficiency of Scripture; and some writers in the Continuing Anglican world use the dialogue as part of a larger argument about Anglican catholic identity and ecclesial continuity.

Common Accuracy Notes

Several clarifications help prevent misuse of the Statement:

• It was a major modern Anglican-Orthodox agreed text, not the first theological contact between Anglicans and Orthodox since the sixteenth century.
• It did not establish full communion between the Anglican Communion and the Orthodox Churches.
• It did not constitute an Orthodox endorsement of Anglican orders, Anglican comprehensiveness, or Branch Theory as such.
• It did give Anglicans a serious official context in which to state doctrine in patristic, conciliar, and Eucharistic terms.
• Its treatment of the Filioque is a recommendation about the Creed's ecumenical form and a theological judgment about the history of the addition, not a complete settlement of all Western pneumatology.

See Also

• Anglican-Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission
• Dublin Agreed Statement (1984)
• Branch Theory
• Filioque Clause
• Catholicity in Classical Anglicanism
• High Church Anglican Theology
• The Thirty-Nine Articles and the 1928 BCP
• Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
• Prayer of Consecration (1928 BCP)
• Eucharistic Sacrifice in Anglican Theology
• Nonjuror Liturgical Theology

External Links

• The Moscow Statement - Anglican Communion Office
• Anglican-Orthodox dialogue overview - Anglican Communion Office
• Anglican-Orthodox and Anglican-Roman Catholic Theological Dialogue - Anglicanism.org
• The Anglican-Orthodox "Moscow Statement" (1976) on the boundaries of the Eucharist - Streams of the River