Touching Christ’s Body

Thomas, when he touched the flesh, believed that he had touched God, saying, “My Lord and my God.” For they all confessed but one Christ, so as not to make him two. Do you therefore believe him? And do you believe in such a way that Jesus Christ, the Lord of all, both Only Begotten and firstborn, is both creator of all things and preserver of humanity and that the same person is framer of the whole world and afterward redeemer of humankind?

John Cassian, On the Incarnation of the Lord against Nestorius 6.19, quoted in Joel C. Elowsky (ed), John 11-21, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture New Testament IVb (InterVarsity Press, 200) 372-373.

With good reason, then, we are accustomed to have sacred meetings in churches on the eighth day. And, to adopt the language of allegory, as the idea necessarily demands, we indeed close the doors, but Christ still visits us and appears to us all, both invisibly as God and visibly in the body. He allows us to touch his holy flesh and gives it to us. For through the grace of God we are admitted to partake of the blessed Eucharist, receiving Christ into our hands, to the intent that we may firmly believe that he did in truth raise up the temple of his body. … Participation in the divine mysteries, in addition to filling us with divine blessedness, is a true confession and memorial of Christ’s dying and rising again for us and for our sake. Let us, therefore, after touching Christ’s body, avoid all unbelief in him as utter ruin and rather be found well grounded in the full assurance of faith.

Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of John 12.I, quoted in Joel C. Elowsky (ed), John 11-21, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture New Testament IVb (InterVarsity Press, 200) 369.

A blessed Pascha to all celebrating it today, and a blessed end of the Octave to the rest of us! (I’ve given up trying to work out precisely who follows what calendar by now).

 

Dost thou make Him a cup of gold, while thou givest Him not a cup of cold water?

Let us also then touch the hem of His garment, or rather, if we be willing, we have Him entire. For indeed His body is set before us now, not His garment only, but even His body; not for us to touch it only, but also to eat, and be filled. Let us now then draw near with faith, every one that hath an infirmity. For if they that touched the hem of His garment drew from Him so much virtue, how much more they that possess Him entire? Now to draw near with faith is not only to receive the offering, but also with a pure heart to touch it; to be so minded, as approaching Christ Himself. For what, if thou hear no voice? Yet thou seest Him laid out; or rather thou dost also hear His voice, while He is speaking by the evangelists.

Believe, therefore, that even now it is that supper, at which He Himself sat down. For this is in no respect different from that. For neither doth man make this and Himself the other; but both this and that is His own work. When therefore thou seest the priest delivering it unto thee, account not that it is the priest that doeth so, but that it is Christ’s hand that is stretched out.

Even as when he baptizes, not he doth baptize thee, but it is God that possesses thy head with invisible power, and neither angel nor archangel nor any other dare draw nigh and touch thee; even so now also. For when God begets, the gift is His only. Seest thou not those who adopt to themselves sons here, how they commit not the act to slaves, but are themselves present at the judgment-seat? Even so neither hath God committed His gift to angels, but Himself is present, commanding and saying, “Call no man Father on earth;” not that thou shouldest dishonor them that gave thee birth, but that thou shouldest prefer to all those Him that made thee, and enrolled thee amongst His own children. For He that hath given the greater, that is, hath set Himself before thee, much more will He not think scorn to distribute unto thee of His body. Let us hear therefore, both priests and subjects, what we have had vouchsafed to us; let us hear and tremble. Of His own holy flesh He hath granted us our fill; He hath set before us Himself sacrificed.

What excuse shall we have then, when feeding on such food, we commit such sins? when eating a lamb, we become wolves? when feeding on a sheep, we spoil by violence like the lions?

For this mystery He directs to be always clear, not from violence only, but even from bare enmity. Yea, for this mystery is a mystery of peace; it allows us not to cling to wealth. For if He spared not Himself for us, what must we deserve, sparing our wealth, and being lavish of a soul, in behalf of which He spared not Himself?

Now upon the Jews God every year bound in their feasts a memorial of His peculiar favors to them: but for thee, every day, as I may say, through these mysteries.

Be not therefore ashamed of the cross: for these are our venerable things, these our mysteries; with this gift do we adorn ourselves, with this we are beautified.

And if I say, He stretched out the heaven, He spread out the earth and the sea, He sent prophets and angels, I say nothing in comparison. For the sum of His benefits is this, that “He spared not His own Son,” in order to save His alienated servants.

Let no Judas then approach this table, no Simon; nay, for both these perished through covetousness. Let us flee then from this gulf; neither let us account it enough for our salvation, if after we have stripped widows and orphans, we offer for this table a gold and jewelled cup. Nay, if thou desire to honor the sacrifice, offer thy soul, for which also it was slain; cause that to become golden; but if that remain worse than lead or potter’s clay, while the vessel is of gold, what is the profit?

Let not this therefore be our aim, to offer golden vessels only, but to do so from honest earnings likewise. For these are of the sort that is more precious even than gold, these that are without injuriousness. For the church is not a gold foundry nor a workshop for silver, but an assembly of angels. Wherefore it is souls which we require, since in fact God accepts these for the souls’ sake.

That table at that time was not of silver nor that cup of gold, out of which Christ gave His disciples His own blood; but precious was everything there, and awful, for that they were full of the Spirit.

Wouldest thou do honor to Christ’s body? Neglect Him not when naked; do not while here thou honorest Him with silken garments, neglect Him perishing without of cold and nakedness. For He that said, “This is my body,” and by His word confirmed the fact, “This same said, “Ye saw me an hungered, and fed me not;” and, “Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.” For This indeed needs not coverings, but a pure soul; but that requires much attention.

Let us learn therefore to be strict in life, and to honor Christ as He Himself desires. For to Him who is honored that honor is most pleasing, which it is His own will to have, not that which we account best. Since Peter too thought to honor Him by forbidding Him to wash his feet, but his doing so was not an honor, but the contrary.

Even so do thou honor Him with this honor, which He ordained, spending thy wealth on poor people. Since God hath no need at all of golden vessels, but of golden souls.

And these things I say, not forbidding such offerings to be provided; but requiring you, together with them, and before them, to give alms. For He accepts indeed the former, but much more the latter. For in the one the offerer alone is profited, but in the other the receiver also. Here the act seems to be a ground even of ostentation; but there all is mercifulness, and love to man.

For what is the profit, when His table indeed is full of golden cups, but He perishes with hunger? First fill Him, being an hungered, and then abundantly deck out His table also. Dost thou make Him a cup of gold, while thou givest Him not a cup of cold water? And what is the profit? Dost thou furnish His table with cloths bespangled with gold, while to Himself thou affordest not even the necessary covering? And what good comes of it? For tell me, should you see one at a loss for necessary food, and omit appeasing his hunger, while you first overlaid his table with silver; would he indeed thank thee, and not rather be indignant? What, again, if seeing one wrapped in rags, and stiff with cold, thou shouldest neglect giving him a garment, and build golden columns, saying, “thou wert doing it to his honor,” would he not say that thou wert mocking, and account it an insult, and that the most extreme?

Let this then be thy thought with regard to Christ also, when He is going about a wanderer, and a stranger, needing a roof to cover Him; and thou, neglecting to receive Him, deckest out a pavement, and walls, and capitals of columns, and hangest up silver chains by means of lamps but Himself bound in prison thou wilt not even look upon.

And these things I say, not forbidding munificence in these matters, but admonishing you to do those other works together with these, or rather even before these. Because for not having done these no one was ever blamed, but for those, hell is threatened, and unquenchable fire, and the punishment with evil spirits. Do not therefore while adorning His house overlook thy brother in distress, for he is more properly a temple than the other.

And whereas these thy stores will be subject to alienations both by unbelieving kings, and tyrants, and robbers; whatever thou mayest do for thy brother, being hungry, and a stranger, and naked, not even the devil will be able to despoil, but it will be laid up in an inviolable treasure.

Saint John Chrysostom, Homily L, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew

 

Zizioulas on a synthesis between the “Historical” and “Eschatological” approaches to Apostolic Continuity

In the second subsection of the fifth chapter of Being as Communion on apostolic continuity, Zizioulas points to the need for a synthesis between the historical and eschatological approaches outlined in the previous subsection and makes the following points.

Firstly, the Christ event should be seen as pneumatologically constituted leading to an understanding of Christ not as an individual “but in terms of personhood which implies a particularity established in and through communion” (182) which allows the biblical idea of “corporate personality” to be applied to Christ.

Our continuity, therefore, with the Christ event is not determined by sequence or response based on distance; it is rather a continuity in terms of inclusiveness: we are in Christ, and this is what makes Him be before us, our “first-born brother” in the Pauline sense. (182)

It is in the Spirit that Christ contains us in Himself and

He thus in the Spirit contains by definition the eschata, our final destiny, ourselves as we shall be; He is the eschatological Man – yet, let me repeat, not as an individual but as Church, i.e. because of our being included in Him. It is in this sense that historical existence becomes in Christ and in the Spirit a continuity that comes to us from the future and not through the channels of a divided time sequence like the one we experience in our fallen state of existence. Thus when the eshcata enter into history in the Spirit, time is redeemed from fragmentation, and history acquires a different sense. (183)

This means, secondly, that the apostles cannot be enclosed as individuals in a self-defined event or a closed past. Zizioulas argues that

It has done a lot of damage to the notion of apostolicity to think of it in terms of historical prerogatives, be it in the form of the Petrine keys or in that of the apostolic kerygma. For the keys are those of the Kingdom, and the kerygma is not an objectifiable norm but the Risen Christ, i.e. a living person; in both cases historical prerogatives are eschatologized. The apostles continue to speak and proclaim Christ in the Church only because the Church is by her very existence the living presence of the Word of God as person. (184)

In listening to the voice of the apostles, the Church listens to her own voice that comes from her own eschatological nature.

This makes the history of the Church identical with that of the world and of creation as a whole. Thus to recall that the Church is founded on the apostles in an eschatological sense makes the Church acquire her ultimate existential significance as the sign of a redeemed and saved creation. This makes the Church, in the words of St Paul, “the judge of the world,” i.e. makes her acquire a prerogative strictly applied to the apostles and especially to the Twelve in their eschatological function. (184)

Thirdly, such pneumatological conditioning should allay fears about an identification of the Church with the Kingdom, for such fears are only justified when apostolicity is seen in historical terms, which is what we see in the Protestant reaction to the medieval Church. However,

… in a pneumatological conditioning of history by eschatology this identification does not present any dangers. The reason is that it takes place epicletically. The epicletic aspect of continuity represents a fundamental point in what I am trying to say here, and its implications must be stressed. In an epicletical context, history ceases to be in itself a guarantee for security. The epiclesis means ecclesiologically that the Church asks to receive from God what she has already received historically in Christ as if she had not received it al all, i.e. as if history did not count in itself. (185)

Despite having received the Spirit, the apostles, and the Church since them, continue to invoke the Spirit.

The epicletic life of the Church shows only one thing: That there is no security for her to be found in any historical guarantee as such – be it ministry or word or sacrament or even the historical Christ Himself. Her constant dependence on the Spirit proves that her history is to be constantly eschatological. (185-186)

Nevertheless,

…the fact that the Spirit points to Christ shows equally well that history is not to be denied. “The Spirit blows where He wills,” but we know that He wills to blow towards Christ. Eschatology and history are thus not incompatible with each other. (186)

Such an epicletic conditioning of the Church’s continuity with the apostles points, fourthly, points to the possibility of a synthesis between the historical and the eschatological in a way that overcomes any Neoplatonic dualism. While there is certainly an “already” and a “not yet” aspect this does not involve any incompatibility between time and eternity.

The incarnation of God in Christ makes it possible to say against Neoplatonic dualism that history is a real bearer of the ultimate, of the very life of God. History as existence in space and time offers in Christ the possibility for communion with the eschata. (186)

The tension between history and the Kingdom is not one of ontological dualism but rather of a longing for transformation.

In the expression of St Paul, we are anxious to exchange the present form for the eschatological one not because the present one is less real or less “ontological” in its nature – it is the very same body we have now that will be resurrected, according to Paul – but because the presence and activity of the Antichrist in history makes the present form of the Church’s existence fragile and a cause of suffering. (186)

…

When the Church lives epicletically, she cannot but long for what she already is. The synthesis of the historical with the eschatological in this epicletical conditioning of history constitutes what we may properly – and not in the distorted sense – call the sacramental nature of the Church. (187)

This leads, fifthly, to the practical question of how the Church can unite these two approaches in one synthesis. Here Zizioulas points to the eucharistic experience of the early Church.

There is, indeed, no other experience in the Church’s life in which the synthesis of the historical with the eschatological can be realized more fully than in the eucharist. The eucharist is, on the one hand, a “tradition” (para/dosiv) and a “remembrance” (a0na/mnhsiv). As such it activates the historical consciousness of the Church in a retrospective way. At the same time, however, the eucharist is the eschatological moment of the Church par excellence, a remembrance of the Kingdom, as it sets the scene for the convocation of the dispersed people of God from the ends of the earth in one place, uniting the “many” in the “one” and offering the taste of the eternal life of God here and now. In and through the same experience, therefore, at one and the same moment, the Church unites in the eucharist the two dimensions, past and future, simultaneously as one indivisible reality. This happens “sacramentally,” i.e. in and through historical and material forms, while the existential tension of the “already” and the “not yet” is preserved. In the consciousness of the ancient Church this is further emphasized through the use of the epiclesis in the eucharist: the “words of institution” and the entire anamnetic dimension of the Church are placed at the disposal of the Spirit, as if they could not constitute in themselves a sufficient assurance of God’s presence in history. This makes the eucharist the moment in which the Church realizes that her roots are to be found simultaneously in the past and in the future, in history and in the eschata. (188 )

The Eucharist was therefore the place where the concrete manifestation of apostolic continuity took place. While the centrality of the Eucharist has been preserved in the Orthodox liturgical and canonical tradition, Zizioulas that Orthodox theology has often disregarded it making a synthesis between history and eschatology difficult.

In the following subsection he discusses the concrete consequences of this for the life of the Church.

 

Does it matter?

I was recently dipping into a new history of our Order in the twentieth century* and came across an interesting account about a certain Dom Alexis Presse, abbot of Tamié in the 1920s and 1930s. He was a reforming abbot and an expert on early Cistercian history and liturgy. “But he was not merely a historian, and dreamed of bringing his Order back to its original practices by sweeping aside all that had been added since then, especially since Rancé and Lestrange.” (200) As abbot he got into trouble for suppressing practices such as Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament in his own community, even forbidding his novices to make “visits” to the Blessed Sacrament. A gifted and visionary person, it appears that he was less than diplomatic and that he became increasingly arrogant and unstable, resulting in rebukes even from sympathetic friends such as the great Dom Anselme Le Bail of Scourmont. The sad outcome of an extended conflict was that he ended up being secularised and, supported by some of the French bishops, went on to form a community outside the Order.

That is an interesting titbit of history, the details of which I won’t go into. But I raise it here because of the comment of the authors of this history who judge his approach “overly archaeological” and ask “Had the Holy Spirit inspired nothing good in the Church since the sixth century?” (206-207) I am interested in this because the shift in Eucharistic understanding and practice in the late Middle Ages, and the persistence in emphasis on the Holy Gifts outside the Eucharist, is something that also concerns me. The authors of this history, like vast majority of Latin Catholics, seem to accept that this development was a good thing. And to simply object to it on the grounds of “archaeology” does indeed seem problematic. There have, after all, been many developments in the history of the Church; the question is how we discern which of them are genuine developments and which involved a shift in meaning that represent a departure from the tradition. Do such innovations really matter?

I have previously noted Father Louth’s discussion of the reversal in understanding concerning the mystical Body of Christ in the twelfth century, based on Cardinal De Lubac’s work Corpus Mysticum. A few months ago a friend sent me an article entitled “The Eucharist in the West” by the Irish Jesuit Michael McGuckian (New Blackfriars, March 2007), which also draws on De Lubac’s work which had showed that prior to 1050 the term Body of Christ had referred to the Church and that the Eucharist had been referred to as the Mystical Body, but that that after this the Eucharist became the Body of Christ and the Church came to be referred to as the Mystical Body. Father Mc Guckian comments:

De Lubac opines that the change can be considered ‘good because it was normal’, but it seems to me that the change in terminology betokens a most profound change in mentality, and it is from this shift that I take my cue as to what is going on here. I suggest that the change results from the loss, among Western Christians, of the sense of the mystery of Christ’s presence in the Church. (146)

McGuckian traces this loss of consciousness of Christ’s presence in the Church back to Saint Augustine, who in his conflict with the Pelagians conceded that “the bride without spot or stain” will only be revealed in heaven, and to the emphasis on the institution that resulted from the Gregorian reform and was further strengthened in reaction to the Protestant Reformation. He writes:

The suggestion I am making is that this loss of the sense of the mystery of Christ’s presence in the Church encouraged our concentration on his presence in the Blessed Sacrament. The Church, for us, has been a focus of disunity, and failing to find our consolation in the presence of Christ through his Holy Spirit in the Church we sought our peace in the Blessed Sacrament, and this has led to an imbalance in our spirituality. St Paul simply said ‘You are the body of Christ’ (1 Cor 12.27), and the concentration on the Eucharistic body must not be allowed to distract us from that primary mystery, to which the phrase, the Body of Christ, should spontaneously refer. Sacrosanctum concilium 7 teaches that Christ is present in different parts of the liturgy, but especially in the Eucharistic species. Pope Paul VI, in Mysterium fidei 38, teaches that the presence of Christ in the Eucharistic species is a presence ’surpassing all others’. It seems to me that the considerations presented here call for a review of these affirmations. On the simple principle that the whole is greater than the part, one must affirm that the presence of Christ in the Eucharistic liturgy as a whole surpasses the presence in the Eucharistic species alone. The mystery of transubstantiation and the miraculous presence of Christ’s body is more accessible to our imaginations than the mystery of his presence in the people, in the presiding Bishop and in the proclaimed word. However, those other presences surpass the presence in the elements in their personal quality, their dynamic force and their effects on our spirits, and are not to be undervalued. And surely we must affirm that the presence of Christ through the action of his Holy Spirit in the Church, which includes all the rest, is the most important, the most fundamental, presence of Christ on earth. There is need, it is being suggested, for a contextualisation of the Eucharistic presence in the larger whole, and the proper recognition of the absolute priority of the presence of Christ in the Church. (148)

While this touches on themes that require considerably more background, reflection and working out, it seems to me that being concerned at certain developments in the western Church in second millennium is not simply about “archaeology”. It is not simply about a romantic desire to return to the old because it is old, but rather because the changes that have occurred have impoverished our consciousness of the fundamental Christian mysteries. Of course, I cannot comment on Dom Alexis’ motivation in these things, but that is where my interest lies.

 

Zizioulas on the Eucharistic Community and the “Catholic Church in the World”

The various local Churches had to wrestle – perhaps unconsciously – with the problem of the relationship between the “catholic Church” in the Episcopal community and the catholic Church in the world. The moment they would admit a supra-local structure over the local eucharistic community, be it a synod or another office, the eucharistic community would cease to be in itself and by virtue of its eucharistic nature a “catholic Church.” The moment, on the other hand, that they would allow each eucharistic community to close itself to the other communities either entirely (i.e. by creating a schism) or partially (i.e. by not allowing certain individual faithful from one community to communicate in another or by accepting to communion faithful excluded from it by their own community) they would betray the very eucharistic nature of their catholicity and the catholic character of the eucharist. The council was, therefore, an inevitable answer to this dilemma, and its genesis must be seen in the light of this situation. (156-157)

In this third subsection of chapter four of Being as Communion Zizioulas addresses the relationship between the local and the universal and argues that a eucharistic ecclesiology enabled the early Church to transcend the antithesis between the local and the universal, so that the term “catholic” could apply to both the local and the universal at the same time.

Each eucharistic community revealed the whole Christ and the whole Church in a particular concretisation. It revealed the eschatological unity of all in Christ. However, this necessarily applied to all the eucharistic communities and so “no mutual exclusion between the local and the universal was possible in a eucharistic context, but the one was automatically involved in the other.” (155) This relationship between the different eucharistic communities was expressed through the bishops who represented their own local Churches and who also shared in the episcopacy of their brother bishops.

The fact that in each episcopal ordination at least two or three bishops from the neighbouring churches ought to take part tied the episcopal office and with it the local eucharistic community in which the ordination to it took place with the rest of the eucharistic communities in the world in a fundamental way. This fact not only made it possible for each bishop to allow a visiting fellow-bishop to preside over his eucharistic community but must have been also one of the basic factors in the appearance of episcopal conciliarity. (155)

While the origins of conciliarity are obscure, they are clearly rooted in the search to explicate the implications of eucharistic communion. They represent “the most official negation of the division between local and universal, a negation which must be taken in all its implications.” (157)

The whole Christ, the catholic Church, was present and incarnate in each eucharistic community. Each eucharistic community was, therefore, in full unity with the rest by virtue not of an extended superimposed structure but of the whole Christ represented in each of them. The bishops as heads of these communities coming together in synods only expressed what Ignatius, in spite of – or perhaps because of – his eucharistic ecclesiology wrote once: “the bishops who are in the extremes of the earth are in the mind of Christ.” [Eph. 3,2] Thanks to a eucharistic vision of the “catholic Church” the problem of the relationship between the “one catholic Church in the world” and the “catholic Churches” in the various places was resolved apart from any consideration of the local Church as being incomplete or any scheme of priority of the one over the other, in the sense of a unity of identity. (157)

 

Zizioulas on the structure of the Eucharistic community

Certainly there was a basic difference in faith that distinguished Christians from their environment. But there was also a certain distinctiveness in the manner of their gathering together, which should not pass unnoticed. This distinctiveness lay in the composition of these gatherings. Whereas the Jews based the unity of their gatherings on race (or, in the later years, on a broader religious community based on this race) and the pagans with their collegia on profession, the Christians declared that in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Greek,” “male or female,” adult or child, rich or poor, master or slave, etc. To be sure the Christians themselves soon came to believe that they constituted a third race, but this was only to show that in fact it was a “non-racial race,” a people who, while claiming to be the true Israel, declared at the same time that they did not care about the difference between a Greek and a Jew once these were members of the Christian Church. (151)

In this second subsection of chapter four of Being as Communion Zizioulas addresses how the early Church’s understanding of catholicity was reflected in her structures. He notes that coming together in “brotherly love” was not a Christian innovation and was already found among both pagans and Jews. For the Christians, however, the Sunday synaxis would be the only one in a particular place and would thus include the “whole Church,” which transcended not only social but also natural divisions.

It is very significant that, unlike what the Churches do today in an age marked by a tragic loss of the primitive ecclesiology, there was never a celebration of the eucharist specially for children or for students, etc., nor a eucharist that could take place privately and individually. Such a thing would destroy precisely the catholic character of the eucharist which was leitourgia, i.e. a “public work” for all Christians of the same city… (151-152)

This catholicity was also reflected in the Church’s structure. The ordering of the Church in which the bishop occupies a central place and in which the different orders are given particular places is intended not to create division but rather to enable the “many” to be expressed through the “one”.

A fundamental function of this “one bishop” was to express in himself the “multitude” (poluplhqei/a) of the faithful in that place. He was the one who would offer the eucharist to God in the name of the Church, thus bringing up to the throne of God the whole Body of Christ. He was the one in whom the “many” united would become “one,” being brought back to him who had made them… (153)

However, both the bishop and the various orders in the Church were dependent on and emerged from the Eucharistic gathering and it is this that prevents them from becoming sources of division.

By restricting all such ordinations to the eucharistic community and making it an exclusive right of the bishop, not as an individual but as the head of this eucharistic community, to ordain, the early Church saved the catholic character of its entire structure. The bishop with his exclusive right of ordination and with the indispensable restriction of ordaining only in the eucharistic context took it upon himself to express the catholicity of his Church. But it was the eucharistic community and the place he occupied in its structure that justified this. (154)

 

Zizioulas on the “One” and the “Many”

In the first section of this fourth chapter of Being as Communion Zizioulas traces the relationship between the “one” and the “many” in the eucharistic consciousness of the early Church. This idea of the incorporation of the “many” into the “one” is developed by the Apostle Paul (especially in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17) but can be traced back to earlier ideas of the figure of the “Servant of God” and the “Son of Man”.

But what is significant for us here is that this idea was from the beginning connected with the eucharistic consciousness of the Church. Paul in writing these words to the Corinthians, was simply echoing a conviction apparently widely spread in the primitive Church. (146)

The connection between the Servant of God imagery and the Eucharist continues in I Clement and in the Didache, while the imagery of the Son of Man is further developed in the eucharistic consciousness of John’s gospel.

It is significant that Christ appears here as the Son of Man, and not in another capacity, as he identifies himself with “the true bread.” Hence the eating of this bread is called specifically the eating of “the flesh of the Son of Man” who takes into himself every one who eats this bread, thus fulfilling his role as the corporate Son of Man. (146-147)

The ecclesiological consequences of this can be seen in the sources of the first three centuries. The fact that the Church comes to be called an ecclesia indicates a gathering together in a dynamic sense. Moreover, this gathering constitutes it as the whole Church.

… in the literature of the first three centuries at least, the local Church, starting again with Paul, was called the e0kklhsi/a tou= qeou or the “whole Church” or even the kaqolikh\ e0kklhsi/a and this not unrelated to the concrete eucharistic community. As the ecclesiology of Ignatius of Antioch makes clear, even the context in which the term kaqolikh\ e0kklhsi/a appears is a eucharistic one, in which Ignatius’ main concern was the unity of the eucharistic community. Instead of trying, therefore, to find the meaning of the “catholic Church” in this Ignatian text in a contrast between the “local” and the “universal,” we would be more faithful to the sources if we saw it in the light of the entire Ignatian ecclesiology, according to which the eucharistic community is “exactly the same as” (this is the meaning I would give to w3sper  which connects the two in the Ignatian text) the whole Church united in Christ. (148-149)

In this context, then, catholicity simply means the whole, fullness and totality of the Body of Christ as portrayed in the eucharistic community.

 

Zizioulas on catholicity

… although the catholicity of the Church is ultimately an eschatological reality, its nature is revealed and realistically apprehended here and now in the eucharist. The eucharist understood primarily not as a thing and an objectified means of grace but as an act and a synaxis of the local Church, a “catholic” act of a “catholic Church”, can therefore be of importance in any attempt to understand the catholicity of the Church. (144-145)

Zizioulas opens the fourth chapter of Being as Communion, entitled “Eucharist and Catholicity”, by attempting to understand the catholicity of the Church in the light of the eucharistic community. For the early Christians, “catholicity” was not concerned with universality as it later came to be understood in the West (and in some ways also in the East), but was rather concerned with the catholicity of the local Church. They spoke of “catholic Churches” in the plural. This had to do with a concrete gathering together which identifies the whole Christ and the whole Church with the local episcopal community.

 

Zizioulas on the implications of the synthesis for Ecclesiology: II

Being a continuation of the third section of chapter three of Being as Communion.

The third implication of the synthesis between Christology and Pneumatology for ecclesiology is seen at the local level in the relationship between the Bishop and the community. Here too communion is ontologically constitutive and the correct relationship between the “one” and the “many” must be maintained. It is a fundamental principle of Orthodox ecclesiology that the bishop cannot exist without the community and the community cannot exist without the bishop.

This principle is expressed in various ways. There is no ordination to the episcopate outside the community which makes the community constitutive of the Church. Likewise, there is no episcopacy without a community attached to it.

Here a detail must be stressed because it points to a peculiarity of Orthodoxy compared with Roman Catholic theology: the mention of the name of the community takes place in the prayer of ordination of a bishop. Since in the Orthodox Church there is no missio canonica or a distinction between potestas ordinis and potestas iurisdictionis, the fact that the community is mentioned in the prayer of ordination means that the community forms part of the ontology of episcopacy: there is no bishop, not even for a moment or theoretically, who is not conditioned by some community. The “many” condition ontologically the “one”. (137)

However, the opposite is also true, namely, that the “many” cannot exist without the “one”. This means that there is no baptism or ordination of any kind without the bishop, for “the bishop is the condition for the existence of the community and its charismatic life.” (137)

This mutual independence between the “one” and the “many” are dependent on the Eucharist, and the fourth implication of the synthesis is therefore the “iconic” character of the ecclesial institutions. Here communion is placed within the context of eschatology.

The eucharist, in the Orthodox understanding at least, is an eschatological event. In it, not only the “one” and the “many” co-exist and condition each other, but something more is indicated: the ecclesial institutions are reflections of the Kingdom … all ecclesial institutions must have some justification by reference to something ultimate and not simply to historical expedience. (138)

While there are ministries arising out of concrete historical situations, “History is never a sufficient justification for the existence of a certain ecclesial institution”, for

The Holy Spirit points beyond history – not, of course, against it, though it can and must often point against history as it actually is, through a prophetic function of the ministry. The ecclesial institutions by being eschatologically conditioned become sacramental in the sense of being placed in the dialectic between history and eschatology, between the already and the not yet. They lose therefore their self-sufficiency, their individualistic ontology, and exist epicletically, i.e. they depend for their efficacy constantly on prayer, the prayer of the community. It is not in history that the ecclesial institutions find their certainty (their validity) but in constant dependence on the Holy Spirit. This is what makes them “sacramental,” which in the language of Orthodox theology may be called “iconic.” (138)

 

Zizioulas on the Eucharist as the Locus of Truth

In the final subsection of this second chapter on Truth and Communion, Metropolitan Zizioulas makes the following observations about the Eucharist as the locus of truth.

a) In the Eucharist God’s Word comes to us “from inside our own existence … as communion within a community.” Christ is revealed not in a community but as a community. This means that

… truth is not just something “expressed” or “heard,” a propositional or a logical truth; but something which is, i.e. an ontological truth: the community itself becoming the truth. (115)

Such truth is not imposed from outside but springs up from within. However it is not merely sociological but “comes clearly from another world, and as such is not produced by ourselves.” (115)

b) While Christianity is certainly founded on historical fact, history, understood in the light of the Eucharistic experience, is not simply a succession of events but is

conditioned by the anamnetic and epicletic character of the eucharist which, out of distance and decay, transfigures time into communion and life. (115)

While the bishops possess a certain charisma veritatis which was expressed in the development of apostolic succession and of conciliarity,

In the approach presented here, this association cannot be understood as a delegation of the truth to official ministers. The fact that every bishop receives the charisma veritatis only within the eucharistic community, and as a Pentecost-event, shows that the apostolic succession has to pass to the community through communion. The bishop in his function is the apostles’ successor inasmuch as he is the image of Christ within the community: the primitive church was unable to see the two aspects (Christ-apostles) separately. Similarly, the councils were expressions of truth simply because the bishops were the heads of their communities, which is why diocesan bishops alone can take part in councils. The communities’ unity in identity is the foundation of conciliar infallibility. (116)

c) Similarly, the point of dogma is soteriological and is intended to lead to life by maintaining “the correct vision of the Christ-truth and to live in and by this presence of truth in history.” (117) The point of excommunication (and the reason why the councils ended with anathemas) was to protect the community from distortions of truth. And communion was no longer possible after a council’s definition and anathema because communion requires a common vision of Christ.

The councils’ aim was eucharistic communion, and in producing or adopting creeds the intention was not to provide material for theological reflection, but to orientate correctly the eucharistic community. Thus is may be said that the credal definitions carry no relationship with truth in themselves, but only in their being doxological acclamations of the worshipping community. (117)

Dogmas do, nevertheless, “represent a form of acceptance, sanctification, and also transcendence of history and culture” (117) similar to that of the Eucharist itself. Thus historically and culturally specific elements are taken up into the life of the Church acquiring a sacred character and permanence becoming transformed in the process.

It is in this sense that we would understand faithfulness to dogmas. Not because they rationalize and set forth certain truths or the truth, but because they have become expressions and signs of communion within the Church community. Communion, being relational, is inescapably of an incarnational nature… (118)

Thus

Dogmas, like ministries, cannot survive as truth outside the communion-event created by the Spirit. It is not possible for a concept or formula to incorporate the truth within itself, unless the spirit gives life to it in communion. Academic theology may concern itself with doctrine, but it is the communion of the Church which makes theology into truth. (118)

d) Truth is not something that concerns humanity alone, but has a cosmic dimension which finds expression in the Eucharist in which Christ “is revealed as the life and recapitulation of all creation.” (119) It is humanity’s priestly function that reconnects the universe to infinite existence, liberating it from the slavery to necessity.

Man’s responsibility is to make a eucharistic reality out of nature, i.e. to make nature, too, capable of communion. If man does this, then truth takes up its meaning for the whole cosmos, Christ becomes a cosmic Christ, and the world as a whole dwells in truth, which is none other than communion with its Creator. Truth thereby becomes the life of all that is. (119)

This has implications for the relationship between science and theology so that Christian scientists will be able to recognise their para-eucharistic work “and this may lead to a freeing of nature from its subjection beneath the hands of modern technological man.” (120)

e) In the Eucharist truth becomes freedom because it enables us to overcome division and individualisation and creates the possibility of otherness and communion. This is, however, a new concept of freedom “determined not by choice but by the movement of a constant affirmation, a continual ‘Amen.’” (121) This is an idea of truth that is not of this world …

But as we have emphasized above in connection with Christology, you do not do justice to truth’s ontological content by implying that our fallen state of existence is all there is. The individualization of existence by the fall makes us seek out security in objects or various “things,” but the truth of communion does not offer this kind of security: rather, it frees us from slavery to objective “things” by placing all things and ourselves within a communion-event. It is there that the Spirit is simultaneously freedom (II Cor. 3:17) and communion (I Cor. 13:13).

Man is free only within communion. If the Church wishes to be the place of freedom, she must continually place all the “objects” she possesses, whatever they may be (Scripture, sacraments, ministries, etc.) within the communion-event to make them “true” and to make her members free in regard to them as objects, as well as in them and through them as channels of communication. Christians must learn not to lean on objective “truths” as securities for truth, but to live in an epicletic way, i.e. leaning on the communion-event in which the structure of the Church involves them. Truth liberates by placing beings in communion. (122)