Ecclesial and Anthropological Aspects of the Concept of “Catholicity” in the Theology of Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov)

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In the theology of Father Sophrony the understanding of the catholicity is displayed as opposed to Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, and shows that each two-faceted theology necessarily falls into the extremes of objectivism and subjectivism. This is a prerequisite for understanding the Church in a legal or individualistic perspective, while such understanding to become mandatory for the concept catholicity. Therefore, the Elder introduce a three-faceted understanding of the Church in the image of the Holy Trinity. Thus the Church is a reality in which man-humanity is viewed as one essence manifested in many human hypostases by a human action that is synergic (in co-operation) with God’s grace, the latter being conceptualized as energy metabolized. Thus, through the understanding of God’s grace, Father Sophrony demonstrates that the Church is an ontological realization of the unity of mankind in the multiplicity of creatures personalities. This shows that the Elder gives meaning to the Church as a man realized in fullness, and the man in the Church updated its catholicity or antinomic absolute identity and difference of the three aspects of its created being. Hence the theme of grace opens perspectives for understanding the catholicity in a sacramental context. In the sacraments of the Church Father Sophrony sees a real possibility for created personality to assimilate God‘s grace and to participate in it. Thus, according to the measure of the ascetic effort of human synergistically to participate in the grace of God is gifted with the ontological content of their existence, ie by the grace a man realize his creature personality in the Church. This realization was seen again by Father Sophrony as a mutual act of man and God, on the one hand, and between man and any other member of the Church, on the other. The testimony which is realized as an act of God or grace in the Church is viewed as an evidence of each member of the Body of Christ, who testified in the sacramental life of the other person. Thus Father Sophrony expresses the real possibility for the person in the Church to acquire the gift of catholicity and to achieve as a goal.

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