Adam Pastorczyk

The purpose of this article is to show Mary as an icon of the sacramental lifestyle in the Holy Spirit. The iconic character of Mary’s life consists above all in the manifestation, not her own, but received on the day of the Annunciation, the new life – Jesus Christ. Mary does not teach the doctrine, does not describe God, does not create abstract concepts about Him, but allows us to experience His real presence. From the very beginning, the Church also participates in the iconic style of Mary’s life, showing the accepted novelty to the world. Christians have neither borrowed nor copied this sacramental lifestyle from anyone. This is something completely original, something that the world cannot give them, but they can give it to the world.

„Ecclesial being” means nothing other than making a paschal transition: from individual being to communal being. „The new birth from above” is a fruit of the simultaneous action of the Trinity, which in our presentation will be expressed by means of the theorem: „christology conditioned by pneumatology and vice versa”. At the same time, the Spirit forms the body of Christ and Christ sends the Spirit to those who are incorporated into the Church.

Taking into consideration what was said above, Christ cannot be understood as an individual, but as an unique „corporate personality”: „«one» in «many» and «many» in «one»”. In this way, the eschatological identity of Christ, being beyond history, finds its full realization in history. The location of history and eschatology in Christ brings us closer to the christological-pneumatological equilibrium in ecclesiology, so much awaited by Ioannis Zizioulas.

For many Christian communities, St. Paul the Apostle was not only the founder and teacher but above all a father. The Gospel proclaimed in the power of the Holy Spirit, created a truly father-son relationship between him and the young local Churches. Its intensity and character can be particularly seen in the letters sent by the Apostle to the community in Corinth, especially when the Corinthians were moving away from true faith.

The subject of our work is to examine the concept of liturgical syntax in the consciousness of early Church based on the relecture of the Scripture and Tradition by Ioannis Zizioulas. With regard to the Scriptures, our study will be based primarily on the relecture of the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians. The interpretation of biblical content in the author’s optics will allow us to distinguish two basic aspects of the ancient Eucharistic community (geographical and eschatological), shaping the ecclesiological-eucharistic concept of the liturgical syntax in the first centuries of Christianity. In the patristic, according to Zizioulas’research, the liturgical dimensions of the syntax of early Church will be sought by Ignatius of Antioch in his Episcopal Bishop model of the Church, with Justin Martyr, an eyewitness of the Eucharistic community of the second century, and Maximus the Confessor, presenting the iconic perspective of living liturgical community.

Although more than half a century has passed since the adoption of the dogmatic constitution on the Church at the Second Vatican Council, a discussion continues in the Catholic Church and in ecumenical discussions about the correct interpretation of the conciliar expression „Ecclesia in et ex Ecclesiis”. The subject of this article, therefore, is an analysis of the conciliar and post-conciliar teaching of the Catholic Church and the ongoing theological discussion on the mutual relationship of the universal Church and the local Church.

The purpose of this article is to present theology of secularization and the world in the view of Friedrich Gogarten. An indispensable help in presenting our author’s thoughts is the sentence: „Man between God and the world”, which is also the title of one of his most important works. According to Gogarten’s thought, a constant tension between direct  and dynamic relationship with God and the resulting ethical responsibility for the world in which he lives is inscribed in human life. On the one hand, the meeting with God inspires man to a positive response to the world’s problematic questions, but on the other hand, it reminds him of his freedom from the world resulting from God’s sonship. In this  regard, Jesus Christ is the only hermeneutical key to understanding life between God and the world.