Foreword

Prof. O.M. Mathew, amidst his multifarious activities - academic, social and political - has found time to attend classes in theology and to get himself involved in theological thinking. This book 'Church and Sacraments' is the result of his study of theology and of his wide reading.

The first chapter, is an attempt to discuss the Church in terms of Bible and Tradition. The second chapter, is a lengthy discourse about the Trinitarian dimension of the Church. In this section he could have clarified the Pneumatological dimension of the Church. In Western theology, Pneumatology is often presented as a function of Ecclesiology, while really speaking Ecclesiology is a function of Pneumatology. The third chapter, is concerned with the four essential marks or "notae" of the Church. The fourth and fifth chapters, treat the Sacraments in general and the Seven Sacraments in particular. The background and perspective of his discussion is that of Western Scholastic theology. The author, however, has not followed the overstress on the institutional and juridical aspects of the Church, usually found in the Ecclesiological treatises in the Western Church. The dogmatic aspects of the Church's relation to the Holy Trinity and the relation of the Seven Sacraments to the Church as Sacrament of Christ have been dealt with in the last two chapters.

The author, though not a professional theologian nor a member of the Western Church, has clearly understood some of the principles found in the Ecclesiology of the early Church Fathers: principles such as the relation of the Church to the mystery of the Holy Trinity and the relation of the Holy Eucharist to the Church. The communion aspect of the Church and the Pneumatological aspect of the Church, greatly stressed in the Oriental Churches could have been brought in. The topics discussed in each chapter may appear to the ordinary reader as heavily loaded with the abstract notions of a scholastic theological discourse.

The author has tried, at least in an implicit manner, to view the Church not as a "Power" or "Jurisdiction" but as a "Sacramental" organism. The author, though not expressed in clear terms, seems to have realized that the institution, essential as it is for the Church as sign and Sacrament, cannot be simply identified with the Church. As institution the Church is of 'this world", as fulfilment she is of "the world to come". The whole purpose of the institution is precisely to make fulfillment possible, to reveal as present that which is to "come". The fulfilment is impossible without the institution, just as the institution receives all its meaning from that which it fulfils. What this means however, is that the Church's visible, institutional structure - episcopate, canonical order, etc. - is a structure not of power, but of presence. It exists in order to answer the fullness of that presence and its continuity in space and time, its identify and 'sameness' always and everywhere. Her only mission is to reveal and "represent", to make present in this world, the Kingdom which is not of this world, and for the sake of which those who "possess should be as if they possessed not".

An important point to remember in any study of Ecclesiology is its relation to the whole of theology. The Church is the mystery of the new creation and she is the mystery of the Kingdom. It has often been said that there is no ecclesiology in the modern sense of the word, in the writings of the Church Fathers. The reason for this is not a lack of interest in the Church, but the Fathers' understanding and experience of the Church, as the new life of the new creation and the presence, the Parousia of the Kingdom. Their attention is not focused on the "institution" because the very nature and purpose of that institution is not to exist "in itself" but to be the "Sacrament", the "epiphany" of the new creation. In this sense, their whole theology is ecclesiological, for it has the Church, the experience of the new life, the communion of the Holy Spirit, as its source and context. From this point of view, as the Russian Theologian Schmemann has said, "the post Tridentine treatise 'De Ecclesia', mother and pattern of all modern ecclesiology both Western and Eastern, is indeed the downfall of Patristic ecclesiology, for, by focusing attention almost exclusively on the institution, it obscures the cosmical and eschatalogical  nature of the Church". It makes "institution" an end in itself, and in doing this, in apparently exalting the Church, it in fact mutilates her, making her as we see it today (among many theologians) more and more "irrelevant" for the world, less and less, "expressive" of the Kingdom of God."

As an attempt of a person who has laboured to understand the theology of the Church, Mr. Mathew seems to have succeeded to understand what the Church really is. The reduction of the Church to a merely human society is the bane of the age. Consequently many of the so called theologians evaluate the Church and her faith and life in terms of the World, of its ideologies, and philosophies, of its trends and of its needs, and thus ultimately surrender ecclesiology to the

cultural, philosophical and ideological categories of the World. The World should be judged in terms of the Trinitarian Communion which the Church is. As Cyprian says, Church is "a people made one in the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit". This idea has been well brought out by Mr. Mathew in this book.

I am sure that this book will give an incentive to students of theology for a more detailed study of ecclesiology. I congratulate Mr. Mathew for his maiden attempt to present his theological insights in a book form. This book, I hope, will provoke other students of theology to study ecclesiology in relation to theology and to become convinced that all theology is ecclesial.