The Church is One

A. S. Khomiakov

Source: W. J. Birkbeck, ed., Russia and the English Church, Containing a correspondence between Mr. William Palmer, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and M. Khomiakoff, in the years 1844–1854 (London: SPCK, 1917 reprint of the 1895 edition). Public domain (archive.org russiaenglishchu00birkiala, confirmed NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT).

Khomiakov’s foundational statement of Orthodox ecclesiology — the Church as the living unity of grace, not visible/invisible or juridical, but true and substantial. Written c. 1863; first published posthumously.

1. Chapter 1

§1. THE Church is one. Her unity follows of necessity from the unity of God; for the Church is not a multitude of persons in their separate individuality, but a unity of the grace of God, living in a multitude of rational creatures, submitting themselves willingly to grace. Grace, indeed, is also given to those who resist it, and to those who do not make use of it (who hide their talent in the earth), but these are not in the Church. In fact, the unity of the Church is not imaginary or allegorical, but a true and substantial unity, such as is the unity of many members in a living body.

The Church is one, notwithstanding her division, as it appears to a man who is still alive on earth. It is only in relation to man that it is possible to recognise a division of the Church into visible and invisible; her unity is, in reality, true and absolute. Those who are alive on earth, those who have finished their earthly course, those who, like the angels, were not created for a life on earth, those in future generations who have not yet begun their earthly course, are all united

1 The title written by Mr. Khoiniakoff himself at the top of the manuscript from which this Essay was first printed is: 'The Church is one.'— [W. J. B.]

together in one Church, in one and the same grace of God; for the creation of God which has not yet been manifested is manifest to Him; and God hears the prayers and knows the faith of those whom He has not yet called out of non- existence into existence. Indeed the Church, the Body of Christ, is manifesting forth and fulfilling herself in time, without changing her essential unity or inward life of grace. And therefore, when we speak of 'the Church visible and invisible,' we so speak only in relation to man.

§ 2. The Church visible, or upon earth, lives in complete communion and unity with the whole body of the Church, of which Christ is the Head. She has abiding within her Christ and the grace of the Holy Spirit in all their living fulness, but not in the fulness of their manifestation,1 for she acts and knows not fully, but only so far as it pleases God.

Inasmuch as the earthly and visible Church is not the fulness and completeness of the whole Church which the Lord has appointed to appear at the final judgment of all creation, she acts and knows only within her own limits; and (according to the words of Paul the Apostle, to the Corinthians, 1 Cor. v. 12) does not judge the rest of man- kind, and only looks upon those as excluded, that is to say, not belonging to her, who exclude themselves. The rest of mankind, whether alien from the Church, or united to her by ties which God has not willed to reveal to her, she leaves to the judgment of the great day. The Church on earth judges for herself only,2 according to the grace of the Spirit, and

1 Bo Bcefi HXI }KH3HeHHofl noiHOTt, HO ne BT> ncumrrt HXI npOHBjeniii. On the true meaning of the last word Samarin wrote: — Je n'ai rien a redire a ' Selbstoffenbarung, ' mais d6cidez vo