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Where is the Church? (Part 2) by Fr. Gregory Last month we established that the Church is constituted by God and is an identifiable body living out a specific faith. This month we try to answer the question: "Where is the Church?" First we must assess the claims of some other Christian communities, notably, Protestant and Catholic. Of course if we were to follow the logic that the Church is everywhere then it follows that she is nowhere in particular. This is the Protestant solution to the question. The boundaries of the Church, (such as they are), continually shift and change as the "Church" more or less approximates to "someone's" idea or ideal of the Kingdom. This could be a founder or it could be a set of doctrines based on a denominational confession. The Church as such is only known to God and any one Church must be "semper reformandum" ... always being reformed. This is deeply unbiblical, (and therefore extremely ironic for Protestants who claim the Bible as sole authority!) When Paul writes his letters he addresses them to the Church at Corinth, at Rome, Ephesus or wherever. He doesn't wander round the streets wondering whether or not this individual, this congregation, is or isn't part of the Church. Neither does he act as if his own authority as an Apostle were unimportant. So, Congregationalists who would have us believe that each local community should be autonomous are as equally mistaken as those Protestant founding fathers who believed that they had rediscovered Christianity and that everbody should follow them. The Reformers struggled to find some constitutive principle for the Church. Calvin tried to locate this in good Presbyterian order and his own brand of systematic theology. Luther was more vague, preferring to use the tag "wherever the Word and Sacraments are duly administered." Anglicans picked up on this one but then spent the next 400 years squabbling what this Word was and whether or not a Protestant view of the Sacraments could be reconciled with a Catholic view. The error of all these Protestant attempts lies in the notion that the Church can somehow be "rebuilt" by either human engineering (anathema to Calvin) or by rediscovering some lost pot of gold, (historical criticism). The Roman Catholic Church of course firmly resisted (and resists) the idea that the Church isn't already here. She believes that she is that Church and that all other Christian Trinitarian communities, to a greater or lesser degree, share in that divine fullness that she alone possesses. Now and again the Roman Catholic Church talks about "sister churches" ... a curious version of the now discredited branch theory of the Church but which is useful to Rome when she wishes to court her suitors and rescue her wayward children. Rome's claims might reflect an Orthodox understanding of the visible Church IF SHE HAD REMAINED ORTHODOX. But the point is, she hasn't. Claiming apostolic pedigree is not enough. Apostolic life, which is both hierarchical and conciliar, is conservative in relation to the past or else it loses its moorings for the future. When Rome started bringing in such innovations as papal supremacy, the filioque and a rationalised theology which distanced God and Humanity from each other in a moralising vacuum, it parted company with the Orthodox Church. True, Rome retains many marks of the Orthodox Church of which she was once part, but her life now is very different and separated from the authentic stream of Orthodox life. There is no way that Orthodoxy will ever accept being thought of as a "sister Church" or "another lung." Rome doesn't believe this herself by the way she behaves, so why should anyone else? It is a barmy idea anyway. To say that the Church is in two states simultaneously is just as silly as saying that she is in many states simultaneously. It is of course a warm and nice thing to say that another church is your "sister" or your "other lung," ... but saying it alone does not make it so. Indeed if such sentiments become a substitute for doing the real and hard work of ecumenical convergence then they can be counterproductive to their intention. So, reader, by now you should have concluded that Orthodoxy believes that she is the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. But, how so? How may such a claim be justified? That question will be answered in the third and final part next month. Fr Gregory |
