Church (Orthodox Ecclesiology)

TAMARA GRDZELIDZE

THE PURPOSE OF THE CHURCH

The purpose of the church is to restore fallen humanity and thereby reconcile the whole creation to God. Its sacramental life is the means to fulfill this purpose. The divine economy of salvation is the foundational principle of the church. The mystery of human salvation leads to the mystery of the salvation of the whole creation which is God’s ultimate goal. In this life the church bears witness to a new existence revealed through the incarnation and the resurrection of Jesus Christ – “The Church has been planted in the world as a Paradise,” says St. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 5.20.2) – and this new reality already proclaimed is destined finally to attain the status of the new creation.

The nature of the church, as Orthodoxy understands it, is deeply experiential and accordingly it is difficult to describe it by any single formula that carries an overwhelming authority. The early church knew no such single doctrinal definition and the reason for this is that, according to Fr. Georges Florovsky (1972: 57), the reality of the church was only made manifest to the “spiritual vision” of the church fathers. The nature of the church can thus be experienced and described, but never fully defined. The closest approximation to a doctrinal definition within orthodoxy is the clause in the creed, which affirms that the church is “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.” The church is the place par excellence of a believer’s participation in the mysteries of God. The faithful participate in the divine mysteries from the very beginning of their life in Christ through the sacrament of baptism and reach the height of that participation in the Eucharistic celebration. The very essence of this participation is experiential, something that can be readily observed in the case of children whose love exceeds their understanding, or orthodox people of little knowledge but great faith. The love of God manifested to human beings and creation is reciprocated in faith by the church’s constant returning the love of God through the praise of the faithful. This human participation in the divine mysteries is nurtured always by the belief and knowledge that “God is love” (1 John 4.8), and this movement of praise that constitutes the church’s inner life is the height of creation – its meaning and fulfillment.

A CHURCH TRINITARIAN AND CHRISTOCENTRIC

The Apostle Paul speaks about the church and Christ in this way: “This is a great mystery” (Eph. 5.32). Christ is the foundation of the church: “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ” (1Cor. 3.11). The mystery of the incarnation and the mystery of the resurrection lie at the heart of that mystery which is the church; for, as Metropolitan Kallistos puts it, “The Church is the extension of the Incarnation, the place where the Incarnation perpetuates itself” (Ware 1993: 241). At the same time, in the words of olivier Clement, “The Church is the power of resurrection to us; the sacrament of the Risen one who imparts his resurrection to us” (1995: 95). The Scriptures describe the church as the body of Christ (Eph. 1.23; 2.13–14; Rom. 2.5; 1Cor. 12.4–30) and the Temple of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2.1–4; Eph. 2.21–22). The church is christocentric, yet it is charismatic, a restless energy led by and inspired with the Holy Spirit of God. The fullness of the triune God resides in the incarnate and resurrected Son of God. It is through the Spirit that Christians are united in Christ, incorporated into his body, and all partake of the same body of the resurrected Christ (1Cor. 10.17). It is through the Holy Spirit also that the faithful become partakers of the body of the resurrected Christ. As St. Basil describes it: Through the Holy Spirit comes our restoration to Paradise, our ascension to the Kingdom of heaven, our adoption as God’s sons, our freedom to call God our Father, our becoming partakers of the grace of Christ, being called children oflight, sharing in eternal glory, and in a word, our inheritance of the fullness of blessing, both in this world and the world to come. (On the Holy Spirit 36)

Plate 11 The Monastery of the Holy Trinity, now known as Troitse-Sergieva Lavra, Sergiev Posad, founded by St. Sergius of Radonezh. The most important monastery in Russia. Photo by John McGuckin.

A CHURCH DIVINE AND HUMAN, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE

The church as a theandric entity is like Christ in that it shares two natures, two wills, two realities – the divine and human; therefore, what can be said about Christ can be applied in an analogous way to the church. In this (christological) sense, the church cannot sin and the human sinfulness of its members evident within it cannot affect its holy nature. The church in its earthly existence witnesses to a certain tension because it is already the holy body of Christ (in other words it is sinless), but at the same time it gathers into its embrace members who are fallible and sinful. Even so, the element of human sinfulness cannot affect the essential nature of the church. The church, in orthodox understanding, is at once visible and invisible: it is one, and is not divided into a visible and an invisible church. The church exists in this world, and for this world, but it cannot be reduced to this earthly existence since it can never be considered separately from Christ and the Holy Spirit. The church thus embraces at once the body of Christ and the fullness of the Holy Spirit. In this sense, the church extends from an assembly of the gathered faithful to the assembly of saints: both realities gathered together around the throne of God.

The communion of saints denotes the continuity between the two worlds, that of the living and of the departed, a unity of present and future in the fullness of the one body of Christ. The names of the departed are read out together with the names of the living during every Eucharistic celebration, and the faithful who pray for the health and spiritual prosperity of the living also pray for those who “have fallen asleep in the true faith, and in hope of the Resurrection, and of life everlasting.” Most honored among the saints is the Mother of God and EverVirgin Mary, “More honorable than the cherubim and incomparably more glorious than the seraphim,” as a troparion of the church services describes her. The orthodox adopted the early patristic heritage about the church as Virgin Mother. such documents as the Shepherd ofHermas (2nd century) and the Second Epistle of Clement (late 2nd century), and the works of st. irenaeus of Lyon, clement of Alexandria (2nd-3rd centuries), Tertullian (3rd century), St. Cyprian of Carthage (3rd century), and later works from the 4th century onwards also developed the image of Mary as a symbol of the church. As St. Ephrem the Syrian expressed it: “Three angels were seen at the tomb: these three announced that he was risen on the third day. Mary, who saw him, is the symbol of the Church which will be the first to recognize the signs of his second coming” (Behr 2006: 119–34). In Orthodox iconography, Mary is symbolized in this ecclesial role with upraised hands – “orans” praying as the symbol of Christ’s church, as his truest disciple.

A SACRAMENTAL CHURCH

The structure of worship in the orthodox Church also reveals its true nature: Matins (Orthros), followed by 1st, 3rd, 6th, 9th Hours, the divine liturgy, Vespers, Compline, and Midnight Prayer. The church is shown in the liturgical cycle to be an unceasing prayer itself, an instrument of giving thanks to God for our life, by letting the faithful participate in the mystery of sharing the body and blood of Christ in anticipation of the kingdom and for the salvation of the whole creation. But worship is not an end to itself, for the church enters into the life of the faithful by the sacraments which spread out dynamically into the rest of their actual life. If understood otherwise, the church can seem to be a place of occultism. The participation of the faithful in the mysteries (sacraments) of the church unfolds in different ways. In the early church, in anticipation of the Eucharistic celebration, the faithful brought many products, fruits of their labor such as wheat, bread, oil, and wine, and they were used in the church services, thus offering back to God what had been given to them. Nowadays, in some places, especially in rural areas, one can still see the faithful bringing the actual fruits of their labor for use in church services. In other places this remains now only as a symbolic part of orthodox ritual. The participation of the laity in orthodox services is always dialogical, deliberately responsorial: clergy and laity are in dialogue throughout the worship, whether it is a question of the reciting of prayers, or the singing of troparia, jointly hearing Old and New Testament readings, assenting to the priestly intercessions by a corporate “Amen” or shouting out Axios, as a sign of assent during the rites of ordination and canonization. Sacramental operations in the church reveal the mystery by using material elements such as bread, water, and oil, thus disclosing at once the reality of this life and of the new life that is in Christ.

Sacramental life in the church is the pathway to salvation for a believer for, as Lossky puts it (1991: 181), “In the Church and through the sacraments our nature enters into union with the divine nature in the hypostasis of the Son, the Head of His mystical body.” By means of the sacred mysteries, the faithful are born, formed, and united to the Savior, so that “in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17.28). Orthodox catechisms today usually list seven sacraments or mysteries of the church: baptism, chrismation, Eucharist (the sacrament of sacraments), repentance or confession, holy orders, marriage, holy unction or the anointing of the sick; but this seven-fold enumeration is a late (17th century) development, made under the influence of western scholastic theology. Different church fathers and theologians have counted them in different ways (John of Damascus referred to two, Dionysius the Areopagite to six). Although the orthodox tradition avoids labeling the sacraments in terms of what are the most or the least important, baptism and the Eucharist remain the cornerstone of the sacramental life of the church. Baptism confers being and existence in christ and leads the faithful into life, while the Eucharist continues this life. Nicholas Cabasilas describes this in the following terms: “Through the sacred mysteries, as through windows, the Sun of Righteousness enters this dark world ... and the Light of the World overcomes this world” (1974: 49–50).

A EUCHARISTIC CHURCH

It is the sacrament of the Eucharist that constantly builds up the church as the body of Christ. As St. John Chrysostom maintains: “We become a single body, according to Scripture, members of his flesh and bone of his bones. This is what is

brought about by the food that he gives us. He blends himself with us so that we may all become one single entity in the way the body is joined to the head” (Hom. Jn. 46; PG. 59. 260). The sacrament of the Eucharist is the main key for approaching orthodox teaching on ecclesiology. As St. Irenaeus says: “Our teaching is conformed to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist confirms our teaching” (Adv. Haer. 1.10.2). The Holy Eucharist expresses all the major defining ecclesiological characteristics: unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity. In the orthodox Church the celebration of the Eucharist incorporates several of the other mysteries too (baptism, marriage, holy orders, funerals), because the partaking of the holy gifts was always seen as the summit of a liturgical celebration. The eschatological dimension of the Eucharist has also indicated and expressed the very nature of the church. The Eucharistic mystery is the eschatological moment par excellence, a remembrance of the kingdom which is centered on the Presence (Parousia) of Christ. In fact, as Metropolitan John Zizioulas reminds us, there is no real unity of the church without a vision of the last days (1985: 187). Liturgical anamnesis and commemoration are understood eschatologically: every moment in the liturgy is related to the past and the coming kingdom. This is the living reality of the church which embraces all times and all places at once; which recognizes the presence of faithful in prayer together with commemorated saints and the departed. This is the living church celebrating the Eucharist of which the faithful become partakers. The Eucharist is thus the sacrament par excellence, but it cannot exist on its own, without the wholeness of the wider sacramental life and teaching of the church. The entire life of the mysteries is a preparation or a pretext to participation in the Eucharistic celebration and all is brought into the human gift of salvation, which is the attaining of deification.

There are extreme cases such as martyrdom by which someone may acquire all the depth and meaning of the sacramental life at once; but these exceptions attain meaning only in the general context of a believer’s continual formation and transformation in and by the sacramental life of the church. Twentieth-century Orthodox theology has certainly witnessed a movement (seen in Catholicism also) for the rediscovery of Eucharistic theology. The remembrance that lex credendi must derive from lex orandi led to the “rediscovery” of the church as “the Sacrament of Christ.” Fr. Alexander schmemann was one of the leading lights in this revival. This rediscovery emphasized that sacramental life must not be seen as confined to the church, but embraces the whole of a human existence, a lifelong growth into christ, The church does not view its faithful as spectators or attendants of church services, but rather as participants who, after being sanctified in the church, bring the church back to their everyday life.

THE CHURCH AS A TEMPLE

obviously, when we refer to the church, for the orthodox the particular building also comes to mind. This is a secondary meaning (the church in its iconic architectural form as temple), but it is none the less important. Since the time of the official recognition of Christianity as a licit religion in the Roman Empire (Edict of Milan, 313), the church has been more a place than an action conducted at different locations such as memorials at the grave of the martyr or prayers in the home, as it was in the earliest practices of the Christians (and in modern times too, when we consider how many modern confessors in gulags have secretly celebrated the Eucharist). The primary importance of the action compared to the place has been preserved in the orthodox tradition of having liturgies in the open air, or “stational” liturgies. However, the Byzantine commentaries on the liturgy (by Germanos the patriarch of Constantinople d. 733 or Maximos the Confessor d. 662) also emphasize the importance of the church as a specific, and hallowed, place. Going to the church for other occasions apart from the liturgy is also significant, says Maximos the Confessor in his Mystagogia (PG 91. 701–4), as the holy angels remain there even after the synaxis and the grace of the Holy Spirit always invisibly is present in the church. For this reason it is a marked aspect of orthodoxy how much the faithful love their churches, care for them with great affection, and visit them often for private prayer as well as for public services.

THE CHURCH AS ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC, AND APOSTOLIC

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed speaks about the four marks of the church. Orthodoxy understands the unity of the church as being something true and absolute, a unity provided in one sense by the communion of all the local churches in the sameness of faith in Christ, yet a unity also that is the one promised by Christ (Jn. 10.16; 17.11, 21–22), which cannot be defined according to worldly concepts of unity because it is part of the divine mystery of communion in the Trinity. As Archbishop Antony Khrapovitsky put it: “The Church is the likeness of the existence of the Holy Trinity, a likeness in which many become one” (1911: 17–18). The church is also called to be holy. From the creation until the accomplishment of all the works of God the church will guard its holiness, which in the world is the most striking manifestation of God. Orthodox tradition sees the Holy Spirit as hypostasized holiness. Various aspects of the sacramental life in the church witness to different degrees of consecration and sanctification flowing out from the divine holiness. Like the burning bush at Sinai, “this place is hallowed” because of God’s presence within it; all the marks of holiness coinhere within it. The “kiss of peace” the church uses to recognize its communion is holy because it marks the fellowship of those who exchange it in christ. The prophets and apostles are holy because of the charism of their ministry, and each baptized person is sealed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and thus participates in none other than “the very holiness of God” (Heb. 12.10). The Eucharistic celebration speaks most explicitly of holiness. The Epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit during the Anaphora, consecrates not only the holy gifts but also the entire people of God; its words declare as much, saying: “Send down your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts here presented.”

The holy unity of the church also signifies its unifying power for divided humanity, and this characteristic is directly related to the third mark of the church – its catholicity. The orthodox church is called and known as catholic because it extends over all the world, from one end of the earth to the other; and because it teaches universally and completely each and all of the saving doctrines which must come to humankind’s knowledge, concerning things both visible and invisible, heavenly and earthly. As St. Cyril of Jerusalem said: “The Church is rightly named Ecclesia, because it calls forth and joins together all mankind” (Catechetical Lectures 18.23). Catholicity (known also in its Slavonic translation as Sobornost) is the wholeness and integrity of the church’s life rather than a simple geographical extension. The unity of the church is extended into the catholicity of the church: the church is one but it is manifested in many places, it operates with a plurality in unity and unity in plurality; and as Afanasiev put it: “in the church, unity and plurality are not only overcome: the one also contains the other.” (1992: 109). By virtue of this catholicity each member of the church on earth lives in union with the heavenly church entire, which maintains an uninterrupted union of love and faith with the visible church. This is why, in orthodoxy, the concept of catholicity is associated with a profound sense of the church as a body of which every member is an integral part, endowed with profound responsibility for the whole.

Exegeting how the church can be called “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1.23), St. John Chrysostom says:

The Church is the fulfillment of Christ in the same manner as the head completes the body and the body is completed by the head. Thus we understand why the Apostle sees that Christ, as the Head needs all His members. Because if many of us were not, one the hand, one the foot, one yet another member, His body would not be complete. Thus His body is formed of all the members. (Hom Ephes. 3.2)

Finally, the strong guardian of the unity of the church is its apostolicity. St. irenaeus gives the classic exposition of this concept:

Those who wish to see the truth can observe in every Church the tradition of the Apostles made manifest in the whole world.... This tradition the Church holds from the Apostles, and this faith has been proclaimed to all, and has come down to our own day through the succession of bishops. (Adv. Haer. 3.1)

The purity of apostolic succession, which orthodoxy cherishes as one of its great glories, binds the entire history of church life into the unity of catholicity, bringing together the faithful of all generations, transcending limitations of time and space. Apostolic succession is a matter of fidelity to the Lord’s teaching, but also involves the threefold ministry in the church: that of bishops, priests, and deacons. ordained ministry is the manifesting of the charismatic principle, the gift of the Holy spirit, continued in the church through the apostolic succession. The priest, the celebrant of the Eucharist, safeguards the unity within the local community, but the bishop safeguards the catholic unity of the local ekklesia, and their synodical communion defends the unity of the whole church throughout time and space. This is why the church’s apostolicity is fully manifested in the celebration of the Eucharist. The structure of the Orthodox Church with its threefold ministry and collegiality unfolds the theology of the early church with a bishop presiding as the head of the Eucharistic celebration, surrounded by presbyters and deacons who facilitated a link between bishop and laity. As Fr. John Meyendorff expressed it, Orthodoxy’s “maintenance of the apostolic structure of the Church is an eschatological necessity” (1978: 321). Orthodoxy also recognizes the highest authority of the ecumenical councils because they have this living charism of apostolicity.

A CHURCH LOCAL AND UNIVERSAL

orthodoxy’s conciliar principle is intrinsic to its Eucharistic ecclesiology; in other words, every local church is in accord with the other local churches and they are drawn together by love and harmony (a “consilience into unity” as the Council of Chalcedon described the Christ-mystery) above and beyond their legal unity afforded by means of the canons. Every local church bears the fullness (pleroma) of the Church of God precisely because it is the undivided Church of God, not a mere part of it. This fullness is a gift of God to every local church and all stand in agreement with each other, forming a living interdependence of churches. This interdependence is interpreted within orthodox ecclesiology as fundamentally a matter of connectedness of witness and testimony, rather than of canonical submission. It is a dialectic of unity in diversity which is very descriptive of orthodox ecclesiology, and very important to it. orthodox ecclesi- ology does not exclude the notion of a primacy of authority, but it interprets this in precise ways, and does not associate it with a power of supremacy in the church, which it regards as incompatible with the nature of the church as communion in Christ.

The church has been placed in the world by its Lord and master on a pilgrimage. It does not belong to the world (Jn. 17.16–18), but its task is to illumine it as it progresses towards its own glorious communion with the Lord of Ages. It lives in tension with the world, which cannot understand it unless God enlightens it to do so, and it has to resist the spirit of the world. But at the same time it does not reject the world; just as its Master did not reject the world but loved it and gave his life for it (Jn. 3.16), and sees that its destiny as eschatological mystery is to catch the very world into the New Creation which the church inaugurates as its ultimate goal. The church, “the inaugurated Eschaton,” already belongs to the New Creation (Gal. 6.15), but as to its final glory, that remains unseen in this earthly time.