If I were asked, however, for a contemporary
example of this ecclesiology of language, I would have no hesitation in
mentioning the work of the novelist Nikos Gabriel Pentzikis. In this work (which our academic theology in
Greece sadly has difficulty in accepting) a fully subjective and concretely
catholic—I would say pragmaticological— language, which shelters within it the
whole of the experience of beings in Christ calling for participation in his
language-bearing ecclesial community of intentions, is present on almost every
page. On the theological level, moreover,
of the topic we are discussing, Pentzikis’ book, Πρὸς Ἐκκλησιασμό, I
would be so bold as to say, is a patristic work that far surpasses the limited
spiritual perspective of much of the academic theological work of the last
century.
…It is worth devoting some time to reading Pentzikis’
book Πρὸς Ἐκκλησιασμό. It is one
of the most anti-scholastic ecclesiological “treatises” that has been written
since Gogol’s analogous treatise. It is
a text that does not define the church but presents it, like a salvific bloom
of the Spirit growing Christomorphically out of things, places, feelings, beings,
relationships, in and through language. We
find then, in Pentzikis, that it is the living adventure of the corporeal and
linguistic dialogical appropriation of the Church-in-her-making and not
abstract private thinking that animates these writings.
Church in the Making. pgs. 246 & 248
No comments:
Post a Comment