Orthodox Christians of different nationalities in the Orthodox Church in Toronto (photo from here)
Christos Sp. Voulgaris
Myriobiblos
The author is Dean of the school of Theology, University of Athens
All New Testament authors agree that the condition in which creation
found itself after the fall, caused by man’s disobedience and sin
(cf.f.e. Acts 13,22-31. Rom. 8,18-25 etc.,) suggests also the way to its
restoration. Indeed, re-creation consists in God’s action on the human
level, through the incarnation of the Son, where He combats satan who
had become “the ruler of this world” (Matth.9,34. 12,24. Mk.3,22.
Lk.11,15. John 12,31. 16,11. 14,30. Gal.1,4. etc.,), breaks his power
and sets man free from his subjection to him and, along with him the
entire creation as well (Rom.8,15ff). This is to say that salvation is
not accomplished by man himself, but by God and in particular by man’s
appropriation of Christ’s human nature to himself. In other words, sin
and evil enter the world after man’s estrangement and separation from
God, while salvation is the condition caused by man’s communion with
God. Both conditions affect the entire creation. Summing up this idea
St.John observes that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,…and from
his fullness have we all received and therefore, “to all who received
him, believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God”
(John 1,12-16. cf. Rom. 8,14-17. Gal.4,4-6, etc). Therefore, the real,
i.e. the Son’s incarnate presence in the world and effects of his work
upon men, consisting in their adoption again as God’s sons, constitute
an ecclesiological event which excludes the possibility to regard the
Church as an invisible entity in a cosmic sense, in accordance with the
platonic ideas or the Gnostic myths, because the historical reality of
the incarnation, experienced by all those who believed in the Son,
stresses also the historical reality of the Church as that specific
human society of all those believing in and saved by the incarnate Son.
This, however, is not enough when we refer to the Church as a historical
reality, because it cannot be restricted to a mere human institution.
As a historical reality, the Church combines in itself both, the divine
and the human. As St. John says again, “our fellowship with the Father
and with his Son Jesus Christ” became possible by the Son’s entrance
into history: “that which was from the beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched
with our hands… and the life was made manifest, and we saw it… that
which we seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have
fellowship with us” (1John 1,1-3. cf. Phil. 2,5-11. Col. 1,15-20. 1Tim.
3,16 etc.,). This fellowship with Christ is an endless reality for
humanity, continuing even after his exultation because it is worked out
by the Holly Spirit (John 14,8) and is realized within the Church, since
it is the Holy Spirit who makes Christ present in the believers: “Lo, I
am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matth.28,20. John
17,11ff). Because the Church came into being as a historical reality by
Christ’s presence and in the world, it follows that Christ’s Church are
inseparably knit together. This is why the Church’s task and mission
in the world is “to make known the manifold wisdom of God to the
principalities and powers in the heavenly places, according to the
eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord… and
make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God
who created all things” (Ephes. 3,9-11). The Church extends to the
whole creation which is thus re-created by joining it. This is the
mystery in God’s manifold wisdom which Paul speaks about in Ephesians
and Colossians by extending the boundaries of the Church to the
boundaries of creation. Thus the Church is God’s new creation because
in it all things are re-capitulated in Christ, “things in heaven and
things on earth” (Ephes. 1;10). Though visible and historical in
appearance, and divine and human in nature, the Church is a mystery in
itself, as a mystery is the person of Christ in who are inseparably
united the divine and the human, uncreated and created.
This explains why any definition of the Church is absent in the New
Testament. Instead of a definition, the New Testament authors give
plenty an information with regard to the place and life of the Church in
the world and describe it by a variety of symbolisms which express the
same reality, i.e. that within which God’s communion with man and the
entire created order takes place in the person of Jesus Christ through
the Holy Spirit. The common denominator in all these metaphors is the
person of Christ who is the formative factor and the connecting link of
the members. This is how St. John Chrysostom speaks about them: “Christ
is the head, we are the body… He is the foundation stone, we are the
building; he is the vineyard, we are the wine; he is the groom, we are
the bride; he is the shepherd, we are the sheep; he is the way, we are
the walking ones; we are also the temple, he is the resident; he is the
first-born, we are the brothers; he is the heir, we are the co-heirs; he
is the life, we are the living; he is the resurrection, we are the
risen; he is the light, we are the enlightened” (In 1 Cor. Hom. 8,4.
M.P.G.61,72.).
Belonging to the whole, all parts form a unity and as such their
relationship to one another is defined by the whole which is Christ,
their generating and formative factor. This reality is better expressed
by St. Paul’s metaphor about the Church as “Body”, “the body of
Christ”. No doubt, the metaphor of the “body” offers the most
appropriate and accurate description of the Church’s nature because it
presents it as the extension and continuity of the incarnation of the
divine Logos, so that Ecclesiology proper is directly related to
Theo-logy, to Soterio-logy and to Eschato-logy. In this way the Church
is, as Paul puts it, “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephes.
1,22,23), i.e. as that entity within which the unity of the entire
creation is again achieved (Ephes. 1,10).
Looking at it closely, the “body” metaphor is not new with Paul. It is
also used in the Septuagint (with no equivalent in the Hebrew Bible),
the Rabbinic literature, Stoicism and Gnosticism, and as such it was
know to Paul’s readers. Nevertheless, while in them it denoted
collectivity and solidarity, in Paul it denotes the Church as a living
organism, i.e. the body of Christ, and there is no trace of a stage at
which he regarded the Church as “body” without considering it as “the
body of Christ”. This is to say that the Church is a “body” only with
reference to the person of Christ.
The first instance in which Paul works out the metaphor with reference
to the Church is 1Cor. 12,12-27 where he concludes (v.27) that
Christians form a body as members of it only because they are members of
Christ by participating to him on account of their appropriation of his
saving work to themselves. This makes it clear that the description of
the Church as “the body of Christ” is not occasioned by the metaphor;
rather, it was the Church which was first defined as “the body of
Christ” and then the conception of the Christians as members of the body
was formed. In other words, Christians are members of the body because
they participate in the body of Christ which as the Church. Obviously
then, this idea clearly gives priority to the incarnation event for the
formation of the body of Christ. Christology thus is the foundation of
Ecclesiology.
The metaphor of the body expresses an ontological entity of a variety of
members with different functions but of the same nature (Rom. 12,4-5.
1Cor.12,12-31. Ephes.4,11-16). What connects the members to each other
is not their external similarity and uniformity but the oneness of their
nature, and in this case the human nature of the incarnate Son of God
in which they participate through Baptism. Their unity in nature,
however, does not make them identical as persons, but one in Christ,
because in baptism each individual person-member imitates sacra mentally
Christ by putting on his own human nature free from sin (Gal.3,27) and
so enlightened by the Holy Spirit he becomes son of God by adoption and
thus is led into perfection and immortality (Cf. Clement of Alexandria,
Pedagogue, I,4). This is what Paul stresses in Rom.6,3-11. The “first
fruits of the Spirit” (Rom.8,23.Cf. 2Cor.1,22. Gal.4,6. Ephes.1,13. T
it.3,5 etc.,), repeats at baptism the event of Pentecost within
each individual and so the baptized one becomes “pneumatikos”
(1Cor.2,13ff. Gal.6,1. 1Pet.2,5) by being re-created and reborn into a
new life, the life “from above”, i.e. “of water and the Spirit” (1John
3,3-6). It is this radical change affected at baptism which attaches
every individual into the body of Christ, the Church, where every
distinction disappears to the extent that “there is neither Jew nor
Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor
female; for they are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal.3,28). Salvation
becomes an experience only when man joins the body of Christ and becomes
part of the whole. Therefore, the individual can become a member only
if he belongs to the body of Christ, the Church, in which he is united
with him and with the other members. In the Church, his body, Christ’s
humanity reflects its prerogatives upon his members who thus do not live
to themselves but to Christ to whom they ever since belong (Rom.
14,7-8. Gal. 2,20. 2Cor. 5,15. Phil. 1,21. 1Pet. 2,4-5), because the
life of the head is poured out to its body. This makes it clear why
writing to the Corinthians Paul does not ask if the Church is divided,
but rather if Christ is divided (1Cor. 1,13. 12,12). In the same sense
Christ reproved Saul on the road to Damascus not by asking him why he
persecuted the Church, but rather why he persecuted him (Acts 9,4).
Photo from here (Orthodox Church in Uganda)
The close unity between Christ, the Church and the Christians has
nothing in common with the idea of a “corporate personality” put out in
Europe at the end of the 19th century. Their unity is centered in
Christ’s human nature in which individual members retain their
individuality as persons. No one is absorbed by the other, as in
Gnosticism. We can see this clearer in 1Cor. 12 where Paul speaks about
the role of the Holy Spirit in the Church. In order to emphasize the
unity and the variety in the body of the Church, Paul says that the
variety of the gifts comes “from the Spirit”, in the same way as the
variety of the services stems “from the same Lord” and the variety of
the workings comes “from the same God” (1Cor. 12,4-5), because “to each
is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (v.7),
“who apportions to each one individually as he wills” (v. 11). The
oneness of the Spirit does not lead to the confusion of the various
gifts. The same principle, Says Paul, applies to the Church which as a
body has a variety of members baptized into it “by one Spirit” (vs.
12-13), but with different functions. In the Church, Christians “are
the body of Christ and individually members of it” (vs.24-27). The
opposite creates confusion which destroys the reality of the body, the
Church :”if all were a single organ, where would be the body? As it is,
there are many parts, yet one body” (vs. 19-20).
In his epistles to the Romans and to the Corinthians, when he speaks
about the Church as the body of Christ, Paul never depicts Christ as the
head of the Church. In them he only stresses the unity of the
Christians in Christ as members of the Church. The idea of Christ as
the head of the Church, his body, occurs in the epistles to the
Ephesians and to the Colossians where the Apostle speaks about the
relationship of the Church as a whole to Christ (Ephes. 1,22. 4,15.
5,23. Col. 1,18). However, as in 1Cor. 12,3 “no one can say “Jesus is
Lord” except by the Holy Spirit”, so also in Ephes. 3,16 the riches of
Christ’s glory can be “strengthened with might through his Spirit in the
inner man”, so that the Body of the Church consists of members ;filled
with the Spirit” (Ephes. 5,18). In other words, “the equipment of the
saints… for building up the body of Christ” is worked out by the Holy
Spirit, but comes from Christ as a source “who is the head,… from whom
the whole body joined and knit together by every joint with which it is
supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and up
builds itself in love”(Ephes. 4,12-16. Cf. Col. 2,19). Christ’s place
as the head of the one body of the Church underlines the unbreakable
unity of both, while at the same time it distinguishes the head from the
body as two separate entities, as it also distinguishes each member of
the body from the rest. Christ and Church can not be identified, nor do
the members of the Church. Their unity is considered in a collective
sense, in which each part is united with the rest in substance, while it
retains its individuality and distinct entity. Furthermore, Christ’s
place as head of the Church indicates that neither the Church can be
body without the Church as his body. This makes it plain why the Church
is necessary component of Christ’s divine-and-human person, “the
fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephes. 1,23).
This phrase describes the divine-and-human nature of the overall body of
the Church as a living organism, i.e. the unbreakable unity of its
divine and human elements, in which the divine is the head, Christ.
While the human is Christ’s humanity appropriated by the members of the
Church in baptism. Thus the Church is connected with the event of the
incarnation of the divine Logos and through him with the other two
persons of the Holy Trinity, the Father and the Holy Spirit, with which
the Logos-Son is related by their common divine nature. Being the human
body of the incarnate Son, then, the Church realizes the unity and
communion between the Triune God and humanity achieved by the
incarnation and the overall redemptive work of the Son. Since the son
ship of Christ is an internal issue of the Holy Trinity, on account of
the common divine nature of its persons, likewise the Church must be
seen in the context of Christ’s “consubstantiality” with the Father and
the Holy Spirit. Or, to put it in other words, the Church as a
historical entity falls within the context of its inner relationship
with Christ, because its nature is defined by its unity with Christ, on
the human level, and by his consubstantiality with the Father and the
Holy Spirit, on the divine level. Through his incarnation, the Son
connects the Church with the Holy Trinity in his own divine-and-human
person (Cf.Ephes. 2,4-6). Christ’s perfect humanity forms the nature,
as well as the entity of the Church which in this way constitutes the
perpetual continuation of his incarnation extending beyond time. Hence,
any thought of an ontological separation between Christ and Church
rules out both, the fact of Christ’s incarnation and the reality of the
Church. Without its ontological connection with Christ, the Church
becomes a mere social organization. Christ and the Church together from
a “whole”; without Christ is nothing; in him the Church is everything.
Without the Church, Christ the Son is not incarnate, because after his
incarnation the Son can be thought of only as both, divine and human
and, therefore, only with the Church, while the Church can be thought of
only in Christ and with Christ as his human body, i.e. as “the fullness
of him who fills all in all” (Ephes. 1,23). Here we meet with the
extreme paradox: the unity which Christ forms with the Church is in some
way identified with himself: he is the whole Christ, body and head.
While he is a part of the whole, he is also the whole, the incarnate
divine Son. And while the Church exist as a community in its own
right, it at the same time is the body of the distinct person of Christ,
the humanity of the incarnate Son and Logos.
That this paradox is so, i.e. that the appropriation of humanity by the
divine Logos at his incarnation is tantamount to the formation of the
Church as his body, in an objective sense, even before any human persons
joined it as members, is evident in Ephes. 5,22-30, where the unity
between man and woman in the Sacrament of Marriage is placed parallel to
the unity between Christ and the Church after the incarnation. The
expressions: “as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her”
(Ephes. 5,25. Cf., Acts 20,28), and “that he might sanctify her, having
cleansed her by the washing of water with the word” (v.26), suggest the
objective existence of an entity before the incarnation proper living in
sin, which the Son took to himself by becoming human and cleansed it.
Christ’s body here is the entire human nature “per se”, not the body’s
human members who are added to it by appropriating to themselves the
human nature of the Son. Human nature cleansed from sin comprises the
Church as Christ’s and so human persons are added to it as its members
afterwards, so that we can say that as Christ’s body the Church exists
as an objective reality even before or regardless of its members. The
Church exists objectively at the incarnation and because of it, even
without members. Christ’s human nature, being his human body, is the
place within which he works out eternally the redemption and salvation
of each particular human person and through them the salvation of the
entire created order, to which humanity belongs (Cf.Rom. 8,14ff).
Now we can understand better Christ’s expression “in me” (εν εμοί) in
John 6,56 and 15,1-10, as well as Paul’s frequent expression “in Christ”
(εν Χριστώ) denoting not man’s identification with or absorption by
Christ, but his unity with and in Christ’s humanity. Man’s unity with
Christ does not deform him, but conforms him “to the image” of the
incarnate Son (Rom. 8,29. 2Cor. 3,18. Gal.2,20.), which has nothing to
do again with the idea of “corporate personality”. In the Church, the
relationship is a member relationship to the head and the body, the
whole Christ. In the same sense is also understood Paul’s formula “in
Christ” with reference to Christ’s correspondence with Adam which
defines the relationship between the “one” and the “many”. On account
of the unity or the oneness of human nature, Adam’s fall extends to all
of his descendents, while their individuality is preserved by their
active participation in Adam’s sin when each human person does exactly
what Adam did in the past, being thus for it personally responsible:
“εφ’ ω πάντες ήμαρτον» (“because all men sinned on account of it”, Rom.
5,12). Influenced by satan fallen human persons inherit Adam’s sin
which is “Like the transgression of Adam” («επί τω ομοιώματι της
παραβάσεως Αδάμ»,Rom. 5,14). This fact rules out the rabbinic idea,
according to which Adam constitutes the coherence of mankind in the
sense that all men were created “in him”.
Restricting the hereditary
transmission of the original sin and ignoring satan’s role in it, we are
forced to deny the existence of righteous men in the Old Testament, on
the one hand, and accept the universal salvation of all men by Christ
without their active appropriation of his saving work to themselves, on
the other. In this case, personal freedom and responsibility are done
away with, and together with them active membership in the Church as
well. In Paul’s expression “for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ
shall all be made alive” (1Cor. 15,22), we must understand the fall and
restoration of human nature as objective conditions to which men
participate personally by their own free will. Being unable to achieve
salvation because of his fallen nature, man in Christ obtains it by
actively sharing in Christ’s human nature cleansed from sin. This is
why the Old Testament law could not save man (Heb. 7,19), even though,
as Goad’s work, the law was “holy” and “good” and “spiritual” (Rom.
7,12-16), being thus restricted to the role of “our custodian until
Christ came” (Gal. 3,23). Conditions changed however, when :God has
done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own
Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin he condemned sin in the
flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled
in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit”
(Rom. 8,3-4). Thus, “in Adam” and “in Christ’ we understand human
nature in its two conditions: of sinfulness and sinless ness, i.e. the
body of Adam, human nature, and “the body of Christ which is the Church”
(Col. 1,24).
In conclusion, we observe that it is in full agreement with Pauline
thought when St. John Chrysostom comments that at his incarnation Christ
“took to himself the flesh of the Church” (“εκκλησίας σάρκα ανέλαβεν”).
Homily before the exile, (2. M.P.G. 52,429) and formed it into his own
body animated by himself as its head. The mystery of Christ “which was
kept secret for long ages” (Rom. 16,25. Ephes. 3,4;5;9. Col.1,26) has
been disclosed as Church in the fullness of time “to unite all things in
him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephes. 1,10), “that through
the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the
principalities and powers in the heavenly places, according to the
eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ephes.
3,10-11. Col. 1,16-20). Comprising all creation, visible and
invisible, the Church unites in itself “all things” with Christ as “head
over all things” (Ephes. 1,22-23), so that in the Church man comes into
communion not only with those other human members of it, but also with
all those creatures which are subjected to Christ and accept him as “the
image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation” (Col.
1,15).
