What a Mystery Is

The frame for the whole collection: what the Orthodox tradition means by a “mystery” (mysterion) as against the Latin “sacrament” (sacramentum); the Church herself as the primordial mystery of which the several mysteries are the acts; and the disputed question of the “number seven.”

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

This section sets out the theology within which every particular mystery is read. The first file, sacramental-theology.md, treats the vocabulary of mysterion and sacramentum, the sense in which the Church is herself the first mystery, and the Orthodox reserve toward the scholastic analysis of matter and form in favor of the whole prayer of the Church and the invocation of the Holy Spirit (the epiclesis). The second file, the-mysteries-and-the-number-seven.md, takes up the collection’s flagship both-sides question: whether the count of exactly seven mysteries is an authentic part of the Orthodox tradition or a late, Western-influenced systematization, how the “seven” entered Orthodox usage, and the mysteries that lie beyond any list of seven.

Contents

File Description
sacramental-theology.md Mysterion vs sacramentum; the Church as the primordial mystery; matter, form, the Holy Spirit, and the epiclesis
the-mysteries-and-the-number-seven.md The whole sacramental life vs the medieval count of seven; how the “seven” entered Orthodox usage; the mysteries beyond the seven

See Also