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The Search for the Identity of the Church of Christ

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The Search for the Identity of the Church of Christ E-Theologos, Vol. 3, No. 1 DOI 10.2478/v10154-012-0009-6 The Search for the Identity of the Church of Christ ThDr. Štefan Palo čko , PhD. University of Prešov in Prešov, Greek Catholic Theological Faculty The secularized society offers to man the entire independence and autonomy from God, or directly denies his existence in order to prove his self-sufficiency. Secularism, as emphasized the Holy Father Benedict XVI. 17.4.2008 during his tour of the USA, is the result of the separation of faith from life. The dictatorship of secularism is the interference into the free dom of man that can mature only in fidelity to the truth. Secularization is also called "earthliness", that means the importance of the world and ser- vice to the world, its autonomy and independence, as well as an obliga- tion for Christians to participate in this world. Originally, the secularization was applied to the expropriation of the Church property and it is related to the concept desacralization, so the separation of secular and sacral field, mainly related to family, marriage, and so on. 1 In the secularized society 2 often happens that the true marital and parental love becomes possessive love, which brings material goods and power to the forefront. One of the fundamental Christian claims is that Jesus Christ is the only Savior of men and that his Church is not just an organization of people who believe his teachings, but it is an organism called Christ’s mystical body. Thus the salvation of man is substantially dependent on Christ, and that means in its consequences that it is dependent on the right incorpora- tion of a man into his mystical body. Therefore the seeking of the true identity of the Church founded by Christ seems to be the key problem of man, who wants to be saved by Christ. After many centuries of splitting Christendom the problem of disunity of Christendom became so poignant that at the turn of the 19 th and 20 th 1 Cf.: SCANISZLÓ, V. I.: Sekularizmus vs. Sekularizácia. In: http://szaniszlo.blog.sme.sk/c/239617/Sekularizmus-vssekularizacia.html (28.02.2011). 2 Cf.: SLODIČKA, A.: Medzikultúrny a medzikonfesionálny dialóg v pluralistickej spoločnos ti v kontexte postmoderny. In: Stimuly kresťanskej kultúry. Peter Liba (ed.) Nitra : Univerzi- ta Konštantína Filozofa, 2010, p. 115. 107 E-Theologos, Vol. 3, No. 1 DOI 10.2478/v10154-012-0009-6 century endeavors to seek and accomplish the lost unity of Christians arose. Nevertheless, the differences between individual Christian confes- sions appeared too great to be overcome simply. Therefore some alterna- tive attempts to reconcile the oneness of the Church and the existence of different dogmatic positions emerged. One of the attempts to solve this problem is to implement the phi- losophical theory of relativism. This theory starts from the assumption, that man will never be able to know the objective reality, and so the knowing of absolute truth is impossible for man. 3 From this assumption allegedly comes the fact that no Christian can be sure, what Jesus Christ really taught, and therefore it is senseless to accuse Christians of other denomi- nations of fallacy or heresy. All Christian denominations possess nothing but mere subjective opinions and in no way they can claim the possession of the absolute truth about what Jesus Christ really taught. A dialog be tween different Christian confessions is not anymore a seeking of the truth (which cannot be known anyway), but it becomes a kind of mutual en- richment by different opinions on Christ’s doctrine. The problem of this theory is that if it is impossible to find the salvific doctrine of Christ with certainty, then the individual confessions become mere doubtful opinions, and it would be irresponsible to found one’s life on them. The theory of relativism of faith can secure a sort of mutual tol- erance between churches in the field of interchange of their dogmatic positions, but it deprives the Church of the ability to fulfill its own mis- sion, which is to free man from sinfulness and to lead him to the blissful eternal life. This makes the Church practically useless, or classifies her as a com- munity, which in a way satisfies some psychological and social needs of man. In the end, that would mean that Christ brought to the world the mes- sage of our salvation, but he in no way secured the spreading of this mes- sage in an intact way, and so his salvific work would be in vain. It is inac- ceptable that God decided to carry out the work of salvation in so un- workable a way. Another attempt to defend one’s positions and at the same time to as- sert that Christendom is united is an opinion that all churches have true teachings. The multitude of different churches make one Church of Christ. Their number corresponds to the multiplicity of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which works at every church. Just like body has many members, so the Holy Spirit by his multiform action causes the diversity of churches. And just like the diversity of individual members does not destroy the unity of 3 Cf. RATZINGER, J.: Wiara, prawda, tolerancia, Kielce : Jedność Herder, 2005, p. 94-97. 108 E-Theologos, Vol. 3, No. 1 DOI 10.2478/v10154-012-0009-6 the body, so equally the diversity of churches does not destroy the unity of the Church of Christ. Each church has its own charisma and thus she completes the fullness of the Church of Christ. 4 However, the assumption that different Christian denominations mu- tually complement each other into one whole, sharply contradicts the ob- served reality. It is because individual confessions do not create a mosaic, but they oppose each other in many ways and so they exclude each other. Essential discrepancies in the doctrines of particular churches are not only evident at ordinary observation, but they stem from the very essence of the problem, why there are so many churches in the world. It is an indis- putable historical fact, that particular churches originated in the way that a part of Christians split from the whole, because they did not agree with the doctrine presented by the rest. 5 We can say only that the theory, which claim that particular confessions form the unity of doctrine of Christ, is not based on reality. Probably the most popular theory in the protestant ecumenical movement became the theory of a doctrinal minimum. It asserts that there is a doctrinal minimum that a church must profess in order to belong to the community of churches that form the one Church of Christ. This doc- trinal minimum constitutes the foundation of the unity of the Church. A declination from this minimum is an apostasy form the Church of Christ. On the opposite, if the individual churches profess a doctrinal minimum, they can differ in all other doctrinal questions, because such difference the unity of the Church is not broken. 6 However, a serious problem is the question how to determine what is a doctrinal minimum, that a man must accept from Christ. A man cannot simply define by himself what Christ wants him to believe in order to be saved. The image of Christians meeting to lay down what is necessary from the teachings of Christ is absolutely devious. It is possible to come to an agreement on anything, the voting itself is just an enforcement of the majority opinion, but if a man wants to be saved, it is of no help to be guided by opinions of men, not even if it is the opinion of a majority, be cause a majority can be also wrong. The only thing that can help a man in the question of salvation is the truth. The true doctrine of Christ obviously 4 Cf. HARNONCOURT, P.: Katolicita a katolicizmu, Nástin sebepojetí římskokatolické církve s ohledem na ekumenizmus In : Teologické texty, č.2004/1 : http://www.teologicketexty.cz/index.php?s=clanek&kod=20050801173441&nadpis=Katolicit aakatolicismu (8.11.2006). 5 Cf. PALOČKO, Š.: Katolícka Cirkev ako prostriedok záchrany ľudí. Prešov : Petra, n. o., 2007, p. 53. 6 Cf. PRUŽINSKÝ, Š.: Aby všetci jedno boli, Pravoslávie a ekumenizmus, Prešov: Metropolitná rada Pravoslávnej cirkvi na Slovensku, 1997, p. 198. 109 E-Theologos, Vol. 3, No. 1 DOI 10.2478/v10154-012-0009-6 cannot be known by the way of people agreeing on one opinion, but only by the way of seeking the true and real teachings of Christ and to be guided by them. All these attempts indicate that the search for the true identity of the Church of Christ cannot be realized in such a superficial way, because we can either come to a self-contradicting conclusions, as shown in the case of the theory, according to which individual confessions complement each other, or we come to a superficial opinion of men, which is just a ground- less alternative to the true doctrine of Christ. This leads us to the essential criterion for distinguishing the true Church of Christ from the alternatives based on subjective views and opin- ions of men. The authentic Church founded by Christ to spread his teach- ings and to work as an organism led by him (cf. 1Cor 12:12-13.27; Col 1:18), must necessarily be endowed with a tool that guarantees the integ- rity of the Christ’s doctrine for all times. Otherwise the Church would be functionless and useless, and so would be the whole salvific work of Christ. To ascribe to God a senseless, unconsidered and chaotic work, would be a blasphemy against God and against good sense.
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