An Outline of Orthodox Patristic Dogmatics
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The Church for Orthodox Christians is first of all an object of
faith. We believe in the Church as we believe in God the Father, the Lord
Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The Church is God’s gift to men
of communion and life with Himself: with the Father through the Son in
the Holy Spirit. Just as the uncreated Trinity is one and holy, and as
the Church is catholic, i.e. full, complete, whole, perfect, all-embracing,
with nothing lacking in it of the superabundance of all that is good,
holy, beautiful and true — so the Church of the Trinity is catholic
essentially and by definition: full, complete, whole, perfect, all-embracing,
with nothing lacking in it of the inexhaustible fullness and superabundance
of the very nature and life of God.
The problem of understanding the Catholicity of the Church in Christianity
is a central problem. In Christianity everything is important and central;
there is no periphery. No matter what you touch, you are touching the
heart of Christ. In our Lord Jesus Christ everything occupies a paramount
and central position. There is no word in the Holy Scripture or in the
Divine Liturgy which, for a real and true Orthodox Christian can become
irrelevant or boring, even if repeated daily. The same is the case with
the word catholic or “Sobornost”. The term “Catholic
Church” was used first by St. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 100 A.D.)
who in his letter to the Smyrnaens wrote: “Where Jesus Christ is,
there is the catholic Church” (Smyrn. 8:2). This specific expression
he discovered to define the Church, became so popular that it was used
in creeds — including the most definitive creedal formula approved
by the ecumenical councils of Nicea and Constantinople, in spite of the
fact that the word “catholic” was not found in Scripture.
In order to be able to understand the idea of catholicity we must
start from the center of all — i.e., Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity
is the ideal and crown of catholicity. It is the light of the doctrine
of the Trinity that “catholicity” becomes a uniquely meaningful
quality. The first eight articles of the Creed speak about the Holy Trinity
and the ninth article speaks about the Church, since the Church is an
image, an icon of the Holy Trinity on the earth. The Church is the earthly
aspect of the Holy Trinity. Therefore everything in Church is Trinitarian,
holy and catholic, as we profess to believe in One, Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic Church.
Catholicity is that essential quality of the Church, that makes
the church the Church. Prof. Lossky calls it “the most wonderful
attribute”, which reflects the life and the mystery of the Trinitarian
antinomy.
Very often the word catholic is associated with Roman Catholicism,
and some Orthodox go as far as defensively objecting to its application
to Orthodoxy. Sometime, the term catholic is given geographical and topographical
dimension, while, according to the Orthodox interpretation, the catholicity
of the Church is not a quantitative or a geographical conception. It does
not at all depend on the world-wide dispersion of the faithful. It rather
pertains to the inner, substantial and psychological nature. The Church
was “catholic” even when Christian communities were but
solitary, rare islands in the sea of unbelief and paganism. And the Church
will remain “catholic” even unto the end of time when
the mystery of the “falling away” will be revealed, when
the Church once more will dwindle to a “small flock”.
As we read in St. Luke, “When the Son of Man cometh, shall He
find faith on the earth?” (St. Luke 18:8).
Some of our Orthodox Churches are substituting “universal”
for the correct and original word “catholic” just because of
the Roman-Catholics or because they don’t fully realize that the
term “universal” is not synonymous with the word “catholic”.
“KATHOLIKY” from “KATHOLOU” means, first of all, the
inner wholeness and integrity of the Church’s life. “KATH’OLOU”
is not the same as “KATA PANTOS”. The adjective “catholic”,
according to Fr. Florovsky, “does not belong to the phenomenal and
empirical, but to the noumenal and ontological plane”. The first
Christians when using the words “EKLYSIA KATHOLIKY” never meant
a world-wide Church. This word rather gave prominence to the Orthodoxy
of the Church, to the truth of the “Great Church”, as contrasted
with the spirit of sectarian separatism. According to Archbishop Basil,
“until quite a recent period, the Church was never characterized
by the attribute ‘orthodox’, but always as ‘catholic’.
In Patristic terminology, the Church herself is catholic, but her traditional
faith and doctrine is “Orthodoxy”. Although the faith is sometimes
also called “catholic”, the members of the Church are the “orthodox”.
Therefore, the Catholic Church is often called “the Church of the
orthodox”: “TON ORTHODOXON”.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386) in Catechetical Orations gives
us an excellent description and best definition of the word “catholic”.
Teaching his catechumens the article of the Creed of the Church of Jerusalem
“and in One, Holy, Catholic”, he explained:
“And the Church is called ‘catholic’ for being
in the entire world from one end of the earth to the other and for teaching
wholly “KATHOLIKOS” and lacking nothing of all the doctrines
that must become part of man’s knowledge… and for subjecting
every race of men… to godliness and for curing completely (KATHOLIKOS)
and healing every sort of sin, commited either through the soul or the
body, and for being of possession of every notion of virtue in word or
in deed that can be named, as well as every spiritual gift.” And in another passage of the same oration, St. Cyril stresses the uniqueness
of this Catholic Church: If it happens that you visit some town, do not
simply inquire where is the cathedral, because all other heresies of the
impious attempt to call their caverns “cathedrals”, nor where
is simply the church, but where is the catholic church, because this is
the specific name of this holy Mother of us all.’
Commenting on the words of St. Cyril, Archbishop Basil writes:
“We can say that, in the conception of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, who
expresses in these passages the mature reflection of the Church on her
chief attribute, “catholic” is understood 1) as universal in
both a geographical (ends of the world) and qualitative sense, as embracing
men of different races, cultures and social positions; 2) as possessing
the fullness of truth; 3) as having the fullness of saving power which
defeats every sin or evil; 4) as having the fullness of holiness and grace;
and 5) as consequently, a unique characteristic. We see that, while the
external marks of catholicity are not denied, it is the qualitative notion
of wholeness in truth and grace which is particularly stressed by St.
Cyril.
Fr. Milin, a Serbian theologian, had also some interesting comments
on St. Cyril’s interpretation of the word “catholic”. Fr.
Milin thinks that St. Cyril must have been influenced by the Scripture
when he called the Church “catholic”. “Although the Bible
does not use the word “catholic” as well as Holy Trinity and
Mother of God, and yet the Bible speaks about them and their elements
are present in the Scripture.” “I am forced”, says Fr.
Milin, “to use several Biblical quotations to illustrate this point”.
The Prophet Isaiah: “It shall come to pass in the latter days
that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the
highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills, and all
the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come and say: “Come,
let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob;
that He may teach us his ways and that we may walk in His paths. For out
of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem”
(Is. 2:2-3)
The Prophet Daniel, interpreting Nebuchanezzar’s dream, speaks
about a stone which “became a great mountain and filled the whole
earth”. And that stone represents a spiritual kingdom “which
shall stand forever” (Daniel 2:44).
The prophet Zechariah prophesized the coming of the Messiah and
said that “His dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River
to the ends of the earth” (Zech. 9:9-10).
The Savior proclaims: “And this Gospel of the Kingdom will
be preached throughout the whole world, as the testimony to all nations”
(St. Matth. 24:14). Also, He not only proclaims but demands: “Go,
therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to
observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to
the close of the age” (St. Matt. 28:19-20).
Based on these Biblical quotations, Fr. Milin concludes that the
temporal, geographical and ethnographical spread of the Church enters
definitely into the concept of catholicity as one of its essential elements.
The social element as well enters into this concept. As the Church
does not have any geographical or ethnographical bounds, it also does
not have any social ones. Nor it is bound by any temporal limits, as it
is a kingdom which will not disintegrate (Daniel 2:44). It is not bound
to any one country or city, for it will spread “from sea to sea”
(Zech. 9:9-10). In it “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither
slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one
in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 3:28). It does not belong to those of one
age: neither the old man nor the child. It belongs to the whole man and
to all humanity.”
Later on, in the East, the word “catholic” was understood
as synonymous with “ecumenical”, but this drew attention to
the outward form, not to the inner contents. “Yet the Church is not
catholic because of its outward extent, or because it is an all-embracing
entity, not only because it unites all its members, all local churches,
but because it is catholic all through in its very smaller part, in every
act and event of its life” (Fr. Florovsky).
The catholicity of the Church has been manifested in the Orthodox
Dogmas, Teachings of the Church Fathers, Ecumenical Councils, Orthodox
Liturgy, in the Orthodox canonical tradition and in Orthodox theology.
However, we witness today a gradual evolution of ecclesiology.
The understanding of the “catholic church” as described by St.
Ignatius and Cyril is not the same. According to Fr. Meyendorff, “In
the minds of Orthodox Christians, the ‘church’ came to signify
simply the local parish (‘our church’); or, in America, a particular
ecclesiastical jurisdiction; or national church (The Greek Church, the
Serbian Church); or a denomination, so that the term ‘catholic’
is associated with Roman Catholicism… All this denotes not only a
large degree of ignorance but also a spiritual loss and danger for the
true faith. The concrete and direct implications of our confessing a belief
in ‘one, Holy, catholic and apostolic Church’ are lost
and are replaced by a vague and imaginary or a narrowly confessional concept
of ‘catholicity’, coupled with, in practical terms, a congregational,
Protestant, or sectarian understanding of church life”.
What we have to recover is the sense, implied already very clearly
by St. Ignatius, that it is Christ, through the Spirit, Who makes the
Church to be “catholic”.
There is no way in which one can claim to be a Christian except
through concrete membership in the Catholic Church and through a continuous
effort at manifesting the catholicity of the Church.
From 1986 Calendar
of the Serbian Orthodox Church
in the United States and Canada
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