Ecclesiology

ECCLESIOLOGY (Gr. ekklēsia, logos: ‘study of the Church’) The study of the Church is the study of an institution that is sui generis. Founded by Jesus Christ, by means of his life, teaching, death and resurrection, and guided in his name by the holy *Spirit who descended on the Apostles (Acts 2:1–11) and the Gentiles (Acts 10:44–48), the Church is more of an organism than an organization, it is an offer of divine life even before being expressed in a doctrinal synthesis, and yet must carry its divine mission in a world which is not infrequently indifferent if not downright hostile. Nonetheless, all the Church's life, all its thought finds its indispensable reference point in the liturgical assembly. The Greek word ekklēsia corresponds to the hebrew ‘qahal’ (assembly) and frequently recurs in the Septuagint translation of the OT (e.g., Dt 23:2–3; Ps 21:22) Qoheleth is the man of the qahal, the assembly man, the preacher, and is known in the Latin Vulgate as Ecclesiastes alongside with the name of another OT book, Ecclesiasticus, nowadays called Ben Sirach. In the NT, where the term seems to derive from hellenic Christian circles, the use of ekklēsia is frequent, except in the Gospels where it is found only in Mt 16:18 and 18:17. Reflection on the Church’s nature and mission, tends to set in late in the life of the community, not only because reflection follows action, but also because this reflection generally becomes necessary only if someone puts in question the Church and its activities. Thus, St *Cyprian of Carthage (d.

258) wrote his On the Unity of the Church not as a scholastic treatise, but as a pastoral admonition to those in his flock who, to his mind, were endangering the unity of the Church. As a parallel, even in the West, a Scholastic treatment of the Church was the last dogmatic treatise to be written, in the 15th century. Even then, to present the Church properly is to account for its appearance in time and its ultimate destiny. The Church as the new (second) Eve born from the side of the second Adam. A typically Eastern approach to the mystery of the Church is to exploit the many images for it found in Scripture and among the Fathers. Of these the Church as the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:13, 27), the spouse of Christ (Eph 5:21–33) and temple of the holy Spirit (1 Cor 3:16, 17; 6:19, 20) are well-known in both East and West, but must be supplemented by images less commonly used. Such is the image of the Church as Second Eve. In the canonical *icon of Easter, also known as the harrowing of hell (Christ’s descent into limbo), the first whom Christ calls back into life are Adam and Eve to show continuity between the beginning and the new beginning for humanity. Among the Fathers, this finds concrete expression in the image of the New Eve born from the pierced side of the Saviour (cf. Jn 19:34) Although St Paul does not speak of the New Eve, he calls Christ the New Adam (Rom 5:14), an image which by natural association evokes that of the New Eve. In one of his homilies to catechumens (Cat.

3:17) St *John Chrysostom understands the water and the blood that came out from Christ’s side as symbols of baptism and the Eucharist: Christ washes his bride from any stains, and the baptized Christians contract union with Christ. In general, the Fathers interpret the piercing of the side as the birth hour of the Church, which in turn is understood as the all-inclusive sacrament of salvation Christ instituted. For the feast of Mid-Pentecost, on the Wednesday of the fourth week after Easter, the reading in the Byzantine liturgy is precisely the passage containing Jn 7:38–39, which speaks of rivers of water flowing from ‘his belly’ (Gr. koilia) Much has been speculated as to whom this koilia belongs – to Christ or to the thirsty person who comes to Christ to quench his or her thirst. According to the Alexandrian tradition, which harks back to *Origen (d. 254/255), it belongs to the ‘gnostic’, i.e. the mature or deified Christian (*Deification; *Gnosis and Gnosticism); but according to the tradition of Asia Minor, which ultimately goes back to John the Apostle, the koilia belongs to Christ himself. Be it as it may, the importance the piercing of the heart has for the Fathers not only brings out the birth of the Church as the New Eve from the New Adam ‘sleeping’ (i.e., dead) on the cross, but also the Church as the fundamental sacrament (German: Grundsakrament) instituted by Christ as the primordial sacrament (Ursakrament), who is the only Mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2:5); the water and the blood that overflowed stand primarily for all the sacraments, not only for baptism and the Eucharist.

Although the birth of the Church from the pierced side of Christ is considered to be a common opinion in the Catholic Church at least since the Council of Vienne (1312; *Council, Ecumenical: Canonical and Theological Aspects), the Church as the New Eve receives less attention than in the East. The Church in God’s plan and its final fulfilment. Even then, various approaches to the Church are found among Orthodox theologians to account for the Church’s appearance in time (Y. Spiteris) Several, such as S. *Bulgakov (d. 1944) and J. *Karmiris (d. 1993), sought the key to understanding this in God’s plan of salvation for humanity prior to the creation of the world, for God created the world for Christ’s sake (Eph 1:5; Col 1:16): the protological explanation. The stress here is on the concrete realization of this divine plan in the incarnation. Others, however, such as J. Zizioulas and many who like him take the Eucharist as the key term to understand the Church, hold that the mystery of the latter is best explained through its eternal destination, already anticipated in the Divine Liturgy (Eph 1:10; Col 1:18–20): the eschatological explanation. The emphasis here lies on the experience of the Church. The Church in the symbols. Aside from *Vatican I and especially *Vatican II, which has been described as having the Church for its theme (K. Rahner), the Church has said relatively little about itself in its official pronouncements, and that little has pride of place in the creeds.

The most famous expression is: ‘the one holy catholic and apostolic Church’ of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol (*Constantinople I; *Symbol, Nicene-Constantinopolitan) This condensed way of speaking about the Church presupposes centuries of Church experience in the liturgy, asceticism, martyrdom and the attempt to establish norms for the sacraments. Indeed, the first qualification to be associated with the Church in the creeds is holiness (Y. *Congar) holiness points to the integrity both in time (apostolicity, synchronically harking back to the Apostles) and in space (catholicity, diachronically creating unity between the various local Churches) All the Church Orders, i.e. the early writings on discipline in the Church, such as the *Didache or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles and the *Apostolic Constitutions, claim apostolicity because they want to safeguard this integrity (*Rule of Faith) For the same reason all Churches describe themselves as apostolic and sometimes carry this qualification in their title. Indeed, when St *Irenaeus (d. ca. 200) and Tertullian (d. ca. 220) speak of the *rule of faith or the criterion of truth (regula fidei) they are referring to the apostolicity of the Church as a return to origins: the touchstone of truth in the Church is to go back to the Apostles as the first witnesses to that truth. The best way to assure oneself that the truth one holds goes back to what the Apostles proclaimed is to follow the succession of the apostolic sees, whose bishop is the direct successor of the Apostles.

If we speak of the catholicity of the Church, it means that the indispensable reference to the Apostles necessarily has a contemporary organon in the Church which can express what the Apostles said in a way as to function as a guarantee of the Church’s indefectibility. In spite of this personal touch in the search of truth, the first meaning of holiness, in the East, has to do with the means to attain holiness rather than with holy persons who have attained it. In the East, whatever is normative is nothing but the expression of this holy communion of saints, re-echoed in the priest’s exclamation in the Byzantine liturgy before communion ‘Hagia hagiois’ (Gr. ‘holy things to the holy’), whereby holy things, or the sacraments, take precedence over holy persons in the very idea of what holiness is. Yet, for one thing, the sacraments are not impersonal, but a vivifying encounter with Christ in his Church. Then, without the rich patristic experience of monks and martyrs, of liturgy and the attempt on the Church to delineate the contours of the sacraments, of penance for example, the four adjectives of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan – one, holy, catholic and apostolic – instead of being a direct link to Christ and his apostles would become polemical clubs to exclude others from the Church, as happened in the exclusive E. after the council of Trent (1545–1563), rather than a way to welcome back those who stray in the well-warmed foyer of the Church as communion of saints. Indeed, the touchstone of unity and communion is holiness as embodied in the communion of saints, and as energized in the Spirit Christ donates through the Church’s sacraments. The many Churches and the cultural prism.

Communion is an expression of holiness, and not only of catholicity, even in the relations between Churches. In the East one comes across many Churches not always in communion with one another. Yet prior to any strictly ecclesiological re-ordering we have to take into account an important factor, often ignored in ecclesiological discussions. Since in many dialogues the bottom line is to have established significant convergence in doctrine and considerable difference in culture, this cultural difference must be given more importance than hitherto as part of our very understanding of the Church, ultimately a consequence of the incarnation of the eternal in time and the hope in the concrete of gaining the world for Christ. We have thus to advert to a distinction which is prior to practically all ecclesiological distinctions because it underlies them all. With Michelangelo Guidi (d. 1946), an Italian Orientalist, we have to distinguish between two types of East: the original East, which has retained many primordial elements, and an East which is derivative in comparison with the first. Faced by the onslaught of hellenization, a globalization which helped bring peoples together but also levelled down important and enriching differences between them, there were countries with a culture of their own which managed to resist hellenization and thus retain these precious primeval aspects of Christianity: the Syriac-speaking world, the Greek, the Armenian, the Ethiopian, the Georgian and the Indian. On the other hand, precisely because it had lost many linguistic and cultural barriers, the hellenized civilized world facilitated the spread of Christianity.

As is well known, for the *Church of the East, the first still extant Church to separate itself from the communion of mainline Churches (*Assyrian Church of the East), anything beyond Antioch was considered to be the West, and, given the need of this Church to survive in the hostile environment of the Persian Empire, recourse to the West had to be avoided at all costs, not to give the impression it was conniving with the Roman Empire, especially after the latter’s conversion, against legitimate authority. All this calls for an ecclesiological appraisal of what Catholic theology calls ‘inculturation’, the role of culture as prism of doctrine. One need only remember how the writings of the Fathers revel in the use of images and symbols, taken from scripture, nature and even pagan literatures, and yet manage to relay the unadulterated Christian message precisely through recourse to such images. This cultural prism accounts for many differences which in the past seemed suspicious to the orthodox, but which today we miss as part of that rich response to Christianity endemic to particular cultures. The many Churches and the local Church. The position the local Church occupies in the East is often indicated as one of the major differences between East and West, and accounts for difficulties even between Orthodox *sister Churches themselves. The reason for it is partly historical. Whereas in the West Rome became increasingly more dominant beginning with the end of the first century, it is the local Church that has predominated in the East from the second century on, notwithstanding centres which later became patriarchates, which, however, were not comparable to Rome in influence (*Primacy) Within Orthodoxy, local Churches of a certain importance enjoy administrative autonomy and consider the other autonomous Churches ‘sister Churches’

Immediately after *Vatican II (1962–1965) concepts such as ‘sister Churches’ (*Ecclesiology: Terminology after Vatican II) became part and parcel of the discussions of the relations that should obtain between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church thanks to the ecumenical spirit of Pope *John XXIII (d. 1963), Pope *Paul VI (d. 1978), of Patriarch *Athenagoras I (d. 1972) and of Metropolitan *Nikodim of Leningrad (d. 1978) If on the one hand this attitude has opened the way to official dialogue, on the other it brought to the fore difficulties previously little discussed; e.g. the recognition of the *sacraments. The Catholic Church recognizes the sacraments of the Orthodox, whereas many Orthodox recognize even Catholic baptism sometimes only on the basis of *oikonomia (literally, condescension) On the other hand, precisely these new openings give us an opportunity to revisit the past. Recent dialogue between various protagonists in the East, e.g. between the Eastern and the Oriental Orthodox (*Non-Chalcedonian Churches), but also between the Catholic Church and the *Assyrian Church of the East, have established a basic convergence on those issues which first brought about division, e.g. *Christology. When J. Zizioulas (1981) mentions as still pending issues between the Eastern and the Oriental Orthodox the anathemas one Church hurled against saints of the other Church, we see now that many Churches are quietly dropping the anathemas. Therefore the question remains as to where the ultimate difference lies and why those Churches who have established basic convergence on all moot-issues hesitate to re-establish communion. Again, the cultural mediation of one’s local tradition plays a greater role as hitherto assumed and must be first addressed before one can hope for progress.

however, if the local Church has been able better to assert itself in the East, it is not an unmixed blessing for the East itself, for the tension to affirm the primacy of the local has often blurred the need of the universal. The council of Constantinople of 1871 had to condemn the excesses of a too narrow interpretation of a national Church in what has been branded as ethnophyletism, which unduly stresses the linkage of Church and nation, a condemnation that has been reiterated in J. Zizioulas’ survey of Orthodoxy in the modern world (1998) On the other hand, ‘a strong papacy, strong particular Churches’ (K. Card. Lehmann) has become more and more the Catholic Church’s motto after Vatican II. The Church as Communion. From the liturgical texts of all Eastern Churches, the Church emerges as an icon of the Trinity. Church communion has as its model the inner life of the Trinity (Jn 17:21), from which all grace, life and unity in difference flows (*Communion) This union allows not only for the model of ‘equal but different’ between the local Churches themselves, but also accounts for taxis (Gr. ‘order’) or gradated union, in view of the monarchy of the Father (*Particular Church and Local Church) Practically all prayers are directed to the Father as the beginning without beginning of the Trinity and as the one who sends the Son to redeem the world and the Spirit to sanctify it, but prayers are then said in the Son and through the Spirit. Yet due to polemics and intra-Church divisions, for centuries discussion about the Church revolved around the question of who belongs to it. The question was particularly acute when the Churches felt threatened by desertion of huge numbers of its faithful or even entire populations.

In a way, this was the case with the monophysite crisis (*Monophysitism), only the breakup was long drawn over practically two centuries so that its impact in the immediate situation was mitigated. It was different after the Reformation, when the Churches had to count their numbers and use protective norms to secure that the losses are contained. St Robert Bellarmine’s (d. 1616) definition of who belongs to the Church is a case in point, and its effect is still tangible in Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici corporis (1943), whereby recognition of the pope served as an essential criterion. The question about the nature of the Church usually comes to the fore when there are competing definitions of what goes to make up the Church. This was the case in the mid-19th century when several conceptions of what the Church crashed head on. In the correspondence between A. *Khomjakov (d. 1860) and the Anglican W. Palmer (1811–1879) the Orthodox view of Church and the Three Branch Theory evoked ultimately the patristic idea of the Church, with Khomjakov assigning ‘unity and freedom in love’ to the Orthodox Church, ‘unity without freedom’ to the Catholic Church and ‘freedom without unity’ to the Protestants. For all the discussions such a characterization occasioned even among the Orthodox, one may nonetheless affirm that the Church is the communion of saints, it is the mystical body of Christ of all those who believe, hope in Christ to be saved and seek to translate their hope in terms of love. The presence of sin and sinners is made up for by the constant prayers of the Church in its liturgy and in its sacraments, in baptism, in penance and in the Eucharist.

however, Khomjakov’s idea of communion reduced the role of the hierarchy to a degree which went counter to Orthodox feeling and provoked *Filaret of Moscow’s (d. 1867) criticism, who spoke of a sobornost’ of bishops. Yet the basic idea of sobornost’ was later adapted by Y. *Congar as collegiality of bishops with and under the pope and as such became part and parcel of Lumen gentium (*Vatican II) For all its problematic aspects, the whole discussion about the nature of the Church highlighted the fact that the Church is the icon of the Trinity and that this finds its best expression in the Eucharist. The visible structures of the Church. The Church is not only a mystery and a sacrament, it also tries to implement this in structures, all of which must bear the imprint of the Spirit, but some of which are of divine institution, others of the Church’s own initiative. In the ecumenical councils of the first millennium the various roles of the Church members finds an adequate expression in the bishops who participate as voting members, the legates who in the pope’s name approve or cast their veto, and, last but not least, the emperor who convokes the council. Although his right to convoke was not anchored in any canon (*Council, Ecumenical: Canonical and Theological Aspects) the emperor was considered to be the representative of the Church and icon of God’s coming kingdom on earth, and as such he appears on the icons of the first Seven Ecumenical Councils (*Caesaropapism; *Pentarchy; *Seven Councils, Church of the) As for visible ecclesial structures, considerable differences exist between the various Churches which form the Christian East.

The six Oriental Orthodox Churches, also called *preor non-Chalcedonian, while sharing the same faith, are independent of one another, though special inter-relations as between *Alexandria, *Ethiopia and *Eritrea exist, since the latter two recognize Alexandria’s primacy of honour. Orthodox Chalcedonian Churches in communion with Constantinople are divided into patriarchates, autocephalous Churches and autonomous Churches, in a descending scale of administrative independence. All these Churches have a synodal structure. In the Catholic East (*Eastern Catholic Churches), there are six patriarchal Churches, four major archbishoprics (*Major Archbishop), six *sui iuris Churches and six Churches without a hierarchy, making twenty-two Churches sui iuris in all. The reciprocal relations between them and with Rome are regulated in the *Codex of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO), promulgated on 18 October 1990. Vatican II’s *Orientalium ecclesiarum, encouraged the upgrading and, if need be, the creation of new patriarchates, but the role of the patriarchate itself is much debated. Paradoxically, though the Petrine office is meant to consolidate communion, recent popes have frankly admitted that it is perhaps the main hurdle, at the moment, towards re-establishing communion. No sooner had he had been elected pope (1963), *Paul VI recognized this at *Grottaferrata (1963) and likewise *John Paul II in Ut Unum Sint (1995) even solicited help from Catholics and non-Catholics alike in order to find a resolution to an effective *primacy which would be acceptable. The dialogue with the Eastern Churches remains of supreme importance and must continue. F. Dvornik, National Churches and the Church Universal, London 1944; W.

de Vries, Der Kirchenbegriff der von Rom getrennten Syrer, Rome 1955; h. Rahner, Symbole der Kirche: Die Ekklesiologie der Väter, Salzburg 1964; N. A. Nissiotis, Die Theologie der Ostkirche im ökumenischen Dialog: Kirche und Welt in orthodoxer Sicht, Stuttgart 1968; G. Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition, Belmont MA 1972; J. Macha, Ecclesiastical Unification, Rome 1974; h. P. Müller, ‘Qahal’, in E. Jenni, C. Westermann, Theologisches Handwörterbuch zum Alten Testament, Munich 1976, 608–619; B. Mondin, Le nuove ecclesiologie, Rome 1980; D. Stăniloae, Theology and the Church, Crestwood NY 1980; I. Bria, ‘Biserică’, Dicționar de teologie ortodoxă, Bucharest 1981, 61–66; J. Zizioulas, ‘Eschatological Issues Inherent in the Relations between Eastern Chalcedonian and Oriental non-Calcedonian Churches’, Does Chalcedon Divide or Unite? Towards Convergence in Orthodox Christology, P. Gregorios, W. h. Lazareth, N. A. Nissiotis (eds.), Geneva 1981, 138–156; S. Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church, L. Kesich (tr.), Crestwood, NY 1988; A. Nichols, Theology in the Russian Diaspora: Church, Fathers, Eucharist in Nikolai Afanas’ev, 1893–1966, Cambridge UK 1989; V.

Peri, Lo scambio fraterno fra le Chiese, Vatican City 1993; D. Salachas, Il dialogo teologico ufficiale tra la Chiesa cattolico-romana e la Chiesa ortodossa, Bari 1993; A. Schmemann, The Virgin Mother: Celebration of Faith, 3, Crestwood NY 1995; N. A. Matsoukas, Teologia dogmatica e simbolica ortodossa, Rome 1996, 2:193–307; E. Lanne, ‘L’Orient chrétien au Concile Vatican II et dans la période qui a suivi le concile’, Tradition et communion des Eglises, Leuven 1997, 341–655; R. Slesinski, Essays in Diakonia: Eastern Catholic Theological Reflections, New York 1998; J. D. Zizioulas, ‘The Ecumenical Patriarchate and its Relations with the Other Orthodox Churches’, in P. Kitromilides, T. Vernis, The Orthodox Church in a Changing World, Athens 1998, 155–164; J. D. Zizioulas, Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop during the First three Centuries, E. Theokritoff (tr.), Brookline MA 2001; S. Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, B. Jakim (tr.), Edinburgh 2002; P. Granfield, D. M. Doyle, ‘Ecclesiology’, nCe2 5:36–41; Y. Spiteris, Ecclesiologia ortodossa, Bologna 2003; R. R. Gaillardetz, The Church in the Making: Lumen Gentium, Christus Dominus, Orientalium Ecclesiarum, New York 2006; M. Steenberg, ‘The Church’, CCoCt, 121–135; B. Bobrinskoy, The Mystery of the Church: A Course in Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, M. Breck (tr.), New York 2012; J.-C. Larchet, L’Eglise corps du Christ. 1: Nature et structure, Paris 2012; 2: Les relations entre les Eglises, Paris 2012. E. G. Farrugia.

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Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Christian East

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