The “One Holy Church” within Tradition
The Ecclesiality or “Tserkovnost” of Pavel
Florensky
Written by Dan McDonald
This is my third blog on tradition,
somehow loosely trying to grapple with our relationship to the Bible and
tradition as Christians. In my first
post I looked to words from a Protestant F.F.
Bruce regarding the relationship of Scripture and tradition. In my second post I quoted from Louis Bouyer,
a
Roman Catholic theologian who was involved in the changes instituted by Vatican
II. I am pretty sure I don’t much
understand the Eastern and Russian Orthodox perspective concerning tradition,
which is why I am probably drawn to consider it like a physicist is drawn to a
phenomenon his laws of physics have not yet been capable of explaining. Today I am going to try to write of a mystery
of tradition, I found in the pages of Russian Orthodox priest, linguist, mathematician,
scientist, inventor, art historian, and martyr Pavel Florensky. Florensky described tradition by a term
translated “Ecclesiality”. In Russian
the term was “tserkovnost”. Ecclesiality is a term derived from the Greek
word “Ekklesia” which means “called out of”.
It is the Greek word used to describe our being drawn out of the world
so as to be gathered into and together as the church. In response to God’s divine liturgy we are
called out from our lives of unbelief to hear and respond to God and to be
called together for his purpose as we are brought to him around the table of
the word and sacrament of the divine liturgy, the holy communion, the mystical
body of Christ gathered together as one people partaking of one baptism,
partaking of one holy food, united to be one people in union with God through
Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit.
In Florensky’s mind Ecclesiality is
a term foreign to Protestant and Catholic theology. He says the Protestant misses it because
Protestants define tradition as expressed in a Scripture, a confession of
faith, or a creed; whereas Catholics define tradition as a pope, a system of
functions, and a hierarchy.[i] It is not clear whether Florensky believes we
non-Orthodox are not able to understand “ecclesiality” because we have taken up
the wrong way of faith, or because our systems cause us to miss what is right
in front of us. He believes that
ecclesiality is something of great importance, even of cosmic importance for
the entire creation which God is calling back to himself through Christ’s
redemption, through the redemption of the Church, to the reordering of creation
to be called out of darkness and back into reconciliation and a gathering unto
God in Christ. This gathering of all
that is - - back into union with God, so that God would fill all things is in
Florensky’s mind something being done in coordination with Christ’s redemption
of his church. The entire creation is
being called back into its relationship with God, and this calling of creation
awaits the glorification (in Orthodoxy, the deification) of the sons and daughters
of God. Because life is being extended
to mankind through the redemption of the church it is being extended to the
entire Cosmos. Thus tradition is not
just a historical lesson about what has happened in the church but an
eschatological expectation of what God is doing, building, planning, and
bringing together out of the tradition of the Spirit’s work in the Living
Church.
Florensky finds it necessary to
distinguish the description of human thinking between “the rational” and “reason.” For Florensky, if I understand him correctly “the
rational” is humanity’s determination to explain things autonomously based
wholly and solely upon our thoughts and experiences. But reason is a spiritual exercise occurring
in the mind of man as he absorbs truth under God’s tutelage in the Holy
Spirit. This can be a study of physics
as well as Scripture, but it occurs as a man is made increasingly conscious
even into his unconscious condition that apart from God, from Christ, from the
Holy Spirit he is and knows and understands nothing. If I must take a stab at what Florensky means
by “ecclesiality” it is life experienced in union with God so that in that
union with God we are granted to escape the temptation to define life apart
from our union with God, so as to absorb life and truth and reality in our
union with God in Christ. I will in a
moment let Florensky’s words speak for themselves, so ponder his words as they
lead to a conclusion of understanding truth in and through the Church, which is
called in I Timothy 3:16 “the pillar and ground of the truth.”
Florensky writes: “Ecclesiality – that is the name of the
refuge where the heart’s anxiety finds peace, where the pretensions of the
rational mind are tamed, where great tranquility descends into our reason. Let it be the case that neither I nor anyone
else can define what ecclesiality is!
Let those who attempt such a definition dispute one another and mutually
refute one another’s formulas of ecclesiality.
Indeed, do not its very indefinability, its ungraspableness by logical
terms, its ineffability prove that ecclesiality is life, a special, new life,
which is given to man, but which, like all life, is inaccessible to the
rational mind? And do not divergences in
the definition of ecclesiality, the variety of incomplete and always
insufficient verbal formulas for what ecclesiality is, empirically confirm what
the Apostle told us: namely that the Church is the body of Christ, “the
fullness of him that filleth all in all” (Ephesians 1:23)?[ii]
If as a Protestant I may enter into
something of what Florensky is saying and might venture to dialogue with his
understanding I would say from him this is what I have begun to grasp. The Gospel has come in both life and words,
and the church is expressed in both life and functions, and the tradition that
was given to us through Christ and the Apostles is the communication of
spiritual life granted by the Word, through the sacraments, in the church and
it is God’s reach into a world that he is redeeming through His Son Jesus
Christ and calling to himself through the Holy Spirit who has been given unto
us.
I can remember when the concept of
the creation began to take on a new dimension for me from the Book of
Genesis. I was fascinated how God
originally created the heavens and earth so that darkness covered the earth;
and the earth was described as a void without form and covered in darkness. But then God, in the stages of the six days
as reported in Genesis spoke to creation and creation responded to God and soon
there was life, beauty and order where there had been only darkness and
void. But now we are participants in the
formation of a new creation. It is a
creation where once more God is calling out to his creation this time beginning
with his children, men and women to be grafted into one holy living church, but
the goal is not merely to get as many individuals saved as possible, but to
have Christ fill all things until the whole of creation is redeemed in the
redemption of mankind in Christ. Thus
the meaning of tradition is that God intends to restore life, beauty, and order
to the entire cosmos and to that end he has come to redeem humankind through
Christ and has purposed in Christ to fill all things in and through him. This is truly beyond anything we could
imagine, comprehend, explain, or even ask to be done. This is nothing less than a new heavens and
earth formed and shaped in the redemption that has come into our lives and into
which we have been called to know the rest and peace of God, a new world where
the shalom (peace, tranquility) of God shall cover the earth. Because God is recreating the earth even in
the outworking of this form of Christian tradition, we may pray without
ceasing, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be
done. On earth as it is in heaven.” We shall see him and shall be like him, and
this world around us will be gathered to become the clothes and garment of a
universe in oneness of shalom (peace) with God.
Then we will understand this tradition in which we are involved. We will understand that this tradition we are
a part of is something grand, glorious, the redemption of the entire cosmos in
Christ. We are being called out of the
darkness of a fallen creation to be gathered into the total unity of a new
heavens and earth. Perhaps the physicist’s
dream of discovering a unified theory is as much an eschatological dream as it
is a scientific dream. Perhaps we shall
know the unity of the Creator and his creation in fullness at the same moment whether
we wait as believers to see the face of Christ, or yearn to complete the book
of physics as we see the unified theory of all things in the same face of Jesus
Christ.
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