Source: Notes on Arab Orthodoxy Arabic original here. Note that in Arabic, the word for “synod” and “council” is the same. For a succinct expression of a similar understanding of primacy by a medieval patriarch of Antioch, seehere. For more discussions of Antiochian ecclesiology, see here andhere. The Holy Synod It is the gathering  of the regional church, which they call the local church, and in most churches it is made up of their bishops. For example, the churches gathered around the patriarch of Antioch are called the Antiochian Church, those around the patriarch of Alexandria the Church of Alexandria,…