Alexander Golitzin THE BODY OF CHRIST SAINT SYMEON THE NEW THEOLOGIAN ON SPIRITUAL LIFE AND THE HIERARCHICAL CHURCH Given at the International Conference on St. Symeon the New Theologian at Bose, September, 2002. Forthcoming in Italian translation in the Acts of the Conference, Qiqajon Press, Monastero di Bose 1. Introduction par excellence of clerical authority will emerge as speaking out of a common tradition, rooted in the revelation accorded Israel, summed up in Christ, and continuing especially in the literature of the monastic movement. II. A Summary of St. Symeon on the Church, the Body of Christ, and our Deification A. The Body of the Risen Jesus: the Flesh of Adam and First-Fruits of the New Creation For Symeon, the Church is more than an objective structure. It is reality with an upper-case "R". It is more real or objective a truth than the phenomenal world, the universe embraced by the five senses and darkened by the Fall. Like the Platonism of late antiquity, he holds that the unseen, intelligible world is the more truly existing one. Unlike the pagan philosophers, however, and together with the Fathers, his view is also firmly rooted in the scriptures. The Resurrection of the Lord Jesus has ushered in a new condition of existence, that new and different mode of being which is "the body of Christ". The Lord's risen body, animated by the Holy Spirit, has become the first-fruits of a new creation: "for in Him dwells the fullness of the divinity bodily" (Col 2:9), and "from this fullness have we all received" (Jn 1:16) scriptural phrases that Symeon quotes, for example, at the conclusion of the second of his two long discourses on the Church which open the | |
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