The Bride of the Lamb by Sergius Bulgakov

Author:Sergius Bulgakov [Sergius Bulgakov]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-08-31T07:45:00+00:00

3. The Limits of Sacramentalism

At the present time the Church is understood, first of all, as a sacramental-hierarchical organization, as the repository of the gifts of grace dispensed by the sacraments as potestas clavium or sacramental power. This power is tacitly identified with the Church herself, which in popular usage is frequently equated with the hierarchy. In no wise diminishing the immense value of the gift of sacramental organization, we must nevertheless say that such an identification is illegitimate and does not accord with the truth of Revelation. True, the Church really did institute such an organization and maintains it, but she is scarcely exhausted by it. We already know this from the New Testament doctrine of the Church (see above). As a mystical organism, as Divine-humanity, the Church is the noumen that serves as the basis of the sacramental-hierarchical organization. One cannot reject the necessity and significance of this organization without falling into schism and heresy, the heresy of the pneumatomachians and Quakers. As the repository of the gifts of grace, the Church is a given ac cessible to all. It is the divinely instituted path of the life of grace. One cannot transcend this path; one cannot montanistically subjectify it, empirically subordinating it to personal merits. Nor can one reject it in the name of personal freedom, which would be individualism. One should appropriately venerate the institutions of the Church. But one should not think that the power of the Church and its action in us are exhausted by "seven" sacraments, "not more and not less."26

About what gifts of the Spirit does 1 Corinthians 12 speak (just after the story of the institution of the Divine Eucharist in the preceding chapter)? About the gifts of grace, of course. But does it speak about sacramental gifts? No, not at all, for one would scarcely be justified in speaking of instituted sacraments in the apostolic church. Indeed, to what sacraments do the gifts of the Spirit correspond, the gifts of the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, the gifts of healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discerning of spirits, divers kinds of tongues, the interpretation of tongues (see 1 Cor. 12:8- 10)? And does the Church have a hierarchy to which the bestowal of these gifts could be referred? And to what hierarchical levels can one refer this divine institution "in the church" of apostles, prophets, teachers, possessors of the gifts of miracle-working, healing, assistance, diversities of tongues (vv. 28-29)? This is not even an exhaustive list, but only one that indicates the diversity of gifts, ministries, actions, and manifestations of the Spirit, who is "one and the selfsame" (v. 11). All these manifestations are not subject to any sacramental regulation, which would constrain "invisible gifts with an external sign." For these gifts the guiding principle is that the Spirit "bloweth where it listeth" (John 3:8), for "God giveth not the Spirit by measure" (John 3:34). Absence of law is the law for such manifestations of the Spirit.

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