Mystery Before Institution

The Church is confessed in the Creed and nowhere defined by a council. That absence is not an oversight: the Fathers described the Church, legislated for her order, and defended her boundaries, but never issued a horos on her nature as they did on the Trinity and the Person of Christ. This file sets out what follows — that the Church is a mystery before she is an institution, that ecclesiology is consequently the least dogmatically settled locus, and that none of this licenses the anti-institutional reading which treats canons, bishops, and structures as a decline from an original charismatic purity.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Creed Confesses, It Does Not Define

The Symbol of Nicaea and Constantinople places the Church in the third article, among the works of the Holy Spirit: “[I believe] in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” It says what she is — one, holy, catholic, apostolic — and stops. It offers no account of how these predicates are secured, who possesses them, or where their limits fall.

The same reticence holds across the conciliar record. The Ecumenical Councils legislated extensively about the Church’s order: the ranking of sees (Nicaea I, Canon 6; Constantinople I, Canon 3; Chalcedon, Canon 28), the territorial limits of bishops (Apostolic Canon 35; Antioch, Canon 9; Constantinople I, Canon 2), the reception of those returning from heresy and schism (Nicaea I, Canon 8 and Canon 19; Trullo, Canon 95). They did not define the Church. There is no ecclesiological horos corresponding to the Definition of Chalcedon or the homoousion of Nicaea.

Georges Florovsky put the observation sharply and it has been widely quoted since: the doctrine of the Church, he judged, is still in a pre-theological stage of development — described in the tradition rather than defined by it, and therefore constantly liable to be filled in from outside by whatever social or juridical model is nearest to hand (Florovsky, “The Church: Her Nature and Task,” in Bible, Church, Tradition, Collected Works I). Florovsky did not mean that the Church has no doctrine of herself; he meant that the doctrine has not been put through the fire of conciliar definition, and that the vocabulary is correspondingly loose.

Two consequences follow, and both govern the rest of this collection.

Ecclesiological disputes cannot be settled by citing a definition. When Orthodox churches disagree about primacy, about the procedure for granting autocephaly, or about how far the Church’s boundary extends, there is no definitional text to appeal to. There are canons, and canons are law about order rather than dogma about nature; there is patristic description, which is abundant but not conciliar; and there is liturgical practice, which is authoritative but not propositional. This is why section 04 and section 07 must report open questions as open.

The absence is not a gap to be filled by innovation. That the Church has not defined does not mean she has not taught. She has taught by baptizing, by ordaining, by excommunicating, by receiving councils and rejecting others, and by praying in a particular way — and these acts constrain what can honestly be said about her.

Why “Mystery” Is the Right Word

St Paul applies the word directly. Having quoted Genesis 2:24 on the man and wife becoming one flesh, he writes: “This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the Church” (Ephesians 5:32). The Latin rendering of mystērion here as sacramentum had a long history in Western sacramental theology, but the Greek sense is prior and broader: a mystērion is God’s hidden purpose now disclosed in Christ (Romans 16:25–26; Colossians 1:26–27; Ephesians 3:3–9), and the Church belongs to that disclosure rather than standing outside it as its administrative arm.

To call the Church a mystery is therefore to make three claims at once.

She is not exhaustively describable in the categories available to describe societies. Sociological, juridical, and organizational descriptions of the Church are not false — she really does have property, offices, procedures, and a history — but they do not reach what she is, any more than a description of the human body reaches what a person is.

She is known from within. The Church is not an object placed before the observer for inspection; she is the condition of the knowledge her members have. This is the methodological ground of the standpoint stated in the master README and in METHODOLOGY §4.1: this collection is written from within the Church, because there is no vantage point outside her from which her nature becomes more visible.

She is manifested in the mysteries. Nicholas Cabasilas states the point with unusual compression: the Church is signified in the sacraments — not merely represented by them, but shown, since it is precisely in baptizing and in communicating that she is what she is (Cabasilas, Commentary on the Divine Liturgy 38; The Life in Christ IV). St Ignatius had already located the Church at the same point: where the bishop is, there let the assembly be, as where Christ is, there is the catholic Church (Smyrn. 8.2; trans. Ehrman, LCL 24). One does not first define the Church and then celebrate; one celebrates, and there the Church is.

Alexander Schmemann built a whole programme on this and put it polemically: the Church is not an institution with mysteries, she is the mystery of the Kingdom made present, and the liturgy is not one of her activities but her self-manifestation (Schmemann, Church, World, Mission, and For the Life of the World). The formulation has been enormously influential and is worth stating exactly, because it is also where the danger begins.

The Danger: What “Mystery Before Institution” Does Not Mean

The priority asserted here is one of order, not of value, and still less of opposition. Four confusions recur, and each of them has done damage.

It does not mean that the institutional Church is a decline from a charismatic original. The idea that an early free, Spirit-led community was progressively hardened into a legal institution is a nineteenth-century Protestant historiographical thesis — the “Frühkatholizismus” narrative — and the evidence does not support it. The Pastoral Epistles, which prescribe qualifications for bishops and deacons and speak of the laying on of hands (1 Timothy 3:1–13; 4:14; Titus 1:5–9), belong to the apostolic writings; St Ignatius, writing around the turn of the second century, presupposes bishop, presbyters, and deacons as already normal and already essential to the eucharistic assembly (Magn. 6; Trall. 3; Smyrn. 8). There is no documented Christianity without order. [Disputed: the date and authorship of the Pastoral Epistles, and the pace at which the single bishop replaced collegial presbyteral leadership, are contested in the scholarship — a substantial body of critical scholarship treats the monepiscopate as a second-century development uneven across regions, while the Ignatian letters in the middle recension attest it as established in Antioch and Asia Minor by the early second century; the material and the positions are set out in St Ignatius of Antioch: Monepiscopacy.]

It does not mean that the canons are a secondary accretion. The canonical tradition is the Church’s own regulation of her own life, formulated by the same councils that defined the faith and by Fathers such as Basil whose canonical epistles sit alongside their dogmatic works. To treat canon law as extrinsic to the mystery is to misdescribe what the Fathers were doing when they legislated (see Holy Tradition: The Canonical Tradition, and section 05 of this collection).

It does not mean that “invisible Church” language is available. The distinction between a visible institutional Church and an invisible community of the truly faithful, which entered Western theology through the Reformation, has no purchase here. The Church is visible — she has an altar, a bishop, and a list of those in communion with her — and the mystery is enacted in that visibility, not behind it. What is invisible is not a second Church but the grace at work in the one Church.

It does not license contempt for structure in the name of sobornost or eucharistic ecclesiology. Both concepts have been used this way, and both were misused when they were. Khomiakov’s contrast between organic unity in love and external authority, and Afanasiev’s contrast between eucharistic and universal ecclesiology, are analytic distinctions that in careless hands become a warrant for treating hierarchy as alien to the Church’s nature. Section 02 reports the critique of Khomiakov on precisely this ground, and section 03 reports the critique of Afanasiev.

The Two Aspects Held Together

Vladimir Lossky’s treatment supplies the formula that has proved most durable. The Church, he argues, has two aspects that must be distinguished without being separated: a Christological aspect, in which she is the one Body, given her nature, unity, and objectivity by the Son; and a pneumatological aspect, in which she is a multiplicity of persons, each receiving grace uniquely, given by the Spirit. Neither can be reduced to the other. An ecclesiology built only on the Christological aspect tends toward the institutional and the juridical, and treats persons as material for the organism; one built only on the pneumatological aspect tends toward the charismatic and the individual, and treats the institution as an obstacle (Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, “Two Aspects of the Church”).

This is a description rather than a definition, and Lossky offers it as such. But it names the tension exactly, and it explains why the tradition’s ecclesiology is carried in images. The Church is a body — organic, single, with a head; and a bride — distinct, addressed, capable of infidelity; and a temple — indwelt; and a household — ordered, with offices; and a flock — led, and liable to scatter. No one image is sufficient, and the attempt to systematize them into a single model has repeatedly produced the two errors Lossky identifies.

What This Means for the Rest of the Collection

Three working rules follow, and they are applied consistently in what follows.

1. Description before system. Where the tradition describes the Church in several ways, this collection reports the several ways rather than choosing one and calling it the Orthodox doctrine. The eucharistic-ecclesiology model in particular is reported as one twentieth-century Orthodox account among others, with its critics named (section 03).
2. Order is not optional. Canons, bishops, synods, territories, and diptychs are treated as belonging to the Church’s life rather than as its regrettable machinery. This is why sections 05 and 07 exist and why they are given the same seriousness as sections 01 and 02.
3. Open questions are named. Where there is no definition, this collection does not manufacture one. That discipline is what makes the judgment stated in section 09 legible as a jurisdictional judgment rather than as a dogma.

See Also

• The Body of Christ and the New Israel — the companion file: the images themselves
• Catholicity and Sobornost — the concept most often misused in an anti-institutional direction
• The Bishop and the Eucharistic Assembly — where mystery and order meet concretely
• Akribeia and Oikonomia — the canons as therapeutic rather than merely juridical
• St Ignatius of Antioch: Monepiscopacy — the earliest evidence for episcopal order
• Holy Tradition: The Canonical Tradition — the canons within Tradition
• The Divine Liturgy: Lex Orandi Lex Credendi — the liturgy as the Church’s self-manifestation
• Georges Florovsky: Christian Hellenism and the Mind of the Fathers — the neopatristic programme behind Florovsky’s judgment

References

• Scripture: Ephesians 3:3–9; 5:32; Romans 16:25–26; Colossians 1:26–27; 1 Timothy 3:1–13; 4:14; Titus 1:5–9.
• Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol, third article.
• Canons cited: Apostolic Canon 35; Nicaea I (325), Canons 6, 8, 19; Constantinople I (381), Canons 2, 3; Antioch (341), Canon 9; Chalcedon (451), Canon 28; Trullo (692), Canon 95 — texts in Henry R. Percival, ed., The Seven Ecumenical Councils, NPNF, Second Series, vol. 14, and D. Cummings, trans., The Rudder (Pedalion). Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957.
• Ignatius of Antioch, Letters to the Magnesians 6, to the Trallians 3, to the Smyrnaeans 8; ed. and trans. Bart D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library 24. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
• Nicholas Cabasilas, A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, ch. 38, trans. J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty. London: SPCK, 1960; The Life in Christ, Book IV, trans. Carmino J. deCatanzaro. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1974.
• Florovsky, Georges. “The Church: Her Nature and Task” and “The Catholicity of the Church,” in Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View, Collected Works I. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972.
• Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, ch. “Two Aspects of the Church.” London: James Clarke, 1957. (The repository hub article Ecclesiology cites this argument by chapter number; it is cited here by chapter title, which is stable across printings.)
• Schmemann, Alexander. For the Life of the World. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1963; Church, World, Mission. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1979.
• Afanasiev, Nicholas. The Church of the Holy Spirit, ed. Michael Plekon, trans. Vitaly Permiakov. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.