The Church and the churches in the ecumenical movement

Abstract

This article reflects on the limits of the Church from an Orthodox perspective and on the space which exists in Orthodox ecclesiology for other churches. The question of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC (2002) ‘whether there is space in Orthodox ecclesiology for other churches’ touches the ecclesiological nerve of the Orthodox Church. As is well known, there is no common attitude among the Orthodox towards the non-Orthodox communities that characterise themselves as churches. This affects the way in which the Orthodox churches relate to other churches. An attempt to describe and elaborate on this problem, so as to come up with some possible answers, would have to retrace the positions of the Orthodox churches on the matter, on their way to the Great and Holy Council, as well as during their ecumenical course from the beginning of the previous century until today. As the texts and the Orthodox commitment to the ecumenical endeavour show, the reality that the Orthodox Church understands itself as the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church does not mean that it looks at other Christians as if they were ‘outside the Church’ or outside God's grace; the Orthodox Church moves on the dialectic of the austerity of akribeia and the sensitivity of oikonomia, the distinction of church boundaries to the canonical and the charismatic. In this way it creates space to meet the other.