Concreteness of the Local Churches versus Abstractness of the Universal Church

Church will not have an empirical reality, for it is impossible to have a unique eucharistic celebration for the entire Church. Hence, Afanasiev concludes:

L’unité et la plénitude de Eglise n’ont pas de caractère quantitative mais elles dépendent de la plénitude et de l’unité du corps du Christ qui est toujours et partout un dans toute sa plénitude, car hier et aujourd’hui et dans les siècles le Christ est le même pour chaque église et pour les églises locales dans leurs ensemble. La plénitude et l’unité sont liées […] à la notion de l’église locale et elles ne s’étalent pas en notion d’Eglise universelle ou de l’Eglise en générale.487

He dares draw this conclusion because the plenitude and unity of the Church is founded on the plenitude and unity of the Body of Christ. And Christ is always and everywhere in all his plenitude. He is the same for each and every local Church regardless of time and space.488 What is true of Christ is true also of his Body.

4.3.5. Concreteness of the Local Churches versus Abstractness of the Universal Church

We have already seen that, according to Afanasiev, “The local Church is a Church, because there exists in it the Church of God.”489 _{Does that mean that St Paul admitted of a} Church in general parallel to the local Churches? Afanasiev thinks that the question itself would not have been posed if one had sufficient knowledge about the primitive Church and its ecclesiology. From the Pauline perspective, the Church is an indivisible reality which is whole

484 _{Cf. ID, “Doctrine de la Primauté,” p. 408.}

485 _{“Si la plénitude et l’unité de l’Eglise étaient sous la dépendance de la somme des églises locales, ni l’une}

ni l’autre ne trouveraient jamais leur expression, parce que la somme empirique varie tout le temps, soit en plus, sois en moins, et parce qu’avec la fluctuation de la somme varieraient la plénitude de l’Eglise ” ID, “Doctrine de

la Primauté,” p. 408.

486 _{Cf. ID, “L’Eglise de Dieu,” p. 36.}

487 _{N. AFANASIEV, “Doctrine de la Primauté,” p. 408. Cf. ID, “L’Eglise de Dieu,” p. 36-37.} 488 _{Cf. ID, “Doctrine de la Primauté,” p. 408.}

Autonomy and Independence of Local Churches according to Nicholas Afanasiev __________________________________________________________________________ and unique. St Paul does not speak about a distinctive existence either of the terrestrial and the heavenly Church or of the visible and the invisible Church. According to him, only ‘the Church of God in Christ’ exists; it manifests itself in a visible manner in each eucharistic assembly. If the invisible Church does not exist separated from the visible Church, so goes the reasoning of Afanasiev, then we cannot speak of a general or abstract notion of the Church separated from the concrete notion either.

In the concrete local Church, the whole Church is contained, and, vice versa, the whole Church manifests itself in the local Church. If the local Church exists, it is because it contains within it ‘the Church of God in Christ’. In reality, there does not exist a concrete or abstract notion of the Church: the one is linked to the other, and the one cannot exist without the other. Consequently, the relation between the concrete local Church and the Church of God cannot be defined in empirical terms.490

If the Church is discovered primarily as a concrete reality, then, argues Afanasiev, “the belongingness to the Church is something concrete and not abstract, in other words, one cannot belong to the Church in general, but must belong to a definite Church, because the Church of God manifests itself in the empirical reality, in the local Churches.”491 Because of the close and inseparable relationship between the eucharistic assembly and the local Church, the primitive Church considered one’s belongingness to a particular eucharistic assembly as a determining factor of one’s belongingness to a local Church. For no one can belong to the Church in general, as it is basically an abstract reality. Only eucharistic assemblies of concrete local Churches exist. Those who participate in the same eucharistic assembly, which is a concrete and tangible event, were considered as belonging to the same Church.

Now, if we admit that the fullness of the Church of God exists in the local Church—thinks the Russian ecclesiologist—we cannot then speak of a universal Church existing beside it or parallel to it. Even when there is a multitude of local Churches, nothing of the fullness each of them possesses diminishes.

The number of the local Churches can increase, but the Church of God remains, in all these Churches, in its fullness and its unity. The plurality of the local Churches indicates that there exists a multitude of the manifestations of the Church, and does not indicate that there exists a universal Church. In all the local Churches, just as in each of them separately, there exists only one and the same Church of God. That is why the usage of the term “έκκλησία” is justified not only in the singular, but also in the plural.492

The unity of the Church is also not affected by the plurality of the local Churches, because it is based on the eucharistic presence of Christ. Afanasiev’s point is that the numerical strength does not add to or reduce from what essentially belongs to the Church of God.

490 _{Ibid., p. 32.}

491 _{ID, “L’Eglise qui préside,” p. 42.} 492 _{ID, “L’Eglise de Dieu,” p. 33.}

Autonomy and Independence of Local Churches according to Nicholas Afanasiev __________________________________________________________________________

However great the plurality of local Churches, their totality does not give anything more than what exists in the each of them. […] It follows that the sum of local Churches cannot give the Church of God if in each of them the Church of God did not exist in all its fullness. […] If the fullness and the unity of the Church were dependent on the sum of the local Churches, they would have never found its expression, because their empirical sum constantly changes […]. If the empirical sum of the local Churches could embrace the whole Church of God which exists at the given moment, it cannot, however, embrace either the past or the future.493

In order to further strengthen his arguments to deny the existence of an abstract universal Church, Afanasiev takes up the idea of indispensability of the eucharistic celebration as the

locus of the manifestation of the Church of God. He argues as follows:

If the whole multitude of the local Churches had been reduced to one unique Church – the universal Church, whose part would have been the local Churches, the unity and the fullness of the Church would not have found their expression in the empirical reality, because there does not exist a unique eucharistic assembly of the unique universal Church.494

He concludes by saying that “the unity and the fullness of the Church of God in Christ is inseparably linked to the notion of the local Church, and does not dissolve itself in the fluid notion of the universal Church or general Church.”495