A.
The eschatological
identity of the Church
The basic
characteristics of the Church’s
identity are: God’s people all
assembled for the same purpose, with
the entire world around them, united
in the Person of Christ, in the
Holy Spirit. This is the identity
of the Church, which, however, will
be fulfilled in the future. In the
meantime, during the course of
History, this community struggles
firstly to preserve its identity
uninfluenced by other identities
that exist, and secondly, to bring
the rest of the world alongside it.
Thus, it appears we need to have a
concept of the term “Church”,
rather than a definition of
it. “Church” is mainly something
that we experience, something that
we observe, and not something that
we merely define with words.
Historically, the
roots of the Church are located –I
believe– in God’s appointment of
Abraham and the subsequent forming
of God’s nation. We shall examine
later on how the beginning of the
Church was perceived by certain
theologians (mainly of
Alexandria). Clement spoke of the
pre-existence of the Church, Origen
and others were more
Platonically-oriented, but I imagine
the data of Biblical theology lead
us there. When a nation is created
from the seed of Abraham, the
purpose is specific: “...for all
nations shall be blessed in you...”
and it is from there, that the
Messiah and the eschatological
community spring forth. Given that
all this information is available to
us in the New Testament (i.e. that
this is how the first Christians and
Paul perceived the Church), I
believe that this is where we should
seek its roots. It is within this
context that we should also place
the Incarnation. There are certain
orthodox theologians who seek the
roots of the Church in the reality
of the Incarnation. The Incarnation
is the incarnation of the Son and
Logos of God. It wasn’t mine, or
yours, or anyone else’s. The Church
does not appear in the Incarnation.
Given that the Incarnation has to do
with human nature in its fullness,
it has a certain pertinence to the
fact that various persons are going
to be embodied in the body of
Christ. However,
the body of Christ (in the sense of
being incarnate) is not sufficient,
nor is it capable of providing a
basis for Ecclesiology, because the
Church is not the corpus per se of
Christ – a personal Christ who
extends into eternity as the Western
theologians used to say. In order
for the Church to become the body of
Christ, it is in need of
our personal
incarnation. A body of Christ which
doesn’t include our personal
incarnation cannot –I believe– be
called a Church, if we were to
suppose that the incarnation is left
on its own, without the follow-up
event of the Pentecost. But the
Pentecost did follow, on account of
the fact that there existed the
people of God, which is why it is
preferable for us to seek the roots
there, rather than in the
Incarnation of the Son of God.
I repeat, the
Incarnation can be perceived as an
isolated event, without the creation
of a community, whereas the Church
without a community is unthinkable.
Of course the Church is also a
historical fact, whether we regard
it as “God’s people” or as a body of
Christ in the sense of a commonness,
ie., in the Holy Spirit. Because,
you should not forget that when the
Apostle Paul analyzed the term “body
of Christ” (Corinthians I, ch.12),
he said nothing more than that the
members of the body of Christ are
those precise charismas. There
cannot be a body of Christ without
the Holy Spirit, Who assembles its
members. The members of the Body of
Christ are not merely His physical
members, i.e., the ones that were
crucified or even resurrected; the
members are the “many” who are
joined within the “One”, to become
one whole. Consequently, the Body
of Christ is the Church, but with
the prerequisite that we are
speaking of actual members – of
persons – and not of an impersonal
human nature, the way that the Son
of God assumed human nature and
hypostatized it. If this were so,
then it would not constitute the
notion of “Church”.
[*].
When referring to the
primeval Christian communities, it
is understood that the
eschatological element was more
intense during their time, both
because their experiences of
actually seeing the Risen Christ
were more recent, but also because
they had a keener anticipation of
the arrival of end times events.
The expression “Maran Atha”
(=the Lord cometh) was alive in
them. Gradually, with time, the
Church began to feel this “Maran
Atha” less intensely, because the
Second Coming of Christ did not
appear to be materializing.
Nevertheless, because the eucharist
liturgies had been developed around
this core of “Maran Atha”, they were
not able to rid themselves of this
eschatological aspect of their
expectation. By repeating this
phrase in Her liturgies, the Church
of the first centuries preserved
this awareness of end times
expectations to a significant
degree. I fully respect this
position, on account of the Divine
Eucharist and the fact that the
Eucharist had such a central place
and such an eschatological
destination. The Church perpetuated
the “Maran Atha” with the Divine
Eucharist, hence the eschatological
perspective that is observed. Even
after the time of Constantine the
Great, the eschatological
perspective was preserved vividly in
the East, thanks to the Divine
Eucharist and its central position,
and to the fact that it maintained
the character of “Maran Atha”.
I think the problem
began to first develop in the West,
when this eschatological orientation
was substituted by an orientation of
a rather commemorative nature, i.e.,
as a kind of commemoration of the
past. The Divine Eucharist became a
remembrance of the Last Supper, and
thus lost the character of a
pre-portrayal of end times. On the
other hand, in the Orthodox East
with all its hagiography and
hymnology and the vestments of the
clergy, the Church continued to
preserve eschatology. In other
words, it transferred the
Kingdom of God into the Liturgy.
This is why I believe this aspect
was not lost during the period of
“Byzantium”. In the West, it had
already begun to wane since the
Mediaeval period, and the Church
there began to draw from the past,
and not fro the future. Now, one
might ask how it came to be that we
too have lost this eschatological
dimension. It is my view, that it
was the result of the various
influences from the West that we
succumbed to during the last
centuries. In other words, we too
have lost that eschatological
orientation, because we too have
embraced that perception of the
Eucharist that the West had. When
studying the late Trembelas’
Dogmatics, in the section concerning
the Divine Eucharist I found no
mention whatsoever of End Times. In
all its 200 or so pages, all of the
Divine Eucharist is conceived in the
sense of a reference to the Last
Supper and to Christ’s sacrifice on
the Cross. So we too went ahead and
planted these huge crucifixes atop
our altars. Not to mention my
favorite Liturgical topics, and to
expound how many influences we
accepted there. Well,
what can one expect,
if the Divine Eucharist (which was
the only thing that preserved an
awareness of the eschatological
identity) has also changed and is
heading in another direction? It is
to be expected, that this will cause
the Church to also lose its
eschatological awareness.
When
you bring an eschatological
dimension into the world, you create
a morality and a behaviour which has
social repercussions. You aren’t
supposed to make a special effort to
emulate the activities of secular
societies, to copy their methods and
to familiarize yourself with their
activities in order to compete with
them. Instead of getting itself
involved in philanthropic projects,
with all the specifications of a
successful philanthropic
organization or a Ministry of
Welfare, the ancient Church simply
had almsgiving. You cannot turn
love into an institution (if we were
to take love as an example). This of
course does not mean that you remain
inactive. When someone is hungry,
you give him food. The more that
you carry the eschatological
identity inside you, the more you
will love him and help him, even
sacrificing yourself. I am trying
to say that there are ways that the
Church can better perform its duty
in such areas, without spending
itself in social activities, without
becoming inactive, but rather in a
personal manner, and not as an
institution. I would say the same
thing applies to missionary work and
to all related topics. Things
evolved more naturally in the
ancient Church. Nowadays,
everything is “organized”. What we
call “organization of the Church” is
based on secular standards. We may
not be inactive, but we certainly
haven’t avoided secularization,
because that is what will happen,
when you emulate secular forms. I
happened to read a newspaper
article, whose commentary-response
by a professor Gousides I found very
interesting. He labelled the
article “the exodus”, while the
reference was to the clergy.
Apparently, everyone seeks an exit
in order to become more active,
hence the clergy should do the
same. But the nature of the Church
is entirely different, and I believe
that the people need that
“otherness”, that eschatological
difference. Proof of this, is that
whenever the Church attempted to
develop secular activities, even
though She may have momentarily
noted success, it eventually
dwindled away. We (of the previous
generation at least) had actually
lived through such attempts years
ago, where bishops strived to build
boarding homes, foundations, etc.
All of these were quite nice of
course – they were a testimony of
the Church. But then along came the
welfare state and improved them or
even took over such institutions. So,
what do the people expect?
How was this act of the Church
evaluated?
Very little. People
go to Church to worship, to cross
themselves, to light a candle, and
not because the Church has, say, a
retirement home for the aged. You
may very well ask: can’t the Church
have such a retirement home? Of
course it can. But what I am trying
to say is, that the Church must not
make this a part of Her identity, or
Her program. Naturally every
diocese has its elderly, and it will
take care of them. So will the
bishopric. What I am referring to,
is the spirit, the stance, the
placing.
Anyway, the Church
seems to be bipolar at this point.
On the one hand, it has to attend to
its mission, since it is dispersed
throughout the world. On
the other hand though,
in contrast to the
Jews (and even the Westerners, I
would say), the Church also has the
experience of an eschatological
congregation, on account of the
Resurrection of Christ and the
Pentecost. In other words, the
Church has a foretaste in the
present of that which is to be
expected in the future. The Church
is linked to this eschatological
union, which has not yet been fully
realized and is still anticipated,
hence She exists between these two
situations. She exists within
History, She is dispersed, She makes
missionary attempts, but that is not
the entire issue. She simultaneously
tastes and experiences the
eschatological congregation – a
situation that does not contain
missionary work or dispersal. That
is to say, while the missionary
experience and the dispersion are
elements of the Church, they do not
constitute Her identity. The Church
that does not have this experience
of an eschatological congregation
has lost its identity. Its identity
is linked to that very foretasting
of the eschatological union of God’s
people.
Anyway, judging from
all the above, it appears that the
Church is going through an “identity
crisis”, as it is fashionable to say
nowadays in Sociology. It is a fact
that people also go through an
identity crisis, just like
institutions do. And if you were to
pose the question: “where is the
identity of the Church? – where does
each one of us place it?” then, not
only in theory, but also in
practice, I am afraid you will
observe a vast difference of
opinions. The temptation of History
is immense. Eschatology seems like
a vaporous thing, which cannot be
grasped. But we do not realize –as
a Church – that people do not want
us like that. I believe that Man
needs this vaporous and elusive and
future element; he cannot find it in
any other institution of society,
only in the Church. And that is why
he will continue to go to Church,
regardless of how many activities
the priest or the bishop may have to
show for themselves, because that is
where a person wants to drop anchor
– in that elusive future. And woe
betide, if the Church deprives him
of it. Fortunately, we Orthodox
have a form of worship that is
permeated with the eschatological
dimension, the eschatological
character. That is what makes it so
appealing. That is what attracts
the people, otherwise we would have
no-one in the Church, just as it is
beginning to occur in England
nowadays, where those gigantic
churches are being shut down and
sold. They lack people. Because the
social work that the churches
believed was of greater importance,
has been supplanted by other
institutions; it has been
substituted. And the clergyman does
not know what else to do, or to
give. The more we displace the
eschatological element, the more
that it dwindles within the Church,
the more we are at risk of losing
the true identity of the Church.
[*]
OODE note:
In our humble opinion, the
historical roots of the Church
should be sought in the garden of
Eden, when the first Man and Woman
who were made “in the image” of God
were partaking of Divine Grace, and
were on the course for constituting
members of the body of Christ, as
they were deemed “regal
priesthood”. The Church should not
be perceived as something static; it
is an ever-changing reality, which
moves towards an objective and
which, during the course of History,
has changed many forms, as for
example in the Old Testament, where
it was the ‘Church of Israel’, and
from the Pentecost onwards became
the “Christian Church”. We most
assuredly encounter the roots of the
Church of Israel in the person of
Abraham, but they are not the roots
of the overall Church.