The first basic ecclesiological principle, which we insisted on, is that the Church is the recapitulation of the Mystery of Providence, in other words, She is the finale, the objective of entire Providence, and not simply an objective that is to be realized sometime in the future. And this Mystery of Providence, which is recapitulated in the Church, is rooted within the very love of God. The volition, the “love of God and Father”, is that which moves the mystery of Providence, and subsequently, the Mystery of the Church.
«The grace of Jesus Christ», the Son of God, which is needed for composing that body which will realize, which will incorporate that recapitulation of the Mystery of Providence, is the second leg –so to speak- of the basis of Ecclesiology.
The third leg is the communion of the Holy Spirit, in other words, that the Holy Spirit, with His presence in this Mystery of Providence, makes possible the communion of the created with the Uncreated, as well as between the participant beings.
Thus, Ecclesiology has its basis in the Triadic life of God, which is summarized –as I stressed earlier- so beautifully in the words of the Apostle Paul, with which he closes his second Epistle to Corinthians: “The love of God and Father, the grace of Jesus Christ (i.e., the ‘vacating’ of the Son becomes grace – a free gift by God), and the communion of the Holy Spirit (which implies, as I have already underlined, the transcendence of the limitations of beings). Beings place boundaries around themselves, so that they can discern each other. The created needs to be discerned from the Uncreated, because these two cannot remain indiscernible. Person A demarcates himself opposite person B; everything is demarcated so that they can comprise individual hypostases, however, woe betide, if those boundaries are not overcome, in order to create a society of beings and a communion between the created and the Uncreated. And this is precisely the job of the Holy Spirit. This is why the Holy Spirit is linked par excellence to society.
This is the Triadic basis upon which Ecclesiology is built, and this basis must always exist in our thoughts, when we talk about the structure of the Church, its specific form of organization as we shall see further along.
The second basic ecclesiological principle that we defined, and which must also influence the organization of the Church, is that the Being of the Church resides in the Kingdom of God. That is where the true Being of the Church is; not in that which the Church is presently, in History, but in that eschatological form which is to be revealed. Her true identity therefore is there; the Church is by Her nature the community of the Time to come, or in other words, the Kingdom of God, and Her organization must necessarily reflect that eschatological hypostasis of Hers.
The third basic ecclesiological principle is that the historical Being of the Church, (i.e., the way the Church is at present, within History, and not how She will be in the future), is determined by that which we have named “virtual ontology”. In other words, the Church as She is within History, is a virtual image of the Kingdom of God, and, as History evolves, She provides a fixed point of reference, which is the Kingdom of God. In other words, She pre-portrays the Kingdom that is to come; She establishes it within the course of History – the consequence of which is a conflicting with that flow of History. The Kingdom - and the Church that portrays it – are in conflict with the flow of History. The Church is constantly in a situation, not of identifying with History, but on the contrary, in a crisis situation with History. That is also why the Church cannot, by nature, ever find Her expression amongst secular, historical realities with which She will more or less always find Herself in a certain dialectic situation, regardless how many times She encounters them; She will always be in a conflicting relationship with them. Consequently, the Church cannot be transformed into a State; She cannot be expressed by a political party. She cannot coincide with a particular social structure or organization. And not only can She not coincide, but this also means She is in constant friction with History. The Church remains forever a stranger within History; She does not find Herself, Her home, within History. She always seeks the End Times, and is a stranger and a sojourner here. It is very important to remember that since the beginning, the Church was called “a sojourner in the world”, which is why we call Her “foreigner”: in Clement’s first epistle, and even in the epistles of the New Testament, She is mentioned as the “Church, the existing or sojourning one” in a city. We need to see this fact through this prism; i.e., that the Church is a stranger and one who is just passing through History, as Paul had said. The Church can never be identified – and never should be – with Historical realities, because She is the image of the eschatological community; hence the reason that the fourth ecclesiological principle has equally a lot to do (as we shall see) with the organization of the Church, because that is where the image of the End Times is expressed; the way in which the Church materializes this image in Herself is only through the Sacraments of the Church, and especially in the Divine Eucharist. This is the par excellence image of the End Times, and consequently, the organization of the Church ( if it is as we previously mentioned, and is expressed as the true Being of the Church should be expressed ) must be rooted in the structure of the divine Eucharist, where we have the structure of the Kingdom, the structure of the eschatological community.
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