04 — The Church of the Holy Spirit

The one large book. Tserkov’ Dukha Sviatogo was begun in the 1940s, largely drafted in Tunisia without a library, defended as a doctoral thesis at St. Sergius in 1950, revised until its author’s death in 1966, and printed for the first time in Paris in 1971 — five years after he died. Its eight chapters do not argue eucharistic ecclesiology abstractly; they argue it by writing the history of the Church’s ministries from the royal priesthood of the baptized outward to the bishop, and ending on the power of love.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration; the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Western European exarchate)

Files in This Section

File Description
The Book and Its History Composition in exile, the thesis of 1950, the Russian editio princeps of 1971, the French and English translations, and the companion volume The Lord’s Supper
The Argument of the Book The eight chapters walked through: royal priesthood, ordination of laics, the ministry of laics, the work of ministry, those who preside, the one who offers thanksgiving, the bishop, the power of love

The Discipline of This Section

The publication history is part of the interpretation. Almost everything for which Afanasiev is known appeared after he was dead, in a sequence of languages, over thirty-six years. Readers who met him first in Zizioulas’s criticism (1965) were meeting criticism of a book not yet in print in any language. Readers who met him in French (1975) were reading a translation of a Russian text the author never saw through the press. English readers waited until 2007. The dates are given exactly, from the published editions themselves, because the reception is unintelligible without them.

A composed book, not a collection. Unlike most of the corpus, this is a single sustained argument with a plan. The chapter sequence is itself the thesis: the royal priesthood comes first, and the bishop comes seventh — which is the reverse of the order in which ecclesiology was ordinarily written, and is meant to be.

What is stated is his. Per METHODOLOGY §4.1, the book’s positions are Afanasiev’s theological work and are attributed to him throughout. Where his conclusions bear on the Church’s practice — on the laity, on ordination, on canonical authority — the difference between his proposal and the Church’s actual discipline is stated rather than blurred.

See Also