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But patristic theology from the very beginning insisted on something very significant: man can attain, draw near to God only through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. An ecclesiology that uses the concept of the "image of God" cannot be based simply on triadology. The fact that man in the Church is "the image of God" is due to the oikonomia of the Holy Trinity, that is, to the works of Christ and the Spirit in history. This oikonomia is the basis of ecclesiology, but it is not its goal. The Church is built by the historical work of divine oikonomia, but ultimately leads to a vision of God "as He is," to a vision of the Triune God in His eternal existence.

This metahistorical, eschatological and iconological aspect of the Church is characteristic of the Eastern tradition, which lives and teaches its theology liturgically; it contemplates the existence of God and the existence of the Church through the eyes of divine services, mainly Eucharistic worship, the image of "eschata par excellence". It is for this reason that Orthodoxy is often thought of or portrayed by its representatives as a kind of Christian Platonism, as a vision of the future or the heavenly without regard to history and its problems. In contrast, Western theology tends to limit ecclesiology (and indeed even all theology) to the historical content of faith—oikonomia—and to project the realities of history and time into the eternal existence of God. In this way, the dialectic of God and the world, the uncreated and the created, of history and "eschat" is lost. The Church ends, becoming completely "historical": it ceases to be a manifestation of the eschata and becomes an image of this world and historical realities. The existence of the Church and the existence of God are no longer organically connected; Ecclesiology no longer needs "theology" to function. Orthodox theology is faced with the danger of the historical "disincarnation" of the Church, that is, of depriving it of all earthly things, and, conversely, the West runs the risk of tying it primarily to history, either in the form of extreme Christocentrism – imitatio Christi – which lacks the essential impact of pneumatology, or in the form of social activism or moralism, which tries to play the role of the image of God in the Church. Consequently, the two systems of theology, Eastern and Western, must meet somewhere deep in order to reconstruct a genuine patristic synthesis that will protect them from the above dangers. The being of the Church should never be separated from the absolute requirements of the Being of God, that is, from her eschatological nature, just as it should not be separated from history. The institutional aspect of the Church must always embody its eschatological nature, without destroying the dialectic of this age and the age to come, uncreated and created, of the existence of God and the existence of man and the world.

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But how can we bring together the existence of the Church and the existence of God, history and eschatology, without destroying their dialectical relationship? In order to achieve this, we need to rediscover the lost awareness of the primitive Church regarding the decisive importance in the ecclesiology of the Eucharist.

The new discovery of this understanding, established on the painful paths of the development of medieval scholasticism and the "Babylonian captivity" of modern Orthodoxy, suggests that we refuse to consider the Eucharist as one of the many sacraments, as an objective act or "means of grace" "used" or "performed" by the Church. The ancient understanding of the Eucharist, common in its main features before the twelfth century for both East and West, was completely different. The celebration of the Eucharist by the primitive Church was, first of all, the gathering of the people of God ™p€ tХ ©uto, that is, the manifestation and realization of the Church. Its celebration on Sunday, the day of the eschata, as well as its entire liturgical content, confirmed that during the liturgy the Church lived not only in remembrance of a historical fact – the Last Supper and the earthly life of Christ, including the cross and resurrection – but she performed an eschatological act. It was in the Eucharist that the Church could contemplate her eschatological nature, she could taste the very life of the Holy Trinity; in other words, it could realize the true existence of man as the image of God's own being. All the fundamental elements that made up its historical existence and structure had to pass through the Eucharistic community in order to be "certain" (according to Ignatius of Antioch) or "valid" and "canonical" (according to the terminology of modern canon law), that is, to be ecclesiologically true. No consecration to the fundamental and structural ministries of the Church took place outside the Eucharistic community. It was there, in the presence of all the people of God and all the ranks, in an act of free communion, that the Holy Spirit distributed the gifts, "constituting, building up the whole structure of the Church." Thus, the Eucharist was not an act of some pre-existing Church; it was an event that constitutionalized the existence of the Church, giving the Church the opportunity to be. The Eucharist constituted the existence of the Church.

Consequently, the Eucharist had the unique privilege or advantage of uniting both the works of Christ and the works of the Holy Spirit into one unique experience. It expressed an eschatological vision through historical realities by combining institutional elements with charismatic elements in church life. For only in the Eucharist has the dialectical relationship between God and the world, between the "eschate" and history, been preserved, without creating dangerous polarization and dichotomy. This is because:

a) The Eucharist manifests the historical form of divine oikonomia, all that has been "transmitted" (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:23: Eucharist = "tradition") through the life, death and resurrection of the Lord, as through the "form" of bread and wine and the "structure" that has been practically unchanged since the Last Supper. The Eucharist realizes in the course of history the continuity that binds each Church to the first apostolic communities and to the historical Christ; In short, everything that has been institutionalized is now being passed on. The Eucharist is thus the affirmation par excellence of history, the sanctification of time, the manifestation of the Church as a historical reality, as an institution.

(b) But a Eucharist based only on history and the manifestation of the Church as a mere "institution" is not a true Eucharist. Paraphrasing a biblical statement, one could say that "history kills, but the Spirit gives life." The epiclesis and presence of the Holy Spirit means that in the Eucharist the being of the Church is based not simply on its historical and institutional basis, but that it extends history and time to infinite dimensions of "eschata" and that it is this that forms the specific activity of the Holy Spirit. The Eucharistic community makes the Church eschatological. It frees it from the causality of natural and historical events, from the limitations that result from the individualism inherent in our natural biological existence. It gives it a sense of eternal life as love and communion, as a way of being of God. The Eucharist, in contrast to other expressions of church life, is inconceivable without the gathering of the whole Church in one place, that is, without the event of communion; consequently, she manifests the Church not simply as something institutionalized, that is, historically given, but also as something composed, that is, constantly realized as an event of free communion, prefiguring the divine life and the coming Kingdom. In ecclesiology, the polarization between "institution" and "event" is avoided by a correct understanding of the Eucharist: Christ and history give the Church her being, which becomes a true being every time the Spirit "constitutes" the Eucharistic community as the Church. In this sense, the Eucharist is not a "sacrament", something parallel to the divine word; it is the eschatologization of the historical word, the voice of the historical Christ, the voice of the Holy Scriptures, which come to us through history not simply as a "doctrine," but through eschata it comes as life and being. It is not the sacrament that completes this world, but rather the word that becomes flesh, the resurrected body of the Logos.

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Изучая эту книгу, читатель легко узнает и осознает фундаментальные предпосылки"евхаристической экклезиологии". После того как покойный о. Николай Афанасьев, современный православный богослов, опубликовал свои хорошо известные тезисы, многие западные богословы знают православие в форме этой"евхаристической экклезиологии". Однако читатель, который хочет изучить представленные тексты со вниманием и рассмотреть их в свете истории богословия, наверняка обнаружит некоторые фундаментальные отличия от этой"евхаристической экклезиологии". Поэтому необходимо понять, в каких важных аспектах автор этого исследования стремится идти дальше Афанасьева или отделяет свои собственные мысли от мнения последнего, при этом не принижая или недооценивая значение этого русского богослова и тех, кто точно следовал за ним.

Предыдущие страницы, прежде всего, сделали ясным стремление автора этой книги как можно больше расширить горизонты экклезиологии с тем, чтобы соотнести богословие Церкви с его философскими и онтологическими выводами, а также с другими разделами богословия. Конечно, такой проект, чтобы его осуществить должным образом, требует скорее синтеза, чем подборки исследований, как и обстоит дело в этой книге. Однако в первых двух главах усилия автора направлены на то, чтобы показать, что тайна Церкви и особенно ее евхаристическая реализация и выражение очень глубоко связаны со всей полнотой богословия вместе с ее сущностными выводами и следствиями. Это необходимо заявить с тем, чтобы отделить данное исследование от мнения, что евхаристическая экклезиология основана просто на концепции или на совершении какого‑то сакраментального акта. Потому что часто бытует мнение как среди большого количества западных христиан, так и в среде православных в отношении евхаристической экклезиологии, что православная экклезиология есть только проекция тайны Церкви в сакраментальных категориях: сакраментализация богословия. И в результате такое впечатление неизбежно появляется, если мы не выйдем за рамки того, что евхаристическая экклезиология говорила до сих пор, если мы не попытаемся расширить и наши богословские и философские горизонты.

Далее, евхаристическая экклезиология, как она была разработана о. Афанасьевым и его последователями, ставит серьезные проблемы и поэтому это нуждается в фундаментальной коррекции. Принцип"там, где есть евхаристия, так есть Церковь", на котором построена эта экклезиология, имеет тенденцию вести к двум основным ошибкам, которых не избежал и о. Афанасьев, не говоря уж о тех, кто последовательно следовал за ним.

Первая из этих ошибок состоит в том, что даже приход, где совершается Евхаристия, рассматривается как законченная и"кафолическая"Церковь. Несколько православных, следуя за Афанасьевым, пришли к этому заключению, не понимая, что они очень остро поднимают всю проблему структуры Церкви. Довод является следующим: если какая‑то поместная Церковь охватывает только единственный евхаристический приход — общину, как вероятно обстояло дело в первоначальной Церкви, то тогда можно говорить о законченной и"кафолической"Церкви при условии, если она отвечает всем условиям кафоличности: собрание всех членов Церкви одного места (преодолевая, таким образом, всякого рода разделения: природные, социальные, культурные и т. д.) в присутствии всех служителей, включая коллегию пресвитеров во главе с епископом. Но если евхаристическая община не удовлетворена этими условиями, то, как ее можно назвать законченной и"кафолической"Церковью? Приход в том виде, как он сформировался в ходе истории, не включает всех верующих, какого‑то места, как он не включает все пресвитерство с епископом во главе. Следовательно, несмотря на тот факт, что Евхаристия совершается в приходе, он не является законченной и"кафолической"Церковью. Но тогда не оказывается ли принцип"где Евхаристия, там и Церковь"ослабленным? Необязательно, но он нуждается в новой интерпретации с тем, чтобы выявить правильные отношения между приходом и епархией, между евхаристией и Церковью.