On Church

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleΠερί Ἐκκλησίας
3. Language term Greek, Modern (1453-)
4. lemma author Koutalis, Vangelis
5. lemma category Modes of interaction > Conflict - Concepts of knowledge and modes of reasoning > Orthodox gnosiology
6. Publication date 9-2002
7. lemma work Sotiris, Gounelas [Author]. Περί Ἐκκλησίας [Letter to the editor]. Ὁ Πολίτης, 103, 11-13.
8. lemma manifestations Ὁ Πολίτης
9. Keywords Church - Archbishop Christodoulos - faith and knowledge
10. Lemma body

    1. This letter is the answer of S. Gounelas to a note written by the editor of Πολίτης, Angelos Elefantis, and published in issue no. 102 («Ἐκκλησία καί ἰδεολογία»). The latter, commenting on a phrase of the then Archbishop of the Church of Greece, Christodoulos, according to which when the faith of the Church is transformed into ideology all sorts of problems arise, expressed the view that Christian faith and religion, in general, is ideological par excellence, “the matrix of every ideology”, since the principal doctrines of the religious ideology are non-verifiable truths and convey non-verifiable knowledge.

       Gounelas defends Christodoulos by arguing that for a Christian with a spiritual experience the Church is first and foremost a sacramental, mystical encounter with the person of Christ. The Church exists as the body of Christ. The doctrines of the Church can be, indeed, verified by those who experience this encounter. They are known through faith, because faith for any Christian who enters “into the air of the Spirit” is knowledge. He also criticizes Elefantis for reducing the Church to a social phenomenon and to its institutional being, without taking into account the experience of the participants in its inner spiritual life.