.png "English"){kind=small}
Synodality
Turning now to synodality, we can see at once the way in which a
Church council is to be regarded as a Eucharistic event. Most councils
have been concerned with the restoration of Eucharistic communion
when this has been broken, with the question who may or may not be
admitted to receive the sacrament; and most (if not all) councils
have concluded with a concelebrated Liturgy, embracing all the
members.
What is the aim of every council? It is, through the exercise of
collective discernment, to attain a common mind. Yet this common mind
is not simply the sum total of the convictions of the various
participants. When gathered in council, we sinners become something more
than what we are as isolated individuals; and this ‘something more’
is exactly the presence of Christ Himself, active among us through the
grace of the Holy Spirit. As our Lord has promised, Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in their midst
(Matt. 18:20). It is this dominical affirmation that validates every
true council. Is it not significant that the Paraclete descended on
the first disciples in Jerusalem, not when each was praying
separately on his own, but when they were all together in one place (Acts· 2:1)?
Two or three,
said Christ. It is of course true that He also comes to us when we
are alone, when in watchful silence we explore the inner sanctuary
of our heart and discover there His indwelling presence. Solitude,
which is not the same as loneliness, is indeed an integral aspect of
our life in Christ. Yet, despite the profound value that solitude
possesses, solidarity and togetherness—along with all that is meant
by the Russian term sobornost—is yet more precious.
The Church is not a conglomeration of self-contained monads, but a
body with many limbs, organically interdependent.
That is why, within the Church, we each say to the other, ‘I need
you in order to be myse1f’. That is why, at every level of ecclesial
life, and not least at every council, the members of the Church say
not ‘I’ but ‘we’, not ‘me’ but ‘us’. ‘It has seemed good to the
Holy Spirit and to us’, stated the disciples at the
Apostolic Council in Jerusalem (Acts 15:28). ‘Us’ is the decisive
synodical word. It is surely a striking fact that in the prayer
bequeathed to us by Christ (Matt. 6:9 13), the word ‘us’ occurs five
times, the word ‘our’ three times, and. the word ‘we’ once; but
nowhere in the Lord’s Prayer does the Christian say ‘me’, ‘my’, or
‘I’.
Likewise in the Eucharist—the action that creates the Church—at the epiclesis or invocation of the Spirit it is said to God: ‘We offer You this spiritual worship without shedding of blood, and we ask, we pray and we
beseech You: send down Your Holy Spirit upon us’. By the same
token, when reciting the Jesus Prayer that has been my companion for
the last sixty years, I prefer to say, not ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of
God, have mercy en me’, but rather ‘have mercy on us’.
Needless to say, the more usual form ‘have mercy on me’ is entirely
legitimate; but in saying ‘on us’ we emphasize that salvation, while
personal, is never isolated.
Let us not forget the literal sense of the Greek noun synodos. It is formed from syn, ‘together’, and ‘odos’,
‘path’ or ‘journey’. A synod is a group of persons—primarily
bishops,’ but also including priests and lay participants—who are
engaged in a common pilgrimage, who are journeying together on the
same path. This idea of a shared journey, implying as it does a sense
of movement and exploration, reminds us that synods are not static but
dynamic, not repetitive but revelatory. ‘Behold, I am making all
things new’, proclaims the risen Saviour (Rev. 21:5). At every true
church council we experience the newness of our unchanging faith.
When reflecting on synodality, let us envisage it in wide-ranging
terms. While it refers in the first instance to the proceedings of
actual councils, whether ecumenical or local, it is also to be
understood more broadly as a quality extending throughout the Church
at every level, in the diocese, in the parish, and in our personal
lives. Fr. Georges Florovsky used to speak of need to acquire a
‘patristic mind’; we may speak likewise of the need to acquire a
‘synodical mind’. Synodality implies what has been termed a
‘spirituality of fellowship’1
openness to the other, a willingness to listen. Synodality means
not monologue but dialogue, not self-sufficiency but exchange, not
solipsism but communion.
We Orthodox are accustomed to speak of ourselves as a conciliar
Church, as the Church of the seven Holy Councils, But we have to
confess, with humility and realism, that while we affirm synodality in
theory, all too often we have neglected it in practice. It is true
that, since the era of Ecumenical Councils, there have been a number
of synods: the Council of Hagia Sophia in 879-80; the
fourteenth-century Palamite Councils at Constantinople (1341, 1347,
1351); the seventeenth-century councils, no1ably here at lafi (1642)
and at Jerusalem (1672), which affirmed the true Orthodox t.eacbing
concerning the Church and the sacraments; the Council of
Constantinople (1872) that condemned ethnophyletism. (Regrettably its
teaching is not observed in the contemporary Orthodox diaspora); and
more recently the great Moscow Council of 1917-18. Attended by priests
and laity as well as bishops, tragically cut short by the Bolshevik
Revolution, this was in many ways as radical and innovative as
Vatican II not more so.
Without underestimating all these and other councils, should we not
admit that all too often Orthodoxy finds it singularly difficult to
act in a conciliar way? How many years of preparation and postponement
elapsed before the Holy and Great Council actually met in Crete
during 2016! In the Roman Catholic Church, on 25 January 1959, Pope
John XXIII, to the astonishment of almost everyone, announced the
summonina of an Ecumenical Council; and in less than four years, on 11
October 1962, the Council actually began. I am afraid that this is
not the way in which things happen in the Orthodox Church. As long ago
as 1902 the Ecumenical Patriarch Joachim III sent an Encyclical
Letter to all the Orthodox Churches, calling for closer contacts and
cooperation. This received a favourable reception. In partcular, the
Russian Church replied in 1903, emphasizing the importance of
‘special assemblies of Orthodox bishops’, drawn from all the various
Patriarchates and Autocephalous Churches, to confer face to face and
‘mouth to mouth’ on issues of shared concern.2
Here we have the seed that led eventually to the Holy and Great
Council of 2016; but it was a long time before this seed bore fruit.
In 1923 the Ecumenical Patriarch Meletios IV Metaxakis convened what
was intended to be a Pan-Orthodox Conference at Constantinople; but a
number of Orthodox Churches failed to attend, and several
decisions of this Conference proved deeply divisive, in particular the
adoption of the New Calendar. After this, in 1930 an Inter-Orthodox
Commission met at the Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos—there were
no women among the delegates!—with the task of preparing for what
was termed the ‘Prosynod’, which in its turn was expected to lead to a
full Pan-Orthodox Council. But in the event the Prosynod was never
convened; still less did the proposed Pan-Orthodox Council itself materialize.
In 1965 the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras revived the idea of
the Holy and Great Council when he convened the first Pan-Orthodox
Conference at Rhodes. Here a comprehensive list of possible topics was
drawn up. Further preparations for the Council were made at
subsequent Pan-Orthodox Conferences in Rhodes and Chembesy. Yet more
than a further half-century was to elapse before the Holy and Great
Council finally met in Crete in 2016. This continual postponement of
the Council recalls the experience of travelling by air in the 1940s
or 1950s. As we waited in the runway, the engine kept revving up, the
propellers whirled round and round, but it seemed as if the aeroplane
was never actually going to get airborne. Hence the most significant
thing about the Crete Council of 2016, viewed in this light, was that
at long last the Council had finally met.
Sadly the proceedings of the long-awaited Council turned out to be
something of a disappointment. It was far from being pan-Orthodox. Of
the fourteen Churches that comprise the worldwide Orthodox communion,
only ten attended. The Churches of Antioch, Georgia, Bulgaria and
Russia chose for various reasons not to come. The OCA (Orthodox Church
in America) was not invited. The absence of the Russian Church was
particularly damaging; it was also a surprise, for until the last
moment the Patriarchate of Moscow had taken an active and positive
part in the preparations.
Before the meeting of the Crete Council, some Orthodox spokesmen
speculated whether it might not prove to be the Eighth Ecumenical
Council. In retrospect no one today takes that view. Indeed, the Crete
Council adopted a significantly different procedure from the seven
Ecumenical Councils. At the Ecumenical Councils in principle—perhaps
not always in practice—all the bishops of the Christian world were
invited, since from a sacramental standpoint all had been consecrated
in the same way, and therefore all enjoyed the same gifts of grace.
Furthermore, at the Ecumenical Councils each bishop voted
individually, and decisions were reached by majority vote. The
dissenting minority was usually extremely small—at Nicaea I (325) it
consisted of no more than two bishops—but nonetheless a dissenting
minority existed.
The procedure at Crete was different. Its guiding inspiration was
not so much sacramental and charismatic as administrative and
bureaucratic. Not all bishops were invited to the Council, but only
twenty-four from each Patriarchate or Autocephalous Church. Had all
the fourteen Orthodox Churches sent twenty-four delegates, there would
have been 336 bishops at Crete; in actuality the number was not
much more than 150. (Of course, some Orthodox Churches do not have as
many 88 twenty-four bishops; this is the case, for example, with the
Churches of Cyprus, Albania, Poland, and of the Czech Lands with
Slovakia.)
Another point of difference between Crete and the Ecumenical Councils
was that at Crete, so it was decided beforehand, decisions should be
reached, not by majority vote as at the Ecumenical Councils, but by
consensus. I take this to have meant that, whereas there might have
been dissenters withineach delegation of twenty-four, yet the various
delegations, each taken as a whole, were all to be required to accept
the resolutions by majority vote. Otherwise a single dissenting bishop
could have paralysed the entire procedings.
Following a decision reached by the Pan-Orthodox Conference in
1976—no less than forty years previously!—six topics were chosen for
discussion at Crete, and on all of these preliminary papers were
submitted to the Council:
- ‘The Mission of the Orthodox Church in the Contemporary World. The Contribution of the Orthodox Church to the Establishment of Peace, Justice and Freedom, of Brotherhood and Love between People, and the Removal of Sexual and other forms of Discrimination.’
- ‘The Orthodox Diaspora.’
- ‘Autonomy in the Orthodox Church and the Manner of its proclamation.’
- ‘The Mystery of Marriage and its Impediments.’
- ‘The Importance of Fasting and its Observance Today.’
- ‘Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World.’
Several comments spring immediately to mind. First, these six
topics were surely too many to be considered in depth at a meeting
that lasted only a little more than a week. In the Roman Catholic
Church, the Council of Trent lasted sixteen years, while Vatican II
extended across four years, with the sessions amounting altogether to
an aggregate of nine months. Because of the short time available and
the variety of topics placed before it, the Crete Council lacked a
clear focus.
In the case of the seven Ecumenical Councils, each was summoned to
deal primarily with a single doctrinal issue that was causing acute
controversy throughout the Christian world. But in the case of the
Crete Council, there was no such single issue of burning concern. For
example, at the end of the Sunday Liturgy in Oxford, where I live, I
do not find that I am surrounded by agitated parishioners,
exclaiming: ‘Despota, we could not sleep a wink last night. We are all
so worried about the manner of proclaiming autonomy.’
Clearly, not all of the six topics are of equal importance. The
first, on ‘The Mission of the Church’, is exceedingly general; as a
result, the text eventually adopted by the Council said little that
was exciting or unexpected. As a regards the third topic, surely the
question at issue in contemporary Orthodoxy is not the proclamation of
autonomy but the proclamation of autocephaly. But this was not
included in the agenda and was not discussed. I do not recall anything
being said in Crete about the status of the OCA, recognized as
autocephalous by the Moscow Patriarchate but not by the Ecumenical
Patriarchate, a matter that has been pending for nearly fifty years.
Equally nothing was said about the melancholy confusion in Ukraine,
and the possibility of establishing an autocephalous Ukrainian Church.
Again, I ask myself: Do we really need a Holy and Great Council to
make decisions about fasting? Surely this can best be discussed
locally and personally at a pastoral level, with the parish priest or
the spiritual father.
Two, however, of the six topics are certainly of major importance:
the canonical situation of the so-called Diaspora, and the relations
of the Orthodox Church with the nonOrthodox world. Yet on these two
questions the preliminary papers failed on the whole to come to grips
with the real problems involved. As regards the Diaspora, for
example, the preliminary papers first noted the failure in the Western
world to observe the canonical rule of one bishop in each place.
This, however, is something we have all been lamenting for the last
hundred years. Then it rightly commended the establishment of an
Episcopal Synaxis in each area of the Diaspora; but this is something
already decided at the Pan-Orthodox Conference in 2009. Otherwise the
preliminary paper, and the eventual resolution adopted at Crete, said
nothing that was new.
In general, it has to be admitted that the six preliminary
‘position papers’ discussed at Crete were somewhat conservative in
spirit; and the emendations adopted at the Council —which were not
extensive—served for the most part to reinforce the conservative
character of the documents.
Overloaded though the agenda was at Crete, there were a number of
grave problems in today’s Orthodox Church about which the Council said
nothing. As already noted, it did not consider autocephaly. The
question of the Calendar was not raised. Probably this was wise, for
there was little that the Council could have done about this, since
it is unlikely that Churches following the Old Calendar, such as
Russia, would agree to introduce the New. Any such attempt would
probably lead to schism.
Nothing was said about the manner of receiving converts into the
Orthodox Church. There is a curious discrepancy in present-day
Orthodox practice.3
Since the eighteenth century the Church of Russia has
generally received Roman Catholic proselytes simply by confession
of faith and absolution, without requiring chrismation or (still
less) rebaptism [this was in practice before the twentieth century;
it has not been the practice in the Russian Church after the
reinstitution of patriarchy in the early twentieth century.—O.C.].
On the other hand, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia
(ROCOR), which since 2007 has been in full communion with the
Moscow Patriarchate, frequently rebaptizes converts, including
Roman Catholics. A similar practice exists elsewhere in the
Orthodox Church, notably on Mount Athos. Where baptism is required,
it is not said to be ‘conditional’.
Now this is clearly not simply a matter of administrative practice,
but raises a point of doctrine. It involves the question: Do
non-Orthodox Churches possess a valid sacrament? Within Orthodoxy
there are some, in both the Greek and Slav Churches, who maintain that
outside the visible limits of the Orthodox Church there is no divine
grace and no valid sacraments. They appeal for support to the
decision taken by the Eastern Patriarchs (apart from Antioch) in 1755.4
This, however, is by no means the universal opinion within
Orthodoxy. There are others, such as Fr Georges Florovsky in his
well-known article, ‘The Limits of the Church’, first published in
1933,5
who argue that the charismatic and canonical boundaries of
the Church do not exactly coincide. For myself I find it literally
incredible that the Pope should be considered not merely a layman
but an unbaptized pagan. Of course, much depends on what is meant
by ‘valid’. I had hoped that the Crete Council would formally
revoke the 1755 decision, and would decree that all converts,
already baptized in the name of the Trinity with the use of water,
should be received neither by rebaptism nor yet by simple
profession of faith with absolution but by chrismation. In this way
a uniform practice throughout Orthodoxy would be secured. But
regrettably on this matter the Cretan delegates remained, in the
words of the Akathist Hymn, ‘dumb as fishes’. The matter was not
discussed.
Further issues ignored in Crete, although subject to vehement
controversy in the non-Orthodox West, were the ministry of women in
the Church and the practice of so-called ‘same sex marriage’.
So how are we to assess the Council of Crete? After such lengthy
preparations, what did we actually achieve? Perhaps the Crete Council
is best regarded, not as an isolated happening, a one-off event, but
as the beginning of a process, as the first in a series of such
meetings. At Crete Patriarch Daniel of Romania proposed that there
should be a Holy and Great Council every seven years; and he offered
on behalf of the Romanian Church to be the host at the next such
gathering. This last is certainly a vital point, for Holy and Great
Councils are costly occasions, and we do not have a Christian Emperor
to cover the expenses. Surprisingly the Crete Council dispersed
without making a decision when and where the next Holy and Great
Council was to be held, and no continuation committee was set up. We
need to start working now towards a further council, which we hope
will be fully pan-orthodox. Preparations for the Cretan assembly
lasted, as we have seen, for 114 years, from 1902 to 2016. Shall we
have to wait for another 114 years before there will be a sequel?
Fortunately at Crete there was little or no political interference.
For the future let us erect a placard: Politicians keep out!
Admittedly in the Byzantine era the Christian Emperors played a
prominent role the Ecumenical Councils. But Putin is not the Emperor
Constantine, nor is Poroshenko the Emperor Justinian.
The most important thing about the Crete Council, as we have said,
was that it actually met. Subsequent Councils, so we hope, can deal
with the matters that were not examined at Crete. What the Crete
Council has done is to reaffirm the synodical spirit of Orthodoxy, i
ts conciliar ethos. And for this we are grateful above all to the
leadership and persistence of His All-Holiness the Ecumenical
Patriarch Bartholomew.
Primacy
Coming now to the subject of primacy—which is of such central
importance in the current Orthodox/Roman Catholic dialogue—the first
thing to be said is that synodality and primacy are complementary and
interdependent. There is between them, as Metropolitan John
Zizioulas has rightly insisted, an ‘inseparable link..6
In ‘Orthodox ecclesiology,’ he writes, can be no such thing
as primacy without a council, nor, conversely, can there be a
council without a primate.’7
This follows, indeed from the eucharistic nature of the
Church. At every concelebration of the Eucharist there is always
one who fulfils the role of liturgical president; and in a similar
way at every church council—and the council, as we have seen, is
basically, a eucharistic event —there is one who acts as
president and primate.
Between the primate and his fellow bishops, as Apostolic Canon 34 makes clear,8
there is a reciprocal relationship. The bishops are not to act
without the primate, nor the primate without the bishops. There is
between the two what may be termed co-responsibility and
differentiated interdependence. And what is the chief function of
primacy? It is to promote mutual consultation and so to safeguard
the unity of the Church. The primate is basically a bridge-builder:
In the words of Fr. John Meyendorff, ‘The essential functions
of the “first bishop” consist In assuring that a constant
consultation and conciliarity takes place among all Orthodox
Churches, and that ecclesiastical order (especially local and
regional unity of all the Orthodox) be secured.9 Thus the ninth century Eisagoge,
after describing the Patriarch of Constantinople as ‘the living
and animated icon of Christ’, goes on to affirm that his task is
‘to return all heretics to Orthodoxy and the unity of the
Church’, while Canon l 02 of the Council In Trullo states that his vocation is ‘to bring back the lost sheep’.10
Primacy, as Fr. Alexander Schmemann observes, exists in
contemporary Orthodoxy in a ‘great variety of existing patterns—from
the almost absolute “monarchy” of the Russian patriarch to the more
or less nominal primacy of the archbishop of Athens’; this ‘reveals
the absence of a common understanding of primacy [in the Orthodox
Church], or of a constant canonical theory of it’.11
As Archdeacon John Chryssavgis admits, ‘The truth is that we do
not really have a developed doctrine or—more correctly—a
defined apology for the concept of primacy.12
While the Patriarchate of Moscow agrees with the Ecumenical
Patriarchate that Constantinople holds the first place in the taxis
or canonical order of the Orthodox Church, there is no full
agreement between them concerning the scope end the practical
implications of this ‘first place’. The Grand Logothete
Theodore Metochites said in the fourteenth century that the great
men of old have expressed everything so perfectly that they have
left nothing further for us to say. But at any rate as regards the
question of primacy in the Orthodox Church, this is by no means the
case. The last word has not yet been spoken.
The lack of agreement over the primacy of the Ecumenical Throne can
be seen, among other things. in the conflicting views concerning the
granting of autocephaly. (Perhaps we should not of ‘granting’ but of
‘recognizing’ autocephaly.) Constantinople sees this as the
prerogative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate; Moscow considers it the
responsibility of the Mother Church. This divergence is evident in the
disagreement that arose in 1970 concerning the OCA. Moscow, on the
grounds that it was the Mother Church of the Russian Metropolia in the
USA, granted autocephaly to its daughter, but Constantinople refused
to recognize this action. Fortunately on this occasion sacramental
communion between the two Patriarchates was not broken. But the
extraordinary fact remains that, nearly half a century later, no
solution has been found to this disagreement.
More serious is the conflict that has arisen in 2018 over Ukraine. The Patriarchate of Constantinople granted a tomos
of autocephaly to the schismatic groups in Ukraine, to the so-called
‘Kievan Patriarchate’ under Philaret Densisenki and to the so-called
‘Autocephalous Church’ under Metropolitan Makary. Rejecting this
decision, Moscow retains under its jurisdiction the portion of
Ukrainian Orthodoxy that is headed by Metropolitan Onufry, which
contains in fact considerately more parishes than the other two groups
together. As a result Moscow has taken the decision to break
communion with Constantinople, although the latter has not so far
retaliated, but seeks to maintain full communion with Russia. Several
of the other Orthodox Churches have urged that this breach between
Moscow and Constantinople should be resolved at a pan-Orthodox level,
either by reconvening the Crete Synod or by summoning a special synaxis of all the primates of the worldwide Orthodox Church.
With all due respect to the two Patriarchates, many of us are
disturbed by the actions of both parties in this complex and unhappy
dispute. While the Ecumenical Patriarchate sees itself as the Mother
Church of Ukraine, it has to be acknowledged that for more than 330
years Ukraine has formed an integral part of the Russian Church.
This is a fact of history, and, as Aristotle remarks, ‘Even God cannot
change the past.’13
At the same time, while reservations can be expressed
concerning the policy of Constantinople, there is reason also to be
disquieted by the decision of Moscow to break communion with the
Ecumenical Patriarchate. In the words of Archbishop Anastasios of
Albania, with specific reference to the crisis in Ukraine, ‘It
is unthinkable that the Divine Eucharist, the mystery par
excellence of the infinite love and utter humiliation of Christ,
could be used as a weapon against another Church… However serious
they may be, the accumulated questions of jurisdictions on no
account may constitute a cause for a Schism of Orthodoxy, anywhere
in the world.’14 Alas! What Archbishop Anastasios has termed ‘unthinkable’ is exactly what has in fact happened.
It has been said by the Fathers that to start a schism is worse
than to commit murder. Schisms are easy to instigate but hard to heal.
For seventy-five years, from 1870 until 1945, there was a schism
between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Church of Bulgaria; and
the cause was precisely the question of autocephaly. Let us pray that
the present schism between the second and the third Rome will not
last for three-quarters of a century.
The inability of the worldwide Orthodox Church to reach agreement
over the OCA and, more recently, over Ukraine has led
some—particularly Roman Catholics—to suggest that what Orthodoxy needs
is a greatly strengthened primacy at the universal level. Personally I
am unenthusiastic about such an argument. If we are to develop
further our understanding of primacy, this should not be simply for
negative reasons, as a solution to particular problems, but it should
be inspired by a positive vision of the reality of the Church. Let us
not be reactive but proactive.
Before leaving the topic of primacy, let us emphasize one basic
point, that applies not only to the exercise of primatial authority
but to every level of ecclesial ministry. When the apostles disputed
about who should have the first place, Jesus rebuke them: You know
that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great
ones exercise authority over them. It should not be so among you
(Matt. 20:25-26). Christ is entirely unambiguous: ‘Not so among you!’
The exercise of authority within the Church is to be utterly different
from that which prevails in civil organizations. As a Kingdom not
of this world—Eucharistic, Pentecostal, eschatological—the Church is
unique. She is never to be assimilated to models of power and
government prevailing in the fallen world around us. The bishop is
not a feudal overlord or an elected parliamentary representative. The
chief bishop or primate is neither a dictator nor a constitutional
monarch nor the chairman of a board of directors.
Having stated what ecclesial authority is not, Jesus then goes on to specify what it is. It should not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant (diakonos)… even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Matt. 20:26-28). Such is the true meaning of primacy. The first shall be the last. Power, says Christ, means service; exousia signifies diakonia.
The perspective has to be reversed, the pyramid stood upon its head.
All genuine primacy is kenotic; the primate is the servant of all.
Among the titles applied to the Pope, the one that appeals most
immediately to the Orthodox is servus servorum Dei,
‘the servant of the servants of God’. The same title can be applied to
every primate in the Church. And if the primate’s vocation is to
serve others, then his ministry involves sacrifice and even martyrdom,
outward or inward: he may be called to ‘give his life’, as was done
by Christ. Above all the primate carries out his ministry in a
spirit of love. As Fr. John Behr and Archdeacon John Chryssavgis have
rightly said, ‘Primacy presides in kenotic love.’15
The aged woman and the uncompleted tower
Among the richly symbolic visions to be found in The Shepherd
of Hermes, there are two which express in a striking way the two
contrasting aspects of the Church. First, Hermas sees the Church as a
venerable woman of great age. ‘And why is she so old?’ he asks; and
he is told, ‘Because she was created before everything else; and
because of her the world was framed.’ After that, Hermas is shown a
great tower, to which fresh stones are being continually added.16
Such is the paradoxical character of the mystery and miracle of the
Church. In the words of Fr. Alexander Schmemann, ‘The Church, which
by her near nature belongs to the aeon, to the Kingdom of the age to
come, abides yet in history, in time, in “this world”. She is in statu patriae, but also in statu viae. She is fullness, but she is also mission.’17
The Church is old yet young, unchanging yet ever new. She is
plentitude and completion, eternal, preexistent, but at the same
time she is dynamically caught up in the ever-evolving
movement of history, implicated unreservedly in a process of
adaptation, renewal and growth. She is transcendent yet fragile.
Stressing these two aspects, both the aged woman and the
uncompleted tower, and borrowing a phrase from Plato,18 Fr Georges Florovsky describes the Church as ‘the living image of eternity within time’19 she is the ‘image of eternity’, yet she is a ‘living’ image, an ‘image in time’.
If, during our reflections on synodality and primacy, we keep in
view these two aspects of the Church, contrasting yet complementary,
we shall not wander from the true path.
A video recording of the full address can be found here.
1/16/2019
