Hence, mechanical and formal unity in worship cannot be, in the final analysis, an effective instrument for the unity of human beings in Jesus Christ. For the Church can be gathered as a sacrifice pleasing to God only because it sacrifices all the fruits of its radiance in the world. The Church is not only an assembly of the invited, ekklesia. It is also a community of those who are in the diaspora.

Every Church, whether it lives in its own country or in a foreign land, dwells in the diaspora. As the Epistle to Diagnetus, a document of the second century, says: "Christians live in their own country as foreigners. A foreign land is like a fatherland and a fatherland is like a foreign land." Another apologetic work of the second century says that Christians "walk in all humility and goodness, and lies are unknown to them. And if there is a person among them who is poor or in need, who lacks the necessities, then they fast for two or three days in order to provide the needy with the necessary food. […] It is from them that the kindness that is in the world comes. And for me there is no doubt that the earth also abides by the prayers of Christians."

Consequently, there is no separate manifestation of Christianity in the Church and a separate one in the world, for where the Holy Spirit is, there is the Church of God. Where we carry out an embassy, as the Apostle Paul so beautifully put it, the Church has already been planted. The eternal Church abides with us in the eternal present time of God. If in Eucharistic communion we become one body with Christ, it is in order to partake of the chalice of suffering of those around us – to partake of the suffering of those around us – to partake of it in service, in work and in charity. It is by becoming like God in this way that man will again accept the universe, take it upon himself, and reunite with it. In the new Christs that we have become, the universe really enters. Our inner man remains in the world, which sanctifies labor, humanizes social relations and the economy, and builds the Kingdom of God in two ways: by revealing the Lord to the world and by gathering God, who is scattered in the world. This double action – infiltration and manifestation, inclusion and dissemination – is symbolized in the Eucharistic action.

In this perspective, the Church is not an instrument of escape from the world, not a memory of the house of the dead. It is the search for the Kingdom, abiding and coming. The kingdom enters into that creation of God, for which God gave the only Son. That is why Simone Weil could write: "Not by the way a man speaks of God, but by the way he speaks of earthly things, it is possible to determine whether his soul has been in the fire of God." If, as St. Macarius said, "the heart, having been purified, is inflamed with love for every creature," then it is precisely outside of himself that the Christian will try to solve the problems posed by contemporary civilization. There is no special Christian technique for building the world. Nor are there any tools absolutely necessary for mission, be they schools or public institutions. "God is present in all things," says Pseudo-Dionysius, "but not necessarily all things are present in Him."

Since the Church is attentive to the movement of history and to the needs of people, a handful of Christians can assimilate the rhythms and lessons of the Book of Peace within the Church, as St. Maximus the Confessor said. For the Greek Fathers, the universe is a book in which the words of God can be read, whereas Scripture is the universe as God thinks it. In uniting with these rhythms of the world, the Christian must not deny his own identity; on the contrary, according to the same St. Maximus, he strives to collect spiritual logoi (prototypes) of things, "in order to offer them to God as gifts from creation."

In the fulfillment of the commandment of testimony, such an aspect as verbal transmission is important. This aspect, in turn, is connected with the more theological problem of the value of culture. This dimension of transmission is clearly stated at the beginning of 1 John: "Of that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have beheld, and which our hands have touched, concerning the Word of life, for life has appeared, and we have seen, and testify, and proclaim to you this eternal life, which was with the Father, and which has appeared unto us." (1 John 1:1-2). If the word "testify" is related to the truth being communicated, then the verb "proclaim" emphasizes the aspect of transmission even in that truth itself.

The Apostles Paul and John, as well as the Fathers of the Church, speak of philosophy and even of non-Christian religious messages as transmission. From the moment we are saved in Jesus Christ, philosophy retains only the value of mediation; in its content, it cannot be included in the Gospel message. For this reason, the Scriptures and the Fathers resorted to various systems of Greek philosophy, showing no preference for any one. They felt fully justified in quoting Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, the Stoics, while rejecting any of their thoughts incompatible with the Gospel.

If a poorly educated Christian must go through a considerable experience of asceticism in order to expound his faith coherently when necessary – and this duty, according to the Apostle Peter, lies with everyone – then mental purgatory is no less severe, since here one must beware of traps – such concepts of God that St. Gregory of Nyssa calls idols, and pseudo-theological speculations without a direct connection with the mystery of Christ. The goal of all mental activity is to bring the mind to obedience to the Lord, to regeneration by Baptism, to conversion. It is necessary to reveal Christ in us through the direct contagious action of grace and through the work of purifying the mind. Such work can precede the acceptance of Christ. We must proceed from the divine principle in man, realize this principle, personify it and call it Jesus Christ, our Savior.

There remains, therefore, the only way to convey the message. To teach the gospel is to translate it into the modern language of a given country and a particular society at all levels of culture. It is necessary to attain such a high level of mastery in order to transmit the Gospel without betraying it, in order to bring the truth revealed in the Judeo-Hellenic context closer to people whose minds are alien to this culture and for whom the liturgical symbolism and mentality of the Fathers are something like a cipher. We know, however, that Pentecost introduced into the world not only glossolalia—speaking in incomprehensible tongues—but also the gift of understanding tongues. A new concept does not appear by itself, it is formed. It can be the fruit of the work of a community of people concerned with saving a hungry and broken world. But, once again, these efforts are not the lot of theologians alone, for mission must be carried out at all levels, and the ways of conveying the message change during the transition from one intellectual and social stage to another.

Translation implies the presence of two ways of thinking: that of the Christian and that of his listener. Hence the need to delve into the culture of other people, into their system of symbols, into their psychology, to build bridges between us and them. At the same time, we must not fall into syncretism, that is, we must be extremely careful not to introduce into our message foreign elements originating from the religion or philosophy of our interlocutors, otherwise we will no longer transmit the Gospel, but religious eclecticism. A Christian can assimilate elements of non-Christian culture, philosophy, or religion, but he cannot mix tares with wheat. In any similarity of ideas there is a certain divergence, as well as the possibility of coincidence in opposition. Since the historical order is not alien to God's plan—and God is the master of both the world and time—there are religious values in history that Christianity has more or less left in the shadows. The idea of obedience to God, as developed in Islam, when combined with the proclamation of the Gospel, could be extremely fruitful. The whole spiritual life could be built around this idea, linking it with the Jesus Cross. And it would be much more dynamic than on the basis of Islam. It is here that the most important aspect of missionary theology and our understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit lies. If the Holy Spirit is omnipresent, or can be omnipresent, in all non-Christian cultures and religions, and therefore they do not belong entirely to the realm of death, then we, discovering the presence of the Lord in them, do not deserve the reproach that the angel addressed to the myrrh-bearing women: "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" (Luke 24:5). By the action of the Holy Spirit, who breathes where He will, Christ is undoubtedly secretly present outside the visible boundaries of the Church.

This, however, does not mean that one can take a thoughtlessly optimistic position in relation to the cultural world. It is impossible to jump with impunity from the plane of God's creativity to the plane of human creativity. Man is a sinner and a bearer of death, and therefore all his activity is essentially ambiguous. As Claudel said about artistic creativity: "Evil is a slave who pumps water." The mysticism of human creativity does not and cannot exist in the Christian worldview. That is why we cannot subscribe to the statement of the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich: "Religion is the essence of culture, culture is the form of religion," just as we cannot subscribe to the statement of the modern Orthodox theologian, for whom culture is the fruit, form and manifestation of man's power to create in the name of the Creator. In fact, there are purely pagan cultures that do not exceed the level of pure aesthetics, even if it is religiously colored. Another modern theologian, the Protestant Jacques Ellul, wrote in a book entitled "Presence in the Modern World" as follows: "The will of the world is always the will to death, the will to suicide. This suicide must not be accepted, it must be done in such a way that it cannot take place. Therefore, it is necessary to know what is the current form of the world's will to suicide in order to resist it, in order to understand where our efforts should be directed. […] It is a question of penetrating into the very point where this will to commit suicide is at work, and to see how the will to preserve God can operate in this position. […] This means that we must know this gravitation of our world towards death in all its depth, in all spiritual reality, and direct our efforts to it."

This is the missionary position toward worldly spirituality, and it is partially correct. It is true because it opposes God's judgment to every human action, because it sees sin in man in a profoundly biblical way. And partly, because human thought is not only the aspiration of fallen man, but sometimes it is an expression of the rebirth of man in a foreign land, outside the visible realm of the Church, in that hidden realm of the Church where the Holy Spirit unites those people from all nations who grope for justice and truth. Therefore, there are elements through which the Spirit of Jesus draws a significant number of people, and we must be able to recognize these elements in an evangelical way.

These fragmentary reflections on testimony will become useless in the day when our existence becomes a call. If it is important that a group of Christians should reflect on the problem of evangelism, it is infinitely more important that those who are not involved in the ministry of Christ should know for certain that we have passed from appearance to being, from anguish to peace, that the truth of God is already present in that immeasurable joy which is the dawn of the kingdom.

Paths of holiness