Category: Church

Ecclesiology is thus related to the issue of the priority of substance, or ousia, in relation to personhood, or hypostasis. If the one God were prior to the Trinity and identical with the one divine substance, then substance and oneness would precede personhood and multiplicity, in the Church as well as in God. The consequences for ecclesiology would be very serious. Not only would the local churches be subordinated to the structure of a universal Church, but equally each human person would be subject to that structure. Universal laws would be imposed upon particular personal beings, and the Church would be a totalitarian authority over the person. But such is not the case. Just as one nature of God exists, not in the abstract, but only in the three persons, so the universal Church exists only as a communion of local churches. In this respect there is a convergence between Orthodox and Anglican understandings of the Church. Orthodox and Anglicans agree in rejecting a single centralized authority in the Church. This is not for local and cultural, but for profoundly theological reasons.

The Church of Triune God – The Cyprus Agreed Statement of the International Commission for Anglican–Orthodox Theological Dialogue (Co-Chair Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon) Section I, 25.

Much of the current understanding of pedagogy, in Britain especially, is driven by an appeal to method: the pursuit of specified goals in learning a subject will generate specified, quantifiable results and an outcome. Education, inasmuch as it is conceived as a process, will have outcomes which will both act as a measure against which differing students of differing ability can be measured and will thereby sift themselves into social roles and place. At the same time an understanding that what is to be learned is something which must be attended to, rather than grasped, in an attitude of humility and reserve, is being eroded. Modern teaching is too often underpinned by a view that everything is a ‘resource’ which can be endlessly remodelled or manipulated to satisfy immediate needs. Instead of learning as a process of assimilating something greater, and to which the one who learns must be conformed, students are increasingly being taught to see everything as series of ‘problems’ to which mere cleverness and expediency can always find ‘solutions’.

The emphasis on method in learning, and the gradual wearing-away of a model of teaching that has at its heart the apprenticeship of the student to the teacher – discipleship in learning – is yet again evidence of the disappearance of the place of the human in what it is to learn, to study, and to teach. In the face of this Christians have long known that at the heart of discovering who we are to be in God is the practice of discipleship and the witness of the disciples the Lord gathered around him. We encounter the person of Jesus the Christ through the teaching of those disciples who became Apostles, both followers and, as followers, ones who received the commission to go out and proclaim the good news to the whole world. This going out always has at its heart a personal encounter, of those at whose hands we ourselves have received the faith, and through whom we encounter the person of Jesus Christ.

The Church knows therefore, that pedagogy cannot ever be a method, but rather has to have at its heart personal encounter. The one who teaches must himself know what it is to have studied and to have been taught. In pedagogy like this, the specificity of ‘outcomes’ and ‘benchmarks’ might be present, but is only adjunct to the real task: the leading of the student into a path on which the teacher himself has journeyed…In consequence, a genuinely humanising pedagogy can emerge which questions every attempt to instrumentalise learning to outcomes and methods. Such a pedagogy becomes a genuine met’ odos, the following of an open path.

The Society of St. Catherine of Siena The Vocation and Formation of Theologians and the Teaching Office of the Bishop in the British Context

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I have been looking for this sort of document for fully two years. I am simply baffled as to why it and others like it are, for all intents and purposes, hidden. I suggest that it is the job of every congregation to pray and petition their bishop to read them this document from the pulpit once a year and that its pithier phrases be turned into bullet points, learned off by heart, taught to confirmation candidates and chanted through the streets of English cities every Corpus Christi. Every Anglican should find a Roman Catholic and say ‘teach me this discipleship.’

Of course this ‘Vocation and Formation of Theologians…’, along with ‘On the Holy Eucharist’ and the other marvellous documents on display on the Catherine of Siena site, have their weaker moments. But inasmuch as we do not know even of the existence of these church documents, let alone start to wrestle with them, we are all the losers. Aren’t we failing the people of the UK, or wherever, by failing to pass on to them the deposit of faith we have been given on their behalf?
Ditto for the Anglican documents of the Inter Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission published on the Anglican Communion website.

The Christian is a member of an assembly that participates in the future assembly of all things. Under the instruction and supervision of that assembly the Christian begins to grow into their place and role, and to learn that this assembly has more in store for him or her. However the individual Christian may delay taking up their identity, this assembly refuses to let him or her become less, or become an object, they do not allow that everything has been said about them. To know them we have to open ourselves to the point at which we can let them surprise us.

The completion and catholicity depends on our Amen, which is the public event of the acknowledgment, which we give in freedom. As we give this Amen, we grow, our ability to grant the freedom of others, and with it our own freedom, grows.

The basis of knowledge is communion, and bound by love, in which we participate in one another in friendship, brotherhood and many other forms. It is as we respond to people, and they to us, that we know people. To come to know them more fully we have to respond them, and wait for them, and receive their response gladly, and learn to give them whatever will direct them towards their fulfilment. We have to give them Christ and all his hospitality and its truth, and not thank them for anything but Christ and all his truth. There is no knowledge without love. This love is that fellowship which is the whole loaf of Christ and his people. Thus catholicity, of which the eucharist is the event, is the origin of the universality of knowledge. It is this catholicity and comprehensiveness to which all the sciences of the university aspire. The university is universal to the extent that it participates in the catholicity that derives from the eucharist and observes the anticipatory character and so observes the proper limits of our knowledge.

Previous Catholicity posts

This theological doxological mode of knowing enables all other forms of knowing, amongst them natural science. It provides the framework which prevents science from imposing an unlimited power over its object. This framework guarantees that we are distinct from what we know, that the world and other creatures are distinct from us. It is the assurance that neither the world nor any object in it are divine, and that they are not constructed by us, and thus we are not divine. The acknowledgment that we are not God is the real foundation that we may have real knowledge of anything, and thus it underwrites and enables science.

For the human without God however, the highest form of mastery is that of the scientist who can place before them the object of their enquiry before them. Whether this object is a thing or a person, the form of scientific knowing, makes an inert object of it. This object of enquiry is not expected to introduce itself, to speak back or to play any part in the process by which it becomes known. The scientist can control it so that it cannot become anything that it is not already. To such science the object is inert so that it will never be able to surprise or threaten the knower. Such knowledge will require the regular re-assertion of the mastery of the knower, and this act of subjugation will impoverish the knower as well as the known.

But this is not an adequate form of knowing. Knowledge, or science, without love, is just an act of control and mastery. Knowledge without love means that we never have the confidence or self-mastery to be not only a master, controller and manipulator, but also a friend and even a servant.

So far I have said that, in the church, we already participate in that future complete assembly, which is the whole body of Christ. In this future body we will be relationship with all, and they will all participate in us. We will belong, not any smaller or lesser group, but to the whole, the universal or catholic entity of Christ. We are not complete, and not ourselves without them, and they are not complete without us. We will not be raised from the dead without them: they are essential to our final identity: in the resurrection body, the universal, catholic, body, when Christ is all in all, all will be in all. This means that we may now know Christ only with all whom the Father has given him. Christ prepares now them for us, and us for them.

All these people have received from Christ a piece of the future creation, and in this future creation they have also received a little bit of us. They have a piece of our own true selves that we do not yet have. They have to teach this new aspect of our proper identity to us, and we have to receive it from them. They have to give this piece to us, and we have to receive it from them, and must wait until they do. We receive ourselves only from them. This means that we must want to receive this from them: it requires that we are open and willing to receive them, and so to receive Christ, and our own identity, freely. Love makes us free to receive them. Only when we take it from them (and have learned how to do this) are we really and freely ourselves.

Christ meets us. But that meeting involve us in a search in which we look everywhere for him, even in that company that we consider ungodly. We find him where he, in his freedom, meets us. He meets us in the form of that very set of persons against whom we had most recently and most fervently been defending ourselves. Christ is there – only – for us, in the person we were trying to avoid. Christ is there at that moment turning this rival into our friend. We cannot turn away from them without turning away from the piece of ourselves that they, and only they, have to give us. We cannot turn away from them without turning away both our Lord, and our own future. We have to go the Christians we don’t like, whose doctrine and churchmanship are repellant to us, in order to meet Christ.

This means that ‘ecumenism’ is an event of repentance, reconciliation and forgiveness. The eucharist is the ecumenical event. Though an unlovely word, ‘ecumenical’ simply means communion. This communion comes through being reconciled with those who oppose us. Of course this reconciliation cannot come at the expense of truth, so ‘there must differences among you’ and forthright exchanges of view. But we must be reconciled with those who oppose us, and that most often means from those at opposite ends of the church, the ‘evangelicals’ or the ‘catholics’ or whoever’s churchmanship you regard as least acceptable.

We meet Christ in the event in which our opponent becomes our brother. We have to put into words what we hold against him, and we have to forgive him and ask him for his forgiveness. Every time we meet, we must look forward to and pray for this reconciliation and unity.

See previous ‘Catholicity’ posts

This fraternal encounter which brings us together, Pope Benedict XVI of Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, is Godâ??s work, and in a certain sense his gift. We give thanks to the Author of all that is good, who allows us once again, in prayer and in dialogue, to express the joy we feel as brothers and to renew our commitment to move towards full communion. This commitment comes from the Lordâ??s will and from our responsibility as Pastors in the Church of Christ. May our meeting be a sign and an encouragement to us to share the same sentiments and the same attitudes of fraternity, cooperation and communion in charity and truth. The Holy Spirit will help us to prepare the great day of the re-establishment of full unity, whenever and however God wills it. Then we shall truly be able to rejoice and be glad.

1. We have recalled with thankfulness the meetings of our venerable predecessors, blessed by the Lord, who showed the world the urgent need for unity and traced sure paths for attaining it, through dialogue, prayer and the daily life of the Church. Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I went as pilgrims to Jerusalem, to the very place where Jesus Christ died and rose again for the salvation of the world, and they also met again, here in the Phanar and in Rome. They left us a common declaration which retains all its value; it emphasizes that true dialogue in charity must sustain and inspire all relations between individuals and between Churches, that it â??must be rooted in a total fidelity to the one Lord Jesus Christ and in mutual respect for their own traditionsâ?? (Tomos Agapis, 195). Nor have we forgotten the reciprocal visits of His Holiness Pope John Paul II and His Holiness Dimitrios I. It was during the visit of Pope John Paul II, his first ecumenical visit, that the creation of the Mixed Commission for theological dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church was announced. This has brought together our Churches in the declared aim of re-establishing full communion.

As far as relations between the Church of Rome and the Church of Constantinople are concerned, we cannot fail to recall the solemn ecclesial act effacing the memory of the ancient anathemas which for centuries had a negative effect on our Churches. We have not yet drawn from this act all the positive consequences which can flow from it in our progress towards full unity, to which the mixed Commission is called to make an important contribution. We exhort our faithful to take an active part in this process, through prayer and through significant gestures.

Common Declaration by Pope Benedict XVI & Patriarch Bartholomew I

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What these two Christians, Benedict and Bartholomew, are doing is what every Christian must do in order to receive Christ â?? go to the Christians you disagree with, make your differences clear to one another, confess and forgive what has to be confessed and forgiven, and together look forward to your reconciliation and unity. Let’s do it.

The real Christ for the Orthodox Church is the Christ of the gospels and Acts; the Christ of the writings attributed to the apostles John and Paul, and Peter and James and Jude. There is no other Christ for the Orthodox Church. A Christ produced by scholars, mystics, poets or politicians – or even by creative theologians, charismatic elders or crusading activists within or without the Church – is never the real and whole Christ of Orthodox doctrine, liturgy, spirituality and sanctity. He is surely not the Christ of Orthodox mission.

To know the real Christ requires a diligent and critical study of the Bible. Before anything else, Christians are disciples, i.e. students (mathetai). They are students of Christ before they are his “members” as members of his Church. They are his disciples before they are his apostles and missionaries (i.e., “those who are sent”). And they are certainly his disciples before they are bishops, presbyters, elders, and theologians of his Church.

Jesus appears in the gospel narrative first as rabbi, master and teacher (didaskolos, magister). He instructs his students in the right understanding of the old testament writings. Risen from the dead he opens the minds of his disciples to understand the scriptures and explains to them how “the law, the psalms and the prophets” speak about him (cf. Lk 24).

Critical study of scriptures is a reading and hearing of the biblical words without prejudging or predetermining their meaning. Through such study the student (who may in some circumstances be unable to read) wants to know what the writings actually say and mean, first for those who originally wrote and heard them, and then for people today, beginning with oneself. Such study uses all available means to illumine and explain (but not to constitute or determine) the biblical texts as written and received in the Church. It employs, for example, the knowledge of languages, literature, history, religion, geography and archeology. It welcomes the guidance of those skilled in such fields. But though this study is done within the Church community with the help of others, it must be done for oneself. Each individual believer must personally engage God’s Word in the Bible. Without such engagement, especially today in North America, and especially by the Church’s leaders, there is no genuine Orthodox mission.

Bible and Liturgy

The hearing and reading of the Bible essential to Orthodox missionary work occurs in the context of the Church’s self-actualization in corporate worship, i.e. the liturgy. The Church assembled in Christ’s name before the Face of God in the Holy Spirit for instruction, petition, praise, remembrance and thanksgiving is the hermeneutical condition and context for interpreting God’s Word recorded in the scriptures. As such, it is the point from which the Church’s apostolic mission originates and the point toward which its activity is directed.

Not only is the Bible read, heard, contemplated and explained at Church services, but the services themselves are thoroughly biblical in content, form and spirit. Biblically informed believers have an immediate awareness and experience of the Bible’s message in Orthodox liturgical worship. Or rather, more accurately, the God and Christ witnessed in the Bible become immediately accessible to believers in liturgical contemplation and communion in the Church.

Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko The Mission of the Orthodox Church in North America with thanks to Matthew Baker