A passage from Archpriest George
Florovsky’s work entitled “The catholicity of the Church.”
The inner quality of catholicity
The catholicity of the Church is not a quantitative or a
geographical conception. It does not at all depend on the world-wide
dispersion of the faithful. The universality of the Church is the
consequence or the manifestation, but not the cause or the foundation
of its catholicity.
The world-wide extension or the universality of the
Church is only an outward sign, one that is not absolutely necessary.
The Church was catholic even when Christian communities were but
solitary rare islands in a sea of unbelief and paganism. And the Church
will remain catholic even unto the end of time when the mystery of the
“falling away” will be revealed, when the Church once more will dwindle
to a “small flock.” “When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” (Luke
18:8). The Metropolitan Philaret expressed himself very adequately on
this point: “If a city or a country falls away from the universal
Church, the latter will still remain an integral, imperishable body” (Opinions and Statements of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow, Concerning the Orthodox Church in the East, St. Petersburg, 1886, p. 53.).
Philaret uses here the word “universal” in the sense of catholicity.
The conception of catholicity cannot be measured by its wide-world
expansion; universality does not express it exactly. Καθολικη from Καθ
σλου means, first of all, the inner wholeness and integrity of the
Church’s life. We are speaking here of wholeness, not only of communion,
and in any case not of a simple empirical communion. Καθ σλου is not
the same as Κατα παντóς; it belongs not to the phenomenal and
empirical, but to the noumenal and ontological plane; it describes the
very essence, not the external manifestations. We feel this already in
the pre-Christian use of these words, beginning from Socrates.
If
catholicity also means universality, it certainly is not an empirical
universality, but an ideal one; the communion of ideas, not of facts,
is what it has in view. The first Christians when using the words ‘Ekklisía Katholikí
(Εκκλησια Καθολικη) never meant a world-wide Church. This word rather
gave prominence to the orthodoxy of the Church, to the truth of the
“Great Church,” as contrasted with the spirit of sectarian separatism
and particularism; it was the idea of integrity and purity that was
expressed. This has been very forcibly stated in the well known words
of St. Ignatius of Antioch:
“Where there is a bishop, let there be the
whole multitude; just as where Jesus Christ is, there too is the
Catholic Church” (Ignat Smyrn. 8:2).
These words express the same idea as does the promise:
“Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18:19-20).
It is this mystery of gathering together (μυστηριον της συναξεως, Mystírion tis sinákseos)
that the word catholicity expresses. Later on St. Cyril of Jerusalem
explained the word “catholicity” which is used in the Creed in the
traditional manner of his Church. The word “Church” means the
“gathering together of all in one union;” therefore it is called a
“gathering” (εκκλεσια, Ekklisía).
The Church is called
catholic, because it spreads over all the universe and subjects the
whole of the human race to righteousness, because also in the Church
the dogmas are taught “fully, without any omission, catholically, and
completely” (καθολικως και ανελλειπως) because, again, in the Church
every kind of sin is cured and healed” (Catech. 18:23 (Migne P.G. 33 c. 1044)).
Here
again catholicity is understood as an inner quality. Only in the West,
during the struggle against the Donatists was the word “catholica” used
in the sense of “universality,” in opposition to the geographical
provincialism of the Donatists (Cf. Pierre Batiffol, Le Catholicisme de St. Augustin, I.
(Paris, 1920), p. 212
— “Rappelons que le nom ‘catholique’ a servi à
qualifier la Grande Eglise par opposition aux hérétiques … Le nom est
vraisemblablement de création populaire et apparait en Orient au second
siècle. Les tractatores du 4. siècle, qui lui cherchent une
signification étymologique et savante, veulent y voir l’expression soit
de la perfection intégrale de la foi de l’Eglise, soit du fait que
l’Eglise ne fait pas acception de personnes de rang, du culture, soit
enfin et surtout de fait que l’Eglise est repandue dans le monde entire
d’une extrémité à l’autre. Augustin ne veut connaître que ce dernier
sens.” Cp. Also Bishop Lightfoot, in his edition of St. Ignatius, v. 2 (London, 1889), p. 319. Note ad Loc.
The history of the Christian and pre-Christian use of the terms ekklisía katholikí (Εκκλησια Καθολικη) and katholikos
(καθολικóς) generally in various settings deserves careful study;
apparently there have been no special investigations on the subject. In
Russian, reference may be made to the very valuable, though not
exhaustive or faultless, article of the late Professor M. D. Muretov in
the supplement to his book Ancient Jewish Prayers Ascribed to St. Peter (Sergiev Posad, 1905). See also Bishop Lightfoot, St. Ignatius, v. 2 (London, 1889), p. 310, note).
Later on, in the East, the word “catholic” was understood as synonymous
with “ecumenical.” But this only limited the conception, making it less
vivid, because it drew attention to the outward form, not to the inner
contents. Yet the Church is not catholic because of its outward extent,
or, at any rate, not only because of that. The Church is catholic, not
only because it is an all-embracing entity, not only because it unites
all its members, all local Churches, but because it is catholic all
through, in its very smallest part, in every act and event of its life.
The nature of the Church is catholic; the very web of the
Church’s body is catholic. The Church is catholic, because it is the
one Body of Christ; it is union in Christ, oneness in the Holy
Ghost-and this unity is the highest wholeness and fulness. The gauge of
catholic union is that “The multitude of them that believed be of one heart and of one soul” (Act
4:32).
Where this is not the case, the life of the Church is limited
and restricted.
The ontological blending of persons is, and must be,
accomplished in oneness with the Body of Christ; they cease to be
exclusive and impenetrable. The cold separation into “mine” and “thine”
disappears.
The growth of the Church is in the perfecting of its inner wholeness, its inner catholicity, in the “perfection of wholeness”;
“That they may be made perfect in one” (John 17:23).
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