Church Councils and Their Origins

CONCILIARITY OF THE CHURCH AND THE "POWER OF THE KEYS"

The long-awaited, though somewhat belated, publication of the book by Archpriest. Nicholas Afanasiev's "Church Councils and Their Origin" testifies to the return of modern Christianity in the person of its scientific and theological thought to its own sources, i.e. to the foundations and meaning of church existence, to the comprehension of churchliness as such.

Written in 1940, this work eloquently characterizes its author, who declared himself as one of the greatest figures of ecclesiastical scholarship of the 20th century, who became the actual founder of modern Orthodox ecclesiology, a branch of dogmatics, the development of which was and remains especially relevant.

It seems that there is no doubt that the modern Church is in dire need of regulating its obviously uncoordinated existence, primarily in such aspects as unity, conciliarity and apostolicity.

The bright signs of the revival of the principles of conciliarity and unity, which inspired optimism, such as, for example, the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church of 1917-1918, the movement towards not a superficial declarative, but a genuine reunification of the parts of the once united Christian world, the constructive exchange of positive historical experience that had begun—all this is now gradually receding into the past, at the same time leading the aspirations of Christians to the land of unfulfilled dreams. Practice, somewhat unexpectedly, turned out to be much more demanding of them, and the task of restoring authentic ecclesiastical order was more difficult than reconciling the dogmatic symbols of the East and the West.

Today's appearance of the church, alas, fully corresponds to the words of Fr. Nicholas, which preceded his most famous work, The Church of the Holy Spirit: "Our church life has come to a dead end, since the principles that penetrated it in the distant past have outlived themselves and cause only shortcomings in church life. The Church is seen as an organization subject to human laws and, as an organization, devotes itself to the service of human tasks. The human will dominates in itself, and the human will outside of it strives to turn the Church of God into a means to achieve its goals. Never, perhaps, have the faithful themselves given the 'bride of Christ' to be mocked in such a way."

"Church Councils...", which to a certain extent prepared Fr. Nicholas's main work, are devoted to the scientific and theological rehabilitation of the conciliar principle of church life, which is inseparable from its essence and purpose.

Fr. Nicholas departs from the Eucharistic nature of the Church, which is thus revealed first and foremost in the Eucharistic assembly. For the same reason, the conciliar principle of the Church is nothing other than a property directly presupposed by the Eucharistic nature of the Church. It is extremely important here that the author does not speak of an assembly that calls itself so or assimilates its visible attributes. It is a question of the very nature of the sacramental event, and therefore of whether a given assembly is really Eucharistic, whether it really lives by having Christ at its head, "in our midst." Fr. Nicholas mentions several times the well-known fact that local gatherings-communities were often designated by the word "love."

The Church obeys Christ, Whom God has "placed above all things," the head of the Church, which is His Body, "the fullness of Him who fills all in all." The very headship of Christ, His authority, is completely devoid of signs of external authority, it only reveals the reality of the gathering in Christ of "two or three" and, therefore, confirms or, more than hopes, refutes it. Even the authority of Christ, therefore, is not an external disposition, but only the authenticity of His presence, and therefore of the presence of the Church, His mystical Body.

The Eucharistic ecclesiology developed by Fr. Nicholas proceeds from the primacy of the local Eucharistic assembly, and, consequently, the presence in it of the fullness of the Church, provided that it is sacramental. In this way, the whole Church, and not any part of it, appears in the life of the local community. In the author's opinion, in the author's opinion, the peculiarity of early Christianity, which has actually disappeared from the life of the earthly Church, is rooted in this consciousness. "The Church is where Christ is, and Christ is where two or three are gathered in His name" (p. 31).

Christ is indivisible, so His presence "in our midst" in this Eucharistic assembly cannot be partial, but it follows with all certainty that the manifestation of the Church is possible only in fullness, and not in part. Only later, as we know, will a different conception of the Church develop as a union of local communities, where none of them has in itself the fullness of the Church, which within the framework of this new, universal ecclesiology belongs only to the whole.

The most ancient image of unity according to Fr. Nikolai Afanasiev looks fundamentally different, it is a loving union of communities, which does not represent an organization of a higher nature, since in the Church there can be nothing higher than the Church (p. 32). In the same way, the authority of a church community is not measured by the number of members, the antiquity of the see, the historical importance or administrative status of the host city. Its authority will be the higher, "the greater the degree of approximation... community to the essence of the Church" (p. 33).