Alexander Schmemann

1. The Beginning of the Church (28 pages)

Page 6

But although their preaching and teaching was the link between all the churches, each Church through its local hierarchy also received the apostolic gifts and doctrine in full measure. In the community at Jerusalem, the model upon which all the other churches were based, even at a very early stage St. James and the presbyters exercised authority along with the apostles.
The apostles moved on, but everywhere local hierarchies remained to continue their work, preserve their witness, hand on their gifts, and — in harmony with all the other communities — to realize in this world the unity of the Church as the one, indivisible people of God which is everywhere assembled together to proclaim the new life. In this way we are given from the outset an example and definition of what later became known as “apostolic succession.”

 

Life of Christians.

But what, one may now ask, was the positive ideal of life held by this community? For the early Church, unity in love was the ultimate value; it was the supreme purpose of life that Christ Himself had revealed to men. The Church was the restoration of the unity that had been broken and torn asunder by sin; those who were baptized, who were living in union with Christ and sharing in His life through the breaking of bread, were reunited with God, and in God they also found unity with one another.

This unity was demonstrated above all in the active love through which each Christian was conscious that he belonged to all the brethren, and conversely, that they all belonged to him. The unity of Christians with one another is now, alas, only symbolized by their communion in divine service; in the early Church the liturgy was the crowning point of a real unity, a continual communion in everyday life; moreover, the liturgy was then unthinkable apart from that communion. In early Christian writings no other word is so often repeated as “brother,” and Christians of that age filled the idea of brotherhood with vital meaning, which showed clearly in their unity of thought: “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul . . .” (Acts 4:32).

Brotherhood also meant active mutual support among Christians “of all for all” — a care which was both material and spiritual. “And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need” (Acts 2:44f.). The very smallness of the Christian community in Jerusalem made it possible to put unity of life into practice in a radical way through sharing their property. This phenomenon, inaccurately described as “primitive Christian communism,” was not the product of any specifically Christian economic or social theory, but a manifestation of love. Its meaning lies not in community of property as such, but in the evidence it gives us of the new life that manifested itself among them, entirely transforming the old. In the Pauline epistles we find the summons: “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give” (II Cor. 9:7) — a remark which points to the survival of private property in other Christian communities. But the utter devotion of the Jerusalem community — the brotherhood of “beggars” as St. Paul called them — remains forever in the mind of Christendom as an ineffaceable example and legacy, the ideal of an authentic regeneration of all human relationships through love.

The early Church has often been described as indifferent to this world and as existing in a continual tense expectancy of the End. But the new life also involved a new attitude toward the world; since for Christians this love is not an internal affair of the Church, but, on the contrary, the essence of her witness in the world. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another” (John 13:35). If we read the New Testament with care we discover a complete doctrine concerning the world and how Christians should relate to it and live in it. The Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the figure of the merciful, succoring Christ are proclaimed to the world by the Church and will remain the world’s ideal even when men reject the Church. And when Christians have sought the basic standards by which to determine their relationship to the state, to the family, to work — indeed, to all aspects of human life — have they not always searched the epistles of St. Paul? The expectation of the End, the prayers for the coming of Christ — everything which it is now the fashion to call eschatological — cannot, without doing violence to historical truth, be divorced from this positive ideal. The kingdom to come for which Christians pray is for them inseparable from judgment, and their judgment will reflect the precise extent to which they have embodied their faith in their own lives, i.e., in the world. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these. . .” (Matt. 25:40). Through Christ the kingdom of God has entered human life in order to regenerate it.

 

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Schmemann, A History of the Orthodox Church: Table of Contents

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