What Is More To Be Desired', asks Saint Theodore the Studite (759-826), 'than a true father-a father-in-God?' This personal relationship between the spiritual father or elder geron in Greek, starets in Slavonic and his child in God is of crucial importance for any understanding of the Christian East. There are in a sense two forms of apostolic succession within the life of the Church. First there is the visible succession of the hierarchy, the unbroken series of bishops in different cities, to which Saint Irenaeus appealed at the ed of the second century.