Tag: Church

The Church as Tension between the Old and New Worlds

It is not obvious indeed that man—inspire of all presumed radical changes in his ideas and worldview—remains essentially the same? He faces the same problems, is challenged with the same eternal mysteries: those of birth and death, of suffering, joy, love, loneliness, and above all, of the ultimate meaning of his life. Philosophers may have changed their terminology; in fact they debate the same questions. Science may have radically altered the external conditions of life; but it remains helpless—and today more than ever—in solving the ultimate questions of man’s existence. And this essential “sameness” of man is nowhere better revealed than in his recurring “returns” to religiosity and credulity, which today include witchcraft, magic, orientalist of all shades, mysticism of all brands, and primitivism of all flavors.

The tragedy, then, is not that the Church has failed to “understand” the wired and to follow it in all its pseudo-metamorphoses. Rather, the tragedy lies in this: that she followed the world too much, adopting for the explanation of her faith philosophies and though forms alien to it, polluting her piety with the old, pre-christian dichotomy of the “natural” verses the “supernatural” and her worship with either legalistic or magical connotations, abandoning above all that which stood at the very heart of the early Christian faith: the experience of the Church herself as tension between the old and the new, between “this world” and the “world to come,” as the presence “in the midst of us,” and thus the anticipation, of the Kingdom of God.

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 150-151

Christ’s Risen Life is Given to Us in the Church through Baptism

The fruit of Baptism, its true fulfillment, is a new life; not simply a better, more moral or even more pious life, but a life ontologically different from the “old” one. And this difference, the very content of this “newness,” is that it is life with Christ: “…if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (Rom 6:8). It is His Risen Life “unto God” that is given to us and becomes our life and our resurrection. But his Life in us, our life in Him is precisely the Church, for she has no other being, no other purpose and no other life but to be Christ in us and we in Christ.”

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 120

The Eucharist is the Visible Unity of Christ

The Eucharist, before it is or can be anything else, is thus gathering or, better to say, the Church herself as unity in Christ. And this gathering is sacramental because it reveals, makes visible and “real,” the invisible unity in Christ, His presence among those who believe in Him, love Him and in Him love one another.

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 118

The Church is Life because She is Christ’s Life

It is personal faith in Christ which brings the catechumen to the Church; it is the Church that will instruct him in and bestow upon him Christ’s faith by which she lives. Our faith in Christ, Christ’s faith in us: the one is the fulfillment of the other, is given to us so that we may have the other. But when we speak of the Church’s faith—the one by which she lives, which truly is her very life—we speak of the presence in her of Christ’s faith, of Him Himself as perfect faith, perfect love, perfect desire. And the Church is life because she is Christ’s life in us, because she believes that which He believes, loves that which He loves, desires that which He desires. And He is not only the “object” of her faith, but the “subject” of her entire life.

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 68

Fidelity to Church tradition, even in the slightest thing, is critical

We are obedient to you, O King, in things concerning our daily life, in tributes, taxes, and payments, which are your due; but in ecclesiastical government we have our pastors, preachers of the word, and exponents of ecclesiastical law. We do not change the boundaries marked out by our fathers (Prov. 22.28): we keep the tradition we have received. If we begin to lay down the law to the Church, even in the smallest thing, the whole edifice will fall to the ground in no short time.

St. John Damascene
Apology Against Those Who Decry Holy Images
Part II

Unwritten traditions are handed down in the Church

How do we know the Holy place of Calvary, or the Holy Sepulchre? Does it not rest on a tradition handed down from father to son? It is written that our Lord was crucified on Calvary, and buried in a tomb, which Joseph hewed out of the rock; (Mt. 27.60) but it is unwritten tradition which identifies these spots, and does more things of the same kind. Whence come the three immersions at baptism, praying with face turned towards the east, and the tradition of the mysteries?* Hence St Paul says, “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which you have learned either by word, or by our epistle.” (II Thess. 2.15) As, then, so much has been handed down in the Church, and is observed down to the present day, why disparage images?

St. John Damascene
Apology Against Those Who Decry Holy Images
Part I

Church tradition is a faith we carry forward by imitation

A small thing is not small when it leads to something great, nor indeed is it a thing of no matter to give up the ancient tradition of the Church held by our forefathers, whose conduct we should observe, and whose faith we should imitate.

St. John Damascene
Apology Against Those Who Decry Holy Images
Part I

 

Some works were known but not included as “ecclesiastical books”

The term ἀσώματον, i.e., incorporeal, is disused and unknown, not only in many other writings, but also in our own Scriptures.  And if any one should quote it to us out of the little treatise entitled The Doctrine of Peter, in which the Saviour seems to say to His disciples, “I am not an incorporeal demon,” I have to reply, in the first place, that that work is not included among ecclesiastical books; for we can show that it was not composed either by Peter or by any other person inspired by the Spirit of God.

Origen
On First Principles, Book I
Preface

Apostolic tradition “alone” is the source of authority

…as the teaching of the Church, transmitted in orderly succession from the Apostles, and remaining in the Churches to the present day, is still preserved, that alone is to be accepted as truth which differs in no respect from ecclesiastical and apostolical tradition.

Origen
On First Principles, Book I
Preface