Abstract
In Scaffolds of the Church, Cyril Hovorun presents a challenging reflection on ecclesial space, borders and boundaries. In what is a highly original work in constructive ecclesiology which is often marred by poor proofreading he constantly moves between the ideal and the real, the sacred and the profane when dealing with the church: it is both an object of faith and at the same time a historical phenomenon subject to all the vagaries of human power and myth-making. Although there is a focus on the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the general point can be applied to all churches. The basic thesis is simple: to describe the emergence and origins of structures of the church in their historical context and to show how these changed through tensions with other boundaries, especially the political authorities.
Chapter One offers an extraordinarily wide-ranging account of the church’s borders and structures in dialogue with authors as diverse as Richard Hooker and George Lindbeck. This moves on to a far-reaching discussion of universal and particular and sacred and profane with a particular challenge to the Orthodox Churches which, he feels, have been ‘unable to sacrifice their local interests to the universal Christian’ (p. 48). Hovorun then goes on to describe the sacred and secular uses of the word ekklesia before discussing the archaeology of church space as well as the borders and boundaries of the great empires of Rome and Byzantium and the complex medieval political structures of the areas in which Orthodoxy spread northwards including the Balkans, Russia and Ukraine. What were fundamentally administrative structures, however, could easily become sacred forms that separated clergy from laity and made the church immune from criticism, and where borders could isolate those outside so that they became impregnable. He moves on to discuss sovereignty both inside and outside the churches including complex ideas such as ‘canonical territory’ as well as diasporic communities. A lengthy chapter then describes the different versions of autocephaly and how it grew in response to political authority. Another chapter discusses the issue of primacy and hierarchy in both church and ministry which again reveals the tension between the ideal and the real.
The final two chapters discuss the management of frontiers and issue in a strong injunction open up borders as widely as possible: the fact that there is so much contingency in the church means that humility rather than bounded certainty must be the starting point for discussions in and between the churches. Structures remain important in providing shape to human agency but are outside the nature of the church which means that the church can create new structures when necessary. Such a conclusion will no doubt have many critics, but the challenge it presents is real for all churches: a healthy dose of realism might be what all the churches need in their common witness for the future.