Perspectief 2016-34

2016-34 Why Ecumenical Dialogue Matters for the Orthodox Church 31 Com ment Liturgy. What would be hard to comprehend for most Orthodox faithful is the affirmation that the dialogue with non-Orthodox would help them or the Orthodox Church learn something new about God’s revelation in Christ. The difficulty arises from two commonly held presuppositions: 1.) the notion of deification does not apply to the Church, because the Church as the body of Christ is perfect; 2.) if we accept that there is something to be learned from other Christian denominations, this implies that the Orthodox Church does not possess the fullness of the truth, but only partial truths which require ‘completion’ by others. In the following section, I will address both of these preconceived ideas. First, I will explain in what respect it is possible to talk about the deification of the Church. Then, I will try to clarify why saying that the Orthodox Church has something to learn from its dialogue with others does not entail that the Orthodox tradition contains only partial truths. One might ask how the Church can be in need of deification if its head is Christ, who infuses it with sanctity through the sacraments. Stăniloae addresses this concern by highlighting the cosmic vocation of the Church. The goal of the entire creation, Stăniloae explains, is to become a fully transparent medium of communion between God and human beings. 21 Since, at the moment, as Stăniloae himself remarks, the Church does not fulfil any of these criteria (the Church is neither completely transparent to God’s love, nor does it include the entire world) it is impossible to speak about a perfect Church. In its present form, the Church is only a provisional reality, on its way towards cosmic fulfilment. The manner in which the Church can attain its deification is dialogical, following the same premises as that of every individual faithful. The Church, like its members, has to transform the material creation into a space for communion. More precisely, according to Stăniloae, the Church has to endorse all those initiatives that can serve to strengthen human solidarity and love: from technological developments, to social movements and ecumenical dialogue. 22 The support of the Church should not be unconditional or uncritical, but dialogical – learning from others and using what they have discovered in order to make the world a better place for inter-personal love. Thus, the dialogue with the 21 Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă , vol. III (Bucureşti: Institutul Biblic şi de Misiune Ortodoxă, 2010), 13. 22 Dumitru Stăniloae, "Coordonatele Ecumenismului din Punct de Vedere Ortodox", Ortodoxia 19, no. 4 (1967), 528–529.