Eucharistic Boarders of the Church (In a Parallel between Pro-static and Pro-dynamic Understanding of Ecclesiology in the Early Church Tradition)

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Abstract:

This text is dedicated to the issue of the “borders of the Church”. The soterio-ecclesiological perspective, formulated by St. Cyprian of Carthago “No salvation outside of the Church” and St. Augustine distinguishing of “actuality” and “effectivity” of the mysteries are observed as a specific Latin attitude to the esse of the Church. The Latin interpretation of the question of the boarders of the church has opened the door for a specific “territorial” understanding of Church where an organized and centralized structure is going to appear in the next centuries. The parallel with the Eastern imperial protection of the catholicity of the Church – in the case of Theodosian’s Edict of Thessalonika (380) – is analyzed as apparent and a specific contribution to an ecclesiology in political perspective. Such a “territorial” and imperial guarantee in the next centuries will give birth to the principle of symphony between Empire and Church as a kind of realized eschatology. The growing political influence of the Pope of the Ancient Rome is observed as an alter ego of the growing ecclesial influence of Emperor of the New Rome and vice versa. But both of them are based on a same “territorial”, Roman centric ecclesiology. Such a political dimension of the issue of the boarders of the Church – present in the West and East – is commented as a static opposition to a dynamic ecclesiology of the “podvig” (dynamic and ascetic living) as a way of life in the Church in general. The canon 7th of the Second Ecumenical Council (and the canons 8th and 9th of the Holy Apostles) is analyzed as an example of such dynamic dimension of Church participation. Here the participation in the Eucharist is pointed as a conditio sine qua non, the necessary sign for re-delineation of the Church boarders.

Keywords:

Church, Church Boarders, Territorial Ecclesiology, Dynamic Ecclesiology, Eucharist

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