Mark Downham
20th January 2005, 09:49 AM
The Orthodox view on Symbolism and Sacraments is summed up by Fr. Chrysostom MacDonnell in his paper - "The Mysteries of the Kingdom - The Sacraments in Orthodox Life"
For in Eastern Christianity a symbol is not a stand-in for what is absent, but the physical manifestation and evidence of its presence. The human face, for example, is the ‘symbol’, in this sense, of this or that particular human person; it is the outward image manifesting the inward reality, yet cannot be separated from it. In the same way, the sacraments are symbols of the grace they convey and in being consecrated from the very stuff of matter in this world, the sacramental elements, as symbols, manifest the truth about those elements, be they water and oil in Baptism; bread and wine in Communion; the crowns at marriage; whatever they be, once consecrated they not only bear a sacred power as means of grace, but moreover, point to the sacred nature of all matter, that once redeemed from the fall of creation by the action of the Holy Spirit and of Christ through his Church, begin to manifest the nature they had in the beginning and are to manifest as the future things.
We call this the outward and visible signs of an inward and spirtual work of grace. There are four words that are important in your quotation on symbols - they convey (transformative intercession); they bear (presence bearing as a form of prophetic declaration); they point (they act as a witness and testament) and they manifest (which is an expression of symbolic reification).
Another Orthodox Quote: The Orthodox Church abounds with the use of symbols. These symbols are those realities which have the power and competence of manifesting God to men, signs which carry us beyond ourselves and themselves into the genuine union and knowledge of things eternal and divine.
We hold that this is in effect saying that Orthodox symbolic worship is a recognition of the invested power symbols have as a prophetic medium and that actually the process of being carried deeper is not actually a symbolic process but a form of substantive process - because if a symbol goes beyond itself it moves from shadow to substance.
For us the real nature of the prophetic is expressed in two ways:
Revelation. 19:10 'The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy'.
Colossians 1:17 'he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
This act of consistence is expressed prophecy - so when you engage the symbolic in Orthodoxy you are actually engaging an expression of the prophetic. We hold that hold that Consistence is Investiture - living and active investiture. So for us, the Symbolic and the Iconic in Orthodoxy are expressed forms of prophetic intercession and declaration.
For in Eastern Christianity a symbol is not a stand-in for what is absent, but the physical manifestation and evidence of its presence. The human face, for example, is the ‘symbol’, in this sense, of this or that particular human person; it is the outward image manifesting the inward reality, yet cannot be separated from it. In the same way, the sacraments are symbols of the grace they convey and in being consecrated from the very stuff of matter in this world, the sacramental elements, as symbols, manifest the truth about those elements, be they water and oil in Baptism; bread and wine in Communion; the crowns at marriage; whatever they be, once consecrated they not only bear a sacred power as means of grace, but moreover, point to the sacred nature of all matter, that once redeemed from the fall of creation by the action of the Holy Spirit and of Christ through his Church, begin to manifest the nature they had in the beginning and are to manifest as the future things.
We call this the outward and visible signs of an inward and spirtual work of grace. There are four words that are important in your quotation on symbols - they convey (transformative intercession); they bear (presence bearing as a form of prophetic declaration); they point (they act as a witness and testament) and they manifest (which is an expression of symbolic reification).
Another Orthodox Quote: The Orthodox Church abounds with the use of symbols. These symbols are those realities which have the power and competence of manifesting God to men, signs which carry us beyond ourselves and themselves into the genuine union and knowledge of things eternal and divine.
We hold that this is in effect saying that Orthodox symbolic worship is a recognition of the invested power symbols have as a prophetic medium and that actually the process of being carried deeper is not actually a symbolic process but a form of substantive process - because if a symbol goes beyond itself it moves from shadow to substance.
For us the real nature of the prophetic is expressed in two ways:
Revelation. 19:10 'The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy'.
Colossians 1:17 'he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
This act of consistence is expressed prophecy - so when you engage the symbolic in Orthodoxy you are actually engaging an expression of the prophetic. We hold that hold that Consistence is Investiture - living and active investiture. So for us, the Symbolic and the Iconic in Orthodoxy are expressed forms of prophetic intercession and declaration.